Displaying posts published in

2016

Is Brexit vote a validation of Trump’s campaign? Up to a point. Mark Thiessen

Donald Trump’s trip to Scotland on the day Britain voted to leave the European Union looked, in hindsight, like a stroke of political genius. “My timing was great because I was here right at the epicenter of the crisis,” Trump told reporters. But Trump was not in Scotland because of Brexit; he was there to promote his golf courses. In an interview a few weeks earlier, he did not even know what Brexit was. It was serendipity, not strategy, that brought Trump to Scotland. Trump’s the guy who swallowed a lucky horseshoe.

But it’s true that his timing could not have been better. Trump is now arguing that the Brexit vote is validation of his upstart presidential candidacy. And he’s not entirely wrong.

Like Trump’s campaign, Brexit was a revolt against open borders. British voters blamed the E.U. for a wave of migration that has fundamentally transformed their country. One third of “Leave” voters said they cast their ballot for Brexit because it “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders.”

Brexit was also, like Trump’s campaign, a revolt against an establishment out of touch with the struggles of ordinary, working-class citizens. With Brexit, in the words of Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, “pensioners in the seaside towns, the plumbers and chip-shop owners” delivered “the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage.”

As in the United States, the anti-establishment sentiment driving Brexit was on both the right and left. As former prime minister Tony Blair pointed out, the “Leave” campaign could not have succeeded “without finding common cause with a significant segment of Labour voters . . . worried about flatlining incomes and cuts in public spending . . . [who] saw Brexit as an opportunity to register an anti-government protest.” In Britain, Blair says, the Brexit campaign saw “a convergence of the far left and the far right.” Could the same happen here? A Post-ABC News poll last month found it might, with 20 percent of Sanders supporters saying they would support Trump over Hillary Clinton in the general election. This month that figure has slipped to just 8 percent.

But here is the fundamental difference between the Trump and Brexit campaigns: Brexit was also a revolt against centralized power. British voters were tired of edicts from Brussels and wanted to put decision-making power back in the hands of the British people. This was the single biggest driving force of the Brexit campaign. Nearly half of pro-Brexit voters said the principal reason they wanted to leave the E.U. was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK.” As U.K. secretary of state for justice and Brexit supporter Michael Gove put it, “By leaving the EU we can take control . . . Like the Americans who declared their independence and never looked back.”

New Documents Suggest IRS’s Lerner Likely Broke the Law Recently obtained documents raise new questions about Lois Lerner’s role in sending confidential tax returns to the Justice Department. By Eliana Johnson

It is likely the largest unauthorized disclosure of tax-return information in history: the transfer of some 1.25 million pages of confidential tax returns to the Department of Justice in October of 2010. And some say it may have been illegal.

The documents, which consisted chiefly of non-profit tax returns, were transferred to the DOJ’s criminal division from the IRS at the request of Lois Lerner, who wanted to get the information to the DOJ in advance of a meeting where she and several of the attorneys in the public integrity section of the department’s criminal division discussed their concerns about the increasing political activity of non-profit groups.

The Justice Department later told Congress that the documents contained confidential taxpayer information protected by federal law. The nature of that information hasn’t been made public, but the so-called “Schedule B” form, for example, which non-profit groups are required to attach to their tax returns, known as 990s, asks for the names and addresses of donors to the organization.

But we already knew that. The transfer of information at Lerner’s request came to light during a congressional investigation in 2014. What we know now, thanks to additional documents unearthed in years-long litigation by the good-government group Cause of Action, is that Lerner almost certainly broke the law when she transferred the documents. That casts a new light on the Justice Department’s decision last year not to prosecute Lerner, who had become the face of the IRS’s ham-handed effort to crack down on right-leaning groups, but against whom a criminal case might have been difficult to build.

