[unable to retrieve full-text content]The following article, Democrats Dig For New Insults After Their Trump ‘Hitler’ Rhetoric Fails To Move Masses, was first published on Conservative Firing Line.…

As was the case at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia last December, foreign adversaries are flying drones over sensitive U.S. military bases and into military training areas to spy on…

Culture The Mayor of Hooville Bids Adieu Tony Bennett did it his way and changed UVA Basketball Forever.  Fighting back tears as best he could, University of Virginia’s head basketball coach, Tony Bennett, quoted the late Christian missionary Jim Elliot during a Friday press conference to formally announce his resignation. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose,” said Bennett. “I’ve been here 15 years as the head coach and I thought it would be a little longer to be honest but that’s been on loan. It wasn’t mine to keep. It’s time for me to give it back.”  Bennett then turned to his family. “I love Laurel with all my heart,” Bennett said of his wife. “To be a better dad to my daughter Anna and my son Eli. My parents are both 81 years old, and I don’t want to live with any regrets. Just to be around them, to be a better friend, to be a better brother.” Bennett’s retirement comes only months after he signed a contract extension that would have seen him remain the Cavs coach through 2030. Among college basketball’s sordid landscape of success, Bennett is oft regarded as one of the good guys, a deep-believing man of faith who eloquently expressed his faith in the Lord without coming across as dogmatic.  His sincerity, deep faith, and leadership blissfully shone through during his meeting with the Blue Ridge press on Friday. Bennett credited the “unique way” in which UVA has built a non-traditional powerhouse. In the era of one-and-done, Bennett was an old-school ball coach who valued four-year players and prized low-scoring, defensive battles drawn out through his vaunted pack line defense. They say defense wins championships, and for Bennett especially, no axiom serves a more fitting description of his first-rate tenure as the head hoops coach for the Cavaliers. Bennett’s 15-year run as leader of the Wahoos was sparkling. A two-time Naismith and AP coach of the year and one time NCAA tournament champion, Bennett leaves Charlottesville the most decorated hoops coach in the university’s history.  Many college basketball fans despised his defensive scheme. As commentators and casual fans complained about the protracted nature of Bennett’s basketball, those who watched the two decades of flashy but streaky Cavaliers teams that proceeded Bennett came to appreciate the Merrimack vs. Monitor-esque slogs that more often than not resulted in a W over the last 15 seasons. In his decade and a half at the helm, Bennett’s teams won 364 games while earning six regular season ACC titles, two ACC tournament championships, and 10 NCAA tournament appearances. His win percentage of 72.8 percent ranks him just below Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and UNC’s Dean Smith, two other ACC coaches who rose to the top of the college basketball coaching world.  The year before Bennett led his team to its sole, miraculous championship, the Hoos experienced one of the most devastating defeats in the history of the game. The Cavaliers, who had earned a #1 seed in the 2018 edition of March Madness, inexplicably lost to #16-seed UMBC. It was the first time in the history of the tournament that a #1 lost to a #16. Such an embarrassing defeat would’ve sunk other coaches or at least caused them to strike out at their team in absence of an explanation for such an embarrassing loss. Not Bennett. He and the Cavaliers, led by senior guards Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy, used the loss as fuel for what would become one of the most sensational and enchanting runs in the history of the game. After dispatching Gardner Webb, Oklahoma, and Oregon in the first three rounds of the tournament, Virginia beat #3 Purdue and #5 Auburn with back-to-back, breathtaking buzzer-beater finishes that propelled the Cavs into the finals where they forever etched their name into March Madness lore.  Virginia’s Gov. Glenn Youngkin, reacting to the news on Thursday, said his “heart broke” upon hearing the news. “Tony Bennett is one of the greatest coaches that college basketball will ever see, and he’s also a great man. I was heartbroken to see he was stepping down. We’re going to miss him.”  The legendary college coach Rick Pitino also took the time to note Bennett’s contributions to the sport and its community. “College basketball just lost a man with incredible class, humility, and dignity. Tony Bennett is an awesome teacher of our game.” Bennett’s success began with his belief in the “five pillars” of humility, passion, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness. In the age of big-money recruiting and off-court scandals, his players represented UVA, Charlottesville, and the greater Commonwealth with grace and professionalism. From top to bottom, Bennett built the program into something to admire and be proud of.  At his introductory press conference in 2009, Bennett spoke earnestly: “I came here to build a great team. But, more importantly, I came here to build a program that lasts.” Whoever inherits the Hoos next, and for this season it will likely be his associate head coach Ron Sanchez, Bennett has achieved the goal of building a program unlike anything we’ve seen in college hoops. So long, Tony. You will be long missed but never forgotten. The post The Mayor of Hooville Bids Adieu appeared first on The American Conservative.

