ETNA, Pennsylvania — In January 2022, the local news reported that a homemade gray flag with a swastika in the center of it was hung from the front porch of a resident on Greeley Avenue of this tiny…

Dennis Quaid(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) -- Actor Dennis Quaid said he plans to vote for former President Donald Trump this November. While appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, he said, “It just makes sense.”…

Whatever the jury decides in former President Donald Trump’s New York City felony bookkeeping trial, any pretense that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution was not entirely political…

He was a big fan. The post Freddie Mercury’s favourite song by Prince: “A giant” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

What does a foreign policy for the middle class look like? The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft partnered with the American Conservative to put on a conference to answer just that question. READ MORE from Stephan Kapustka: Nicole Shanahan: RFK Jr.’s Unconventional Pick for Vice President Inside the beltway, “realism and restraint” has become a common calling card among those who dissent from what many inside the beltway call “the blob.” Running through the center-right and center-left, the blob favors liberal internationalism and believes America must take an active role in promoting democracy across the globe.  Restrainers, by contrast, argue that “we should care first and foremost about our own national security,” as Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson succinctly put it. “If you look since the Cold War, to go a bigger view, America’s less free, less safe, and more burdened by debt. And so if you go since the war on terror, less free, less safe, more burdened by debt.” Initially, something seems off about the whole notion. It’s a weird time for the natcons. As the conference’s location inside the Hart Senate Office Building testified, they’re not on the fringe anymore. But even as their influence continues to wax, they cannot be said to have taken over the GOP quite yet. Every speaker was united over opposition to further aid to Ukraine. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who spoke first, said that while he “certainly admire[s] the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russia,” he does “not think it’s in America’s interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine.” Vance further charged that America has not been insistent enough in demanding that its European allies pay their fair share of the burden of a war that ultimately is on their continent. On this, his arguments have found a receptive argument with GOP voters. According to Pew Research Center, right after Putin invaded Ukraine in March 2022, 49 percent of Republicans felt the U.S. was not providing enough support for the eastern European country, while only 9 percent said we were providing too much. Just over two years later, 49 percent of Republicans said we’re providing too much for Ukraine, while just 13 percent say too little. Democratic feelings, by contrast, have been essentially static. But while the arguments advanced by Vance have found success in winning over many Republican voters, they have been markedly less effective in winning over Republican politicians. Thus far, Congress has yet to see a Ukraine aid bill that it hasn’t liked. Particularly in the U.S. Senate, home to the GOP’s most senior politicians, old habits die hard. While Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt has noted that younger GOP Senators have been more receptive toward taking a more restrained approach aboard, the GOP establishment remains unmoved. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it his personal mission to fight for Ukraine aid, going so far as to describe it as “one of the most important issues” he’s faced during his time in office. Republicans like McConnell who favor more interventionism abroad argue that if America retreats from the existing global order, it will embolden bad actors to take more and more until American core interests are directly threatened. The speakers were all skeptical of this notion, instead arguing that there were some parts of the world that matter more than others and that it becomes necessary to prioritize when resources are finite. In spending those finite resources, there was some degree of disagreement about America’s relationship with Israel. Vance accounted himself a friend, arguing that America has more of an interest in Israel than in Ukraine both because of America’s Christian heritage, and because of Israel’s technological and military prowess. Israel’s strength allows it to be a regional counterweight to Iran when paired with the Sunni world. Given the strain that the Gaza war has put on Israeli-Muslim relations, it’s in America’s interest that the sooner Hamas is defeated, the better. On the other side of that debate was former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who affirmed that he opposed aid to Israel for the principled reason that he opposed all foreign aid but suggested that he would have America give the Israelis diplomatic cover to prosecute their war against Hamas. Ramaswamy may well be right that American diplomatic support may be more valuable than American monetary support, but one still wonders about the coherence of his position. Our diplomatic backing is no more of an infinite resource than our money. Nor is it a reliable currency when presidential administrations change, as President Joe Biden is currently demonstrating.  