Townhall Review | Conservative Commentary On Today's News

Talking politics with your average young male these days, chances are you will hear all kinds of odd theories coming from the Pied Pipers of Podcastistan. You will hear them mentioning “experts” nobody heard of until about 10 minutes ago or until they were discovered by these podcasters because of their contrary, and often, conspiratorial thinking.

Young men, especially, are attracted to this novel “wisdom,” and they are so prone because, as they will tell you, mainstream institutions have been untruthful over the years. But because some institutions that we used to rely on and respect have been taken over by partisanship and been wrong doesn’t mean that all normative thinking and scholarship is a lie or cannot be trusted, or that people nobody have ever heard of are the replacements of true wisdom.

We dismiss and ignore this fallacious thinking at our collective peril.

The task of the serious is to be able to discern truth from fiction and greatness from mediocrity. In these critical times, that task has never been more important than now.

What happens when the Left plucks a ‘working class man’ from obscurity and pushes him for high office? In an era of Democratic desperation, mainstream media creates narratives to protect him, even at the expense of their stated values.

Graham Platner’s rise and fall stains all the institutions of the Left. Democrats and the media tried to bury or downplay Platner’s checkered past, including his Nazi SS tattoo, his record of disturbing public comments and his moral depravity.

Don’t be fooled by the sudden shift in media coverage. Everything that outlets like Axios and the New York Times reports as “news” today had been reported weeks and months ago by independent media. The Times cooked its own report in early June to protect Platner. Every elite media outlet perpetuated the “working class” lie about a man who lives off his wealthy parents.

The insistence by Democrats and media to make excuses for Platner exposes the corruption of both.

The Nazi tattoo told us all we needed to know.

Teaching Constitutional Law is a joy.

Every semester since 1996, my students hear that Con Law ought to be their most interesting class during their three years of law school.

This year the Court issued 67 majority opinions.

Because district court judge issue bolts-from-out-of-the-blue on a regular basis, there’s a perception abroad that the judiciary becoming politicized. Our highest court, however, is an enormous force for stability in the country that just turned 250 years old.

The most significant of this term’s cases may well turn out to be NRSC v. the FEC, which held that the provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act restricting the amount of money a party can spend in direct coordination with a candidate’s campaign, those restrictions were unconstitutional, and that breathes much-needed life into the two major political parties which indeed need the lift.

The Supreme Court has gone about its work successfully and will be back at it in October. The “republic of laws not men” carries on.

A specter is taking over the Democratic party and haunting America...Marxist and Islamic Socialism.

A new crop of Democratic party candidates truly stand for and believe in the worst and most dangerous ideologies of the past.  These candidates are winning nominations and likely winning races for mayor, for Congress, and for Senate—from Los Angeles to Washington, DC; from Colorado to Michigan.

Even a cursory look at their platforms and speeches reveals admissions of support for Marx and Mao and Stalin, and Islamist organizations from Hamas to Hezbollah.

This juggernaut of alien and anti-American ideology has a motor, and it has momentum; even the Democratic front-runner for President and the Democrat’s former nominee, Kamala Harris, is in regular consultation with one of its leaders, seeking favor and advice from Zohran Mamdani. 

The toxic ideology, from which millions died, and fled from in Europe, Asia, Lebanon, and Iran, cannot be replanted here.  But just now, due to enfeeblement or sympathy, no force within the Democratic party can stop it. 

The job must be left to us.

In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court has issued one of the most important administrative law decisions in years. It overrules a famous precedent called Humphrey’s Executor, which had protected some independent agency commissioners from being fired by the president.

President Trump removed two members of Federal Trade Commission over policy disagreements. But federal law says commissioners can be fired only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct. So the fired commissioners sued.

The Supreme Court held that the statutory limits on presidential removal violate the Constitution’s separation of powers. And the Court was right. If public officials exercise executive power but answer to no elected president on matters of policy, they’re no longer accountable to the voters. That creates an unelected governing class — an oligarchy, really — that’s protected by law. And that’s fundamentally un-American. 

Few issues have generated more controversy in America than whether biological males should be allowed to compete on girls’ and women’s school sports teams. Now, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that states may protect biological females from having to compete against biological males without violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause or Title IX.

It’s important to understand what the Court did—and didn’t—decide. The ruling doesn’t require states to adopt those protections. It simply says they are free to do so.

That matters because the decision explicitly affirms a basic truth: men and women are physically different. Recognizing that reality is not discrimination. It is a legitimate basis for protecting fairness in girls’ and women’s sports. And it leaves those policy decisions where they belong—with the people and their elected representatives.

As you celebrate this 4th of July weekend, I hope you get time to slow down and relax. Enjoy the day with friends, family, and loved ones in your world. As you do, remember that even these things are the fruits of freedom, the benefits of a stable government, civilizational order.

For 250 years—a quarter of a millennium now—our nation has benefitted from these gifts.

Yes: There is plenty to be concerned about as we look at the health of our nation in recent days. We are—and this is not hyperbole—more polarized today than the upheavals I lived through in the late ’60s and early 1970s.

We have a lot of work to do.

And yet—I really believe this—we have a lot to be thankful for.

America is still as my old friend, Bill Bennett has said the last best hope.

On behalf of Salem Media, have a great 4th of July.

As the nation approaches our 250th anniversary, it’s important for us to take a moment to recognize and appreciate the role that Christianity played in the foundation of the American experiment.

Broadly speaking, there is simply no question that the basic worldview behind the foundation of our republic was the biblical worldview of Christianity.

And it didn’t begin here exclusively, but it goes way back in history into the great foundations of Western civilization.

Is America a Christian nation in terms of explicit constitutional arrangement? No. But I think it's safe to say it wasn’t considered necessary at that point for such a claim to be made.

Our Founders did not foresee a secular age coming, but in that secular age there are now important arguments to be made—arguments about the meaning and the dignity of life, about marriage and family and religious liberty. 

As we mark 250 years, it’s up to us now to continue to make those arguments and to make them loudly, make them we must. 

This week, the USA turns 250. It comes at a time when our nation has become more sharply divided than any other in living memory.  

One man’s wisdom calls to us from an even more bitterly divided moment in American history. Six weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the bitter divisions of his day and how the American soul could look to the Lord for grace to heal them. 

“With malice toward none with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds,” Lincoln wrote in his 1865 second inaugural address. He sought to work for a “just and lasting peace” through faith—first in the Lord, and then in the potential of the American spirit to prevail.

Events vindicated Lincoln in his prayer for America. We must cling to our faith with no less strength in these times.

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, it’s worth honoring our glorious Constitution—the longest-surviving written charter of national government in world history.

Rarely have so few gotten so much so right. The Constitution protects our inalienable rights, reflecting the truth that our freedoms come from God, not government. It enshrines the principle of “We the People,” affirming that power belongs to citizens, not rulers, and that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.

Because the Framers understood the temptations of power, they divided authority among three branches of government, each designed to check the others. They also balanced the powers of the federal government and the states.

Our Constitution ensures that Americans live under the rule of law, not the rule of men. May it ever be so.

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is approaching quickly.

The document—as I often point out to my listeners—is, to quote Abraham Lincoln, an “apple of gold” protected by the “frame of silver” that is the Constitution he borrowed from Psalms there.

All Americans—indeed all the free world—have a lot to celebrate in this our 250th year of independence.

The Declaration asserted the existence of "rights" of individuals that exist before any government — no matter the form of that government— comes into being:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The great day of the fourth is, from beginning to end, about love of our country because our country defends our individual rights, rights derived—back to the Declaration— from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”

It is quite a gift that we have been given—a gift that needs to be defended.

As Americans celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday, we’ve received a special and quite unexpected gift: a spontaneous outpouring of affection from the rest of the world.

Visitors from across the globe are attending World Cup matches here, and many are posting videos expressing their delight with what they’re finding, and what we so often take for granted. Our safe streets and parks. Our barbecue. Ranch dressing. The wonders of LongHorn Steakhouse. Unlimited refills. But above all, the kindness and friendliness of the American people.

Too often, tourists fly into New York or Los Angeles and assume they’ve seen America. Now they’re discovering America’s heartland, and the enormous heart of its generous, welcoming people.

At 250 years old, America is still inspiring admiration, gratitude, and affection around the world.

Just recently, Ken Paxton secured the nomination for the GOP looking to represent Texas in the US Senate. Paxton will be facing a state senator and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico. The question is, as the New York Times put it, are Texans ready for Talarico's kind of Christianity?

Ruth Graham and David Goodman begin by talking about Talerico's pastor, Jim Rigby at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin. The article begins, "Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word God, is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas."

Later, the reporters refer to a sermon where Pastor Rigby refers to "the creative impulse of the universe, which can be called God, but doesn't have to be called God." I do not think that the majority of people in Texas understand the Bible in those terms.

 What we're talking about here is light years outside of biblical orthodoxy. So let's ask the question. Is Texas ready for that?

A recent report issued by British Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe documents the grooming and horrific sexual abuse of as many as 250,000 young girls across England,

These girls endured gang rape, brutal abuse, forced abortions and pregnancies, and even coerced Islamic conversion. And it happened while social workers, teachers, police and prosecutors looked the other way.

