Townhall Review | Commentaries

Of course it’s sad to have seen a totalitarian response to Covid in places like China – but few of us are surprised. What’s dismaying is that some of the same draconian measures seem to have leeched into the liberal democracies of the western world.  

Australia is perhaps the best—or rather the worst—example.  In the second year of the pandemic, Australia still forbids its citizens from leaving the country and requires masks even when people are outside and socially distanced. South Australia has an intrusive facial recognition and geolocation app. And in some parts of the country, you can’t even leave home without an excuse from an official government list. The military enforces these rules, and dissenters are arrested and fined.

Americans have watched these deprivations with growing horror. On YouTube, there are films that record police interactions that resemble officers from a Soviet era state more than our easygoing Aussie cousins.

Perhaps the totalitarian measures will keep Australia relatively Covid-free. But at what cost?

 

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In Joe Biden’s newest assault on American’s privacy, he’s proposing that banks be required to give the IRS information for all accounts holding more than $600. 

The policy is supposed to reveal tax dodging by the wealthy. But banks are already required to report transactions of $10,000 or more. It’s hard to imagine how dropping the threshold all the way down to $600 is going to ensnare the rich. Instead, it will just allow vast data collection on everyone.

And the IRS hasn’t shown it can be trusted. Earlier this year, IRS data on thousands of taxpayers was leaked to the ProPublica website and then published. That’s not all. Remember the Lois Lerner scandal during the Obama years, when some organizations were targeted just because those in charge at the IRS disagreed with their politics? 

I don’t want to be audited for saying this—but until the IRS has shown it won’t abuse its powers, it’s a terrible mistake to give it any more power over Americans’ lives.

 

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The culture of death had a big win in the House of Representatives last week. Democrats pushed through legislation known as the Women’s Health Protection Act. It is one of the most radical pro-abortion pieces of legislation adopted anywhere, anytime on planet earth. 

The final vote was 218 to 211. Every single vote in favor of the bill was a Democrat. 

This bill would allow for sex-selection abortions. It would allow for abortion of unborn babies marked by the genetic pattern for down syndrome. It would effectively do away with all state-level restrictions on abortion. And: It would effectively allow those abortions all the way up until the point of birth.

This is where we are. This isn’t a hypothetical piece of legislation. This is actual legislation that in space and time and history passed the United States House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, just days ago.

Friday, September 24, 2021— a date that must live in infamy.

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The Republicans want no part of a debt ceiling hike-and good for them.

Democrats wanted the White House. They got it.

Democrats wanted to keep the House in 2020. Speaker Pelosi got her wish ...barely.

Democrats wanted the Senate majority. Now Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has it.

Democrats have all they need to bring up their giant spending bill to the floor, including massive tax hikes and a debt ceiling increase attached.

The nation is out of borrowing authority-so Congress must either pass a hike in that debt authority, pass a stand-alone bill as part of a stopgap measure or as part of the massive spending-and-tax bill.

The last option won’t require any GOP votes. But it would require Democrats to get to an agreement among themselves on which taxes to raise, how much to spend, when to spend it, and on who.

But: Republicans should have no part of this inflationary giant boondoggle.

Republicans need to have message discipline: Just. Say. No.

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Biden administration spokespeople and the press seem eager to shift our attention from the Afghanistan debacle.

 

Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security admitted only 3 percent of the 60 thousand Afghans who’ve been brought to America have special immigrant visas. Those eligible for such visas are Afghans who worked for the US military. They’re at greatest risk of being murdered by the Taliban. 

NBC News reported that, as of May, some 20,000 Afghans had applied for the special immigrant visas. When their families are included, the total eligible for such protection is at least 70,000.

All this means are those who need and deserve our protection most have been abandoned, even as the vast majority of Afghan evacuees brought to this country are completely unvetted.