Sen. Rand Paul also argued for a more consistently restrained approach. Perhaps the most consistent small-l libertarian in the U.S. Senate, Paul has always been opposed to foreign aid. In his view, the United States is under no obligation to give any foreign aid, and what aid we do give is not an obligation but a charity. It’s only fair, then, that we exercise some discretion around it. “Should aid be conditional? Well, of course it should be,” Paul said. “All aid should be conditional. Should there be a bare minimum standard? Of course there should be a bare minimum standard.” As an example, Paul noted how many of the key figures in the coup that brought the current Egyptian government to power were previously trained by the United States and called out the country’s repressive treatment of Christians. The status of global Christian communities was a common theme. Vance noted in his speech that the Iraq war and subsequent regional disorder had shattered Iraq’s Christian communities. Only 250,000 of a 2003 population of 1.5 million were left as of 2019. Ramaswamy raised the issue of the Azerbaijan–Armenia wars that have culminated in the ethnic cleansing of Armenian Christians from the Artsakh region. (RELATED: Armenian Christians Undergo Ethnic Cleansing. DC Politicians Pocket the Change.) One cannot accuse Paul of unfairly singling out Israel. But it seems as though it is the progressive Left that has been successful in turning the Democratic mainstream away from Israel, and for reasons completely unrelated to what is actually in America’s best interest. It cannot be accounted as any sort of victory for restrainers, no more than flimsy and bad faith protestations of “free speech” by pro-Palestinian campus demonstrators can be accounted as a blow against cancel culture. Something that was absolutely clear was that realist arguments could no longer be ignored or evaded. “The [old] slogans don’t work anymore,” Vance said. While the interventionists have prevailed in the internecine foreign aid fights during the Biden years, it’s remarkable that there was ever any doubt that they would. While calling for a more diplomatic and less punitive approach to world affairs, Paul said “Part of the problem with our foreign policy … is that you have to listen. You don’t have to agree with your enemies. You don’t have to agree with your adversaries. But you have to listen.” While solid advice on conducting foreign policy, Paul’s approach seems eerily applicable to our domestic conversation about foreign policy as well. The post What Does America First Actually Mean? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When Antonio Rodiles was invited to last year’s July 4 party at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, he handed out leaflets listing names of more than 1,000 political prisoners incarcerated by the communist regime since antigovernment protests broke out in 2021. “We got to all the European ambassadors, the papal nuncio, everybody,” says the Cuban opposition leader. But when an embassy van took him back home, a government goon squad was waiting for him. “We are at the worst moment since the human rights movement started up in Cuba 30 years ago,” Rodiles told The American Spectator. “Whoever opens his mouth gets whacked.” The beating he received — which landed him in hospital with a broken face and forced him into exile together with thousands of Cuban dissidents increasingly joining the migrant tide moving across the Mexican border —might have been avoided if the U.S. provided free internet service with which regime opponents can communicate among themselves and expose their plight to the the outside world. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: The Venezuela Template Against Democracy) With their own internet connection, opposition activists could be warned about the movements of regime security teams and the spontaneous mass protests that began three years ago may have gathered enough strength and coordination by now to topple the family dynasty to which Raul Castro’s son and Fidel’s nephew Alejandro, is now heir apparent following the death of his brother. Even policemen were joining street protests before the regime cut internet services to the general population importing the tactics and monitoring technology used to repress protests in Iran, Russia and China. “You cannot win a battle if the enemy controls your communications,” says Rodiles, “the regime is weak, but it can’t fall on its own”. “Cuba’s internet services are firmly in the hands of the Chinese who support their total control by the government,” Dr. Evan Ellis, Latin America specialist at the U.S. Army War College, said. Chinese companies have built up Cuba’s telecommunications including an undersea cable connecting Cuba with Venezuela laid by Beijing-based ZTE to secure the low of data between China’s main Latin American allies. China has recently expanded its intelligence operations with the construction of an electronic espionage base in Lourdes just outside Havana that was formerly operated by Russia to spy on the U.S. Florida congresswoman Maria Elviria Salazar has proposed floating balloons at 50,000 ft. to beam signals that would open independent internet access for Cubans. The U.S. military has electronic warfare systems that could further boost the signals and jam regime communications. But instead of green lighting such ideas, the Biden administration is appeasing the Castro regime even while risking World War Three to fight its backers in distant battlefields. (READ MORE: To Hell With the Universities) Last week, the State Department removed Cuba from the list of countries that “don’t fully cooperate against terrorism” even as state terrorism continues thriving on the island and the regime actively supports Hamas, whose delegates met with the Cuban ambassador in Beirut soon after the Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis. Rául Castro has held meetings with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, who visited Havana. Biden’s State Dept. announced the removal of Cuba from list of countries that don’t fully cooperate against terrorism. This is an INSULT to everyone fighting for freedom in Cuba. Floridians deserve to know if Biden’s hand-picked senate candidate, @DebbieForFL, supports this… — Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) May 16, 2024 While the U.S. all but abandons Cuba’s anti-government protestors, organizations linked with the Cuban communist party are promoting violent anti-semitic protests on American campuses, according to a recent report in the New York Post. A New York based group called The People’s Forum, which led the occupation of Hamilton Hall in Columbia University last month, has received extensive political indoctrination and training in Cuba. The leader of the group, Manolo Dos Santos, previously involved in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, met personally with Cuban premiere Miguel Díaz-Canel in 2022 to arrange for hundreds of American leftist activists to go to Cuba in April and May 2023, as reported in the Cuban official government newspaper Granma, for “exchanges” with Cuban communist party “grass roots activists” — like those who beat up Rodiles. Cuba has historical ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and whose representative office in Havana has been organizing pro-Palestinian rallies. At a recent event, attended by Díaz-Canel, “solidarity” videos were exchanged with American activists occupying NYU. Cuba’s intelligence services played key roles in forming a nexus between the PFLP, European and Latin American far left terrorist groups in the 1970s and 80s. The DGI also backed U.S. domestic terrorism by groups like the Weather Underground, the Puerto Rican FALN and the Black Liberation Army, whose fugitive leaders continue living in Havana. Cuba has been collaborating closely with Russia in what President Volodymyr Zelensky describes as a “terrorist” war on Ukraine. Hundreds of Cuban mercenaries are fighting on the front lines while high level Cuban defense and intelligence officials, including Raul Castro, have visited Moscow as well as Belorussia “to discuss in detail the current status of military cooperation and ways of developing it” according to an official communiqué released by the Byelorussian defense ministry last year. According to Ukrainian intelligence reports, Cuban special forces known as Avispas Negras (Black Wasps) have been undergoing language training in Byelorussia for possible infiltration missions into Ukraine and other east European countries. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Russia Is Pounding Eastern Ukraine’s Industrial Heartland) In a twisted explanation for sliding Cuba off the terrorism list, the State Department said it was in keeping with a recent decision by Colombia to lift extradition requests for two members of the National Liberation Army who planted a truck bomb in the country’s police academy killing 20 cadets in 2019. In other words, there was no action or concession by Cuba for its delisting. It was a political decision by Colombia’s leftist president Gustavo Petro, himself a one time member of another Cuban backed guerrilla group (M19), to officially ignore Cuba’s non-compliance that opened the way for Biden to move his appeasement policy forward. “The administration is trying to accomodate left of center allies in the region,” says Dr. Ellis. But there may be other reasons involving the interests of important donors to Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign, such as the Hyatt hotel chain owners itching to sign deals with the Castros. They lobbied intensely for the normalization of relations with Cuba under President Barack Obama who appointed a Hyatt family member to a senior position in the commerce department. Cuba has been accused of election interference along with China, Russia, and Iran in a recently released