Mister Mayor and September 11. The Dumbest Generation. Senate Stakes. She Let Her Kid Go For a Walk, and Now She Has a Criminal Record. School Choice & Fertility. More
Friday, we will solemnly remember the terrorist attacks on America. It’s been 25 years since that terrible day.
There will be a full schedule of events in New York. But should New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani attend? No, says Rudy Giuliani. “America’s Mayor Tells Mamdani to Skip 9/11 Memorial Ceremonies,” blares the New York Post. “Zo Away!”
Former Mayor Giuliani, who rose spectacularly to the occasion that dreadful day, isn’t the only objector. A petition urging Mamdani’s exclusion from the ceremonies has garnered 1000,000 signatures—including that of former New York Governor George Pataki.
Mayor Mamdani has announced that he plans to attend. Matthew Hennessey of the Wall Street Journal is disgusted with the way Mayor Mamdani addressed the issue:
The current mayor of New York has done and said many things in his short tenure that have annoyed me. What he did on Friday made me want to punch a wall. After signing a pair of executive orders recognizing the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Mayor Zohran Mamdani handed the ceremonial pen to his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, and instructed her to hand it to the man to her left.
That man was Ramzi Kassem, the mayor’s chief counsel. Attentive readers of Free Expression will remember the name. Mr. Kassem is the terror lawyer who represented Ahmed al-Darbi.
Hennessey gives a sketch of the New York Chief Counsel’s famous client:
Mr. Kassem was Mr. al-Darbi’s lawyer when Mr. al-Darbi pleaded guilty in 2014 to participating in al Qaeda’s bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. One person was killed and a dozen injured in the attack, which spilled 90,000 barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Aden.
Fun fact: Mr. al-Darbi’s brother-in-law, Khalid al-Mihdhar, was one of the hijackers who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001….
Everyone deserves a lawyer. But by deliberately handing his ceremonial pen to this man, Mr. Mamdani mocked the loss his city suffered on 9/11. And he forced Ms. Tisch to participate in that mockery. He might as well have turned to the cameras and winked.
How has it come to this?
Mayor Mamdani says he will use the ceremony to “honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack.” What about recalling the terror campaign against the United States? “A 9/11 Story Some Want Us to Forget” is the headline on John J. Miller’s story, also in Free Expression. Martin Gurri writes in City Journal about “September 11’s Long and Bloody Geopolitical Road.” The surprising subhead:
The attacks inaugurated a struggle to the death that dragged on for decades and only now might be reaching its conclusion—in Iran.
The political season traditionally starts the day after Labor Day, though it feels like it’s been going on forever. The GOP’s first-ever midterm convention gets underway on Wednesday in Dallas. As President Trump takes center stage in Dallas, the “GOP faces brutal midterm headwinds as Republicans paint election as ‘competition with communism’.”
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal addresses “Trump and the Senate Stakes.” The editors conclude:
The midterm election in a second presidential term is often bad for the party in the White House, with Bill Clinton a notable exception. The campaign still has two months to run, and Republicans might be able to avoid a Senate wipeout. But if they do lose their majority, Mr. Trump will find his Presidency in a two-year state of siege, and he’ll be the main reason.
“Everything Is Bigger in Texas — Including the Senate Stakes” is Josh Hammer’s take on Talarico vs. Paxton in the Lone Star state. The most fascinating phenomenon is the emergence of the Social Democrats of America. The kids seem to love socialism.
In “The Boom They Never Saw Coming,” Larry Kudlow writes about a surge in investment, manufacturing, productivity, and jobs. But will voters see it in November? This isn’t good news: “Oil Nears $100, Dow Futures Dip.”
Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write about this in “Socialism and the Dumbest Generation“:
Say socialism and college-educated young people start to dance and cheer. But when you ask them about the specifics of what it would mean, they quickly sour on it as shown in a recent Harvard Caps/Harris poll….
Sixty-eight percent of young voters say they want to own their own home. Meanwhile Cea Weaver, Zohran Mamdani’s director of the New York City Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, has declared that “private property and . . . especially home ownership is a weapon of white supremacy” and that housing should be regarded as a collective good….
The share of 18- to 24-year-olds who attend college has increased by roughly half since 1969. It seems our institutions of higher learning are busy producing the dumbest generation—one that succumbs easily to the social-media sirens championing socialism while in reality they yearn for the same old elements of the American Dream their parents wanted—owning a home, getting paid well for good work and maybe starting a business.
So maybe the dumbest generation needs better schools? Eve Mosknwitz of the aptly named Success Academy explains in the Washington Post why New York’s Education Department doesn’t want parents to see students’ AP scores. Could school choice ease the fertility crisis? William Mattox thinks it might:
Kevin and Alissa Kashani had a third child after moving to Florida, where a good education doesn’t require paying tuition or taking on a prohibitive mortgage.
More on Education. “Is It Right to Hold Your Kids Back in Kindergarten?” asks a Free Press headline: “‘People will do anything to get an edge,’ said one Florida mom. ‘At what point does it become too ridiculous? When does it stop?’”
Is it right to let your child go for a walk alone? A Virginia mother did that. “And Now She’s a Convicted Criminal,” The Free Press reports. Jonathan Adler reports:
Nothing happened to Sam (the child), at least not physically. But for her choice, Parkinson was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a first-degree misdemeanor in Virginia. In August, she was convicted by a local judge after a bench trial in the Williamsburg Juvenile & Domestic Relations District Court and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Knowing Karyann Parkinson (the mother)—a then-neighbor and former student—and having attended the trial, it seems she was punished less for making a debatable parenting choice and more for refusing to come to heel when questioned about her decision. It’s not so much that she let Sam collect goose feathers so much as that she did not genuflect to the proper authorities. That makes the case no less of an outrage. Parkinson has found herself in every parents’ nightmare—hence why it made national news. So how, exactly, can a mother be given a suspended jail sentence for simply letting her son go for a walk?
We began this morning with 9/11. It’s not the only terrorist attack the left would like to forget. Don’t miss this Free Beacon exclusive: “UN Sought to ‘Cover-Up’ UNRWA Staff’s Role in Oct 7 Attack and Ties to Hamas by Undermining Internal Probe, US Watchdog Finds.”
Dumbest Couple. Instead of killing a fatted calf to welcome home the prodigals, King Charles has ruled out a royal role for Meghan and Harry:
[A letter from the King] specifies that the Duke and Duchess do not represent the sovereign, and are not working members of the Royal family.
The couple’s use of His and Her Royal Highness remains in abeyance, it states, and any charity work “is a personal matter for them both and undertaken in their private capacity”.
The letter adds: “In short, their position is akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests.”
