The World and Everything in It - June 24, 2021

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Rural Americans lack broadband access. President Biden’s got a plan to fix that, but it’s not as easy to do as some might think.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also what a new hardline president for Iran means for nuclear containment.

Plus, the search for a lost piece of Illinois history.

And commentator Cal Thomas on facing facts.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, June 24th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden anti-crime effort aims to crack down on illegal guns » The White House announced a new strategy Wednesday to stem violent crime in the United States.

The plan aims to, among other things, crack down on gun dealers who break federal law and establish strike forces in several cities to help stop gun trafficking.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters:

PSAKI: His objective is to take steps—what he can do as president of the United States, using the tools he has at his disposal to empower local communities, get them the resources they need, and ensure we’re putting laws in place that reduce gun violence.

Biden is seeking more money for the agency that tracks the nation's guns.

He’s also encouraging cities to invest some of their COVID-19 relief funds into policing as well as crime reduction programs.

Republicans say the president’s plan places too much emphasis on guns and not enough on the criminals who may wield them.

South Carolina Sen. Linsey Graham said too many criminals receive little more than a slap on the wrist.

GRAHAM: The people who robbed and looted in New York are being let go. There’s a sense out there that the bail system is broken down. You get caught on Monday morning, you’re out on Monday afternoon.

The White House countered that the president is anything but soft on crime, and stated once more that while he backs police reform, he does not support efforts to defund police departments.

High court limits when police can enter home without warrant » The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday put limits on when police officers pursuing a fleeing suspect can enter a home without a warrant.

The court ruled that when officers are pursuing someone suspected of a misdemeanor, they cannot always enter a home without a warrant if a suspect enters.

The court had previously given police greater freedom to enter homes in cases involving a suspected felony.

Wednesday’s ruling does not give police a bright line for when they can and cannot enter a home to pursue someone suspected of committing a lesser crime.

The ruling was 7-to-2 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito dissenting.

High court sides with cheerleader over Snapchat post » The high court also ruled almost unanimously Wednesday that a Pennsylvania public school wrongly punished a student over a vulgar social media post. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The court rule 8-to-1 in favor of Brandi Levy, who was a 14-year-old high school freshman four years ago when she expressed anger on social media over not making the varsity cheerleading squad.

She used a string of curse words and a raised middle finger in a Snapchat post.

Levy was not in school when she posted her remarks, but the school suspended her from cheerleading activities for one year anyway.

The high court ruled that the suspension violated Levy's First Amendment freedom of speech rights. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, noting he would have upheld the suspension.

The justices did not foreclose schools from disciplining students for what they say off campus, though they did not spell out when schools could act. An earlier federal appeals court ruling in this case would have barred public schools from punishing off-campus speech.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Judge blocks Iowa pro-life law » Meantime, a ruling in Iowa this week could set up a legal battle before the state Supreme Court.

A judge has blocked a state law that would have imposed a 24-hour waiting period before getting an abortion.

Iowa District Court Judge Mitchell Turner ruled that because legislators passed the law last year as an amendment to an unrelated bill, it violated the Iowa Constitution's single-subject rule.

He also ruled that the law ran afoul of a 2018 Iowa Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights.

A spokesman for the Iowa attorney general's office said the state will appeal.

Austin backs change in military sex assault prosecution » Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for the first time this week, said he will support major changes to the military justice system. Under those changes, military commanders would no longer decide whether to prosecute sexual assault cases and certain other alleged crimes.

Austin had appointed an independent review commission to look at sexual assault and harassment in the military and has accepted the panel’s advice.

AUSTIN: We are prepared to work with Congress to amend the uniform code of military justice in this regard. The IRC also Special victims crimes inside this independent prosecution system to include domestic violence, and I support this as well.

A bipartisan group of 67 senators support a bill that would have independent prosecutors handle all alleged felonies that call for more than a year in prison.

But other key lawmakers and military leaders say stripping control of all major crimes from commanders could hurt military readiness and unit cohesion, and erode command authority.