“It took an organization over 50 months of investigation and multiple lawsuits to get clarity on the IRS’s own compliance with the rules it enforces against others,” says Dan Epstein, the executive director of the Cause of Action Institute and a former attorney for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “The IRS, in the midst of its political targeting of groups engaged in policy advocacy, was engaging in the disclosure of millions of records aimed at ginning up prosecutions of these groups without going through the legally required channels.”

Federal law prohibits the IRS from sharing tax returns filed with the agency, with very limited exceptions. “The IRS has a special obligation to keep information confidential, that’s how our tax system works,” says Eileen O’Connor, who served as assistant attorney general for the tax division of the DOJ in the George W. Bush administration.

The Benghazi Debacle Should Have Ended Hillary Clinton’s Career Instead, with an assist from the media, she’s going to get off scot-free. By David French

Do failures and lies matter any longer? If you are a prominent Democratic politician, what exactly is the level of wrongdoing that will end your career?

Reading the long-awaited report from the House Select Committee on Benghazi and the associated media coverage, I was struck by the sheer scale of the failures and the deceptions surrounding the terror attack on the Benghazi compound, and by the mainstream media’s dismissiveness. Here’s the opening paragraph of the New York Times’s story on the report:

Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.

And here’s the Washington Post on the report:

A final report issued by the Republican majority that investigated the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, found fault with virtually every element of the executive branch response to the attacks but provided no new evidence of specific wrongdoing by then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This is an extraordinary response to a report that comprehensively details one of the most shameful episodes in recent American diplomatic and military history.

Clinton’s State Department failed to adequately protect its diplomats in Libya, with the Obama administration so intent on avoiding “boots on the ground” in the aftermath of its Libyan air war that it left Americans dangerously exposed even as the jihadist threat was plainly and clearly ramping up. The report details at least ten previous terror attacks in Benghazi, including two IED attacks on the American compound, yet the State Department had decreased its security there in the months before Ambassador Chris Stevens and four others were killed.

Obama’s Pentagon failed to mobilize assets to protect those same Americans even as they endured an hours-long assault on September 11, 2012. One of the most painful elements of the report is its description of exactly how difficult it was for the Pentagon to ramp up even the quick-strike elements of the most powerful military in the history of the world. Fighters were in one location, tankers in another. Ground assets were in one place, air transport in another. It took hours for clear commands from the White House and Pentagon to filter sufficiently far down the ranks to spur actual military activity.

Zika mosquitoes are biting in America now — and we’re still not ready by Betsy McCaughey

This month, mosquitoes capable of transmitting Zika start biting in Florida, the Gulf states and southern California. It’s the “virus from hell,” warns Peter Hotez, Dean of Baylor University’s School of Tropical Medicine.

Hotez is urging women to delay getting pregnant. He worries expectant mothers in these states are already being bitten and next spring they’ll “start giving birth to brain-damaged infants.” Doctors are investigating whether infants – up to age 1 – are in danger from these mosquito bites because their brains are still developing.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers face a different threat: sexual transmission. It’s unknown whether local mosquitoes will spread the virus. But even without mosquitoes biting, New York already has more Zika infections than any other state.

The virus is being brought here by immigrants and travelers exposed in infested areas like Puerto Rico, Brazil, Honduras and El Salvador. Their sex partners need to know the virus can survive in semen for six months or longer and also possibly spread through deep kissing.

Dating tip: Ask to see his passport.

The gravest danger is to women who can get pregnant, but taxpayers will also feel the impact. Area hospitals, including Mount Sinai and North Shore University Hospital, are preparing for a surge in Zika maternity cases. Health officials refuse to disclose how many will be uninsured immigrants whose health bills will be paid by taxpayers.

Any pregnant woman – here legally or not – can get emergency Medicaid to cover prenatal care and child birth. Babies born in the United States are automatically eligible for lifetime care if disabled, which, in the case of Zika-caused ailments, could cost $10 million per child.

Anticipating public outrage, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hiding the issue. The agency labels all Zika infections brought into the United States as “travel related” – lumping together Americans who caught it on a trip and migrants coming here for care.

