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2016

Democracy’s Verdict on Clinton Trump shows more good judgment by not prosecuting Hillary.

Donald Trump’s approval rating is up nine points since Election Day in one survey, and one reason may be that he’s setting a tone of expansive leadership. A case in point is his apparent decision not to seek the prosecution of Hillary Clinton for her email and Clinton Foundation issues.

“I think when the President-elect, who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content,” Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC on Tuesday. Mr. Trump later told the New York Times that “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” adding about prosecuting Mrs. Clinton that “it’s just not something that I feel very strongly about.”

That’s the right move—for the country and his Presidency. We know from reading our email that many Americans want Mrs. Clinton treated like Mel Gibson in the climactic scene of “Braveheart.” Their argument is that equal justice under law requires that she be treated like anyone else who mishandled classified information.

But discretion is also part of any decision to prosecute. FBI Director James Comey was wrong to exonerate Mrs. Clinton before the election because that wasn’t his job and he let the Attorney General off the hook. Loretta Lynch should have taken responsibility for absolving or indicting her party’s nominee—and voters could hold her and Democrats accountable.

The voters ultimately rendered that verdict on Nov. 8, and being denied the Presidency is a far more painful punishment than a misdemeanor or minor felony conviction. Prosecuting vanquished political opponents is the habit in Third World nations. Healthy democracies prefer their verdicts at the ballot box.

Prosecution would also stir needless controversy that would waste Mr. Trump’s political capital. President Obama made the mistake of blessing then Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision in 2009 to have a special prosecutor investigate CIA officials over post-9/11 interrogations. This made Mr. Obama look vindictive and ideologically driven, and it was among the decisions that set the tone for the hyperpartisan Obama Presidency.

The press corps is making much of Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to name a special prosecutor for Mrs. Clinton, as well as the cries at his rallies of “lock her up.” That always seemed like campaign overkill, and Mr. Trump is now President-elect. His more important promise is the one he made in his victory speech to be the President of the entire nation, and democracy’s verdict is justice enough for Mrs. Clinton.

MY SAY: WORDS FROM ALEXANDER HAMILTON….NOT THE MUSICAL

You think Brandon Dixon ever read these lines? rsk

“There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism”……. Alexander Hamilton

“Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike……. Alexander Hamilton

Which Way, José? That permanent Democratic majority may never emerge after all. By John O’Sullivan

If you type “Hispanic turnout 2016,” Google will churn out a series of buoyant links, all along the lines of “Latino Voting Surge Rattles the Trump Campaign” and “Trump Awakens a Sleeping Giant: Record Turnout for Latino Voters.” Should you do the same exercise about Latino support for the two candidates, you will get “Clinton Trounces Trump in New Poll” and the like.

In addition to their topic, these stories have something else in common: Almost all of them were published before the 8th of November. After the election result, which was itself the biggest story, the second biggest story was that Latino turnout had remained the same as the 2012 Latino turnout, at 11 percent of all voters. And the third biggest story was that within the Latino electorate, support for Clinton had fallen slightly from Obama’s two highs (71 percent in 2008 and 69 percent in 2012) to a respectable but not election-winning 65 percent. In line with that, Trump’s share of the Latino vote rose two points above Romney’s, to 29 percent.

These figures come from the national exit polls. Those for the share of the vote have been challenged by other pollsters, who found Trump getting a low of 18 percent of Latinos. It may be that the exit-poll figures will be corrected, as sometimes happens. Bush’s 44 percent share of the Hispanic vote in 2004 was reduced to 40 percent when the pollsters examined their data in tranquility. But other pollsters doubt that will happen in this case.

And even if it were to do so, that would have the secondary result of suggesting that candidates can win a national election with very little Latino support — the opposite conclusion of all those “surging turnout” and “awakening giant” stories that dominated the campaign coverage. So there’s an interesting story here, even if not the story that reporters and analysts wanted to write.