Britain denies Russian claims of warning shot incident » The British government is refuting claims that a Russian warship and warplane fired warning shots at a British destroyer. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has that story.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Moscow claimed the incident occurred near Crimea in an area it claims as its territory.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said a patrol ship fired warning shots after the HMS Defender had ignored a notice against intrusion and sailed into Russian waters.

It said a Russian bomber also dropped four bombs in the vessel’s path to persuade the Defender to change course.

It’s the first time since the Cold War that Moscow acknowledged using live ammunition to deter a NATO warship. But Britain says that never happened.

The British Ministry of Defense insists that the Defender was never fired upon and that it was in Ukrainian waters, not Russian territory.

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a move not recognized by most countries. In April, it declared a broader area off Crimea closed to foreign naval ships.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Iran’s new political figurehead.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, June 24th, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up today: Iranians went to the polls last week to elect a new president. If you haven’t heard much about this election, that might be because Iran’s presidency is not the highest office in the land.

That position belongs to the unelected Supreme Leader.

BROWN: But the election does have some importance.

President Joe Biden is desperate to revive the Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018.

But if his administration isn’t able to move quickly enough, it may find itself dealing with a new Iranian president who is under U.S. sanctions.

EICHER: WORLD correspondent Jill Nelson reports now on what this election means and how it might influence efforts to revive the nuclear deal.

AUDIO: [CELEBRATIONS]

JILL NELSON, REPORTER: Supporters of Iran’s new hardline president gathered in Tehran last weekend to celebrate his victory. His name is Ebrahim Raisi, and he’s an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini.

Raisi is not an ayatollah, but he does have a low-ranking status among Shitte clergy. And he proudly dons the black turban worn by those who claim to be descendants of Muhammad.

Many Iranians are unhappy about his victory. They say the election was rigged by the Supreme Council, a group of 12 clerics who make many of Iran’s political decisions. They disqualified hundreds of presidential candidates, including many popular reformists. As a result, voter turnout was the lowest ever recorded for a presidential election in Iran.

But how much does Raisi’s rise to power matter in a political system where clerics pull the strings?

PIPES: Khameni dominates, but he can’t do everything. He needs an underling to undertake his wishes and those underlings have views of their own which they push for.

Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and an expert on Islam and the Middle East. He says Raisi will have some pull in Iran.

PIPES: Anyone who has staff working for them knows, you get influenced by your staff. Your staff says, “I really want to do this, I really want to do this. You say, “ Okay, give it a try.”

But Raisi has a dark past. The U.S. government sanctioned him in 2019 for human rights abuses.

He was part of a four-man death committee that ordered the executions of nearly three-thousand political prisoners in 1988. More recently, during his two-year role as chief justice, floggings and executions increased. Some say he’s on a path to become the next supreme leader.

Raisi’s record could put a wrench in the Biden’s administration’s plans for a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. It would be hard to celebrate a nuclear deal with an Iranian president sanctioned for crimes against humanity.

And the nuclear deal faces more problems now than it did in 2015.

GOLDBERG: But even if you believed it was a temporary fix on the nuclear program back in 2015, the deal came with all of these sunset provisions, expiration dates for key restrictions, that already started to expire in late 2020.

Richard Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But two years ago, he worked as an advisor for the White House National Security Council, specializing in countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction.

He says we know more now than we did in 2015.

GOLDBERG: And so the idea that you would go back into a deal, particularly after everything we’ve learned about the Iranian nuclear program over the last several years, the discovery of the nuclear archive by the Israeli Mossad in 2018, reports now from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna that Iran may be concealing undeclared nuclear sites and material, alongside that fact that all the restrictions are expiring. If it was a bad deal in 2015, it’s a horrendous deal in 2021.

The Biden administration says it wants to make the nuclear deal “longer and stronger.”

