A Censure

Representative Rich McCormick’s (R, GA) proposed censure of Michigan Progressive-Democrat Representative Rashida Tlaib was passed by the House Tuesday night 234-188. Twenty-two of Tlaib’s fellow Progressive-Democrat Representatives voted to approve the censure, so rank is her bigotry.

Included in the censure resolution that was voted up were such bigotries as these:

Whereas Representative Rashida Tlaib, within 24 hours of the October 7 barbaric attack on Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, representing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, defended the brutal rapes, murders, be-headings, and kidnapping—including of Americans—by Hamas as justified “resistance” to the “apartheid state”

And

Whereas on October 18, 2023, Representative Tlaib continued to knowingly spread the false narrative that Israel intentionally bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17 after United States intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and President Biden assessed with high confidence that Israel did not cause the explosion

And

Whereas on November 3, 2023, Representative Tlaib published on social media a video containing the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

Tlaib also is on two subcommittees each of the House Financial Services, Natural Resources, and Oversight and Reform committees. She needs to be removed from those committees and consigned to the back bench.

The Censure Resolution can be read here.

Selfish

And from that, a Texas bill that would create universal/State-wide school choice—paid for by Education Savings Accounts of $10,500 per K-12 student—is on the brink of failure to pass. Much progress has been made, courtesy of Governor Greg Abbott (R) having convened a special session of the Texas legislature for the purpose. However, here we are on the last day of that session (as I write), and the failure brink is caused by a few rural Republican representatives.

The bill would let any Texas parent withdraw his student child from a public school that parent deemed unsuitable or failing to educate his son or daughter and transfer him/her to a different school (typically charter, voucher, or private) more to his liking.

However.

…some rural Republicans have joined Democrats in resisting ESAs. Their claim is that because their districts have few private schools, education choice doesn’t help their constituents.

Be clear on that. Because a rural Republican’s constituents wouldn’t be helped by universal school choice (I’m eliding the questionability of that claim), no one anywhere in Texas should be allowed that choice.

How very Progressive-Democrat of these selfish rural…Republicans. In the event, Abbott has committed to extending the current special session or calling a new special session, if his school choice bill does not pass in the current session.

“Backlash”

The Wall Street Journal opened one of its Friday editorials with this immoral bit of misapprehension:

President Biden has been stalwart in backing Israel’s right to destroy Hamas after the October 7 massacre. But a political backlash is growing, in the Democratic Party and abroad, to rein in Israel before it can achieve its military objectives.

No, it’s not a political backlash that’s growing in the Progressive-Democratic Party and “abroad.” It’s overt political support for Hamas and the terrorist mayhem this terrorist gang is, and has been for decades, committing.

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s hand-picked Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is shamefully uncertain about the terrorism of Hamas. As paraphrased by WSJ:

Mr Blinken presented “humanitarian pauses” as critical to protecting Gazans, getting them aid, and freeing Israeli and US hostages.

On the contrary, Gazans are best protected by Hamas stopping their use of Gazans as shields in the fighting and their use of Gazans’ residences, schools, and hospitals as weapons storage caches and as rocket launching facilities.

When the Hamas terrorists (excuse the redundancy, but the emphasis is too badly needed) stop stealing the aid that is coming in, then Gazans will start getting it.

Israel already has offered to discuss a ceasefire—for which Blinken’s humanitarian pauses are just a disingenuous euphemism—after the Hamas terrorists release all of those hostages. Hamas has refused the offer.

On the flip side, all any ceasefire—regardless of duration or geographic scope or label—will do is give Hamas time to regroup and refit along with space to relocate and re-hide the hostages. It’s disgusting that anyone in the Biden administration supports such succor for the terrorists, much less that our President and SecState so overtly do.

Massie is Disappointing

The House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning antisemitism on college campuses by a vote of 396-23.

A single Republican—Congressman Thomas Massie (R, KY)—was one of the 23 voting against the resolution. He posted his rationalization on X:

Free speech means protecting speech you don’t like, not just speech you do like.
Also, who defines antisemitism?

This is a mindless quibble. The resolution did not ban any speech, or much less antisemitic speech, however antisemitism might be defined or by whom; it only decried it. Which is itself an exercise in free speech.

Worse, quibbles of this nature—and Massie knows better; as a talented and successful politician, words are his stock in trade—are dangerous, diluting as they do the serious nature of free speech, including the free speech right to speak against others’ speech, and including applying consequences to others that don’t prevent them from continuing to speak. Even if those others don’t like it.

Ceasefire

The Editors at The Wall Street Journal told a sob story of countries are pushing for pause in Israeli attacks to allow more relief for civilians. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s SecState Antony Blinken appears to be sympathetic to such a ceasefire:

[W]e have an obligation to do everything we can, if Hamas is not going to do it, to look out for people in Gaza. So, we are working on a mechanism that can get fuel to where it’s needed, particularly hospitals, bakeries, desalination plants.

That mechanism centers on some sort of ceasefire.

Then the Editors turned on the sobbing waterworks, crying over babies in Gaza hospital neonatal ICUs, patients requiring respiratory equipment or dialysis machines, Gaza hospitals low on fuel for their electrical power needs, and on and on, in their own support for a ceasefire. These really are tragedies in progress, but the Editors shed their crocodile tears all the while shamefully doing only a once over lightly attribution of Gazan deaths, and the increasing risks to those babies, hospital patients, and the hospitals themselves to Hamas’ use of those civilians and hospitals—and hostages—as shields for the Hamas terrorists.

No. The only beneficiary of a ceasefire—or a “temporary, localized pause” in SecState Antony Blinken’s cynical euphemism and between which NSC spokesman John Kirby so disingenuously pretends to draw a distinction—is the terrorist Hamas. Not at all beneficiary would be Gazan civilians, babies, hospital patients, hospitals, hostages, or future hostages such a payoff to the terrorists would engender.

The only ceasefire there needs to be, there should be, is the one at the end when Hamas is utterly destroyed, and there’s nothing left at which to fire.

Full stop.