Politics

Congresswoman Liz Cheney had a supposedly shining moment this week as she sat on the January 6 committee to lecture the Capitol attackers and anyone in league with former President Donald Trump about the importance of the rule of law. Cheney has long said the committee was about “fidelity” to the Constitution. Seriously? Liz Cheney? Dick’s neocon daughter? People are buying this? I don’t even know where to start. In 2011, when libertarian-leaning Republican Justin Amash and many in the Tea Party movement insisted that President Barack Obama did not have the constitutional authority to bomb Libya, Cheney, Senator John McCain and other establishment politicians said to hell with the Constitution.

This week brought revelations that a consortium including multiple interested leftist participants has banded together to attempt to buy a number of Spanish-language radio stations across the country. The effort, backed in part by George Soros, is unsurprising. But it is also an underrated indication of the weakness of vision on both the left and the right. It illustrates an approach used by the left toward Hispanic outreach, which has been consistently top-down. As opposed to listening to the priorities of these communities and making any effort to meet them where they are, the left has instead tried to assert and propagandize to them. Univision, Fusion, and a number of other left-driven media outlets have attempted to control the narrative heard by Spanish speakers in America.

Following every tragic mass shooting, there is outrage directed at the firearms industry. The highly popular AR-15 platform is once more in the crosshairs after the recent killings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. The AR — erroneously described as an "assault weapon” — has been targeted by politicians and celebrities who think it should be banned. A House Democrat recently introduced a bill that would add a 1,000 percent sales tax to the purchase of the semi-automatic rifle. Misinformation rather than facts has been weaponized against the AR, which has been falsely described as a "high-powered" "weapon of war." Major General Paul Eaton, US Army (retired), even suggested in a series of tweets that the AR-15 has no place in civilian hands.

My fellow Americans, I speak to you tonight with a heavy heart. Earlier this week, an eighteen-year-old wielding an AR-15 opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing nineteen students and two teachers. I ask all of you to keep them and their families in your prayers. I’ll be doing the same. But I’m tired of giving speeches like this, and I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing them. The pattern is familiar by now. A gunman opens fire in a school or a grocery store or a movie theater or a church. We offer our thoughts and prayers. We spend a few news cycles arguing about gun control and mental health and school security. And then we all move on. Rinse and repeat.

The late columnist Molly Ivins once quipped about the inhabitants of “the world’s greatest deliberative body” that “‘Get along, go along’ is not an inspirational philosophy, and only God knows how much moral cowardice it has covered up over the years. Serve your time, collect your chits, and cash 'em in for your home state? No, I'd say we could ask for more than that from our senators.” She was right, of course; we should ask more of our senators. But would that really help? Ensconced in chamber and institutionalized by the ways thereof, are our senators even capable of more? This is especially important when considering the current job performance of President Joe Biden, who has spent 36 of his 79 years as a member of the Senate.

Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican from Wisconsin, is facing a relentless and coordinated smear campaign orchestrated by Democrats and the mainstream media. The reason why seems obvious. Johnson is running for re-election this midterm cycle and the Democratic Party has identified his seat as one they can flip. An article in the Hill noted that recent "controversies" have emboldened Democrats vying to replace Johnson, citing the "slew of negative headlines" against the incumbent senator. Most recently, the media made the claim that Senator Johnson had blamed school shootings on liberal indoctrination and wokeness in schools. As per usual, the establishment media failed to contextualize Johnson's remarks and instead chose to mock him because he didn't advocate for gun control.