Cross-Examination

• Oh, Alejandro! Yesterday was a good day for Rule of Law, at least in a ceremonial sense, as House Republicans somberly walked the articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, which will likely lead to a battle between that august body’s narrowly divided political parties. The dispute? Whether to hold a constitutionally prescribed Senate trial at all — such is the sorry state of our politics. As Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy observed, only 22 times in our nation’s history has this sort of impeachment happened, and every single time the Senate has held a trial, except when the charged individual did the right thing and resigned in disgrace. No such luck with Biden’s intentionally incompetent and disgustingly defiant DHS chief. And so, since elections have consequences, and since Democrat Chuck Schumer is the Senate majority leader, he’s therefore the decider on the matter of whether to hold an impeachment trial. Democrats and their media trucklings are calling this a “baseless” “political stunt,” but the testimony against Mayorkas would likely be devastating, and the last thing the Democrats want in the middle of a presidential campaign is a couple of days of damning testimony against a Biden administration cabinet member, which would be a stark reminder about their man-made border disaster, and which would necessitate a yea-or-nay vote by some electorally vulnerable Democrat senators. Speaking of the Democrats’ incessant thirst for political power, the Oversight Project reports that fliers distributed at an (illegal) immigration resource center in Matamoros, Mexico, reads as follows: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” Strange. We didn’t think illegals could vote in our federal elections, but maybe Team Biden knows something we don’t.

• Iran sanctions: In response to Iran’s missile and drone attack against Israel over the weekend, the Biden administration announced new sanctions against Iran. The missile barrage was the first time Iran had ever launched a direct attack against Israel. It was an act of war, and yet, due to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, the attack proved largely impotent. And that fact allowed Joe Biden to warn Israel against retaliating, a warning meant to placate the radical anti-Israel members of his party’s base. That fact was driven home by radical leftist Squad member Representative Cori Bush (D-MO), who was pleased that Biden “advised Prime Minister Netanyahu … that the U.S. will oppose any Israeli counter-attacks against Iran.” But to show that Biden is taking Iran’s act of war seriously, his administration announced it will be raising new sanctions against Tehran. The extent of these sanctions has yet to be made clear. Recall that it was the Biden administration that released $6 billion to the regime in Tehran in exchange for hostages last year. Furthermore, Biden has been soft on Iran when it comes to its selling oil to China. Despite Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asserting that “all options” are on the table when it comes to raising sanctions against Iran, Biden’s record shows otherwise.

• New York City “welcomes” 1,300 Guineans: Life’s tough all over these days, especially for illegal immigrants, around 1,300 of whom mobbed up at City Hall in New York City to demand their rightful free stuff. The illegals were mostly from the West African nation of Guinea because, well, why not? They’re flowing in freely from everywhere else. Apparently, PJ Media’s Lincoln Brown notes, “An activist group said that work visas and green cards were to be distributed and that word had spread around the migrant community.” On the bright side, we suppose it’s encouraging that they at least seem to be interested in working. But, as Brown adds: “On some level, these administrators, bureaucrats, and wonks knew that someone was going to have to pay for all of these immigrants, one way or another. With that in mind, their plan is to put our money, jobs, homes, and lives where their rhetoric is.”

• Monitoring half a million felonious illegals: Of the more than six million illegal migrants U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is supposedly monitoring, some 617,000 of them are either convicted felons or have pending criminal charges. In a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sheriff Bill Waybourn of Tarrant County, Texas, provided a local sample of this criminal problem currently impacting the entire country. After noting that he currently has 264 illegal immigrants sitting in his county jail, all facing felony charges — everything from murder to sexual assault to possession of child pornography — Waybourn stated, “These offenders, [many of which] are gang members and outlaws, have left nothing untouched.” He added, “While I do not necessarily think these aliens have a higher crime rate, just the fact these people are illegal in our country and committed crimes is the impact.” Loudoun County, Virginia, Sheriff Mike Chapman testified to the growing problem of fentanyl and other drugs that have been pouring into his county, which had directly resulted in the rise of juvenile overdoses. Chapman tellingly observed: “Having served as a DEA agent in Miami during the mid and late 80s, I thought I had seen the worst of the drug problem. I was wrong.” Former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli laid the blame squarely at Joe Biden’s feet, stating, “President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas are knowingly and willingly sacrificing Americans to appease their anti-American leftist political constituency.”

