Townhall Review | Commentaries

The fetal heartbeat bills recently adopted in several states are strategic efforts intended to provoke the attention of the United States Supreme Court to confront the logic of the Roe v. Wade decision.

The passage of these bills has also provoked a very revealing public conversation. Notably, Christine Quinn—active in New York city politics over the years, said on CNN, “When a woman is pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her.”

Whatever the inhabitant of the womb is, according to Christine Quinn, “it’s not a human being.”

Because, if it were, pro-abortion advocates would then have to recognize the personhood of that being and recognize his or her rights.

The only significant moral agent when it comes to those who are representing the pro-choice position is the woman. The baby simply doesn’t exist.

Christine Quinn’s horrifying comment has at least achieved one thing, moral clarity, and we should at least note that.

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Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, has delivered some of the most ignorant and incoherent statements ever made about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

She claims that the re-emergence of the Jewish State “was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews” and then adds “and I love the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, that provided that right.”

Of course, this ignores the genocidal riots by Palestinians that killed thousands of Jewish civilians in the 1920s and ’30s. Palestinians never “provided” a safe haven for Jews, but in fact supported Nazis and encouraged the Holocaust, while doing their level best to shut all routes of escape from Hitler’s inferno.

What’s most striking about Representative Tlaib’s indefensible, anti-Semitic gibberish isn’t its malevolence but, rather, its breathtaking stupidity.

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In our era of entitled youth and young men weakened by safe-spaced college campuses and fears of their own toxicity, it’s easy to fret for America’s future.

And then we are reminded of the existence of resolute, faithful young men prepared to defend to the death the civilized against the barbaric.

Enter Kendrick Castillo.

Castillo is the young man who bum-rushed one of the shooters who opened fire on their Colorado charter school and their 1800 classmates.

Kendrick Castillo took a bullet in the chest and laid down his life to save the lives of an incalculable number of others.

“I wish he had gone and hid, but that’s not his character,” said Castillo’s father. But, he went on, “His character is about protecting people, helping people.”

I wish we could bottle and sell whatever it was Kendrick Castillo’s parents did to raise such a courageous young man.

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The old-saying “there are two sides to every argument” does not apply to violent exchanges between Israel and the Gaza terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Without provocation or purpose, Palestinian terrorists launched 690 rockets against Israel, striking schools and hospitals while murdering four civilians.

Israel responded with intense air strikes, aimed at military targets and militant leadership. The only public explanation for Palestinian attacks involved the desire to disrupt Israeli Independence Day and the Eurovision song competition in Tel Aviv.

Nevertheless, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib sympathized with such random acts of destruction, asking: “When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free?”

For 14 years, residents of Gaza have been totally “free” of Israeli rule and all Jewish settlements and yet they somehow believe that firing rockets at innocent Israelis counts as brave and productive.

It’s not just insanity, it’s self-destructive evil.

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Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

The recent tragic shooting outside of Denver provides some healthy reminders for us.

None of us knows the hour of our death. We can’t choose the moment when we will be forced to show courage. But when that time comes, we must be ready.

When two shooters opened fire in the high school, eight were injured and one was killed—a senior named Kendrick Castillo.

When the shooter entered his classroom, Kendrick sprang into action. A female classmate told NBC News of his bravery, “That’s when Kendrick lunged at him, and he shot Kendrick, giving all of us enough time to get ourselves safe, and to run across the room to escape.”

Another student, future Marine Brendan Bialy, helped take down the other shooter.

These brave young men put their lives on the line to save others. They remind us that the age of heroes is not over.

The hour came, and the men showed up.

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Facebook has removed seven people identified as “extremists.”

The New York Times reported it this way:

After years of wavering about how to handle the extreme voices populating its platform, Facebook … evicted seven of its most controversial users, many of whom are conservatives, immediately inflaming the debate about the power and accountability of large technology companies.

Louis Farrakhan of the nation of Islam and Alex Jones of the Infowars website were among those evicted.

But the Times made a point of identifying them as “conservative.”

Are we looking at a more ominous threat?

The question is: Is this the beginning of excising all unwanted speech from Facebook?

We don’t have any assurances that this is not the case.

And we know well the political and cultural climate at Facebook. When you consider the fact that 2.4 billion people on the planet use Facebook, we have every reason to be concerned.

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Democrats have done Republicans a huge favor.

After the release of the Mueller report, the Democrats had two options: Either inflate the narrative of obstruction of justice, or attack the messenger who transmitted that report—a report that deeply disappointed them. That messenger was Attorney General William Barr.

They chose the latter course—and blundered terribly in doing so.

The whole premise of their criticism—that Barr somehow mishandled the release of the Mueller report was just absurd. Hysteria is a bad look. Democrats wore it better than their media boosters, but they still wore it poorly.

In attacking Barr, Democrats have hurt themselves. Not only did they appear desperate after their “bet everything on Mueller” wager went bust, but they proceeded to cement the alliance between President Trump and establishment Republicans, who were squarely behind Barr, in a way that had not occurred before.

From Barr to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the electorate sees a face of resolve from an increasingly united GOP.

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California has decided sodas are the new tobacco, with five bills introduced in the legislature to limit sales. If they pass, you won’t be able to buy sodas larger than 16 ounces, you won’t find them in check-out lines, and there will be extra fees.

New York introduced a bill banning large sodas and it was blocked by a judge. While it was in effect the data showed people actually bought more sodas. And there are very different interpretations of the effects of a soda tax.

But the real issue is individual freedom. Isn’t drinking a soda your decision, not the government’s? If they are dangerous to health, isn’t education the answer, not regulation?

The nanny state keeps regulating us more and more at the cost of individual freedom. What’s next: banning meat and dairy products in school lunches? Oops, that bill has been introduced in California also.

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The 2020 election is not even going to be close.

The recent numbers on the economy make it clear:

The first-quarter gross domestic product growth came in at 3.2 percent. The economy over which President Trump is presiding is strong and getting stronger. A recession before Election Day looks less and less likely by the day.

Small wonder then that Trump dominates the GOP with an approval rating close to 90 percent. His administration's deregulatory push is accelerating. More and more rule-of-law judges are being confirmed to the bench. Readiness levels in the U.S. military have been renewed. Our relationship with our strongest ally, Israel, is at its closest in decades.

Last week's message from a booming economy should have rocked the Democratic field. But the party remains intent on poring over the Mueller report while they face a Hobson’s choice between a Biden-esque person or someone from the hard-left Bernie brand of Democratic Socialism.

Whoever the Dems nominate, the case for Trump in 2020 looks good.

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The culture of death has gained new ground as the state Supreme Court in Kansas has now blocked a law that would have protected unborn human life.

In a decisive 6-1 decision, the majority said that, according to the Kansas state constitution, a woman there has a right to an abortion, to the procedure known as D&E—dilation and evacuation. Note: that is the dismemberment and the removal of the unborn child from the woman’s body.

The decision was breathtaking, catching both sides of the abortion argument in Kansas by surprise.

The constitution of Kansas was adopted in 1859. Abortion was not mentioned. Abortion wasn’t intended.

Once again: We’re looking at invented law and invented rights made by courts.

If we are not restrained by the meaning of words—in this case the words of the state constitution—then we are fundamentally unrestrained. And that means our government is unrestrained, and there are few more deadly dangers than a government unrestrained.

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