Libertarian: This Is How the Left Destroys Itself
Many on the left were quick to declare the initial edited video of the Covington Catholic incident as a “symbol of all that’s wrong with America,” notes The Atlantic’s Conor Friersdorf. One even proclaimed a smirking teen’s face, which is “something known to every parent and schoolteacher in the world,” as “an emblem of ‘tactics of genocide’ — as though the root of ethnic cleansing were adolescent ignorance.” Indeed, treating a smirking teen as a stand-in “utterly trivializes bygone atrocities.” Why, he wonders, do so many on the left spend “so much energy on culture-war pile-ons, even opining that children are punchable or irredeemable or deserving of doxing”? It’s this “bizarre focus” on the boys as a symbol of what ails America, instead of what actually does, “that’s going to do in the left.”
Foreign desk: Trump Makes the Right Move on Venezuela
Give President Trump credit for recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the nation’s interim president, as a dozen other Western Hemisphere countries have done, urges Bloomberg’s Eli Lake. Trump’s foreign policy may be chaotic in other areas, but he “has always been consistent” on Venezuela and exerting pressure against socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro. Some on the left accuse Trump of supporting a coup, comparing this to US Cold War interventions in Latin America. Back then, though, Washington “supported dictatorships and juntas as a bulwark against international communism” at the expense of democracy. In Venezuela, Trump “is trying to help restore democracy,” which has been “strangled” under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
Conservative: McConnell’s Looming Win on Judges
Score one for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In The Washington Post, Hugh Hewitt reports that Republicans are very close to changing the rules governing the amount of time the Senate can debate a nomination. Under the current rules, in which a single senator can block attempts to limit debate, Democrats have managed to slow-walk President Trump’s nominations, especially on judges. Republicans, in turn, “tried in vain to reach a compromise” that would reinstate broader rules “adopted in a bipartisan fashion” years ago. But with “a vast array of vacancies in the executive and judicial branches,” McConnell is expected to “prevail on his caucus.” Bottom line: “The crippling of the Trump administration’s appointment process and the blockade on judicial vacancies with majority support is about to end.”
From the right: Supremes Take Up a Strange Gun Case
The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear its first gun-rights case in nearly a decade, and, says National Review’s David French, “it’s a strange case indeed.” At issue is New York City’s law prohibiting gun owners from transporting their weapon anywhere except to one of the city’s seven shooting ranges. It’s “an astonishing law” — and also “one of the most limited gun-rights cases in the country.” Which begs the question: Why “step into the arena now,” especially since the Court has previously passed on so many more consequential cases? French predicts that “unless the Court does something truly unexpected — like strike down the law by applying an intermediate-scrutiny test that actually helps gun controllers — the outcome of the case will likely be positive for gun rights.” Question is, how positive will it be?
Mideast watch: UN Is Silent on PA’s Political Detainees
A number of Palestinian human-rights organizations have asked the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Right to speak out against politically motivated arrests by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, reports the Gatestone Institute’s Khaled Abu Toameh. But it’s “highly unlikely” they’ll get a response from the Israel-obsessed agency. Dozens of Palestinians — 94 in recent weeks, by one estimate — have been taken into custody, where they have reportedly been subjected to torture. Their crime: “expressing views that are critical of the PA or being affiliated with Palestinian opposition groups.” This, he says, “is a generous gift to Hamas and other extremist groups,” who are using the detentions to discredit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “and depict him as a traitor and dictator.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann