From the right: How #MeToo Undermines #Resistance

The Left made a significant mistake in 2016 by opposing Donald Trump on moral grounds, given their own candidate’s significant moral failings, asserts National Review’s David French. But the post-Hillary #Resistance was able to target Trump “unencumbered by all that Clinton baggage.” Then along came #MeToo, and “left-dominated quarters of American life — Hollywood, the media, progressive politics — have been revealed to be havens for the worst sort of ghouls.” Worse still, each scandal has been accompanied by two words that undermine all of the Left’s moral arguments: “Everyone knew.” All this has been “a welcome reckoning.” But “it’s also dismantling progressive moral credibility.” And for the Left, “that truth is hard to face.”

Urban wonk: Same Old, Same Old in Corrupt Albany

It took a Manhattan Federal Court jury just eight hours to convict former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver yet again on a range of political corruption charges. But Bob McManus at City Journal insists “it’s clear that the corrupt culture Silver so masterfully exploited has survived him.” Indeed, it’s “a fair measure of the cynicism that defines government in New York that since Silver’s fall there has not been a serious proposal advanced to reform the institutions that he exploited so baldly.” This, even though more than 30 state lawmakers have been forced from office since 2006 “for one malefaction or another.” Silver’s disgrace, simply, “has had no discernible effect on the way Albany conducts the people’s business.” But if the people don’t care, “why should the politicians?”



Political scribe: Far Left Is Winning Dem Civil War

Tuesday’s primaries in four states were good news for the Democrats’ hard-left wing, reports The Washington Post’s James Hohmann. But “the success of very liberal candidates” in those battlegrounds “is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority.” Yet it dramatically “reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.” Among the results: In Nebraska, a political neophyte campaigning on a “Medicare for All” platform scored a shocking upset in a House primary. In the Philadelphia suburbs, a centrist Navy Veteran endorsed by Emily’s List lost to a “proud progressive.” And a small-town Pennsylvania mayor with “a bristly beard and tattoos on both his arms” beat Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor thanks to an endorsement from Bernie Sanders.

Foreign desk: Iran Next To Feel ‘Maximum Pressure’

Critics of President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal “are once again missing the big news,” contends Austin Bay at the Observer: His administration has launched another “maximum pressure” operation, this time targeting the Tehran regime. It’s similar to the campaign being waged against North Korea, involving “coordinated diplomatic, information, military and ‘elements of power’ ” fronts. All of which “serves notice” that “Team Trump intends to eliminate Tehran’s nuclear weapons program” by declaring “political and economic war on the ayatollah regime at a moment when it is politically and economically vulnerable.” Moreover, says Bay, “the ayatollahs know it.” In terms of power, America “is Earth’s 800-pound gorilla.” Now Trump intends to use that power to deny Iran nuclear weapons — and he “won’t apologize for doing so.”



Law professor: Religious Disagreement Is Not Bigotry

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg finds himself “genuinely confused by the outcry” against televangelist Robert Jeffress, who spoke at the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Mitt Romney has labeled Jeffress “a religious bigot” for calling Morminism “heresy,” while others have condemned his statement that “you can’t be saved being a Jew.” Yet, as Feldman notes, “all he’s doing is echoing an almost 1,800-year-old” Christian doctrine that “there is no salvation outside the church.” True, the Catholic Church recently backed away from the notion, but plenty of other denominations still teach it — including Mormons, which is why they practice posthumous baptism. It’s “not bigotry, it’s theology,” says Feldman, “and it makes no sense to be offended by it.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann