Washington Examiner:

Members of the House Armed Services Committee met with Jordan’s King Abdullah Tuesday not long after news broke that ISIS had burned to death a Jordanian pilot captured in the fight against the terrorist group. In a private session with lawmakers, the king showed an extraordinary measure of anger — anger which he expressed by citing American movie icon Clint Eastwood.

“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” said Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, who was in the meeting with the king. “He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.”

Hunter would not say which part of “Unforgiven” the king quoted, but noted it was where Eastwood’s character describes how he is going to deliver his retribution.

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Reuters:

Jordan hanged two Iraqi jihadists, one a woman, on Wednesday in response to an Islamic State video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burnt alive in a cage by the hard-line group.

Islamic State had demanded the release of the woman, Sajida al-Rishawi, in exchange for a Japanese hostage whom it later beheaded. Sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack in Amman, Rishawi was executed at dawn, a security source and state television said.

Jordan, which is part of the U.S.-led alliance against Islamic State, has promised an “earth-shaking response” to the killing of its pilot, Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, who was captured in December when his F-16 warplane crashed over northeastern Syria.

Jordan also executed a senior al Qaeda prisoner, Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi man who was sentenced to death in 2008.

Leave it to the Washington Post to celebrate Independence Day by getting some Canadian “free-lance writer” and self-styled historian to compare the USA (where we actually are allowed to hunt with dogs and own firearms) unfavorably with other (even more statist and socialist) “English-speaking countries.”

Paul Pirie (surprise! surprise!) immediately plays the old Slavery card, says we have too many criminals in jail (well, I may go along with him in opposing our victimless crime laws), and contends that we don’t take enough days off and work too hard. He even then proceeds, withe the height of insolence, to suggest that “[p]erhaps it’s time for Americans to accept that their revolution was a failure and renounce it.”

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The correct reply to M. Pirie (and the editors of the Washington Post) would be the same given by Sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman) to English Bob (Richard Harris) in Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” (1992).