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September 2025

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Lawmakers Should Endure the Consequences of Their Policies By J.B. Shurk

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/lawmakers_should_endure_the_consequences_of_their_policies.html

Those who wish to disarm us shouldn’t have armed guards.

Sundance over at The Conservative Treehouse brought to my attention an effort by some House Republicans to increase private security for members of Congress.  The Treehouse links to an article from Politico that describes one budgeting option that would grant as much as $25,000 each month to individual lawmakers so that they may “have access to around-the-clock personal security.”  These security guarantees would be in addition to current levels of federal spending for lawmakers’ safety — including those funds that assist Capitol Police in partnering with state and local law enforcement.

Over a haunting still image that shows defenseless Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska sitting on a North Carolina train just before a black man brutally stabbed her from behind and murdered her last month, Sundance poses this question: “What incentive exists to make sure American society is safe from domestic regional violence, if the representatives of the regions don’t ever have to concern themselves with such matters?”

It is an excellent question.  It is astounding to me that Democrats (and squishy RINOs) can get up in front of television cameras and demand gun confiscation while insisting on taxpayer-funded security details for themselves.  Ordinary people can’t afford private security.  That’s precisely why they have a natural right to defend their lives in the best ways that they can — and why the Second Amendment explicitly protects that right in the Constitution.  Lawmakers who walk around with armed guards have no business disarming citizens.  

Before Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez moans, “It’s different because members of Congress are public figures,” allow me to say, “Hogwash!”  Most Americans can’t identify federal lawmakers.  Even the more famous ones look completely different in real life without an inch of makeup on their faces.  But try walking down certain city streets with a red “Make America Great Again” hat for everyone to see!  Or try waving an American flag in neighborhoods filled with foreigners who view that flag with contempt!  

Regular Americans understand that they are sitting ducks in some parts of the United States.  If Kyle Rittenhouse had been unarmed amid the Antifa-BLM riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin five years ago, he would not be alive today.  Because of his heroic actions, Democrat politicians have painted a target on Kyle’s back for the rest of his life.  Why should members of Congress receive thousands of dollars of taxpayer-funded security each month when Kyle does not?

This brings us to a larger point.  Why should members of Congress be insulated from the consequences of their destructive policies?

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Stu Smith “Destroy the Idea of America” The People’s Conference for Palestine put academic radicalism on full display.

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/peoples-conference-for-palestine-gaza

Over Labor Day weekend, thousands gathered for the Second Annual People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit. The conference featured a lineup of speakers who variously called on activists to “destroy the idea of America in Americans’ heads,” identified Palestine as “the vanguard of the second wave of decolonization,” and told attendees to “bring[] the fight back home.” One of America’s most prominent live streamers called for “revolutionary optimism” and increased agitation.

The event drew an array of activists and ideologues. Many youth organizations, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Young Democratic Socialists of America, organized the conference. The speakers included academics, doctors, journalists, politicians, nonprofit leaders, and even a former UFC champion. Often, those most likely to sympathize with lawbreakers and call for direct action were the professors—underscoring the need to root out such extremism in higher education.

The conference’s “guiding principle” was “Gaza is our compass.” UCLA professor Loubna Qutami, a cofounder of the Palestinian Youth Movement and a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective, expanded on that theme in her speech. “Gaza fuels our moral clarity, our political will, and our sense of responsibility to act with integrity, with vigilance, and with organized discipline,” she said.

Qutami also implicitly praised what leftists call “diversity of tactics”—the strategy of using variously legal and illegal means to achieve a political goal. She highlighted how some pro-Palestinian activists have variously “shut down bridges, flooded streets, organized die-ins and sit-ins, rallies, marches . . . pickets, fundraisers, and conferences,” while others have “doubled down on campaigns for boycott, divestment, and sanctions” or “confronted tech, logistics, media, and other private industries colluding in genocide.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Keir Starmer has emboldened the enemies of humanity The world leaders ‘recognising Palestine’ are betraying the Jewish nation and the West itself. Brendan O’Neill

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/22/keir-starmer-has-emboldened-the-enemies-of-humanity/

If you want a state, kill some Jews. That’s the sick message Sir Keir Starmer has just broadcast to the world. He says his recognition of a State of Palestine while Hamas continues to hold half-starved Jews in its dank tunnels and still dreams of annihilating the Jewish State is not a ‘reward for terror’. He isn’t fooling anyone, possibly not even himself. Somewhere in the recesses of what remains of his moral sensibility, even he must know that bestowing legitimacy on a ‘state’ part-ruled by a neo-fascist militia is an act of lethal cowardice that benefits no one but the neo-fascists.

Starmer made his Palestine statement in true neo-imperial style. In a glossy video message, he said his act of recognition is an attempt to counter the ‘growing horrors’ in Gaza and to ‘keep alive the possibility of peace and a two-state solution’. The Foreign Office has already updated its maps of Israel and the Palestinian Territories to reflect the PM’s decree that a State of Palestine should exist. Do these people think it’s still the 1920s and puffed-up ministers in London’s opulent offices of state have the ‘right’ to redraw the map of the Middle East as they see fit?

The most maddening part of Starmer’s Palestine posturing is his claim that this is about ‘keeping alive’ the hope of peace. That was also said by the other states that recognised Palestine yesterday: Australia, Canada and Portugal. Their imperious arrogance is outdone only by their geopolitical obliviousness. The idea that it assists peace to give an army of anti-Semites what it wants less than two years after it slaughtered more Jews in one day than anyone else since the Nazis is preposterous. In truth, it emboldens the enemies of humanity, the neo-medieval murderers of Hamas and their allies in the regressive Islamist project, by telling them that butchery works. Mass murder brings benefits. Rape a Jew, get a nation.

Starmer criticised Hamas, calling it a ‘brutal terror organisation’. He said it can play ‘no role’ in this State of Palestine the aloof leaders of the West think they can magick up with grand talk. He can have as many pops at Hamas as he likes. It will do nothing to alter the galling truth that, objectively, in a truly material sense, he has handed a victory to this genocidal terror outfit founded with the express intention of destroying the Jewish nation. During a time of unforgiving war between the Jewish State and a militia of Jew-killers, he has taken action that directly boosts the moral fortunes of the latter. Shameful doesn’t cover it.

Hamas itself recognises this. ‘Hamas claims victory after Starmer hands out a “prize for terrorism”’, says the front page of today’s Daily Mail. This follows Hamas’s gloating over Starmer’s ‘prize’. Starmer’s statement is ‘a victory for Palestinian rights and the justice of our cause’, the terrorists said. And it will ‘send a clear message’ to Israel, they crowed. Hamas refers to Western leaders’ recognition of a State of Palestine as ‘one of the fruits of 7 October’. This will be your legacy, Sir Keir: you gifted ‘fruit’ to the mass killers of Jews. You pleased the men who beat Shani Louk to death by assenting to one of their aims. You brought a smile to the faces of fascists.

It’s this simple: if you take action that isolates the Jewish State and delights its murderous foes, then you have forfeited your right to be considered a serious leader or even a moral person. This isn’t about whether we think there should be a Palestinian state in the future. It’s not about whether people think the two-state solution is still a goer or is dead in the water courtesy of Hamas’s fascistic pogrom. That debate will continue. No, it’s about the fact that, right now, a bloody war is raging between the Jewish nation and the Jews’ enemies, and what our leaders do and say in that moment really matters. It impacts on the battlefield over there and on the political future here.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Starmer is worse than Chamberlain’ Andrew Fox on the folly of recognising a Palestinian state. VIDEO

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/video/starmer-is-worse-than-chamberlain/

Keir Starmer’s recognition of Palestine has been hailed by Hamas as a victory for its cause. The anti-Semitic army has thanked the UK prime minister for rewarding the 7 October pogrom, the deadliest day for Jews since the Nazi Holocaust. Here, Andrew Fox – former British Army officer and co-host of the podcast, The Brink – argues that this is a moment of shame for Britain. Starmer’s gambit, he says, will do nothing for ordinary Palestinians and will not bring an end to the war in Gaza. It will only embolden those committed to Israel’s destruction. Watch, share and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

After PM Starmer Recognizes ‘Palestine’, Terror State Demands $2.7 Trillion in ‘Reparations’ Reparations “roughly the size of Britain’s total economy,” are “a good place to start.” by Daniel Greenfield

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-pm-starmer-recognizes-palestine-terror-state-demands-2-7-trillion-in-reparations/

They say that “no good deed goes unpunished”, but it’s actually “no bad deed, no shameful appeasement of Islamic terrorists and cowardly collaboration with the enemies of human civilization goes unpunished.”

And Islamic terrorists are more than happy to punish their own useful idiots, seeing any appeasement as a sign of weakness that they can jump on like an unaccompanied six-year-old girl not wearing a Burka.

After PM Keir Starmer recognized the PLO terrorist state, the terrorists now want $2 trillion.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is reportedly demanding that the United Kingdom pay it reparations, which could be worth up to trillions of dollars, after U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer on Sunday formally recognized a Palestinian state.

The Daily Mail’s report says that “some international law experts” have said that reparations worth two trillion British pounds, “roughly the size of Britain’s total economy,” are “a good place to start.”

“Abbas, who has a long history of threatening to sue Britain, is demanding ‘reparations in accordance with international law’ based on the value of the land which was under British rule between 1917 and 1948,” the Daily Mail reported.

