Townhall Review | Commentaries

The government of Iran has been at war with the United States for four decades.  It announced itself to the world in a revolution that took over a U.S. embassy and held 52 American hostages.  Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, bombed and killed 241 American soldiers in their barracks in Lebanon.  It publicly executed Robert Stetham in the hijacking of TWA Flight, it killed 19 Americans in a bombing at Khobar Towers, it killed over 1,000 Americans in Iraq, and it tried to bomb an American restaurant in Georgetown.
 
The American response has mostly been to shovel more money to Iran, saying we don’t want war with that country.  But Iran, opening its parliament with shouts of “Death to America,” has no compunction.
 
Iran just unloaded a fusillade on Israel.  The indiscriminate launches against civilian targets of our ally, as Iran’s proxies still hold American hostages, is a new escalation.  By Iran.  Iran is the rogue.  Iran is the escalator.  Iran is the warmonger.  
 
Will we put this fire out or keep fueling it?

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Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren are among the loudest voices opposing Israel. Warren, in particular, has provided plenty of aid and comfort to Hamas. Just over the last month, she’s called for a Palestinian state, blocking the sale of F-15’s to Israel, and a cease-fire. Nancy Pelosi likewise demanded that Biden halt weapons transfers to Israel. 
 
But here’s what they—and other progressives like them—seem to have forgotten: Hamas killed thirty Americans on October 7, and still holds six Americans hostage. 
 
And the media remains silent about all of it.
 
Every time Warren, Pelosi and others like them advocate for anti-Israel policies, they’re helping Hamas.
 
Reasonable people can disagree about how Israel conducts the war against Hamas. But no reasonable person can be confused about who the bad guys are. And no decent person aids those who kill and capture their fellow Americans.

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Remember what Robert Gates wrote in his 2014 memoir about Joe Biden's foreign-policy acumen? “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates concluded.

Well, good news: Biden's streak remains unbroken. Last week, Biden demanded that Israel unilaterally declare a 6-8 week cease-fire in Gaza without even mentioning the hostages held by Hamas. In doing so, Biden gave Hamas a clear signal to remain firm on its maximalist demands, and to hold the hostages—including at least five Americans—indefinitely.

Biden lashed out at Benjamin Netanyahu for his “mistakes” in continuing the fighting, but the vast majority of Israelis support both the war and an assault on Rafah to destroy Hamas. For that matter, the vast majority of Americans do as well, and two-thirds in a recent Harvard-Harris poll oppose any cease-fire in which Hamas does not release all the hostages.

Here's a better proposal: Biden should shut up for six to eight weeks about Israel.

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In Dearborn, Michigan, a recent anti-Israel rally turned even darker as an activist and an imam led the crowd in chanting “Death to America.” 

Under our First Amendment, people can scream this hateful slogan. But the first question is: why has America adopted an immigration policy that welcomes people who hate our country?

The second question is: where is the media? Reports of this America-hatred are scarce.

The third question is how is the Biden administration permitting this? It was team Biden, after all, who sicced the FBI on parents at schoolboard meetings, who prosecuted people praying silently at abortion clinics and who allowed the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches. 

The president labels half the country as dangerous for supporting his opponent. But when people literally threaten our country, the Biden administration stands silent. 

The only threats the president takes seriously are those to his political fortunes.

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The accidental killing of aid workers by Israel—aside from its obvious sad tragedy for the families and friends of those seven—was unfortunately instructive; a teachable moment—against and about Israel and how she is viewed.

The difference between the accidental bombing by Israel and the deliberate atrocity of Hamas’ ongoing war against Israel, where civilians are deliberately used as weapons and victims of war, collapsed.  It shouldn’t have. War is Hell and in Hell, as almost everywhere, accidents happen.

The Israeli accident will be remembered and exploited far more than when, under Barack Obama, the US struck a Doctors Without Borders facility in Afghanistan, killing at least 40 civilians; and Joe Biden’s bombing in Afghanistan that killed ten civilians. Or any other number of wartime accidents.

If Hamas did not use civilians for cover and target, and taken hostages, these seven lives would still be with us.

