Displaying posts published in

2016

POLITICS Comments turned off

Who’s Who on Trump’s Supreme Court Wish List

By on May 19th, 2016

Donald Trump on Wednesday disclosed the names of 11 candidates he would consider to fill the current vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court. The list includes six federal appeals court judges appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, as well as five state Supreme Court justices with conservative credentials.

Here’s a quick look at the Trump 11:

• Steven Colloton

Judge Steven Colloton, who lives in Iowa, has been a judge since 2003 for the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers a large swath of the Midwest. He was appointed to the position by President George W. Bush. Prior to becoming a federal judge, he served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and had been a federal line prosecutor in that district for eight years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton and law degree from Yale. After law school, the 53-year-old clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.

Judge Colloton’s name had already been floated as a potential Supreme Court nominee in 2012, during GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s bid for the White House. In 2011, he voted in favor of owners in the National Football League to allow a lockout by the players to continue indefinitely. He also voted in a unanimous decision last year to side with religious nonprofits challenging the Affordable Care Act’s rules for contraceptive coverage.

• Allison Eid

Allison Eid, 51, has been an associate justice on the Colorado Supreme Court, the state’s highest, since 2006, appointed by former Republican Colorado Gov. Bill Owens. Before joining the bench, she served as Colorado’s solicitor general representing state officials and agencies in court. She also taught at University of Colorado Law School and worked as a litigator at the Denver office of Arnold & Porter LLP. She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford and law degree from the University of Chicago.

In 2012, Judge Eid wrote the majority opinion ruling that the University of Colorado’s policy to ban students from carrying handguns on campus was unlawful. She also wrote a decision last year that said companies in Colorado, which has decriminalized most marijuana use, can fire employees for using marijuana outside of work because the activity still violates federal law.

• Raymond Gruender

A 52-year-old Bush appointee, Judge Raymond Gruender has served on the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since 2004. A longtime prosecutor before joining the bench, he served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri from 2001 to 2004 after working as an assistant in that office for many years.

Between stints as a prosecutor, Judge Gruender campaigned for Bob Dole’s failed 1996 presidential bid. He earned law and business degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. In one noteworthy decision he authored, the Eighth Circuit held that it wasn’t sex discrimination for an employer to exclude insurance coverage for birth control.

• Thomas Hardiman

Judge Thomas Hardiman, 50, joined the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007, after serving as a district court judge in Pennsylvania for four years. Both appointments came from George W. Bush. A graduate of University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University Law Center, he worked in private practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and other law firms before becoming a judge. The Trump campaign says he’s the first in his family to attend college. In a decision he authored, which was later affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the appeals court held that a jail’s policy of strip-searching all detainees, even those with minor alleged offenses, wasn’t a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EgyptAir Flight MS804 Disappears en Route From Paris to Cairo Airbus A320 vanished from radar over the Mediterranean SeaBy Jon Ostrower and Andy Pasztor

By on May 19th, 2016

EgyptAir said one of its aircraft disappeared early Thursday while flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard, the third major incident to befall the nation’s aviation sector since October.

The Egyptian flag carrier said Flight MS804, which departed Paris at 11:09 p.m. local time, “disappeared from radar” at 2:45 a.m. Cairo time Thursday while at 37,000 feet. It lost communication over the Mediterranean Sea, the airline said, shortly before it was due to land at 3:15 a.m.

An EgyptAir official said military search and rescue teams picked up a possible emergency locator signal at 4:26 a.m. Cairo time, less than two hours after the jet disappeared.

But Egypt’s military, which is leading the search and rescue operation, said shortly after that no such signal had been detected.

A civil aviation ministry official told state television that the initial report had been his ministry’s error.

