Contributed

The aforementioned article "Facing Afghan Chaos, Biden Defends Exit" and the letters to the editor shown below were first published in The New York Times on August 17th.

As the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, the president of the United States went into hiding. Biden’s most recent disappearing act in a moment of crisis proved once again that he’s not leading the nation and that America is without a commander-in-chief. But his belated and disgraceful address to the Nation served to highlight the 3 D’s that define the modern Democratic Party — dishonesty, delusion, and danger.

President Biden offered a defiant defense on Monday of his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, blaming the swift collapse of the Afghan government and chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport on the refusal of the country’s military to stand and fight in the face of the Taliban advance.

As thousands of people rush to flee Afghanistan , California Governor Gavin Newsom says they are welcome here. The governor addressed the situation Monday at a "Vote No" on the recall rally in Northern California.

Long Beach’s California Heights neighborhood, the city’s largest historical district, was baptized in oil. The area just north of Signal Hill was once grazing land for Jotham Bixby’s livestock on his family’s Bixby Ranch, later named Rancho Los Cerritos. When oil was discovered on Signal Hill in 1921, Jotham Bixby’s Land Company subdivided the tract and offered individual sites for sale, strongly suggesting that you’d become a wealthy landowner once oil was struck in the lowlands, mere blocks away from the oil-rich hill.