Viewpoints with Kerby Anderson

Penna Dexter
The recent off-year election was not a good one for the pro-life movement. One big disappointment was the vote on Ohio Issue 1 which creates a constitutional right to abortion in what has been a pro-life state.
The 57 to 43 percent vote, in favor of Issue 1, opens the door for legal late-term abortions and the negation of parental rights and health and safety protections, which Ohio pro-lifers have worked for decades to attain.
In 2019, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a heartbeat law which banned abortion after embryonic cardiac activity is detected — normally at about 6 weeks gestation. The law has been under a court challenge ever since.
The 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade returned responsibility for abortion policy to the states. That should have smoothed the path for enactment of Ohio’s heartbeat law. But instead, a coalition of abortion industry lobbyists and far-left organizations launched a ballot initiative, Issue 1. They spent $35 million branding the pro-life movement as “extreme.”
Direct-to-voters ballot initiatives allow out-of-state actors to bypass elected bodies. Carol Tobias, President of National Right to Life warns that the rise of such initiatives risks making state legislatures obsolete.
One shocking statistic regarding this vote is that 24 percent of self-described “white evangelical or born-again Christians” supported Issue 1.
One would have hoped churches all over Ohio would have prepared congregants for this vote. But Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm says, “Many churches don’t want to be divisive, so they choose to say nothing,” which leaves the impression that “it really doesn’t matter what Christians think about abortion.”
It does matter.
Author and cultural commentator Rod Dreher says we must not “fool ourselves into thinking that we can sustain a civilization without a religious foundation.“
It appears many Christians need help getting moral clarity on the sanctity of human life. Churches must step up.

Kerby Anderson
I have been reading the latest book from Michael Lewis, Going Infinite which is about Sam Bankman-Fried (often referred to as SBF). Lewis was thinking about the topic of his next book when he took SBF on a hike in the Berkeley Hills. He knew he had the subject for his book when SBF told him that his financial goal was “infinity dollars.”
Lewis had unprecedented access to a crypto king worth billions who walked around in cargo shorts and limp white socks. SBF also practiced “effective altruism” and spread lots of money around to companies and political campaigns. CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin called him the “J.P. Morgan of crypto.”
After writing most of the book, Michael Lewis had a problem. He didn’t have a third act. Then the SBF company FTX declared bankruptcy, and he was now being compared to Bernie Madoff. He had his third act, which now appears to be coming to a conclusion.
Earlier this month, a jury found SBF guilty on all seven criminal charges. Damian Williams (US Attorney) declared after the trial that, “Sam Bankman-Fried perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.” He went on to add that, “While the cryptocurrency industry might be new and the players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, this kind of corruption is as old as time.”
The lesson in all of this is “buyer beware.” Celebrities in nearly every field of endeavor invested in SBF’s company. The FTX logo was on the Miami Heat arena and on the uniforms of baseball’s umpires. SBF operated a crypto casino with tokens that were unregistered securities, yet only a few expressed their concerns.
We now know how the third act ended.

Kerby Anderson
The world has always been a dangerous place. But those dangers are accentuated due to erroneous assumptions about war and foreign policy. Jakub Grygiel highlights three foreign policy illusions.
“The first is that leaders are responsible for wars and these countries are our rivals only because of their bad leaders.” One example can be seen in the statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who placed the blame of the Russia-Ukraine war on Vladimir Putin. “One man chose this war. And one man can end it.” But a recent poll showed that three-quarters of Russians support the war.
“The second illusion is that international organizations and global governance can overcome contentious national and regional politics.” President Franklin Roosevelt believed the Soviet Union would behave better once it joined the United Nations. Western leaders hoped China would also be more responsible after joining the World Trade Organization. That has not happened in either case.
“The third illusion is that greater trade and wealth produce peace.” Nations proposed a naïve principle of “change through trade.” The US hoped trade with China would make that country more peace-loving.
Nations engaged in trade in order to gain advantage over their commercial partners. In many ways, trade fosters a desire for power. As nations grew economically, they also grew militarily so they could protect their commercial interests.
These significant conflicts between nations cannot be changed through leadership changes nor through international organizations nor through trade. Conflict between nations can be checked or even defeated, but that comes from military power.

