President Trump said Friday he granted former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) a sentence commutation months after the ex-lawmaker reported to prison.“George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated,” the president wrote in a statement on Truth Social.

Playing with fire... The post How The Thompson Twins showed that rock ‘n’ roll relationships can last first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Alice Roberts has a gift. Few can make stones live the way she does. An archaeologist by training, a storyteller by nature, she takes broken tiles and battered fragments and makes them shine. Roman ruins gain a voice, altars rise again, and the past presses close. But when people step into her tale, when faith and conviction enter the picture, the poetry fades. Her new book, Domination,  is where the awe ends and the arrogance begins. Christianity, she says, was nothing more than Rome’s second act, empire dressed up as faith. Roberts sets out to explain how Christianity, born in Judea’s dust, grew into a force that reshaped the world. Her thesis is rather blunt: the Roman Empire never truly fell. It simply shifted shapes. Christianity, she says, was nothing more than Rome’s second act, empire dressed up as faith. (RELATED: Christianity at the Crossroads) It’s a tidy tale, but one that reduces human beings to pawns. Roberts refuses to allow that believers might have meant what they said, or that faith could matter more than politics. That refusal drains her account of depth. The bishops of Nicaea become nothing but schemers. Creeds are recast as cover stories. Doctrines turn into dismal propaganda. Of course, politics mattered. No one denies it. But to claim it was only politics is to turn history into a cartoon. In her telling, Christians are either con men or fools. (RELATED: Nicaea’s Echo: The Creed) Her treatment of Saint Paul shows this most clearly. She paints him as a fiendish fraud, a salesman peddling stock. Yet his letters burn with urgency. He argued, pleaded, contradicted himself, circled back again and again like a man who knew the stakes were eternal. He faced hostile cities and tied himself to communities he barely knew. He carried the gospel from its Jewish roots into the Roman world, reshaping not only theology but the moral order of the West. To dismiss him as a charlatan is like dismissing Beethoven as a piano player for hire or Shakespeare as a ticket hawker. At the heart of Domination sits a fatal flaw. Roberts assumes that because Christianity shaped politics, it must have sprung from politics. Because bishops lived in palaces, the gospel must be a scam. Because faith built empires, faith itself must be counterfeit. By that logic, every great human endeavor would be worthless. Democracy discarded because demagogues exploit it. Science rejected because governments use it for war. Art dismissed because rich men hang it on their walls. What Roberts calls sharp insight is really just cynicism with citations. Take her treatment of the island saints. She jokes about Columba and Aidan for founding monasteries on Iona and Lindisfarne, noting they weren’t truly isolated since trade routes passed nearby and the mainland was visible. True enough, but so what? The point was never to disappear. It was to confront power from a place of stark contrast. From Lindisfarne, you look straight toward Bamburgh Castle. Each day, the king in his fortress saw across the water men who owned nothing, carried no swords, and yet commanded attention. Their poverty preached. Their humility defied. Their presence rebuked worldly power. Roberts notices geography, but she misses the gospel. The pattern repeats. She marvels at glorious manuscripts, then mocks the monks who made them. She admires the arches of cathedrals, then sneers at the faith that stacked stone upon stone. It is like gazing at the Cross and calling it carpentry. Her conclusion is as laughable as it is lamentable. The church, she insists, was really a corporation — with CEOs, franchises, and products to sell. But that is our world she’s describing, not theirs. Corporations don’t create martyrs who choose death over denial. They don’t carve art that still unsettles a thousand years later. (RELATED: The Digital Crucifixion of Christianity) And if Christianity was only Rome in new robes, why did it keep producing movements that unsettled Rome’s own logic? Why did it give rise to men and women who defied emperors, toppled idols, and unnerved tyrants? Why did it continue to shake the very order it supposedly existed to serve? Roberts claims to stand for humanism. But her version of humanism is heartless and hopeless. Suspicious of belief. Contemptuous of transcendent values. Dismissive of longing. It drains humanity of the very things that make us human: our hunger for meaning, our sense of wonder, our refusal to accept that life is nothing more than survival of the fittest. Christianity did not conquer the empire by copying it. It triumphed by offering what the empire never could: dignity for the despised, and a purpose beyond power. It spread not by promising palaces but by proclaiming a kingdom not made by hands. That, not politics in disguise, explains why slaves and fishermen embraced it, why emperors knelt before it, and why its cathedrals still tower while Rome’s legions lie in dust. Roberts has written a book about Christianity while refusing to admit what gave it force. On the cover, she calls herself “Professor,” a pretentious flourish from an unserious writer presuming to tackle the most serious subject in history and failing spectacularly. In the end, Domination does what reductionism always does. It explains everything while understanding nothing. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: HuffPostThinks God’s a Fascist House of Guinness: Netflix’s Biggest Show of the Year Is a Total Disgrace Robert Reich and the Cult of Cowardice

