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February 2017

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

America’s 19th nervous breakdown by Richard Baehr

By on February 9th, 2017

With apologies to the Rolling Stones, America’s nervous breakdown since President Donald Trump’s inauguration seems to be of a different order of ‎magnitude than the many other emotional meltdowns of recent decades (the Clinton, Bush, or Obama derangement syndromes). It will almost certainly worsen in the weeks ahead with continued ‎fights over immigration and the Supreme Court nominee.‎

Sunday night, America celebrated one of its true national holidays: Super Bowl ‎Sunday, an event watched by 100 million people, a third of the population. ‎This year, the political fog that envelops all matters these days naturally ‎also surrounded the football game, which turned out be a masterpiece as these games go. In the ‎weeks leading up to the game, one team became the Trump team, the other the anti-‎Trump team. A startling come-from-behind victory for the Trump team (the New ‎England Patriots) was immediately viewed as a repeat of the upset on Election Day, Nov. 8, and was caricatured as such.

The absurdity, of course, is that the owner of the Trump team is a ‎Jewish Democrat (though friendly to Trump), and the owner of the anti-Trump ‎team (the Atlanta Falcons) is a Jewish Republican. So, too, Trump carried Georgia ‎and was beaten badly in Massachusetts. The halftime performer, Lady Gaga, was ‎attacked from the left for not making a personal statement slamming Trump. Everything now has to be viewed as political. ‎

With the game over, America’s annual six-month nightmare without professional or college football has begun. This will allow ‎partisans to focus more intently on the heated political wars. On the U.S.-Israel ‎front, however, there is likely to be significant change and arguably far fewer ‎political battles between the two countries.‎

In the final weeks of President Barack Obama’s term, the administration seemed somewhat ‎obsessed with Israel. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power abstained on ‎Security Council Resolution 2334. Secretary of State John Kerry felt the need to ‎give an hour-long speech justifying the U.N. inaction that allowed the ‎resolution to pass, and fire a few parting shots at Israel and its prime minister over ‎settlements, as well as trying and failing one more time to make a persuasive case ‎for the Iran nuclear deal. The Obama team released money ($221 million) that had ‎been held up by Congress to send to the Palestinian Authority. ‎

Israel has been an afterthought in the early weeks of the Trump administration. ‎This is not a bad thing. There have been many presidential executive orders, but ‎none directing a move or directing planning for a move of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Iran nuclear agreement has not been torn up. The ‎administration has been far less fixated on Israeli settlement activity, despite ‎announcements by Israel of construction plans for 5,000 new units that in the ‎Obama years would have caused the faces of the administration spokespeople to ‎become purple with rage and scorn.

The administration, while releasing a short ‎statement on settlements, allowed that policy changes would not come until after ‎Prime Minister Netanyahu comes to Washington to meet with Trump next ‎week. The administration also sharply reversed policy toward Iran, choosing to ‎put the country on notice for its ballistic missile tests, which violated U.N. Security ‎Council Resolution 2231, the resolution that accompanied the nuclear deal. The ‎Trump White House also initiated sanctions against a few dozen Iranian individuals ‎and firms for the missile tests. Most dramatically, the Trump administration ‎seemed anxious to communicate to the leaders in Tehran that the days of America ‎serving as Iran’s lawyer and backstop — excusing away Iranian violations of one ‎agreement or another — were over.‎

The national newspaper of record for the anti-Trump forces, The New York Times, ‎chose to see in the release of the administration’s short statement on settlements ‎an action that fit a pattern of continuity of Trump foreign policy with Obama ‎foreign policy. They saw the same thing in the fact that Trump had neither disowned ‎the Iran nuclear deal nor had gone to war yet with the mullahs. Sadly for the paper, the ‎announcement condemning the ballistic missile tests and announcing sanctions ‎came shortly thereafter. The New York Times may have been clutching at straws ‎to suggest that it retained some semblance of balance in evaluating Trump (he is more ‎like Obama, so he is not that bad on X and Y).‎

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Iranian authorities hanged 87 people in the month of January 2017, that’s one execution every nine hours.

By on February 9th, 2017

Iran Human Rights (FEB 3 2017): According to reports compiled by Iran Human Rights, the Iranian authorities hanged 87 people in the month of January 2017, including two juvenile prisoners and six prisoners who were executed in public. Out of the 87 executions, only 19 of them were announced by official Iranian sources. Most of the executions which were carrieed out in Iran in January 2017 were for drug related charges.

According to research conducted by Iran Human Rights, executions tend to significantly increase in the months leading to an election in Iran but significantly decrease or stop a couple weeks before the election. Iran Human Rights is deeply concerned that a new wave of executions have started in Iran and worries that the number of executions will increase following the “Fajr Decade” celebrations.