Kerby Anderson
Antisemitism is on the rise in nearly every country. Who would have expected to hear “Gas the Jews” in Sydney, Australia? Jewish students in Germany are being warned by their parents not to wear the Star of David in public. Justin Cohen in a BBC story warns, “The Jewish community at the moment is full of dread, full of fear, like I’ve never seen before.”
Those are just a few examples cited by Michael Brown in his commentary, “Wake Up World Before Jewish Blood is Shed in Your Country.” He is pleading with the public to take the recent antisemitic events seriously. He says we need to stand up, speak out, and push back.
The problem of antisemitism has become so severe that the European Union issued a statement about antisemitic incidents in Europe. “The spike of antisemitic incidents across Europe has reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history. European Jews today are again living in fear.”
Alan Dershowitz concludes that “the Democratic Party now faces a choice.” He sees a fracture in the party between centrist and liberal Jews and the woke, anti-Israel progressives. He understands that left-leaning young people often inject vitality and enthusiasm into progressive causes. But now they seem to be embracing bloodlust. And he also points to faculty on elite college campuses that have signed open letters supporting the Hamas attacks.
He first voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and has voted for democrats ever since. But if the woke-hard-left succeeds in taking over the party, he predicts that millions of American Jews like him will turn from blue to red. This has implications for our next election.

Kerby Anderson
Two economics professors at Johns Hopkins University are warning that we could be facing tough economic times soon. These men aren’t doom-and-gloom economists, but sober-minded individuals concerned about the policies of the Federal Reserve.
We all know drivers who one minute floor the accelerator and then slam on the brakes. That is my metaphor for what has been happening over the last few years.
Back in March 2020, the government significantly increased the money supply to send money to US citizens during the pandemic. The M2 money supply “grew at an unprecedented, annualized rate of 16.5%.” That was more than three times the appropriate rate for the Fed’s inflation target.
Two years later in March 2022, the Federal Reserve changed course and started tightening the money supply by increasing the federal-funds rate. This “quantitative tightening” contracted the money supply. The economists explain that this was the most extreme contraction since 1933.
They point to the fact that the Federal Reserve “ignored the huge acceleration in the quantity of money and thus failed to anticipate the ensuing inflation.” You might remember when inflation began to show up in early 2021, we first heard that it was merely transitory and caused by the disruption of supply-chains.
Now that the Federal Reserve has pumped the brakes, these economists argue that we are facing the opposite problem. “The money supply has been contracting for 18 months, and soon, after the overhanging extra money from 2020-21 has been used up, spending will plunge, and inflation will fall” they believe even into deflation.
Their evaluation should be a warning to all of us that we may be facing some tough economic times in the future.

Kerby Anderson
The road to a progressive utopia has arrived at disillusionment for so many in the younger generation. New York Post writer Kendall Qualls begins, “Your intentions were noble. You wanted to make the country and the world a better place.” The goal of this emerging generation was to “fundamentally change America” by attempting to align their values with liberal progressive goals.
It seemed like the best way to deal with racism in this country was to support BLM and put law enforcement on notice. Unfortunately, something went wrong. Groups like BLM were supposed to implement beneficial programs “have proven to be inept, mismanaging funds and the leaders of the organization embezzled millions of dollars.” Even worse, BLM supported the terrorist group Hamas “that decapitates infants, sexually assaults women, and takes 80-year-old grandmothers as hostages.”
It seemed like the best way to provide fairness to the LGBQ movement was to promote same-sex marriage. “However, as the group started adding more letters (and numbers) to the movement, you forgot that most folks are uneasy with the idea of biological men competing against women in swimming, cycling, weightlifting and other sports where clearly men will dominate over women.”
Progressive policies in government aren’t working. “Crime continues to skyrocket in major cities nationwide. Black leaders seem unable or unwilling to subdue flash mobs of black youth who are shoplifting, carjacking, and brutalizing suburban moms.”
Progressive policies and organizations aren’t producing the desired effects in society. It is time for this generation to reevaluate their beliefs and assumptions.

