Dangerous: ‘Illegal Orders’ Theater. Ukraine on Edge. Ken Burns: We Stole Our Government from the Iroquois. Sex Offenders & Homelessness. More
Was anybody really fooled by their fake innocence? Yeah, six members of Congress solemnly tell soldiers that they can disobey the Commander-in-Chief’s orders and immediately try to wiggle out of their own mess.
Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut, and one of the six, might have slipped up in adding his voice to the chorus. The Washington Examiner reports:
The War Department announced Monday that it will conduct a “thorough review” of “serious allegations of misconduct” levied against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired Navy captain.
The review will “determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures,” according to the department’s statement, which was published on social media.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that five of the six do not fall under War Department Jurisdiction. But Kelly does. President Trump’s Truth Social response was arguably reckless and over the top, but James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal observes:
One doesn’t have to approve of the way President Donald Trump responded to several congressional Democrats to deplore their reckless suggestion that U.S. troops should disobey the president’s orders.
Another of the six is Senator Elissa Slotkin, inevitably identified as a moderate. PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser’s Morning Briefing is headlined “Elissa Slotkin Is a Classic Study in Dem Doublespeak.” Kruiser says that the Michigan Rep. is “struggling to put the cat back in the box.” Surprisingly, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz did not let Slotkin wiggle out of her bind. You might be interested in what she said when asked point-blank if President Trump had ever issued an illegal order:
“To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela,” Slotkin said Sunday during an ABC News interview.
So, it was just disobey-military-orders theater. Not dangerous or anything and not confusing for a young soldier who is being sent in harm’s way. The video was reminiscent of the letter of the 51 former intelligence officials who said that they never said Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation—they adamantly insisted that they had only said that it looked like Russian disinformation.
President Trump’s 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine has been whittled down to 19 points. There is a report that Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner hatched the plan and sprang it fully formed upon a surprised Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is now in Geneva negotiating changes.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues that a good peace would feature a Ukrainian military strong enough to defend itself, backed up western guarantees to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty. Walter Russell Mead writes in the same outlet about the plan in “Another Attempt at Peace in Ukraine.”
President Trump’s latest foray into Ukraine diplomacy is having the usual effects. When Mr. Trump’s 28-point plan, twice the size of Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points in World War I, first leaked, supporters of stronger Western backing for Ukraine were appalled. Mr. Trump’s most impassioned critics returned to their happy place, reviving Russiagate charges that because of either blackmail or ideological affinity, the American president is a Putin fanboy, eager to do the Kremlin’s bidding. More soberly, Ukraine’s supporters on both sides of the Atlantic argued that Mr. Trump wasn’t bringing the West’s enormous advantages in wealth, population and productive capacity to bear on Russia. …
If there’s one consistent theme in Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, it’s that rich and technologically advanced American allies must take primary responsibility for their own security. … Washington is therefore confronting Europe with a simple choice: Back up Ukraine or watch it go under.
Meanwhile, the Federalist supports the Trump plan and charges that “warmongers” are unjustly trying to pin the Neville Chamberlain label on President Trump. Vice President J.D. Vance takes to X to say he believes we already have invested too much:
But the level of passion over this one issue when your own country has serious problems is bonkers. It disgusts me. Show some passion for your own country.
Guess what did go under—though probably just for the time being. The James Comey and Letitia James indictments were dismissed, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy predicted would happen. A Wall Street Journal editorial describes the Trump administration as “The Gang That Couldn’t Indict Straight.” George Washington law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley cites problems with the cases as filed, but they were both “dismissed without prejudice,” which likely means we haven’t seen the last of them.
Many Americans are no doubt glued to the screen for Ken Burns’ latest documentary on the American Revolution. National Review’s Rich Lowry is disappointed that the authoritative documentarian, whose film is narrated by Peter Coyote (“as close as we have today to ‘the voice of God’”), feeds us “a childish canard” about our national origins.
Burns makes out that the nascent United States modeled itself upon an Iroquois confederation—this sort of outdoes the humdrum land acknowledgement, doesn’t it? Lowry writes:
This is a nice fairy tale, but it has no connection to reality, and Burns and his colleagues — who worked on their project for a decade — had time to verify the claim. …
We are told that Benjamin Franklin “proposed that the British colonies form a similar union,” the so-called Albany Plan. He printed a famous cartoon of a chopped-up snake illustrating his point with the legend, “Join or Die.” The narrator continues, “Twenty years later, ‘Join or Die’ would be a rallying cry in the most consequential revolution in history.”
There’s much to unpack in this passage, which is carefully constructed to be misleading without being flagrantly false (although it doesn’t quite succeed).
Just for the record, our Iroquois forefathers seem to have somewhat eschewed the Noble Savage image in favor of mercilessly biting off the fingers, digit by digit, of those who ran afoul of their rules. Maybe Mr. Burns highlights this in a forthcoming installment. Wow! Here we are, an Iroquois nation, and yet there is a “whiteness pandemic.” Fortunately, a midwestern university is offering a program to “re-educate” parents to help their children confront the scourge of whiteness.
Here’s another apparent scourge: sex offenders among the homeless population. “Trump is Right About the Link Between Sex Offenders and Homelessness,” writes Devon Kurtz in City Journal. Activist critics try to ignore the problem:
The highest-risk sex offenders are also the most likely to be homeless. Sex offenders designated as sexually violent predators were 77 percent more likely to be homeless compared with low-to-moderate-risk sex offenders. Moreover, sex offenders on probation, such as for low-level offenses like indecent exposure, were 51 percent less likely to be homeless than sex offenders who were not on supervision….
Other homeless people do, however, face the brunt of the public safety risks of living in proximity to sex offenders. Homeless people are nine times more likely than the general population to be victims of sexual assault. …
Less lurid but also devastating to society is the scourge of kids who arrive at college unable to do middle school math. An editorial at the Wall Street Journal addresses the problem through the “math horror show” at San Diego University.
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker considers what will happen in a few years “when Trump has left the building.” Baker sees divisions in the MAGA movement and asks whether it will survive. Matthew Hennessey looks at something nearer—the midterms—and begs the president to go for a traditional Republican, supply-side solution, which Hennessey argues could bring prosperity in time for a good midterm showing. What happens when a fire alarm goes off, and there is a woman who has escaped her caregivers present? Here’s what:
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: You know what this reminds me of is I wish that there could be like a huge national sound system. And we would all wake up and they’d say “Attention! Attention! We have found the problem, and we have solved it. He is gone!
[APPLAUSE]