But with Raisi replacing the more moderate Hassan Rouhani in August, Tehran will likely become more consolidated in its hardline stance. Already, Raisi has said Iran’s ballistic missile program will be non-negotiable. And he’s called on Biden to lift the crippling sanctions Trump imposed in 2018.

Israel’s newly-elected Prime Minister Naftali Bennett issued his own warning about Raisi:

BENNETT: Raisi’s selection is, I would say, the last chance for world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement and to understand who they’re doing business with. These guys are murderers, mass murderers.

Iran is enriching uranium at its highest level ever and could be months away from reaching weapons-grade material. Goldberg says Washington needs to signal to Tehran that the United States will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

GOLDBERG: The United States has to have a bottom line where we make clear to Iran’s leaders, number one, we will never allow you to make a nuclear weapon. If you try, if we detect you trying, there will be a military consequence for that. We don’t want war, we don’t want to have to use military options, but we have a bottom line to prevent you from developing a nuclear weapon.

And Daniel Pipes says our concerns about Iran go far beyond its quest for a nuclear weapon.

PIPES: There’s a general consensus that Iran under the mullahs, Islamic Republic of Iran, is a great disruptor in the Middle East and not just in the Middle East. Be it its ideology, its political parties, its subversion, its weapons, its potential nuclear weapons, it is the great disruptor.

Diplomats from Europe, China, and Russia will meet with their Iranian counterparts next week in Vienna for what they hope is a final round of negotiations on a renewed nuclear deal. The United States has not participated directly in any of the meetings, but has used other world powers to negotiate its terms. 

President Biden says he wants a nuclear deal finalized before Raisi takes office in August.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jill Nelson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: high-speed Internet.

After a year of online school, online shopping, and online work, the internet is more a part of everyday life than ever.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: But millions of Americans in rural and even some urban areas still don’t have access to high-speed broadband. WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reports on efforts to bridge the growing digital divide.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: A video conference call is no small feat for David Morton.

MORTON: So the best I can hope for with my WiFi is, is video.

If Morton turns on both video and audio during a call, they will both fail.

His solution? He dials into the call on his cell phone for audio. And uses his Internet to stream video. 

MORTON: I can't tell you how many trials and errors that took where I now know I have to do that.

Morton discovered how to work around his slow internet when his office went remote last year, and he had to start working from his home in rural Louisiana.

Internet problems have plagued his family ever since they moved here six years ago.

MORTON: When we moved out here, you know, asking about Internet availability, I never even asked the realtor. Why would you ask? It's like, like asking for oxygen.

Just finding a provider was difficult. No cable companies service his area, so no cable internet. No phone line, so no DSL internet.

Morton’s only option became expensive satellite service.

MORTON: So for $170 a month, we get 100 gigabytes of data. So you can basically watch 20 movies a month.

And that’s if the weather is good.

MORTON: During a rainstorm, the satellite can't get a good signal.

David Morton is one of up to 42 million Americans who don’t have access to high-speed broadband internet.

Jessica Denson is with Connected Nation, an organization advocating for high-speed broadband access. She says many Americans live in rural areas where it’s not cost-effective for Internet service providers or ISPs to install infrastructure.

If there aren’t enough paying customers in an area, then an ISP decides that stringing or laying Internet cables isn’t worth the investment.

DENSON: I get a lot of emails from people saying, you know, Verizon, T Mobile, or any number of ISPs, you want to name is just a mile from me? Why can't they just get here? Well, that's an expensive venture.

But Denson says after the last year, an internet connection has become vital to everyday life. And those who don’t have one risk getting left behind.

DENSON: You could throw a rock and talk to a parent who had a kid who was trying to learn from home, or somebody who suddenly had to telework and didn't have access at home. It's also senior citizens. They were told to limit their exposure, but then you don't have access to telehealth, which is a very simple way to do that.

Beyond the practical, there are growing social costs to lacking high-speed internet access.

Gaylene Seibold lives outside Springfield, Missouri. She and her husband run a flower farm. Their only internet option is a hotspot router their phone company provides, and it only works part of the time. When it’s down, they rely on their cell phone hotspots.

