Townhall Review | Commentaries

It’s hard to unite Senate Democrats and Republicans these days. But Biden’s National Intelligence Director, Avril Haines, has managed to do just that.

She’s refused to show members of the Senate Intelligence Committee copies of the classified documents discovered in Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s possession. Her excuse? The special counsel investigations of both.

What nonsense. As Democrat Mark Warner pointed out, the Senate Intelligence agency was regularly briefed even as a Special Counsel investigated Donald Trump for supposed collusion with the Russians.

At this point, with many Americans doubtful about its integrity and motives, the intelligence bureaucracy would be wise to choose transparency. Instead, it’s raising bipartisan suspicions. And it’s highlighting once again the arrogance of Washington’s permanent bureaucracy.

There’s a problem when unelected, unaccountable officials feel so invincible they can treat the people’s representatives so dismissively.

It’s just one more sign that it’s time for fundamental reform of America’s intelligence services.

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Recent media coverage celebrating "falling inflation" is taking a victory lap a little too early.

Yes, inflation is lower … somewhat. It certainly has come down from the stratospheric levels of nearly 10 percent a year, but at 5 percent a year, it's still unacceptably high. There's no grounds for our policymakers to declare victory … the job just is not done.

Rising demand for inflation hedges like gold, bitcoin, and inflation-protected bonds and foreign currencies show that investors know that the inflation crisis is not over yet, even if the ruling class which caused it and benefits from it is in denial. You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know what's going on, you just need to go to the store and buy a dozen eggs. When pay doesn't keep up with the cost of living, that means you're losing ground, and government is the culprit.

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We have already seen the grim consequences of the Biden administration’s open borders to the south. A record two and a half million people breached America’s southern border last year.

Now our country is confronting a stream of illegal immigrants from the north, as well. The Border Patrol reports a 743% increase in migrant encounters, compared to the same period last year. Traffickers are victimizing migrants. Consequences can be horrific for those trying to enter. Some – including an Indian family of four – have literally frozen to death.

The consequences are horrific for the United States, too. Every time we send the message that America is a country without borders, drug cartels seize the moment. In just one episode in North Dakota last October, officers seized enough fentanyl to kill everyone in the state.

It’s time to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to enforce our border laws.

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You probably know who your governor is and your senators too. But do you know who your state treasurer is? How about your comptroller?

Well, it's time to start paying attention, because these officers have emerged as the new frontline against the intrusion of politics into finance under the guise of ESG. On my podcast, “Meeting of Minds,” I recently interviewed John Murante, Treasurer of Nebraska—an agricultural state. He warns that the war against fossil fuels is now turning into a war against agriculture as government and activists push companies to divest not just from the energy industry but from industries that use energy—and farms use energy.

Whether they know it or not, ESG activists would create a world where we are colder, more hungry and in the dark.

It’s time to start engaging with the companies you own in your 401(k). Remember: They work for you.

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Here’s the question: “Is Defying Parents the Only Ethical Alternative?” Amazingly enough, that’s the question which is the title of an article recently published in the Atlantic—coming from author Conor Friedersdorf.

Now the question is this, and Friedersdorf asks it bluntly: should a child be seen as educators as legitimately transgender, or should those educators defer to parents when they raise their children? 

Now, this just underlines the fact we're living in new and very dangerous days. 

Friedersdorf understands what's at stake, at least to this point, and he writes, "To a degree that has surprised me, many educators believe their judgments on these matters should trump the judgments of parents, if the latter are even consulted about their children." 

Now, to you listeners today, I just want to say this is a moral emergency. 

It's more fundamentally about parental authority, and we had better all be paying attention to what these educators are saying out loud. 

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Biden’s classified document scandal spells real trouble for The White House—and the departure of Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, proves it. Klain has been with the president for more than thirty years. He knows Washington, and he can read the writing on the wall.

What’s coming will be a mess. We’ve now learned that Biden has classified documents not just from his vice presidency, but from his tenure in the Senate, where he served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senators are allowed to view classified documents only in Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities—known as SCIFS. So it’s fair to ask: how did those documents get out of the SCIFs and to Biden’s house in the first place?

The White House has refused to answer even the most basic questions. But the American people have a right to fundamental information about the documents being retrieved. Now.

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Last Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade—a ruling of breathtaking judicial activism that manufactured a so-called right to abortion out of whole cloth. 

Of course: Nothing in the actual Constitutional text—or its history, structure, logic, and moral foundations—provides any support for denying a class of human beings equal protection of the law. And that is why this year’s March for Life had something of a celebratory tone, as this year’s March was the first in a post-Roe America thanks to last summer’s courageous ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson.

But this year’s March also had a somber tone, as those of us marching knew how much remains. We need to commit for the long-haul, to protect life at the state and federal levels, in regulations and legislation—and future litigation. Now is an all-hands-on-deck moment for the prolife cause.

Please: Join us in doing your part.

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Partisan bickering may soon reach an early zenith in the 118th Congress, but so might congressional chutzpah. In the previous session, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke longstanding House tradition by removing two Republicans from their committee assignments over their support for Donald Trump’s claims about the 2022 election. Pelosi further blocked then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s appointment of several Republicans to the January 6 select committee, also an unprecedented step.

McCarthy has chosen to block two Democrats from their committee assignments over their misconduct—but also a bit of retribution. New House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries had the temerity to claim that McCarthy’s move “runs counter to the serious and sober mission of the Intelligence Committee,” and that McCarthy should “honor past practice” and rescind his decision.

McCarthy is honoring past practice—the practice of bare-knuckled partisanship by Pelosi. Jeffries could have objected to it at the time but chose to endorse it. This is merely sauce for the goose after Democrats cooked the gander in 2021. 

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The Editorial Board of the New York Times recently published what we can only describe as an abortion manifesto—1800 words, two-thirds of the print page and the headline, “We must place access to abortion on the ballot.”

The statement included these words, “The fight over abortion has taken on new resonance in post-Roe America. It is no longer just a front in the culture wars, but rather a fundamental matter of health and well-being for millions of women. And the difference between life and death for many…” 

And thus the editors go on proposing a course of action, advocating state-level action through ballot measures—to support abortion.

So: there’s the plan, spoken right out loud.

But notice the very important “tell,” so to speak.  They said it is a “difference between life and death for many…”

Indeed, it is: abortion is intended to be a matter of death. Period. That’s what makes abortion—abortion. 

And this culture of death ought to be opposed every step of the way.

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The culture of death is expanding its reach. The FDA just issued what it calls a “permanent rule,” giving the approval for retail pharmacies to prescribe abortion pills.

What that means—as a practical matter—is that CVS and Walgreens may now be dispensing mifepristone, that is to say the abortion pill. The availability of those pills at the big chains and local so-called brick-and-mortar pharmacies, that is a game changer.

This was not imaginable back in 1973. Today, you need to know, more than half of all abortions in the United States happen not in an abortion clinic, but rather by means of taking a so-called abortion pill. Let me state clearly what many of you, I’m sure, already recognize: The moral equation does not change whether the agent of death is now a chemical, or a pill, or a surgical abortion.

Pro-abortion advocates cheered this move by the FDA saying this decision is good so far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. The culture of death, just understand this, is never satisfied. 

It will never be satisfied.

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