Tag Archives: politics

Will it be on the watch of tough-talking Trump that Iran finally goes nuclear?

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President Trump enjoys campaigning. The first campaign was in 2016 when he criticized the ill-advised deal that Obama had struck with Iran the year before.

Under that deal, Iran promised not to develop nukes – but only for a few years. Moreover, the inspection requirements were toothless, and Iran began violating them immediately by continuing its nuke program.

Trump rightly called that deal “a disaster” and “the worst deal ever” (which is saying quite a lot when it comes to deals made by Obama). After he was elected in 2016, Trump cancelled the deal.

And Iran continued its nuke program.

Trump’s second campaign was in 2020 when he promised that “as long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Trump lost the election.

And Iran continued its nuke program.

Trump’s third campaign was in 2024 when he declared that if elected, he would exert “massive, maximum pressure” on Iran to end its nuclear program. He won that election.

And Iran continues its nuke program.

Trump’s “massive, maximum pressure” has not included new sanctions on Iran, even while the United States Senate is considering bipartisan bills to impose those sanctions whether Trump likes it or not.

Trump’s fourth campaign is ongoing as you read this. He seems unconcerned that there’s no election going on; campaigning is what he does. Tweets, anyone?

When it comes to Iran, his campaigning substitutes for governing. Tough talk substitutes for tough action – or even moderate action.

Even the tough talk gets watered down. A couple of weeks ago, Trump announced that he was “very close” to a new deal with Iran, as if he could close the gap with wishes and charm.

On Wall Street, stock traders evaluating the tariffs have an acronym. It’s “TACO,” which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. In the face of a stock market rout, the tariffs Trump announced in April have quietly been withdrawn or at least re-drawn.

Note that Wall Street doesn’t say “TACO” as a political attack. They’re in the business of making money, not the business of politics. They say “TACO” in the same way they say, “Buy low, sell high.” It’s a truism.

Wall Street’s smart money has probably judged Trump correctly; being correct is why they’re on Wall Street while you and I are just on Main Street.

And so, we should expect a similar chickening out by Trump with respect to the Iranians. The Iranians themselves certainly do.

There will be a deal, alright. Trump will compromise to the point that it will be much the same as the 2015 deal that Obama struck. There will be promises by the Iranians, again, but no real teeth in the deal to enforce those promises, again. And there will be a zillion-dollar payment to the Iranians, again, which they’ll use to fund worldwide terrorism, again.

In short, the Iranians will get their nukes, and we’ll give them money to fund terror – and Trump will campaign on his success in striking a fake deal for them not to get their nukes.

Just like Obama.

In the big picture, western leaders have resigned themselves to a nuclear Iran. The fake deals are merely to mollify the masses. The leaders know that Iran will break the deals and get its nukes, and are already planning to say, “I’m shocked! They broke the deal!”

I’m not surprised that the Europeans act out this dishonest dance. Nor am I surprised that the Obama/Hillary/Biden crowd join in. But I expected something different from Trump – because he promised something different.

Ah, but there’s a wild card in this charade. It’s the Israelis. If the Ukrainians can take out a third of the strategic bomber fleet of Russia, imagine what the Israelis can do to the nuke program of Iran.

When it comes to the Jews saving the world, you know, there’s a precedent.

Trump is not a fascist . . . but . . .

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At the outset, let me state my bona fides. I voted for Trump three times. I publicly supported his candidacy back when the media deemed him and his supporters like me stupid racists.

That was back when “Trump is literally Hitler” was the meme of the moment amongst the kind of people who don’t know the meaning of Hitler and don’t know the meaning of “literally.” Which is to say, most of the current mainstream media.

For the record, Trump is not Hitler, not literally or metaphorically, nor is he a fascist.

Contrary to popular belief engendered by the lamestream media, the word “fascist” does not mean “Republican.” Nor does it mean “very conservative.” In fact, Republicans and other politically conservative people are nothing like fascists at all.

Fascism is notoriously difficult to define, perhaps because it is used as an epithet by the ignorant more than as a descriptor by the educated. But most would say it involves a tendency toward, or actual exercise of, strong autocratic or dictatorial control. It also frequently involves forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

OK, let’s look at President Trump.

He’s missing the race component. Indeed, many of his political appointments have been racial or ethnic minorities.

Some people would say, “Oh, but those minorities don’t count because they’re conservatives.” To those people, I have a question: So, who’s the bigot here when you’re the one willing to deny the color of a person’s skin because he lacks the “correct” viewpoints?

The nationalistic component is a closer call. Trump shows little interest in invading Poland or France, but does seem to hanker for a little elbow room up north in Greenland and Canada. Still, forcible conquest doesn’t appear to be on his radar. (But what exactly is the purpose of his conquistador callings?)

As for a belief in a natural social hierarchy . . . gimme a break, the guy’s a real estate developer. If there were a natural social hierarchy, real estate developers would be at the bottom.

Here’s the component that worries me: He doesn’t suffer disagreement lightly.

It would be one thing if Trump shot down disagreement with brilliant argument and nuanced analysis. In doing that, my favorite commentator on the conservative side – or any side, for that matter – was William F. Buckley. He won arguments in such eloquent, understated style that the people he persuaded to his side left thinking they had agreed with him all along.

Trump, not so much. If you agree with him at the outset, he’ll draw cheers from you. But that’s not a persuader; that’s a cheerleader.

As for those who disagree with him, he quickly escalates – or, rather, gutter-stoops – to name-calling, arm-twisting and outright bullying.

There’s a place for that tactic, to be sure. Army boot camp comes to mind.

In politics and people, however, such an approach tends to backfire. You can bully people only so far, and you can’t bully strong people at all.

Moreover, the bullying itself can backfire. For example, how is Vladimir Putin supposed to back down once Trump tells him to? Even the girly-men at Harvard have stood their ground (sort of) once Trump publicly told them to take a knee. The first rule of effective bullying is to do it in private where the object of your bullying doesn’t need to save face.

But this self-pleasing bullying, this autocratic nature, is in Donald Trump’s DNA. Recall that this man took time away from making billions in order to be on a stupid TV reality show where he gloried in screaming “You’re fired!”

The most recent “You’re fired” moment came this week when Trump lashed out at some judges – one of which he appointed – for striking down his tariff program as non-enabled by the laws he’s citing. The judges may or may not be right, but it’s a matter that will be decided by the Supreme Court on appeal, as it should be, not by playground bullies. Meanwhile, calling the judge names is not an effective strategy for a litigant.

The judges that disagree with him are reinforced in their disagreement when he tries to bully them. They have lifetime tenure and no fear of Trump. And the judges who agree with him, give pause. What self-respecting judge (and judges have a lot of self-respect) wants to be known as a Trump toady?

Oh yeah, the Supreme Court. He lashes out at them, too, though he appointed three of the nine. And he lashes out at the conservative Federalist Society for helping him choose the judges he lashes out at. I’m sure he’s just one lash away from lashing out at the people who helped him choose the Federalist Society to help him choose the judges.

Maybe all this plays well with a certain component of the base, and so it’s all clever triangulation by Trump. More likely, it seems to me, he just has the nature of an authoritarian bully.

It’s his greatest weakness. And I will not be voting for him a fourth time.

But he’s not Hitler!

Will Trump punish Iran as much as he’s punishing Harvard?

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Harvard deserves punishment. For years, they boasted in their published materials that they had a policy to favor certain ethnic groups.

Accordingly, they favored a Native American with the improbable name of Elizabeth Warren to fill a law professor position. When called out for their discrimination, they said that – in violation of their stated policy – they had not favored her.

Comically, it turned out Warren wasn’t Native American anyway. And so, in her case, Harvard failed at racial discrimination despite their best efforts. Usually, however, they’ve succeeded.  

One egregious area where they’ve succeeded is in discriminating against Jews and Asians. For Asians, their SAT scores had to be substantially higher than for whites and about 400 points higher than for Blacks.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court outlawed this discrimination against Asians in a decision two years ago. The suspicion is that Harvard has not stopped doing it, however, but has merely stopped advertising it.

Harvard’s discrimination against Jews is worse, if that’s possible. Harvard encourages Jew-hate. It’s probably not a coincidence that many of these antisemites are foreign students that pay full tuition.