It is obvious that the NFL has become so inflated with its financial and cultural success that it feels free to shove anything down the viewing public’s throat and get away with it. A good example is the “Bad Bunny” Superbowl halftime show. Bad Bunny is a Puerto Rican rapper show who sings almost exclusively in Spanish. He is a virulent critic of President Trump who has cancelled US shows in the past fearing that ICE agents might disrupt his fan base; what a tragedy that would be. He recently sat through the National Anthem at a Yankees playoff game. It is too much to expect that Bad Bunny will be disinvited, but if the alternative teaches the league the value of thinking about the core fans … it will be well worth the effort. Not one to shy away from controversy, Homeland Security Kristi Noem has vowed to send ICE agents to the Super Bowl to protect real Americans. The reason given by the NFL for this unnecessarily polarizing choice of mid-game entertainment is that Mr. Bunny (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is one of the most popular world-wide entertainers, and the league is trying to expand its audience in Europe and Latin America. This, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans over 30 who represent the core pro football fan base had never heard of him. The question is how do we punish the NFL in ways that will get the attention of Commissioner Goodell and his front office minions. They should be made aware that their core audience is more important than the degenerate Eurotrash and would-be immigrants (legal and illegal) currently south of the border that they are trying to cultivate? It is too much to ask the American public to boycott the game. It has become a “must-see” American institution. But it is not unthinkable for them to boycott the half-time show, particularly if an entertainment alternative is offered. This is where Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA (TPUSA) comes in. TPUSA is putting together and alternative half-time show with entertainers who will actually sing in English and will not insult or disparage the nation and its leaders. To that end, I have some suggestions of how to make the event such a success that the NFL will never again offer up such an insult to the American public as Bad Bunny. Advertisers should be competitors of the ads broadcast at the actual halftime. TPUSA could offer ads at discount rates to the competitors of half time sponsors. For example, if Bud Light is one of the entertainment sponsors, Coors Lite or Miller Lite could be asked to provide an entertaining ad in competition. Liquid Death is reportedly  sponsoring an add for the first time. If so Icelandic or Evian could be invited to provide an add for the alternative. Nothing scares a sponsor like the loss of market share. Some TPUSA officials have suggested Christian entertainers for their show. Rather, I’d suggest that the organization stay with more mainstream entertainers. Lee Greenwood, Kiss, and George Strait come to mind; Strait even has 35,000 signatures as a substitute for Bad Bad Bunny at the actual event. The alternative should be a fun show that celebrates America and its values. Given the fact that she was snubbed for this year’s event Taylor Swift might even consider doing the alternate event if invited. She is no fan of Trump, but she probably dislikes Goodall as much if not more. The defection of the Swifties would be a definite slap in the face for Goodall. Another idea for the alternative would be to have President Trump host it. He is entertaining when he wants to be and it would give him a chance to thumb his nose at both Goodell and Bad Bunny simultaneously. If the alternative is competitive with or outperforms the Bad Bunny show in the ratings, it might well send a signal that the woke Goodell is not the guy to lead the league into the future. The owners were asleep at the switch in the selection of Bad Bunny and there are rumors that some are very uncomfortable that the halftime show controversy will be an unwanted distraction from the game; good, it may teach them a lesson. It is too much to expect that Bad Bunny will be disinvited, but if the alternative teaches the league the  value of thinking about the core fans and their desires, it will be well worth the effort. At the very least, it will increase the followership and the coffers of TPUSA. READ MORE from Gary Anderson: The US Navy Gets Fit Is the Internet the Antichrist? Want to Suppress Crime? Start With Rochester, NY Gary Anderson is a regular contributor to The American Spectator.