What makes it even more interesting, if paradoxically so, is that it’s the same sequence of stories that have been written before and after the last five or six elections. The awakening giant is always going to surge before the election but then takes a nap during it and wakes up yawning. Several analysts on both sides of the debate noticed this and wrote about it while the election campaign was still cool. Roberto Suro was one; I was another here at NRO.

The Mainstreaming of Non-White Americans

Let me very briefly rehash Professor Suro’s argument and my response. He accepted that increases in the Latino vote lagged far behind the growth in Census Bureau numbers of Latino citizens. By January this year, when Professor Suro wrote, Latinos had apparently exercised very little influence on how the election was conducted. Signature Latino issues had been eclipsed by general economic ones. And, amazing to relate, the two most prominent Latino politicians in the race were conservative Republicans, namely Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, neither of whom ran on issues identified as specifically Hispanic.

The Trump-Climate Freakout He will reverse a policy that isn’t working anyway. By Oren Cass —

Given the emotional reactions that Donald Trump and climate change each trigger separately, they offer an especially combustible combination.

Paul Krugman worries that Trump’s election “may have killed the planet.” Activist Bill McKibben calls Trump’s plan to reverse the Obama climate agenda by approving the Keystone XL pipeline and other fossil-fuel projects, repealing the Clean Power Plan, and withdrawing from the Paris agreement “the biggest, most against-the-odds, and most irrevocable bet any president has ever made about anything.” And let’s not forget “Zach,” the DNC staffer who reportedly stormed out of a post-election meeting upset that “I am going to die from climate change.”

A Trump presidency offers many reasonable reasons to worry. But the fear that he will kill the planet, or even poor Zach, is at least one anxiety we can dispel.

Just listen to President Obama. His administration developed a “Social Cost of Carbon” that attempts to quantify in economic terms the projected effects of climate change on everything from agriculture to public health to sea level, looking all the way out to the year 2100. So suppose President Trump not only reverses U.S. climate policy but ensures that the world permanently abandons efforts to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions. How much less prosperous than today does the Obama administration estimate we will be by century’s end?

The world will be at least five times wealthier. Zach may even live to see it.

The Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE) model, developed by William Nordhaus at Yale University, which has the highest climate costs of the Obama administration’s three models, estimates that global GDP in 2100 without climate change would be $510 trillion. That’s 575 percent higher than in 2015. The cost of climate change, the model estimates, will amount to almost 4 percent of GDP in that year. But the remaining GDP of $490 trillion is still 550 percent larger than today.

Who Are Wise, Who Not? Insight often comes not from an Ivy League degree but by way of animal cunning, instinct, and hard work. By Victor Davis Hanson

“Cleverness is not wisdom.”
— Euripides, the Bacchae

At the height of the sophistic age in classical Athens, the playwright Euripides asked an eternal question in his masterpiece, the Bacchae: “What is wisdom?”

Was wisdom defined as clever wordplay, or as the urban sophistication of the robed philosophers in the agora and rhetoricians in the assembly?

Or instead was true wisdom a deeper and more modest appreciation of unchanging human nature throughout the ages, which reminds us to avoid hubris, tread carefully, always expect the unlikely, and distrust the self-acclaimed wise who eventually prove clever fools? At the end of the play, a savage, merciless nemesis is unleashed on the hubristic wise of the establishment.

Euripides would have appreciated the ironies of the 2016 election.

Millions of Americans, far from the two coasts, kept largely quiet. They either did not talk much to pollsters or they politely declined to reveal their true feelings. They tuned out talking heads and ignored blue-chip pundits. They did not listen to the shrill bombast of President Obama on the campaign trail or pollsters who ad nauseam declared Hillary Clinton the sure electoral-college winner.

They were not shamed or much bothered by the condescension they receive from the media and the Washington elite, who proved wrong or biased or both in their coverage. They believed that free trade was not worth much if it was not fair trade, that illegal and politicized immigration was as subversive as legal and diverse immigration was valuable, that real racists were those who used race and ethnicity to encourage others to break the law for their own political and elite interests, and that it was stupid to trust their job futures to those who never lost their own jobs while often losing those of others.