But that’s not the only reason. The Jew-haters are egged on by many faculty members.

But at least Harvard has not promised to nuke the Jews. They may chant for the eradication of Israel (as in “From the River to the Sea”) but at least they are not advocating the eradication of Judaism, for the most part.

President Trump has rightly declared war on Harvard. He has cut off federal money until they comply with the Supreme Court rulings on racial discrimination, and protect Jewish students and other racial and ethnic groups.

Harvard has vowed to fight for their “right” to discriminate, and their “right” not to protect Jewish students, and their “right” to hate or love in admissions and hiring on the basis of skin color.

Naturally, they express this neo-Nazi skinhead language in more flowery terms – it’s all about academic freedom, they preen. To preserve their academic freedom to hate, they’ve filed lawsuits in their backyard of Boston in front of Democrat-appointed judges who are predictably disposed favorably to their position.

But it will go to the Supreme Court, and there will be supreme judgments, and Harvard will lose supremely.

Then there’s Iran.

Iran’s formal policy is not to fail to protect the Jews. It’s to kill them. For many years, they’ve armed proxies in the Middle East to do precisely that. Hezbollah, ISIS, Hamas . . . you name it. The Iranians see no group as too violent, too cruel, or too barbaric. The more violent, the more cruel, and the more barbaric, the better.

And so, on that horrific October 7, there were babies beheaded, grandmothers burned alive, young women raped in front of their husbands, and hostages taken, tortured and killed.

At Harvard, they cheered, and that was very bad. But in Gaza, it was even worse.

So, President Trump, will your punishment of the Iranians be at least as severe as your punishment of Harvard? Will you impose sanctions to cut off their funding, as you have with Harvard?

Moreover, will you put an end to Iran’s decades-long quest for a nuclear weapon to carry out their promise to destroy Israel?

Or is all your talk just . . .  big talk? Is it something like the tariff talk – a negotiation posture that you’ll climb down from and compromise on when the going gets rough?

It’s one thing to declare war on Harvard, but it takes some guts to declare war on Iran. The world is watching.

To generate book sales, the former Director of the FBI advocates 86’ing the President

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James Comey has a book coming out, so he’s looking for attention. He got it.

He posted on Instagram a photo of shells on the beach arranged in the numbers “86 47,” the last two numbers being a little separate and bigger than the first two so as to differentiate them. His accompanying comment was:

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

In case you were born yesterday, the number “86” is slang for terminating a person or thing. If a gangster talks about “86’ing” you, you’re toast. The number “47” of course corresponds to President Trump as the 47th President.

Comey got the attention he sought, and then some. Then he deleted the Instagram post, and put up a new post “explaining” that:

“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Wait a minute. In his first post, Comey pretends that the numbers were merely a “cool shell formation” while they were obviously much more than that; they were the numbers “86” and “47.”

So why did he pretend they were just a shell formation in the first post?

In his second message, he contradicts his first in admitting that he was aware it was a “political message” but contends he was not aware that it was a violent one. Really? This is the former Director of the FBI.

Then what did he think it meant? He never says.

The Secret Service charged with protecting the President takes seriously threats to his safety. The latest reports are that they’ve interviewed Comey.

That presents a problem for Comey. It appears likely that Comey himself arranged the shells on the beach. If he maintained his story that he simply stumbled across them, he was probably lying.

Such a lie could be uncovered by the contents of his phone. Multiple pictures of his “shell formation” could be on his phone showing various iterations until he settled on the one he liked.

Such a lie to the Secret Service investigators would constitute perjury, as Comey well knows – since he put people in jail for that.

On the other hand, if he told the truth to investigators, he revealed himself for what he apparently is: A former Director of the FBI who is willing to encourage harm to the President in order to sell books.

In today’s sordid world, it will probably indeed work to sell books. Fellow travelers on the left will buy his book with no intention of reading it, just to support his advocacy of violence. After all, they’ve normalized calls for political assassination, as we saw when they lionized a maniac who murdered a health insurance CEO on the street.

And it may work to accomplish more, too. It may work to achieve its stated goal of 86’ing the President. These are dangerous times, and this sick former FBI Director isn’t helping matters.