Texas clinics are already seeing pregnant women from Central America with Zika.

Texans: Keep this Budding Jihadist out of Your State! Janet Levy

“Clock Boy,” the 14 year old Muslim student who was arresting for causing a bomb scare at MacArthur High School in Irving, is coming back to Texas. Apparently, Ahmed Mohamed is leaving Dubai due to “homesickness.”

You probably remember the overblown incident last year (that animated Barack Hussein Obama) in which Ahmed perpetuated a hoax by bringing a beeping countdown clock with dangling wires to school for no apparent reason. (This was NOT part of a science assignment as reported by the co-opted media). When the clock began to beep in class, an alarmed teacher sent Ahmed to the principal’s office; a perfectly reasonable action in light of the epidemic of Muslim jihadist incidents in the U.S. (For the uninformed, this is NOT Islamophobia. This is REAL and LEGITIMATE fear CAUSED by the actions of Muslims since at least 9/11).

Some background: Ahmed Mohammed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, is a well-heeled Sudanese immigrant who ran for president of Sudan. He was the spiritual leader at an Islamic center in Dallas, an ardent fighter against so-called “Islamophobia” and a member of the infamous mosque in Irving that created a tribunal to establish shariah law over the Constitution in Texas. When Ahmed was charged by law enforcement, his family threatened to sue the City of Irving and school district for civil rights violations and physical and mental anguish unless they received a written apology and $15 million.

Following the bomb hoax, Ahmed’s father worked closely with CAIR (a Muslim Brotherhood front group that was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial that concluded in 2009) to broadcast his son’s story of being “tortured” by school officials and experiencing “anti-Muslim” discrimination.

At the time of the incident, former U.S. Army Special Forces and counter-terrorist specialist Jim Hanson of the Center for Security Policy stated, “I don’t think there’s any question that this latest event was a PR stunt. It was a staged event where someone convinced this kid to bring a device that he didn’t build (it’s a Radio Shack clock that he put in a briefcase). You know how I know that? Because I have built briefcase bombs and blown them up. That’s what they looked like. So anyone who looked at that was reasonable in assuming it was a dangerous device. They did that to create the exact scenario that played out. They wanted people to react and they wanted to portray a kid as an innocent victim. I think he was a pawn…”

It is easy to see how such incidents can be useful in the stealth jihadist effort to destroy the law enforcement “see something, say something” policy allegedly put in place to prevent crimes and terrorist attacks.

Hillary’s ‘Serious Lack of Competence’ Cost Lives at Benghazi But she is only the tip of the iceberg. Robert Spencer

Former CIA officer D. W. Wilber noted in The Hill Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions leading up to the Benghazi attack, and the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Libya as a whole were “lunacy on a grand scale”: “Additional security was denied even though intelligence reports clearly indicated the presence in Libya of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups hostile to the United States.” Hillary’s “trust in the various militia factions to set aside their longstanding differences and establish a governing body in the war torn country illustrates another amateur mistake.” But it wasn’t. It was a professional mistake.

In reality, Hillary’s actions in Libya were an implementation of the policy called for by foreign policy professionals for years: to ignore whatever a study of Islamic doctrine and law might reveal about the thought processes and motivations of Islamic jihadis, and to assume that they’re motivated by the same mix of pragmatism and self-interest that motivates secular Western urban cosmopolites, i.e., people just like themselves.

This is the kind of disastrous miscalculation preached by establishment foreign policy wonks including the likes of the puerile and silly Will McCants (and the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution in general), Max Abrahms (and the Council on Foreign Relations in general), and a host of others that the State Department and other foreign policy entities hire by the pound.

The foreign policy establishment is a bipartisan creation, and both parties refuse to challenge its hegemony. The Republicans, as the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearings showed Tuesday, continue instead to let Hillary and Obama off the hook, and don’t even come close to challenging the entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy. Breitbart News noted that the final report from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)’s committee refused “to blame President Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as refus[ed] to say directly if Clinton lied to the American people regarding the Benghazi attacks.”

The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell said of Gowdy after the Tuesday hearing: “It was up to him to get to the truth, and he punted. Just as with the IRS investigation, the Republicans lacked the fortitude to confront those responsible.”

Bozell detailed the many failures of Gowdy’s inquiry: “The causes, events and circumstances regarding the attacks on the American personnel and facilities at Benghazi are still a mystery to the American people. Who denied the multiple requests for additional security for the compound? No answer. Who is being held responsible for the deaths of these men? No answer. Why did this administration deliberately lie about the video? No answer. Should the Commander-in-Chief be held responsible for the multiple failures of the military? Should the Secretary of State be held responsible for the disastrous consequences of State Department decisions? Not according to this report. They wouldn’t even state that Hillary Clinton lied about the video though her own emails, read by committee members, prove she had! But they did blame a ‘rusty bureaucratic process.’”

Turkey-Israel Rapprochement by Shoshana Bryen

Israeli policy (assisted by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden) produced perhaps the best possible outcome.

The UN Secretary General’s Report on the Gaza Flotilla concluded that Israel was within its rights to use force, and found the blockade of Gaza to be legal.

Turkey agreed to Israel’s original condition to the flotilla ships — aid bound for Gaza will offload in Ashdod.

Israel had also wanted to oust Hamas from Turkey — something that may not have been accomplished. But Turkey, by agreeing to a number of humanitarian projects in Gaza, will increase its leverage over Hamas in ways that might benefit Israel.

The announcement of Turkish-Israeli rapprochement was touted first as an economic achievement for Israel. It should be noted, however, that Turkey-Israel civilian trade, as distinct from military trade, was already robust, rising from $1.5 billion in the first half of 2010 to $5.6 billion in 2015. Israel has an interest in Turkey as a customer for Israeli natural gas fields, but a number of countries — including Russia — also seek partnerships in natural gas.

The deal has also been linked to the resolution of three Turkish conditions arising from the “Gaza Flotilla” of 2010. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who was prime minister at the time of the Gaza flotilla) had demanded an Israeli apology for the deaths of Turkish citizens on one of the flotilla ships, financial compensation, and the lifting of the Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza. The first two were agreed to by Israel years ago. The resolution — or non-resolution — of the third is a window into what is really going on, which is both more, and less, than the news reports.

Critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu naturally blame Israel for delaying the restoration of political and presumably military ties, but, in fact, Israeli policy (assisted by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden) produced perhaps the best possible outcome.

Israel has had some success working with Sunni governments in the region — including Saudi Arabia — on the basis of shared opposition to ISIS and to Iranian plans for regional hegemony. Both are better done with Turkey than without. And Israel’s political and military interlocutors, Russia and Egypt, needed some assurance that would ameliorate their displeasure with Turkish-Israeli reconciliation.

Turkey and Israel: Happy Together? by Burak Bekdil

Ironically, the futile Turkish effort to end the naval blockade of Gaza is ending in quite a different direction: Now that Turkey has agreed to send humanitarian aid through the Ashdod port, it accepts the legitimacy of the blockade.

Ostensibly, almost everyone is happy. After six years and countless rounds of secret and public negotiations Turkey and Israel have finally reached a landmark deal to normalize their downgraded diplomatic relations and ended their cold war. The détente is a regional necessity based on convergent interests: Divergent interests can wait until the next crisis.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon welcomed the deal, calling it a “hopeful signal for the stability of the region.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, too, welcomed the agreement. “We are obviously pleased in the administration. This is a step we wanted to see happen,” he said.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks that the agreement to normalize relations will have a positive impact on Israel’s economy. “It has also immense implications for the Israeli economy, and I use that word advisedly,” Netanyahu said, in likely reference to potential deals with Turkey for the exploration and transportation of natural gas off the Israeli coast.

