Saturday’s Final Word – HotAir

Pretty women out clicking on the tabbies down my street, from my window, I’m staring while my browser goes cold …

Tonight a man disrupted Shabbat services at Central Synagogue, punched a 63 y/o woman in the face, and attacked a security guard.

Jews in New York have spent years warning that there is a target on their backs. This time it was live-streamed. pic.twitter.com/v6NwmL1QpM

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 15, 2026

Ed: Unfortunately, places of worship have had to start ensuring security and camera coverage for their services. Jews and synagogues have become particularly targeted, and everyone knows why. Demagogues spew conspiracy theories and blood libels, both ancient and novel, to rabble-rouse and create chaos to serve their own purposes. The perp in this case violated federal laws – the FACE Act and the Klan Act – and should get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The same is true for Don Lemon and his radical cohort in St. Paul. At least Harmeet Dhillon will know where to find this guy …

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CNN: A man has been arrested and charged with multiple hate crimes after disrupting Shabbat services and injuring a woman at Central Synagogue in Manhattan Friday night, New York police said.

The man, identified as 46-year-old Larry Montes from The Bronx, also “damaged synagogue property,” and spat at and headbutted a member of the synagogue’s security team as he was escorted out of the building, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said on X. …

Montes has been charged with “two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count of criminal mischief as a hate crime, along with other charges,” Tisch said.

Ed: Well, that’s a good start, but it’s not sufficient as a deterrent. Montes just shifted the Overton window on “street action,” and the Department of Justice needs to shove it back – hard. 

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The state of Jews in 2026. The billions invested by Qatar, China, Russia, and Iran has paid off.

But they’ve forgotten our history. We’re not going to disappear. https://t.co/8zqD2nuWoG

— Meryl Yourish (@MerylYourish) August 15, 2026

Ed: We will not stand by and allow that to happen, either. We need to stand up to the radical anti-Semites that have taken over college campuses and threaten to take over the Democrat Party as well. If you want to find out how we have ended up in this nightmare, watch my interview with Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor. It didn’t happen by accident. 

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Jeffrey Blehar at NRO: I hesitate, however, to call it a “tragedy,” as I see others have done. I reserve that term for the innocent victims of events on the order of force majeure. (As for school shootings and terrorist attacks, these are not tragedies; they are atrocities.) I have no doubt that Arday’s sense of despair was acute indeed; the act of self-abnegation speaks for itself.

Yet I will not pretend he is innocent in his own doom. For one thing, suicide is a choice, and I don’t have to respect the decision of a man to end his life out of shame, even as I pity it intensely. That becomes even more difficult to do when I remember the positively malicious acts Arday committed against other innocents when he was still trying to conceal his wrongdoing.

Those who noticed that Jason Arday was an academic fraud are not to blame for his death. Those who insisted Cambridge live up to its scholarly standards and investigate the legitimacy of Arday’s work are not the ones who should feel shame. The most obvious person to blame for Jason Arday’s suicide is Jason Arday himself — and yet he is no longer around to account for this sin, or any other.

But I can think of some people who are.

Ed: Yes, I’ve seen a lot of people on social media attempting to blame those who uncovered the fraud for Arday’s choice to take his own life. Sorry, but that’s absolute crap. Arday clearly had emotional and mental issues, but his fraud was his choice, and its success was the choice of many others in his orbit. We are not morally obligated to overlook fraud and delusion simply because exposing it means that those perpetrating it have to deal with its inevitable consequences. No one’s to blame for Arday’s decision except Arday himself, but there are a lot of people who need to be held accountable for abetting the fraud he perpetrated. Also, I think “tragedy” still applies, but the moral weight for it belongs to those who acted in bad faith in the first place, again primarily Arday. 

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May I suggest a prescription of a daily pill called DontGiveAFuq. One daily dose of that drug or the generic ZeroFuqs2Give will cure that problem right away 😜 https://t.co/enp3ydHGUC

— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 15, 2026

Ed: When you blog, it’s positively a requirement. If you want to hold institutions accountable, there is no substitute. 

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Daily Wire: A foreign-born Massachusetts mayor was arrested Friday for stealing COVID relief funds to fund his campaign and pay off personal debt. 

The FBI arrested Lawrence Democratic Mayor Brian DePena, 61, for allegedly funneling $1.5 million in COVID funds to fund his campaign, pay taxes, and pay down $880,000 on various property mortgages. DePena, who went viral last year for struggling to speak English, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering. 

“Mayor DePena was elected to be a leader for the City of Lawrence. He was looked up to and trusted by his constituents, but he betrayed that trust through his alleged corruption and lies,” said United States Attorney Leah B. Foley. “Today’s arrest is just another example of our determination to root out fraud by anyone, even public officials and holding elected officials accountable.”

DePena, born in the Dominican Republic, was first elected mayor of Lawrence, a city about 25 miles north of Boston, in 2021, running on a platform of “integrity” and “citizen-centered” government. He was re-elected in 2025. 

Ed: Wanna bet we’ll need to up our daily dose of ZeroFuqs2Give when the trial starts? Assuming, of course, that the Protection Racket Media covers it at all. I’m already upping my dose for this next story …

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Government-owned airports cannot favor one religion over all others.

DFW plans to install Islamic wudu washing facilities are illegal. I’ve directed a review of all state grants to both airports for possible revocation, and referred DFW & IAH to USDOT for investigation.

Texas… pic.twitter.com/XY58WAKJ8N

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 14, 2026

Texas will not allow illegal religious discrimination at taxpayer-funded facilities.

Ed: Airports sometimes have chapels for prayer or reflection, but they are non-denominational – basically meditation spaces. Government facilities are not supposed to set aside spaces for specific religious rites, as Abbott rightly declared yesterday. And he’s already getting results …

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NY Post: DFW told Fox News Digital Friday it had been evaluating a proposal to add ablution washing stations on the pre-security side of Terminal D, its international terminal, but accelerated that review in response to increased public attention.

“DFW was in the process of evaluating an internal proposal to add a set of ablution washing stations on the pre-security side of Terminal D, the international terminal. Like all proposed projects, the airport ultimately considers the operational benefits, customer service impacts, operational risks and costs before approving them,” the airport said. 

“While that evaluation was planned, the airport accelerated its review due to elevated public interest this week and has determined not to proceed with the project as it would not deliver the originally anticipated operational benefits.”

The project was registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation July 31.

The filing initially listed the project as privately funded, estimated its cost at $300,000 and indicated construction would be completed by the end of the year.

Ed: Who thought spending $300,000 on wudu stations was a good idea? That’s the next question that Abbott needs to ask, and then find out the reason why. Also, I wonder how many other municipally owned airports have already installed them. Wanna bet that Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is ahead of that particular curve? Republicans in Congress want to get answers to that question as well.