Iran Human Rights urges the international community, especially European countries, to pay attention to the execution crisis in Iran, and calls on all countries which have diplomatic relations with the Iranian authorities to call on the Iranian authorities to stop executions.

“In the month of January, we witnessed an average of one execution every nine hours, including two juvenile offenders and six public executions. Lack of reactions from the international community to these executions encourages the Iranian authorities to execute even more people in the months leading to the 2017 presidential election,” says Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesperson for Iran Human Rights.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Poll: Travel ban is one of Trump’s most popular executive orders Business Insider Pamela Engel

By on February 9th, 2017

President Donald Trump’s executive order barring refugees and citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US is one of his most popular so far, according to a new poll from Morning Consult and Politico.

The order has a 55% approval rating (with 35% saying they “strongly approve”) with only 38% of voters polled saying they disapprove of it.

Opinions about the ban fall along partisan lines — 82% of Republicans support the ban, while 65% of Democrats oppose it.

The only other executive order more popular than the travel ban is the one revoking federal funding for so-called immigration sanctuary cities. That order has a 55% approval rating, with only 33% disapproving.

Morning Consult and Politico’s poll was conducted between Feb. 2 and Feb. 4.

The seven countries included in Trump’s executive order were first flagged by the Obama administration as “countries of particular concern” for visa screening, but critics have accused the Trump administration of targeting Muslims specifically with the travel ban.

Last week, a judge issued a stay on the executive order which suspends its implementation.

While the travel ban seems to be fairly popular, Trump’s overall approval rating is slipping — only 47% of those surveyed in this poll said they approve of the job Trump is doing, which is down two points from the previous week. His disapproval rating rose five points to 46%.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

A Muslim Brotherhood Security Breach in Congress There’s a national security risk swamp to drain. Daniel Greenfield

By on February 8th, 2017

Last year, eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a demand that their staffers be granted access to top secret classified information.

The signatories to the letter were Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell and Patrick Murphy. All the signatories were Democrats. Some had a history of attempting to undermine national security.

Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.

The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz; to whom the letter had been addressed.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access. They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro. Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

Abid A. Awan was employed by Lois Frankel and Ted Lieu: members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Also on the committee is Castro. As is Robin Kelly whose office employed Jamal Awan. Lieu also sits on the subcommittees on National Security and Information Technology of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Tammy Duckworth’s office had also employed Abid. Before Duckworth successfully played on the sympathy of voters to become Senator Tammy Duckworth, she had been on the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the Armed Services Committee.

Gwen Graham, who had also been on the Armed Services Committee and on the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, had employed Jamal Awan. Jamal was also employed by Cedric Richmond’s office. Richmond sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and on its Terrorism and Cybersecurity subcommittee. He is a ranking member of the latter subcommittee. Also employing Jamal was Mark Takano of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Imran had worked for the office of John Sarbanes who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees, among other things, the nuclear industry. Other members of the Committee employing the brothers included Yvette Clarke, who also sits on the Bipartisan Encryption Working Group, Diana DeGette, Dave Loebsack and Tony Cardenas.

But finally there’s Andre Carson.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Milo at Berkeley Identity politics and the progressive assault on campus free speech. Richard L. Cravatts

By on February 8th, 2017

Of the many intellectual perversions currently taking root on college campuses, perhaps none is more contradictory to what should be one of higher education’s core values than the suppression of free speech. With alarming regularity, speakers are shouted down, booed, jeered, and barraged with vitriol, all at the hands of progressive groups who give lip service to the notion of academic free speech, and who demand it when their own speech is at issue, but have no interest in listening to, or letting others listen to, ideas that contradict their own world view.

This is the tragic and inevitable result of a decades of grievance-based victimism by self-designated groups who frame their rights and demands on identity politics. Those who see themselves as perennial victims also feel very comfortable, when they express their feelings of being oppressed, in projecting that same victimization outward on their oppressors, as witnessed recently, for example, at Berkeley University where some 1500 violent rioters, including members of the radical, far-Left Antifa group, feminists, gay activists, pro-immigration groups, and other faculty and students, lit fires, smashed windows, tossed smoke bombs, destroyed property, and pepper sprayed and beat pro-Trump bystanders and conservatives, all because of the purported extreme ideology of Milo Yiannopoulos, a speaker invited to campus by the Berkeley College Republicans that evening as part of his “The Dangerous Faggot Tour.”