The Airbus A320, with 56 passengers, including three children, three security personnel and seven crew on board, was last spotted over the Mediterranean Sea on the way to Cairo, according to flight-tracking websites.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

What If Clinton Gets Indicted? It would scramble the campaign if Hillary or her aides lose the vital FBI primary.By Karl Rove

By on May 19th, 2016

Despite losing the Oregon primary while barely eking out a win in Kentucky, Hillary Clinton emerged with 51 of Tuesday’s delegates to Bernie Sanders’s 55. To reach the 2,383 needed for the nomination, Mrs. Clinton now needs only 92 of either the 890 still-to-be-elected delegates or the 148 still-unpledged superdelegates. This is because she is already supported by 524 superdelegates—the Democratic Party’s unelected overclass—to Mr. Sanders’s 40.

Still, she must be concerned about losing the FBI primary. If the bureau recommends that the Justice Department indict Mrs. Clinton or close aides like Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin or Jake Sullivan for acting with gross negligence—disregard of known or easily anticipated risks—in sending classified information over a private email server, the campaign could be completely scrambled.

The FBI may not recommend indictments, or the Justice Department could refuse to issue them. The latter could result in high-profile resignations like those in 1973 with the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre,” when several top Nixon officials were fired or resigned. Only this time, the turmoil would be covered on cable TV and in high-def.

If there are indictments, Team Clinton will dismiss them as an overreaction to unintentional, minor mistakes and try pushing on through. But that may be unacceptable to the party’s hierarchy, especially if indictments occur before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia opens July 25.

The party establishment might balk at having the ticket led by someone mired in a national-security scandal or by Mr. Sanders, a socialist and independent who has never before sought election as a Democrat or attended a state or national convention.

Instead, the party establishment might move to replace Mrs. Clinton with Vice President Joe Biden, a sentimental favorite, or Secretary of State John Kerry, whom many in the party’s leadership think more substantive, less prone to gaffes and, because of his 2004 loss against President George W. Bush, more deserving.

The legally unbound superdelegates hold the balance of power. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Sanders can get the nomination without their votes. And the rest of the Democratic delegates, unlike their Republican counterparts, aren’t bound by state laws or party rules to vote for the candidate they were pledged to in their state’s primary for a certain number of ballots. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why David Petraeus Really Wants You To Shut Up About Islamism :Christine Brim

By on May 19th, 2016

Christine Brim is a founder of Paratos LLC, a risk communications consultancy. Previously she served at the Center for Security Policy as a vice president and chief operating officer.
On May 13, the Washington Post published an online op-ed by former CIA director and CENTCOM commander David Petraeus, titled “Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists.” The op-ed was noteworthy chiefly for Petraeus’ use of rhetorical clichés more commonly expected from the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s “Islamophobia Observatory,” including such standards as “inflammatory political discourse against Muslims and Islam,” “blanket discrimination on the basis of religion,” “those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims,” “those who demonize and denigrate Islam,” “who toy with anti-Muslim bigotry,” and the ever-reliable “demonizing a religious faith and its adherents.” Although the op-ed seemed to target Donald Trump, it also admonished all Americans to limit what we say about Islam.

Petraeus’s attack was so over-the-top, no expression critical of Islamic doctrine would escape his censorship. Have you criticized mainstream Islamic doctrine or the laws of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates? You’re demonizing a religious faith. Do you object to authoritative Islamic doctrines justifying jihad, proclaimed by both Islamic governments and non-state Islamic militants alike? Stop toying with anti-Muslim bigotry; you’re just aiding “Islamist terrorists.”
Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch expertly summarized Petraeus’s specious logic: “So the upshot of Petraeus’ argument is that we must not say things to which Muslims might object, because this will just make more of them become jihadis. His prescription for minimizing the jihad against the West is for the West to practice self-censorship in order to avoid offending Muslims.”

Sadly, Petraeus’s attacks primarily undercut the foremost critics of Islamic doctrine: Muslim reformers, the group of Muslims who most need our support. A prominent young Muslim reformer, Shireen Qudosi, responded to his op-ed with this poignant tweet: “Petraeus doesn’t see that for much of the maddening world of Muslims and liberals, hate speech is conflated w/ truth.”

