James Keivom
Culture desk: Jew-Hate Wins Again
The annual New York State Writers Institute literary festival was “disrupted,” marvels The Free Press’ Joe Nocera, because “two authors refused to discuss their books with the panel’s moderator” Elisa Albert — simply “because she is a ‘Zionist.’ ” “The cancellation of Albert’s panel highlights a worrying recent trend in the realm of literature”: As Albert, “a 46-year-old progressive feminist,” puts it: “Refusing to participate on a panel with a Zionist is a straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism.” Nocera notes: “This tendency to cast anyone who is ‘Zionist’ — a.k.a. Jewish — as an oppressor, and thus canceled for the common good, is escalating in elite, educated circles.” And “the New York State Writers Institute may well have violated the law,” given that it’s a public institution.
Senate watch: The Filibuster Must Remain
Vice President Kamala Harris “announced that she wants to abolish the Senate filibuster to fast-track legislation to reinstate national Roe v. Wade rules on abortion,” fumes Brian Darling at The Hill. But: “No matter who takes the White House or the Senate, the filibuster should remain to allow for extended debate. The procedure forces the majority party to listen to the minority party, and to back-bench members of its own party,” and so encourage durable “agreement on controversial issues.” Fact is, “controversial legislation should not be railroaded through Congress on party-line votes” — and: “If ever there was an issue meriting long, extended debate, it is the issue of federal abortion policy.”
Conservative: A Day in Pa. With The Donald
Tuesday in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump’s “motorcade was greeted by thousands of people gathering in front of their small towns, suburban bedroom enclaves, or standing in front of their farms with their tractors or cows,” observes the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito. He “listened intently as third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation farmers shared stories of how they struggle to maintain their calling of providing the country with a food supply,” and how many are “keeping the family farms going because of the royalties from natural gas extracted from their land and their concerns about the Biden-Harris administration’s moratorium on exporting that liquefied natural gas.” He raised that at a rally later, warning that if “Kamala Harris cannot stand up and say she opposes what her administration is doing, then she remains essentially anti-fracking.”
Eye on Iran: Khameini Is Waiting for Kamala
Why hasn’t Iran retaliated for Israel’s killing of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran? It “may be that Iran is playing a longer game and showing restraint to advance its nuclear ambitions,” warn Reuel Marc Gerecht & Ray Takeyh at The Wall Street Journal. Supreme Leader Ali Khameini seems willing “to restart nuclear negotiations” just “to explore” whether President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “can be neutralized through diplomacy.” Democrats see negotiations as the only alternative to the “Iran nuclear dilemma,” so they’d overlook Tehran’s aggression in the region and restrain Israel just to keep talks alive. Indeed, Khameini is just “waiting for a President Harris.”
Campaign beat: Joe ‘Helps’ (?) Kamala
“As vice president, there wasn’t a single thing that I did that she couldn’t do,” President Biden said Wednesday on “The View.” “So I was able to delegate her responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy.” Hmm, muses The Federalist’s Tristan Justice: Harris has “campaigned as if she were an outsider candidate running to reform Washington, railing against inflation and a broken border even though she’s been the ‘border czar’ for years.” She’s also bragged “she was ‘the last person in the room’ when the decision was made to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.” Strange that “Harris is now running as a ‘change’ candidate despite her status as the incumbent” in an administration that now “even Biden said she ran.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board