The only hotness in Hogg is that he’ll soon be bacon

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The Democrat who goes by the initials AOC is the hottest Democrat in Congress. I know that’s a low bar, but still.

It’s the main reason Democrats like her. Be honest: Who would you like to share a voting booth with – AOC or Nancy Pelosi? And then there’s also the possibility of voting from home . . . .

I’ll admit it’s a bit creepy to see Her Hotness and 163-year-old Bernie Sanders together on a stage performing Dem-porn acts such as “the rich don’t pay taxes” and “Republicans are a threat to Democracy” before at least one of them gets driven to one of Bernie’s mansions.

But in creepy cradle-robbing and grave-robbing stunts, they have nothing on the Republicans. Have you seen Bill Belichick’s new 24-year-old girlfriend? (I thought the guy was just a great football coach. Turns out, he’s a god!)

And then there’s a new kid on the block named David Hogg. He’s a hero because he was at school one day when a nutcase went ballistic with a gun.

Hogg saved several students. Well, no, he didn’t.

Hogg disarmed the gunman. Well, no he didn’t.

Hogg went to confront the gunman. Well, no he didn’t.

Hogg hid in a closet. Yes, he did.

Hogg has made a living selling the day he hid in a closet. His pitch is that we should ban guns. Forget about police protection in the schools. Forget about mental health issues. Forget about arming the teachers. No, we should ban guns.

Because then, the gunmen couldn’t get a gun legally at a gun store, and they’d have to get them illegally instead. They’d have to get one or more of the 400 million that are in circulation in America.

Democrats love this pitch. Not because it would reduce gun violence – remember the 400 million guns already out there?

No, Dems love the pitch for two reasons. One, it punishes gun owners, and they hate gun owners. Or at least they think they do. They forget that most gun owners are not pickup-drivin’ beer-drinkin’ tobacky-chewin’ GOP-votin’ rednecks. Most don’t drop their drawers or even their g’s. Most are people like you and me. Well, at least me.

Two, banning guns makes Dems feel virtuous. It means they’re doing something and, more importantly, it means they can say they’re doing something. In the world of Democrats, it doesn’t matter if what you do is effective. It only matters that you do it and talk about doing it.

Hogg rode this pitch all the way to the Democrat National Committee Vice Chairmanship. (I won’t make a comment about the Chairman of Vice, not with Belichick on the page.) Hogg became a male AOC. White smoke rose from the DNC office, and it wasn’t because they were burning emails. They all but christened him “His Hotness.”

Then he started saying some things apart from his DNC-approved gun-taking pitch. He suggested that the old Democrats should retire to make way for young ones. He himself, coincidentally, happens to be a young one.

But not all old Democrats should retire, he said. Only the powerless ones he thought he could risk offending. That wouldn’t include 85-year-old Nancy. She’s fine, he assured us. Really not even old!

He miscalculated. Turns out, the old powerless ones he said should retire do, in fact, have some power.

Hogg is now being ousted from his Chairman of Vice position. He’s cooked. He’s fried. He’s bacon.

But he’s still got his gun-taking schtick. Expect more books and speeches.

Joe, don’t go!

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On those rare occasions when I’m in need of an emetic, I’d rather have a finger stuck down my throat than have the image of Joe Biden stuck through my retina.

But he’s baaaaaack anyway. Democrats hate that he’s back.

What my enemy hates, I should like.  And so, I do. Even though it hurts my eyes and turns my stomach.

Democrats hate it for the same reasons that I like it. Every Joe sighting reminds people of why they voted against him. He demonstrates that he’s a creaky, corrupt, cardboard cutout that is incapable of thought and practically incapable of reading a teleprompter containing the thoughts of people who do his thinking for him.

Every appearance reminds people that the Democrats lied that he was “sharp as a tack” right up to the minute that he proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was dull as a dullard, at which time they dumped him like a stained, plaid Laz-Z-Boy from the 70s and declared that their hand-picked replacement (why bother with primaries to ascertain the people’s preference when you have Nancy, Chuck and Barack?) was

. . . wait for it . . .

. . . “sharp as a tack.”

And joyous, to boot. And no known hair plugs, capped teeth, or criminal family.

