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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charles Fain Lehman Biden’s Death-Penalty Commutations Are a Moral Outrage The decision shows he’s more beholden to pro-crime groups than to the public.

By on December 26th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/biden-commutes-sentences-capital-punishment-death-penalty

In the latest in a series of shameful closing acts, President Joe Biden on Sunday night commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 murderers on federal death row.

Biden’s midnight decision spared the lives of all but the three most notorious capital inmates: the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, the Emmanuel AME Church shooter, and the surviving Boston Marathon bomber.

In his statement on the commutations, Biden said he was “more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” It’s clear, then, that he only stopped short of a blanket commutation because of the backlash that would have come with pardoning these three mass murderers.

Make no mistake: Biden’s choice to spare the remaining 37 murderers is a moral travesty. In so doing, the lame duck president has once again shown that he is more beholden to progressive dogmas than to the pursuit of justice.

That’s obvious when you look at the killers Biden spared. Take Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., who murdered a family of four in cold blood, including three-year-old Luis Damian Escobedo and four-year-old Luis Julian Escobedo. Or consider Jorge Avila-Torrez, who murdered eight-year-old Laura Hobbs and nine-year-old Krystal Tobias in 2005. Avila-Torrez then joined the Marines, strangled U.S. Navy petty officer Amanda Jean Snell to death, and abducted and assaulted two more women before finally being apprehended.

Nine of those with commuted sentences were on death row for killing other people in prison. If capital punishment is not an option for such offenses, then there is no deterrence for prison homicides—and therefore no guarantee of safety for the incarcerated.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

What Was So Different This Time About Trump’s Election? Trump’s 2024 resurgence marks a dramatic shift from his 2016 vilification, fueled by Biden’s unpopularity, a longing for normalcy, and Trump’s endurance through relentless opposition. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 26th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/26/what-was-so-different-this-time-about-trumps-election/

In the weeks before the 2016 Trump Electoral College victory, Trump was polling between 35 and 40 percent.

He would average only about 41 percent approval over his tumultuous four-year tenure.

No one knows what lies ahead over the next four years. But for now, Trump already polls at well over 50 percent approval.

Trump’s inauguration in a few weeks likely will not resemble his 2016 ceremony.

In the 2016-7 transition, Democratic-affiliated interests ran commercials urging electors to become “faithless” and thus illegally reject their states’ popular votes and instead elect the loser, Hillary Clinton.

Massive demonstrations met Trump on Inauguration Day.

In less than four months after assuming the presidency, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate the hoax of Russian collusion.

That wasted 22-month, $40 million investigation found no collusion but did derail the first two Trump years.

What followed the collusion ruse was a consistent effort to undermine the Trump presidency—two subsequent impeachments, the laptop “disinformation” hoax, the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, and news suppression of any mention of the Chinese lab origin of the virus or questioning the closing of schools.

In the Trump administration’s last summer of 2020, 120 days of riot, arson, looting, assault, and murder followed, with the denouement of the January 6 turmoil.

In contrast, during the 2024-2025 transition, Trump has all but assumed the presidency. Over 100 foreign leaders have elbowed each other to be invited to Mar-a-Lago or to phone in their congratulations to the newly elected Trump.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fetterman Comes Out for Common Sense Again And leftists are ENRAGED. by Robert Spencer

By on December 26th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fetterman-comes-out-for-common-sense-again/

It used to be taken for granted on both sides of the aisle that once the presidential election was over, the country should unite behind the president, whoever he was, and support him for the good of the nation. Disagreements would begin almost immediately, of course, but there used to be what was generally known as a “honeymoon period,” during which politicians of both parties paid tribute to the national unity by wishing the new chief executive all success. But that was in an earlier, less fractious age; now, Sen. John Fetterman (D-But Sane), has landed in hot water with the left for stating what used to be a commonplace sentiment.

Fox News reported Sunday that Fetterman “says he hopes President-elect Trump is successful, and spoke out against those who feel otherwise.” Every senator should be saying the same thing, but Fetterman was one of the few Democrats, if not the only one, to dare to state publicly that Bad Orange Man shouldn’t fall on his face and end up behind bars, or worse, before his term of office is up.

“I’m not rooting against him,” Fetterman said sensibly; after all, if the president fails, the nation suffers, so what American should be wishing for that? “If you’re rooting against the president,” Fetterman continued, “you are rooting against the nation. And I’m not ever going to be where I want a president to fail. So, country first. I know that’s become maybe like a cliche, but it happens to be true.”