The left and big media have been on a crusade to convince the voting public that Antifa, a band of sometimes violent anarchists, is not really a thing. “Antifa is an idea, not an organization,” then-former Vice President Joe Biden argued during a 2020 debate with then-former President Donald Trump. So if you are well-armed, lawyered-up and you call yourself Antifa, you should get a pass because, well, you say you oppose fascism. To which Trump rightly responded, “When a bat hits you over the head, that’s not an idea. Antifa is bad.” On Thursday, Trump’s Department of Justice unsealed indictments that charged two alleged Antifa members with providing material support to terrorists, attempted murder of an officer and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime during a July 4 attack at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. “The Antifa Cell was heavily armed with over 50 firearms,” the document charged. They used an encrypted messaging app, and “at least eleven operatives” were dressed in “black bloc.” The worst charge: A gunman shot an Alvarado police officer in the neck. Many news stories focused on the indictment’s status as the first-ever terrorism charges filed against individuals associated with Antifa. Not right-wing gun nuts. Which should come as no surprise after the unconscionable assassination of conservative maverick Charlie Kirk last month and after two failed assassination attempts of Trump last year, as well as the 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk, and an unprecedented explosion of attacks on ICE agents since Trump took office. The Brennan Center for Justice headline, however, announced, “Trump’s Orders Targeting Anti-Fascism Aim to Criminalize Opposition.” Jonathan Choe, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute who has documented violent far-left activism, had a different take: “What took so long?” “As far as I’m concerned, this is a good, positive first step,” Choe told me. “So kudos to (FBI Director) Kash Patel.” Amen. Given Antifa’s history of setting fires at protests, bomb throwing, and getting up close and personal with law enforcement and ICE officials, federal authorities should have done this years ago. Choe has no use for so-called experts who insist Antifa isn’t organized. They haven’t been in the front lines or “on the receiving end of a punch from Antifa militants,” as he has. Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., recently dared critics to name one member of Antifa — his way of pooh-poohing the notion that Antifa is a bona fide organization. The indictment, law professor Jonathan Turley noted on X, named two: defendants Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts. Choe sure believes Antifa is an organization. Steven McGuire of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni noted that the anti-fascist mantle “implies the other side is fascist.” And who wants to side with fascists? So if you are well-armed, lawyered-up, and you call yourself Antifa, you should get a pass because, well, you say you oppose fascism. As the character Roger “Verbal” Kint — or was it Keyser Soze? — said in The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist.” READ MORE from Debra Saunders: President Looks in the Mirror and Sees a Nobel Peace Prize The New Editor-in-Chief of CBS News Is Not Like the Others Virginia Attorney General Race May Show Proof of the Charlie Kirk Effect Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Saunders was a fellow at the Discovery Institute. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM  

Despite a 60-day deadline and a 22-day extension, the terms of the U.S.-mediated ceasefire agreement between the Israeli and Lebanese governments remain unfulfilled. Nine months after the extension deadline, no evidence exists of a complete withdrawal by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah from southern Lebanon and its disarmament. An Israeli Defense Force (IDF) presence persists at five locations in south Lebanon while the IDF carries out periodic attacks on Hezbollah members and its remaining weapons depots. The Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire agreement does not fit neatly into the popular narrative about the Middle East. President Biden’s much-heralded ceasefire agreement in November of 2024 has largely become a ceasefire in name only. For Israel (who was decimating the militia when the ceasefire was announced), the agreement has produced less-than desirable results and realities; its shortcomings are as ironic as they are sad. The “ceasefire” provided some cover for Hezbollah to regroup and reassert its defiance of Lebanese sovereignty, created circumstances that allow Lebanese officials to drag their feet (once again) on the issue of disarmament and security, and generated conditions for the delegitimizing of Israel while failing to return all displaced Israelis to their homes and businesses in northern Israel. Fatefully, the ceasefire’s chief beneficiary has become the initiator of the 13-month conflict and the U.S.-designated terror organization, Hezbollah. The ceasefire saved the militia from further degradation. It alleviated some pressure on its crippled leadership and provided a bit of a reprieve and space for the militia to regroup and seek ways to rebuild. Why? Hezbollah is not a party to the ceasefire agreement. The ceasefire does not require Hezbollah to make any formal concessions or officially subject itself to systematic accountability. The onus is on the Lebanese state, and by extension the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), to ensure that the militia withdraws from southern Lebanon and is disarmed. Not surprisingly, after the ceasefire announcement, the militia utilized its decades-old playbook of feigning cooperation and conciliation, while indulging in further defiance. At times the political theater and media suggest a change in Hezbollah’s ways and the dissolution of the militia. Hezbollah politicians engage in talks with Lebanese politicians and officials. Reports appear about the militia’s integration (or at least some members) into the LAF, and how the militia will surrender its “heavy” weapons or disarm after Israel withdraws. However, every time Hezbollah’s leader publicly comments, the militia remains resolute in its beliefs and behaviors — unequivocal in its rejection of Israel; indignant about maintaining its weapons; and indifferent to the suffering and any future suffering inflicted on the Lebanese. Ultimately, the interests of Hezbollah supersede the interests of the Lebanese nation and state. Witness some of the words of its leader, Naim Qassem, over the last nine months. In January he remarked: The Resistance leadership is the one that decides when to resist, how to resist, the method of resistance and the weapons to use … there is no timetable that determines the Resistance’s work — not an agreement or the end of the 60-day ceasefire agreement. In September, Qassem maintained the indignation. We will not allow disarmament, and we will confront it with a Karbala-scale confrontation if necessary; this is an existential struggle, and God willing, we are capable of meeting it. Ridiculously, the ceasefire agreement