Penna Dexter
Most politicians — even those with strong religious faith — don‘t necessarily make that the first thing they want you to know about them. They want to appeal both to voters who will trust them more because of their faith and also to those who will trust them less or who want faith and the Bible left out of politics.
Politicians often publicly explain how their faith informs their position on a social issue, like abortion, or gay marriage, or religious liberty. But few clearly articulate how their faith informs their politics the way Mike Johnson the new House Speaker does.
Within days of his election, he did just that in an in-depth interview with The Daily Signal. Speaker Johnson said he doesn’t find his openness all that remarkable. He said, “It’s who I am. It’s how I think.”
Some media took issue with remarks Mr. Johnson made to Congress minutes after his election as Speaker. Especially his words claiming, “God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment and this time.” He explained this to The Daily Signal: “It’s a central promise of the Bible that God invented civil government.”
People used to know this. Speaker Johnson warned that we must pay attention to the fact that we are “a more secularized society.” Our founders were clear that, to maintain a constitutional republic, “there has to be a consensus on virtue and morality.”
Mr. Johnson recognizes a growing sense among Americans that “we are adrift…in uncharted waters.” He explained, “We live in an age of moral relativism, which has become postmodernism, which is gradually becoming nihilism, the idea that if there is no truth, then you can believe anything or everything, or nothing.”
Speaker Johnson is not going to push his faith on the country. He will live it. He’s known for treating colleagues “with dignity and respect.” On that foundation, he will forge consensus to enact wise policy.

Kerby Anderson
John Stossel recently did a video on the Covid deception. The reason for his latest documentary was the release of Senator Rand Paul’s book, Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up.
He began the video by asking us to remember when the senator accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of funding China’s Wuhan virus lab. Fauci replied, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Stossel says the media loved it. Vanity Fair smirked, “Fauci Once Again Forced to Basically Call Rand Paul a Sniveling Moron.” He then notes that the magazine changed its view and admitted, “In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan … Paul might have been onto something.”
What about the idea that the virus came from a lab leak? At the time, this was portrayed as a conspiracy theory. Now you have the FBI, the Department of Energy, and many others accepting the idea that the laboratory was the source.
Rand Paul reminds us, “Three people in the Wuhan lab got sick with a virus of unknown origin in November of 2019.” Also, the Wuhan lab is 1,000 kilometers away from where bats live.
The funding for gain of function research went to EcoHealth Alliance, run by zoologist Peter Daszak. Before the pandemic, he bragged about combining coronaviruses in Wuhan. Once the pandemic broke out, he was less eager to talk about these experiments.
John Stossel observed, “The media is weirdly un-curious about this.” Rand Paul responded that, “We have a disease that killed maybe 16 million people, and they’re not curious as to how we got it?”
I know you may not have time to read the book, but it’s worth a few minutes of your time to watch the video of the Covid deception.

