Cross-Examination

• Subpoenas for the Biden Crime Family: The Israel-Hamas war may have given Joe Biden a brief respite from the constitutionally prescribed oversight of House Republicans, but that respite is officially over. Earlier this week, we noted Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s efforts to connect the dots from the Communist Chinese to Joe Biden’s bank account, and now, as promised, the chairman has issued a blizzard of subpoenas for the Biden Crime Family. As the New York Post reports, Comer’s committee is now “demanding closed-door testimony from President Biden’s son Hunter and brother James as part of the GOP impeachment inquiry into the family’s foreign business dealings.” In addition to these two, subpoenas were sent to Biden family associate Rob Walker in addition to requesting voluntary testimony from James Biden’s wife Sara, Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend and sister-in-law Hallie Biden, and his current wife Melissa Cohen, in addition to former Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski. Time will tell whether compelling them to testify will result in a series of substantive questions followed by a broken record of Fifth Amendment invocations, but even that spectacle would be instructive. “The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” said Chairman Comer. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”

• Hamas states its priorities: Any dullards who still believe that Israel can work with Hamas to hammer out a lasting peace were disabused of that quaint notion recently. From the river to the sea, Hamas is both warlike and genocidal, and it’s not interested in superfluities such as food, water, and electricity for its people. Just ask its leadership. “Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” said Khalil al-Hayya, who serves in Hamas’s top leadership body. “Hamas, the Qassam, and the resistance woke the world up from its deep sleep and showed that this issue must remain on the table.” In case that language is unclear, al-Hayya added that Hamas didn’t massacre all those Israeli men, women, and children in an effort to bring peace. Nor did it do so to “improve” the plight of the more than two million Gazans whom it rules. No, no, said al-Hayya: “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.” Al-Hayya didn’t come right out and say which “situation” he and his fellow genocidalists are seeking to overthrow, but we think it has something to do with Hamas’s charter; something about wiping out the Jews “from the river to the sea.”

• Hamas billionaires living it up: Demonstrating that they view the Palestinians living in squalor in Gaza as little other than human shields for their anti-Israel jihad, Hamas’s top leaders won’t even deign to live amongst them. Instead, the top three leaders of Hamas spend their days living like kings in Qatar in lavish luxury, staying in five-star hotels and villas. The three Hamas leaders — Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk, and Khaled Mashal — have an estimated combined wealth of $11 billion. Meanwhile, people living in the Gaza Strip are subject to abject poverty, as the millions in international humanitarian aid tellingly never seems to get to those who most need it. Qatar, a U.S. ally, has justified housing and protecting Hamas leaders for years under the dubious claim that it was doing so to turn the terrorist group into “a responsible governing power.” However, after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Republican Representative Andy Ogles introduced a bill that would strip Qatar of its U.S. ally status if it does not end this terrorist-harboring charade and expel these Hamas leaders.

• Democrats: Let Hamas come here: Speaking of Hamas, the question that has been bandied about after Israel launched its war to eliminate the threat of Hamas permanently is what to do with the refugees from Gaza. The fact of the matter is that none of the surrounding Arab countries want these Palestinians who are in fact Arabs. It’s one of the primary reasons this conflict with Israel has continued unresolved for decades. Well, now leading Democrats including Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Pramila Jayapal are calling for Palestinians to be afforded “Temporary Protected Status” in order to be brought into the U.S. Durbin and Jayapal have begun circulating a letter urging the Biden administration “to designate the Palestinian territories for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and/or authorize Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for Palestinians present in the United States.” The letter further states, “In light of [the] ongoing armed conflict, Palestinians already in the United States should not be forced to return to the Palestinian territories.” Evidently, Democrats have forgotten who our actually ally in the region is, or that jihadists could be posting as “refugees.” The humanitarian effort should be focused on getting other Arab nations in the region, like Qatar, which has long expressed support for the Palestinians, to step up and take in these refugees with whom they share a common culture and religious faith.

• The “End the Occupation” occupiers: Yesterday, Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on free speech and anti-Semitism on college campuses. Given recent events — given that incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault of Jews have increased by 388% — it seemed a worthwhile topic. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the pro-Hamas crowd, the “end the occupation” crowd, to disrupt and occupy the proceedings. As The Daily Signal’s Tyler O'Neil reports, immediately after Jordan swore in the witnesses, “a protester shot up, holding a sign reading ‘Pro-Palestine [doesn’t equal] antisemitism.’ The protester shouted something about ‘genocide,’ adding, ‘Over 10,000 people have been killed, and you’re trying to silence the free speech of students.’” We wonder: Was this dude charged, as hundreds of J6 protesters were, with disrupting an official government proceeding? Somehow, we doubt it. Another protester then went to bat for recently censured pro-Hamas Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, claiming that her colleagues were trying to silence her. That’s not true, of course. Tlaib is free to speak her mind, free to flaunt her bigotry, free to chant “from the river to the sea,” but that doesn’t mean she’s free from the consequences of such speech.