Lost in the reporting about the Berkeley rioting, of course, is the topic that was to be the theme of Yiannopoulos’ February 1st speech. It was specifically to address Berkeley’s recent decision, along with approximately 30 other campuses across the country, to become “sanctuary campuses,” giving them the dubious distinction of flaunting the intent and spirit of federal law that could lead to the arrest of students who are attending schools in this country but are actually not legally permitted to do so. Yiannopoulos was also going to raise the related, and clearly relevant, question of whether, once they had, in contravention of current law, declared themselves either sanctuary cities of sanctuary campuses, these entities should lose Federal funding.

Interestingly, in sending a letter to the university community prior to the Yiannopoulos’ planned speech, Berkeley’s Chancellor, Nicholas Dirks, confirmed, on one hand, a “right to free expression, enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and reflected in some of the most important moments of Berkeley’s history,” but then portrayed Yiannopoulos in that letter as “a troll and provocateur who uses odious behavior in part to ‘entertain,’ but also to deflect any serious engagement with ideas,” clearly signaling to readers that, as far as the Berkeley administration was concerned, this speech would be in violation of the prevailing norms and beliefs of the University at large and would, consequently, have no intrinsic intellectual value.

So while Dirks was purportedly supporting the idea of academic free speech, together with its oft-lauded vigorous open debate, he actually was violating the content neutrality that is required of free speech on campuses by leaving no one reading his letter with any doubt as to where he and the University stood on this issue, especially since the decision had already been made to ignore existing statutes that would call for the arrest and possible deportation of individuals who attend schools in this country but are not legally permitted to do so.

The debate over whether immigration to this country should continue without proper vetting and oversight, of course, was one of the central issues of the recent presidential election, so there is considerable emotion and debate over this topic, especially among college students and faculty (not to mention Democrat governors and mayors across the country), who have taken it upon themselves to decide that they have greater moral authority to settle this issue than the government does in enforcing existing laws of this nation.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When Teddy Met Yuri Bork smearer Ted Kennedy sought Soviet help against Ronald Reagan. Lloyd Billingsley

By on February 8th, 2017

The smear surge against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is certain to sweep in a tide of lies. That was the case thirty years ago in the 1987 hearing for Robert Bork, Supreme Court nominee of President Ronald Reagan. The smearer-in-chief was Senator Ted Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and something of a poseur.

His chief claim to fame was brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who narrowly defeated Richard Nixon for president in 1960. Ted rode the JFK coattails to a Senate seat in 1962 but his self-control issues soon plunged him into trouble.

On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. Kennedy escaped unharmed but abandoned 28-year-old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne in the car, where the young woman perished. In Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-up, Leo Damore showed how the Kennedy family deployed their influence to quash investigations of the incident and shield Ted from accountability.

JFK’s brother got only a two-year suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident and in 1970 was reelected to the U.S. Senate. There he became an object of derision even to liberals.

“Every image that the Democrats have to overcome – that they overtax the Middle Americans, try to meet social problems only with a proliferation of programs, are the junior partners of vociferous but marginal interest groups, look too carelessly at the credentials of the Third World movements and leaders, and neglect the security of the nation and of the free world – is kept alive by this buffoon.” That was Henry Fairlie in a 1987 New Republic piece headlined, “Hamalot: The Democratic Buffoon-in-Chief.”

As it later emerged, Ted Kennedy was also a pioneer in seeking the influence of hostile foreign powers in the American electoral process. In 1984 Sen. Ted Kennedy sought help from the Soviet Union, then headed by the KGB’s Yuri Andropov, an old-line Stalinist. Kennedy offered to lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet boss would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.

The gambit failed, and Reagan won in a landslide over both the Democrats’ Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and Communist Party USA candidates Gus Hall and Angela Davis. In 1987, Reagan’s nominee for the Supreme Court was Robert Bork, solicitor general during the Nixon administration, a professor at Yale Law School, and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. With this highly qualified candidate, who was also a good man, Ted Kennedy took the low road.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump Should Reject the Failed “Peace Process” The historical pattern is clear. Bruce Thornton

By on February 8th, 2017

President Trump has made a lot of bold moves in his first few weeks in office. Judged by the mainstream media’s lies, fake news, distortions, and hysteria, his executive actions on immigration, oil pipelines, rolling back federal regulations, and firing an insubordinate acting Attorney General are on the money. But a few of his foreign policy moves are questionable.

Most troubling is the statement on Israel’s announcement about new settlements. “While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”

This Delphic announcement has provoked differing interpretations. On the one hand, it correctly rejects the false global consensus that peace would break out in the region if only Israelis stopped building “illegal settlements” on “occupied territory.” On the other, the White House repeats the hoary cliché that settlement construction isn’t “helpful in achieving” peace, implying that settlement developed should be slowed or halted. The statement may just be diplomatic triangulation, an attempt to assure both Israelis and their enemies while the president determines a new approach. But Trump’s repeated statements about forging “peace” between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs suggest he may be trapped by long-exploded assumptions about the crisis, at a time when what we need are blunt truth and decisive action instead of more failed diplomacy.

Take the incoherence of the statement. If “settlements” are not an “impediment” to peace, then how exactly can they “not be helpful”? Because they anger the Arabs and Israel’s other enemies? To think this is to validate the Arabs’ duplicitous pretexts for violence, and to appease their irrational passions––approaches that have distorted our policies in the region for seven decades. And it takes at face value the false assumptions that all the Palestinian Arabs want is their own nation and self-determination, and that their violence and murder are understandable reactions to Israeli intransigence.

But the Palestinian Arabs have rejected multiple opportunities to achieve their own state, starting in 1947-48 when they answered the offer of a nation with a war on Israel that killed 20,000 Israelis. They answered the Oslo Accords of 1993, a framework for creating a Palestinian state, with continued PA corruption and terrorist violence that killed 269 Israeli civilians and soldiers in seven years. In 2000, Arafat rejected Bill Clinton’s plan, and followed up with terrorist attacks that by 2013 had killed 1,227 Israelis. In 2008 Ehud Olmert offered “moderate” Palestinian honcho Mahmoud Abbas another state comprising 97% of the disputed territories, and once again Israel was rebuffed and subject to even more terrorist murder. And for all that time the PA has continued to incite violence against Jews, reward the families of murderers, and brainwash children with virulent Jew-hatred.

The historical pattern is clear: when offered a state, the Arabs respond by killing Jews. To paraphrase Einstein, repeating the same failed policies over and over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of foreign policy insanity.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

To Fix Counterterrorism, End Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Strategy By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on February 8th, 2017

Last June, the jihadist terrorist Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and wounding several other revelers. It quickly became clear that Mateen was yet another “known wolf” – the term popularized by my friend and colleague Patrick Poole to describe the frequent phenomenon of terrorists who manage to plot and strike against the West notwithstanding that their patent radicalism has put them on the radar screen of law-enforcement and intelligence agents.

I have long argued that the cause of this phenomenon is the restrictions on common sense placed on our agents by political correctness, which essentially blind them to the well-known but rarely acknowledged progression from Islamic scripture to sharia-supremacist ideology (what we call “radical Islam”), to enclaves populated by adherents and sympathizers of this ideology, and inevitably to jihadist terror. This iteration of political correctness has been the backbone of Obama administration counterterrorism strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE). Shortly after the Orlando attack, I delivered a speech at the Westminster Institute – entitled, “Defenseless in the Face of Our Enemies” – in which I addressed CVE. The new Trump administration is in the process of formulating its own counterterrorism strategy. Below, for what it may be worth, is the portion of my speech that addressed CVE:

Of the nearly 36,000 people who work for the FBI, fewer than 14,000 are investigative agents. National security is a crucial part of the Bureau’s portfolio, but the FBI is statutorily the lead investigative agency in virtually every category of criminal offense in federal law. At most, there are a couple thousand agents assigned full-time to counterterrorism. Those numbers are multiplied somewhat by joint federal-state efforts — the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in several metropolitan areas across the nation. Even so, because the Bureau is an intelligence agency as well as a law-enforcement agency, there are over a thousand terrorism investigations ongoing at any one time. The FBI director indicates that there is activity that must be monitored in all 50 states. Unless there are flashing neon signs of imminent attack, the small number of investigators can only spend so much time on any one suspect.

Of course, that time can be maximized, or wasted, depending on whether investigators know what they’re looking for . . . and whether they are permitted to look for it.

Clearly, the FBI spent a lot of time on Mateen. It sent confidential informants to interact with him, conducted physical surveillance, covertly monitored some of his phone calls, and interviewed him face-to-face three separate times. It concluded that his bark was bad, but his bite was non-existent. Honoring guidelines imposed on terrorism investigations, the FBI closed its case. That is, in addition to concluding that no charges should be filed, the Bureau further decided that additional monitoring of Mateen was not warranted.

In retrospect, this seems reckless. But the FBI is not incompetent, far from it. The agency knew Mateen was worth a heavy investigative investment. The problem is that the FBI answers to the Washington political class. The bipartisan Beltway has long ruled that advocacy of radical Islam is protected by the Constitution. It has long instructed its investigators, preposterously, that seditious beliefs and agitation are immune, not just from prosecution, but even from mere inquiry.

