It started with a “Hello, Cleveland” moment. Joe Biden gingerly shuffling to the podium and saying in a husky whisper “Great to be here, thank you” to an empty room foreshadowed. The 90 minutes that followed showcased a candidate struggling to articulate coherent thoughts in complete sentences and occasionally suffering brain freezes. The key moment came early, when, for many uncomfortable seconds, Biden lost not only his train of thought but muttered words seemingly untethered from his brain. The profoundly awkward moment ended with the non sequitur: “Look, if we finally beat Medicare.” Come again? The split-screen when Trump answered questions damaged Biden nearly as much. As Trump spoke, Biden stared blankly, almost catatonically, at the floor. Did they coach him in that airplane hangar to look as spaced out as though he were in the midst of an LSD trip? Later, when Biden trailed off in answering a question on immigration, Trump deadpanned: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” Everyone thought, including Biden supporters, what Trump said before he said it. President Biden flunked math, history, and biology in boasting of the creation of “15,000” new jobs, claiming to talk to the World War II dead on his recent visit to Europe, and speaking of women and girls needing abortions because of rapes “by their brothers and sisters.” He strangely pivoted from the topic of abortion, the issue on which he polls best, to illegal immigration, the issue that dogs him most. Another unforced error occurred when he invoked Afghanistan, a disaster from which his approval ratings never recovered, and allowed his opponent a natural opening to remind viewers of that horrible day. His frequent use of “damn” and “hell” in the transcript indicated the angry man viewers saw on their televisions. Biden called his opponent a “whiner,” a “convicted felon,” a “child,” a “sucker,” and a “loser.” He raised the discredited story of Trump praising Nazis at Charlottesville and resorted to the reductio ad Hitlerum. Donald Trump offered memorable lines: “We’re paying everyone’s bills,” “We’ve become like a Third World nation,” “Russia would have never attacked if I were president.” But his behavior trumped his words. His laid-back, relaxed demeanor undermined the caricature pushed by the media and sometimes reinforced by the former president. Biden exuded negative energy; Trump, positivity. Biden exuded not merely weakness but unwellness. Trump looked the picture of a man in command. Four years ago, when these two men first in such a forum, Donald Trump, through his boorish interruptions, put in the worst performance in the history of presidential debates. On Thursday night, Joe Biden eclipsed it in his disqualifying performance. The loud, lingering question: can his candidacy survive this? The post The Most Disastrous Debate Performance in U.S. History appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Today’s Five Quick Things does not cover Thursday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The reason for this is less profound than you might imagine. I’ll have something to say about the debate when it’s over. I might do something early next week on the subject. I’m not covering it on this page simply because this edition of the 5QT was posted hours before Trump and the Adderall King, he of the large black pupils redolent of copious stimulative pharmaceuticals not to be identified in a drug test because he refused to accept Trump’s challenge on one, did battle. Melissa and I offered a preview of the event at The Spectacle. Feel free to check that out and see how we did. No, this column is going to delve into other subjects that perhaps lay beneath the radar of the legacy corporate media that will furiously peddle the idea that since Joe Biden remained upright for 90 minutes, assuming he did manage that feat, Thursday night’s tussle was a win for him. By now you probably need a break from that. I’m happy to provide one. 1. Call Him Re-Fi Joe, I Guess Did you see that Daily Mail article about the nonstop mortgage refinances that Joe and Jill Biden have engaged in? You can’t get much more of a telltale sign of corruption than this: Joe Biden and First Lady Jill have been using their homes as an ATM, taking out multiple mortgages and refinancing their Delaware properties an astonishing 35 times, a DailyMail.com investigation has revealed. The president has lived in two houses in his home state since 1975, when he bought his first property in Wilmington that he later sold in the late 1990s. But records obtained by DailyMail.com show the couple have had a habit of negotiating a new mortgage or credit deal on both homes every 17 months. Over the decades the Bidens have borrowed a total of $6million on both properties – and there’s still an outstanding $541,000 mortgage on their current three-bed, 4.5-bath Wilmington mansion nearly three decades after they bought it. The constant refinancing raises the question of why the Bidens, who have a reported net worth of $10million, needed a constant flow of extra cash. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense unless they were desperate for cash,’ a finance expert told DailyMail.com. The revelation comes as questions grow about the president’s involvement in his son Hunter’s shady business dealings with Chinese oil giant CEFC and other foreign entities. According to the mortgage documents, the president and first lady purchased their current four-acre lot for $350,000 in March 1996 but have since saddled it with 20 different home credit agreements and mortgages totaling $4.23million. Their previous five-bed, 2.5-bath home in the same town was purchased for $185,000 in 1975 – and sold controversially for $1.2million in 1996. Records show the property had a total of 15 mortgages and lines of credit attached to it. Yeah, that’s not normal. Why would this guy refinance his mortgage again and again like that? What’s the advantage? The obvious answer is almost assuredly the true one: because home mortgages are just about the most basic way to launder money. The way it works is, you use real, legal money to put a downpayment on a house, and you use dirty money to make the payments on it. That’s laundering the money going out, and it buys home equity that is clean. Then you refinance the mortgage, which gives you clean cash coming in. This isn’t me talking. It’s what ChatGPT told Glenn Beck when he asked about all this. Is THIS the Shady Reason Joe Biden Keeps Refinancing His Home A report has come out in the Daily Mail that claims, “Joe and Jill Biden have been using their Delaware house for fast cash – refinancing 20 times with loans totaling $4.2 million since buying the $350k home.”… pic.twitter.com/TAM8SvbEdp — TheRealCherokeeOwl (@RealCherokeeOwl) June 26, 2024 So those houses Biden keeps refinancing every 17 months are literally money laundries, and nobody seems to care. This is happening out in the open. Of course, you’ve known that for a while. And Biden’s sycophants nevertheless insist on describing him as a “decent” man. He isn’t clean. He’s freshly laundered and has been for the better part of 40 years. That isn’t the same thing. 2. Anarcho-Tyranny and Weaponized Governmental Failure Are Pretty Much the Same Thing Nate Hochman had a pretty good piece here at The American Spectator on Thursday, describing as “anarcho-tyranny” something this column discusses a lot: There is a term that one hears on the Right from time to time: “anarcho-tyranny.” The concept refers to “a kind of Hegelian synthesis of what appear to be dialectical opposites: the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety” — a dynamic that “not only fails to punish criminals and enforce legitimate order but also criminalizes the innocent.” This is a constant and essential feature of progressive governance today. In every jurisdiction where the Left claws its way into power, criminals are given free reign while law-abiding citizens are forced to pay for their crimes. He’s talking about crime, and more specifically the Left’s fetish with gun control that denies the law-abiding an opportunity to defend themselves against the criminal class whose possession of weapons is impeded very little by what laws are on the books. But Hochman’s basic theory is that the left-wing Democrats who run the large cities — and who have managed to seize control of the executive branch — are actively governing by and for the criminal class to the detriment of the general public. He’s correct in his description of this form of kakistocracy — elevating deviants at the expense of regular folks is certainly a form of tyranny that the Chavez/Maduro regime in Venezuela has perfected to the ruin of their country, and Democrats have clearly taken note. But I would fold this into my description of a wider phenomenon that I call Weaponized Governmental Failure. Certainly the coddling of criminals is a major part of that. But there is more to the phenomenon. It entails intentionally supplying the people with dysfunctional and failing public schools. Defenestrating works of public art so as to make our landmarks and public spaces scarred, banal, ugly, and demoralizing. Stealing the money earmarked for fixing potholes and drainage. Efficiently run cities are places middle-class voters tend to be interested in living in. You’d think that would be desirable, but it isn’t, because those voters actually demand efficiency, and they’ll vote politicians out of office who don’t provide it. Better to chase them away with shocking abuses of power and governance so that the electorate that remains is either very rich or dirt poor, and in so doing it becomes all but impossible to turn left-wing Democrats out of office. Of course it’s evil, and it’s a reason that party must be exterminated as a viable political entity if we’re to have a future as a nation. 3. Is Amy Barrett Going Bad? After her catastrophically terrible majority opinion in the Murthy v. Missouri case, striking down an injunction by a lower court against the Biden administration’s continuing to pressure social media platforms to censor posts they don’t like, a lot of people began asking questions about Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s third and final Supreme Court selection. Barrett was joined by John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as the three leftists on the Court, in that opinion that — frankly — was utter nonsense. Then Barrett wrote another majority opinion in the Idaho abortion law case that effectively enjoined that state’s attempts to ban most abortions pending a completion of the lengthy suits brought against it. Barrett’s position in that case could be marked down as procedural. But when Barrett wrote a dissenting opinion joining the three leftists in a case that stopped the EPA from enforcing its unconstitutional “Good Neighbor Plan,” which savages states’ economies with unrealistic emissions standards, this started getting difficult to dismiss. Are we seeing David Souter in a dress? One