Leftists were predictably enraged. Over at Bluesky, where the hard-left can let its freak flag fly without having to put up with the benighted, hateful, and evil ones who dare to dissent from their crystal-clear vision of what constitutes truth and righteousness, our moral superiors were giving full vent to their tolerance and broad-mindedness. “Fetterman,” said one, “is a giant moron.” Another waxed eloquent: “F**king Fetterman can f**k off. There. I said it. I love being able to use the F word here. And f**king Fetterman deserves it. F**king traitor.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Jew-Hate Cancer in U.S. Schools It’s flourishing. by Larry Sand

By on December 26th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/in-schools-jews-lose/

When Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists attacked Israel through air, land, and sea, killing over 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, it was the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust. There were also countless numbers of gang-rapes, and 251 Israelis were taken hostage. Sadly, the attack revealed an antisemitic cancer in many of the nation’s schools, which I wrote about at the time. And, sadly, it is still with us. To wit….

The Sequoia Union High School District in California’s Silicon Valley is being sued over rampant antisemitism their kids experienced in high school as administrators stood by and allowed it to fester. “When SUHSD parents and students raised concerns—through emails, petitions, and formal complaints—the District responded with bureaucratic obfuscation and outright denial, demonstrating a deliberate indifference to SUHSD’s Jewish students. Emails were ignored, and meetings were canceled without explanation,” the lawsuit says.

“The District’s administrators and trustees have consistently and deliberately refused to take concrete action to stem the scourge of antisemitism on their campuses, to the detriment of Jewish SUHSD students who, subjected to harassment and ridicule from both peers and teachers, have been forced to endure an increasingly hostile learning environment.”

In New York City, there are myriad examples. One concerns the mother of a Manhattan public school student who is outraged. “On Monday, Oct. 9, my child came to school and found their teacher chanting, ‘Palestine all the way!’ Israel is going to get what they (sic) deserve!’” In Harlem, a swastika was drawn on a wall immediately following Oct. 7, and another was carved into a desk at the beginning of this academic year. The principal sent out an email encouraging everyone to be tolerant of different points of view and said that the “person who drew the symbol probably didn’t know what it meant.”

Not surprisingly, the teachers’ unions are fully on board with unabashed Jew-hatred.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu and the Road to Victory Hugh Fitzgerald

By on December 26th, 2024

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/netanyahu-and-the-road-to-victory?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=netanyahu-and-the-road-to-victory

Elliot Kaufman published in the Wall Street Journal on December 20 an interview he had just conducted with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s a riveting read. At three key moments since October 7, 2023, Netanyahu was given advice by the Biden administration on the conduct of the war against Hamas, and then on the war against Hezbollah. In all three cases, Netanyahu ignored that advice and went ahead with what turned out to be moves essential to the IDF’s success. More on Netanyahu’s road to victory can be found here: “Benjamin Netanyahu: The Inside Story of Israel’s Victory,” by Elliot Kaufman, Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2024:

…”The Americans said to me, ‘If you go into Rafah, you’re on your own, and we’re not going to send you the critical arms,’ which is tough to hear,” Mr. Netanyahu says. Internally, others argued that Israel was too reliant on U.S. munitions to risk fighting on. “That’s a legitimate case,” Mr. Netanyahu says. “But if we don’t go into Rafah, we can’t exist as a sovereign state. We’d become a vassal state and we won’t survive. The question of arms will fix itself, but the question of our independence will not. That’s the end of Israel.”

In Rafah, Israel cut off Hamas’s supply route [for weapons] and later killed Sinwar, its chief. The Biden administration imposed a de facto arms embargo on Israel, delaying weapons shipments.

Just as Netanyahu rejected the American advice not to conduct a ground invasion of Gaza but instead to stick to airstrikes, he rejected the American pressure not to enter Rafah, which was accompanied by a threat to withhold some weaponry. He was told that the people in Rafah would not evacuate, for there was “no place” for them to go, and that such an operation would cost 20,000 lives. The Americans were wrong on both counts. Within a few weeks, almost one million civilians had evacuated, as directed, from Rafah, and went to the town of Al-Mawasi on the coast, near Khan Younis, an area where the IDF would not attack. And instead of 20,000 casualties in Rafah — the number that the Americans feared would result from the operation — there were only a few thousand, both combatants and civilians.

“The U.S. withheld critical weapons,” Mr. Netanyahu admits, but he appreciates the pressure Mr. Biden was under. “It’s not easy to be president, let’s face it, with these very radical fringes in his party. It wasn’t easy to do what Mr. Biden did,” including helping Israel in its defense against Iranian missile attacks, he says….

For Israel, it’s a return to form. “Power isn’t merely guns, missiles, tanks and aircraft,” Mr. Netanyahu says. “It’s the will to fight and seize the initiative.”