Culture Will D.C.’s Oldest Liquor Store Become a Pot Shop? Dixie Liquor’s days may be numbered as college tastes turn to weed. Credit: image via Shutterstock Dixie Liquor is the oldest spirit shop in Washington, D.C., but by the beginning of next year, it may become just another dope depot. The liquor store, which has been a landmark of Georgetown since it opened in 1934, announced in early October that its landlord is transferring its lease to the owner of a marijuana dispensary—unless the community fights back. The plea for community involvement was, to put it mildly, graceless. Dixie Liquor posted the news on its company Facebook page, along with this harangue: “Is this what Georgetown wants? This would make 23 Cannabis retailers in Georgetown alone. The best we can do is protest the Cannabis License Approval with Washington, D.C., or protest directly with the Dixie Liquor Landlord.” And to show that its owners meant business, Dixie Liquor posted a screenshot of the landlord’s name, phone number, and personal email. Within hours, the Facebook post was gone, but the news was already widespread. The property’s landlord, Ronald Miller, said that there is no guarantee that the spot will be filled by a cannabis dispensary: He is exploring other options as well.  “The days of the Mom and Pop Liquor Store are dwindling,” he said in an email, adding of his future plans, “The goal is to maximize the property’s value now and into the future to do what is best for my family.” The decision regarding cannabis licensing is now in the hands of the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration, which will decide the store’s fate by early December. Dixie Liquor did not respond to media requests—mine or anyone else’s—but the store’s prospective replacement was happy to explain exactly what could be happening, if he gets his way.  “It’s an iconic property,” James Kahn, the owner of JKEntity, LLC, told the Georgetown Voice of his desire to fill the spot with a dispensary. Kahn, who is also an ordained rabbi, cited as especially attractive the fact that Dixie Liquor is right on M Street, Georgetown’s main drag, and that the fact that it is the first building drivers see when they cross Key Bridge from Northern Virginia. He added that he could envision his pot shop as a place that “contributes meaningfully” to Georgetown at large.     “We want to be good neighbors,” he said. “I want to be a dispensary that I would be happy to live next to, that I’d be happy for my kids to live next to.” Unstated in all of this, of course, is the real reason why the property is attractive to purveyors of vice: It is a five-minute walk from Georgetown University. And, at the same time as college-aged tastes for alcohol and tobacco are declining, young people’s desire for weed—legal weed—is on the rise. There are already about two dozen dispensaries in Georgetown alone and more than 200 more throughout the rest of the city. Though their wares are technically only available to those with a city-issued card, D.C.’s regulations allow residents to “self-certify” by presenting an ID, filling out a form, and paying a small fee in the dispensary itself. The barrier to entry is very low. That final fact of course has not gone unnoticed by people who live in the area. “It’s close to a university, it’s close to a high school, it’s close to a middle school, an elementary school. It just doesn’t seem like the right location,” one Georgetowner said of Kahn’s proposal at a recent meeting of the Georgetown Advisory Neighborhood Commission.  The same complaint could be applied to Dixie Liquor in its current incarnation. There has always been something skeevy about the place. Until the city’s Costco opened in 2012, it was the biggest seller of Natural Light (about 40,000 cases annually) in Washington, D.C. It was frequently shuttered for selling to minors and seemed to change hands every decade. One owner, at least during my childhood, was famous for keeping the place open late on snow days to get the college kids extra drunk. “When we hear school is closed, we stay open until midnight, and we make sure sidewalks are clear,” he once informed the Georgetown student newspaper. “We’re going to get you guys drunk. Responsibly.” And yet there is some melancholy romance about the place, too. Whenever I cross Key Bridge and see Dixie Liquor, especially at night, when the neon is all lit up, my mind drifts to the slouchy world of some jangly, pre-Swordfishtrombones Tom Waits song. The store is one of the few remaining relics of an older, shadier version of the nation’s capital. Dixie Liquor is said to have been John F. Kennedy’s local liquor store. Bill Clinton certainly got trashed off its products. My grandfather, when he was a Georgetown student in the 1950s, swore he saw Fidel Castro walking out with a bottle of rum.  Back in the Bush era, Dixie Liquor advertised itself as “the only privately owned monument in Washington,” declaring that “the more the world changes, the more Dixie stays the same.” That statement has been true for 90 years—a long time in Washington—but for how much longer? The post Will D.C.’s Oldest Liquor Store Become a Pot Shop? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Will Sheinbaum Confront the Cartels? The technocratic tack may prove more fruitful than the drug war or its softer replacements. Claudia Sheinbaum, the recently inaugurated president of Mexico, released additional details last week on the security strategy she intends to pursue during the course of her term. This issue is of grave importance to both citizens of Mexico, facing a growing wave of cartel violence, and to Americans, who suffer from cartel violence and trafficking (both drug and human) across the southern border. In Mexico, cartel violence has exploded since the United States captured—under somewhat mysterious circumstances—the drug kingpin El Mayo, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. Just this month, 34 people were killed in the space of a single day in the state of Guanajuato; in the city of Chilpancingo, cartels killed the newly elected mayor and left his severed head on top of his car as a warning to the public. Controlling the cartels will undoubtedly be one of Sheinbaum’s biggest challenges. Organized crime in Mexico has proven extremely difficult to root out. During his presidency, Felipe Calderón attempted, without success, to destroy the cartels by force during the Mexican Drug War—the principal result of which was a massive increase in murders as cartels militarized in response, a development that continues to haunt Mexico to this day. Successive presidents have tried adjustments and alternative strategies to little avail. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO), famously advocated a somewhat softer approach, proclaiming that cartel violence must be solved with “hugs not bullets” by addressing the root social causes, although he less conspicuously continued to deploy the armed forces against organized crime in affected areas. The result was a modest decline in the homicide rate during his term in office, little consolation in a country whose raw numbers remain near historical highs. Sheinbaum’s security strategy builds off that of her mentor, but adds some promising new elements to the mix. It consists of four points: solving the root social causes of organized crime, reforming the National Guard, increasing cooperation with state and local governments, and the strengthening of state intelligence and investigative services through the creation of a new national intelligence coordination agency. During the October 8 press conference at which she presented her new plan, Schienbaum remarked, “Calderón’s narco war is not coming back. We’re not looking for extrajudicial executions, which was what was happening. What are we going to use? Prevention, a focus on root causes, intelligence, and [security] presence in this four-pronged strategy.” The first two points of this approach are a clear continuation of AMLO’s “hugs not bullets” approach. The use of social programs—particularly employment and educational training for young men—to dissuade vulnerable sections of the population is a trendy but probably low-impact idea for fighting organized crime. The revenue from the drug trade is simply too vast for social programs to act as much of a counter-incentive. Cartel money is sufficient to suborn Mexican law enforcement, judicial officers, politicians, and even the head of Calderón’s own war on drugs; a few welfare programs cannot compete with the economic possibilities available to Mexicans willing to sign on with narco gangs. But the remainder of the program shows a sharp understanding of the limitations of the Mexican state and the reforms necessary to effectively confront organized crime. The fundamental issue that faces all Mexican presidents attempting to deal with the cartels is that the Mexican government has limited state capacity. Its institutions are often inefficient and corrupt, with poor organization and oversight. As a result, the government is frequently unable to take decisive action when needed, and what actions it does take are often blunt and ineffective. The farther away from the capital and direct federal oversight, the bigger the issue. Cartels, with their more efficient and less compromised chains of command, are thus able to outmaneuver the Mexican government in the great game of crime suppression. The latter three points of Sheinbaum’s program work directly to address this issue and build the state capacity of the Mexican government and make it capable of confronting cartels effectively. The reform of the Mexican National Guard was one of AMLO’s signature reforms during his final year in office, and one that Sheinbaum has faithfully followed. The proposal is to incorporate it as an arm of the Mexican Armed Forces, placing it under the command of the Secretary of Defense and providing it with access to military resources. This will, according to the Mexican government, allow for the National Guard to be trained to much higher standards, be issued higher-quality military equipment, and most importantly improve coordination between the Guard and other branches of the armed forces during security operations. Improving cooperation with, and oversight of, state and local government is also an absolute necessity for the suppression of organized crime in the country. The failure of the Mexican federal government to effectively respond to local conditions and protect citizens and government officials is a major contributor to the power of cartels, who are able to extort local officials and citizens and incorporate them into their power base as collaborators and recruits. In many places, Mexicans are left with few other options: Those who do not cooperate with the cartels simply end up dead. Effectively providing security and protection by responding to the needs of localities denies the cartels this path to expanding and maintaining their influence. Finally, increasing the capacities of Mexican intelligence services is a major step towards eliminating one of the cartels’ major advantages: initiative. The vast financial resources available to the cartels from the drug trade allows them to co opt portions of the Mexican state for their own ends, including for gathering intelligence on the Mexican government’s plans and organizing operations in anticipation of them. In contrast, the Mexican government has relatively little insight into the cartels’ own operations, and must react to situations that are unfolding or have already unfolded. An effective intelligence agency can reverse this dynamic, eliminating compromised points in the Mexican state and providing insight into cartel operations, allowing the government to be proactive and take the initiative in any conflict with organized crime. This is absolutely necessary for the pacification of the nation and the elimination of cartel violence. Some commentators have criticized Sheinbaum for not taking a harder line on organized crime. The example of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador has made many on the right underestimate the difficulties faced by anyone attempting to confront organized crime in Mexico, a country orders of magnitude more massive and with vastly more complex issues. Sheinbaum’s subtler technocratic approach is in fact a very intelligent way of solving the fundamental problem that enables the persistence of organized crime in Mexico: a state that lacks the capacity to maintain order internally and externally and to respond to challenges quickly and efficiently. Once that is achieved, taking a harder line against the cartels will be both natural and, unlike Calderón’s attempt, effective. The big question in all of this is, of course, execution. The same lack of state capacity that leaves Mexico relatively helpless to respond to cartel violence makes it difficult to build an effective intelligence apparatus and cooperate with local governments. And it’s unknown what priority Sheinbaum places on security relative to her other concerns, like the environment and social welfare programs—all of these proposed reforms will be expensive to accomplish. But, as a plan, it’s a promising start. The post Will Sheinbaum Confront the Cartels? appeared first on The American Conservative.

A Tale of Two Economies

Actual Tough Guy Donald Trump Vs. Scripted Tough Guy Actor Dave Bautista

Wisdom From the Founders: What Is Necessary for Liberty?

Why We Must Win for School Choice

Protecting Our Economy Is a Bipartisan Issue