It’s just another way the Biden administration has managed to betray both America and our allies in the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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Vaccines mandates are driving vaccine hesitancy. I’ve noticed a sharp shift upwards in the intensity of rhetoric in opposition to the anti-covid vaccines from the grassroots since the Biden administration has started advocating various forms of government mandates. 

People don’t like being pushed around, and some people respond to federal government mandates by doubling down on their vaccine hesitancy.

The case against mandates is different from any possible case against voluntary vaccine usage. Conservatism has always made a very strong distinction between the state and the society. The state is top-down coercive power; society is built upon many millions of individual and family decisions. 

I decided to get vaccinated—not because the government told me to. My research led me to this decision. But no one should be forcing conservatives into groupthink for—or against—voluntary vaccinations. 

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Normally, the fights over the debt ceiling are little more than partisan sniping. The party in control of government doesn’t want all the blame for deficit spending, and the opposition doesn’t want any of it. The fight is usually as specious as the debt ceiling itself, an unconstitutional credit limit granted to the executive in the absence of fiscal discipline in Congress.

This time, however, the argument against a new debt ceiling has substance. Democrats want Republicans to cooperate in suspending the debt ceiling rather than raising it to a specific amount. With Joe Biden demanding trillions of dollars in new spending, GOP leaders have refused to support a blank check for the rest of the president’s term. Instead, Republican leaders have rightly told Democrats to pass a debt ceiling hike themselves, or to curtail their spending demands.

The debt ceiling is an absurd structure on its face. Ideally, Congress should take responsibility for spending and eliminate the ceiling. In this case, however, Republicans should absolutely stand firm and make Democrats take responsibility for their profligacy.

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Ever since abandoning Americans in Afghanistan, Joe Biden has undergone a sharp reassessment by voters—and the results are not pretty. Prior to August 8, not one single national poll tracked by Real Clear Politics put Biden’s job approval in negative territory. Since the last week of August, a full 15 of the 21 polls they’ve tracked show a majority of voters disapproving of the president’s performance.

Gallup’s latest poll has Biden ten points underwater— disapproving 53 to 43. In June, 55 percent of independents supported the president. That number is now at 37 percent.

Voters may not be the only ones reassessing Biden as chief executive. After spending the summer ignoring the border crisis, the media has suddenly showered it with attention, Democrats in Congress—and even the NAACP  have lashed out at Biden.

The sudden focus on Biden’s incompetence suggests the administration has reached a tipping point. Let’s hope so. It’s long past time that the president is held accountable for his failures.

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“How much is a little girl’s life worth?” Simone Biles asked at a Senate hearing last week, after a scathing report on the FBI’s investigation into former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.

The FBI initially ignored the allegations about Nassar. He was eventually sentenced to over 300 years in prison in 2018 for allegedly molesting more than 330 women and girls.

Even as the FBI delayed following up on the accusations, Nassar continued the assaults. When agents on the case were confronted with their lack of action on the Nassar matter, they lied.

Even worse, it turns out one of the agents had been discussing a job with the Olympics Committee with USA Gymnastics. Yet that agent has been allowed to retire with his federal pension intact.

It’s another verse in the same old song: Washington elites escape accountability for behavior that would be very costly for people outside the Beltway. It’s a corrupt status quo that cannot stand.

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We are at a great moment of disclosure within the American conservative movement. The catalyst for this moment is the law on abortion that recently went into effect in Texas. It’s a law that basically outlaws abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

The passing of this law has revealed things we had not seen so clearly before.

Key voices who have—over the years—claimed a conservative and pro-life identity now argue that the pro-life movement has gone too far in seeking to use the law to prevent an actual abortion.

The rest of us thought that was at least in part what the pro-life movement was actually about and willing to do.

Let me just say this bluntly: A person is not morally serious about something like the sanctity of human life until and unless they are willing to use the power of the law in order to preserve unborn human life.

The Texas law may be controversial. It may actually be inelegant. But that law is crucially important … especially for those of us who really believe the defense of human life is what is at stake.

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