Seibold says due to their poor internet, friends and family hesitate to visit. And during COVID lockdowns, she missed out on online gatherings with her Bible study.

SEIBOLD: It has, it’s seemed, affected every aspect of my life, like work, pleasure, spiritual relationships. That's how much pervasive my the internet is in, in my life.

Some broadband experts say that despite those woes, the government shouldn’t get involved. But others say getting high-speed broadband to all Americans will only happen through an ongoing public/private partnership. They compare it to the investments made in the 20th century in power and telephone infrastructure.

Jeffrey Westling is a technology and innovation policy scholar at R-Street, a free-market think tank. He says without government subsidies and grants… rural areas won’t get connected to the internet anytime soon.

WESTLING: Reaching those areas is really tricky for the market, if you're just relying entirely on the market, because that that economic incentive really isn't there.

But exactly what that public private partnership should look like, how much money the government should spend, and where funds should go is up for debate.

So far, government grants have mostly been going to private ISPs.

But President Joe Biden wants to change that. His infrastructure proposal originally offered $100 billion to local governments and rural-electric coops to install underground, fiber optic cables. In a tentative compromise, Republicans got that number down to $65 billion.

Still, the plan would mark a huge jump in broadband spending. Previous government subsidies totaled around $14 billion.

R-Street’s Jeffrey Westling has a couple of concerns with the president’s proposal. He says in some places, giving money to governments to install internet infrastructure will hurt private companies trying to compete as well as customers.

WESTLING: The fact is, a lot of these new municipal efforts go out of business real quick, because they don't understand just how costly it's going to be to continue to run these networks and know how much of a drain on taxpayer resources it will be.

Westling also disagrees with the plan's strict focus on installing fiber optic cable. He points out that Internet and cell phone providers are improving satellite dishes and towers, which could be better options for rural areas in the long run.

Subsidizing just one type of internet infrastructure hurts other technology development.

WESTLING: We don't really know what the peak of these technologies is going to be yet. So that's why I'm just worried about foreclosing some of that innovation.

But those living without the internet completely or with a slow connection, want solutions sooner than later—no matter how it gets to them.

Caroline Phillips lives outside the small town of Nevada, Missouri. She has slow internet via satellite. She hopes President Biden’s broadband spending plan will bring a faster connection. But she isn’t holding her breath.

PHILLIPS: Even with that, I have little hope that it'll be a quick relief. Things just don't happen quickly.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A customer at a New Hampshire bar and grill recently ordered a couple of chili dogs, along with chips and a drink, and he put the meal on his credit card.

The total tab: $16,037.93.

The meal itself was just under $38. The other $16,000 was the tip.

The owner of the Stumble Inn Bar and Grill in Londonderry, New Hampshire told WMUR that at first, the server didn’t even notice.

ZERELLA: And he said three times ‘don’t spend it all in one place.’ That’s what made her flip it over and look. And she’s like ‘Are you serious?’ And he’s like ‘I want you to have it.’ You guys work hard.

The eight servers on duty contacted the owner, who spoke to the customer, just to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. And it wasn’t.

The servers are splitting the tip, but not just among themselves.

ZERELLA: The back of the house works really hard, the kitchen. They’re giving them a big tip out of that, which is very generous of them too.

Hey, after the year servers have had, good on them!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Thursday, June 24th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

You know, we put our interns right to work. Now, you met Caleb Bailey yesterday and he’s back at it today on our next story on ghost towns.

EICHER: This past weekend WORLD’s Paul Butler heard about a ghost town near his home. So he set out with intern Caleb Bailey and went to work to see what they could find out about this forgotten part of Illinois history.

HINCKLEY: I think we all have this picture from John Wayne movies and westerns, the tumbleweeds blowing down the streets, all of that...

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: Jim Hinckley is an expert on ghost towns. He’s been exploring them, and writing about them for years.

HINCKLEY: I think for a lot of people it starts when we're kids reading about stories of lost treasures...