U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment on foreign threats to U.S. elections: “We assess that Cuba attempted to undermine the electoral prospects of specific US congressional and gubernatorial politicians (in 2022). Havana probably intended these efforts to advance its foreign policy goals which include removing sanctions and its State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.” The 1.5-page assessment on Cuba’s election influence is heavily redacted with most lines blacked out, including a long paragraph that starts: “Havana sought to identify and establish relationships with members of the U.S. media.” The Biden administration’s whitewash of Cuba not only endangers dissidents on the island whose ranks are swelling due to growing scarcities in food and energy but America’s national security as well. Many members of the intelligence community were shocked when a court trying Cuban state department mole Manuel Rocha, failed to convict him for espionage in a verdict handed last month, even as the FBI produced recordings in which he confessed to spying willingly for the Castros throughout his diplomatic career. “An espionage conviction might have raised some embarrassing questions,” says Timothy Ashby, an ex-commerce official and onetime business partner of Rocha’s. Members of Congress are also calling for an investigation into the mysterious appearance of Cuban security officials at Miami airport last week to inspect airline screening facilities, just hours after being cleared on terrorism. The post Cuba Is Training Leftist American Anti-Semites. The Biden Administration Is Helping. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The story of World War II’s “Red Ball Express” serves as a reminder that winning wars means winning a battle of logistics. It also offers insight into how we should approach our assistance to Ukraine in the face of concerns about Ukrainian corruption, which is an issue raised repeatedly in the recent debates over the latest aid package and which is likely to be raised again and again as long as the war continues. One may not agree with those who’ve made Ukrainian corruption an issue, but it has loomed too large in recent months to simply be dismissed out of hand. The “Red Ball Express” was an emblematic American “can-do” solution to a problem that might well have defeated the armies of most other countries. After the “breakout” from Normandy at the end of July, 1944, after the crushing encirclement of the German armies at Falaise, the German defenses collapsed and the allied armies raced across France. Raced so fast that they exceeded even the wildest dreams of the D-Day invasion planners, so fast that the armies soon had outrun their base of supplies, hundreds of miles distant in back in Normandy. (READ MORE: Russia Is Pounding Eastern Ukraine’s Industrial Heartland) By Aug. 25, it had become clear that nothing short of desperate measures would enable the continued pursuit of the broken German forces. The French rail system and rolling stock had largely been destroyed by the allied air forces in the run up to D-Day, when the priority was denying supplies to the Germans manning the vaunted Atlantic Wall. If the necessary supplies were to reach the front line troops, truck convoys on a scale heretofore scarcely imagined, would have to do the job. The solution was the “Red Ball Express.” Combining virtually every available military trucking resource in France, mainly the famous “deuce and a half” trucks, it was a system designed to overcome the limitations of the French highway system, roads largely well-surfaced, but too narrow to sustain large volumes of two-way truck traffic. So instead MPs were deployed to create two one-way highways, the northern route carrying supplies forward, the southern bringing the trucks back to be loaded once again. And it worked. At its peak it delivered something like 12,000 tons of supplies per day to divisions along the entire Western Front. To be sure, it was a close run thing. For example, Patton’s famed 3rd Army, having charged over virtually the whole of France in little more than 30 days, literally ran out of gas just shy of the final great barrier to the German border, the Moselle river in the French province of Lorraine. At a critical moment, the pursuit ended, and, when it resumed a week later, the breathing space had enabled the Germans to put cobble together a new line of defenses along the river, presaging a bloody and brutal slugging match that would last deep into November. The “Red Ball Express” continued throughout these critical days, lasting until the opening of the port of Antwerp dramatically eased the allies’ supply situation. All along the front, in hard and bitter battles from the Hürtgen forest to the grand fortifications of Metz, tanks depended on thousands of gallons of gasoline, while bullets and shells were consumed in almost unimaginably vast numbers. Soldiers had to eat, and, as winter set in — what would be the most brutal winter in eastern France in decades — they also desperately needed winter clothing to replace the increasingly tattered lightweight garb. Saboteurs on Both Sides As I’ve listened to discussions about