The theme of Petraeus’s op-ed, “Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists,” was in line with a campaign to blame ISIS on Western critics of Islamic doctrine. For example, The Mirror: “ISIS wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t Islamophobia”; The Nation: “ISIS Wants You to Hate Muslims”; The Guardian: “Islamophobia plays right into the hands of Isis”; Salon: “After Brussels, far-right Islamophobes are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do”; and last but not least, Hillary Clinton in The Daily Mail: “‘He is becoming ISIS’ best recruiter’: Hillary Clinton blasts Donald Trump for demonizing Muslims and using ‘bluster and bigotry to inflame people.”

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

ALICE IN OBAMALAND BY MARILYN PENN

By on May 19th, 2016

If Alice were an 18 year old American college freshman, she would be protected by Title IX from any hint of sexual harassment or molestation. Even if she consented to climb into bed with a guy she had already had sex with many times, voluntarily peeled off all her clothes and had a black belt in karate, if she changed her mind at any time in her romantic encounter, the government would defend her as if she were a hothouse flower outdoors in a hurricane. If she spent her evening getting drunk with her partner, he alone would be held responsible for any advances while she would remain a helpless victim with no agency. Under the same rubric of Title IX, if Alice were a younger girl in elementary or high school, she would be expected to change in a locker room or shower in a communal facility with bi-gender members of the opposite sex. The government now demands that young Alice be cool with seeing boys on hormone therapy with both breasts and penises. How odd that so much more is expected of Alice as a child than when she is actually old enough to be responsible for her own behavior as well as enlist in the army and be killed for her country.

The media coverage of transgender bathrooms usually leaves out the locker room and focuses instead on debunking the likelihood of bathroom rape. That contingency is not the most salient argument for segregating sexes according to their biology. The interjection of civil rights and equality into this LGBT campaign is a canard since physically disabled children have never been defended by the government against the so-called “stigma” of using separate wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. Why should unisex bathrooms be considered more discriminatory than that? Considering the likelihood that there are more disabled youngsters in the population than the tiny percentage of transgender children, why wouldn’t the government be more interested in protecting their civil rights first?

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Vilifying Israel, ruining Venezuela: How Nicolas Maduro’s regime is spreading anti-Semitism abroad and abusing its power at home by Diego Arria

By on May 19th, 2016

Mr. Arria was Venezuela’s permanent representative to the United Nations from 1991-93.

“What does Israel plan to do with the Palestinians?” asked the Venezuelan ambassador to the UN, Rafael Ramirez. It was, of course, a rhetorical question.

Speaking at an informal session of the Security Council this month, the representative of a despotic, corrupt and militarized regime — one that has bankrupted Venezuela, hijacked the judicial system to throw political dissidents in jail, and counts Iran and Syria among its closest allies — rained down anti-Semitic rhetoric upon the State of Israel.

Ramirez went on to flatly ask whether Israel was “trying to impose a ‘final solution’ on the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

In making the obscene comparison between Israel and the Nazis, the Venezuelan delegate engaged in the ultimate blood libel — accusing the survivors of the Holocaust of having turned into the same monsters who exterminated 6 million Jews and millions of others. Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon publicly rejected such a disgusting comparison, as did other UN member representatives including France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

(Ramirez has since apologized privately to Israel’s UN ambassador, but has yet to do so in public.)

The Venezuelan remarks, of course, were meant only to fuel hatred. Ramirez never had any intention of addressing the subject of the meeting: the protection of civilians affected by the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.

Even worse, arguably, is the fact that these comments were made under the auspices of a process that is designed to increase dialogue and understanding, rather than boosting hatred and polarization.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

‘Islamophobia Studies’ Are Coming To A College Near You, And There Won’t Be Any Debate About It by Cinnamon Stillwell

By on May 19th, 2016

“Before I get started, I just wanted to say that we are meeting on stolen indigenous people’s land. That’s really important to acknowledge.” So declared San Francisco State University race and resistance studies professor Rabab Abdulhadi, at the University of California, Berkeley’s Seventh Annual International Islamophobia Conference in April.

