The dangerous world we are looking at today serves as an appropriate backdrop for our expression of gratitude for those who have died in the service of our nation.

From the time of our nation’s founding to today, well over 1.2 million Americans have paid the ultimate price in the service of our country.

Today is a day for us to say, “thank you.” It is also a day for us to dedicate ourselves.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln called our country to an “unfinished work.” And, in many respects, we remain an unfinished work.

Our commitment—the commitment of “the living”—to the values and freedoms our honored veterans fought for makes clear that they did not die in vain.

To those who have served or are serving today: A grateful nation says, “thank you.”

To those listening who have a loved one who died for this great cause: A special thanks to you—and a heartfelt civilian salute from me (and all my friends here at the Salem Media Group).

Happy Memorial Day.

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The tragedy of Texas, the massacre in Uvalde weighs heavy on the country. There is a great deal of debate. Some of it is simply misinformed as Senator Alex Padilla tells us, “We're outraged and no, putting more armed adults in schools is not the answer!”

The answer is exactly what the Senator dismissed—armed officers trained at every school in America. 

It is incumbent upon the authorities in the federal government to provide funding to the states to supplement so that every school in this country is protected. Because children cannot protect themselves. 

There is no way that every act of violence in America can be deterred, but we can protect defenseless children—and we need to start to be serious about it.

We need armed police at every one of the 131,000 K-12 schools in America—and we need it now. 

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There's been a lot of discussion about something called "replacement theory" in the wake of the horrific Buffalo shooting spree. Other mass killers, such as the Tree of Life synagogue shooter here in my own hometown, have also alluded to it.

Elite media is predictably pinning it on conservatism to use as an instrument to discredit rather than rebut. But the truth is more complicated. During the run-up to the election of Obama and for some time after, left-of-center commentators promoted the idea of the inevitable political victory of the left due to racial demographic shifts. This was, of course, nonsense. Race is not destiny and immigrants have a history of assimilating to American values in their voting patterns over time and we've seen that play out.

The fact that some on the right have fallen into a similar mistake shows how gullible both sides can be. The fact is: Left and right adherents to replacement theory need to replace their distorted thinking. There's room for everybody.

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In a welcome holding, a California Superior Court struck down as unconstitutional a state law mandating a certain number of women on every public company’s board in the state.

The law was as unnecessary as it is misguided. Last year, fully 96 percent of Fortune 500 boards included two or more female directors, without the heavy-handed intrusion of California’s legislature.

But most importantly, the law was simply wrong. After all, if companies are required by law to hire female directors, they’re also being forbidden from hiring male ones. And that’s gender discrimination.

In America, we should strive toward the ideal of a meritocracy – where people are selected for positions based on their abilities and efforts, not on immutable characteristics. 

A quota system only creates a permanent warfare between armies of interest groups. That’s no way to run a lemonade stand, much less a country – and it’s antithetical to America’s founding principles.

Kudos to California’s Superior Court for getting this one right.

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Special counsel John Durham’s prosecution of former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann has uncovered how her 2016 presidential campaign shopped around an unfounded allegation as fact—and turned it into the worst dirty trick since Watergate.

Witnesses testified that Sussmann shopped the false allegation of a link between the Trump Organization and Russia-controlled Alfa Bank to the CIA and the FBI. In both cases, Sussmann falsely claimed not to be working for a political candidate. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified that Hillary herself approved the decision to leak the allegation to media.

The Washington Post and the New York Times won Pulitzers for their breathless reporting on the Russian-collusion fallacy. Neither paper has gone out of their way to report on its unraveling. This dirty trick has torn our country apart and set off a wave of political hysteria not seen since the Red Scare. 

Accountability should come to those at the highest levels of both politics and the media.

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This weekend brought news that the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco had informed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that she was not to present herself for holy communion at Mass.
 
Some reacted with overheated rhetoric that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was violating the separation of church and state. That is false. 
 
