On a recent episode of the Federal Newswire Lunch Hour podcast, CFIF's Timothy Lee joined host Andrew…
CFIF on Twitter CFIF on YouTube
The Lunch Hour - FTC Overreach, 'Junk Fees' and More

On a recent episode of the Federal Newswire Lunch Hour podcast, CFIF's Timothy Lee joined host Andrew Langer and Daniel Ikenson, Founder of Ikensonomics Consulting and former Director of Trade and Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, to discuss Federal Trade Commission overreach, so-called "junk fees," and more.

The conversation focuses on "the FTC's increasingly aggressive regulatory posture under Chair Lina Khan, highlighting concerns about overreach, economic consequences, and implications for constitutional governance."

Watch below.…[more]

December 05, 2024 • 12:18 PM

Liberty Update

CFIFs latest news, commentary and alerts delivered to your inbox.
Joe Biden Is Selling Out Israel to the Antisemitic Mob Print
By David Harsanyi
Friday, May 10 2024
This is a historic moment, as it is surely the first time a president has sold out a stalwart U.S. ally to save a terrorist organization.

Even as President Joe Biden was delivering his perfunctory Holocaust Remembrance speech earlier this week, decrying the "ferocious surge" in antisemitism on college campuses and prattling on about how he would never forget the Oct. 7 attack  which saw over 1,200 Israelis murdered, raped and kidnapped  the president was planning to stop the Jewish state from destroying modern-day Nazis.

On Wednesday, Biden told CNN's Erin Burnett that if Israel invades the city of Rafah in Gaza  where remaining battalions of Hamas terrorists are holed up behind civilians  the U.S. would stop supplying Israel with offensive and precision weapons.

This is a historic moment, as it is surely the first time a president has sold out a stalwart U.S. ally to save a terrorist organization. And not just any terror organization, but one that murdered, sexually tortured, kidnapped  and still holds  American citizens. Biden has sacrificed them to the mobs of Columbia University and Dearborn, Michigan, and The Washington Post editorial board. Biden could have given Israel this ultimatum privately. But he went on TV to do it precisely because it is meant for the ears of Israel haters.

You may recall, only a couple of weeks ago Democrats insisted on attaching Israeli aid to Ukrainian aid as a means of garnering the votes to pass a foreign assistance bill. Biden is now pausing the congressionally approved delivery of weapons to one ally to bolster his domestic election prospects by appealing to campus radicals and antisemitic enclaves.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump was impeached for "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress" for merely threatening Volodymyr Zelensky on a phone call with the same behavior. This is far worse. Not only is Israel a longtime ally, it is also, in every way imaginable, a better "democracy" than Ukraine.

It should not be lost on anyone that Biden is only incentivizing more demonstrations and violence from the communists, Islamists and well-funded Hamas cosplayers. The next time a Jewish kid is accosted on campus, Biden can take some credit. Then again, the president's donors are also the patrons of these America-hating revolutionaries. And they have, by any measure, succeeded.

Biden is also willing to sacrifice the remaining American hostages to placate the mob. If Israel submits to the president's demands, it will have been stripped of any leverage in hostage negotiations. Why would a terror organization hand back any Jews knowing that the Israelis are being leashed by the United States? All they had to do was wait it out.

It is almost surely the case that Biden's feckless, unprincipled nature allowed him to be cowed by the pro-Iranian Obamites who now infest the American government and institutions. We learned Monday that Rob Malley, a man who brought Iranian assets into the United States government, was suspended for allegedly sending classified documents to his personal email account and downloading them to his personal phone. Weird, right?

Yet, not even former President Barack Obama, who had been chummy with black supremacists and other antisemites for decades before reaching the White House, cut off aid to Israel. Democrats continue to lurch toward the hard left.

And where are the Jewish Democrats decrying this development? Probably blaming their straw man, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they frame as some kind of warmongering fascist. In reality, the unity government war council of Israel includes the opposition leader. Netanyahu has less power to act unilaterally than the American president. There is no responsible government in Israel, much less the world, that would permit Hamas to skate.

Well, perhaps the one run by the person who opposed the bin Laden operation.

In the end, Biden has also prolonged the suffering of Palestinians. Hamas knew there would be retribution after Oct 7. They knew thousands of Arab civilians would die, because they seek as many martyrs and as much suffering as possible. Biden only extended that reality by allowing Islamists to hold power. Rather than planning for a post-Hamas Gaza and Israel-Saudi normalization, Biden is choosing to save Iranian proxies in the region.

Democrats like to argue that Israel shouldn't be given a "blank check," which implies that the Jewish state is indiscriminately killing people without any legitimate plan or goal. There is no blank check. Israel's mission is well defined. Biden is micromanaging the military operations of an ally and limiting categories of weapons to stop Israel from eliminating Hamas  designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

It is scandalous and corrupt. 


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books  the most recent, "Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent." 

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

Notable Quote   
 
"Why did Marc Andreessen -- inventor inventor of the first internet web browser, and perhaps the prime venture capitalist in Silicon Valley today -- switch from his longstanding support of the Democratic Party and back President-elect Donald Trump this year?Because, in his view, the Democrats who claim to be the great scourge of 'disinformation' are threatening to embed disinformation in the bedrock…[more]
 
 
— Michael Barone, Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
 
Liberty Poll   

RFK Jr. believes that elements of the CIA were involved in the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, and wants further investigation. What do you believe?