Kerby Anderson
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” That’s a phrase we often use that has been attributed to Everett Dirksen, though it is doubtful he ever said it. But let me suggest a variation of it. “A regulation here, and a regulation there, and soon you are talking about real money.”
Over the years, I have talked about the economic costs of more and more regulations. Recently, a consumer watchdog organization calculated the cost of this administration’s climate regulations. The estimated cost was over $9,000.
The Alliance for Consumers put together an infographic with the title: “Biden’s Dream House.” Price tags were attached to household appliances calculated using the administration’s energy standards and climate regulations. Those regulations will make appliances more expensive.
As I mentioned in a previous commentary, the Biden administration regulations would require that 90 percent of gas stoves would have to be redesigned. The consumer watchdog group estimated that would raise the upfront cost of stove products by as much as $3,250.
Rules targeting air-conditioning refrigerants would raise the cost of air-conditioning units by $1,100. New energy standards for water heaters would raise the price another $2,800. Gas furnace efficiency standards are supposed to reduce greenhouse emissions but will add an additional $494 to the cost.
This administration wants to regulate every aspect of our lives with little regard to the overall cost. Many government regulations are necessary, but they must be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. I doubt you have an additional $9,000 laying around ready to spend on appliances that were made more expensive by these government regulations.

Kerby Anderson
The latest controversy at the United Nations over comments by the Secretary-General is a reminder of how many times the UN has taken an anti-Israel stance. Senator Ted Cruz believes the Secretary-General should resign and adds that “many aspects of the UN, like the Human Rights Council and UNRWA are either antisemitic or give cover for terrorism or both.”
While there may be some debate about the recent comments, they come after decades of false accusations against Jews in general and Israel in particular. For example, the 1975 UN resolution passed by a majority of UN member states equated Zionism (the founding philosophy of the state of Israel) with racism. The resolution eventually was overturned but was used to justify actions against Israel.
Back in the 1980s, New York Mayor Ed Koch referred to the UN as a cesspool. That was when the UN passed an anti-Israel resolution because the country occupied the Golan Heights to prevent rockets from being launched into northern Israel.
The late Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban once joked, “If Algeria introduced a UN resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”
As I mentioned in my booklet on antisemitism, always blaming Israel is irrational. “Israel is about the size of New Jersey and is surrounded by Arab countries with more than 500 times the land area.”
Israel realized long ago that it could not depend upon the United Nations to defend it. This latest controversy with the UN is just another reminder of that fact.

Kerby Anderson
We need to confront antisemitism. Noah Rothman writes, “Your Turn, Democrats.” He explains that mainstream Republicans have confronted right-wing antisemitism, but the left has not done so. It is time for Democratic politicians and liberal thought leaders to do the same.
Yesterday, I talked about the divide in America between those who were shocked at the brutality of Hamas terrorism and others who marched in the streets to support Hamas and oppose Israel. Add to that the increasing number of antisemitic statements and violent actions against Jewish citizens in this country. It is time for leaders to speak up.
Noah Rothman says that “these are times that call for plain language” and reminds us of “the Republican Party’s leading lights and household names” who spoke out years ago against the “antisemitic sentiments on display in America’s streets” and criticized those who paraded through the University of Virginia’s campus. He concludes, “In 2017, it was incumbent on Republicans of conscience to anathematize the noxious elements orbiting their periphery. Democrats are now confronted with the same challenge.”
While it is true that the president and administration give no comfort to the toxic rhetoric from the streets, Noah Rothman says more needs to be done. “It won’t be done though inference, by declining to name names . . . Democrats had the opportunity to throttle the rising antisemitic sentiments in their coalition in their infancy” but now the problem is growing and Democrats will find it harder to speak out.
The lesson for us to learn from this is to confront evil and error when it first appears. When we give it a pass, it becomes more difficult later when the rhetoric and actions ratchet up.

Kerby Anderson
I think we all know that America is divided politically, but the greatest divide is between old and young. This was illustrated when young people took to the streets to support Hamas after the October 7 attack on Israel.
A Harvard/Harris survey conducted in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel illustrated this demographic divide. Older Americans believed the US was justified in branding Hamas as a “terrorist group” and believed the attack was “genocidal.” Younger Americans (18-24) disagreed with their elders.
The explanation for the difference in attitudes can be found on university campuses. Students are likely to be exposed to an intersectional framework. Intersectionality is a concept that discourages looking at unique individuals but instead focuses on groups as stereotypical images with certain traits.
Modern Jews, for example, enjoy financial stability and even political power. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority are seen as weak. According to this mindset, the powerful should be condemned while the weak should be supported.
Noah Rothman explains, “Once you subscribe to this philosophy, you just internalized the plain-old antisemitism. Through this framework, people are reduced to statistics.” These young people view the world in a way similar to Marxists. In other words, they view the world through the prism of class and other distinctions and thereby justify all sorts of evil and violence.
That is how these young people in the streets could turn a blind eye to the murder and mayhem of Hamas terrorists and place all the blame on Israel. This demographic divide shows the power of ideology and worldview to ignore evil.