tasks the spectacularly incompetent and unconscientious Lebanese state with bringing Hezbollah to heel. The Lebanese state is an exhibition of fecklessness. As demonstrated by the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, it repeatedly fails to provide security for its citizens. Justice is largely an anomaly. No one has served time for the deadly Beirut port blast in 2020 and over a dozen assassinations and attempts since 2004. The state cannot manage the country’s economy. Lebanon is experiencing the sixth year of a historic economic collapse and record inflation with no relief in sight. For years, the Lebanese state has relied on international handouts for items as essential as school books. The state cannot even provide basic services. Citizens receive only a few hours of electricity each day. The fecklessness of the state is fueled by a Lebanese society with little fealty to the “Lebanese nation.” Lebanon’s diverse sectarian identities (e.g., Shia Muslim, Sunni Muslim, Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Druze) compete with or supersede Lebanese nationalism. As a result, the Lebanese are a fragmented society where little respect exists among citizens for the state let alone a willingness to invest or sacrifice on its behalf. Given the circumstances, environment, and history is anyone really expecting that the Lebanese state and, by extension, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), to suddenly excel at securing territory, removing a seasoned militia from a specified territory, preventing it from returning to the territory, and disarming it? There is a greater probability that it will resemble the Iraqi army after it first confronted ISIS. Have they forgotten that the LAF required Hezbollah’s assistance to eliminate an ISIS force located in a limited area along the Lebanese-Syrian border in 2017? Will enough Lebanese soldiers suddenly and repeatedly put their lives on the line for a nation they have little affinity for, particularly when some soldiers will confront members of their sect that they maintain a deeper attachment to? Is more U.S. funding of the LAF, on top of the billions of dollars provided over the years, including paying of soldiers’ salaries, going to make a difference? Furthermore, does the Lebanese government and the LAF have the focus and patience to effectively complete a systematic and methodical process? The latest U.S. proposal to bring the ceasefire to fruition gives the LAF until December 31 to accomplish a job it failed to complete in the last nine months. Are four additional months going to reverse long-term attitudes, deep-seated behaviors, and a seemingly hollow institution? The state’s track record with carrying out policy is poor. Let’s not forget that the Lebanese state agreed to the same task in 2006 when it accepted UN Resolution 1701 and failed to honor its word. Inexplicably, the U.S.-mediated ceasefire agreement assists Hezbollah’s defiance and the Lebanese state’s fecklessness because it formalized a sharp contrast in the verification of actions for the involved parties. The IDF withdrawal from south Lebanon is precise. International observers can immediately report any Israeli violations, but the same cannot be said about the Lebanese government and its dealings with Hezbollah, the aggressor in the conflict. No one knows exactly who and how many Hezbollah members remain in southern Lebanon, not to mention who comes and goes. Israel continues to target militia members in the withdrawal area. Complicating matters further is south Lebanon’s demographics. Hezbollah militia members can simply remove their fatigues and, as Shia, claim to be part of the largest community indigenous to southern Lebanon. Who is going to contest these claims? The Lebanese state? Also unclear is how much weaponry Hezbollah retains, where it is located, and whether Hezbollah is rearming. How does one determine that a militia is disarmed if one cannot determine the number of weapons? Given its continued defiance about surrendering its weapons, it is hard to imagine that Hezbollah will reveal the locations of all its weaponry or cease rearming itself. Sadly, the sharp contrast in efforts to verify each side’s ceasefire compliance hamstrings and hurts Israel while empowering Hezbollah and its supporters. Due to the continued failings and delays of the Lebanese state to bring Hezbollah to heel, Israel’s security is left to chance if it does not act. Any action to strengthen or ensure its security (maintaining troops in Lebanon) makes Israel look like the non-complaint aggressor. It contributes to Israel’s deteriorating international image of uncooperativeness in regards to the conflict in Gaza. To add insult to this injury, as of July 29 Israeli “noncompliance” has not even facilitated the return of 26 percent of the 60-80k Israelis to their homes and business in northern Israel who were displaced by the conflict with Hezbollah. Instead, the maintenance of Israeli troops in Lebanese territory breathes life back into the delusions about the necessity of Hezbollah’s militia. Many Lebanese maintain that Israel seeks to occupy and undermine Lebanon in its quest to create a “Greater Israel.” Somehow, they think Hezbollah’s arms will still deter this despite the militia having sparked two devastating wars. The periodic Israeli attacks on Hezbollah assets also resuscitates the Lebanese belief about the ineffectiveness of the Lebanese state vis-à-vis Israel. The state’s historic feebleness contributed to the popularity of the slogan: Army, People, Resistance. The slogan added legitimacy to Hezbollah’s weapons as being another layer of defense for Lebanon. After 25 years, the very weapons that have endangered the lives of every Lebanese on a daily basis, will still somehow bring Lebanon peace and security? The Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire agreement does not fit neatly into the popular narrative about the Middle East — America acquiesces to Israeli demands (i.e., Gaza) and acts on behalf of Israeli interests in the region (i.e., Iran). Eleven months after its inception, the ceasefire has failed to guarantee security at Israel’s northern border and framed Israel as the aggressor while breathing new life into the initiator of the conflict and excusing the feckless Lebanese state. As each day passes, it becomes increasingly perplexing why the Israelis signed on to a Biden-mediated ceasefire that was naïve and premature — naïve insofar that the Lebanese state might execute it in a timely fashion and that Hezbollah would cooperate; premature insofar as Hezbollah needed to be weakened more before confrontation by the Lebanese state. In 30 years, when the Biden presidential archives are declassified, we will have better insight into how and why the Biden administration was able to procure Israeli agreement with this deeply problematic “ceasefire.” Until then, all we can do is speculate and ask: “What were the Israelis thinking?” Eric Bordenkircher, Ph.D., is a research fellow at UCLA’s Center for Middle East Development. He tweets at @UCLA_Eagle. The views represented in this piece are his own and do not necessarily represent the position of UCLA or the Center for Middle East Development.  

There’s something quietly revolutionary about paperwork. It rarely makes headlines or history books. But every so often, a bureaucratic act reveals a moral frontier. Because citizenship isn’t just about where you live. It’s about what you’re willing to live for — and what you’re prepared to stand against. That’s what happened last week in Berlin, when the German government revoked the citizenship of a man named Abdallah A., a naturalized Palestinian-German who used his new German identity to glorify Hamas’s October 7 atrocities , the deadliest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust. His Instagram stories praised the attacks as heroic, sanctified the gunmen as martyrs, and circulated celebratory footage of the carnage. The message was clear: if you celebrate the slaughter of civilians in the name of jihad, you don’t get to carry our passport.. This wasn’t theater. It wasn’t symbolic. It was a line in the sand, drawn not in outrage, but in moral resolution. And it’s exactly the kind of line the United States still refuses to draw, at least not yet. Nine months into Donald Trump’s second term, the administration has moved aggressively on border enforcement, visa scrutiny, and immigration controls. Visa-holders who glorify terror have been deported. Foreign students caught amplifying Hamas propaganda have had their status revoked. No complaints here , it’s overdue. But when it comes to naturalized citizens like Abdallah A., we haven’t yet taken the next step: revoking citizenship from those who use it to shield allegiance to the enemies of democracy. Germany just did. And we should pay attention. Abdallah’s Instagram posts weren’t vague. They weren’t about policy or solidarity. They were straight-up odes to mass murder. He called the killings of Israeli civilians “resistance,” praised the Hamas gunmen as “martyrs,” and wrapped it all in the familiar aesthetic of radical chic — keffiyehs, slogans, and martyr memes masquerading as activism. Germany didn’t blink. The government — led by a center-left coalition, no less — moved to strip him of citizenship and deport him. Their reasoning? You can’t glorify terror and call yourself part of a constitutional democracy. At some point, the moral contract dissolves, and the passport no longer applies. And here’s the kicker: they’re right. Because citizenship is not a participation trophy. It’s not an identity badge you get to flash no matter what you say or do. It’s a contract — reciprocal, binding, and real. And when that contract is broken in public, with intent and clarity, the state has a right to walk away. Germany has had good reason to start drawing these lines. In the year following Hamas’s October 7 pogrom, the country experienced a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents and threats to Jewish institutions. Jewish homes, schools and synagogues faced bomb threats, vandalism, and even firebombings. In Berlin, two Arab men hurled Molotov cocktails at a synagogue within days of the massacre. By 2025, German authorities had arrested multiple Hamas-linked suspects, including three men in Berlin in October accused of plotting attacks on Jewish institutions. Police recovered weapons, including an AK-47 and explosives, suggesting an imminent plan for mass violence. That was only the latest in a string of plots. In early 2024, four Hamas operatives were caught planning operations tied to arms caches in Poland. According to Der Spiegel, German authorities believe Hamas has been laying the groundwork for its first European attacks. Faced with mounting threats, Germany responded with unprecedented force. It banned Hamas and the activist group Samidoun outright in November 2023. It passed new laws criminalizing support for terror organizations and barred public use of the slogan “From the river to the sea,” now officially deemed incitement. It didn’t stop there. Germany rewrote parts of its immigration and naturalization rules. In 2024, two states began requiring that applicants for citizenship affirm Israel’s right to exist, in handwriting. The message is unambiguous: you can’t reject the principles of the German state and expect its full embrace. And that’s the paradigm shift Abdallah A. now embodies. He’s not just a case study. He’s a signal — the first in what may become a larger turning of the tide, a recalibration of Western liberalism’s boundaries. Germany has decided that celebrating the murder of civilians , especially Jews — is incompatible with citizenship. America should take note. Yes, we have stronger free-speech protections than Germany. And no, we should not start punishing people for chants alone. But there’s a difference between dissent and betrayal. Between protest and open allegiance to a group like Hamas. Germany sees it. So should we. Because citizenship isn’t just about where you live. It’s about what you’re willing to live for — and what you’re prepared to stand against. That’s the line. Abdallah crossed it. Germany responded. And now, the United States must decide whether its moral compass still points true. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Poland’s Fusion of Hard Borders and Human Duty The Business of Borders: The Economy of Virtue The Geography of Defiance  