hopes not. One theory I’ve seen is that Barrett is, at least to an extent, doing Roberts’ dirty work. The court is bit by bit tearing apart the leviathan regulatory state by its decisions on things like the Chevron doctrine, and this is dangerous politically. You’ve seen attacks on the court’s “ethics,” specifically in the cases of  Justices Alito and Thomas, but also Gorsuch, and Democrats haven’t really let up on their rhetoric about packing it with as many as 13 justices so as to artificially alter its composition. Given that, and given majorities for doing significant things to rebalance the relationship between states and the federal government on the court, one would expect to see John Roberts trying to placate Democrats by engineering acceptable rulings for them where possible. The Murthy v. Missouri decision, for example, was on an injunction rather than on the merits of the case. So was the Idaho abortion law ruling. I don’t know if I believe that. It seems more likely that Barrett’s lousy opinions of late are an example of a Supreme Court justice “evolving,” and not in a good way. I hope I’m wrong. 4. Two Years Later, the Inevitable Descends In Ukraine I wonder if Adam Kinzinger and Max Boot will savage Volodymyr Zelensky as a puppet of Putin now: "Ukraine does not want to prolong the war. We do not want it to last for years," President Volodymyr Zelensky said, Interfax-Ukraine reports. "We have many wounded and killed on the battlefield. We must put a settlement plan on the table within a few months," Zelensky added. pic.twitter.com/9dU3Y9M47o — KyivPost (@KyivPost) June 27, 2024 Of course, this is simply a statement of the obvious. Ukraine was never going to hold off Russia forever, and sober observers knew that. The war in Ukraine had to be settled at the peace table, and now both Zelensky and Putin are openly acknowledging this. Our government is not acknowledging it. Of course, the Biden administration scuttled peace talks between Russia and Ukraine more than two years ago, sending U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to do their dirty work. And some of the various peace arrangements currently being discussed look pretty similar to the ones Johnson spiked back in 2022. Which means all of this warfare was pointless and unnecessary. But Mitch McConnell informs us that billions of our dollars spent perpetuating the carnage in Ukraine were good for our economy because they kept our defense contractors busy. Oh, thanks, Mitch. So all that unnecessary and pointless blood is on our hands thanks to you? If you’re not disgusted with what passes for “statecraft” among our garbage elite, you aren’t paying attention. This is not about appeasement or placating Putin. Supplying the Ukrainians with weapons to bleed the Russians and blunt their attack was perfectly defensible as a response at the beginning of the war. The sin has been the two years of fantastical boasting that the Ukrainians would push the Russians out of Crimea and the Donbas with our help, and that’s why a hundred billion dollars or more had to be shoveled out of your pocket. Now that’s finally being exposed. Zelensky is talking like he wants to sue for peace and get on with the business of repairing his ruined country. Of course, Ukraine will be much different when this war is over, as much of its land will be owned by Western institutional investors and it will never regain anything resembling real sovereignty. As corrupt a country as it is, that might be a good thing, but what Joe Biden has taught us is foreign corruption from a place like Ukraine is readily transmittable to us. 5. Tucker Carlson’s Textbook Takedown of a Stupid Australian Reporter What’s so fantastic about this is the abject refusal to credit the bad-faith and obviously false premises behind the questions Carlson was asked by what had to be a cub reporter for an Australian media outlet during a tour stop he made in Canberra, the Aussie capital. She brought out an utterly inane narrative, which is that Tucker Carlson is a racist who espouses the Great Replacement Theory that brown immigrants will drown out white people in the U.S., and that this theory is responsible for mass shooters like the one in Buffalo. We know this, because she spouts that narrative off a note card while peppering Carlson with abuses of it. And he’s having none of that. He stops her again and again and insists on correcting the record. Tucker Utterly Stumps Reporter By Simply Asking For A Citation pic.twitter.com/DwgKMgMTfB — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 26, 2024 This is reminiscent of Canadian politician Pierre Polievre’s apple-munching takedown of a similarly idiotic narrative-driven line of questioning. Carlson is more energetic; Polievre’s presentation was more nutritious. The theory is the same — don’t give these people an inch. Take note, Republican politicians. Please. The post Five Quick Things: Dirty Joe’s Chinese Laundry appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The people of Israel started out as a family. Israel was the name of the father of the twelve sons who became twelve tribes. The Book of Exodus describes how this family became a nation, in which the covenant that was the story of the family and its ancestors extended into a system of law and government.  