Eye on Israel: How US Slow-Walks Weapons
Team Biden’s “assertion of normalcy” on arming Israel “is easily refuted,” explains Michael Doran at Tablet.
Consider how “an order by Israel for Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) — converter kits that turn ‘dumb’ bombs into ‘smart’ bombs” — came up for license last December, but is still under State Department review, along with multiple other sales.
“President Biden and his team are asking us to believe that when they arbitrarily place an arms shipment bound for Israel ‘under review,’ they are following routine procedures rather than denying weapons to Israel.”
In fact, the review process is “so convoluted that President Biden can place a transaction on hold simply by leaving it to rot in an interagency labyrinth of mandated reviews, verifications, and notifications.”
Current delays aren’t even about Rafah, but to deny Israelis “the ability to make long-term plans — namely, plans regarding Hezbollah and Iran.”
Culture critic: How DEI Wrecks Our Universities
“The clearest expression of what has gone wrong” with US universities is DEI, argues City Journal’s Christopher F. Rufo.
They use the idea of diversity to “justify a policy of sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, racial discrimination.”
Equity means “categorizing individuals into group identities and assigning disparate treatment to members of those groups.”
And inclusion becomes a “justification for excluding people and ideas that are seen as a threat to prevailing ideologies and sentiments.”
“The degeneration of universities into centers of ideological activism — which American taxpayers are currently subsidizing — violates basic democratic principle.”
So it’s time to “abolish DEI,” to “prioritize merit over ancestry, and to govern by the principle of colorblind equality, rather than left-wing racialism.”
“And let the universities pursue their true mission, without ideological interference.”
Education beat: GOP Govs Must Shut Unneeded Schools
The COVID school closings were an “enormous” mistake, and red-state governors “deserve credit” for reopening them quickly, “over the objections of officials in Democratic cities,” recalls Michael J. Petrilli at The Wall Street Journal.
But now, with America’s birthrate collapsing (down 14% since 2007), many schools are half empty — but teachers unions and lefty leaders “are allergic” to closing them.
We need “laws that force districts” to promptly close some of them, and to require a school’s “performance be a major consideration” in choosing which ones.
The alternative is to “let left-wing officials mess it up, as they did during Covid. That’s too high a price for students to pay.”
White House watch: Voters’ No. 1 Question for the Debate
Despite “clear evidence that all is not well with the president, the White House — and its complicit legacy news media — are demanding the American people suspend reality and believe that Biden’s decline is a Republican conspiracy,” fumes USA Today’s Ingrid Jacques.
But, “Americans aren’t stupid,” and “they say in poll after poll that one of their top concerns is his age and mental decline — something we’ve all witnessed.” Biden’s handlers “have ensured that we’ve seen as few unscripted moments as possible,” e.g., “far fewer solo news conferences and interviews than other presidents in recent history.”
Cue Thursday’s debate, a ” high-stress situation, sans notes or teleprompter,” where “the American people can judge for themselves — free from White House or media spin — whether the president is fit for another four years.”
From the right: Biden’s Ultimate Cynicism
President Biden’s “agendas may have fundamentally changed the country for decades, if not longer — and will require tough remedies that may be almost as unpopular as the wreckage they wrought,” groans Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness.
“Most Americans believe it is unhinged to deliberately destroy the border,” for one.
But how to “deal with 10 million illegal aliens who entered the US without audit or legality? . . . How would they be found and deported? How many court suits in blue-jurisdictions before blue judges would have to be overcome?”
The Bidenites “were confident” they could “force the next Republican administration to adopt such tough medicine that it would prove untenable politically.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board