The Impossible Fortune By Richard Osman Pamala Dorman Books/Viking, 355 pp., $30 There’s a lot of downright intense stuff going on in our culture and politics just now, some of it encouraging, others of it downright alarming. Conflict is at a boil. TAS readers are an engaged bunch, and we keep up better than most. But even we need a break from the battle now and then. What better therapeutic R&R than a well-wrought detective story with charming and amusing characters. But as the story opens with the wedding of Joyce’s middle-aged daughter, the best man tells Elizabeth he fears for his life. In short order the best man disappears. Comes now Richard Osman with just the thing — another adventure with the wildly popular Thursday Murder Club. The Club is a quartet of British pensioners operating out of an upscale retirement community in Kent who’ve forsaken bingo, shuffle board, book clubs, afternoon soaps, and putzing around in the garden in favor of the more taxing and dangerous but exhilarating business of solving murders. Not an age-appropriate hobby perhaps — bad guys (and gals) can be hazardous to one’s health — but one that has delighted millions of readers since the first book in 2020. The Thursday stories are firmly in the English cozy mystery tradition, i.e. mysteries with a minimum of gore, violence, car chases, fist fights, sex, or swearing. Think Miss Marple and the body in the library. But while staying within this form, Osman’s stories can still give us sharp and often amusing observations on the mores of our day and the tragedies, hard choices, and expectations of our lives. Just because a mystery is a cozy and unrealistic doesn’t mean it can’t be intelligently done. Osman’s cozies are cozies with an edge. The four wrinklies (I can us this term as I’m of their vintage) and their associates engage and outwit characters not found in Jane Marple’s St. Mary Mead. Jane would be way out of her league in dealing with the drug dealers, mafiasos, hit men, forgers, and fraudsters of various stripes, as well as the odd garden variety murderer the Thursday irregulars are called on to sort out. The Impossible Fortune is the fifth case for the amateur oldies, and like its four predecessors it consistently pleases on all levels. The plot is complex and proceeds with a quick pace, featuring red herrings, misdirections, multiple suspects, and unexpected twists. Charm, humor, and above all humanity abound as the crew outwits the villains once again. But whodunit, how and why aside, the heart of the Thursday stories are the characters and how they develop and evolve through the series. And this calls for a caveat.(Caveats always seem to be in season.) The characters — the heart of the business with the Thursday bunch — can be baffling to those who don’t know their backgrounds. There are four main Thursday characters and several recurring peripherals, all with revealing back-stories that make their current behavior understandable. Impossible Fortune can be read as a stand-alone for newcomers to the series. But greater understanding and pleasure comes from reading the books in order. The four regulars, as disparate as they are unlikely, are Elizabeth, a retired spy and usually the leader of the pack; Ron, a former union organizer with Marxist tendencies; Ibrahim, a semi-retired and over intellectual psychiatrist; and Joyce, a retired nurse who likes to bake and is everyone’s favorite aunt. While these characters have each either reached 80 or are staring down the barrel of it, Osman does not make them cutesy or twee. They punch above their investigative weight, but not without dealing with the losses, disappointments, and indignities of the golden years. They subscribe to the philosophy that it’s better to wear out than to rust out. And it’s fun watching them do so, even with the various hitches in their get-alongs. The action in this one sets up in this wise: It’s been a quiet year at Cooper’s Chase while Elizabeth grieves the death of her husband Stephen, who had been suffering from dementia. But as the story opens with the wedding of Joyce’s middle-aged daughter, the best man tells Elizabeth he fears for his life. In short order the best man disappears, his business partner dies from a car bomb, and the Thursday crew is at general quarters again. The prize, which various unsavory and dangerous characters pursue in this one is Bitcoin (which I still don’t understand), worth hundreds of millions of pounds, which is locked away in an unorthodox kind of cold storage. Or is it? This well constructed plot demonstrates once again Osman’s skill at making the unlikely seamless. Our lives these days can be cluttered and challenging, with reading time at a premium. So we should only spend those precious reading hours under the lamp with writers who deliver entertainment, humor, and insights. Not every writer in the mystery section of your book store delivers any of these. Richard Osman delivers all three. And the Thursday Murder Club is his vehicle and his triumph. So if you’ve read the latest The American Spectator website, go ahead and treat yourself. READ MORE from Larry Thornberry: Me and Sundance — the Last Movie Star? Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass — Proof You Can Joke Your Way Through Life The American Century … and Baseball’s

The old phrase holds that “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Its legal corollary: where there’s a wrong, there’s a remedy. Chief Justice John Marshall expanded upon this dictum in Marbury v. Madison (1803). “The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men,” the jurist wrote. “It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.” Nonetheless, now and again, plaintiffs find some odd obstruction in the scaffolding of the law which bars their attempts to secure redress. This ought not to dismay but to incite Congress to action and reform. In the American system, Congress is no passive bystander; it is the first branch of government. The task of lawmaking meets perpetual difficulties: the knowledge and foresight of human beings is bounded; language cannot escape some degree of imprecision; and new circumstances breed new abuses that require new legislation. When a deficiency in the law becomes apparent, reform must follow. Recent years have revealed such a deficiency, as the federal government jostled and coerced companies in the business of speech in the attempt to preside over and direct the content policies of media institutions and social media platforms. Fortunately, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has