corruption in Ukraine and the misuse of the billions in assistance we’ve provided, I’ve found myself thinking of a family anecdote, and reflecting on the way in which it might point to a policy solution. In August, 1944, my uncle Tom’s regiment, the 29th Infantry, had just arrived in France from England, having spent much of the war up to that point providing security for bases in Iceland. Rather than being pushed forward to the front lines, the 29th was assigned the task of providing security for the “Red Ball Express.” Much of the territory through which the trucks passed day and night had only recently been liberated, and General Eisenhower feared that bypassed German units or Vichy French saboteurs might attempt to interrupt the flow of supplies. (READ MORE: The Strange Life and Ironic Death of Putin-Loving Russell ‘Texas’ Bentley) So while the MPs directed traffic and manned the many intersections along the way, the riflemen of the 29th patrolled the routes in vehicle mounted teams, ready to respond to any threats. One afternoon, my uncle, a very young second lieutenant, saw several “Red Ball” trucks pulled off the route onto a side street in a French village, where a crowd had gathered. He ordered his jeep driver to pull over, and he and a third soldier walked over to the back of the crowd, discovering that a couple of “Red Ball” drivers were conducting an auction, selling GI long johns, overcoats, and “ten-on-one” ration boxes off the back of their trucks. My uncle saw red. Unslinging his carbine, he led his soldiers through the crowd and levelled the weapon at the drivers. While his men dispersed the crowd, he ordered the drivers — at gunpoint — to reload their trucks and then followed them in his jeep to the next MP checkpoint, his gunner with a locked and loaded, pedestal-mounted .30 caliber machine gun trained on the truck ahead from the back of the jeep. As he told the story many years later, what infuriated him the most about the entire incident was knowing that, at that very moment, his older brother, my father, was freezing in the front lines outside Metz, waiting for the warm clothing that the drivers had been flogging to French civilians. Would he have shot the drivers, I asked. Only one, he replied, somebody was still needed to drive the trucks, and the trucks had to get through. But yes, as he put it: “Our mission was to stop saboteurs, and those drivers were saboteurs just as much as a bunch of Krauts.” So much has been made of World War II’s “greatest generation” that it’s easy to forget that not all of its members were all that great. In the wake of the advance across France in 1944, a massive black market arose, centered upon Paris, organized by AWOL soldiers and corrupt members of the services of supply. The temptations were huge. After years under German occupation, and faced with shortages of almost everything, the French were eager for clothing, foodstuffs, gasoline, and cigarettes, and huge profits accrued to the Americans who could supply this demand. TV’s Sgt. Bilko may have played this kind of thing for laughs, but there was nothing funny about the GI mafias that emerged in Paris (or, in fairness to the French, even more so in Naples). It’s no accident that the early history of the U.S. Army’s CID, it’s Criminal Investigation Division, is filled with tales of the battle against black marketeers in World War II, not just the occasional “Red Ball Express” driver, but much more the organized crime syndicates that arose in Paris and other French cities. GI criminality never actually threated the war effort, and most soldiers had little use for the criminals, but, as my uncle’s story makes clear, it had its effect. Many front line soldiers during December’s Battle of the Bulge lacked the winter gear a great nation should have provided, mainly due to the miscalculations of rear-area supply officers, but also because these items were hijacked along the way. Let’s Stop Sending Humanitarian Aid to Ukraine What, then, does the “Red Ball Express” have to do with supplying Ukraine’s war amidst allegations of Ukrainian corruption? The lesson should be obvious. No one was selling 105mm artillery shells off the back of ‘deuce and a half” trucks to French villagers, nor were tank transporters being hijacked so that French farmers could use Sherman tanks to plow their fields. Similarly, it’s doubtful that Ukrainian crooks want to put a HIMARS rocket system up for sale, or pallet loads of 155mm shells. When these things get to Ukraine, and in spite of the Biden administration’s ridiculous strictures on their use, they get used for the purpose of stopping Putin’s invasion and protecting the homes and families of ordinary Ukrainians. If there’s concern about the money spent buying weapons and ammunition, then critics should at least acknowledge that, overwhelmingly, this money is spent with American companies providing jobs for American workers here in the U.S. If the Ukrainians could make these weapons and systems in their own factories, no doubt they’d be doing just that. After all, having experienced the perpetually “hot and cold” manipulative nature of Biden’s approach to providing aid — and having witnessed