Abdulhadi’s seemingly disjointed declaration was typical of the post-colonial, “intersectionality”-driven jargon of the entire conference, which sought to link the mythical plight of America’s prosperous, content Muslim population, with the struggles of every oppressed minority known to man. It was also an opportunity for two academic centers at opposite ends of the country to join forces and promote what was euphemistically referred to at the 2015 UC Berkeley conference as “Islamophobia studies.”

While UC Berkeley Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP) director and conference convener Hatem Bazian gave the opening remarks, John Esposito, founding director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) and project director of ACMCU’s Bridge Initiative, “a multi-year research project that connects the academic study of Islamophobia with the public square,” was the undisputed star.

Esposito was introduced by Munir Jiwa, director of the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, who, after noting that one of the scheduled speakers on the same panel was unable to attend, added with a smile, “I’m sure Dr. Esposito will be happy to take up the time.” Esposito did not disappoint, delivering a long, rambling talk filled with humorous asides and one-liners to which the audience responded with hearty laughter. He clearly reveled in being the center of attention and joked at the outset about his family, “They think I’m a humble person; my wife will tell you that I’m faking it.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ben Rhodes Takes a Play Out of North Korea’s Playbook to Sell the Iran Deal By: Benjamin Weingarten –

By on May 19th, 2016

One way to evaluate the direction of 21st century Western civilization is to ask whether free nations are acting more like totalitarian ones, or vice versa. A recent story highlighting modern-day North Korea indicates a depressing parallel between America and a nation where opponents of the ruling regime are rumored to be fed to the dogs – or at least executed by firing squad.

In “I went to North Korea and was told I ask too many questions,” the Washington Post’s Anna Fifield describes a visit to a Pyongyang maternity hospital during a state-organized media tour. During the visit to what we gather is a Potemkin hospital, a medical facility set up for pure publicity that misrepresents the true state of the country’s healthcare industry, Fifield asks a series of questions met with propaganda, obfuscation and not-so-curious inconsistency.

The reporter’s handlers rush her through a tour of the hospital, showing “state-of-the-art” Siemens equipment marked to show the technology is a gift from “Respected Leader Kim Jung Un.” Supposedly domestically produced machines are nowhere to be found. Staffers turn on a CT scanner to reveal password protection that cannot be cracked.

How can an administration’s words be at all trusted when frauds with profound consequences like the Iran deal and Obamacare are foisted so audaciously on the American people?

The trip ends with a visit to a room in one ward with “a nicely made-up woman sitting on the bed in pink pajamas…there were no personal effects on the bedside table or in the connecting bathroom, there was no medical chart on the end of the bed or even a glass of water on her bedside table.”

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

MENACHEM BEGIN’S BROADCAST TO THE NATION, MAY 15, 1948- THE STATE OF ISRAEL HAS ARISEN! ****

By on May 18th, 2016

FROM MIDEAST OUTPOST FEBRUARY 2014

Editor’s Note: This is excerpted from Begin’s address on Israel’s independence day on the Irgun’s radio station. His words are worth remembering in this time of unprecedented challenges to Israel’s right to exist.

Citizens of the Hebrew Homeland, Soldiers of Israel, Hebrew Youth, Sisters and Brothers in Zion! Today is truly a holiday, a Holy Day, and a new fruit is visible before our very eyes. The Hebrew Revolt of 1944-1948 has been blessed with success — the first Hebrew revolt since the Hasmonean insurrection that has ended in victory. The State of Israel has arisen in bloody battle. The highway for the mass return to Zion has been cast up. The foundation has been laid — but only the foundation — for true independence.

One phase of the battle for freedom, for the return of the entire People of Israel to its homeland, for the restoration of the whole Land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners, has ended. But only one phase. We should recall that this event has occurred after 70 generations of dispersion and unending wandering of an unarmed people and after a period of almost total destruction of the Jew as Jew. Thus, although our suffering is not yet over, it is our right and our obligation to proffer thanks to the Rock of Israel and His Redeemer for all the miracles that have been done this day, as in those times. We therefore can say with full heart and soul on this first day of our liberation from the British occupier: Blessed is He who has sustained us and enabled us to have reached this time. The State of Israel has arisen. And it has risen “Only Thus”: through blood, through fire, with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, with sufferings and with sacrifices. It could not have been otherwise.