begun the work of reform. “Cruz plans to introduce a bill in the coming weeks that would codify protections against government-driven censorship, and make it easier for consumers to win monetary damages in lawsuits,” The Wall Street Journal relates in an exclusive report. Americans whose speech the federal government squelches encounter this difficulty: In Murthy v. Missouri (2024), the petitioners, who objected to the Biden administration’s efforts to mold social media’s content moderation policies, failed to persuade the Supreme Court to grant standing. The majority found the relationship between the government’s requests and demands and the deplatforming of the petitioners too tenuous, and the Court declined to intervene. Although some of the Biden administration’s conduct at issue in Murthy likely did not violate the First Amendment, and although relief was not granted, the majority opinion was no vindication of state influence or coercion levied against free speech. In the American system, Congress is no passive bystander; it is the first branch of government. And in instances in which the law does not grant to the judiciary the prerogative to halt abuses — particularly of the constitutional variety — Congress is duty bound to legislate. The problem of presidential meddling in private speech has persisted after President Donald Trump re-entered the Oval Office in January. Indeed, it was an act of the Trump Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that seems to have accelerated (although not, originally, to have provoked) Sen. Cruz’s effort. FCC chairman Brendan Carr menaced the broadcast license of Disney-owned ABC following Jimmy Kimmel’s factually unmoored and obstinately partisan discussion of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said, a threat which The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board aptly labeled “words that could have been uttered by a New Jersey mob boss.” Carr’s pursuit of Kimmel departs not a jot from the warp and woof of the policy of his first months helming the agency. Since January, he has leveraged his merger authorities to contort the editorial policies of broadcasters. Cruz, no friend of Kimmel and a good friend of Charlie Kirk, put it best: “Censorship is wrong, regardless of who’s doing it.” In its original sense, Lord Acton’s famous maxim  —that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” — cautions not only against the abuses of power committed by “great men” but against the corruptions that fester in the minds of those adjacent to, and often overawed by, the great. Donald Trump and Joe Biden have little use for the rule of law, and not of men, which is apt to frustrate the personal ambitions of the powerful. Subordinate officers, jockeying for favor and position, have taken to inventing unconstitutional powers to please unscrupulous chief executives. The Presidency was not intended to deploy nebulous or unlimited prerogatives unchecked and unwatched by the legislature. The President is no tribune of the people — neither in his constitutional function nor as some supposed incarnation of the (largely fictitious) general will of the American people. No, it is Congress that must lead in governance. Presidents of both parties have succumbed to the tantalizing temptation of invading Americans’ speech rights. The legal system has, for colorable reason, declared itself incapable of intervention. The remedy is to be found on Capitol Hill. “Perhaps [the situation] poses an opportunity for us to work together in a bipartisan way,” Sen. Cruz said. If Congress manages to rediscover its institutional mettle, he will be proven right. READ MORE from David B. McGarry: Republicans Should Reject European-Style Tech Policy The Supreme Court Defends Free Speech New York’s Attempted Hit on the NRA Violated the First Amendment David B. McGarry is the research director at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

When The Free Press broke the news in August that a dozen viral photographs, supposedly of starving Gazan children, in fact depicted children with unusual medical disorders, not everyone in the media reacted with chagrin. One journalist, Ryan Grim, said that the name of The Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold “will become notorious for a generation.” Not only is the account spreading denialism about Hamas’s self-documented perpetration of sexual violence … it insists that the real sexual offenders in this discussion are the Israelis. The editors of The Free Press thought that was rich. They pointed out that neither Grim, nor several other writers who took time away from their independent journalism to excoriate Reingold, disputed her reporting. Reingold’s transgression, it seemed, was to notice that truth had poked holes in the narrative of the total culpability of Israel regarding the conflict in Gaza. Grim’s Substack blog, Drop Site, has garnered nearly 400,000 subscribers peddling that narrative with widely varying degrees of journalistic probity. An astonishing number of its claims are sourced to itself, or to nowhere. Some of its reporters have uncomfortably close connections to Hamas. The blog has also backed up its analysis with reporting by an anonymous X account given to spreading conspiracy theories. It is largely dedicated to portraying Israel’s effort to defeat Hamas as evil when the campaigns are successful and futile when they’re not. While Drop Site describes itself as non-partisan and independent, it may as well be the Washington, D.C. news bureau for Hamas. Grim founded Drop Site with The Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill in 2024. Grim is the author, most recently, of The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution (2023), of which The Guardian said, “The book seems to have been written at great speed without much time for editing.” Drop