Brexit aftermath: Today EU, Tomorrow UN?
A Fox News banner proclaiming Britain voted to “leave the UN” (rather than the EU) may have drawn lots of derision, but is unintentionally “grist for serious thought,” argues Claudia Rosett at PJMedia. There are a lot of similarities between the two: “a distinct tilt toward central planning, with all the warped incentives, waste and disregard for free choice that this entails.” And the scandal-scarred UN has proved an ineffective peacekeeper: “The standard defense of the UN is that it may be imperfect, but it’s all we’ve got. The real question is, just how imperfect can we afford to let it get before we start looking quite seriously for a better way?”
Right turn: Benghazi Should’ve Been Career-Ender
David French at National Review asks whether “failures and lies matter any longer” — and what (for prominent Democrats, anyway) “is the level of wrongdoing that will end your career.” Because, he maintains, the devastating Benghazi report’s litany of failures and willful deceptions would have destroyed just about any other politician. But Hillary Clinton, “with an assist from the media, [is] going to get off scot-free” and “looks primed for a promotion.” He also blames those on the right who, “obsessed with finding smoking guns . . . swing for the fences, and journalists are all too happy to treat doubles and triples as signs of failure.”
Boomer’s lament: I May Vote for Candidate I Hate
Retired financial adviser Jim Ruth says he can’t stand Donald Trump — but may vote for him anyway because of his “one redeeming quality: He isn’t Hillary Clinton.” And, unlike Hillary, “he doesn’t want to turn the United States into a politically correct, free-milk-and-cookies, European-style social democracy where every kid (and adult, too) gets a trophy just for showing up.” Writing in The Washington Post, Ruth says voters like him are “not uneducated, uninformed, unemployed or low-income zealots. We’re affluent, well-educated, gainfully employed and successfully retired.” And while under no illusions about Trump, he argues that the alternative “is bleak: a wealthy, entitled progressive with a national security scandal in her hip pocket.”
Runamok campus PC: Restoring Common Sense
A students-rights group has come up with a comprehensive proposal to even the scales on campus sexual-assault investigations and is lobbying Congress to adopt it when it reauthorizes the 1965 Higher Education Act, reports Ashe Schow in the Washington Examiner. The bill, drafted by Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) “supports the rights and interests of both the complainant and accused student, and encourages the involvement of local criminal justice authorities.” It “reins in the ever-expanding definition of sexual assault by limiting it to existing standards” and Supreme Court rulings. And it would also protect an accused student’s rights by ensuring due process.”
SCOTUS abortion myth: Ignoring Gosnell
The Supreme Court’s decision striking down Texas’ regulation of abortion clinics is being hailed across the left and by supportive media. Yet, as Mollie Hemingway writes at The Federalist, they ignore that the court itself acknowledged “that the regulations were enacted . . . in response to the horrific story of Kermit Gosnell,” the Pennsylvania abortionist now serving time for murder who “worked for decades in filthy and unsafe conditions, keeping trophies of his victims’ feet and other body parts in formaldehyde around his cat-urine-soaked offices.” No surprise — there’s been a mainstream media blackout from the start on Gosnell, “a serial murderer who operated under an abortion regime so permissive he hadn’t been inspected in 17 years.”