Former Trump attorney “Sidney Powell’s guilty plea in the Fulton County election-interference case,” explains National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy, “signals that District Attorney Fani Willis’s much-heralded RICO indictment . . . is a dud” because it was only “a misdemeanor plea to dispose of what was publicized as an indictment of the grand conspiracy to destroy American democracy.” Crucially, Powell didn’t have “to plead guilty to the RICO charge — or even admit that she was guilty of it.” Yet prosecutors “want the pleading defendants to admit guilt to the major charges in the indictment,” as that “shores up the case against the major culprits.” So Willis “filed the grandiose allegations in an indictment that depicts Trump as if he were the boss of a Mafia family — with Powell as one of his lieutenants.” Letting her plead “to minor infractions” suggests that “minor infractions are all” Willis has.

“Iran is a country that has just seen history move its way,” warns Jonathan Spyer in The Spectator. “In the new geopolitical reality, Iran is a major force,” as seen by Oct. 7’s “carnage”: “Tehran, empowered by America’s Middle East withdrawal, has spent years surrounding Israel with client Islamist paramilitary groups. The aim is Israel’s eventual collapse, a key part of Tehran’s drive for regional domination as a global power.” Hamas “is by far the most dynamic and co-ordinated,” but in “virtually every Middle Eastern country” outside the Gulf, “political Islam” commands “the streets.” And Iran “provides such groups with the required potency and capacity to operate,” “turning them into its instruments.” With the protests following the hospital strike Islamists themselves caused, “it’s increasingly unclear whether the rage throughout the Muslim world can be restrained.”

To Hamas’ “appalling terrorist attack,” the “response of America’s intersectional left has also been appalling,” thunders Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot. These progressives hold humanity comprises “oppressed and oppressors,” “powerful and powerless” and “dominant and marginalized.” Accordingly, Hamas’ killers and other “people of color” must be “deferred to given their place in the intersectional hierarchy.” Americans overwhelmingly believe in “equal opportunity” and reject the belief “social disorder should be tolerated because the populations involved are ‘marginalized.’” Normal Democrats “should seize this opportunity to dissociate themselves not just from these disgraceful reactions” but also from the woke left’s “bad policy and worse politics.”

“Wars have a way of scrambling politics,” argues The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph C. Sternberg, including Hamas’ war on Israel. “In France, representatives of the two main right-wing political movements” participated “in a pro-Israel rally days after the attack” — a “topsy-turvy outcome.” “In Germany, a parliamentary resolution in support of Israel garnered support from the Alternative for Germany,” a “populist right” movement. That’s even as “several local politicians have or are threatening to quit” Britain’s Labour Party after “leader Keir Starmer supported Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas.” “If the left won’t defend Western values in relation to Israel and the Jews, the far right will, and in ways the left doesn’t like.”

A video of ophthalmologist Jeff Levenson performing an inexpensive form of cataract surgery that restored vision for 1,000 people drew much praise but also criticism for “disparaging” those with disabilities, reports The Free Press’ Francesca Block. That’s “emblematic of a larger debate in the medical community”: “Disability, some professionals argue, no longer needs to be cured. Rather, it should be embraced and celebrated.” Indeed, “a growing number” of Americans “view their disabilities as a core part of their identities”; some not only don’t want to be “cured” but even hope their kids have the same traits. Of course, many of those Levenson treated clearly disagree. For Jeff Yaple, the experience felt like a miracle. “I don’t care what anybody says,” insists Yaple. The treatment “gave me my life back.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board