Among the many topics the laws addressed was that of naturalization. A family expands through marriage and the births that follow. A nation expands through births as well, but also by naturalization, the process by which people not born as members of the nation become a part of it. The laws embrace a simple principle of reciprocity: the would-be citizen accepts the laws of the adoptive country as binding while the nation binds itself to love the new citizen and treat him or her uniformly under the nation’s law: There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger; it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before God.  -Numbers 15:15  When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them.  The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.   -Leviticus 19:33-34 The reciprocity described by these laws set up a paradigm of workable naturalization throughout time. Naturalized citizenship as a solemn covenant engages all parties in a pact of mutual responsibility. American law is premised on the people having rights that no government may take away from them. “Nature and Nature’s God” bestows rights on each person that no government can take away, most obviously, the rights to life, liberty, and property. We can assert these God-given rights against any person or institution, no matter how powerful. But the authority behind biblical law is that very same God who gives us those rights. We need no protection from God, and if we truly were to need protection, who could offer it? The key to understanding Biblical law, then, is that they describe responsibilities we have toward each other and toward God. The biblical laws of naturalization do not, then, confer either a unilateral right to citizenship to would-be immigrants or a unilateral right to refuse it to the nation of Israel. All of creation is bound together in a network of interwoven responsibilities, and here is no exception. Israel must see themselves in the stranger: they are responsible to offer them equal status under the law since “you yourselves were strangers in the Land of Egypt.” The imagination of the other as the self is so powerful that it includes a responsibility unenforceable in any court yet nevertheless binding: one must love this [former] stranger, as the law tradition makes clear, both by dint of their now being the neighbor that one is already commanded to love and specifically as a stranger who has chosen to make himself one with us. The immigrant, simultaneously, is obligated to act under the same laws as those already citizens, bound no more and no less by the duties of citizenship than those born as citizens. The Bible offers a counterexample, which is amplified in oral traditions, that of the mixed multitude who joined Israel as they fled from Egypt. The Midrash Shemot Rabba, in a much-quoted passage, assigns much of the guilt for the sin of the Golden Calf to these people: The Holy One blessed be He said to [Moses]: ‘They are your people. When they were still in Egypt I said to you: “I will take out My hosts, My people” (Exodus 7:4). I said to you not to mix the mixed multitude with them. You, who were humble and upright, said to Me: One always accepts penitents. But I knew what they were destined to do; I had said to you, no, but I performed your will. It is they who crafted the calf, as they were idolaters; it is they who crafted it and caused My people to sin.’ In this text, God is ascribing error to Moses for his humility and willingness to give second chances that were, here, not the main qualities the moment required. In this finite world, we must act clearly to establish the expectations of what a good and successful national life requires. Those not willing to accept the most basic allegiance to the source of the nation’s authority cannot be allowed into membership. The experiment has been done, says the text, and the result nearly destroyed the nation before it got started. The positive counterexample is set out in the Book of Ruth. Ruth’s declaration to her mother-in-law is stunning in its grace and simplicity: Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. This small and exquisite book of the Bible does not shrink from telling what followed from Ruth’s acceptance into the people. At its end, it describes her line of descendants, which leads directly to King David and so ultimately to the Messiah. Israel is taught that its full glory came to be through accepting a humble and sincere stranger into its midst. Our contemporary politics is polluted with the woeful concept of rights absent responsibilities. Responsibilities temper us to deal with the real world and not propose an imagined utopia as overriding the everyday concerns that are the fabric of our lives. Nations that work are nations that care for each other as we are by pulling together. That begins with acknowledging that we are bound together in our very nature by our very Maker, who challenges us to conceive of our mutual citizenship as binding us in loving responsibility. The post Biblical Insights Into Immigration appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