So, to return to Euripides, what really is wisdom in the 21st century?

Is it to be judged according to the values of those who inhabit the Podesta WikiLeaks archive? Is being smart defined as being on lots of corporate boards, having an impressive contact list of private cellphone numbers, name-dropping one’s Ivy League degrees, referencing weekends in the Hamptons or on Martha’s Vineyard, or being ranked in the top 100, 1,000, or 5,000 of some cool magazine’s list of go-getters and “people to watch”?

Sex With Children: Turkish Bill To Clear Men Accused Of Child Rape If They Marry Victim Sees Protests BY Mary Pascaline

A Turkish bill that would clear men of statutory rape provided they marry the victim is on the receiving end of criticism from opposition groups that are accusing the government of legitimizing child sexual assault.
The bill received preliminary backing in the parliament Thursday and is due for a second round of voting after a debate next week. Proposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the bill would clear those convicted of assault only if they had sex without “force, threat, or any other restriction on consent” and if they marry the victim.
Violence against women is on the rise in Turkey with nearly 40 percent of cases of sexual and physical abuse reported. Murder of women has also increased by 1,400 percent from 2003 to 2010. The legal age of consent in the country is 18 years but child marriage is widespread.
According to the BBC, the government has said the aim of the bill “is not to excuse rape but to rehabilitate those who may not have realized their sexual relations were unlawful – or to prevent girls who have sex under the age of 18 from feeling ostracized by their community.”
Critics, which include the opposition, celebrities, an association whose deputy chairman is Erdoğan’s daughter, are worried that the bill – which if passed is likely to quash nearly 3,000 convictions – would also legitimize child marriage in addition to overlooking child sexual assault.
“The AKP is pushing through a text which pardons those who marry the child that they raped,” Ozgur Ozel, a lawmaker belonging to the opposition Republican People’s Party reportedly said.

Hezbollah’s Brazen Display Flush with cash, Iran’s terror proxy shows off its wares but the group should be careful what it wishes for. Ari Lieberman

Last week the Shia terrorist organization and Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, held a military parade in the city of Al-Qusayr, located in western Syria. The venue was likely chosen for its symbolism. In 2013, it was the site of fierce battles between the Free Syrian Army and Hezbollah. Though it suffered heavy casualties, the Shia terror group eventually gained the upper hand over the rebels and succeeded in ejecting them from the city and surrounding region.

The parade featured a wide assortment of Russian weapons including laser guided AT-14 Kornet anti-tank missiles, T-72 tanks equipped with reactive armor and R-330P electronic warfare vehicles. But among the weapons displayed, one stood out as a curiosity – the American made M-113 armored personnel carrier. The Hezbollah configuration mounts a twin 23mm anti-aircraft cannon that could also be used in an infantry support role.

The M-113 is essentially a battle taxi whose primary purpose is to ferry troop into battle while offering a measure of armored protection. It was introduced into the U.S. military during the early 1960s and is a versatile platform that has since been configured to take on a variety of roles including mortar and anti-tank missile carrier. One highly effective variant, known as the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System, mounts a six-barreled 20mm cannon.

Since its introduction, the M-113 has seen extensive service with the U.S. military and militaries throughout the world. The vehicle has been widely exported and is known to be in service with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Lebanon is the fifth largest recipient of U.S. military assistance and U.S. military aid to Lebanon in 2016 totaled $216 million. The Pentagon and the State Department maintain oversight over all shipments to the LAF to ensure that the weapons are utilized for the purposes intended.

Hezbollah is lavishly supplied by Iran but there has been growing speculation that Hezbollah has been pilfering weapons from LAF stocks. The revelation of M-113s in Hezbollah’s arsenal has lent credence to this notion. It is also possible that Hezbollah captured the weapons from the now defunct South Lebanon Army (SLA). During the 1980s Israel transferred a small number of M-113s to the SLA. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, the SLA collapsed and its weapons, including M-113s, fell into the hands of Hezbollah.

