Free Republic

Who’s to blame? Every time there is a shooting, a bombing, any kind of mass killing, a heartbroken nation asks ourselves, who’s to blame? We must begin, of course, with the fact that the person who did it, did it. Period. The person who pulled the trigger, set the bomb, drove the van, was responsible. Unless he was hypnotized, or otherwise physically and mentally controlled from afar, the killer himself bears criminal responsibility for the crime he commits. No excuses, no reprieves, no blaming a cruel society or bad childhood. When a killer kills, he owns the responsibility, and he...

The rabbi who led prayer services at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh the day it was attacked by a deranged gunman has revealed he has received hate mail for saying he would be “honored” to meet with President Trump. Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived Saturday’s brutal attack by hiding in a bathroom until SWAT rescued him, said Monday that it would be his “honor” to “meet a president of the United States” when asked by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie if he would like to meet with President Trump when he arrives in Pittsburgh

Alisyn Camerota has described one of President Trump's campaign messages as "vitriolic attacks on the media." Can you blame Trump for criticizing the media when, in the same breath, Camerota twice lumped the President with an accused mass murderer? On CNN this morning, Camerota said: "Midterms messaging, we'll start with, from the president. So he seems to be zeroing in on the two pillars of the media, continuing his vitriolic attacks against the media, and migrants, continuing to, in fact, ratchet up the language about them and frankly, I mean, I have to say it, using some of the same...

A rabbi from Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue said he won't meet with President Donald Trump who is heading to the city Tuesday in the wake of the massacre at the house of worship this weekend. Rabbi Jeffrey Myers -- who escaped the gunfire that killed 11 on Saturday morning -- at first said the president was welcome, but since he made that statement, he "received a lot of email... [from people who] are not happy with those words," Myers told CNN Tuesday. "The thing that saddens me is those emails also contain hate, and it just continues in this...

Around 200 people joined together in Pittsburgh on Tuesday afternoon to demonstrate against President Trump's visit to Pittsburgh. The protesters, organized by Jewish group IfNotNow, staged a gathering that was part-protest and part-shiva, a Jewish mourning ritual, Buzzfeed News reported. The demonstration came as Trump landed in Pittsburgh to meet with the victims and families of those affected by the Saturday mass shooting in a well-known Squirrel Hill synagogue. The shooting, which left 11 dead and a few people injured, is reportedly the deadliest attack against Jewish people in the history of the U.S. "Today, President Trump is in Pittsburgh,"...

Shortened title. Full title: Pittsburgh Rabbi Receives Hate Mail From Leftists For Welcoming President Trump to Synagogue After Massacre Pittsburgh Synagogue Rabbi Jeffrey Myers revealed on Tuesday on an appearance with CNN that he received tons of hate mail simply because he previously said he would welcome President Trump to Tree of Life Synagogue. On Saturday, police responded to a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The liberal American Jewish organization J Street sent out an email on Monday, using the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting as a peg to encourage supporters to mobilize against Republicans in next week’s election – and carrying a “Donate” button. The Republican Jewish Coalition called the move “a disgrace.” After telling recipients of the email that “our first duty is to come together in support of the victims, their loved ones, the congregation and the entire city of Pittsburgh” and “to grieve and to comfort one another, standing together in solidarity,” J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami shifts direction. In bold type, he...

As a Jew who attends synagogue every Shabbat, and as an advocate for the carrying of concealed weapons, I fervently pray we will not need armed guards at American synagogues. America's uniqueness has been exemplified by the fact that Jews do not need armed guards in their synagogues. May it always be so. Even if you don't love Jews -- if you only love America -- you need to fight anti-Semites. As the Jews go, so goes the fate of the nation in which they live.

Two days after the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, Vice President Pence bowed his head at a rally on Monday in Michigan as a religious leader who casts himself as a “rabbi” offered a prayer for the victims in Pittsburgh. But the man who shared a stage with Pence, Loren Jacobs, preaches Messianic Judaism, a tradition central to Jews for Jesus, a group condemned by Jewish leaders as faux Judaism that seeks to promote Christian evangelism. The major Jewish denominations join the state of Israel in viewing followers of Messianic Judaism as Christian, not Jewish. His appearance drew...

Former Jewish community leader Gregg Roman said Tuesday that President Trump should visit Pittsburgh in the wake of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, and that the community would embrace him. "Any president -- Democrat, Republican, Whig, Federalist, whatever you want to call it -- their responsibility is to provide solace and comfort to their nation for people on one side of the spectrum politically or the other," Roman, former director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Pittsburgh, told Hill.TV co-hosts Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on "Rising." "And for him to be able to show up...