Penna Dexter
What is education even for? Not, it seems, for proficiency in core subjects. At least not in Oregon or in other states that have been ratcheting down their educational standards. Recently, the Oregon Board of Education, by unanimous vote, decided to drop state graduation requirements that students be proficient in math, reading and writing. The board’s statement announcing the move called the standards “burdensome to teachers and students.”
Oregon suspended its proficiency requirement for graduation in 2020, a “pause” instituted during the height of the pandemic. As with many misguided Covid-related education policies, this one resulted in worse outcomes.
Rather than implement remedial measures to bring students up to speed, education bureaucrats blamed the assessment tool for students’ subpar performance. According to the Oregonian, the decision to extend the “pause” means: “Students in the K-12 system will not be held to an academic graduation standard for another four years.” Board members argued that proficiency requirements for graduation would harm marginalized students because many of them would have to take extra classes their senior year in order to demonstrate mastery of required disciplines.
Requiring extra effort on students’ part is wise policy. Throwing out basic requirements is not.
Ohio also tried this in 2020, abandoning “competency” in math and English. The Daily Signal points to an Ohio State University report showing a substantial decline in math performance for middle-and-high-schoolers.
The Daily Signal also reports that Baltimore City Public Schools relaxed math standards several times since 2010. After the 2023 state assessments, the district “has 13 high schools in which zero students are proficient in math.”
In similar misguided attempts to achieve “racial equity,” school districts in California,Michigan, New York, and South Carolina have tried lowering standards and expectations. According to the Daily Signal, “No district that has sought to cut academic standards has seen an improvement in academic performance.”
Idiotic no-expectations/no-failure policies will not help minorities and will destroy many students’ futures.

Kerby Anderson
Has Christianity made a positive impact on Western civilization? That was a question I posed a few years ago in a commentary and provided a short list of atheists who would agree with that statement. Now, there are more atheists coming to that conclusion.
Jonathon Van Maren writes about a number of atheists who he calls “King Agrippa Christians.” After the Apostle Paul gave his testimony and the gospel to the king, he said he was nearly persuaded. None of the atheists Van Maren mentions have become Christians, but they do acknowledge the important contribution of Christianity to our world.
One example is the historian Tom Holland, author of the book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. He has been on my radio program to talk about his book. His book and his interview make a convincing case for Christianity. Christian writers who have read the book praise it because it provides examples that various Christian historians have documented.
The ancient world was cruel. Spartans, for example, routinely killed off “imperfect” children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for physical pleasure. Only a few citizens had rights.
Holland explains that Christianity changed the prevailing views about sex and marriage. It demanded that men control themselves. It placed sex within marriage and within monogamy. And Christianity elevated the status of women. To put it simply, Christianity transformed the world.
Without Christianity, the Western world as we know it would not exist. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, “no one would have gotten woke.”
This growing list of atheists who say positive things about Christianity is encouraging. They are willing to admit that Christianity has been a force for good in our world.