The LAF has denied claims that it either supplied Hezbollah with U.S. equipment or turned a blind eye toward misappropriation but irrespective of how Hezbollah acquired the M-113s, it is clear that the aid given to the LAF by the United States is not being utilized for its intended purpose. As noted by the Weekly Standard’s Lee Smith;

“The 2016 appropriations bill to Lebanon stipulated that military aid must be used ‘to professionalize the LAF and to strengthen border security and combat terrorism, including training and equipping the LAF to secure Lebanon’s borders, interdicting arms shipments, preventing the use of Lebanon as a safe haven for terrorist groups.’ The military assistance was also intended to help Lebanon ‘implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701’—namely, disarming Hezbollah and helping the government of Lebanon take full control of all its territory.”

‘Sanctuary Cities’ Vs. National Security and Public Safety Why ‘sanctuary city’ mayors should be given an MVP Award by ISIS and drug cartels. Michael Cutler

The lunacy of the immigration executive orders and other actions of the Obama administration to block the enforcement of our immigration laws and immigration anarchy will be brought to a screeching halt on the day that Donald Trump replaces Mr. Obama in the Oval Office.

However the “Immigration All-Clear” will not be sounded across the United States in cities and states that have been declared “Sanctuaries” by the mayors and governors who have created a false and very dangerous narrative that equates immigration law enforcement with racism and bigotry.

This insidious false claim has been heartily embraced by the demonstrators who are rampaging across the United States to protest the election of Donald Trump and his promises to secure the U.S./Mexican border and enforce our immigration laws.

This is the false narrative that has enabled mayors of so-called “Sanctuary Cities” to foist this lunacy on the residents of their cities and was the focus of my article, “Terrorism, Enclaves and Sanctuary Cities: How sanctuary cities facilitate the growth of terror enclaves in America.”

The challenge for the Trump administration and for all Americans, is to eliminate these enclaves of lawlessness.

Sanctuary cities are highly attractive to illegal aliens and the criminals, fugitives and likely terrorists among them who entered the United States by evading the inspections process conducted at ports of entry by the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors and are vulnerable to arrest and removal (deportation).

Sanctuary cities, however, certainly do not provide “sanctuary” for the residents of those cities who, all too often, fall victim to the crimes committed by these criminal aliens. However, what is generally not understood is that Sanctuary Cities endanger every person in the United States, no matter where they live.

Terrorists would most likely seek to set up shop in sanctuary cities to evade detection and arrest.

They can use the security provided by such “leaders” as Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and New York’s Bill de Blasio as a staging area for attacks they might carry out in the cities where they live or in other cities they could easily travel to on the day of an attack.

While politicians from both parties often claim that the “Immigration system is broken” as a way of justifying their positions of advocacy for massive amnesty programs and the creation of these dangerous “sanctuaries” for criminals, fugitives and terrorists, in reality, this is “Immigration Failure — By Design.”

America’s borders and immigration laws are our first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists, transnational criminals, fugitives from justice and those foreign nationals who would displace American workers wrecking havoc on the lives of those Americans and their families when they lose their jobs and their paychecks.

A quick review of a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)- Title 8, United States Code, Section 1182 would quickly dispel the bogus claim that equates the enforcement of our immigration laws with racism.

The New War on Conservative Media Censoring conservative voices from social media. Daniel Greenfield

Remember when Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory? The fake news media which predicted it in order to depress pro-Trump voter turnout certainly does. And so they’re out to fight “fake news.”

By fake news, they don’t mean their own raging torrent of misinformation and lies.

The media has gone to war against Facebook. While various supporters have blamed Hillary’s loss on everything from the FBI to internalized misogyny, the media has decided that Facebook is to blame.

Why Facebook?