Iran’s nuclear program now looks vulnerable. “I’m not going to talk about that,” Mr. Netanyahu says. When I say I’ve never heard him so reticent on his favorite subject, he responds cryptically: “I’ve always said the jury’s out, still out on all of us, and I don’t exclude myself.” It is perhaps on this that he expects to be judged.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Piers Morgan, Candace Owens and ‘Haaretz’ Ruthie Blum

By on December 26th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/piers-morgan-candace-owens-and-haaretz/

The International Federation of Journalists was disturbed last month when the Israeli Cabinet voted to cut all financial ties with Haaretz, the country’s self-described “paper of record” with a proud, far-left bent.

“We are extremely concerned over Israel’s authoritarian drift that undermines media pluralism and the public’s right to know,” Anthony Bellanger, the IFJ general secretary. responded to the move. “The IFJ urges the government to review its decision and stop damaging press freedom in the country by boycotting a newspaper. We express our solidarity with Haaretz journalists.”

It’s typical of the IFJ to decry Israeli policies as antithetical to Western values. You know, like the time it blasted the Jewish state for “targeting” Al Jazeera reporters. Never mind that those paragons of the press were affiliated with Hamas and participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.

And forget the fact that its depiction of the measure adopted in relation to Haaretz is totally false. Canceling subscriptions to and pulling ads from a publication over its content do not violate freedom. On the contrary, they constitute consumer prerogatives.

Furthermore, Haaretz has only itself to blame for its waning readership, as its open anti-Zionism is too much for even many liberal Israelis to tolerate. This is especially true in the wake of Oct. 7 and the paper’s extremist positions on Israel’s defensive seven-front war.

The last straw for the government—and its purse strings—was publisher Amos Schocken’s appalling performance at a conference in London at the end of October, sponsored by Haaretz, in conjunction with JW3-Jewish Community Centre London, New Israel Fund U.K., Yachad, A Land for All and Standing Together.

During his speech at the event—titled “Israel After October 7th: Allied or Alone?”—Schocken smeared his country with lies its enemies love to hear.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden Greenlights California’s Unworkable Green Car Mandates on Way Out the Door Kerry Jackson

By on December 26th, 2024

https://www.pacificresearch.org/biden-greenlights-californias-unworkable-green-car-mandates-on-way-out-the-door/

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the executive order, the unelected California Air Resources Board “codified” it, and now the Biden administration, on its way out, has gone along with the plan.

As expected, the Environmental Protection Agency granted on Dec. 17 permission for California to go outside of federal law. California and other states need exemptions from the EPA to enact stricter air quality standards than those set by the 1970 Clean Air Act. And the Biden White House is clearly eager to let the states do as they wish.

“The EPA plan underscores how President Joe Biden is racing to Trump-proof his climate legacy before leaving office next month,” the Washington Post said.

So, the decision is more about how Biden is remembered in his party and among the true believers that the sky is falling because we drive cars with internal-combustion engines than it is about a practical matter of policy?

All is not lost for those concerned with the weight of the government dictating their choices, though. Donald Trump is likely to reverse the EPA’s action after taking office next month. His incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, promised Trump “will support the auto industry, allowing space for both gas-powered cars” as well as electric vehicles.

So maybe we aren’t staring into “a future in which the government tries to arrest you for driving a vintage Ferrari – or any car you like,” say the Cato Institute’s Travis Fisher and Joshua Loucks of the Mercatus Center. Any such restriction is of course “awful and should be relegated to science fiction.”

“If you love driving a gasoline-powered vehicle” no matter the reason, well, “this is America,” they continue, “and no one at the EPA should tell you what kind of car to love.”

But limiting consumer choice and dictating how people live is a California value. At least that’s the way Newsom and millions of others across the state see it.

Others have values, too, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which has said it will hear arguments that could threaten the waiver that California has received for decades, going back to the Nixon administration. The Court “will review whether the oil industry has the standing to try to overturn a decision that allowed California to set its own limits on pollution emitted by automobiles,” says CalMatters.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel is winning the war, while the West retreats Jew-hating Islamists and self-loathing liberal-leftists have allied to isolate Israel in its greatest hour of need. Mick Hume

By on December 24th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/21/israel-is-winning-the-war-while-the-west-retreats/

It’s now clear that, given a free hand, Israel can handle its mortal enemies in the Middle East. It’s their so-called friends in the West and the ‘international community’ that the Israelis have to worry about.

In 2024, Israel has achieved remarkable military successes on every front. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have hammered the genocidal pogromists of Hamas in Gaza, devastated their fellow Islamist terrorists of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and shaken their sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to its tyrannical roots. All of which, as Brendan O’Neill recently argued on spiked, also facilitated the collapse of the brutal Assad dictatorship in Syria.