What passes for Obama’s national-security strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism,” exacerbates this problem. CVE delusionally forbids the conclusion that radical Islamic ideology has any causative effect on terrorist plotting. The FBI is in the impossible position of trying to conduct investigations that follow the facts wherever they lead, while fearing that such investigations — by illuminating the logical progression from Islamic scripture to sharia supremacism to jihadist terror — will enrage its political masters.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

5 Great Reforms Betsy DeVos Will Bring to the Department of Education By Tyler O’Neil

By on February 8th, 2017

On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence broke a tie in the U.S. Senate to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos. Liberals have launched numerous attacks on DeVos, even protesting her nomination with a 24-hour “speechibuster” reminiscent of Ted Cruz’s anti-Obamacare message in 2013.

Liberal attacks have branded her an elitist, a religious extremist, and a foe of public education. But what will DeVos actually do as secretary of Education? Here are 5 things to expect from the newly confirmed secretary.
1. Decentralize education, abolish Common Core.

When asked what DeVos will actually do at the Department of Education, Friends of Betsy DeVos spokesman Ed Patru told PJ Media, “I think you’ll see a concerted effort to return decision-making back to states.”

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips praised DeVos as “someone who understands that better outcomes can’t be dictated from Washington.”

Along those lines, DeVos released a statement last year announcing her full opposition to the Common Core Education Standards. DeVos supports “high standards, strong accountability, and local control,” her statement explained. She noted that many of the organizations she supported also backed Common Core, but added that “along the way, it got turned into a federalized boondoggle.”
2. Put kids before unions.

“I also think you’ll see a Department of Education that, before every decision, asks itself: ‘Is this policy in the interest of kids, or is it in the interests of teachers, administrators and organized labor leaders?'” Patru added. He argued that under DeVos’ leadership, “the interests of kids will always take priority.”

Black leaders have also praised DeVos for her concern about all kids, regardless of race. “She’s not African American, but she’s concerned about our children,” Dr. Dwight Montgomery, president of the Memphis Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), declared in December. Montgomery said DeVos will be committed to “make sure that every child is in an environment to receive the education that is in the best interest of the child.”

The new secretary of Education will “have a commitment to education, not just public education,” Montgomery declared. This may involve shaking up the status quo, to put the needs of children ahead of the education establishment.
7 Desperate Liberal Lies About Trump’s Education Pick Betsy DeVos
3. School choice.

DeVos has promised to revolutionize education in concrete ways, through school vouchers and charter schools. She has supported these programs in order to deliver “top-notch education for all students, regardless of their location or socioeconomic level.”

In 2000, DeVos and her husband backed a ballot proposal to amend the Michigan Constitution to create a school voucher program that allows taxpayer funds to follow students to private schools. While that proposal failed, the couple formed a political action committee to support voucher-friendly candidates on the national level. DeVos has also fought to expand the number of school choice programs across the country.

DeVos and her husband also helped to pass Michigan’s first charter school law, establishing publicly funded schools open to all students, but able to operate with more autonomy than traditional public schools. There are currently 275 charter schools in Michigan, and while these schools have been criticized for their lack of accountability and government oversight, they provide more educational options for children.

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The truth behind the under reporting of terrorist incidents By Ed Straker

By on February 8th, 2017

President Trump initially said the media didn’t report some terrorist incidents, which was quickly clarified to mean that they underreported them. The New York Times released a long list of terrorist attacks they had covered in their reporting to counter Trump’s claim.

The Times was correct on the very narrow question but totally wrong on the underlying truth.

No one questions whether the Times, and the media, have reported most terrorist attacks. They have. But they report on terrorist incidents the way they report the weather. It is brief, to the point, and usually gone the next day. Most importantly, there is never any examination of the “why” behind terrorist attacks. The Times simply reports “A man shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ went and killed three people. He is now in custody,” expressing no greater interest in what caused the incident than what you would see about what caused rain on a particular day.

The underreporting that Trump is referring to is that total lack of curiosity on the part of the media about the motivations of the attackers. From that list the Times provided, you can see there have been many, many terrorist attacks by Muslims. Why are they committing so many attacks? Is this part of some trend that should concern us? The Times doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know.

Contrast that with the story of how a private security guard shot and killed a black man who was trying to pound his head into the pavement. The Times published literally dozens and dozens of articles exploring the possible racist motivations of the security guard. Every time a police officer shoots a black man (which, in a nation as large as 300 million people, can happen from time to time), the Times empties a well of ink trying to draw larger conclusions about the racism of the police.

Not so with radical Islamic terrorist attacks. There are no days and days of follow-up about the ideology that drove an Islamic terrorist. It happened, it’s over, that’s it, like a passing raincloud. That’s the underreporting I believe President Trump is referring to.

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