Foreign desk: Iran’s Behind the Saudi Oil Attack

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to blame Iran for Saturday’s attacks on the Saudi oil industry was “obvious and necessary,” writes Eli Lake at Bloomberg Opinion. It was obvious because “the Houthi rebels in Yemen,” who claimed responsibility for the attack, “lack the drones, missiles or expertise” for such attacks — but, by Iran’s own admission, receive weapons from Iran. It was necessary “historically, Iran pretends to seek peace as it makes war.” This makes it time for President Trump to “re-evaluate his recent push to negotiate with Iran” and to “reconsider military options to deter future escalations.” Otherwise, he’s imitating the Obama strategy — which “Trump would be a fool” to repeat.

From the right: More ‘Ballot Harvesting’ Ahead

The 2018 midterms saw “ballot harvesting,” whereby a candidate sends out to pick up vulnerable-to-manipulation mail-in ballots, at least two states, notes Jason Chaffetz at Fox News — “but there was a big difference”: The practice is illegal in North Carolina, where it forced a redo election. But in California, it “was legalized by Democrats in the state legislature. They don’t consider it cheating” since it just helped them flip seven seats. On the one hand, letting third parties deliver complete ballots risks “manipulation by campaign operatives or nonprofit political groups”; on the other, it helped Dems “flip seven Republican seats.” In the name of “election security,” Democrats in Congress are pushing “measures are designed to enforce less secure voting processes … including the very vulnerable mail-in ballot.”

From the left: 2020 Dems’ New Kavanaugh Test



New York Times reporting has brought the idea of impeaching Justice Brett Kavanaugh “front-of-mind for many Democratic lawmakers and others on the left,” reports Chas Danner at New York magazine. With many 2020 candidates immediately calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment, it may be a 2020 campaign issue as well — with only Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar clearly refusing to demand it. Now, though “Kavanaugh will in all likelihood need no rescuing from impeachment,” the Times has “reignited what is arguably the most contentious single political battle of the Trump era” — which Danner insists “was and is a fight worth having.”

Conservative: End Food Stamps for Millionaires



Americans think of food-stamp recipients as “poor people struggling to make ends meet with welfare benefits helping them get the vital nutrients they need to stay alive” — but, thanks to “a bizarre loophole,” “millionaires — or even billionaires” can get them, Tim Andrews warns at the Washington Examiner. “An estimated 3.1 million to 5 million people” are getting the benefit though they shouldn’t. The loophole has a “Kafkaesque quality”: Merely “receiving a brochure or calling a toll-free number” can count as getting a federal welfare benefit, and so make you “automatically eligible for food stamps” since most states don’t “ensure that recipients’ assets aren’t too high” to qualify. Now Team Trump is looking into closing the loophole, and advocates for those truly in need should cheer a “change that saves taxpayers billions of dollars and helps the needy get food on the table.”

Culture beat: Huffman Just Earned an Oscar

Felicity Huffman deserves an Oscar for her “performance” as a repentant parent in the college-admissions scandal, jokes Dominic Green at Spectator USA. “She’s done nothing that millions of other parents haven’t in their desperation to insert their spoilt and talentless children into the inside lane” — showing that admissions systems are so corrupt that “either the system or the law needs changing,” and that corruption is “merely the primer for the deeper corruption of the entire college system.” The only difference in Huffman’s case is that “she’s not a legacy parent. She’s a middle-class striver who’s made good, and wants to ensure that her children benefit from her hard work. So she did it the wrong way, and got caught.” But her sentence doesn’t change the big picture: “The applications system is rotten to the core.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann