Displaying posts published in

November 2015

INVITING CATASTROPHE THROUGH OUR PORTS OF ENTRY : MICHAEL CUTLER

The deadly threats to the homeland posed by the legal immigration system.

For many years most people assumed that any discussion about immigration needed to focus on illegal immigration and the supposed “four border states” along the U.S./Mexican border.

My July 6, 2014 FrontPage article, “Border Security and the Immigration Colander: Why the breakdown of the Southwest border is only the tip of the iceberg” explained that our immigration system has many components and that not only must the U.S./Mexican border be secured, but that all elements of the immigration system must possess integrity if we are to be protected.

On February 5, 2015 FrontPage Magazine published my article, “The ‘Secure Our Border First Act’ Deception: Why it’s no solution to the immigration crisis.”

The official government report “9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” focused specifically on the ability of the terrorists to travel around the world, enter the United States and ultimately embed themselves in America as they went about their deadly preparations.

Page 54 contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot”:

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

The demise of academic freedom When politically correct ‘speech police’ are given the upper hand by Gerald Walpin

• Gerald Walpin served as a U.S. inspector general from 2007 to 2009. He is the author of “The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution” (Significance Press, 2013).

Last week, I was attacked by so-called “diversity” groups at Yale Law School because I had accepted an invitation from a student group (providing a forum for diversity of ideas), to speak on the meaning of the Birthright provision of the 14th Amendment. Without having heard what I would say, this speech-suppression coalition sought to prevent me from speaking by charging that I would utter “anti-immigrant rhetoric,” rest on “racist assumptions,” and express “racist and xenophobic ideas,” and “hateful ideologies.”

As a 1955 graduate of Yale Law School, it was difficult to believe that students who came to this excellent school would seek to prevent a diverse view from being expressed. After all, lawyers in the real world must be trained to hear their adversary’s differing views and be willing to answer them. Yale Law School itself proudly announces on its web site that it is “renowned as a center of constitutional law” — attained certainly by constant discourse, including differing views on the meaning of Constitutional provisions.

This was not simply an attack on my free speech right. It was an attack on all students’ right to obtain the benefit of free speech by hearing different views. Most disconcerting, it was not a single incident, but one of many in the nationwide movement at schools to suppress any thinking that the self-appointed student and faculty thought-police find unacceptable.

America’s Cultural Revolution Reaches Amherst : Andrew Harrod

I am rather troubled by recent developments at my alma mater, the Fairest College.
In dismaying news for a troubled alumnus, America’s politically correct student revolutionaries have not bypassed Amherst College, as shown by a November 12-13 sit-in at the college’s Frost Library. Amherst events provide a case study of modern academia’s leftist domination with grave implications for academic freedom.

The student protesters issued a statement befitting the Maoist demands for self-criticism of China’s Cultural Revolution Red Guards, although no cannibalism has yet occurred at Amherst. The protestors decried Amherst being “complicit in oppressive organizations” against the “systematically oppressed” and demanded statements of apologies from Amherst’s Board of Trustees Chairman and President Biddy Martin. Although “only a part of short-term healing,” this apology would address Amherst staff, students, and alumni who had suffered the modern lament of lacking a “safe space for them to thrive while at Amherst College.”

Unbeknownst to many at the “Fairest College,” these individuals endured a catalogue of horrors of several injustices including but not limited to our institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latin racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism.

While no institution is perfect, such sins and any corresponding inability of the Amherst College community to thrive are not immediately apparent. A campus statue commemorates Amherst alumnus and abolitionistHenry Ward Beecher while a captured Confederate cannon in a college building recalls Amherst students who fought in the Civil War. Amherst’s Charles Drew Memorial Culture House carries the name of another alumnus who was a medical pioneer and, like civil rights legal pioneer Charles Hamilton Houston, is among Amherst’s distinguished African-American graduates. The first Japanese graduate of a Western institution of higher learning, Joseph Hardy Neesima (Amherst Class of 1870), initiated Amherst’s longstanding relationship with Japan.

41 years. $3 billion. Inside the Clinton donor network.By Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Anu Narayanswamy

A Washington Post investigation reveals how Bill and Hillary Clinton have methodically cultivated donors over 40 years, from Little Rock to Washington and then across the globe. Their fundraising methods have created a new blueprint for politicians and their donors.

LITTLE ROCK — Over four decades of public life, Bill and Hillary Clinton have built an unrivaled global network of donors while pioneering fundraising techniques that have transformed modern politics and paved the way for them to potentially become the first husband and wife to win the White House.
The grand total raised for all of their political campaigns and their family’s charitable foundation reaches at least $3 billion, according to a Washington Post investigation.
Their fundraising haul, which began with $178,000 that Bill Clinton raised for his long-shot 1974 congressional bid, is on track to expand substantially with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 White House run, which has already drawn $110 million in support.
The Post identified donations from roughly 336,000 individuals, corporations, unions and foreign governments in support of their political or philanthropic endeavors — a list that includes top patrons such as Steven Spielberg and George Soros, as well as lesser-known backers who have given smaller amounts dozens of times. Not included in the count are an untold number of small donors whose names are not identified in campaign finance reports but together have given millions to the Clintons over the years.
The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation, one of the world’s fastest-growing charities, which supports health, education and economic development initiatives around the globe. A handful of elite givers have contributed more than $25 million to the foundation, including Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra,who is among the wealthy foreign donors who have given tens of millions.

The President’s Sanctimony on Syrian Refugees By Rich Lowry —

President Barack Obama has seen the enemy, and it is the refusal to accept more Syrian refugees.

From the tone of his post-Paris remarks, you’d think that a sophisticated terrorist assault on a major Western city is a setback; sentiment in the U.S. against taking more Syrian refugees is an atrocity.

Obama warned this week against “that dark impulse inside of us,” as if we were debating whether Syrian refugees should be drawn and quartered. He said that “slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values.” He was joined by liberal commentators who scoffed and guffawed at worries over Syrian refugees after — ho-hum, nothing to see here — one of the Paris terrorists apparently posed as a refugee.

It’s remarkable that the president feels justified in lecturing anyone on humanitarianism. He has stood by while Syria has descended into a hellish chaos, and hasn’t betrayed any guilty conscience. There are roughly 10 million Syrians who are refugees (4.2 million) or internally displaced (6.5 million). At 10,000 over the next year, we are offering to take .1 percent of them.

One wonders when Obama begin caring so much about Syrians. If you put those 10,000 Syrian refugees back in their native country and let them get gassed, barrel-bombed, shelled, or shot, would he bat an eye, or would they just be part of the ever-growing casualty count?

JAY NORDLINGER ON REP. ILEANA ROSS LEHTINEN (R-FL DISTRICT 27)

As she walks down the corridor in the Rayburn House Office Building, she asks someone, “Are you coming to my hanging?”

The woman doing the asking is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, known to some as “Ily.” She is a congresswoman from Miami, elected in 1989. (It was a special election following the death of an incumbent.) She is a Republican, and a force, and a joy.

Why “hanging”? Her portrait will be unveiled, and hung, in the hearing room of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She was chairwoman of that committee in the previous Congress.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is a champion of democracy, freedom, and human rights — not just in Cuba, land of her birth, but in all the world: the Middle East, the Far East, it doesn’t matter.

When you walk into the hearing room, the first portraits you see are those of Henry Hyde and Dante Fascell. I remember them well. (Shades of Hamlet?) Hyde was a congressman from the Chicago area; Fascell was from Florida.

The room is absolutely packed — cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder. Eliot Engel, the New York Democrat, says, “I’ve been a member of this committee for many years, and have never seen the room this full. Not even for a holiday party.”

Several speakers note that the room is a veritable United Nations, an atlas of the world. In other words, there are people who come from the four corners of the earth.

The MC is Yleem Poblete, who was once chief of this committee’s staff. She mentions that the attendees include officials from Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel. Why am I not surprised? Those countries are threatened by wolves. They are exactly the kind of country to which Ileana lends particular support.

Israel’s ambassador says a few words. He is Ron Dermer, and guess where he grew up? Miami. In fact, his father was mayor of Miami Beach. So was his brother.

Charlie Rangel is present — handsome old devil. Seems to be handsomer now in his mid-80s than he ever was. I wonder whom he loves more: Ileana or Fidel?

“Everybody loves Ileana,” speakers say. And they are right. There are current House members here and former members. There are Republicans and Democrats. Ileana “reaches across the aisle.” She’ll work with anybody, to make what she regards as progress.

Hillary’s Campaign Ordered a Comedy Club Not to Make Fun of Her — Someone Should Tell Her This Isn’t China The campaign actually threatened to shut the club down. By Katherine Timpf

Hillary Clinton’s campaign thought it was okay to order a comedy club not to make fun of her, which is obviously a totally normal thing to do.

That is, if this if this were China.

In case you haven’t heard, Hollywood’s Laugh Factory posted a three-minute video of comedians telling jokes about Hillary Clinton on its website.

Yes . . . comedians making fun of a public figure. How outrageous! And by outrageous, I mean something that any presidential candidate should not just accept but expect because that’s the way it works.

But apparently, the way the world normally works just doesn’t apply when you’re Hillary Clinton — because her campaign called the club demanding that it take the video down and give them the personal contact information of every single comic who appeared in it.

I mean, what in the hell did the campaign plan to do with that? Call them and tell them they were mean? Threaten to end their careers? What possible reason could her campaign have for wanting that information, and what possible reason could they have for thinking they had any right to ask for it in the first place?

Hillary Says: Stop Mocking Me! Or Else. By Stephen L. Miller

While in Los Angeles last week for fundraising, Hillary Clinton felt like updating her humor protocols by stopping off at the famed Laugh Factory. The roster of comedians that have performed at the renowned Los Angeles venue is no laughing matter: Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Dave Chappelle, Jay Leno, Damon Wayans, and George Carlin, to name a few.

But when a former secretary of state enters a comedy club and makes her presence known, she is apt to become as much of a target for the performers as the middle-class club-goers she is hoping to champion.

Result: Hillary isn’t laughing anymore.

As reported by Judicial Watch, Hillary’s campaign is working to have a short video of her visit removed from the Laugh Factory’s website, featuring highlights of the comics that night and the pot shots they took at Hillary. Judicial Watch’s report is based on a statement by club founder Jamie Masada, who claims the campaign has threatened him legally if he doesn’t remove the clips from his website.

“They threatened me,” Masada said. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”

Judicial Watch’s report goes on to state:

Masada told Judicial Watch that, as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a “prominent” person inside Clinton’s campaign. “He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up.

President Obama Demonizes Dissent – Again By Ian Tuttle —

Admitting Syrian refugees into the United States presents two concerns — one over security, and one over identity. The first is urgent and concrete, and failure will be measured in bodies; the second is long-term and, though more difficult to assess, no less consequential. If we want to aid the persecuted, without granting sanctuary to people who threaten our security and who are in tension with American ways, putting Syrian Christians and certain persecuted religious minorities, such as Yazidis, at the front of the refugee line is an obvious, common-sense proposal.

Predictably, it has not been treated as such. When Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush made the suggestion recently, they were roundly excoriated, the president of the United States going so far as to call any such proposal “shameful,” and that we ought “not to feed that dark impulse inside of us.” President Obama has since suggested: “When you start seeing individuals in position of responsibility suggesting Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land — that feeds the ISIL narrative.”

The president’s fondness for strawmen is among his better-known traits. But the reduction of Cruz’s and Bush’s proposal, whatever one may think of it, to “xenophobia” is an insult not only to them, but to millions of Americans who espy legitimate concerns in our refugee-resettlement program. After all, Cruz’s statement in South Carolina over the weekend, “There is no meaningful risk of [Syrian] Christians committing acts of terror,” is, of course, correct. There is no significant minority of Syrian Christians engaged in slaughtering Yazidis in the Syrian hinterlands, or in murdering civilians in French cafés. Responsible for those abominations is an organization that, however much it might pervert or distort doctrine, finds its inspiration in a different religious tradition, Islam.

Obama’s Strategic Bumbling Is Theater of the Absurd : Jonah Goldberg

‘You’re all suckers.”That has to be what Barack Obama is thinking as the country falls for his head-fake.Let’s recap.

George W. Bush’s surge reduced the Islamic State’s precursor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, to a paltry 700 members, according to CIA director John Brennan. Its membership has grown by something close to 4,000 percent. As it metastasized, Obama yawned, calling it the “JV team.” When Syrian president Bashar al-Assad violated Obama’s “red line,” Obama yawned again, and the refugee crisis was born.

By August 2014, Obama was grudgingly conceding he needed a new counterterrorism strategy. One tactic he ruled out: building up pro-American Syrian forces. He told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that was an unworkable “fantasy.”

Then, within weeks, the Islamic State beheaded American journalist James Foley. On vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Obama denounced the murder. Within eight minutes of that statement, he was on the golf course. He later conceded that was a mistake.