• Good news: Pro-life activist sues DOJ: Mark Houck is a pro-life activist whom the Biden administration sent an FBI SWAT team to arrest at his home following an altercation near a Planned Parenthood abortion mill back in 2021. The Biden administration charged Houck with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, though a jury acquitted him in January. Now, Houck has filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, seeking $1.1 million in restitution from the DOJ for conducting “a faulty investigation” and using “excessive force.” As the lawsuit states, “These government agents intentionally sought to assault Mr. Houck and deprive him of his Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force to arrest him on non-violent charges when he had not threatened law enforcement, did not own a gun, and had offered to turn himself into authorities if indicted.” Houck states the reason for his lawsuit is “to hold the DOJ and the FBI accountable for their investigative and law enforcement officers’ tortious conduct against him.” Hear hear!

• Biden brings back the Cold War: One of the many benefits of the Biden presidency has been a return to normalcy, a return to a more peaceful and less turbulent time. We see the results everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, in Israel. And we’re starting to see the Biden touch at work in the relationship between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the U.S. and Russia. Two days ago, for example, the Russians withdrew from a landmark treaty that limited certain categories of conventional armed forces in Europe. Soon thereafter, the U.S. and its NATO allies responded in kind, also suspending their participation in the treaty. The goal of the accord had been to keep countries from massing their forces on mutual borders and to thereby reduce the likelihood of war. So much for that. Joe Biden’s weakness is again proving provocative. As The Wall Street Journal reports: “Suspending participation in the treaty — which continued to be implemented as the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dissolved — will give the U.S. more flexibility in deploying forces on NATO’s northern and southern flanks, including in Romania and Bulgaria near Ukraine. It also enables Ukraine’s Western allies to avoid sharing information on the deployment of their forces with nations close to Russia.” So you see, Joe Biden has returned us to normalcy, returned us to a Cold War that Ronald Reagan had long ago won.

• FERC warns of heat and power shortfalls: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently issued a warning to New England that if a planned shutting down of a major natural gas terminal goes forward, it could lead to a situation where millions living in the region find themselves suddenly losing heat and power in the dead of winter. FERC joined with independent watchdog North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in issuing “serious concerns” about outages. “Increased reliance on non-natural gas generators” means that, “should those expectations [of new renewable energy systems] not materialize as anticipated, ensuring reliability and affordability could become challenging in the face of a significant winter event.” At issue is the future of the Everett Marine Terminal, which is the largest natural gas pipeline terminal in New England. The power grid restructuring to favor renewable energy in the name of combating climate change has effectively made LNG power generation unprofitable. A company called Constellation operates the LNG terminal as well as a natural-gas-fired power plant it slated for retirement, as the company determined back in 2020 that it saw no “path to continue commercial electric generation” at the plant. Once again, the issue for renewable energy is reliability, a problem that fossil-fuel-based power solves.

Headlines

• Eight key moments from third GOP primary debate (Daily Signal) | Six key takeaways from Trump’s debate-skipping rally in Florida (Daily Signal)

• Ending 40-year hiatus, GOP wins a city council seat in the Bronx (New York Times)

• Republicans call on Ronna McDaniel to resign following Tuesday’s elections (Breitbart)

• Hillary Clinton compares Trump to Hitler while warning he could win again (Fox News)

• Minnesota Supreme Court dismisses “insurrection clause” challenge and allows Trump on primary ballot (AP)

• Mainstream outlets had photographers embedded with Hamas as terror attack unfolded (Daily Wire)

• U.S. drone shot down by Yemen’s Houthi rebels (AP) | U.S. launches airstrike on site in Syria in response to attacks by Iranian-backed militias (AP)

• Nashville police say seven individuals on “administrative assignment” amid probe into leaked images from Covenant school shooter's manifesto (Daily Wire)

• New HHS policy permits employees to “wear clothing,” “use bathrooms” based on gender identity (Fox News)

• New woke children’s book released: “In My Daddy’s Belly” (MRCTV)

• Satire: Republican Party checks into rehab for addiction to losing (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.