If there’s one person in Virginia with job security, it’s the head of Governor Ralph Northam’s (D) crisis PR. Northam, who’s become more known for his scandals than his successes, has managed to keep his damage control team hopping since the moment he was sworn into office — first with his defense of legal infanticide and then with the surfacing of some unflattering blackface yearbook photos. But if 2020 was supposed to be the year of redemption, then someone might want to tell Northam to rethink his coronavirus strategy.

“Wearing a mask could literally save someone’s life,” Northam had been telling his pandemic-ravaged state. So imagine everyone’s surprise when selfies of the governor started popping up on social media with beachgoers in May — no masks in sight. Two days later, to everyone’s amazement, he signed an executive order requiring Virginians to do what he wouldn’t: cover their faces or take the consequences. Of course, people in the state are well acquainted with their governor’s double standards. After all, Northam is the same man who called the lockdown protestors “selfish” for violating quarantine and then pledged to stand by the George Floyd mobs overflowing city streets.

But this week, it isn’t just your garden variety hypocrisy that’s bothering Virginia voters. It’s Governor Northam’s latest pandemic outrage: a snitch line for coronavirus violators. That’s right. With the help of the Virginia Department of Health, Northam is urging people to file a complaint against anyone they see who isn’t following social distance guidelines, the mask mandate, or overcrowding their establishments. The portal, which you can see for yourself here, comes complete with a dropdown menu that highlights places like churches and gun ranges as lawbreakers. (There’s no option for “beach,” in case you were wondering).

“So let me get this straight,” State Senator Mark Obenshain (R) posted. “Governor Northam is asking private citizens to tattle on their fellow citizens… And these complaints can be made anonymously.” In other words, he went on, “There’s nothing to prevent businesses from snitching on competitors or to prevent the outright fabrication of reports.” What will that mean, he wondered, for local businesses — who are already struggling under the weight of coronavirus? Surely, this would work against them. To say nothing, he went on, of the governor’s own actions, as he “equivocates and prevaricates when it comes to its enforcement in connection with protests, demonstrations, and riots…”

Of course, the irony of this latest rumor form — and the governor’s orders in general — is that no one seems to have any idea who’s overseeing it. When the governor announced his initial mandate on masks, he insisted this was a “matter of public health,” not a criminal matter. Reporters at the press conference were confused. So who is enforcing these rules, they asked? And what would the punishment be? Eventually, Northam conceded that violators could be charged with a class one misdemeanor — which would make it, you guessed it, a criminal matter.

Later, the governor’s counsel, Rita Davis, tried to clean up the mess, explaining that the health commissioner would oversee the orders, not law enforcement. The point, both she and her boss stressed, wasn’t to lock people up in jail but to encourage people “to do the right thing.” But surely we can all agree that a state-sponsored tip line, especially one that encourages religious snooping, is about a lot more than healthy peer pressure. Governor Northam is turning neighbors into government informants with absolutely no way to screen phony or politically-motivated complaints.

Think of the possibilities, one blogger says. Want to close down a business competitor? Report them for mask-less workers! Dislike church? Turn them in for packed pews. Mad over your neighbor’s landscaping? Summon the health gestapo.

State Republicans like Steve Newman could only shake his head. “Three months ago, could we imagine a Virginia where the government would set-up an online form and encourage you to report on a neighbor or your neighborhood church?” And of course, he points out, there is no pull-down menu to report “unmasked mobs of more than 50 that vandalize communities or tear down and destroy personal property.” Nor, he goes on, is there an option for people who aren’t social distancing while they shoot at our police. Virginia used to be a state of laws. Now? It’s a state under the thumb of hypocritic governor who’s relying on a secret network of citizens to uphold his capricious rules. No wonder Virginians are asking: Is it 2021 yet?

Originally published here.

The Annex Best Thing for Israel

President Trump has already done more than any administration in modern history for Israel. But this week, he and his White House team are weighing a move that could change the status quo of America’s ally forever.

It’s a conversation that’s been going on since President Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018. With Israeli’s new coalition government finally in place, it may finally be time to move forward with America’s support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan. For the administration, it’s not a question of whether the president supports the idea — Donald Trump has been ready to restore Israeli control to Judea and Samaria since he took office. The question, at least in most people’s minds, is when the policy would make the most political sense.

Caroline Glick, a senior columnist at Breitbart News, joined “Washington Watch” Tuesday night from Israel to talk about the move, which, as she points out, is more than 50 years in the making. The crux of Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan is to officially restore the country’s control over the Jewish communities inside Judea and Samaria, where a half-million Israeli’s live — and the Jordan Valley, which is Israel’s eastern frontier with Jordan. For the last 53 years, these areas, which include some important biblical heritage sights, have been under military rule — not civil law like the rest of Israel. It’s not a matter of giving away land, Caroline explains. “And it’s not annexation,” she points out, “because under international law, these are parts of the territory that was allocated for the Jewish state by the League of Nations 100 years ago.” It’s essentially “an administrative move.”

Israel has had sovereignty over this area for decades, but they haven’t exercised it because of the international opposition. Now that President Trump has relocated the embassy to Jerusalem, there seems to be a growing sense that this is the right time to move forward in other ways. For too long, Caroline said, people have been afraid of the Arab world’s reaction. “There was this idea that to gain peace, Israel has to surrender to all the demands of the Palestinians. And that meant surrender all of its rights to Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem in order to get peace from the Palestinians.”

But from a moral and factual perspective, that was wrong. The world was trying to pretend that the state of Israel was somehow a new country — not the “reconstitution of the biblical Jewish commonwealth.” They wanted us to believe “that the Jews who live here have nothing to do with the Jews that were here at the time of the temple — which is a lie, of course. And therefore, we’re not going to recognize Israel capital in Jerusalem. We’re going to say that their capital is in Tel Aviv, the city that was only established in 1989.”

President Trump understood how ridiculous that was. He knew the reason that all of the past peace plans had failed because they were built on the lie that the Jewish people don’t have a legitimate claim to Israel. It’s the same concept, she explains, as Judea and Samaria. The Jews aren’t “occupiers” of a foreign land. It's their land. “That’s the cradle of Jewish civilization. That’s the cradle of the Judeo-Christian civilization. It’s not only where Judaism was born and where we’re King David was born, and where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were. It’s also where Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And so when you say that Judea actually has nothing to do with the Jews, you’re denying Jewish history.”

With America’s support, Israel can move forward and claim the right that was already there. And believe it or not, a lot of Israelis on both sides support it. Even on the political Left, Caroline explains, people in the country think it’s a reasonable plan. “Whether it’ll work or not is a completely different issue,” she acknowledges, “but it has a better chance of working than anything else because at least it’s based on reality. And Israelis appreciate that.”

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.