Cable news is dying. Newspapers struggle online and offline. The mainstream media’s profitability lives and dies by social media. But the essence of social media is that it allows communities to shape what they see. That’s a terrifying idea if you’re a media conglomerate that depends on its megaphone.

But it’s also scary if you’re a leftist running for office in a country that doesn’t agree with your views.

Obama blamed “messaging” for the election results. But messaging requires being able to reach people. And that means clearing competitive voices out of the social media space by banning conservatives.

The war on conservative media is being conducted under the guise of banishing “fake news” from Facebook. But the fake news devil is in the details. Fake news can mean satire sites like the Onion or the Daily Currant. It can mean foreign clickbait sites that invent fake news. But it can also mean sites from outside the mainstream media whose stories are contested by the left for partisan reason.

The war on fake news is a smoke screen for a campaign against conservative media. And it’s easy to see that it’s conservative sites that are the real target of the Facebook book burners.

Buzzfeed, which depends heavily on Facebook traffic , has fed the “fake news” hysteria. Its list of “fake news” sites includes “hyperpartisan” sites. Its story contrasting “legitimate” mainstream media outlets, a category that somehow includes the Huffington Post, with a variety of right-leaning sites is a major piece of supporting evidence used in the fake news crusade.

Considering BuzzFeed’s history of fake news stories that fit its political narrative, it has no credibility fact checking anyone else. Examinations of BuzzFeed’s own methodology for its fake news article tore it into tiny little shreds. Its claim that fake news outperformed real news turned out to be… fake.

But what’s more important is how quickly the goal posts have been moved from fake news to conservative news, from fraudulent sites to fighting “clickbait” or “hyperpartisan” sites. And it’s clear that these are largely a euphemism for sites on the right that are outperforming the media.

State Dept. Issues New Europe Travel Alert: ‘Credible Information’ Points to Holiday Attack Plots By Bridget Johnson

The State Department issued a new travel alert for Europe today, warning American citizens about the potential for attacks particularly as the holiday season approaches.

The alert specifically noted that U.S. citizens “should exercise caution at holiday festivals, events, and outdoor markets.”

“Credible information indicates the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Da’esh), al-Qa’ida, and their affiliates continue to plan terrorist attacks in Europe, with a focus on the upcoming holiday season and associated events,” the notice continued. “U.S. citizens should also be alert to the possibility that extremist sympathizers or self-radicalized extremists may conduct attacks during this period with little or no warning.”

“Terrorists may employ a wide variety of tactics, using both conventional and non-conventional weapons and targeting both official and private interests.”

ISIS’ Rumiyah magazine has been giving guidelines on different terror tactics in their first three issues, including choosing random victims such as teens playing sports in a park, conducting random knife attacks on gatherings or lone passers-by, and plowing a heavy vehicle into a parade or political rally crowd in the model of the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France.

Last month, soon after the offensive to retake Mosul was launched, U.S. officials warned that ISIS could stage a “spectacular attack” to draw attention away from their losses at the hands of the Iraq-led coalition. In a rare break from their usual propaganda last week, ISIS admitted losing a handful of districts in Mosul to Iraqi forces.

The commander for U.S. operations in Iraq and Syria also warned that “an external plot” for a terror attack was being fomented in Raqqa, ISIS’ capital in Syria.

Pressed on what that external threat could entail, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters last month that he didn’t want to discuss specific intelligence but “we actually aren’t sure how pressing it is, and that’s what’s worrying us.”

“So we’re not sure, we know they’re up to something. And it’s an external plot, we don’t know exactly where, we don’t know exactly when. You can understand this because you’ve been following these kinds of terrorist plots for a number of years, and we’re gonna try to hit if off,” he said.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula also recently published a new issue of their English-language Inspire magazine — the premiere DIY guide for lone jihadists — analyzing the Sept. 17 attacks on a race in New Jersey, a street in Manhattan and a shopping mall in Minnesota.