Pun Salad

I'm with Mr. Ramirez; it's time to make the "Death to America" mullahs an endangered species.

Also of note:

• The bogosity is strong with this one. Especially when he's trying to defend the indefensible. Rich Lowry examines Zohran Mamdani’s Bogus Explanation for Opposing Israel. He claims that he refuses to support "any state that privileges one religion over another." For an example of his "fairness", he cites Saudi Arabia.

  Well.

  Israel doesn’t have an official religion — repeat, it has no state religion.

  Instead, it is the homeland for Jews. Its Basic Law says that Israel is “the nation-state of the Jewish people, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious, and historical right to self-determination.”

  In other words, Israel is for the Jews in much the same way, say, that Poland is for the Poles or Japan for the Japanese.

  That these countries have distinct national identities defined by the peoples that live in them doesn’t mean they aren’t free societies.

  The Israeli Declaration of Independence says the Jewish state “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”

  And, indeed, there is freedom of religion in Israel. Christian, Muslim, Druze, and Baha’i communities maintain their own religious institutions and are free to worship as they please. The wrinkle is that — in an inheritance from the Ottoman Empire — Israel recognizes various religions and gives their courts authority over matters such as marriage and divorce.

  For the record, Wikipedia tries very hard to lump Israel into the (many) other countries with a state religion, it has to admit that "Judaism is not the state religion". Buried in a lot of handwaving meant to persuade the reader otherwise.

• The horseshoe's ends are getting closer every day. Meagan O'Rourke reports on Democrats' first 'Project 2029' proposal: More government control over social media.

  Democrats are gearing up for the 2028 election and preparing a list of policy priorities—dubbed "Project 2029"—should they retake the White House. The first Project 2029 proposal is not about affordability, healthcare, or foreign policy. No, the Democrats' first proposal concerns children's online safety: the issue fueling lawmakers' bipartisan push to impose greater government control over the internet.

  Semafor's Nicholas Wu first reported on the "Kids Over Clicks" proposal on Monday. The proposal, Wu wrote, advocates for "narrowing protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that shield platforms from some liability," banning social media accounts for kids under 16, "designing safer internet platforms," and more.

  "It's for the kids" is, unfortunately, a too-effective thought-terminating cliché.

• Also on the censorship front. There was something for everyone at SCOTUS yesterday. Let me link to something the WSJ editorialists (and I) liked: Political Speech Wins Again at the Supreme Court. (WSJ gifted link)

  One laudable project of the current Supreme Court has been incrementally restoring the First Amendment right of Americans to spend on political campaigns. A 6-3 majority on Tuesday took another step toward that end by overturning federal limits on coordinated spending by candidates and parties (NRSC v. FEC).

  Political parties are weaker than ever, and one reason is a 1974 campaign finance law that limits how much parties can spend in coordination with candidates. “For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend freely to support their candidates during campaigns and could do so in coordination with the candidates,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh writes for the majority.

  It's dispiriting how many Democrat candidates want to "overturn Citizens United". Now they will have something else they want to overturn! Even my "moderate" CongressCritter Chris Pappas, now running for Senate, wants Citizens United overturned.

  Fun fact: his campaign website features his "Anti-Corruption Agenda". Which proudly announces that "Pappas doesn’t take a dime of corporate PAC money."

  But as it turns out, Pappas takes a lot of dimes of union PAC money. Which is not corrupting at all, apparently.