I almost feel bad for Joe that the Democrats are not even pretending to welcome him. Almost.

“Joe, please go” Is their typical greeting. Guffaws are their typical reaction to his tiresome contention that he would have won the election (if only he’d had the courage not to quit). Yawns are elicited by his warnings that the Republicans want to end Social Security, end motherhood, and end the world.

Rage is the emotion generated by him reminding Democrats of his truculent, selfish refusal to quit when the quitting was good – back when the primaries were playing out and a competent new candidate could be chosen in the way they’re supposed to be. Embarrassment is what they feel when they see him stumbling, bumbling, humbling and crumbling on a stage.

Mind you, I don’t blame Joe for being semi-senile. Lots of people wind up there. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her final years comes to mind.

Ginsburg is another person whom I adore because she screwed the Democrats by quitting long after the quitting was good. Ginsburg’s encroaching senility so clouded her judgment that she could not see it encroaching, and so she failed to quit in time for Barack Obama to name her replacement.

She died at age 87 while still on the bench (when she was not in the hospital). After decades of reliably liberal votes, the legacy she left is that her replacement is Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by Republican President Trump and confirmed by a Republican Senate.  

Back to Joe being back. Surely, he can still distinguish between friends and enemies. Given that his friends wish he’d go away for good, and his enemies are happy he doesn’t, one might ask, why doesn’t he go away?

This might shock you, but politicians have big egos. They crave attention. It’s not exactly a monastic profession.

I don’t hold that against them. The need for attention is fundamental to mankind (and, to a slightly lesser extent, womenkind). Some people achieve it by being loved, others achieve it by being hated, and still others achieve it by writing stupid blogs where they weave themselves into the narrative.

What I hold against Joe is not his basic need for attention. What I hold against him is his terrible policies, his family corruption, his gross incompetence, and his shameless lies.

I’m glad he’s back to remind Americans of those things. As he continues to decline, I hope he sticks around. Cement that legacy, Joe.

Is the American Pope a case of follow-the-money?

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To everyone’s surprise, the new Pope is an American. Like almost everyone else in the world, I’d never heard of him before yesterday. But he looks like a straight shooter and a stand-up guy. And, as popes go, he looks pretty healthy.

For readers in my tribe who are dismayed that he once expressed some passing criticism of President Trump’s summary deportation of illegal aliens, I ask you: What’s a clergyman supposed to say – kick the SOBs out?

I did not expect to see this – an American Pope – now or ever. Reports are that the smoke-watchers crowding the Vatican grounds didn’t either, and were a bit disappointed.

That’s not because Europeans hate or even dislike Americans. The practice of scorning American tourists ended at least a generation ago. The days of ugly Americans are now replaced by the days of rich Americans – and everyone likes customers who are rich.  (That said, it doesn’t hurt to greet people in their language when you’re in their country. “Buenos dias” and “bonjour” fetch a lot more smiles than “Hey, howya doin?”)

So don’t be fooled by Americans who sanctimoniously advertise to fellow Americans that they identify themselves as Canadians, not Americans, when they go to Europe, ostensibly to trick the Europeans into liking them. Those Americans are revealing a dislike for Americans alright – by themselves. Those Americans hate America, and they project that hatred onto the world.

Although Europeans don’t hate Americans the way some Americans hate Americans, I still wouldn’t expect the sun-drunk, ecstasy-filled citizens of Rome milling about St. Peter’s Square this week to be whispering, “Let’s pray they elect an Americano!”

And they weren’t. So why did the Cardinals elect an Americano?

Here’s a relevant factoid: The Vatican has deep financial problems.

Here’s another relevant factoid: When the Notre Dame burned a few years ago, guess who donated the greatest amount for the rebuilding, apart from the French themselves (several of whom were extraordinarily generous). It was the Americanos.

Connect the dots. 

I hope the strategy pans out. We need the Catholic Church more than ever before – and I say that as a Protestant.

The Wall Street Journal debases itself in a misleading Trump headline

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I’ve read the Wall Street Journal for many years. I’ve even had a piece published in the Journal. The opinion page is excellent (even when I disagree with the opinions expressed there) and the news page is reliable (though it has drifted leftward over the years).

I was therefore surprised and disappointed to see the Journal’s coverage of a recent interview that President Trump gave to NBC News.

Trump was asked about the due process protections he should afford illegal aliens being deported. Here’s the transcript of the relevant part, as presented by NBC News itself:

“But even given those numbers [of illegals] that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

A fair reading of that exchange is: (1) the interviewer asked Trump whether he would uphold the Constitution in connection with his deportation of illegals, (2) he replied that he’s not a lawyer, so he doesn’t know what the legal requirements are, (3) he has many brilliant lawyers who will tell him, and (4) they’ll “obviously follow what the Supreme Court” says.

The Journal presented the clip, but accompanied it with a very misleading headline. The headline read,

“Asked if He Has to Uphold the Constitution, Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’”

That headline was misleading in at least three ways. First, it leaves out the context, thereby implying a context much broader.

The question asked of Trump was not the general question of whether he “has to uphold the Constitution.” Rather, it was a very specific question: It was whether Trump has to afford due process protections to illegals being deported.

Second, the headline omits the rest of Trump’s answer. He immediately went on to note in connection with this Constitutional issue that he is not a lawyer.

That’s not just a quibble. Even most lawyers would struggle to define the necessary due process protections for illegals. Do they get a full-blown jury trial? Do they get summary adjudication by an administrative judge? Do they get something in-between? Even the Supreme Court has not been crystal clear on this point.

Third, Trump wound up his answer by explicitly stating that he would defer to whatever the Supreme Court says.

In context, it’s hard to see what Trump said wrong. He did indeed start his answer with “I don’t know” but immediately explained why he didn’t know, and gave assurance that he would do as told by people who do know — namely, the Supreme Court.

The Journal’s headline parrots a similar headline from the outlet that did the interview, NBC News. I was not surprised to see NBC sink this low to rake up muck, but I was indeed surprised to see the Journal follow them down there.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Liberal judges to violent, criminal illegals: “You’re Trump’s enemy, so that makes you my friend”

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Judges lately often exhibit acute cases of TDS. One in Milwaukee was preparing to preside over the trial of an illegal who’d been charged with domestic abuse. In layman’s language, he was charged with beating his girlfriend and others to the point that some required hospitalization. Federal agents showed up outside the judge’s courtroom with a warrant to arrest the man, presumably to deport him.

The judge stalled the agents for a bit by sending them down the hall, then returned to the courtroom. While the agents were away, she spirited the violent illegal out the side door.

The agents suspected a ruse, and went outside. They intercepted the man on the street, though it took a potentially dangerous rundown to catch him.

A judge in New Mexico was harboring three illegals who were apparently members of a notorious Venezuelan gang. The judge gave them guns. The judge also took a hammer to the phone belonging to one, evidently because it contained pictures of beheaded victims. He didn’t want the incriminating evidence to be discovered.

These acts by judges are not just intemperate and illustrative of bad, well, judgment. They’re also crimes. It’s a federal crime to conceal illegal immigrants. It’s a federal crime to interfere with the investigations of federal law enforcement officials. It’s a federal crime to lie to them. It’s a federal crime to destroy relevant evidence of a crime. The statutory punishment can involve decades in the federal penitentiary.

Ordinarily, these judges would not side with a wife-beater, or with a gang member with photos of his beheaded victims on his phone. Even judges who are Democrats are not that loony.

So why did the judges do so in these cases? Here’s my theory.

The reason the judges sided with criminals in these cases was because the person who was after them was Donald Trump.

These Democrat judges perceive Trump as their enemy (probably correctly) and they perceive these criminals as Trump’s enemy (certainly correctly) and so that makes the criminals their friend.

“My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a crude and amoral way to pick friends, but I suppose people have the prerogative to use whatever criteria they like in such personal matters.

But judges sitting in their courtroom are not engaged in personal matters. They’re engaged in public matters. Their job is to judge, and they’ve sworn to do so in accordance with the law. They don’t have the luxury of putting the law aside in favor of personal prejudices such as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” If they did, then they could decide that criminals are innocent simply because they happen to dislike the prosecutor. Or guilty because they happen to like the prosecutor.

