16 March—Congratulations to Connecticut State Trooper Brian North on his (expected) acquittal yesterday of first-degree manslaughter, a charge that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place. But the state’s Inspector General, Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Robert Devlin, a former federal prosecutor and state Appellate Court judge, who was appointed to the IG post in 2021, not long after it was created, had to show that he and his fellow politico-legal functionaries weren’t just wasting even more taxpayer money than the state usually does.

The inspector general position was part of the overkill police-accountability legislation passed by the Connecticut General Assembly in 2020 as a local part of the nationwide panic reaction to George Floyd’s totally unwarranted death at the hands and knee of a Minneapolis cop. The intent of the legislation was purely and simply political—to mollify minority communities and increase the voting public’s trust in the state’s criminal justice system.

It hasn’t worked at all. Not that anybody really expected it to.

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The Monitor has never been positively disposed to Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat who is currently the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. We’ve referred to him thus:

“If Charles Schumer ever gets the chance to oversee the death of the filibuster for his party’s convenience, his scummy ass is also bound to be bitten.”

“Not that Senate Majority Leader Charles (known to his friends as Chuck the Fuck) Schumer of New York, who’s taking credit for getting the fraudulent IRA passed, was eager to fiddle with the loophole that he and his sugar daddies also benefit from.”

“Senate Democrat Majority Leader Charles Schumer (of whom the less said, the better). . . .”

“Senate Majority Leader (i.e., at the moment, Democrat) Charles Schumer has been polluting the Capitol, first in the House, then in the Senate since 1999, for 41 years.”

“But the big Sunday news is that King Charles III (a.k.a. Chuck the Turd, although he prefers to defer to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer for that descriptive sobriquet). . . .”

“Senate Majority Leader Charles “the insidious hypocrite” Schumer. . . .”

Well, a couple of days ago Schumer called for new elections in Israel, the world’s only Jewish state (it has no established religion but must nevertheless be considered excessively theocratic if not an actual theocracy), and declared in no uncertain terms that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was an impediment to peace.

The New York Times reminded readers that Schumer is the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history. But Schumer’s religion should be irrelevant. As Mitch McConnell reacted to Schumer’s inappropriate suggestion, “Just because he’s Jewish doesn’t give him a pass to advocate something that’s completely inconsistent with our past approach to democratic countries.”

Sen. McConnell emphasized, “You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections. It’s just completely at variance with the way we typically operate in a foreign country, which is to deal with whatever government has been chosen in a democracy.”

Getting back to Schumer the Jew, then, Norm Coleman, former Republican U.S. Senator from Minnesota and Brooklyn (N.Y.) schoolmate of Schumer’s, currently chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said it very well in The Hill:

“I’ve known Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) since we were schoolmates at PS 197 and James Madison High School in Brooklyn. . . . That personal connection made it especially painful for me to watch Sen. Schumer stab Israel in the back in his public remarks on March 14.

“Sen. Schumer said that the elected Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu ‘no longer fits the needs of Israel.’ He called the government ‘an obstacle to peace,’ and demanded new elections. He threatened that if the Netanyahu-led coalition remains in power, ‘then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.’ 

“With these words, Chuck Schumer, who styles himself the ‘Shomer’ or guardian of the Jewish people, crossed an unprecedented line.  

“Here is the highest ranking Jewish elected political leader in American history threatening to use U.S. financial and diplomatic leverage to pressure Israel to dump its democratically elected government and adopt policies favored by radical Democrats in Congress and in the White House. This at the very moment that Israel is fighting a war for survival against the barbaric Hamas terrorists who murdered, mutilated and raped 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 and who still hold over 100 hostages, six of whom are American citizens. 

“It’s hard to believe that the smart Brooklyn boy I knew 60 years ago has so completely missed the mark. Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is determined by a War Cabinet agreed upon in October, which includes some of Netanyahu’s toughest critics. Moreover, the vast majority of Israelis approve of the government’s conduct of the war. Israel has done more than any nation in history to protect innocent civilians in wartime, while taking down a terrorist infrastructure in Gaza that has been decades in the making.

“Netanyahu is leading a country that is still in shock, in mourning and unwaveringly determined that the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust will never be repeated. Ironically, attacking Netanyahu now will only make him stronger politically at home, as he defends Israel from both Hamas and its supporters in the U.S. at the same time. 

“While Israelis face an existential enemy that publicly announces its intention to repeat Oct. 7 over and over again, Democrats are trying to look tough on Israel to please their radical supporters sitting safely here in the U.S. This is not the time to insert American political calculations into our relationship with a key strategic partner and a democratic ally in an increasingly fragmented world. 

“In this moment of crisis, Israel deserves our wholehearted support. Americans know this — the majority of them support Israel. But Democrats in Washington are seeing their poll numbers dropping, and Schumer’s remarks make clear that they are increasingly willing to sacrifice our ally Israel to win votes in certain battleground states. It is a ‘shanda,’ a disgrace, that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of Brooklyn, New York, is the one holding the knife.”

Can’t beat that . . .