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Posted on 04/22/2025 5:35:58 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The Pennsylvania governor survived an anti-Semitic attack. Now he faces a choice: fold to his party’s radicals—or lead.
Earlier this month, on the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover, 38-year-old Cody Balmer firebombed the residence of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. A search warrant indicates that the attempted murder was driven by Balmer’s fury over what the Democratic state chief executive—America’s most identifiably Jewish governor—“wants to do to the Palestinian people.”
Balmer is not merely an anti-Semite and would-be domestic terrorist. He was out on bail after assaulting his estranged wife and stomping on his ten-year-old son’s broken leg. He is also mentally ill and was off his meds: his mother tried to commit him three days before the arson attack, but police told her that, unless he threatened himself or others, he didn’t meet the threshold for involuntary commitment.
This attack represents, then, a failure of the systems meant to keep people safe. The question now is whether Governor Shapiro will seize the moment to fix them. He could buck his party’s pro-terrorism wing and back popular, common-sense fixes to bail, commitment, and domestic-terrorism laws. Will the likely 2028 presidential contender step up?
The question has national relevance. Across the country, public disorder is rising as policymakers retreat from tools like institutionalization and pretrial detention. “Why was he free at all?” is a question asked not just about Balmer but about repeat offenders across the country who are out on bail or seriously mentally ill.
The public wants to make it easier to detain such individuals. In New York, where Tulchin Research, Bernie Sanders’s pollster, has conducted public opinion research, nearly 90 percent of residents back reforms to remove dangerously ill individuals from public spaces. A separate Manhattan Institute survey finds that majorities in both parties favor tougher bail laws.
There’s also growing alarm over a surge in political violence. Balmer’s attack is just the latest in a string of incidents: the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione; the firebombing of multiple Tesla dealerships; and the New Year’s Day attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas. In many cases, these incidents have gone curiously unremarked in the media, which seems eager to downplay the Left’s tendency to support violence.
Balmer’s attack, moreover, was an explicit response to Shapiro’s Zionism—and, one suspects, to his Judaism more generally. And it occurred against the backdrop of a broader campaign of civil intimidation targeting Jews and pro-Israel Americans. Across the country (and in Shapiro’s backyard), radicals have escalated from protected speech to coercion: blocking roads, occupying campus buildings, harassing Jewish students, and lionizing terrorist groups in the public square. These aren’t isolated protests—they’re deliberate efforts to make life unlivable for political opponents and to sidestep the democratic process.
Governor Shapiro, of all people, should feel the urgency to act. A man tried to murder him and his family. Yet, his record doesn’t inspire confidence. On issue after issue—from school choice to energy policy—Shapiro has talked tough, only to fold when pressured by the activists who rule Democratic politics....SNIP
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It is amazing what dilemmas he faces for being in a party that embraces insanity and criminality.
“It is amazing what dilemmas he faces for being in a party that embraces insanity and criminality.”
For Dems, it’s power above all else. Shapiro will shut up, go along, and get wealthy just like the rest of the criminals in the communist party.
The Democrat Party is a ticking time bomb of mutually exclusive disparate pieces of societal shrapnel.
It cannot hold together much longer.
They have abandoned all sanity and will explode in a fireball of hate and violence.
It’s only a matter of time....................
Recent events will be a definite political plus for Shapiro: he can now claim to be a holocaust survivor.
I am reminded of when GW Bush was asked about what he was going to do about the racist killing of a black man in Texas. He looked at the camera and said, “They got the death penalty. What more can we do about it?”
They can arrest the guy and charge him with arson.
Shapiro has already come out and talked about it. Unless people expect him to go down to the lockup and fight the guy…there isn’t much more he can do about it.
The evidence suggests that the wacko attempted it because of Shapiro’s position on Palestine, not because he’s Jewish, no?
It is not about this one crazy arsonist. It is about the radicals in the party. With a presumed presidential run in 2028, will he support HAMAS to appease the radicals?
Convert to Catholicism? ;-)
I have so much trouble with conspiracy theories I think I must be schizophrenic. I find myself wondering if the fire was a campaign kickoff event for a Presidential campaign.
He has already folded.
In an interview he went with the “both sides do it” baloney.
Like Schumer, he claims to be Jewish until it comes to bucking his party’s love of anti Semitism and terrorism.
Love of, and loyalty to, far left ideology trumps his religion. I am always astounded at the liberal American Jews’ inability to learn from history. Every US Jew in the democrat party should be loud and raising hell with the media and the party about leftist anti Semitism.
Not..A..Peep.
OTOH, approximately 50% of Israelis still think they can make peace with the Arabs.
Land for peace until there is no land and still no peace.
It is so disappointing and discouraging.
“The evidence suggests that the wacko attempted it because of Shapiro’s position on Palestine, not because he’s Jewish, no?”
Generally speaking, this is a false distinction.
Uh, no. It’s not. The two are conflated for political purposes, but they are not at all the same.
No, they are separated so anti-Semitic twats can demand the extermination of Jews “from the river to the sea” with semi-plausible deniability.
You’re crazy.
Mabey don’t go around dedicating mosques in black areas. The ox gored him
No, crazy is ignoring facts and logic to support the murderous Gazan Arabs.
That wasn’t the argument, Meanie.
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