Has the United States ever had a weirder president than Richard Nixon? The fact that his only close competitors in this regard are his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, and his indirect successor, Jimmy Carter, could help to explain why the ’60s and ’70s were such troubled times for this country. But even LBJ (who loved to lecture aides while sitting on the toilet) and Mr. Carter (who claimed to have been attacked by a “killer rabbit” and to have experienced “lust in his heart”) could not match Nixon for sheer bizarreness. Evan Thomas’s terrifically engaging biography contains many choice examples.
The story of IRS targeting of conservative groups that disagreed with Obama Administration policy isn’t over. On Friday the IRS lost another big battle, as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a viewpoint discrimination lawsuit against the agency can proceed. Next stop, discovery.
The lawsuit began when the Pennsylvania-based pro-Israel group Z Street applied for tax-exempt status in 2009. When Z Street called to inquire about its application, it says an IRS agent said the agency had a policy that required Israel-related applications to get extra scrutiny in a special unit in Washington. Z Street sued in federal court but the IRS claimed the Anti-Injunction Act prevents suits meant to evade the collection of taxes and because the IRS was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The IRS lost in district court but appealed.
Professors reacted to the budget move as if lawmakers had tried to ban tweed jackets with elbow patches.
On a sunny, early summer day, Memorial Union Terrace on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is idyllic. The high, cloudless skies and cool blue water of Lake Mendota serve as a backdrop to coeds drinking beer, sunning themselves and studying for exams.
Yet for weeks now this utopian campus has been awash in dyspepsia, ever since the state legislature’s Joint Finance Committee passed a budget motion concerning faculty tenure. Wisconsin is the only state where the university tenure framework is codified in statute. Under the new plan, tenure would be instead administered by the University of Wisconsin system’s governor-appointed Board of Regents.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-state-of-the-kurds-1434712156
With a political win in Turkey, victories over Islamic State and autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurds are enjoying a triumphant moment—and thinking of a country of their own.
It is a time of good news for the Kurds, a people more accustomed to tragedy than to triumph.
Just last week in Turkey, a political party rooted in the struggle for Kurdish rights vaulted over the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation, giving the Kurds their biggest say ever in Turkish politics. Days later, allied Kurdish fighters in Syria seized a crucial border crossing from Islamic State, thus uniting Kurdish areas that now stretch from Iraq halfway to the Mediterranean Sea.
Establishing de-radicalization centers to fight the jihadist plague, either in Muslim countries or in the West is a futile endeavor. They cannot erase centuries of indoctrination by religious authorities in Arab and Muslim countries.
The preaching of hatred of all others (Kuffār), for not following in the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad, include instructions to dehumanize and subjugate those who cave-in and preferred methods to kill the rest, especially the Jews.
This has been re-enforced by local mosques and madrassas in Muslim dominated territories over centuries, and more recently in non-Muslim countries. Since the mid 1960s the Saudi royal family and the Saudi Kingdom have funded Islamic radicalization.
Even before MK Michael Oren’s book “Ally” is officially released, it is already causing the kind of buzz that best-sellers are made of. And with good reason.
The memoir of Oren’s term as Israeli ambassador to the United States — a position he held from 2009-2013 — provides a detailed account of the U.S. administration’s treatment of Israel. Though the tension that has existed between Washington and Jerusalem since Barack Obama became president is both an open secret and the focus of endless commentary on both sides of the political divide, its true extent is often obfuscated by insistence that the rift is greatly exaggerated. Or that it is merely due to the fact that Obama has a personal aversion to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Oren is now asserting that none of us even knows the half of it.
The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) instituted in 2005 by “Palestinian civil Society” against Israel and its civil society continues to attract people from all around the world – including Jews and Israeli Arabs – who support the campaign without realising its genocidal objective.
The BDS manifesto makes clear that its punitive measures are to be pursued until Israel ends
“its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands”
These are code words effectively calling for Israel’s destruction since:
1. According to the PLO: Israel is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab home land, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
2. According to Hamas: Israel is an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it.
Bush and Clinton Downplay Foreign Policy in Their Announcement Speeches
American presidents have greater leeway on foreign policy than on domestic issues. Just see how President Obama is forging ahead to an agreement with Iran opposed by large majorities in Congress and among voters.
A president’s personal predilections and core assumptions can have much more of an effect on his foreign policy than on domestic issues. You can draw a straight line from Obama’s 2008 judgment that Iraq was a “stupid” war to the decisions that have led to the mess we see there today.
We suspect that death-penalty opponents will be largely silent as the case of Dylann Root, the 21-year-old racist who gunned down nine people in a Bible-study class on Wednesday, goes through the court system. His horrendous crime cries out for the ultimate punishment. It leaves children without parents, parents without children, and the community of Charleston, S.C., devastated.
Root may not generate any sympathy or pleas for clemency, but plenty of other cold-blooded killers do — and go on to escape the death penalty. But the cases in which they commit evil acts and leave a trail of tears don’t get the publicity that Root’s case will. It’s time we give these lesser-known crimes a closer look when we evaluate claims that the death penalty is barbaric and unjustified.
~The decision to boot Alexander Hamilton off the ten-dollar bill – or at any rate reduce him to one-half of a double-act (like the short-lived Dan Rather and Connie Chung) – is one of those small acts of historical vandalism I absolutely loathe. The powers that be have decided it’s time (once more – see right) for “a woman” on a US banknote. So Hamilton’s not even being bounced for some outstanding individual but just for some dreary identity-group quota. Secretary Lew said, “Find me a woman, any woman” – Sacagawea, Harriet Tubman, Caitlyn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal… And that means one of the dead white males has to go. Not Washington or Lincoln – people have still, just about, heard of them. But Hamilton? I mean, dude, like, he wasn’t even president …er, was he?
No, but he can stake a greater claim to being on there than most of the guys who were: Jackson, Wilson, they’re just the passing parade – but Hamilton earned his place.