The archbishop was engaging in his Constitutionally-protected right to the free exercise of religion—and that includes teaching the truth about moral issues such as the right to life of the unborn. It also entails church governance.
 
After repeated attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi about the grave evil of her public support for legalized abortion on demand up until the moment of birth, the archbishop felt duty-bound in conscience to let Pelosi know that she needs to repent of her abortion support before receiving communion.
 
That’s not a violation of the First Amendment, that’s the proper exercise of it.

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This is Hugh Hewitt for Townhall.com.

As we quickly approach the mid-term election, the nation is—naturally—looking past it to 2024 presidential contest.

It will mark my ninth as a Republican commentator—and 50 years since I first voted in 1974. The party has changed a lot over that half-century.

Two huge changes have rocked the party:

Externally, the national security challenge posed by a hardline Chinese Communist Party. Every Republican who wants to win will have recognize the fact that China is the new U.S.S.R. We need to respond accordingly.

The second change, of course, is the rise of Donald Trump. The former president’s populism has brought untold numbers into the party and vastly reorganized its thinking about trade and some aspects of foreign policy.

Trump is likely to run, but that’s not a given. He may choose to try his hand as kingmaker. Keep your eyes on Governor DeSantis, former Secretary of State Pompeo, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton … and I could go on. 

It could be quite the field.

Voters should have their eyes on one thing: Winning.

We don’t want another four-year rumble with the hard left.

I’m Hugh Hewitt.

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Last week the Democratic-led Senate forced a vote on a radical abortion bill—but the big story is what didn't happen. 

We’re talking about the Women's Health Protection Act of 2022. The Democratic leadership claimed that this bill would codify Roe v. Wade, it actually would have gone even further. The legislation as proposed would have basically allowed for abortion all the way up until the moment of birth for any reason, or for that matter, for no reason at all.

But the Senate vote to forward the bill was 49 to 51—falling far short of the 60 votes needed to advance. But what is notable—and what news media didn’t really note—is that proponents did not even gain a bare majority.

What does that vote tell us? All but one Democrat voted for the bill and not a single Republican voted for it. What does that tell you? It simply highlights that on the issue of abortion, we are now looking at a clear, predictable, unmistakable partisan divide. 

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“This was pure evil.” Those were the words of Erie County Sheriff John Garcia, speaking of that tragic shooting in a Buffalo supermarket last weekend—a shooting that left ten people, people made in God’s image, dead.

The Sheriff’s comment points to the deep, deep evil that was in that man’s heart. He went to Buffalo on a singular mission: To try to kill as many black people as possible. We know this because he told us so in what can only be described as a horrific manifesto.

Evil is not just an apparition; evil is an objective reality.

Ten human beings are now unspeakably missed by their loved ones in an attack that was targeted at people simply for the color of their skin.

Of course, this horrific act of evil will reignite the nation’s debate over guns and the second amendment.

But the real problem and the biggest problem facing humanity is not what this young man carried in his hands—though that is horrifying beyond words. The biggest problem, as we know, is what he carried in his heart. That is infinitely more horrifying.

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We need to protect our Supreme Court justices, no matter the outcome on abortion.

Fanatics come in all shapes and sizes, all ages and eras. They are usually driven by ideology or an insatiable thirst for power.

The leak of the draft of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs’ decision has done incredible damage. But more could result: Will the leak also lead to violence, intended or not, now that abortion rights activists are protesting outside the homes of Supreme Court justices?

There is already a federal law that prohibits demonstrations to influence a judicial proceeding. Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to enforce it. He needs to narrow the possibility of the sort of shocking act that has tortured our politics since the Civil War, in which we’ve seen only so recently in Buffalo and Orange County, California. We know what fanatics are capable of. It is up to the attorney general, working with the chief justice, to anticipate and protect, not sit back and apologize come some dreadful day.

Attorney General Garland: Act quickly and decisively.

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