Kerby Anderson
Free speech is an essential foundation for a free society. Unfortunately, authoritarians in this country and around the world want to stop the free exchange of ideas and information. That is why an eclectic group signed the “Westminster Declaration.”
Among the signers are psychologist Jordan Peterson, British biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, former ACLU president and law professor Nadine Strossen, editor Julian Assange, journalist Matt Taibbi, and author and researcher Michael Shellenberger. I have quoted many of these people and even had some of them on my radio program, even though we would disagree about many of the topics we cover from a biblical perspective.
“Coming from the left, right, and center, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.”
They warn that “government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’”
This is an important document. We can see from history that attacks on free speech and limits on religious liberty often are precursors to attacks on other liberties. These thought leaders understand what is at stake and are calling for governments and tech companies to respect free speech and stop the censorship.
I think we should all applaud them for calling attention to this important issue.

Kerby Anderson
When it comes to government economic numbers, you don’t know who to believe. A good example came from a recent TV interview with Janet Yellen. In case you aren’t familiar with her, she has been the Secretary of the Treasury since January 2021. Before that she was the chair of the Federal Reserve for four years.
She was asked if America could afford a second war when the US debt-to-GDP was at 122%. Of course, she said America can afford to stand with Israel and Ukraine. Then she added, “I don’t know where the 122% number comes from, the US Federal Debt to GDP ratio is about 98% right now.”
That statement is troubling since that 122% comes from the Federal Reserve chart posted by the St. Louis Fed. I could post the chart. But let me suggest that you do the math yourself.
The national debt clock lists the national debt at $33.6 trillion. You can then go to any website and find that the estimated GDP for this year is $26.9 trillion. Divide 26.9 into 33.6 and you come up with 124.9%. She says she doesn’t know where the 122% number comes from. It comes from dividing GDP into the national debt. It comes from looking at the graph of the Federal Reserve, where she worked for four years.
Then where does she get the 98% number? That comes from the Congressional Budget Office and strikes many of us as just another manipulated economic estimate. Because if you look at the Federal Reserve chart, you will see the debt-to-GDP hasn’t been 98% in a decade.
The percentage is important. In previous commentaries, I have documented that nearly all (98%) nations that have surpassed a 130 percent debt-to-GDP ratio eventually defaulted. We are much closer to that dangerous territory than Janet Yellen will admit.

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday I talked about the post Hamas world. I ended with an observation that many Americans have developed an even more negative opinion of our universities because presidents at these elite institutions could not condemn the evil actions by Hamas against Israel. Major donors are pulling their money from these elite schools, while administrators and professors with a conscience have taken to criticizing moral cowardice.
Zeke Emanuel is the current vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania.  He wrote an op-ed in the New York Timesand complained about the current state of US higher education. He believes that the statements blaming Israel for the Hamas attack are reprehensible.
At Harvard, many donors are withdrawing their support. More than 30 student organizations signed a statement blaming Israel for the killing done by Hamas. The president offered a bland and ambiguous statement about the Hamas attack. Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers said in a tweet that he had “never been as disillusioned and alienated” as he was with the student and administrative actions at Harvard.
Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer announced his resignation from the Dean’s Executive Board at the Kennedy School saying he and his wife “are disappointed by the lax statements and lack of clear position by the university officials against the murderous terrorism on Hamas.”
Marc Rowan is the chairman of the Wharton School of Business board of trustees. He called for the university president and the president of the university board of trustees to resign. More than a half dozen major donors have written to the university announcing their intention to cut ties with the university because they see a culture of antisemitism.
Many of the people speaking out hoped that these universities would see the light. Since they have not, they will now feel the heat.

