◼ Just wait until Hulk Hogan is dispatched to do the whip counts.
◼ Just eight days after his nomination was announced, Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration as Donald Trump’s second-term attorney general. In Gaetz’s own words, he had become a “distraction.” That Gaetz was ever advanced is a testament to the willfulness of President-elect Trump. That Gaetz’s advancement was halted so quickly is a testament to the enduring importance of the Senate. It is proper for the chief executive to be accorded a good deal of latitude when selecting those who will carry out his agenda. But that latitude ought not to be infinite. In Federalist 76, Alexander Hamilton contended that, in such cases as there are “special and strong reasons for the refusal”—especially in such cases as the country was witnessing the “appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity”—the Senate had the responsibility to exercise its advise and consent powers and block the choice at the pass. Matt Gaetz is an unfit character in almost every way that it is possible for a nominee to be. That he will get nowhere near the office for which he had been named is a blessing—and a reminder, too, that our system of separated powers was designed for good cause. Next up: Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who will face ethics questions of her own but, we trust, none as lurid as Gaetz has.
◼ Enough is enough: It is time for the U.S. government to take decisive action against the International Criminal Court. The ICC has just issued arrest warrants for Israel’s sitting prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for the “war crime” of defending their nation against Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that carried out the October 7 atrocities—which are best understood as part of the multi-front war of aggression waged against the Jewish state by the jihadist Iranian regime, Hamas’s sponsor. The ICC is a radical and power-hungry tribunal that purports to exercise jurisdiction even over such nations as the United States and Israel, which are not parties to the enabling 1998 Rome Treaty. Here, it purports to act on behalf of “Palestine,” which not even the U.N. recognizes as a nation. The charges of “genocide” are preposterous. The population of the Palestinian territories has grown more than tenfold since the “genocide” supposedly began in 1948. Since October 7, Israel has waged a heroically humanitarian defensive war, making efforts to shield and nourish Palestinian noncombatants (their widespread support for Hamas notwithstanding) even at the cost of increasing the casualties and risks sustained by the IDF. The United States must impose severe sanctions against ICC officials (as President Trump did in 2020, when the ICC purported to exercise jurisdiction over U.S. military operations in Afghanistan). Beyond that, sanctions should also be imposed against any of the 120 Rome Treaty member states that fail to renounce the arrest warrants against Israeli officials. Where are Senate Democrats and the Biden-Harris administration?
◼ Bob Casey and the Democrats tried and failed to steal an election. As of this writing, according to the state website, Republican Dave McCormick has 3,398,462 votes and incumbent Democratic senator Casey has 3,382,113. That is a margin of 16,349 votes. Back on November 1, the Pennsylvania supreme court reaffirmed that a state law requiring mail ballots to have handwritten dates on the return envelopes is constitutional. But four counties in Pennsylvania—Bucks, Philadelphia, Centre, and Montgomery—declared they would count those ballots anyway, in open defiance of the law. And they were not shy about it; Neil Makhija, the Democratic chairman of the Montgomery County election board, told the New York Times that the date requirement “is immaterial and serves no purpose.” That’s not his call. In a tantrum, Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia absurdly contended, “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws any time they want.” She also serves on the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and in her limited defense “on” does not mean “against.” The state supreme court felt compelled to weigh in again, with pointed terseness. Casey belatedly withdrew late on Thursday, past the point at which he could have salvaged any dignity.
◼ Trump has announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which, notwithstanding its name, will not be a government entity but rather an outside advisory group to study the bureaucracy. We welcome the elevation of government waste and poor service to a more prominent place in the national discourse. It harks back to the Grace Commission under President Reagan, when a lengthy report detailing government failures was compiled and published, an idea Reagan first implemented as governor of California. Most of the Grace Commission’s recommendations were, however, ignored. It does not appear that the DOGE’s recommendations will be any more binding. DOGE leaders Musk (the name is a reference to dogecoin, his favorite cryptocurrency) and Vivek Ramaswamy are tweeting up a storm, but it will take more than tweets to disentangle the government-employee unions, territorial politicians, and regulatory superstructure that have made the bureaucracy the sprawling mess that it is.
◼ In a speech to the Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that a “specific component” of Iran’s nuclear program was hit as part of Israel’s October 26 air strikes, which were launched in retaliation for Tehran’s October 1 ballistic-missile attack on Israel. It had been widely reported throughout October that the Biden administration was pressuring Netanyahu to avoid Iran’s nuclear sites or its oil infrastructure. When the counter-strike finally came, it at first appeared that Jerusalem had indeed limited its operation to Iranian air defenses and missile-production facilities. But U.S. officials later revealed that a top-secret nuclear-research facility at Parchin had been targeted and destroyed. The site, known as “Taleghan 2,” was not part of Iran’s declared “civilian use” nuclear program. The mullahs and their henchmen have been so far reluctant to acknowledge the strikes and their significance, because it would reveal that they had been violating Tehran’s commitments, such as they are, to refrain from developing nuclear weapons. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi insisted in a statement that “Iran is not after nuclear weapons, period,” and the Israelis seem determined to help it keep this resolution.
