Townhall Review | Commentaries

What does it mean when a prosecuting attorney says that he will not prosecute violations of the law? That’s exactly what we’re seeing in Virginia, where Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano has announced he is not and will not prosecute abortion crimes.

The headline of his piece in the New York Times states clearly, “My governor can pass bad laws, but I won’t enforce them.” 

The growth of this sort of thinking—borne out of critical legal studies—is revolutionary. Let me just state the obvious: Our rule of law, our basic constitutional order rests on officers who fulfill their constitutional responsibility. 

What is at stake here is the rule of law itself. The legal officer is saying that his judgment is above the judgment of the court. His judgment is above the legislature and the governor there in Virginia. He’s basically declaring himself to be a law unto himself. 

Let’s hope voters in Virginia and elsewhere are watching closely.

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Americans’ trust in institutions was already low—and then came the horrific shooting in Uvalde.  As days passed, to our growing horror, we learned police stood outside the classroom for 50 minutes while a killer was closeted with innocent children and their two teachers. The school district’s police chief insisted they wait for tactical equipment, as children inside pleaded for help. 

In these circumstances, I know I’d be afraid. But I can’t imagine waiting outside, with other armed men as children were murdered.

What’s happened to our culture—to our men—when this is even thinkable? Are we so afraid of death, or lawsuits, or unemployment that the armed and the strong will sacrifice the weak and helpless?

9/11’s redeeming moment came when the passengers of Flight 93 refused to be hostages to fate. With the now-famous cry of “Let’s roll!” they took on their hijackers and thereby saved the U.S. Capitol.

Where was that American spirit in Uvalde?

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Is there something that conservatives and liberals agree on in the aftermath of the massacre in Texas?

Let’s begin with a reminder of what Justice Scalia wrote in the 2008 Heller decision: The Justice reiterated that the court did not want to cast doubt on the legality of laws forbidding “felons and the mentally ill” from possessing firearms.

So: The right to own a weapon is not absolute, and no serious person believes it is. What, then, should Congress aim to achieve? 

First, the police should have acted very differently, beginning with the absence from the scene of any kind of regular “resource officer” (that means armed police) and then the terrible decision to wait and wait to rush the killer.

Second, I think a supermajority of voters also believe that well-trained, experienced and well-armed officers need to be on the campuses of all K-12 schools. 

These steps make sense. Neither gun rights absolutists nor gun confiscation enthusiasts ought to control this conversation anymore. There is a sound center. Let’s begin there. And quickly.

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In the wake of Disney’s noisy opposition to Florida’s parental rights bill, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed a law dissolving the corporation’s private government control of Disney World.   

Proving you can’t please all the people all the time, even some conservatives have criticized DeSantis. They’ve argued he’s illegitimately retaliating against Disney for its exercise of corporate free speech rights.

Nonsense. In passing the Bill of Rights, the Founding Fathers didn’t just intend to protect us from government. They intended to protect us from tyranny, which includes the modern-day tyranny of woke corporations.

The left’s using Disney as it once used the courts—to do an end-run around representative democracy. Kudos to Governor DeSantis for defending his people’s right to self-rule.

Florida’s government and Disney may yet come to a mutual accommodation, which will merit careful scrutiny. But for now, Ron DeSantis looks like that rarest of politicians: a person of principle and courage, willing to stand against big corporations and the woke mob in defense of our children.

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Americans deserve a real debate on violence and school safety in the wake of yet another school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Unfortunately, our leaders have fallen back onto their talking points and rank demagoguery, preferring to stoke fear rather than produce real solutions.

The perpetrator in Uvalde had a long track record of actionable behavior before the shooting. He had posted videos threatening to rape and/or kill others and had been “especially violent toward women.” Had he been prosecuted or committed for his prior behavior, a background check would have prevented him from purchasing the firearms he used to kill nearly two dozen people.

Vigorous enforcement of existing laws and better tools to deal with mental illness are essential to community safety. Instead, Joe Biden offers hysterical nonsense about “high caliber” nine-millimeter firearms which were not even used in this instance and Congress debates gun bills that would have changed nothing in this or any other mass shooting.

If we want change, we need leadership to change.

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Tesla, the company founded and led by Elon Musk, was just kicked off of the S&P ESG index. 

What's ESG? It literally stands for Environment Social Governance, but what it really stands for is the imposition of politics into finance. In response, Musk tweeted out, “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.” That seems about right. 

Musk produces electric cars and that was good enough to keep him in the socially responsible A-list for years. But then he deviated from the party line on cancel culture and free speech and suddenly his company is kicked out of the ESG cool kids club. 

Berkshire-Hathaway also got the boot. Is it a coincidence that the chairman Warren Buffett and his co-chair have recently criticized ESG and Blackrock? 

But it’s not billionaires like Buffett and Musk who are hurt most by all of this. It’s ordinary investors and their pension plans. 

S&P is targeting Musk and Buffet, but they are actually hitting you.

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The Louisville Courier Journal ran the headline recently, “Homework at Christian Academy of Louisville Persuade Your Friend to Stop Being Gay.” 

The headline could have been: “Christian School Under Fire for Teaching Doctrine on Homosexuality.”

Christian Academy of Louisville is the largest private school system in the area—it’s a school with a long history.

But the story is not just about Louisville and not just about this school. This story could be about any Christian ministry, any Christian school, college or university, any Christian Church or denomination, even any Christian family. We had better all be paying attention.

The reporting on the story shows how the moral landscape continues to shift right before our eyes. 

This is an effort to intimidate a Christian school to back down from upholding what? Historical, Biblical, Christian Teaching.

Anyone with an appreciation of our First Amendment and our history of religious liberty ought to be concerned and very aware.

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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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