For the past two years, Pornhub has been slowly losing its battle to keep pornography available to children. Pornhub — which has been credibly and repeatedly linked to widespread abuse, trafficking, sexual assault, and nonconsensual pornography — is one of the most-visited websites on the internet. The website has been quick to protest the passage of bipartisan age-verification laws by state legislatures seeking to prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content. Pornhub would rather block access in a state with age-verification laws than cooperate. If kids can’t watch porn, their logic goes, then no one can.  Following the recent passage of bipartisan age-verification laws in five new states, Pornhub will prevent web access in more than one-fifth of the nation. Pornhub ended access in Kentucky on June 10 and will cut off access in Indiana, Idaho, and Kansas on June 28. The porn industry titan will also cut off access in Nebraska on July 17. Pornhub has already withdrawn from Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Texas following similar age-verification legislation. By the end of July, Pornhub will have withdrawn from states that are home to approximately 23 percent of the total U.S. population.  The battle to protect children from pornography began in Louisiana in 2022 with the passage of the state’s age-verification law. Louisiana was the first state to require online pornography websites to verify users’ ages, which it accomplished in partnership with the third-party service LA Wallet. Pornhub lost its legal challenge against the new law. Though the pornography company did not block web access in Louisiana, Pornhub stated that “traffic to Pornhub dropped by approximately 80 percent in Louisiana” with the implementation of age verification.  Other states soon followed Louisiana’s example. Rather than contract with a third-party company for age verification, however, subsequent states required online visitors to Pornhub to provide an image of a government-issued ID. Citing privacy concerns and First Amendment violations, Pornhub challenged the legislation and eventually blocked online access from states that would require age verification. (RELATED: Musk Allows Porn on X. It’s Time to Fight Back.) Pornhub’s concerns about privacy are one-sided. Though the company wants to protect its loyal customers, the website has long turned a blind eye to the rampant abuse, trafficking, and nonconsensual content on its website. In 2020, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about the website’s continual exploitation of minors and vulnerable individuals in a piece called “The Children of Pornhub.”  “Its site is infested with rape videos,” Kristof writes. “It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.” A number of the subjects he interviewed had sexual videos nonconsensually posted on Pornhub as teenagers. The site didn’t care about the origins of the content. Kristof identified “a recurring theme among survivors: An assault eventually ends, but Pornhub renders the suffering interminable.”  Some critics of the age-verification laws have argued that the laws don’t prevent pornography access so much as divert it from Pornhub to other websites. There’s some truth to their criticism. The unanimous bipartisan passage of age-verification of an age-verification law in Utah sparked a surge in Google searches for “virtual private networks” (VPNs), which disguise the computer user’s location and circumvent location-specific blocks.  In the aftermath of Pornhub’s decision to block Texas users from its site, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason, expressed skepticism about the strategy of age verification:  Pornhub makes a good point, and one that prohibitionists of all sorts are wont to ignore. Banning (or putting up major barriers to) products that people want doesn’t stop people from wanting and accessing those products. It simply bars people from accessing them in the safest and most transparent way possible.    But there’s nothing “safe” about viewing pornography, which has been linked to serious negative outcomes for the children and adults who engage with it. And the age-verification frameworks in states like Texas are explicitly aimed at transparency. If someone wants to access pornography, they need to first verify their age and identity — it doesn’t get more transparent than that.  Libertarians may be loathe to admit it, but banning products — especially products that rely on addiction to produce repeat customers — isn’t an exercise in futility. The free market isn’t capable of self-correction when it’s filled with companies like Pornhub, which view human beings as capital to be bought and sold at the lowest possible cost.  And, besides, Pornhub keeps saying the quiet part out loud by banning access to its website in states that pass age-verification laws: If they can’t sell porn to kids, they aren’t actually interested in selling porn at all.  Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  More Catholics Believe in the Eucharist than Previously Thought Sen. Vance, Rep. Cloud Introduce Legislation to Dismantle DEI Chasing Gender Euphoria The post Pornhub Blocks Access in Five States with New Age-Verification Laws appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The current Supreme Court term is not quite over yet, but conservatives have already suffered notable defeats in cases involving Big Tech censorship and free speech, states’ lawful ability to proscribe abortion, the ubiquity of the abortion pill (mifepristone), the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the possibility of a future wealth tax, and taxpayer responsibility for Indian tribal health care. One might argue — though I probably would not — that the term’s marquee gun case, involving firearm possession for those subject to domestic-violence restraining orders, went against conservative interests as well. It seems that more conservative losses could also be in store before the term is over. Bear in mind this is the same Supreme Court that the political Left and corporate media (but I repeat