That’s about $2.7 trillion.

Why not? Starmer has shown he’s weak and an appeaser, so the terrorists are doing to him what they’ve been doing to Israel and America, pushing to see how far he’ll give. Even if they don’t get $2 trillion (the high offer), they expect to get something, billions more in foreign aid, or even millions.

The point is the leverage. And when you’re a cringing appeaser, they will never let up.

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charles Lipson Jimmy Kimmel is back But let the public – not the FCC – decide what to watch

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://thespectator.com/topic/jimmy-kimmel-is-back/

Jimmy Kimmel’s broadcast has made a lot more news off the air than on it. The latest is that ABC will resume the show Tuesday night and that some 400 Hollywood celebrities have signed a petition supporting their friend. Stop the presses! Today’s celebrities support leftist politics! So does ABC’s corporate parent, Disney, the folks who lost a fortune by remaking Snow White as a progressive wet dream.

It would be a cruel joke to add, “If another 53 celebrity’s sign up to support Kimmel, his audience will double.” Actually, he will get a lot of viewers on his first night back. After that, viewers will remember why they didn’t watch.

The joke about Kimmel’s small audience may be cruel, but it captures two points. One is that Kimmel’s audience, like that of his mainstream peers, is a shriveled replica of Johnny Carson’s huge numbers. The second is that celebrity culture, represented by those 400 signatures, is badly out-of-touch with a broad swath of the American public and clueless about the most important lesson in marketing: don’t insult your audience. When you do that, the audience walks away, as they have from Miller Lite beer, Jaguar cars, and Cracker Barrel restaurants.

It’s even dumber to alienate your viewing audience when the media environment is as tough as it is today. With the internet and stream content, the market has grown more and more fragmented. As it has, the profitability of late-night shows has shrunk. Their traditional format has also grown stale. After the host finishes a short monologue, he sits behind a desk and talks with one guest at a time. The guests are familiar faces, fresh from Botox, promoting their latest ventures.

With this reduced viewership and dull format comes reduced profitability. The only winner has been a show with a different format and a different political angle. Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld is funny and snarky, but he never takes himself too seriously. He sits in a circle of chairs, talking with a group of guests, some of them regulars, some new for that episode. The goal, which has been wildly successful, is to draw in younger, more conservative viewers, who already like Fox News, and, according to polling, are shifting from Democrat to Republican.

Gutfeld, unlike Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, is performing on a conservative cable channel, not a mainstream network meant to appeal to all viewpoints across a wide demographic. Kimmel and Colbert seem to have missed the point, turning their mainstream broadcast slots into tendentious political platforms, mimicking MSNBC and CNN just as those cable networks were imploding.

Kimmel and Colbert’s decision to alienate half their potential audience is far different from the older, blander days of late-night talk shows, when the hosts poked gentle fun at both sides. Their goal was to appeal to the Upper Midwest as well as the Upper East Side and to provide calming entertainment to a broad national audience as they eased into bedtime. It’s not rocket science, and they knew it.

No one understood this logic better than Johnny Carson, by-far the most successful late-night host of all time. “Tell me the last time that Jack Benny, Red Skelton, any comedian, used his show to do serious issues. That’s not what I’m there for. Can’t they see that?” he told CBS’ Mike Wallace in 1979. “It’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling.”

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

When Jordan’s Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem Daniel Greenfield

By on September 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/liberating-our-jerusalem/

Written in 1922

When Jordan’s Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, drove out its Jewish population and illegally annexed the city– the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the mercenary officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim gangs under their command to make the partition and occupation of Jerusalem possible.

The Jews living in the free half of Jerusalem continued to be killed by Jordanian Muslim snipers. The victims of those years of Muslim occupation included Yaffa Binyamin, a 14-year-old girl sitting on the balcony of her own house and a Christian carpenter working on the Notre Dame Convent.

Under Muslim occupation, while Muslim snipers were cold-bloodedly murdering their children, the Jewish residents living under fire couldn’t so much as put in an outhouse without being reported to the UN for illegal construction. In one case a corrupt UN observer organization held four meetings to discuss an outhouse for local residents before condemning Israel for illegal construction.

It did not however condemn Jordan when one of its soldiers opened fire on a train wounding another Jewish teenage girl.

Not very much has changed.

The hysterical condemnations of “illegal construction” did not end when the Muslim occupation did. The great outhouse of the United Nations and the smaller outhouses of the foreign ministries of countries whose leaders tremble whenever Muslims grow agitated over a cartoon or a YouTube video fill the air with the vilest of falsehoods whenever a Jewish family moves into a home in Jewish ancestral Jerusalem – the eternal Jewish city founded 3,000 years earlier by King David.

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