Jacque King

The recent riots in France aren’t happening spontaneously, argues investigative journalist Richard Miniter. “There are people in the crowd whose job it is to surveil and monitor the police and update the rioters in real time to direct them at some targets and not at others,” he says. The riots in France and the attempted attack on a British air base used by U.S. bombers are connected, he argues. Both may be linked back to Iran. “The situation for Iran is getting quite desperate.…They've exhausted all of their [oil] supply, and the Iranian regime is financially desperate.” “Those are both what one intelligence analyst told me was a brushback pitch: a way to push the United States back a step and try to get it to relax its anaconda-like naval blockade of the Iranian ports and Iranian oil.” Why would unrest in France move Washington? “Because it shifts the European position,” Miniter says. Iran and France go back a long way. Khomeini built a powerful network in French exile before returning to seize power in 1979. Is that network still being used?

Historically, “what does the president do when he’s lost the House and Senate by wide margins?” “The answer is pretty much what he wants to do,” says Victor Davis Hanson. “What I’m getting at [is] a lot of the lame duck presidents feel they’re unbound, and they have nothing to lose.” “They can no longer hurt their congressional majorities or minorities. They're going to be out in two years, and they're going to executive order and veto their way domestically.” “And the imperial presidency operates as they wish.” @VDHanson