HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Who Is James K. Polk?’ — An Old Question Asked Again The American president who never let executive details, political infighting, or public opinion distract him from his specific goals. by Walter Borneman

Posted By on March 19th, 2025

https://spectator.org/who-is-james-k-polk-an-old-question-asked-again/

Who is James K. Polk?” his opponents in the 1844 presidential election mockingly asked. Two centuries later, the question is asked again more quizzically. For one thing, James K. Polk proved a president can be both a big-picture visionary and an effective manager.

Elected as a Democrat from Tennessee, Polk has long been characterized as a dark horse. In fact, he was anything but. Before becoming president, Polk served 14 years in Congress — four as Speaker of the House. He had been governor of Tennessee, a hopeful for vice president in 1840, and the apparent choice to balance presumptive Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren of New York in 1844. When Van Buren failed to be nominated in a convention divided over the annexation of Texas, Polk rode a white horse out of the chaos.

Scholarly Polk was a stickler for detail all his life. As a young attorney in Nashville, he criticized an older Sam Houston for attempting to execute a judgment from a North Carolina court that was not properly authenticated. For his part, the much looser Houston is said to have observed that Polk was “a victim of the use of water as a beverage.”

Sober and somber, Polk carried his attention to detail throughout his political career, earning respect from friends and foes alike whether he was presiding over the House of Representatives or navigating the constituencies and issues of the cutthroat politics of 19th-century Tennessee.

“I intend to be myself, President of the United States,” Polk told a Tennessee confidante after his election, discounting rumors he would be Andrew Jackson’s or anyone else’s pawn. Then, Polk took the unprecedented step of insisting his cabinet appointees pledge not only to support the Democratic platform but also refrain from seeking the presidency themselves. If you run, Polk told them, you must resign.

James K. Polk never let executive details, political infighting, or public opinion distract him from the specific goals — his “four great measures” he called them — that he enumerated for his administration: the resolution of the decades-old joint occupation of the Oregon country with Great Britain; the acquisition of California and an expanse of the Southwest from Mexico; the reduction of the tariff that stifled the southern economy; and the creation of an independent treasury system immune from national bank wars.

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

How the Fate of the West is Tied to the Fate of the Jewish Nation By Janet Levy

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/how_the_fate_of_the_west_is_tied_to_the_fate_of_the_jewish_nation.html

Why is Israel alone forced to justify its existence and questioned when it stands up to those who would annihilate it?  Why was a worldwide campaign of hatred that reeked of anti-Semitism unleashed on Israel when it responded to the October 7, 2023, attack, while there was no criticism of Hamas?  Why has the U.N. censured the Jewish state more times than any other nation, even China, North Korea, and Cuba combined?

The answer runs deeper than geopolitics, says conservative commentator and legal scholar Josh Hammer in his debut book Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.  Western civilization is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and its enemies know well that to deny the existence of God and destroy individual rights, private property, and freedom, they must first destroy the Jews.  Ergo, he argues, the preservation of the West is contingent on the welfare of the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel.

It was the People of the Book who first introduced the world to monotheism, and along with it, to ethical and legal codes that became the basis for the establishment and preservation of all civilizations.  The West drew upon the Judaic idea of humankind as the pinnacle of God’s creation to give primacy to individuals, their freedom, and their rights.  Many of America’s Founding Fathers admired Jewish history, culture, and its legal and moral teachings.

God made a promise to the Jews to protect them as long as they kept his covenant and followed his commandments.  The Hebrew Bible speaks of the Divine Revelation of the Decalogue to Moses at Mount Sinai, the 613 mitzvot of the Torah, and the seven Noahide laws.  The seventh Noahide law, as mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud — to establish courts of justice — is perhaps the first expression of the need for neutral forums and judges to deliver justice.  It is by obeying these laws — divine and temporal – that Jews, often at great cost, have survived millennia of persecution.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

JB Pritzker Wants to Lead the Trump Resistance. But Is He Turning His Back on DEI?By Gabe Kaminsky

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/jb-pritzker-dei-donald-trump-pritzker-family-foundation-website

Mentions of diversity and equity have vanished from the Pritzker Family Foundation’s website amid Trump’s attack on DEI.

