Cross-Examination

• Eighteen dead in Maine: A massive manhunt is ongoing in the area of Lewiston, Maine, for 40-year-old Robert Card, a firearms instructor and Army reservist and a “person of interest” who authorities believe — let’s get real: who authorities know — opened fire first at a bowling alley and then at a bar just before 7 p.m. last night, killing 18 and wounding dozens more. It’s unclear whether these two locations were posted as gun-free zones (read: mass-casualty zones), but what was desperately needed last night was a good guy with a gun. The tragedy here is compounded by a missed opportunity: an utter failure to institutionalize a known risk. Card recently reported mental health issues, including hearing voices in his head. Apparently, he’d threatened to shoot up his Army unit and had been committed to a mental-health facility for two weeks during the summer, but he was then released. Maine has a “yellow-flag law,” which allows law enforcement — but not family members — to remove guns from those deemed to be a threat. As Nikki Haley noted on Fox News last night, 80% of mass shootings are mental-health related, and 70% involve suicidal tendencies. Mental health, not a “gun culture,” is thus the driving force behind the overwhelming majority of such massacres.

(Updated with newer casualty figures.)

• Hamas goes old tech: One of the key questions surrounding the massive and murderous attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists was the organization’s ability to plan and carry out such a plan without having been detected. Israel’s intelligence services have long been the world’s gold standard for uncovering such plots well in advance, but this time, they failed miserably and catastrophically. As it turns out, Hamas went low tech to subvert Israel’s high-tech capabilities. As the New York Post reports: “A small cell of Hamas terrorists used old-school landline phones specially installed in the ‘spider web’ of tunnels under Gaza to evade Israeli intelligence forces for two years while plotting the group’s horrific Oct. 7 attack. … The hard-wired phone system allowed Hamas to communicate without being detected by Israel or the United States.” In addition, Hamas plotters held in-person planning meetings, avoided digital and cellular communications, and kept their barbaric designs from their rank-and-file terrorists so as to better maintain secrecy. Israel and the U.S. will no doubt adapt their intelligence-gathering methods going forward, but at a human cost of more than 1,400 dead and more than 200 still held hostage.

• Team Biden’s anti-anti-Semite, and Dems rebuke Omar: Anti-Semitic attacks have risen in the U.S. in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, increasing by some 388% according to the Anti-Defamation League. The Justice Department official tasked with prosecuting these hate crimes is Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke, but she has a history of supporting anti-Semitic groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that is explicitly anti-Israel. Clarke has praised anti-Semites like Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Linda Sarsour, and Tamika Mallory, and while Clarke was a student at Harvard University, she organized a speaking event for then-Wellesley College professor Tony Martin, a known anti-Semite who made the false claim that Jews were behind the international slave trade. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was recently blasted by fellow Democrat Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY) for her claim that he was “happy” Palestinians were getting killed. Torres noted that Omar voted against Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. “Were it not for Iron Dome interceptions, there would be far more dead Israelis, far more, by orders of magnitude,” he said. “And so the policy position she has taken would have led to more dead Israelis and more dead Palestinians.”

• Biden’s northern border malfeasance: Our ongoing efforts to chronicle Calamity Joe Biden’s open-borders malfeasance has become monotonous, but some new numbers indicate that it’s not just our southern border thrown wide open by the guy who notoriously invited “all those people who are seeking asylum” to “immediately surge to the border.” Indeed, in the fiscal year just concluded, the U.S. apprehended more illegal border crossers at one northern border sector than in the prior 11 years combined — years including roughly half of Barack Obama’s term in office and his unconstitutional amnesty. As Just the News reports, “Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 6,700 foreign nationals from 76 countries attempting to enter the U.S. illegally from Canada.” That’s a 550% increase from fiscal 2022 for the border sector covering 295 miles across northeastern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Our agents there must feel like they’re playing Whac-A-Mole.

• UAW comes to tentative agreement: After a costly strike of nearly six weeks — a strike that saw an enfeebled Joe Biden become the first president to ever engage in a shameless picket-line photo op — the United Auto Workers union and Ford Motor Company may have come to terms. As NBC News reports, “The agreement will need to be ratified by UAW members, thousands of whom have walked off the job at Ford factories throughout the U.S., including its Kentucky Truck Plant, the company’s largest factory worldwide.” So far, though, both sides have been tight-lipped: Neither spokespeople for Ford or the UAW were willing to comment on their earlier negotiations.