myself) have decried, for years now, as a purported den of far-right, authoritarian, “MAGA” iniquity. Worse, they allege the court is somehow “unethical” due to Justice Clarence Thomas having a wealthy friend in real estate magnate Harlan Crow, or Justice Samuel Alito’s wife flying at the family beach house the same “Appeal to Heaven” flag that was first commissioned by George Washington himself and which flew outside San Francisco City Hall for 60 years. For two years in a row, they have assailed the court’s legitimacy in a sprawling media disinformation operation. The Left thus gets the best of both worlds. Progressives are able to generate publicity and rake in fundraising dollars with their recurring temper tantrums about the court’s ostensible threat to “our democracy,” while on the other hand they reap the rewards of a court that delivers them substantive victories far more often than either side would care to acknowledge. As for the Right, it continues to suffer the indignity of frequent defeat at the hands of perhaps the one major political or legal institution in America that it nominally controls. Many of the Right’s recent disappointments can be attributed to wobbliness from the Trump-nominated triumvirate of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Gorsuch is the best of the bunch and issued heroic rulings during COVID-19, but he is an idiosyncratic libertarian who has proven himself unreliable on issues pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity, immigration, and due process, and Indian affairs. Kavanaugh is a prototypical Bush Republican — Karl Rove in a robe. Barrett, nominated to the court after a brief stint on the 7th Circuit and an unremarkable academic career, is timid and lacks the courage of her putative convictions. For many years after former President George H. W. Bush made the disastrous choice to nominate the liberal David Souter to the court instead of the conservative stalwart Edith Jones, those involved in Republican judicial nominations vowed “no more Souters.” Here are some ways the next Republican administration can give that vow some teeth. First, do the actual research. Gorsuch’s stunning defection in the 2020 Bostock decision, for instance, in which he read sexual orientation and gender identity into Title VII, was entirely predictable based upon his prior similar ruling in a 2009 9th Circuit case called Kastl. And if there isn’t a huge body of case law because a prospective nominee hasn’t been an active judge for very long, that’s a good indication not to pick that person. Only demonstrable, proven track records can suffice. Second and related, dive deep into a prospective nominee’s record to verify full-spectrum, across-the-board conservatism. Conservatives are sick of one-trick pony lawyers and jurists, for instance, who obsess over regulatory issues and gutting the administrative state while having little to say when it comes to the core civilizational issues affecting sovereignty, life, religion, and human sexuality. Third, it is imperative that conservatives vet nominees closely for a willingness and eagerness to overrule bad cases and correct course as aggressively as possible. The Right must only consider those who take a properly constrained view of stare decisis (precedent) in constitutional interpretation, will liberally grant writs of certiorari to hear flawed lower-court cases affecting key issues, and who will not search for ways to avoid tough rulings — as the court did this week when it punted on the Big Tech censorship case of Murthy v. Missouri on standing grounds, and dismissed as improvidently granted the Idaho abortion case of Moyle v. United States. Finally, the prospective nominee’s personal life should be closely scrutinized. There is not a single more important proxy than the “spouse test.” It is no coincidence that Thomas and Alito are the two most steadfast of the current justices; their wives Ginni and Martha-Ann are exceptional, conservative women. Beyond the spouse test, a nominee must attend a theologically conservative house of worship; a rainbow flag-flying church or synagogue must be an automatic disqualifier. It is past time that conservatives actually play to win at the U.S. Supreme Court. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post How Conservatives Can Finally Get Judicial Nominations Right appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Despite the new debate rules and mainstream CNN against him, Trump can still pull off a triumphant win against Biden’s incoherency in the anticipated upcoming debate. (READ MORE: Is Biden On The Way Out? I’m Not So Sure.) In today’s episode of The Spectacle podcast, hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay discuss the potential talking points of the upcoming debate and what they think Trump should be focused on. From potential debate topics like Trump’s convictions to Biden’s dismal policies, Melissa and Scott hope that Trump will be successful in debating against Biden. READ Scott and Melissa’s writing here and here. Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify. Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.  The post <i>The Spectacle</i> Ep. 122: Biden v. Trump: How Can Trump Lose? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Biden Shamelessly Throws 'Convicted Felon' Despite Hunter's Felonies

How Conservatives Can Finally Get Judicial Nominations Right

A Festering Evil in the Shadows

There's a Charlottesville Every Week, and Joe Biden Is Fine With It