Cross-Examination

• Mom beheaded by illegal alien: A young mother was murdered by an illegal alien wielding a sword last week. A 33-year-old Venezuelan man, Jose Raphael Solano Landeata, reportedly overstayed a tourist visa over a decade ago, and he allegedly killed his longtime girlfriend and mother of his one-year-old child. The attack happened during the middle of the day following an argument between the two. The victim, 27-year-old Karino Castro, was apparently attacked in her parked car and beheaded by Landeata, who was later arrested near the scene by police. The incident occurred in San Carlos, California. Evidently, Landeata was unemployed and, according to Castro’s grandmother, was a “diagnosed schizophrenic on meds and he would use that as an excuse for his behavior.” Irrespective of Landeata’s mental state, the fact is that this murder would not have happened had he been deported years ago after having overstayed his visa. When government officials are unwilling to uphold our nation’s laws, it only leads to further lawlessness, and sometimes with devastating results.

• No death penalty for 9/11 masterminds? Nearly 3,000 people were murdered in al-Qaida’s attack against our nation on 9/11. Now, 21 years later, the Biden administration is reportedly negotiating a plea deal with five of the defendants who have been charged with both planning and executing the terrorism plot. Military prosecutors have struggled for nearly two decades to bring justice down on these five 9/11 masterminds, yet their defense has successfully delayed the effort by requesting evidence from the CIA regarding its enhanced interrogation techniques. The reported plea deal would pull the death penalty off the table and instead keep these terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for life, while also keeping the prison running indefinitely. Families of 9/11 victims have demanded that executing the terrorists remains the only option for justice. As the brother of one victim stated: “I will not have closure as long as there is any possibility for some future president to commute their sentences or trade them away for something political that they want from some other country. That’s a very real possibility because it’s now been done over and over and over again.”

• China has more coal power than the rest of the world combined: While Beijing may claim concern over climate change and sign toothless virtue signals like the Paris Climate Agreement, the communist regime isn’t about to cave to the concerns of the West’s climate activists. Meanwhile, even as the U.S. has been reducing its CO₂ emissions by roughly 6% since 2015, China has been aggressively doing the opposite. China is currently building or planning to build a number of coal-fired power plants to meet its growing energy demand. The communist nation currently has 258 coal-fired power plants proposed, permitted, or being built, with a target power output of 290 gigawatts. By that number, China would be responsible for producing over 60% of the world’s coal-fired power. Indeed, since Beijing signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, it has increased its coal-fired power by 185 gigawatts. Over that same time span, the U.S. has decreased its coal-generated energy capacity by 80 gigawatts. This decrease in coal power has been made possible thanks to a growth in natural gas energy, which produces lower carbon emissions, though Joe Biden is threatening that industry as his administration clamps down on drilling permits on federal land. Leave it to China’s strongman Xi Jinping to speak sense as he rejects calls to limit coal power in his country. “We can’t be detached from reality,” he said. “We can’t toss away what’s feeding us now while what will feed us next is still not in our pocket.” Well, Biden and the Democrats are doing just that, tossing away what is feeding us now in exchange for an impossible pipe dream of “green” energy that doesn’t have the capacity to come even close to providing America’s current energy demands, let alone our nation’s expanding future energy needs.

Headlines

• Inflation rose 0.1% in August even with sharp drop in gas prices (CNBC)

• Nearly every major fact-checker has completely ignored Karine Jean-Pierre since taking over for Jen Psaki (Fox News)

• Biden administration will pay border cities for cost of busing migrants across U.S. (Washington Examiner) | Biden wants more taxpayer money to transport illegal immigrants around U.S. (Washington Times)

• Ukraine’s incredible success turns the tables on Russia (Spectator)

• Defying markets to promote organics: Department of Agriculture pumping millions in taxpayer subsidies to support overpriced, overhyped organic food industry (City Journal) | Is organic food worth the hype? Eight shocking truths about your fresh produce (CNET)

• Ten facts EV advocates don’t want you to know (PJ Media)

• Fired CNN hacks find new work (Free Beacon)

• Policy: Biden’s proposed Title IX rewrite fails the test (Betsy DeVos)

• Satire: Keeping his promise to rid country of cancer, Biden steps down (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.