I’m from the old-fashioned school, and so are almost all other lawyers and almost all judges and almost all civilized legal systems. In that school, the guilt or innocence of a defendant is based on what he did, not who he’s a friend or enemy of.

These judges know that, and they would agree with it – in the abstract. If offered a hypothetical where the evidence shows the defendant is guilty but the prosecutor is someone the judge abhors, the judges would say that’s the way the cookie crumbles. The defendant would be convicted on the basis of the good evidence presented, not exonerated on the basis of the bad prosecutor presenting it.

But in these particular cases – the real-life ones in Milwaukee and New Mexico mentioned above – the judges have become prisoners to their emotions. Their hate for Trump is so strong that they literally cannot think straight.

The judge’s best defense to the charges against them for aiding the criminal illegals, therefore, is a plea of insanity. And I think that plea is a pretty good one.

They’re deranged, and I mean that in a clinical way. Donald Trump has a way of doing that to Democrats. This derangement is not helping them with voters.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Hating on Jews is all the rage

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Young people are slaves to fashion. (That’s one vice I’ve never been accused of, even when I was young.)

You name it – mustaches, bell-bottom jeans, Barack Obama, hula hoops, big hair, Burt Reynolds, electric cars, transexuals, solar panels, line-dancing to country music, etc., etc., etc.

Someday, there may be a fashion convergence on Netflix where we have a mustachioed Barack Obama, sporting big hair and bell-bottomed jeans, line-dancing to country music with a transexual Burt Reynolds playing with a hula hoop as they both get run over by a Tesla fired by a solar panel.

Meanwhile, we have antisemitism.

It’s all the rage. Ignorant college students chant “from the river to the sea” but can’t tell you the name of the river or the name of the sea.

These kids believe that Jews are racists for “occupying” the land between those two unnamable waters – for some 3,000 years. And so, they hate them and their Jewishness.

The reason they believe this is (1) because they’ve been told it’s true by the kids who are cool because their skin is dark and their foreign accent is strong, (2) because human nature is such that hate produces pleasurable endorphins, and (3) because it’s fashionable.

They still celebrate the torture and massacre of Jews on that horrible October 7, even as they caution (sometimes, but not usually) that it’s not the Jews they want massacred, but the Israelis. At the same time, they harass and persecute Jews on campus who have no attachment to Israel other than Jewishness.

Like most fashions that come around, this one has been around before. The first Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The subsequent Jewish diaspora scattered thousands of Jews through Europe where they were persecuted for two millennia through soft bigotry and hard pogroms.

The discrimination reached an apex in a holocaust. Until the middle of the 20th century, that word meant “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale.” Now, the word is inseparable from an event of unspeakable horror, “The Holocaust.”

European bigotry immigrated to the Americas. As late as the 20th century, Harvard refused to admit Jews. Even now, they impose an informal limit on the number of Jewish admittees. Those who are admitted have been advised not to wear a visible Star of David, lest they trigger the Jew-haters.

When prestige schools occasionally protect the Jewish students, it is reluctantly and ambiguously. The leftists running these outfits smugly justify their tolerance for bigotry and even violence on the grounds of academic freedom. “Free to Hate” could well replace “Veritas” at Harvard.

As it has for thousands of years, Jewish merit overcomes much of this bigotry. Although Jews comprise only about 0.2% of the worldwide population and only about 1% of the American population, some 22% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish.

But the soft discrimination continues in matters not governed objectively by merit. For example, Americans have never elected a President or Vice President who was Jewish. (To their credit, the Jews have not clamored for one. That’s not the way they roll.)

Antisemitism particularly burns in the Middle East. Jews have been essentially expelled from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – practically all of the Muslim countries of the Middle East. Jews are not so much discriminated against in those countries – they’re banned.

You might think that Israel has responded in kind, but they haven’t. Non-Jews exist side-by-side with Jews in Israel. In fact, about 21% of Israelis are Muslim.

It is this Jew-hating bigotry for which the young idiots on college campuses are useful. While they enjoy sunny springtime hijinks designed mainly to prove up their fashion consciousness in the college cocoon, Jews in the real world are actively discriminated against, threatened existentially, and occasionally raped, taken hostage, beheaded and murdered.

Fads pass and fashion is fleeting. If only this one were.