Kerby Anderson
Most events in history are mere footnotes in history books, but there is some reason to believe the Hamas attack on Israel will change just about everything. That includes everything from the current US policy on the Middle East to American attitudes towards university campuses.
Victor Davis Hanson is one commentator convinced of the significant changes. He notes that it has been 22 years since we saw crowds in the Middle East celebrating the killing of 3,000 civilians. This time it was the cheering of the murder of people in Israel.
He argues that the current administration’s policy of appeasement of Iran and the gift of billions of dollars to Gaza and the West Bank are less likely to pass Congress, though I must admit that the president tried his best in a television event from the Oval Office to make the case for humanitarian support. But the attempt to continue giving aid to terrorist groups or the attempt to normalize relations with theocratic Iran seem destined to failure.
Hanson also points to the difference in attitude toward the Ukrainian military and the Israeli military. The State Department put few restrictions on Ukrainian retaliation, including operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. By contrast, some in the State Department already called for a “ceasefire” while others called for a “proportionate” response from Israel. Can you imagine any American diplomat trying to lecture Ukraine about ending the “cycle of violence?”
Finally, America’s perspective on higher education seems to be changing. University presidents and professors could not condemn the Hamas attack. Scores of student groups pledged their support of Hamas and the Palestinians. Hanson says they seem like “kindred spirit to the anti-Semitism, intolerance, and fascism of the 1930s German universities.”
These are just a few examples of what has changed since the beginning of this month.

Penna Dexter
Israel’s critics have denounced even it’s very first efforts to defend itself against Hamas’s horrific massacre. These voices warn that any civilian casualties will be seen as war crimes. And it’s true: the deliberate targeting of civilians is a violation of international law and the laws of war. But unlike Hamas, Israel does not target civilians.
Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich asks this question in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:“Does international law require a nation to choose between committing war crimes and having war crimes committed against it?” He says “The answer is no.”
Professor Kontorovich teaches at George Mason University Scalia School of Law and heads up the international law department at a Jerusalem think tank. Since civilians often become victims, “countries like Israel, “he writes, “resort to war only as self-defense, which, according to the United Nations Charter, is every nation’s inherent right.”
Hamas launches its rockets from civilian population centers. Its weapons infrastructure is located among civilians, by design, as shields and for propaganda. The professor points out that “Hamas has violated international law by hiding among civilians.” Hamas has even ordered Gazans not to flee to avoid Israel’s defensive campaign. He says the presence of civilians in and around military targets does not mean those targets are immune from attack.
Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2005 and has attacked Israel from there several times. In defending against those attacks, Israel targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure.  With this horrendous attack, Israel must operate with the knowledge that “Hamas’s goal is the annihilation of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.” Destroying Hamas is now, rightly, Israel’s existential goal.
Professor Kontorovich writes: “When military objectives and civilians are intermingled, siege aimed at the former will also affect the latter.”  Siege is a part of lawful war. He wonders whether those who deny Israel’s right to self-defense “are merely naïve or wish to leave Israel perpetually exposed to genocide.”
Israel cannot look away. 

Kerby Anderson
For many months, I have been saying that if the 2024 presidential election becomes a rematch of 2020, many voters will stay home. Recent polls confirm my prediction.
There is another possibility. The lack of enthusiasm for Biden and Trump might increase the possibility of more Americans voting for a third-party candidate. The announcement by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that he is running as an independent makes that possibility even more likely.
Of course, he is not the only third-party candidate. The Libertarian Party and the Green Party will no doubt nominate candidates that will appear on most ballots. The No Labels Party is a centrist party that may nominate one Democrat and one Republican for the ticket.
This scenario certainly explains why leaders in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have engaged in a scorched earth campaign against these parties and their candidates. The attacks last time on Jill Stein (Green Party) and Evan McMullin (Independent) will pale in comparison to the attacks we will see against third-party candidates.
We will be hearing that voting for a third-party candidate is throwing your vote away. It is not. The two major political parties don’t own your vote. They need to earn your vote. If you see a candidate worthy of your vote, you should vote for that person.
We will also be hearing that voting for a third-party candidate takes votes away from another political party. But that assumes the voter would have voted for a main-party candidate if a third-party candidate wasn’t on the ballot. That is a difficult argument to prove. Perhaps the best example of that is the 2000 Presidential election in which Democrats argued that Ralph Nader’s candidacy kept Al Gore from winning Florida.
This may be the year of the third-party, which will remind the major parties that they don’t own your vote.