And yet, even before our state is able to establish its normal governing institutions, it is compelled to fight, or rather, to continue to fight satanic enemies and blood-thirsty mercenaries, on land, in the air and on the sea. In these circumstances, the warning sounded by the Philosopher-President Thomas Masaryk to the Czechoslovak nation when it attained its freedom after three hundred years of slavery has a special significance for us. In 1918, when Masaryk stepped out on to the Wilson railway station in Prague, he warned his cheering countrymen: “It is difficult to set up a state; it is even more difficult to keep it going.”

We are surrounded by enemies who long for our destruction. Our one-day old state is set up in the midst of the flames of battle. And the very first pillar of our state must therefore be victory, total victory, in the war which is raging all over the country. For this victory, without which we shall have neither freedom nor life, we need arms; weapons of all sorts, in order to strike the enemies, in order to disperse the invaders, in order to free the entire length and breadth of the country from its would-be destroyers. But in addition to these arms, each and every one of us has need of another weapon, a spiritual weapon, the weapon of unflinching endurance in face of attacks from the air; in face of grievous casualties; in face of local disasters and temporary defeats; unflinching resistance to threats and cajolery.

But even after emerging victorious from this campaign — and victorious we shall be — we shall still have to exert superhuman efforts in order to remain independent, in order to free our country. First of all, it will be necessary to increase and strengthen the fighting arm of Israel, without which there can be no freedom and no survival for our Homeland. Our Jewish army should be, and must be, one of the best trained and equipped of the world’s military forces. In modern warfare, it is not quantity that counts but brainpower and spirit are the determining factors. All of our youth proved that they possess this spirit – those of the Hagana, the Lehi, the Irgun, youth that no other nation has merited. Indeed, no generation since Bar-Kochba and until the Bilu pioneers has seen such spirit.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

MY SAY: DEROY MURDOCK ON TRUMP AND A THIRD WAY PLAN IS RIGHT ON TARGET

By on May 18th, 2016

Never Trump’s Third-Way Plan Is Futile, at Best By Deroy Murdock *****

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/435496/print
Much as Superstorm Sandy’s creeping flood waters knocked out a Con Edison power plant in Manhattan for four days in October 2012, a rising tide of disdain for Donald J. Trump has drowned the brains of some normally smart conservatives.

These activists and GOP luminaries failed to clinch the Republican nomination for any of the 16 rivals whom Trump flattened — fair and square. Notwithstanding the ballots of nearly 11 million Republican primary voters who chose the real-estate tycoon, some Never Trump enthusiasts are plotting to run a third-way contender for president and, they hope, trap the presumptive Republican nominee in Trump Tower.

This is utter madness.

It also saddens me to see otherwise astute friends of mine lose their senses and promote a project that looks as promising as a canoe being paddled rapidly away from Niagara Falls.

A conservative third-party or third-candidate bid will accomplish one thing: Hillary and Bill Clinton will recapture the White House as their once and future crime scene.

Before these “Never Trump” conservatives follow this third path any farther, they should Google these terms: President Ralph Nader, President Ross Perot, President John Anderson, President George Wallace, President Henry Wallace (no relation), President Strom Thurmond, and President Theodore Roosevelt.

TR was president, but as a Republican from 1901 to 1909. When he led the Bull Moose party’s charge against GOP incumbent William Howard Taft in 1912, Roosevelt lost. He also pulled enough Republican-leaning votes from Taft’s left flank to assure the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. As chief executive, Wilson bestowed upon the American people the gifts of the Federal Reserve System, U.S. involvement in World War I, and the flaccid, feckless League of Nations. Wilson’s signature on the Revenue Act of 1913 midwifed the beloved federal income tax after the 16th Amendment permitted it.

Such are the unplanned reverberations of third-party presidential politics.

Continue reading →