Niall Ferguson, preeminent historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, joins this episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to discuss the war and ongoing stalemate in Ukraine; the Trump administration’s foreign policy and negotiations with Russia; and the broader geopolitical landscape, including the shift in Europe’s defense posture as the US signals a reduced commitment to NATO.

A half-century ago, moviegoers flocked to see Inspector Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry) and Paul Kersey (Death Wish) fight wrongdoing in a world where sclerotic legal processes were worse than useless. The system had become unduly solicitous to the rights of villains who had nothing but contempt for the rights of others and for the system itself.

Like some smug, obviously guilty killer going free on some evidentiary or procedural issue in the first 30 minutes of a Death Wish or Dirty Harry movie, the current crop of plaintiffs defending waste, fraud, abuse, grift, gangsterism and/or terrorism supporters are strolling out of well-selected federal courthouses with an injunction or order in hand and a big smile on their faces.

Good news for an unnamed pangolin accused of starting the Covid-19 pandemic. It turns out that the CIA, MI6 and Germany’s BND have all revealed that they believe the source of the pandemic was the Wuhan Immunology Laboratory.   Not only that, but they have high confidence and made their conclusions way back in the spring of 2020.

Five years is a long time to wait when you only live 20 years. FYI, a pangolin can eat about 600 pounds of insects with its 16-inch long tongue in five years. The pangolin looks like an armadillo, but it is not related. Pangolin are under threat because their meat is considered a delicacy and its scales (which are like fingernails) are thought to have medicinal properties. But the most threatening feature for this creature is that they can carry coronaviruses, and that made them the perfect scapegoat for whoever was funding gain-of-function research at the biosecurity level 2 lab in Wuhan. It was none other than the recently pardoned Dr. Fauci who put the blame on the innocent pangolin.

As I’ve posted about in the past, I was interested in astronomy in my early years and even was involved in a Boys’ Club in Oregon for building your own telescope.  We worked on making our own mirrors; first grinding and polishing the glass, then sending them out for “silvering.”  Mine was the only one that didn’t come back from that, so I didn’t finish it.  I think the Men in Black took it because it was so good — I would have seen their Lunar Max prison facility on the Moon where they were holding Boris the Animal.

In more recent years, I’ve been accumulating a variety of telescope brands, types, and sizes, mostly from thrift stores, etc.  For these prices, I’ve been able to gather a pretty large variety and enjoy their different advantages versus what I could have afforded to buy at retail.

I know this is unpredictable. But my view of the possibilities has certainly shifted with what I have observed since the re-election of Donald Trump.

Some thought to call Trump’s second term a lame duck term, whatever that would mean to different people. I don’t think such a term really applies to Trump under any circumstances. It usually seems to mean a difference in behavior depending on whether a future election is in store or not, but I have never seen that in Trump’s behavior or potential. He is working now to get as much of what he sees as needed accomplished during his time in office. I had little confidence that America’s constitutional founding conditions and environment had any potential for restoration after the 2012 election. Trump’s re-election changed that outlook.

Recently I answered a request for volunteers to perform in Purimspiel, a lighthearted and very corny celebration of the book of Esther.

I did this because I made two mistakes… I would never have attended the third rehearsal if I hadn’t thought it was the first, and I didn’t realize that there were no simple spoken parts.

When Donald Trump assumed the presidency, two allies of the US—Israel and Ukraine—were mired in bloody wars with ancient enemies. Both desperately needed more military aid in the effort to defeat their heavily armed foes.

Biden had granted both only enough military aid to enable them to not lose but not enough to win. Moreover, the arms they received came with the condition that they not be used to inflict serious damage to their enemy. Trump could have helped turn the tide. Instead he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Vehicles stranded near Cimarron, Kans., after the storm. Source: Dodge City Globe newspaper, via weather.gov

The month of March 1957 had been unseasonably warm in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles and western Kansas. On March 10, the National Weather Service in Dodge City, Kans., recorded a record high of 79°. Most days were in the 60s and 70s. But the jet stream was interacting with a powerful low-pressure system to pull moisture from the Gulf of Mexico into a cold front coming down from the north. On March 23, a blizzard struck the High Plains.