Tom Cotton is one of my favorite senators. Not only did he join the Army when he knew deploying to a war zone was inevitable, he went the right way. Despite having a Harvard Law degree, he didn’t take the route followed by David French of using his law degree to get a JAG commission and thereafter bother everyone with his stories of how he oversaw SOF missions, he enlisted in the infantry, attended Officer Candidate School, was commissioned into the infantry where he attended and graduate Airborne and Ranger schools. His deployments did not consist of being a glorified Uber driver in Afghanistan, he led a rifle platoon in combat. That combativeness has been his political hallmark, not only in his campaign for the Senate but in his tenure as as senator.

A few days ago, as the nation was discovering that rioting is a preventative measure for Chinese Lung Aids, Tom Cotton called for the US military to be deployed to assist beleaguered (and inept and complicit) jurisdictions to bring street violence under control.

And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry—whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters. https://t.co/OnNJmnDrYM

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 1, 2020

Panties were wadded.

A no quarter order is a war crime, prohibited even in actual insurrection since Abraham Lincoln's signed the Lieber Code in 1863. Such an order is banned by international law and would, if carried out, be murder under American law. https://t.co/YbSw1sM9KW https://t.co/OiNsRT7PPy

— David French (@DavidAFrench) June 1, 2020

It takes a special kind of stupidity and dishonesty to make the leap that French makes here, but it is French and, I hear on good authority, that he did oversee SOF operations so I suppose we do have to credit it.

Yesterday, Cotton followed it up with an op-ed in the New York Times: Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops. The nation must restore order. The military stands ready.

The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested. In fact, the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder. Nor does it violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which constrains the military’s role in law enforcement but expressly excepts statutes such as the Insurrection Act.

For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out the military to disperse mobs that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property. This happened in my own state. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist Democrat, mobilized our National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, “would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.”

More recently, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect Los Angeles during race riots in 1992. He acknowledged his disgust at Rodney King’s treatment — “what I saw made me sick” — but he knew deadly rioting would only multiply the victims, of all races and from all walks of life.

Not surprisingly, public opinion is on the side of law enforcement and law and order, not insurrectionists. According to a recent poll, 58 percent of registered voters, including nearly half of Democrats and 37 percent of African-Americans, would support cities’ calling in the military to “address protests and demonstrations” that are in “response to the death of George Floyd.” That opinion may not appear often in chic salons, but widespread support for it is fact nonetheless.

The American people aren’t blind to injustices in our society, but they know that the most basic responsibility of government is to maintain public order and safety. In normal times, local law enforcement can uphold public order. But in rare moments, like ours today, more is needed, even if many politicians prefer to wring their hands while the country burns.

It is difficult to read Cotton’s op-ed and not agree with it unless you are an Antifa-sympathizing smear of ordure. An, as if to prove the point, the New York Times’s reportorial staff…you know, the brave firefighters who just dispassionately report the facts and check their opinions at the door…positively shat its collective breeches.

Via the Washington Post:

Staffers at the New York Times are publicly rebuking their newspaper for publishing an editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), which called for military intervention into American cities where protests over George Floyd’s death have led to further unrest.

The swift backlash, which spilled out on Twitter, came from dozens across the organization and included opinion writers, reporters, editors and magazine staffers. Several tweeted the same message — “Running this puts Black @nytimes staffers in danger” — with a screen shot of the editorial’s headline, “Tom Cotton: Send In The Troops.”

Even the New York Times got in on the action by reporting on the political partisanship and lack of critical thinking ability on the part of their staff but they did it in a ‘ain’t we cool and down with the struggle’ way: Senator’s ‘Send In the Troops’ Op-Ed in The Times Draws Online Ire.Staff members at the newspaper, including a Pulitzer winner, denounced an opinion essay by Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, calling for a military response to protests.

Dozens of Times staff members responded to the Op-Ed on Twitter by tweeting the sentence (or variations on it): “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” Discussion of the Op-Ed on social media had included the newspaper’s social media policy, which instructs newsroom employees not to post partisan comments and to be “especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine who won the Pulitzer Prize in commentary last month, tweeted, “As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this.”

I’m still trying to wrap my head around how a blatantly fraudulent history of America, one debunked and repudiated by historians of all political stripes, won a Pulitzer Prize and made its way into high school curriculums across the country. But that is a different story.

I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but to not say something would be immoral. As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this. https://t.co/lU1KmhH2zH

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) June 4, 2020

The NewsGuild of New York, the union that represents many Times journalists, said in a statement on Wednesday that the Op-Ed “promotes hate.” “This is a particularly vulnerable moment in American history,” the statement said. “Cotton’s Op-Ed pours gasoline on the fire. Media organizations have a responsibility to hold power to account, not amplify voices of power without context and caution.”

Several members of the Times opinion staff, whom the paper allows more leeway on social media, also weighed in. Charlie Warzel, an opinion writer, tweeted, “i disagree with every word in that Tom Cotton op-ed and it does not reflect my values.”

Three Times journalists, who declined to be identified by name, said they had informed their editors that sources told them they would no longer provide them with information because of the Op-Ed.

Roxane Gay, an opinion contributor who is also an advice columnist for the Business section, tweeted her opposition, saying that while she supported the publishing of a range of opinions, the Op-Ed “was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the constitution doesn’t exist.”

Kara Brown, a freelance journalist in Los Angeles, tweeted that she had turned down an assignment from The Times because of the Op-Ed. In an interview, she said the assignment would have been to profile the rapper Noname for the Styles section.

This just demonstrates the totally corrupt nature of establishment journalism. It has long since ceased being a medium with a mission of informing and educating the public. Instead, it has become the propaganda wing of the progressive movement and of the Democrat party. We saw this throughout the shameful Russia Hoax where New York Times reporters repeatedly, one might say habitually, reported bogus allegations against the President and his administration, received Pulitzer Prizes for their disinformation, and have resolutely refused to run a single correction or offer an apology for their lies.

If reporters can’t stomach the idea of President Trump following the lead of previous presidents in using federal troops to quell disorder, and make no mistake about it, this outrage is directed at President Trump and the idea that decisive action may bring him approval from even the people who are routinely deceived by the New York Times, then they have ceased to be anything but lickspittles for antifa and anarchists.