• Google rabble arrested for anti-Israel protest in CEO’s office: It seems that some of Google’s hard-left, Jew-hating employees can’t stand the fact that their company is doing work with the Israeli government, including a $1.2 billion initiative called Project Nimbus. The sit-ins were announced via internal Google email, and they took place in two Google offices, New York City and Sunnyvale, California. The dirty hippies aimed high, too, going so far as to occupy the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. It could be worse, we suppose. After all, they could instead be engaged in toddler terrorist tantrums. In any case, it’s a catchy ditty they uncorked there in the CEO’s office. Let’s all sing it now: Google, Google, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide. A Google spokesperson said, in part, “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and we will investigate and take action.” And take action they did. The employees were placed on administrative leave, and their access to Google systems was suspended. We wonder, though: If these folks don’t like their company’s business decisions, perhaps they ought to find some other place to work. As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley points out: “This is part of the rather perverse universe we find ourselves in. They’re Google. They’re employees at the company. … Free speech does not include disrupting others from speaking. It also doesn’t include taking a salary and going in and stopping your business because you have a few things that you want to get off your chest.”

• Menendez blames his wife: New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez is facing bribery charges, and the evidence is pretty damning. But Bob’s team has a plan, which amounts to invoking one of the oldest excuses in the history of mankind: It’s my wife’s fault. According to recently unsealed court documents, Menendez is blaming his wife Nadine for withholding information from him and thereby giving him the false impression that everything was on the up-and-up. The documents read in part, “While these explanations, and the marital communications on which they rely, will tend to exonerate Senator Menendez by demonstrating the absence of any improper intent on Senator Menendez’s part, they may inculpate Nadine [Menendez] by demonstrating the ways in which she withheld information from Senator Menendez or otherwise led him to believe that nothing unlawful was taking place.” While Mrs. Menendez is also facing bribery charges in the case, this attempt to pin the full blame on her should work wonders in their marriage. Meanwhile, the trial has been postponed until late summer, as Mrs. Menendez is dealing with a medical issue.

• ChiCom fentanyl tax rebates: Would it not be an act of war for a foreign country to actively conspire to poison American citizens by the bushel? Asking for a dead friend. According to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, China has been subsidizing the manufacture and export “of illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates and other means.” Yoo-hoo, President Biden. Former AG Bill Barr says the Chinese Communist Party is knee-deep in the fentanyl crisis that is plaguing our nation to the funeral dirge of some 70,000 dead Americans every year. As Barr told Fox News this morning: “It’s clear that they’re not acting in good faith. And when they do something, it’s window dressing. They’re knee-deep in this. They’re active. … They’re driving the trafficking. They’re incentivizing the trafficking.” Asked what the ChiComs’ angle is in all this, Barr says: “I think a big part of it is strategic. That is, they believe it weakens the United States. It tells the world that we’re a decadent society, and a disciplined society like China’s is the future, and it distracts us. And so, if it’s bad for us, it’s good for them.” Barr isn’t optimistic about any lessening of the crisis, at least not from the Biden administration, whose obeisance to the ChiComs knows no bounds. He says the Chinese and the Mexicans are giving us “happy talk” and that they’re both complicit. Maybe it’s time for a tougher foreign policy — one that puts the lives and interests of American citizens before the sensitivities of our greatest geopolitical foe.

• Germany is climate nuts: It would seem that when the Germans decide to do anything, they do it to the extreme. A case in point is Germany’s commitment to net-zero carbon emissions. Recently, German transport minister Volker Wissing warned that unless the country changes its net-zero laws, people’s weekend driving will have to be banned. Wissing explained that in order to meet the net-zero target, Germans would effectively have to give up their leisure driving rights. “A corresponding reduction in traffic performance would only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on Saturdays and Sundays,” he wrote last week. Curtailing individual freedom in the name of “saving the planet” is the playbook for the Left across the West. Germany is simply further down that tyrannical “green” road, and it should serve as a warning to the rest of us. Fortunately, for car-loving Germans, Wissing’s warning had an impact, as the government agreed to a more moderated emissions law.

Headlines

• Veteran editor resigns from NPR, says new CEO’s “divisive” left-wing views confirm bombshell exposé (National Review)

• Justices divided over January 6 participant’s call to throw out obstruction charge (SCOTUSblog) | Justice Gorsuch throws shade at Jamaal Bowman during J6 hearing, and it’s glorious (PJ Media) | Gorsuch hammers Biden DOJ on “mostly peaceful protests” (Washington Examiner)

• Planned Parenthood: More abortions, more taxpayer dollars, and fewer health services (National Review)

• Biden has taken over 200 actions against U.S. oil (Just the News)

• Iran closes nuclear facilities over fears they could be targeted in strike (Daily Wire)

• California legislators water down bill making buying child prostitutes a felony (Just the News)

• West Virginia transgender sports ban discriminates against teen athlete, appeals court says (AP)

• Scotland’s proposed misogyny law will protect men pretending to be women, First Minister says (Daily Wire)

• Policy: The failed experiment with ending standardized testing (National Review)

• Humor: Journalist at NPR suspended, leading to shocking discovery there was a journalist at NPR (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.