10 | http://www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 30 , 2017THE WEEK
ships even before Maria hit, but the dispersal of supplies
throughout the island has been hampered by the damage
wrought on a previously shabby infrastructure. Politics has
filled the foreground as San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz
and President Trump have squabbled publicly. Cruz is a
showboat (“We filtered out the mayor a long time ago,” said
FEMA administrator Brock Long; “we don’t have time for
the political noise”). But the president was unseemly for
swinging back during the island’s ordeal. Puerto Rican vot-
ers consistently prefer their commonwealth (i.e., territorial)
status, with statehood coming a close second and indepen-
dence a distant third. But either of the two rejected options,
properly prepared, would make more sense ultimately than
the hobbled arrangement Puerto Rico now has. The U.S. has
not failed Puerto Rico in disaster management, only in long-
term thinking.nLiberal journalists who cover the Supreme Court are argu-
ing that Neil Gorsuch is rubbing his colleagues, including
Chief Justice John Roberts, the wrong way. Gorsuch is
allegedly acting bumptiously by, for example, suggesting at
oral argument that the constitutional text needs to be front and
center. The journalists provide scant evidence that Gorsuch
has annoyed anyone other than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Press
coverage of the justices follows a certain, shall we say, pat-
tern: Clarence Thomas shows he is dumb by not speaking at
oral arguments, while Gorsuch shows he is a jerk by speaking
too much; Gor such is breaking precedent for a new justice,
while Sonia So to ma yor was blazing a new trail for one. May
the justice annoy liberal journos for many years to come.nRemember the IRS scandal? Liberals would prefer you
didn’t recall the revelation during the Obama administration
that the agency had been subjecting conservative groups to
special scrutiny. So they have seized on a new report from the
Treasury Department’s inspector general that suggests that lib-
eral organizations were also improperly targeted. That’s the
way the Washington Postspun the story: Yes, the IRS went
after 248 conservative groups, but it may also have gone after
146 liberal ones. But the Posthad to run a confusingly worded
correction. Readers who untangled it came to understand that
the numbers referred to right-leaning groups targeted over a
two-year span and left-leaning ones targeted over a ten-year
span. In other words, the IRS went after a lot more conserva-
tive organizations over two years than it did liberal ones over
a decade. The IRS scandal was real, and continues to be a press
scandal, too.nIf we needed proof that comics shouldn’t make gun policy,
Jimmy Kimmel helpfully provided it. Following the horrific
mass shooting in Las Vegas, Kimmel assumed his newly
formed identity as the “moral authority” of progressive
Amer i ca and proceeded to fill one of his monologues with
an incoherent anti-gun tirade. All the old arguments were
there—including absurd assumptions that the Second
Amendment wasn’t intended to cover modern weapons (does
the First Amendment apply to television broadcasts or
tweets?), false statements about the mythical “gun-show loop-
hole,” and easily debunked claims that the NRA financially
controls the GOP. The implication was clear. If you really careabout the victims of mass
shootings, then you’ll agree
with Kimmel. Yet missing
from the monologue was any
acknowledgment that his fa -
vorite gun-control proposals
wouldn’t have actually stopped
any recent mass shooting.
Maybe policy is beside the
point, the real goal being to
shame guns out of existence, to
place gun owners on the wrong
side of history. Kimmel and his
allies won’t succeed, and the
price of their failure will be
still more polarization of a
polarized culture.n“I’m back,” Representative Steve Scalise (R., La.), the major-
ity whip, tweeted beneath a photo of himself standing at the
Capitol on September 28. Later that day, he spoke before the
House for the first time since being shot in June by a gunman at
a practice session of the congressional Republicans’ baseball
team. In the hospital, Scalise came out of critical condition and
slowly, with the help of doctors, fought his way back to “work
in the people’s house.” In his remarks, he praised the Capitol
Police officers who rushed to the scene of the mayhem and
saved his life. “Thank God our prayers were answered,” Nancy
Pelosi said to him after his remarks, before returning to the hum-
drum business of talking up proposed gun restrictions. Scalise
opposes them—but squabbling over policy differences would
have to wait. “A living example that miracles really do happen,”
Scalise called himself. The miracle was medical, not political,
although the suspension of partisan rancor for the occasion came
close. “It’s really crystallized what shows up as the goodness in
people,” Scalise said of the support he has received from all
sides during his ordeal. “I see that goodness in people.”nThe American Civil Liberties Union has a revolt on its hands.
Up to 200 employees have signed a statement condemning the
ACLU’s alleged “rigid stance” on the First Amendment. This is
amusing. The ACLU is hardly rigid these days. Indeed, it’s even
joined the ranks of those seeking to compel speech in the Mas -
ter piece Cakeshopcase before the Supreme Court. When non -
discrimination laws collide with free speech, the ACLU
routinely chooses to narrow and restrict the First Amendment.
But now its employees say that’s not enough. Now its employ-
ees want the ACLU to completely abandon its principles and
start placing—for all intents and purposes—ideological litmus
tests on the exercise of America’s first liberties. A robust culture
of free speech needs defenders of free speech, and the ACLU
(for all its many flaws) has historically defended freedom of
expression quite capably. But for how much longer? Has there
been a liberal institution yet that has successfully resisted its
most “woke” members?nFederal marshals have been contracted to guard Betsy DeVos,
the education secretary. This is unusual. It has raised some eye-
brows. Usually, marshals are assigned to protect federal judges,
RANDYHOLMES drug-policy directors, and the like—not education secretaries./ABCVIAGETTYIMAGESweek-FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/11/2017 2:45 PM Page 10