in recent weeks his similar approach to Israel — who wouldn’t prefer to be self-reliant. (READ MORE: Ukraine’s Secret Hospital Train) One suspects that the concern about Ukrainian corruption and American military aid comes down less to a concern about corruption and more a desire to withdraw altogether from supporting Ukraine. And some undoubtedly, reflect a perfectly justified unhappiness with some of the suspected nefarious dealings between interests in Kyiv and the Biden family. All well and good. Therefore, with the lesson of my uncle’s experience of the “Red Ball Express” in mind, and with due deference to the famed satirist Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, here’s a suggestion: Stop sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine, in any form. Undoubtedly, there are Ukrainians who deserve such aid, and maybe our European allies can take up the slack it — the Europeans, after all, are probably better situated to provide such aid and to monitor its honest use. For our part, send nothing that can be flogged by crooks for profit: not food, not clothing, not shelter. Above all, ignore the common NGO request to “send money” so that we can buy the things that are needed, money is far too fungible, far too mobile. Instead, send only things that blow up and destroy things, that is tanks and guns and shells and missiles. It’s not quite the same as Swift’s famed suggestion that the Irish eat their babies to solve their nutrition and population problems, but it is a solution to the anxieties over Ukrainian corruption as it relates to military aid. I know that the very notion of suspending our humanitarian aid will be met with froth and vaporing from all the usual suspects. Weapons bad, food good, and all that. But it might just be a salutary lesson for the NGOs around the world who, in many instances, have grown fat with our propensity for feel good messaging. Watching the manipulative political stench that has arisen around humanitarian assistance to Gaza, one can only hold one’s nose in disgust. After all, the proper time for humanitarian assistance there has always been only after Hamas has been crushed. Similarly, right now we might best provide Ukraine right now with the weapons necessary to bring Putin to the negotiation table, along with ending the inane restrictions on their use. This is the best foundation for peace, and something that has eluded the Biden administration altogether. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His 2022 novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region, and a forthcoming sequel carries the Reprisal team from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post What the Red Ball Express Teaches Us About Ukraine appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump had a message for the Libertarian National Convention Saturday night: Vote for me or lose again. RELATED: Trump Extends a Hand to the Libertarians The confab appeared split between die-hard MAGA fans, who cheered on the former president, and hardcore Libertarians, who booed when Trump took the stage. The mix was perfect for a convention with the theme: “Become ungovernable.” While supporters and opponents shouted at each other, Trump himself appeared relaxed and game for the boisterous evening ahead. He began by noting it was a great honor to be the first president in U.S. history to address a Libertarian National Convention. Cheers and boos. (Did I mention there were a number of bars in the lobby and full plastic cups in the convention hall?) Trump started with the admission that some wondered why he came to speak at the convention for a rival third-party. The answer: With 91 felony charges aimed at him, he offered, “If I wasn’t a Libertarian before I sure as hell am a Libertarian now.” More cheers and boos. When anti-Trumpers heckled him, Trump coolly responded that Libertarians now had a choice: vote for him, or get used to “getting your 3 percent every four years.” And really, Trump’s math was generous. In 2016, the Libertarian ticket, headed by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, attracted 3.3 percent of the popular vote. Most years from 1972 on, Libertarians claimed less than 1 percent of ballots. Be it noted, 1 percent to 3 percent in a swing state could be a game changer when the Electoral College vote is counted. Hence the anger that the Left has directed at independent candidate for president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy spoke to the Libertarian convention at the Washington Hilton on Friday. So the Libertarian Party’s big-name speakers this year were the presumptive Republican nominee and a candidate who until recently was a Democrat. By showing up at the Libertarian confab, Trump showed a willingness to fight for the support of voters whom the political class often ignores. He calls them “the forgotten man.” With that, Trump’s top billing might hurt the Libertarian Party among members, but the move certainly didn’t hurt the Trump campaign. My guess is Trump left the event with more votes than he had before he began his 35-minute remarks. And President Joe Biden seemed to be the last thing on the minds of those in the room. Since 2015, Trump has been offering Republicans a choice: relevancy over purity. In speaking to Libertarians, Trump has expanded this choice to the country’s third largest political party. Trump wasn’t coy about what he was willing to do to woo the room. The 45th president baldly pledged to place a Libertarian in his Cabinet, as well as to other big-shot positions. “We’ll be watching and waiting to see if he follows through on his promises to put a Libertarian in his Cabinet,” Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle said of Trump in a statement. Do I think Trump will put a Libertarian in his Cabinet if he wins a second term? Yes, I do. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Libertarian Party Says, ‘Become Ungovernable.’ Trump Says OK. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Johnny Wactor, bartending in-between gigs in his high-prestige, low-pay work as an actor, died over the weekend in downtown Los Angeles when he interrupted the low-prestige work of catalytic-converter thieves laboring underneath his jacked-up vehicle. Joe Friday does not work the streets of Los Angeles anymore. George Gascón does. Therein lies a problem. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: Ladies and Democrats, the Bronx Is Turning “These criminals can’t keep being on the street,” Wactor’s former fiancée, Tessa Farrell, reacted, “and they can’t keep being sent back and have no repercussions for their actions.” We knew this before 3 a.m. Saturday. Yet, they keep being sent back and face no repercussions for their actions. Repercussions, here and there, come for prosecutors averse to prosecutions. In Portland, challenger Nathan Vasquez unseated District Attorney Mike Schmidt after Schmidt deprioritized pursuing non-violent criminals. The primary vote follows the recall of left-wing district attorney Chesa Boudin in San Francsico two years ago. (READ MORE: Even Portland Is Fed Up with Progressive Policies) If progressive prosecutors cannot make it in Portland and San Francisco, can they make it anywhere? In New York and Atlanta, local prosecutors devote resources to stomping out the crime of Republicanism through the expensive pursuit of Donald Trump and many of his associates. Elsewhere, Illinois eliminated cash bail, and Philadelphia barely pursues shoplifters, a group whose prosecutions there dropped to about one-sixth their 2012 levels. Progressive prosecutors fixate on the wrong things. By not inconveniencing the criminals, district attorneys inconvenience the rest of us. Their inaction forces action by storeowners. Safeway supermarkets in the Bay Area removed self-checkout kiosks, which ensures longer lines and higher prices for customers. “Operational changes have been made at select stores throughout the Bay Area given the increasing amount of theft,” read a statement released by Safeway. “Self-checkout kiosks have been removed at a few stores. Like other local businesses, we are working on ways to curtail escalating theft so we can ensure the well-being of our employees and foster a welcoming environment for our customers.” In Washington, D.C., the Giant supermarket chain imposed a ban on customers bringing large bags into the store due to “unprecedented levels of product theft.” A visit to the DSW in Millbury, Massachusetts, on Tuesday revealed sneaker boxes minus a shoe and containing a plastic anti-theft device on the one that remained. Target, Walgreens, and other large retailers routinely lock up detergent and other theft-magnets. Sephora now similarly keeps its perfume bottles from the public. Pricey products increasingly sit behind plexiglass or counters at CVS. None of this happened a quarter-century ago. Something changed. As evidenced by two of the 10 Commandments, stealing predates us by many centuries. The declining respect for the Decalogue suggests one possible reason for the rise in pilfering and the who-cares attitude toward theft from civic authorities in certain locales. “Shoplifting is a crime in name only, like how hopping a turnstile and jaywalking are crimes,” a Hofstra University freshman recently wrote in a column in the student newspaper. “They’re technically crimes, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from doing it…. The right and wrong of shoplifting doesn’t come from what you’re stealing or how much you’re stealing but who you’re stealing from.” A whole generation, like this youngster, encounters many teachers in their educational journey who impart that profits amount to the real theft, we should abolish private property, relativism rather than absolutes govern ethics, and shoplifting works as a kind of karmic-justice expropriation against large corporations. In short, we teach immorality as morality. Steal the iPhones or bicycles from the preachers of such doctrines to find out if they really believe what they say. In San Francisco and Portland where they threw out mush-head district attorneys, this acid test occurred not theoretically but actually. Nobody supports robbery when it happens to them. The post Why Your Catalytic Converter Went Missing and Tide Sits Behind Plexiglass appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.