Site carries on in that vein. On weekdays it issues Drop Site Daily, bullet lists of paragraph-length news summaries in five sections. The top section is “The Genocide in Gaza.” In one recent missive, readers learned, “At least 29 people have been killed by Israeli forces across Gaza since dawn,” according to an unlinked report by Al Jazeera that apparently did not distinguish whether the dead were civilians or combatants. (At 30 deaths per day currently, this is the first “genocide” in history in which the killings of the supposedly targeted population are fewer than its births.) Drop Site also reported that the Gazan health care system “continues to collapse,” with three hospitals closing, according to, apparently, no one. An item reporting that “explosive-laden robots are being detonated” in the Gaza neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa was linked to a post by the Drop Site X account featuring a seven-minute video submitted by Abdel Qader Sabbah. Sabbah was a freelance journalist for CNN and the Associated Press until The Jerusalem Post reported last year that he “appeared in photographs with senior Hamas leaders online and actively praised terrorists while also carrying out unnamed tasks for the terror organization.” The last item of that day’s “Genocide in Gaza” section cited an X post from the Interior Ministry of Israel characterizing the latest iteration of the Global Sumud Flotilla, the one from which Greta Thunberg was removed, as “organized by Hamas [and] intended to serve Hamas.” The ministry announced that it would not be allowed through Israel’s naval blockade. Drop Site called that characterization false, without evidence. (Past flotillas have indeed been linked to Hamas.) The long-form reporting is hardly better. Sabbah’s byline appears over nearly 20 reports at Drop Site, including a September 15 story titled “Panic as Israel Warns High Rises in Gaza City Will Be Struck With Minutes to Get Out.” Sabbah’s affiliation with Hamas was too much even for CNN. But it evidently does not trouble Ryan Grim, who appears to be repeating the terrorist organization’s narrative of the conflict as uncritically as he cites the widely questioned death toll figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health. Drop Site has also extensively platformed Abubaker Abed, who brings with him a touching story of arrival in Ireland earlier this year as a malnourished 22-year-old refugee from Gaza. He told the Irish Independent that he was working as a sports journalist, covering soccer, but became a reluctant war reporter for the conflict in Gaza. Prompted by Abed’s four appearances as an interviewee on BBC programs, investigative journalist David Collier looked into his background. He found Abed’s X post celebrating the January 27, 2023 shooting of seven Jewish worshipers outside a synagogue in Jerusalem, and another post gleefully declaring “Allahu Akbar” regarding news of the October 7 attacks. In May 2023, Abed took to X to post a story about the release of Islamic Jihad terrorist Ammar Abed from prison. It was a short, happy, vertical video that neglected to note that the two are cousins. The younger Abed’s reportage was clearly not confined to soccer before the Israeli reprisal, and one has reasons to doubt its objectivity. Nevertheless, Abed’s byline appears alongside almost 20 Drop Site reports. One of them, from April, bears the harrowing title “Under Relentless Israeli Bombing and Lacking Everything, a Gaza Hospital Is Triaging Genocide.” While the situation at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital sounded dire, Abed strangely neglected to remark that in the prior October, the IDF struck a Hamas command center operating there, using ailing children as human shields. If that strike was unwarranted, wouldn’t it bear mentioning? Lastly, there’s the matter of Grim’s editorial judgment regarding his own work. His social media-optimized news recap videos regularly feature Pallywood, staged scenes of Palestinian suffering that make American soap operas look high-budget and well acted. This, like the strategically mischaracterized photojournalism discovered by The Free Press, is a curious phenomenon of a war with no shortage of real agony. Grim’s analysis is often declamatory. In July, The Dinah Project, an Israeli organization that advocates for justice for victims of sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, published a report titled A Quest for Justice, October 7 and Beyond. Grim responded that the report repeated debunked claims of sexual violence. His citation for this linked to an X post by Grim, which said, “It does not matter what’s true, only what the Western press wants to be true. So there’s really no point going into it further, but here are a lot of the receipts.” Those “receipts” were in a reposted July 8 thread by an X account running under the name “zei squirrel,” who introduced them like so: “Today the Israeli death and rape-cult that has actually been engaged in systematic pedophilic gang-rape of Palestinian children, girls, boys, women, and men is going to desperately try to re-launch the genocidal atrocity propaganda rape hoax.” Grim’s assessment of A Quest for Justice hinged on the testimony of a pseudonymous social media presence. Not only is the account spreading denialism about Hamas’s self-documented perpetration of sexual violence in the October 7 attacks, it insists that the real sexual offenders in this discussion are the Israelis. It’s no wonder that Grim thought Olivia Reingold at The Free Press had earned a generation of notoriety. His business is the perpetration of a one-sided understanding of Israel that could not be more tendentious if Hamas was producing it. Perhaps, at least in some ways, it is. READ MORE: Why the Left Can’t Congratulate Trump The New Editor-in-Chief of CBS News Is Not Like the Others HuffPostThinks God’s a Fascist