According to Hinckley, a ghost town is any settlement permanently abandoned by its inhabitants. Sometimes buildings remain as a testament to its past, but many become a “historical feature:” meaning nothing remains.

Towns die off for many reasons. Economic changes. Natural disasters. Social or political upheaval. Ghost towns provide a unique snapshot of particular periods of history.

HINCKLEY: You know, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for example, a lot of the towns there that date to the logging in the mining industries of the 19th century. A lot of boom towns and they were gone by the early 20th century.

Every state has them. Turns out that in my neck of the woods—Bureau County, Illinois—there are at least seven towns that have disappeared since the 1890’s. Including: Ottville, Limerick, Lone Tree, and Bourbonais. Not to be confused with the thriving town of Bourbannais in eastern Illinois. That town has two “n's” in its name.

I thought it’d be fun to try to find the lost town of Bourbonais, with one “n.” My research assistant is WORLD summer intern Caleb Bailey.

SOUND: ARRIVING AT THE LIBRARY

We begin at the Princeton, Illinois, public library archives.

SOUND: WALKING THROUGH LIBRARY

The Stevens-Lawton local history room is itself a step back in time. Around the perimeter are heavy wooden bookshelves filled with leather bound volumes.

Caleb pulls the History of Bureau County, 1885 off the shelf. One section includes an alphabetical listing of all the towns and a brief history.

BAILEY: Bourbannais—In March, 1864, John H. Robinson began sinking a shaft on his land, and soon afterward the village of Bourbonais was platted...and it had a post office known as Lovejoy.

Owen Lovejoy is a big deal in Princeton. He is perhaps Illinois’ most well-known abolitionist. He died in 1864, the same year Bourbonais was founded, so it’s not surprising that this young town named their postoffice after him. In fact, three years later, the Illinois General Assembly renamed the whole town Lovejoy.

According to this 1885 entry, the town started because of a coal mine. The vein of coal was about 75 feet down. It was 5 feet thick. The only problem seemed to be an abundance of water.

SOUND: PLACING PLAT BOOK ON THE TABLE

We start looking for the town in the 1892 plat map. The large volume is falling apart. Each page laminated to protect the fragile sheets. They’re all out of order. We eventually find Concord township.

SOUND: PAUL AND CALEB TALKING ABOUT THE MAP

The town of Bourbonais is just south of the Chicago, Burlington, Quincy railroad line between Buda and Wayanett. We page through various Illinois histories, but can’t find anything more on the town.

The roads in the plat book are clearly marked so we’re off to the Bureau County Courthouse to look at the latest land records. Hoping that the new roads line up with the old ones.

SOUND: ENTERING COURTHOUSE

The Assessor’s Office is in the basement of the courthouse. Christine Anderson pulls up a satellite photo of the property, and gives us the name and address of the current owner where the town once stood. And the roads match.

Hanging above her is a poster-sized version of the 1892 plat map of Bureau County. She’s the only person we’ve met so far who’s heard of the town.

SOUND: LEAVING COURTHOUSE

Across the street is the Bureau County Genealogical Society. It sits in an old two-story building on Princeton’s south Main Street.

BUTLER: Hello! How are you today? We are doing some research into a lost town of Bureau County called Bourbonais. Have you heard of the name “Bourbonais” before? ELAINE: No, not really.

Elaine Newell is vice president of the society. She leads us over to a large bookcase filled with three-ring binders. We find one labelled: “Former Towns.” In it is a single entry about our mystery town:

Platted in 1864. Located in section 25 in Concord township. This town also never got the paper stage….

Newell explains that means the town never filed the necessary paperwork with the state to be fully recognized.

The entry ends:

Vacated in 1926.

After 62 years, the town died.

We drop four dollars in the donation case, grab the Illinois Atlas and Gazetteer from the backseat, and drive off to find Bourbonais.