By the year’s end, nobody could seriously doubt Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that ‘We are winning’. Moreover, anybody who believes in freedom should surely be celebrating the success of the only Western-style democracy in the Middle East as a blow struck for civilisation against barbarism.

Instead, Israel’s traditional Western allies have spent 2024 retreating from its side almost as quickly as Hamas and Hezbollah fled before the IDF. For every military advance Israel has made over the past year, it has seemed to suffer more political setbacks on the international battlefield.

At the end of 2023, Israel was accused of committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza before the International Court of Justice – a perverse claim put forward by South Africa, supported by other states and recently endorsed by Amnesty International.

Worse, as 2024 ends, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for allegedly committing crimes against humanity in Gaza – the first leader of a Western-style democracy to be charged with war crimes. Forget all the tyrants on Earth, the prime minister of the world’s only Jewish state must apparently be singled out for punishment. And worse still, several Western states – including, shamefully, the UK Labour government – have declared their willingness to execute the warrant and arrest him.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Luigi Mangione and the American Abyss The assassination of Brian Thompson does not call for a “conversation” about health care—it calls for a reckoning with Americans’ moral breakdown.

By on December 24th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/luigi-mangione-unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson

On the morning of December 4, 2024, in midtown Manhattan, a masked male snuck up behind the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company, and pumped three bullets into the executive’s back and leg. Brian Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

Celebrations of the murder broke out on social media almost as soon as the killing was reported. The unknown assailant had provided a public service by taking out a leader in a predatory and heartless industry, the killer’s fans asserted. The jubilation grew in fervor as each newly released surveillance video confirmed the original impression that the killer, still at large, was young and handsome.

Once an arrest was made, the lionization of the suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, reached a frenzy. “Luigi”—always “Luigi”—was the “hot assassin.” Merchandise featuring his image and phrases from a handwritten manifesto he had carried with him sprung up on Amazon. A video projection of Mangione’s face was cheered at a rock concert in Boston. A crowdsourced defense fund quickly swelled with donations. Wanted posters appeared in Manhattan with pictures of other corporate CEOs. The names and salaries of health-care executives were posted on line. Private citizens who had helped with the manhunt were vilified as snitches; police officers involved in arresting Mangione received threats.

To the mainstream media, the question posed by this episode was obvious: Why are Americans so angry at health-insurance companies? And so reporters and opinion columnists got to work limning a portrait of the health-care industry—its profits, the salaries of its executives—and fleshing out the animus against it.

The only relevant question in the wake of the Thompson murder, however, is: What has gone wrong with Americans’ moral compass that so many could cheer the extrajudicial killing of an innocent man? That question has not been deemed worthy of exploring.

When the high fives for the assassin started appearing on the web, some observers dismissed that support as a minor emanation from the fever swamps of social media, where anonymity and the desire for a following push users to rhetorical extremes.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

MAMA: Make America Moral Again by Linda Goudsmit

By on December 24th, 2024

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28292/mama-make-america-moral-again

 goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Every day I read chilling statistical reports on the escalating violent crime in America––murder, rape, robbery, assault. The staggering increase is horrifying, but what is most alarming to me is the percentage of young people who accept criminality as a societal solution. The Hill posted a stunning article online December 17, 2024, titled, “Shock poll: 41 percent of young voters find killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO acceptable” written by Filip Timotija. Why is this so?

The alarming decline of morality that is convulsing America today is the consequence of the globalist elite, and its relentless replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate. The separation of Church and State that our Founding Fathers institutionalized as protection against a state religion has been exploited and perverted to allow the insertion of Marxist principles, indoctrination, and ideology to be practiced as a state religion inside America.

Primary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities across the nation have embraced American Marxism and its amoral foundation which advances its ends justify the means for the greater good principle. There is no individualism or individual morality in Marxism, only rules to follow that advance the collective. It is precisely this amoral Marxist narrative that has separated young Americans from the morality and protection of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indoctrinated young Americans have not understood the formulaic consequences of the ends justify the means principle that can and will be used against them, the moment their usefulness expires.

Marxism is a collectivist replacement ideology that has been funded, fomented, and weaponized by the globalist elite to shatter the Judeo-Christian morality and the individualism it protects. The amoral tenets of the woke Marxist narrative, including Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental Social Governance (ESG) that affect education, medicine, law, investment, and corporate governance, are designed to collapse the Judeo-Christian morality and infrastructure of the United States––and they have been wildly successful. The evidence is reflected in the stupefying statistic reported in The Hill article, “A poll found 41% of adults under 30 consider the killing of Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson acceptable.” Additionally, “Since Thompson was shot, first in the back and then again as he fell to the ground, a number of social media posts from people saying they do not have sympathy for his death have gained popularity.”

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