But a horrible accident should not serve as a pretext to rhetorically isolate if not abandon our ally in her hour of need.

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Since 2015, the consulting firm McKinsey and Company has produced studies that have been widely used to justify imposing DEI measures. The studies claimed that racial and ethnic diversity improved corporate performance in America’s publicly traded companies.

But according to a new study in the Econ Journal Watch, the McKinsey studies can’t be replicated. The journal points out errors in the McKinsey results, and states they’re not reliable. The Econ Journal Watch analysis finds no relationship between DEI and increased corporate profitability.

The result is consistent with common sense. Why would choosing employees based on race, ethnicity or sex make a company more profitable? Workers with varied perspectives and backgrounds can be helpful—but it’s wrong to assume that immutable characteristics dictates how or what anyone thinks. 

McKinsey’s studies were propaganda masquerading as empirical research. Hiring on character and merit, after all, is the American way. 

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The California Bar Court has recommended disbarring veteran attorney and constitutional law professor John Eastman. Eastman counseled President Trump on cases dealing with alleged election illegalities on and around January 6. 
 
Many of Eastman’s legal arguments are novel, and much of his advice is controversial. But that’s no reason to disbar him.
 
It would be unethical and wrong for Eastman to support ignoring or abrogating the Constitution. But he doesn’t. His arguments recognize the Constitution’s status as the supreme law of the land. They simply advocate novel interpretations of it. 
 
Such advocacy is at the heart of a lawyer’s job. It’s what Thurgood Marshall did in Brown v Board of Education—the case that resulted in the desegregation of schools, ending the “separate but equal” legal doctrine.

Disbarring Eastman is wrong. 
 
It ultimately jeopardizes the right to effective assistance of counsel—and it’s profoundly un-American.

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It looks pretty clear that Israeli defense forces killed several leading officials in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria. One of them, the chief of operations in the region, was the Iranian liaison to the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, with whom he was in daily contact.

The Biden administration sent a direct communication to Iran’s leadership that the U.S. had nothing to do with this.  The organizations which these Iranians in Syria led, are, like Hezbollah, listed as terrorist entities by our own State Department—raising the question:  Why would we effectively apologize?—and ensure our innocence for killing terrorists?  This is the regime that opens its parliament shouting "Death to America."

Iran’s Hezbollah introduced itself to the world by murdering 241 Marines in 1983—and Iranian militias have killed thousands since then, including over 1,000 Americans.

Israel should be praised if it did this, and America should not be engaging the anxious propitiation with Iran for it—these are men with whom we simply cannot share the earth.

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You can’t make this up. 

The White House released a statement from President Biden proclaiming March 31st—Easter Sunday—as 2024 Transgender Day of Visibility. Biden bragged about his support for LGBTQ political goals and declared to the transgender community: “You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.”

And, of course: An explosion of controversy quickly ensued.

But there is a deeper reality here that conservatives—and Christians in particular—must recognize. Yes, all this was an affront to Christianity and to morality, to be sure. And yet, we should pause for a moment to recognize that, despite the best efforts of LGBTQ activists, the White House, and the cultural elites, it’s not working.

At the end of the day, biology trumps ideology and the very real damage done to human beings in the name of the transgender movement is increasingly undeniable—or I’ll put it this way—it’s not invisible.

President Biden may declare Transgender Day of Visibility, but he can’t make that visibility work as they intend.

It’s backfiring—and we know why.

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There has been no accountability from all the so-called “experts” who handed down ruinous mandates during the Covid pandemic. But finally, the FDA has at least been forced to walk back some of the snarky misinformation it spread about ivermectin.

The agency will remove and never republish Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook posts suggesting that Ivermectin, an inexpensive medication some doctors used to treat COVID, is only for animals.

It’s happened thanks to three brave doctors, who sued the FDA for interfering with their right to practice medicine. Although the lower court dismissed the case, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court reinstated it, noting “The FDA is not a physician.” 

Indeed it’s not. With that, the FDA settled the lawsuit and agreed to remove the posts.

No government agency has any business telling physicians how to practice medicine.

Let’s hope they’ve learned their lesson.

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