Now, the victims are being failed again—this time by America’s legacy media. Since the Lowe report was released, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSN NOW have devoted virtually no coverage to its findings.

Legacy media journalists often lament Americans’ declining trust in the press. But this is why. Media bias isn't only about how stories are covered. It's also about the stories legacy news organizations choose to ignore.

As America’s 250th birthday approaches, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.

Today, many Americans take for granted the idea that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights — natural rights that no government may rightfully take away. It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary those ideas were when the Declaration was written.

Grounded in Judeo-Christian principles, the Declaration established the United States not on shared ancestry, geography, or history, but on devotion to a common creed.

Although America has not always lived up to its highest ideals, our Declaration gives voice to our finest aspirations. With it, the Founders drafted the promissory note that generations of Americans have drawn on in the ongoing effort to build an ever more perfect union.

As we celebrate our 250th anniversary as a nation, it is worth reflecting on what got us here and has kept us going, living as we do under the longest-lasting constitution in world history.

From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, our country’s Framers set about establishing this most successful of political governing structures because they understood a few truths. Given low polling about American pride these days, they are truths about which we may need to ask: are they still self-evident?

We began this experiment declaring a recognition of something higher than man— “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and a Creator—endowing us with a right to self-government and a recognition that we human beings are all equal, especially in our inequality before God.  Rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are not given or tolerated by government or man, but God.

Our founding authors all understood and enshrined this for us. But, too many here have forgotten or unlearned this.  Sadly, just now, we need a great re-learning.

“The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb” is a 2016 volume by Neal Bascomb. It tells the harrowing story of Norwegian commandos who attacked the German site at Vemork in World War II. It was the Nazis only plant for mass production of “heavy water,” on which they had placed their primary bet to produce atomic weapons during World War II.

I wish it had been converted to the film that it was optioned to be because it would be a short-cut for those who don’t understand why Donald Trump is singularly focused on ensuring the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot make or buy a nuclear weapon.

Trump is motivated by a conviction similar to that held by Churchill and FDR and knew Hitler would use any weapon he could obtain, even as Trump and Netanyahu know the fanatics in Iran would use any weapon they could build or buy.

Did we achieve enough to end the Iranian regime’s nuclear program?

Time will tell.

The threat has existed for two decades now.

Bravo to Trump for his orders to start destroying it.

Both chambers of the New York state legislature have passed legislation replacing the word mother and father with ‘gestating parent’ and ‘non-gestating parent.

C.S. Lewis famously decried what he called “verbicide” or more technically, “the murder of a word.” We can only imagine what he would think of with this development in New York.

As the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal notes, the effort is part of legislation intended to “purge gendered language from state family law.”

Just ponder that for a moment.

The natural family is predicated upon the fundamental truth that God made human beings male and female, assigned marriage as the union of one man and one woman who would also be fruitful and multiply.

Hence, it’s easy, the male parent is the father and the female parent is the mother. This pattern has been assumed and unconfused throughout most of human history.

Until now. In New York.

The goal of this insanity is nothing less than the collapse of truth, creation order, marriage, morality, and civilization itself. That’s all.

A new poll from NBC reveals another low percentage of Americans who feel proud of their country. One NBC reporter put it that we are seeing “a steady 21st century decline.”  The disappointment in these and similar results is exacerbated by the timing of our birthday as a nation, when national affections should be at their height.

If only more Americans would listen to our foreign visitors.  Ever since Marquis de Lafayette, many a foreigner has come here to show and remind us of our greatness.  In fact, it was another Frenchman—Alexis de Tocqueville—whose two-volume book about us in the 19th Century, still taught today, gave us the best explanation of our politics and our culture. 

Now, we’re seeing reminders from soccer fans coming here—with social media posts and titles like, “World Cup fans embrace American culture.”

They’re reminding us not least of Thomas Paine’s words, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”  Let us hope this sinks in.  Too many here still have a lot to learn.

Just recently, Ken Paxton secured the nomination for the GOP looking to represent Texas in the US Senate. Paxton will be facing a state senator and Presbyterian seminarian James Talarico. The question is, as the New York Times put it, are Texans ready for Talarico's kind of Christianity?

Ruth Graham and David Goodman begin by talking about Talarico's pastor, Jim Rigby at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin. The article begins, "Jim Rigby, a pastor who rarely uses the word God, is a key to understanding the Senate candidate trying to pull off something unusual in Texas."

Later, the reporters refer to a sermon where Pastor Rigby refers to "the creative impulse of the universe, which can be called God, but doesn't have to be called God." I do not think that the majority of people in Texas understand the Bible in those terms.

 What we're talking about here is light years outside of biblical orthodoxy. So let's ask the question. Is Texas ready for that?