All my life I have reminded fellow Jews in America that we are the luckiest Jews to have ever lived in a non-Jewish country. I know what I'm talking about. I wrote a book on anti-Semitism, taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College and fought anti-Semitism since I was 21, when Israel sent me into the Soviet Union to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out Jewish names. Even after the massacre of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, this assessment remains true. But the greatest massacre of Jews in American history is a unique American tragedy. It is a...

.....Rabbi Jeffrey Myers told CNN that he didn't blame any specific group of people for the shooting, because hate “does not know religion, race, creed political party.” Trump expressed the possibility that he would visit the Tree of Life Synagogue in the coming days. While some rejected the president’s visit, Myers welcomed him to the city. “The president of the United States is always welcome,” he said. “I’m a citizen, he’s my president. He is certainly welcome.”

More than 44,000 people have signed an open letter from progressive Jewish leaders saying President Trump is not welcome in Pittsburgh until he denounces white nationalism. Eleven members of the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice penned a letter to Trump following Saturday's shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue that left 11 congregants dead. "President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities," the letter reads. "President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees."

Republicans like to tell you that the government is too big. They also rightly complain that we have an overregulation problem (which they too often wrongly conflate into an over-incarceration problem). Overregulation includes Washington’s criminalization of too much conduct that should not be made illegal (or at least should not be subject to criminal prosecution) or that should be left to the states to prosecute. The Framers, after all, gave us a system in which the states are sovereign, governing their own internal affairs. The federal role, particularly in the administration of criminal justice, is supposed to be limited to...

It was ironic to see many of the same liberals, who recently fought to prop up the world’s most powerful Jew-hating terror state, lecturing us on the importance of combating anti-Semitism. But there they were yesterday. [snip] For those who confuse progressivism with Judaism — which is to say many — it might be difficult to understand that undermining the Democratic Party isn’t an act of anti-Semitism. The Trump administration, in fact, has been the most pro-Jewish in memory. Every Jew who’s ever prayed understands the importance of Jerusalem in our faith, culture, and history. It was President Trump, not...

After a week of hate crimes by Trump’s brownshirts, a sitting GOP Senator tweets out a false account of Pelosi inciting violence. Republicans are killing us and lying about it and appeals to decency won’t work. Only using this platform for BOO-ms added, The whole party has the blood of innocent Jews on its hands now. Your Republican friends and family and neighbors did this. They were warned. They don’t care. They will never take responsibility. It’s up to us to punish them. John Cronyn is a Nazi Lindsey Graham is a Nazi Mitch McConnell is a Nazi Susan Collins...

<p>A group of Jewish leaders told President Trump that he is no longer welcome in Pittsburgh until he denounces white nationalism following the shooting at a synagogue there over the weekend.</p> <p>Eleven members of the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice penned a letter to Trump following the Saturday shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue.</p>

WASHINGTON — Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said Sunday that he disagrees with President Donald Trump's call for more armed guards at places of worship in order to prevent shootings like the one that claimed the lives of 11 congregants at a synagogue in the city on Saturday. Instead, Peduto told NBC's "Meet the Press," he believes that gun control measures would go further to help stop these shootings. "I belong to an organization, a bipartisan organization, called Mayors Against Illegal Guns. I don't think that the answer to this problem is solved by having our synagogues, mosques and churches filled...

The Left and our good, sweet, sincere friends in the media spent most of Saturday after the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue trying to find a way to blame Trump for the monster who killed 11 innocent people and wounded six others. Even though the gunman reportedly hated Trump and blamed him for supporting the Jewish people, somehow, someway Trump was labeled an anti-Semite. We know, it's stupid. Rich Lowryb✔ @RichLowry What’s even the theory supposed to be that Trump is an anti-Semite? 3:42 PM - Oct 27, 2018 Well, Trump beat Hillary … that’s enough doncha...

The 11 victims that were killed in the shooting were identified as: Joyce Fienburg, 75-year-old, of Oakland Richard Gottfried, 65-years-old, of Ross Township Rose Mallinger, 97-years-old, of Squirrel Hill Jerry Rabinowitz, 66-years-old, of Edgewood Cecil Rosenthal, 59-years-old, of Squirrel Hill David Rosenthal, 54-years0old, of Squirrel Hill Bernice Simon, 84-years-old, of Wilkinsburg Sylvan Simon, 86-years-old, of Wilkinsburg Daniel Stein, 71-years-old, of Squirrel Hill Melvin Wax, 88-years-old, of Squirrel Hill Irving Younger, 69-years-old, of Mt. Washington