• Good and bad news on abortion: Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Peach State’s law banning abortions after six weeks is constitutional. The court’s 6-1 majority cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling last summer, noting that the justices overturned Roe by finding it to have been “egregiously wrong from the start.” Georgia’s law has reduced abortions in the state by 40%. However, across the entire country, the ending of Roe has resulted in an uptick in abortions, with the last 12 months averaging 183 more abortions per month than prior to the Court ruling. You can thank Democrats’ rabid promotion of the cult of death.

• The ACLU and HIV: Tennessee recently passed a law making it a felony for a person who knowingly has an HIV infection to engage in prostitution. Anyone found in violation will be hit with a Class C felony and will be registered as a lifetime violent sex offender. Seems like an entirely reasonable law, but leave it to the leftist American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to come out against the legislation, claiming that it is racist. In announcing a lawsuit against Tennessee over the law, the ACLU asserted, “This law is unconstitutional and disproportionately affects Black and transgender women.” Who, exactly, are the racists? Does the ACLU not recognize the fact that it has just negatively stereotyped an entire racial group? Exposing the hypocrisy even more, the ACLU supported the mandating of vaccines, which it said were a “justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity” because these rights “do not include the right to inflict harm on others.” Tell that to the HIV-infected man dressed up like a woman.

• Oregon edumacation: Speaking of leftist racism, Oregon’s state Board of Education recently suspended for at least five years the requirement of basic competency in reading, writing, and math in order to qualify for high school graduation. Why? Well, according to Oregon officials, holding to those basic requirements negatively impacts students of color. In other words, the Beaver State’s Board of Education has effectively declared that black students are not smart enough to learn how to read, write, or do math. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Once again, who are the racists? As former Oregon Republican gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan observed, “At some point … our diploma is going to end up looking a lot more like a participation prize than an actual certificate that shows that someone actually is prepared to go pursue their best future.” Exactly. What employer would want to risk hiring a high school graduate from Oregon?

• Democrats aim to disbar John Eastman: In the wake of the 2020 election, one of the individuals who advised Donald Trump regarding legal theories for challenging the results was lawyer and constitutional scholar John Eastman. Ever since, Eastman has found himself the target of Democrats who are effectively trying to punish him for offering his services to Trump. It was Eastman who presented the novel and likely unconstitutional view that Vice President Mike Pence had the unilateral authority to delay Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. For this, Democrats are seeking to get Eastman disbarred, with the State Bar of California working to strip him of his law license. For Democrats, the overall goal is to prevent Republicans from legally objecting to any future election results. Only Democrats are permitted to challenge elections.

• Beyond rehabilitation? The footage is, we warn you, sickening, and perhaps you’ve already seen it. Two utterly twisted Las Vegas punks steal a car and then go joyriding, filming themselves as they speed down the road and plow into a bicyclist — killing him just for kicks. “Yeah, hit his ass,” the one says to the other. So he did. The victim was 64-year-old Andreas Probst, a 35-year law enforcement veteran and former chief of police, who Las Vegas police say was out for a morning bike ride on August 14. But as the New York Post reports, the most disturbing part of this story might have just now materialized, as the two accused teens — 18-year-old Jesus Ayala and 16-year-old Jzamir Keys — “laughed at each other, smiled, and seemingly flipped off their victim’s family during a court hearing earlier this week.” Weeks earlier, video footage of Ayala’s arrest shows him flippantly requesting a burger from the arresting cop and betting him that he’ll be back on the streets in short order. “They really had no remorse,” said Probst’s 27-year-old daughter Taylor. “This is just a game to them.”

Headlines

• House elects Mike Johnson as speaker after three weeks at an impasse (Washington Examiner)

• Drone attacks on American bases injured two dozen U.S. military personnel (NBC News)

• IDF tanks, troops push into Gaza in limited raid ahead of ground offensive (Times of Israel)

• Biden administration pushes for a humanitarian “pause” in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza (NBC News)

• Palestinian terrorist brags to parents: “Your son killed Jews!” “I killed 10 with my bare hands!” (Daily Wire)

• Rashida Tlaib among Democrats who voted against Israel support resolution (Washington Examiner)

• Cooper Union barricades Jewish students inside library as pro-Palestinian protesters bang on doors (New York Post)

• Pro-Palestine protester calls for boycott of Nike while wearing Nikes (Not the Bee)

• Jamaal Bowman to plead guilty to misdemeanor for pulling fire alarm in a Capitol building (NBC News)

• Trump fined $10,000 after taking the stand in civil fraud trial (National Review)

• U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected (CNBC)

• Humor: To shed “gay beer” image, Bud Light partners with sport where sweaty men in underwear hug for 25 minutes (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.