A few years ago, according to the official Turkish narrative, “Israel is a terrorist state and its acts are terrorist acts.” Today, in the words of Turkey’s Minister of the Economy, Nihat Zeybekci, “For us Israel is an important ally.”

Turkey has long claimed that it would not reconcile with Israel unless its three demands have been firmly met by the Jewish state: An official apology for the killings of nine Islamists aboard the Turkish flotilla led by the Mavi Marmara which in 2010 tried to break the naval blockade of Gaza; compensation for the victims’ families; and a complete removal of the blockade. In 2013, Netanyahu, under pressure from President Barack Obama, apologized for the operational mistakes during the raid on the Mavi Marmara. The two sides have also agreed on compensation worth $20 million. With the deal reached now and awaiting Israeli governmental and Turkish parliamentary approvals, the narrative on the third Turkish condition looks tricky.

RE: LEGISLATORS AND ISLAM…..DICK DURBIN THE “CAIRING” SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS

DURBIN RANKS A + 5 ON THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE’S SCORECARD FOR LEGISLATORS INDICATING A VERY PRO-ARAB VOTING RECORD. HE RECENTLY GRATIFIED HIS SUPPORTERS BY ATTENDING A CAIR 10TH ANNIVERSARY GALA.
CAIR has been designated by the FBI and several in Congress as a supporter of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
1dick_durbin“For more than 10 years, CAIR-Chicago has enhanced the understanding of Islam within our communities by facilitating dialogue, protecting civil liberties, empowering American Muslims, and building coalitions which promote justice and mutual understanding. I applaud your commitment to guaranteeing that our country’s ideals are fully respected and realized for all.”

– Dick Durbin
U.S. Senator, State of Illinois

Two members of Congress accused of Muslim Brotherhood ties By Carol Brown

Covering the Senate hearings on Islamic terror, Tuesday’s HuffPo headline read: “Witness At Ted Cruz Hearing Accuses Congress’ Two Muslim Members Of Muslim Brotherhood Ties.”
The teaser read: “This doesn’t normally happen on the Hill.” The teaser should have been: It’s about time.

I rarely venture over to the HuffPo, but I couldn’t resist reading their coverage:

In explosive testimony Tuesday, a witness before a Senate panel about Islamic terrorism accused the two Muslim members of Congress of having attended an event organized by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The charge was leveled by Chris Gaubatz, a “national security consultant” who has moonlighted as an undercover agitator of Muslim groups that he accuses of being terrorist outfits, and it was directed at Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and André Carson (D-Ind.). At the heart of his accusation is the attendance by those two members at a 2008 convention hosted by the Islamic Society of North America — a Muslim umbrella group, which Gaubatz claims is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.

HuffPo was eager to smear Chris Gaubatz, whose impressive undercover work inside CAIR is chronicled in his book Muslim Mafia. (To learn more about him, The Clarion Project has a short interview, here.) The Huffpo continues:

“I attended a convention in Columbus, Ohio, in 2008, organized by Muslim Brotherhood group, ISNA, and both the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons had recruitment and outreach booths,” Gaubatz said in his testimony. “Both Congressman Keith Ellison, MN, and Andre Carson, IN, spoke at the Muslim Brotherhood event.”

Allegations that Ellison and Carson are secret Muslim agents with extremist leanings are usually found among fringe groups online, often discussed in dire tones on poorly designed websites. Rarely, if ever, do such sentiments get read into congressional testimony, with the imprimatur that offers.

Wow, this is why, as a rule, I don’t read the HuffPo. But seriously, the excerpt noted above highlights how behind the curve we are regarding the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB should have been declared a terrorist organization ions ago. Instead, they have been operating through countless front groups that are legitimized and lauded by the leftist politicians and the media. As a result, no red flags are raised about anyone affiliated with these groups.