Dec 1, 2023 3 min read

Hit: U.S. Sen. John Fetterman has detractors who don’t appreciate his politics or his fashion sense, but give him this – he has been dogged about going after a member of his own party who has the stench of corruption surrounding him. In the weeks since Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey has been indicted for taking bribes and essentially working for the Egyptian government, Fetterman has called for the expulsion of Menendez from the U.S. Senate, and vowed that he would return a $5,000 campaign contribution he received from Menendez’s political action committee in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills. Fetterman has also introduced a resolution that would strip Menendez of his role on committees, prohibit him from seeing classified information or being present at national security briefings. Fetterman has said, “When you find gold bars stuffed in a mattress, the jokes write themselves. But our national security isn’t funny, it’s often life or death.” Fetterman deserves credit for standing on principle over party.

Hit: It’s an understatement to say that the internet has its advantages and disadvantages, but one area where it has clearly been beneficial is the way it has made historical artifacts and information widely available. You can find a bottomless well of information online, and it’s a godsend to researchers and historians. With a couple of clicks of the mouse, you can look at 19th century hospital records, 100-year-old movie fan magazines, congressional debates, and on and on. Before the internet, you would have to make an appointment at an archive or library. Now, the city of Pittsburgh has put scores of documents, meeting minutes, photographs and even film footage online. The radio station WESA-FM reported this week that additional records will be digitized, and it’s able to do this through grants from the National Historical Publication and Records Commission and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. More municipalities, both large and small, need to be doing this.

Miss In the 1800s, the United States deported some Irish migrants for the simple crime of being poor. One hundred years later, Japanese-Americans were uprooted from their homes and placed in internment camps during World War II solely because of their ethnicity. U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana, seems not to have learned from this shameful history, so he wants to repeat it. He has introduced a resolution that would expel Palestinians from the United States by revoking the refugee status, asylum requests or visas of any holder of a Palestinian Authority passport if they applied on or after the beginning of October. Zinke claims this is needed to “keep America safe.” But how would this be done if you blithely assume that all Palestinians support the horrific attack Hamas staged against Israel? U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, a Cincinnati-area Democrat who is also Jewish and a supporter of Israel, is one of two co-sponsors of a measure condemning the call to expel Palestinians. Landsman sensibly pointed out, “They’re trying to expel an entire community of people from the United States. We need these folks to pull back on this dangerous rhetoric and stop adding fuel to the fire.”