Since the election of Donald Trump, Democratic Illinois governor JB Pritzker has emerged as a key figure in the Resistance 2.0. A longtime proponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, Pritzker has described Trump’s attack on DEI as an attempt to “tear down” civil rights. He also called Trump “unfit to lead” after the president suggested DEI played a role in a tragic aircraft collision in January in Washington, D.C.

But, according to a Free Press review of internet archive records, Pritzker’s own family nonprofit appears to have scrubbed a slew of DEI language from its website on March 11. The Pritzker Family Foundation eliminated the phrase justice and equity from its mission statement and jettisoned the word inequities to describe its focus on social justice. The group also removed the word equitable from the statement that said the group had a “deep desire to create more just and equitable outcomes.”

And the foundation removed an entire sentence from its website that read: “Learn more about our ongoing efforts to apply a lens of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) to our grantmaking here,” which linked to a downloadable foundation document detailing its “ongoing journey” to embrace DEI. This document can no longer be found on the foundation’s site, but was located by The Free Press on the internet archive.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Naomi Schaefer Riley, James Piereson Trump’s College Crackdown: It’s Their Own Fault Universities spent decades prioritizing activism over education.

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-columbia-funding-anti-semitism-bias-universities

The federal government has some “legitimate concerns,” said Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong last week, after the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of $400 million in federal grants because, it claimed, Columbia had not addressed rampant anti-Semitism on its campus. Armstrong’s words suggest that Columbia received the message. But have other institutions of higher education?

A recent survey of university presidents suggests not. Unless they take steps to address not just anti-Semitism but also the profound ideological bias that has facilitated it and other forms of radicalism on campus, they may be in line for similar sanctions. If they fail to act, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

The poll, conducted by Inside Higher Ed, reveals the extent to which higher ed is in denial about its predicament. It asked university presidents about the causes of declining public confidence in higher ed. Only 11 percent identified “ideological bias” as the biggest cause of public mistrust (though twice as many acknowledged it as a “valid concern”).

The vast majority are clearly misreading the public mood. A decade ago, 56 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in higher education; by last year, that number had dropped to just 19 percent. A 2018 Pew poll found that 73 percent of Republicans believed higher education was headed in the wrong direction—and of that group, 79 percent cited politicization of the classroom and curriculum as a major reason. Among those voters, higher ed has been in free-fall for some time.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

How Social Media Pushes Vulnerable Teens Toward Eating Disorders Social media companies must take more responsibility to address how their products are fueling adolescent eating disorders Kristina Lerman

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/eating-disorders-social-media?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Introduction from Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch:

In Chapter 6 of The Anxious Generation, we examined the connections between social media use and adolescent mental illness, with a focus on depression and anxiety. We outlined six reasons why social media harms girls more than boys: (1) girls spend more time on visual social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok; (2) they have a heightened vulnerability to visual social comparisons; (3) relational aggression is more prevalent among girls; (4) girls face greater pressures toward perfectionism; (5) they are more susceptible to the interpersonal spread of emotion; and (6) they encounter an increased risk of sexual harassment and online predation.

Throughout the book, we focused on anxiety and depression as the main categories of mental illness for which we found clear evidence of harm from heavy social media use. We mentioned eating disorders just a few times, especially in the story of Alexis Spence. But if you look at the list we just gave of six ways that social media affects girls, you can see that there may be multiple channels through which social media can push girls into eating disorders (some of which are classified as anxiety disorders).

We’ve been meaning to learn more and say more about links between social media and eating disorders. We were pleased, therefore, when Morteza Dehghani—a friend of Jon’s at the University of Southern California—introduced us to his colleague Kristina Lerman, who had just written a paper on the topic. Kristina is a Research Professor in the USC Computer Science Department, and she is a Senior Principal Scientist at the USC Information Sciences Institute. She was trained as a physicist, and she now uses her quantitative skills to study networks, crowdsourcing, and patterns in large datasets derived from social media activity.