SOUND: DRIVING AND NEGOTIATING A REAL MAP

BUTLER: We just passed 1400 East and 1400 North...1200 North...yep, so probably, we’re going to want to turn on to…

About 20 minutes later, we’re at the end of a quiet country road. Two boisterous blue heelers—one with only three legs—run out to greet us.

BUTLER: ...well, let’s go see if anyone is home.

BUTLER: Hi pup! We’re doing some research about a town that used to be around here...called Bourbonais. STRADER: This is the last building...

Adam and Julie Strader bought these 17 acres in 1996. The old post office is part of their farmhouse.

STRADER: This is the post office and we have I have a shelf on the wall. They said, that's where the mailbag was, the mailbags hung. I kept it because it was significant to me.

Turns out we’re far from the first people to stop by. For 23 years, there’s been a slow but steady stream of visitors.

BUTLER: (OFF MIC) So do you feel a certain responsibility to keeping that memory alive? STRADER: I do. I do.  I mean, it's a farm to us...I’ve always wanted to put a sign that said former “Bourbonais.”

Julie says she thinks the town died off because the mine flooded. Too much water. The buildings were taken to neighboring towns. The post office is all that’s left.

After about 15 minutes, we say goodbye and follow the road to the end of the line. Caleb and I hop out of the car and just soak in the scenery. Gentle rolling hills. Groves of oak trees. An active train track stretching into the distance. But nothing remains of the town except for the topography.

Caleb seems thoughtful.

BAILEY: I don’t know, it’s kind of surreal...even though you’re not looking at it, it’s a part of history. Because you look at a town or a person that’s lasted through History that’s one thing, but we’re standing in a place where a town has come and gone. Kind of says a lot about time. I don’t know. It’s beautiful though. [PAUSE] I wonder what it would look like as a town.

I wonder too. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler with Caleb Bailey in Bourbonais, Illinois.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, June 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Here’s commentator Cal Thomas now on the need to face the facts about Iran’s government.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: The Islamic Republic of Iran, as it calls itself, is not a Republic, but it is Islamic.

Here are two definitions to make that point

First, republic. Dictionary.com defines a republic as “a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.” Iran’s elections put supreme power in religious leaders, not the people. When “the people” try to demonstrate in opposition to the government, it jails or murders them.

Second, Islamic. That is a system of beliefs founded on interpretations of the Koran made by political leaders who seek to impose those beliefs on its citizens and the rest of the world, by force if necessary. That’s my definition based on sermons from mullahs in Iran and elsewhere along with personal observations about how those beliefs are put into practice.

Obviously not all Muslims agree on everything, especially when it comes to politics. Neither do Christians and Jews for that matter. But modern Christians and Jews are not known for wanting to forcibly impose their will on others and eliminate nations they don’t like. That’s the difference.

The recent election in Iran, if one can call it that since the results were fore-ordained, places the presidency of the country in the hands of one Ebrahim Raisi. He’s even more radical than his predecessor. His election ought to send a message to the Biden administration that its attempt to re-enter the nuclear deal is a fool’s errand. It won’t benefit the United States, Israel, or the rest of the world.

Iran’s leaders have made it clear that the familiar chant “death to America” is not a bumper sticker slogan. Only the self-deluded would claim they don’t mean what they say.

I’ve asked this question before of other administrations—Republican and Democratic. These people view us as secular infidels. Why would anyone in Washington think they can negotiate with religious fanatics who want them dead and their country destroyed?

Do Westerners sincerely believe they can make peace with people who take direct orders from their god, when their god wants them to pursue an agenda of death to Jews and elimination of the West?

Financial advisers and brokerage firms are required by law to tell clients “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

In the case of Iran, past (and current) performance is a guarantee of future results.

I’m Cal Thomas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday and we’ll talk about religious liberty and a stingy Supreme Court where that’s concerned.

And, we’ll tell you a fish story almost too good to believe. Aren’t they all? It’s a fish story you can watch this weekend with the whole family.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

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The Bible asks: Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Go now in grace and peace.

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