12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
APQA British senior citizen has
been slapped with a restrain-
ing order and a suspended
prison sentence after she
used her pet parrot as “a
weapon” to torment her
neighbors during a 16-year
harassment campaign. A
court heard how Catherine
Searle, 81, would play opera
loudly to “overstimulate” the
bird and cause it to screech
for days on end. Paul and
Lydia Appleton, both 61, de-
scribed the endless squawk-
ing as “Chinese torture”
that left them desperate for
“some nice peace and quiet.”QAt least 43 people have
been injured at the annual
“exploding hammer” festival
in the Mexican town of San
Juan de la Vega. The 300-year-
old event—a celebration of
the town’s Robin Hood–like
patron saint, San Juanito—
sees festivalgoers attach
packets of chlorate powder
and sulfur to the ends of
sledgehammers. They then
smash the hammers against
rail beams, causing explo-
sions that sometimes send
the hammer wielders flying
backward. “It’s extreme,” said
one hammer maker. “We do
it for the saint.”
QA California woman who
meticulously watered a
house plant for two years
was stunned to discover that
the succulent was actually
plastic. Caelie Wilkes, 24,
wrote on Facebook that she
was proud of her “beautiful
succulent,” calling it the “per-
fect plant.” The stay-at-home
mom kept to a strict water-
ing schedule and dutifully
washed its leaves, but when
she tried to transplant it into
the “cutest” vase, discov-
ered it was a fake rooted in
Styro foam. “I feel like these
last two years have been a
lie,” she wrote.It must be true...
I read it in the tabloidsIt’s time for House Democrats “to get much more aggressive in their
oversight of the attorney general,” said Greg Sargent. In a scathing ruling
last week, a federal judge accused William Barr of a “lack of candor,”
suggesting the AG pre-spun the findings of Robert Mueller’s Russia in-
vestigation to politically benefit President Trump. Judge Reggie Walton—
an appointee of President George W. Bush—said he now intends to
review the full Mueller report to determine what should be unredacted
and made public. “All this opens the door for House Democrats to un-
leash the oversight hounds in a serious way.” We need to know if the
Justice Department redacted incriminating details about Trump, whether
those redactions were coordinated with the White House, and what con-
straints, if any, Barr put on Mueller. Scarred by the impeachment process,
some Democrats worry that voters will regard this stepped-up oversight
as a “politically unpalatable relitigation of the past.” In fact, it would
“be all about what’s coming.” Barr might try to assist Trump with re-
election: He has already opened a special channel for Rudy Giuliani, the
president’s lawyer, to send in dirt on Democratic presidential candidate
Joe Biden. Will House Democrats let him get away with it?“People really seem to struggle with the word ‘coup,’” said Jonah Gold-
berg. President Trump keeps calling the failed impeachment effort a
coup—which of course it wasn’t. According to the dictionary, a coup is
the illegal, often violent seizure of power from a government. Still, as silly
as the impeachment coup talk is, it has a certain plausibility within the
bounds of political hyperbole. You can’t say the same of the claim now
being made by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders that Joe Biden’s come-
back in the Democratic primaries is the result of an establishment coup.
What’s happening with Biden isn’t a coup, “it is politics.” Democratic
politicians and ordinary voters rallied to the former vice president partly
out of opposition to Sanders’ socialist agenda, “but mostly out of fear
that Sanders would lose to Trump.” Yet the Vermont senator and his fol-
lowers believe “in almost Marxian fashion” that victory “is their rightful
destiny.” A sense of entitlement courses through our culture, from the
Oval Office to college campuses to the Sanders campaign. People assume
everything must go their way, and when it doesn’t, that the system is
rigged. “Not content with hating the players, they hate the game too.”Woody Allen’s life story is officially “canceled,” said Roger Kimball.
When Hachette Book Group announced last week that it would re-
lease the director’s new autobiography this spring, dozens of Hachette
employees walked out in protest. A day later, the book was pulled. Ha-
chette apparently “forgot to check with the feminist commissars” to see
if Allen “passes muster in the age of #MeToo.” He no longer does, be-
cause a quarter of a century ago—during a messy split with actress Mia
Farrow—Allen was accused of molesting their then 7-year-old adop ted
daughter, Dylan. The facts around the case are murky: A report by sex-
ual abuse experts concluded that Dylan wasn’t abused, but a judge cast
doubt on that report and denied Allen custody. Dylan, now 34, periodi-
cally revives the charges against her adoptive father, as does Allen’s son,
the investigative reporter Ronan Farrow, who led the campaign against
the memoir. Farrow accused Hachette—the publisher of his recent
#MeToo exposé Catch and Kill—of assisting “in efforts by abusive men
to whitewash their crimes.” I’m no great fan of Allen’s, but “there are
no crimes,” only allegations. Sadly, these days, “innocent until proven
guilty” has been replaced with “innocent until accused.”Barr needs
radical
oversight
Greg Sargent
The Washington Post
The mob
silences
Woody Allen
Roger Kimball
The Wall Street Journal
No ‘coup,’
just sore
losers
Jonah Goldberg
NationalReview.com
“Recently, in this time of coronavirus, I got home and dutifully washed my
hands to two cycles of ‘Happy Birthday.’ Then I did what I automatically do
when my mind is idle and my hands are free, which is to take my phone out of my pocket—the same
phone, I groaned upon realizing, that I had just been using with unwashed hands. I set my phone
on the counter but immediately regretted it. Did I need to disinfect my counter now? What about the
inside of my pocket? Oh, my God, did I just touch my face? As the coronavirus has spread, I’ve noticed
this second-guessing start to infect my everyday habits. When these deliberations start to spiral, I real-
ize that I can wage total germ warfare or I can get on with my life.” Sarah Zhang in TheAtlantic.comViewpoint