[Links to the full articles embedded in the headlines.]
The Navy needs more ships, not more politics (Aug.19): The estimable radio host and columnist Hugh Hewitt is, alas, dead wrong to suggest that military construction should be used as a targeted tool to help a president’s reelection campaign.
The suggestion in Hewitt’s Aug. 17 Washington Post column amounts to political cynicism writ very large. Yes, lawmakers and the Pentagon should provide the armed services with the military hardware necessary for their missions, to the greatest extent humanly affordable. But the missions, not presidential politics, should drive the decisions….
Maybe the U.S. needs two more (four total) major political parties (Aug. 19):
The idea of serious third and fourth American political parties merits two cheers, or maybe one cheer and a few quick claps.
During a paean to now-independent congressman Justin Amash of Michigan, columnist George Will touches on, without deeply analyzing, the idea that challenges to the Republican-Democratic duopoly might be salutary for the public weal.
“Voters need not invariably settle for a sterile binary choice,” Will writes. He is not averse to “the idea of offering temperate voters a choice of something other than a choice between bossy progressivism and populist Caesarism.”….
Payroll tax cut would destroy Social Security and Medicare (Aug. 20): If President Trump actually proposes to cut the payroll tax in order to ward off a recession, Congress ought to ignore the scheme without a second thought.
Several news organizations reported Monday evening that Trump administration officials are considering cutting those taxes in order to stimulate the economy — yes, the same economy that Trump keeps bragging is already supposedly the strongest in history. At least one White House official later denied the plan is under active consideration. Let’s hope he’s right. The idea is a stinker….
Heritage Foundation fights vote fraud, which is very real (Aug. 22): Refusing to surrender ground to the leftist/media myth that voter fraud is a negligible problem, the Heritage Foundation this week released a short video highlighting this very real, continuing problem….
Orwellian San Francisco flunks the real test of justice (Aug. 23): Not content to define deviancy down, San Francisco is actually defining outright criminality down.
The situation might be funny, if it weren’t both Orwellian and dangerous.
As Fox News reported this week, “Crime-ridden San Francisco has introduced new sanitized language for criminals, getting rid of words such as ‘offender’ and ‘addict’ while changing ‘convicted felon’ to ‘justice-involved person.’ The Board of Supervisors adopted the changes last month even as the city reels from one of the highest crime rates in the country.”…
