Op-Eds

The US State Department has concluded a year-long legal study and analysis, researching international law and consulting legal experts. It has concluded that the Reagan Administration’s policy towards Judea and Samaria is fundamentally legally sound.

Something is going very wrong for the Democrats in their impeachment drama. It was supposed to play out like the Nixon Watergate hearings. Each day would build drama and increase suspense, with new revelations culminating in such a nationwide impact that the president would not even have to be impeached after all. When Nixon read the tea leaves, he resigned.

So we have a long-serving State Department insider who understood the diplomacy game enough to obstinately refuse labeling the Medz Yeghern genocide as a “genocide,” was appointed by Obama to the Ukraine post, and somehow gained a reputation there as badmouthing the new president, Donald Trump. She understood the rules of the game: “[An] Ambassador serves his president and may be recalled anytime and for any reason.”

If Mueller wasted all our time and so much of our money — because, at the end of the day, we suckers are the ones who pay the $25.2 million bill — he did leave behind one lasting contribution. He was the last echo of the boy who cried “wolf” one time too many.

Reality must be faced realistically. Polls do occasionally miss by a mile, and they often underestimate conservative strength, but they usually are somewhat useful in gauging trends and electoral prospects. Clearly, when a poll anticipates a winner within a margin of error, its value is less determinative than when it projects a wide margin. And yet the recent spate of national and battleground-state polls augur well for Trump, even where the numbers show Trump behind.

Bloomberg’s unexpectedly bleak prospects for nomination signal further radicalization of the Democratic Party. The party is now suddenly gifted with a silver platter, but it throws this godsend out in favor of a disposable, used cardboard tray, that would otherwise be put out for tomorrow’s garbage collection.

I prefer to keep my synagogue messages focused on spiritual, Torah-based themes, trying my hardest to avoid commenting from my shul pulpit on the secular garbage outside. Yet we Orthodox Jews, the fastest growing community of Jews in America, are deeply conservative. Pro-life. We oppose assisted suicide. We are people of deep faith. We live by the principle of personal responsibility. We recognize only two genders. We despise Communism and the socialist Left.

Anyone who believes we arrived at impeachment due to facts has been hiding in a cave or is insane, regardless of political leanings. If this were about facts, impeachment would be nowhere on the horizon.

Given her experience with blatant Anti-Semitism couched as “Anti-Israel” protest, one might have expected Opinion Editor Batya Ungar-Sargon and her colleagues at The Forward to have had an awakening – to have finally recognized the true nature of anti-Israel activism and started vigorously defending the Jewish state from its enemies. Sadly, one would have been wrong.

Democrats set their target in 2016, immediately following the stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump: Impeachment. The goal came first and the search for evidence came later. And this is where the comparison to Stalinism is not merely appropriate, but frightening in its precision.