Thursday roundup

That was one badass ship Britain used to keep Iran from storming that oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Was that move on Iran's part retaliation for Britain putting the kibosh on Iran's attempt to surreptitiously supply Syria with oil by rounding Africa recently?

A must-read for all you believers among the LITD readership: a Resurgent piece by Drew Holden entitled "The Biggest Threat to American Christianity Comes From Within."

On the left, a watering down of Scripture in certain churches to a point where it can’t reasonably be called Christian is taking place, one that denies the bodily resurrection, a physical Hell, and other central pillars of the Bible. In an effort to be expansive and welcoming, it minimizes or excuses sinfulness and contrition altogether, and elevates liberal priorities to religious convictions. 

There are many good and noble things to call an association of people who care deeply about human justice. But lacking a connection to (or flat out rejecting) the most basic, fundamental Christian doctrine and scripture, it’s a stretch to rightly call them Christian. And there’s a darker side as well, punctuated at times with a seemingly blatant disdain for the faithful, be they parents, bakers, or everyday people. 

On the right, the Jerry Falwellization of the Christian Church has been similarly bad. The President rivals Moloch in the devotion he receives from his adoring faithful. Religious leaders line up to lie prostrate before him, ignoring or forgiving (without a pretense of reconciliation) his worst impulses, past and present. And all the while, clear commandments go ignored by way of hard-hearted, inhumane policies toward the refugee, the alien, the poor, the widow, the least of these. 

Jim Geraghty at National Review has some very important questions about the Jeffrey Epstein situation:

One: How did Jeffrey Epstein make his fortune in the first place? One claim is a massive Ponzi scheme.

Two: Could Epstein really have been connected to some sort of intelligence service? In yesterday’s press conference, labor secretary Alex Acosta offered a weird, vague, contradictory, meandering answer when asked about this. If Epstein was working for some sort of spy agency, which one? What was the aim, to collect blackmail on prominent figures? Who was being blackmailed, and what did they do?

Three: Why did the office Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance try to keep Epstein from being registered as a top-level sex offender? “A seasoned sex-crimes prosecutor from Mr. Vance’s office argued forcefully in court that Mr. Epstein, who had been convicted in Florida of soliciting an underage prostitute, should not be registered as a top-level sex offender in New York.” The judge denied the request and declared, “I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this.”

Four: After Epstein was labeled a “Level 3 sex offender” — meaning the worst — Epstein was required by law to check in with the NYPD every 90 days. He never checked in at all over an eight-year span. How did that not generate any consequences?

Five: How did his private island off Saint Thomas get the nickname “Pedophile Island” and how does a rumor like that not get law enforcement to start snooping around?

Six: Bill Clinton’s public statement about his interactions with Epstein was laughably inaccurate, contracted by contemporaneous media accounts, never mind FAA flight logs. You would think Clinton and those around him would have a well-worn playbook for denying sexual impropriety and criminal behavior by now.

Seven: Doesn’t this paragraph in deep in a recent article of Vanity Fair seem to bury the lede, as they say in journalism?

Pecker, he later told me, used to send him articles and issues before they were published so that he and Trump could read them. After the meeting Trump called in Sam Nunberg, then a Trump Organization employee, who saw Pecker leaving Trump’s office. “Michael was sitting in there when I came in, and the issue of the National Enquirer with the pictures of Prince Andrew was on his desk,” Nunberg recalled. “He said not to tell anyone, but that Pecker had just been there and had brought the issue with him. Trump said that Pecker had told him that the pictures of Clinton that Epstein had from his island were worse.” (Cohen, speaking by phone from the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, corroborated Nunberg’s version of the events, though he declined to add any additional information about the meeting.)

So the National Inquirer has pictures of Bill Clinton with Epstein and the women he was using?

If Trump knew about these photographs, why didn’t he at least leak or hype them during the 2016 campaign?

And if Clinton really did nothing inappropriate in all of his interactions with Epstein, why didn’t Hillary Clinton’s campaign make a stink about Trump’s past friendship with Epstein, during a campaign where Trump’s unsavory treatment of women was a big issue? 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says that now that the "A"CA looks likely to die in its entirety, let's let states serve as policy laboratories for health care and see what works and what doesn't. 

Amy McGrath will clearly need to burnish her extemporaneous-speaking chops if she intends to pose any kind of serious challenge to Mitch McConnell, who this week demonstrated that his are in good working order. 

And Bob O'Rourke takes tone-deafness to an entirely new level:

Robert Francis O'Rourke recently reminded America he was running for president by telling a group of immigrants and new citizens that the country they just decided to pledge allegiance to was founded on white supremacy and is so entrenched in racism that to this day "every single institution and structure" is meant to keep minorities enslaved. 

“This country was founded on white supremacy and every single institution and structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression even in our democracy," the former Texas congressman told the group in Nashville, Tennesee.

That ought to boost his poll numbers!