Her recent paper is titled “Safe Spaces or Toxic Places? Content Moderation and Social Dynamics of Online Eating Disorder Communities.” Written with four colleagues, it is currently under review at EPJ Data Science, and you can read it online here.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British police are letting pro-Palestine vandals run riot An activist who destroyed a historic painting of Lord Balfour has faced zero repercussions.Nicole Lampert

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/17/british-police-are-letting-pro-palestine-vandals-run-riot/

This time last year, a female pro-Palestine activist took a blade and a can of red spray paint to the 100-year-old painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge. The perpetrator targeted the painting because Balfour was a signatory of the Balfour Declaration – the British Empire’s 1917 recognition of the aim to establish a Jewish state.

The crime was filmed and posted online for all to see. The perpetrator had a distinctive hairstyle (two plaits), as well as what looked like a £1,400 Mulberry backpack – something your average criminal usually doesn’t sport. She was also very clearly part of an outfit called Palestine Action, which claimed responsibility for the attack. With just a tiny bit of police work and some political will, uncovering the identity of the perpetrator would not have been a monumental task. And yet, a year after the historic painting was destroyed, Cambridgeshire Police have ended their ‘investigation’. They said only that they hoped new information may one day come to light.

Palestine Action seems to attack anything to do with Israel – including charities, banks, arms factories and even a bust of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann. The group was founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and serial activist Richard Barnard. A recent Sunday Times investigation found that, since then, it has claimed responsibility for 356 direct actions. It has ram-raided factories with vans, broken into offices and smashed up equipment.

Palestine Action has vowed to continue its violent behaviour. Just this week, three activists occupied part of the Allianz offices in central London and covered the windows in red paint. They scaled the building to unfurl a banner demanding that Allianz ‘drop Elbit’, an Israel-based defence contractor, as an insurance customer. Police stood around for hours, apparently helpless to do anything, until the protesters were finally brought down and arrested.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Israeli Jew kidnapped by British jihadi thugs The horrific ordeal suffered by Itay Kashti reveals a sickness at the heart of our society. Tom Slater

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/17/the-israeli-jew-kidnapped-by-british-jihadi-thugs/

‘My own personal October 7.’ That is how Itay Kashti describes his violent ordeal at the hands of three Jew-hating kidnappers in Wales last year. In a crowded field, Kashti’s kidnapping is easily among the most chilling acts of anti-Semitic violence we’ve seen perpetrated on these isles since Hamas’s pogrom in Israel 18 months ago.

This grotesque tale begins last August. Kashti, an Israeli Jewish music producer based in London, received an email from a man claiming to be a Polydor Records executive, inviting him to a songwriting retreat in Carmarthenshire. Kashti did a bit of due diligence, even speaking to the organisers, but didn’t notice anything unusual. An Airbnb was booked for him, along with a taxi to drive him there from his London home.

When he arrived at the rural cottage, he was jumped by three men wearing rubber masks and armed with an imitation pistol. The cabbie, who had helped Kashti in with his bags, was also attacked but managed to run away and call the police. Kashti, meanwhile, was handcuffed to a radiator, beaten and bloodied. Thankfully, his kidnappers’ amateurishness would save his life. They left him alone, and Kashti noticed he was chained to an unconnected pipe. He slipped free, found his phone and escaped into the shrubbery outside. He called his wife, and then the cops, who descended on the cottage and apprehended his tormentors.

Last week, the kidnappers were sentenced to eight years apiece at Swansea Crown Court. During their trial, the full, calculated horror of what had taken place was unfurled. Faiz Shah, 23, Mohammad Comrie, 23, and Elijah Ogunnubi-Sime, 20, were trying to extort money.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Columbia Now Faces an Expensive Day of Reckoning A cost to the Jew-haters and brownshirts. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/columbia-now-faces-an-expensive-day-of-reckoning/

On many American campuses, antisemitic nitwits have ever since the beginning of the war in Gaza storm-trooped around, calling for the disappearance of Israel and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state (“From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free”), expressing a wish for homicidal violence against Jews (“Intifada Forever”), and accusing the Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” (“Stop the Genocide”). The worst of these offenders have been the pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University, who have created that awful mess — physical and moral — on Morningside Heights, whom Columbia’s administrators have until now been treated with kid gloves, creating an environment where anti-Israel and antisemitic behavior goes largely unpunished.

Now the Trump administration wants Columbia’s tolerance for antisemitism to be investigated. Columbia, after all, receives $5 billion from federal contracts and grants, and that money which be at risk if Columbia is weighed and found wanting in its failure to protect Jewish students and faculty from the antisemitic bullyboys and brownshirts who threaten them, harass them, surround and hold some of them prisoner, while attacking others, and interrupt, in order to shut down, the classes taught by Israeli and Jewish professors. More on the Trump administration’s investigation — by three different federal agencies — of Columbia, and the possible action by the government to be taken against the university, can be found here: “Columbia’s Choice: Hamasnik Anarchy or Taxpayer Cash,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary, March 4, 2025:

The biggest myth regarding the campus anti-Semitism crisis is that it’s about speech. It is a self-serving myth: Institutions and activists that want to disregard their abuse of Jewish students will fall back on the claim that any attempt to hold them accountable for their actions is actually an attack on free speech.

Columbia University is learning what happens when that disingenuous trick starts to backfire: Students and professors take it as a license to do whatever they want, people end up in the hospital, and the government steps in to say this cannot continue to be done on their dime.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Tariffs Will Lower the Cost of Living America needs tariffs to reshore our factories and revive the American Dream. By Spencer P. Morrison

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/18/how-tariffs-will-lower-the-cost-of-living/

Critics of President Trump’s trade policy—tariffs, tariffs, and more tariffs—cry that tariffs will cause inflation and make Americans poor. This is false.

Although there will be a brief period where the market adjusts to the new normal, tariffs will not cause inflation. In fact, tariffs will lower the cost of living in the long run.

Perhaps the more interesting question to ask is: inflation of what? Consumer goods? Why are these critics not concerned about the inflation of assets like houses or investments that are caused by economic globalism and the trade deficit?  Why are the Democrats and Neoconsso preoccupied with keeping the cost of disposable products low, when people cannot afford their rent or mortgages?

Fiddling with the grasshoppers

Contrary to popular belief, tariffs did not raise the cost of goods during President Trump’s first term, and they are not likely to do so the second time around. There are a few reasons for this.

First, a tariff is a tax imposed on imports. For example, a 25% tariff on steel would increase the price of steel coming from Canada or South Korea. However, that same tariff would not apply to steel that was made in America. In this way, tariffs are a completely avoidable tax. If you do not want to pay tariffs, buy American. Simple.

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Peter Beinart’s Dilemma How does a Jewish writer who hates Israel address October 7? by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on March 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/peter-beinarts-dilemma/

Now 54, the American Jewish writer Peter Beinart, author of the new book Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza, is one of the most prominent of those lamentably multitudinous commentators in whose view Israel can hardly do anything right and the Palestinians can hardly do anything wrong. Asked about Palestinian violence, he’s been quick to blame it on Israel. While wringing his hands incessantly over Muslim suffering, he’s displayed a chilling indifference to the plight of Jews in Iran. He’s even routinely refused to identify Islamic terrorist atrocities in Europe and elsewhere as acts of jihad, or to concede that there’s anything at all about Islam and its teachings that should cause concern to Westerners who live alongside the religion’s adherents.

Long a champion of the two-state solution, in 2020 Beinart wrote a New York Times op-ed announcing a change of heart. Whereas “the dream of a two-state solution that would give Palestinians a country of their own” had once let him hope that he “could remain a liberal and a supporter of Jewish statehood at the same time,” that hope had been “extinguished” by Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank and the denial of “basic rights” to its inhabitants. Hence the time had come “to abandon the traditional two-state solution” and “imagine a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state” – which could mean “one state that includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem” or “a confederation that allows free movement between two deeply integrated countries.” Yes, admitted Beinart, some Palestinians had committed terrorist acts against Israeli Jews, but after all “members of many oppressed groups” had done the same. (For Beinart, Muslim terror is always a desperate reaction to Western oppression, never part of a coldblooded, Koran-inspired effort to expand the umma.) Dismissing Jewish concerns “that anything short of Jewish statehood would mean Jewish suicide,” Beinart quoted an Orthodox rabbi who’d “spent more than a decade forging relationships with leaders of Hamas” as saying: “I have yet to meet with somebody who is not willing to make peace.” Well, that op-ed certainly didn’t age well.