Security writer: Terrorists Still Obsessed With NYC
Monday morning’s terrorist explosion at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station is yet another reminder, says The Atlantic’s Krishnadav Calamur, of what all New Yorkers know: “Attacks like this one are inevitable in a city that is a permanent target for anti-American terrorists.” Fact is, as “the most recognized symbol of the United States around the world,” New York has been a terrorist target since long before 9/11. And “a successful, or even unsuccessful, attack on New York underscores the ease with which a terrorist can target the city,” particularly its transit system. Terrorism, after all, “is not just the cost of lives lost and affected by an attack, but the act of forcing a society’s citizens to change the way they live.”
From the right: Why Did Trump Go All-In for Moore?
As Alabama voters head to the polls Tuesday in the special election for Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat, President Trump reversed his earlier waffling and spent the weekend stumping for Republican Roy Moore and recording a robocall for him. What changed? According to The Weekly Standard’s Michael Warren, Trump has told those close to him “he thinks Moore will win, and for the president, that’s what matters.” This, even as Alabama’s senior elected GOP official Sen. Richard Shelby, disclosed that he “couldn’t vote for Roy Moore.” So “expect Trump to take full credit for a Moore victory.” And if Moore loses? “Trump will be the first to remind America that, after all, he endorsed Luther Strange (who would have won easily!) first.”
Political scribe: For Once, the Joke’s On Al Franken
Why did Sen. Al Franken finally resign? Salena Zito at the Washington Examiner suggests it’s because he “would have become a joke, an afterthought, a pariah, a no one.” And the thought of “being reduced to zero status in American politics was a bridge too far for the egocentric Minnesotan,” who’s “used to being center stage, needed, wanted, catered to, fawned over and courted.” In the end, she says, “he was defiant, blamed others and was without the grace to show remorse.” That’s in line with the “me” generation that began 40 years ago, when it became “cool to be naughty, uncool to be respectful and gentlemanly.” Franken didn’t get caught in a political storm; he was “part of the storm that swept out our culture’s moral compass a generation ago.”
Conservative: The Police Murder of Daniel Shaver
National Review’s Daniel French urges everyone — “if you have the stomach for it” — to watch the “one of the most outrageous and infuriating videos I’ve ever seen.” It shows a young man named Daniel Shaver being shot death as he was “crawling on his hands and knees, crying and begging police not to shoot him.” Police in Mesa, Ariz., in January 2016 had ordered Shaver and a woman companion out of their hotel room and to raise their hands and fall to their knees. But rather than being handcuffed, they were ordered “to crawl towards police in a highly specific way” without lowering their hands. When Shaver, drunk and terrified, reached behind his back, possibly to pull up his pants, he was shot dead. Says French: “I have seen soldiers deal with al Qaeda terrorists with more professionalism and poise.” The tape was released after the officer was acquitted.
Culture critic: Lindsey Vonn Isn’t Representing Trump
Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn made clear in a recent interview that “she would neither accept an invitation to the White House if invited nor would it be President Trump she’d represent at the Olympic Games,” noted Jackie Anderson at The Federalist. Fine: Athletes “aren’t obligated to profess allegiance to the federal government once they hit the podium.” But Vonn seems to believe that “by reproving a president whose politics she disagrees with, she’s somehow fulfilling a civic duty that was never placed on her shoulders.” As such, she reflects “a trend of “ridiculously blessed celebrities who don’t seem to realize that the very nation they spend countless hours condemning is the same one that has paved the way for their successes.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann