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October 2017

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Trump’s Excellent Judges His four latest nominees highlight his biggest political success.

By on October 1st, 2017

The start of a new Supreme Court term is a good moment to note some under-reported news: President Trump is rapidly remaking the federal appellate and district courts, with highly qualified nominees who fulfill his campaign promise to pick “constitutional conservatives.”

The White House announced its eighth batch of judicial nominees on Thursday, including four excellent choices for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They include a pair of Texans: Don Willett, who is now on the Texas Supreme Court and is well known for his witty Twitter feed; and James Ho, a Gibson, Dunn partner in Dallas who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and was Texas solicitor general.

The other two Fifth Circuit nominees have notable legal achievements to their credit. Stuart Duncan was solicitor general of Louisiana and general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He was counsel of record in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the landmark 2014 decision allowing closely held companies to be exempt from regulations they object to on religious grounds.

Kurt Engelhardt is chief judge for the federal district court for eastern Louisiana. In 2013 he wrote a withering 129-page opinion documenting misconduct by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney in prosecuting New Orleans police. Prosecutors attempted to inflame the potential jury pool against the officers with prejudicial public comments, including the use of a fake name on the website of the Times-Picayune. Justice appealed, but Judge Engelhardt was upheld by the Fifth Circuit he will join if he’s confirmed.

The speed of the nominations and the quality of the nominees is a result of the close ties between White House judicial vetters and the Federalist Society that is a national clearinghouse for conservative legal talent. Judicial nominations are arguably the most successful part of the Trump Presidency.

By our count—and we may have missed a name or two—Mr. Trump has made 18 nominations to appellate courts, 39 to district courts and three to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The Senate has confirmed only four for the appellate courts as Democrats use every possible delaying tactic. They’re even trying to disqualify Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee for the Seventh Circuit, because she’s an “orthodox Catholic,” as Senator Dick Durbin put it in a question at a Senate hearing.

With confirmation politics increasingly polarized, Mr. Trump and Republicans are wise to move quickly to take advantage of this moment of Senate and White House control. If Democrats take the Senate in 2018, Chuck Schumer will try to block the confirmation of any conservative nominee. Mr. Trump deserves more credit than he’s getting for his judicial-nominating operation.

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FEMA’s Foul-Up in Puerto Rico The emergency plan depended on generators but diesel was not delivered.By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

By on October 1st, 2017

Hurricane Katrina taught the Federal Emergency Management Agency some harsh lessons in 2005. FEMA used what it learned to prepare and respond better when Harvey and Irma hit the U.S. mainland earlier this year. Now Maria has taken the bureaucrats back to school in Puerto Rico, and they’re not getting passing grades.

Ahead of the Category 4 storm that hit with 155 mile-an-hour winds on Sept. 20, the FEMA team in Puerto Rico said it was ready. But a week later much of the island was still in dire need of food, water and fuel—the basics of humanitarian relief.

The most immediate needs centered on the sick and elderly. About 97% of the island lost electricity in the storm. Diesel-run generators were supposed to fill the void in hospitals and dialysis centers and provide refrigeration for medicines like insulin. But the diesel fuel did not arrive, and by midweek family members began to panic. Tearful Puerto Ricans begged for help.

FEMA will no doubt learn again from Maria. But so too should the rest of us, about the folly of relying on government to deal with a disaster even as predictable as the aftermath of a hurricane.

The only thing more certain than Maria’s devastation has been the rush to politicize it. As video of waist-deep water, washed out highways, splintered roofs, and uprooted trees scattered across the island hit American living rooms, Donald Trump’s adversaries and their media cheerleaders painted the president a heartless Anglo snob.

Yet the failures in Puerto Rico have not been due to a lack of federal attention. Rather the local FEMA team failed to execute fundamental aspects of emergency operations. Whether that’s because it was overwhelmed by the widespread devastation or because of bureaucratic incompetence can be debated. But efforts to chalk up the crisis to mainlander disregard for life are dishonest.

Mr. Trump’s big mistake has been his handling of the Jones Act, which mandates that shipping from the mainland to the island use only American-built-and-crewed vessels. First he said he would not suspend it as he did for Texas after Harvey and Florida after Irma. “A lot of people that work in the shipping industry . . . don’t want [it] lifted,” he said. Well, duh. A lot of people don’t like competition. But that’s hardly a good argument for blocking it.

Under pressure, he finally said he would suspend the Jones Act for Puerto Rico—but only for 10 days, a meaningless gesture.

For more than a week the island’s ports have been piled high with containers waiting to be hitched up to cabs and their contents delivered to supermarkets, restaurants, home-building supply stores and medical centers. In other words, much of the merchandise needed in an islandwide triage is already on Puerto Rican docks. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Not sure what happens today in Catalonia By Silvio Canto, Jr.

By on October 1st, 2017

We have not seen so much division and hostility in Spain since the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s.

It seems like every one of my Spanish friends has an opinion about today’s vote. One of my friends refers to Catalonia as “crazy rebels.” One of my other friends calls the government in Madrid a few names not suitable for a family blog.

At the same time, they’re all very concerned about what happens the next day. The people who want independence don’t know how they will react the day after. The people who want Catalonia to stay are afraid that it could lead to a civil war. And both sides fear the economic impact of putting everyone through this.

Today, the people of Catalonia will vote to split from Spain, as we see in this update by John Moody:

Catalans have their own culture and language, and for the past two years, their political leadership has been promising citizens a vote.

Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has said such a ballot would be invalid and in violation of Spain’s constitution.

The possibility that Catalonia would split off from Spain is very much like California’s “Calexit” movement.

Politically and psychologically, the Golden State is different from America’s misnamed “flyover” states, so its aspirations to be independent are understandable.

Just a few months ago, one independence movement said leaving the United States was the only way to defend “California values.”

So, too, Catalonia’s desire to pull away from the rest of Spain, of which it’s been a part since the 15th century, when King Ferdinand of Aragon married Queen Isabella of Castile and united their realms.

Today, Catalonia is one of Spain’s economic engines, and Barcelona, its capital, is the country’s leading destination for tourists.

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Finally, Canada Begins to Consider U.S. Missile-Defense Partnership For years, only American moral responsibility has protected Canada from a missile attack. Now, Canadians want to change that. By Philip H. DeVoe

By on October 1st, 2017

Ever since North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) deputy commander, Lieutenant General Pierre St-Amand, testified that that “the extant U.S. policy is not to defend Canada” in the event of a North Korean missile attack, Canadians have begun reconsidering their opposition to missile defense. Efforts to overcome that opposition have failed a number of times in the past, because the perception that missile defense threatens Canada’s commitment to peaceful neutrality always trumped concerns over national security — and because Canadians took it for granted that NORAD and NATO would protect them in the event of an attack.

In fact, the mutual-defense clause in NATO’s charter only explicitly requires member nations to act following a direct attack, ambiguously referring back to the U.N charter on the question of collective self-defense. And NORAD is only a monitoring service; if a missile is detected, the decision of whether or not to intercept is left up to member nations themselves. St-Amand’s revelation of this dark reality has left Canadians scratching their heads: How has the Canadian government left them defenseless against missile attacks for so long?

Thirty-two years ago, during the incipient years of missile defense, President Ronald Reagan offered Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney the opportunity to join a space defense-research program called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Mulroney’s decision not to participate was hedged in concern that doing so would uproot Canada’s role as a mediator during the Cold War, but he told reporters that he had great respect for the program and fully supported America’s efforts.

As early as 2003, President George W. Bush tried again, offering Canada the chance to buy into what was then named the Ballistic Missile Defense Shield (BMD). Despite a campaign promise to increase Canadian missile defense, Prime Minister Paul Martin, a Liberal, announced two years later that Canada would opt out of the program, bowing to public criticism and a lack of support in Parliament.

Both times, Canada’s opposition to joining America’s missile-defense program hinged on the same three issues: Its high cost, its low reliability, and, most importantly, the threat it poses to geopolitical stability. In 1985 and the early 2000s, the latter issue dominated criticism of the American program. Should a country begin preparing for a missile attack, the theory states, it will make volatile nations — the Soviet Union in the 1980s and Iran and North Korea today — feel less secure, and thus more likely to attack. This idea runs contrary to Canada’s international identity as a passively pacifist, neutral mediator; Canadians love staying out of the way, and missile defense, in their eyes, would be the opposite.

So far, to be sure, staying out of the way has worked. Canada is one of the few world powers — and arguably the only Group of 7 member — North Korea hasn’t threatened to destroy. Kim-Jong Un’s regime appears to regard Canada with none of the hostility it heaps on the U.S.: Returning from a successful mission to release a Canadian prisoner in August, national-security adviser Daniel Jean reported that Kim considers our northern neighbor to be a peaceful and friendly country. So the question of how the Canadian government could leave the nation powerless in responding to ICBMs has a simple answer: Missile defense is unpopular and unnecessary.

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Blame the NFL, Not Trump The league allowed the false premise of a despicable protest to be accepted unquestioningly; Trump just brought attention to its error. By Andrew C. McCarthy*****

By on October 1st, 2017

I do not believe Trump made matters worse. Regarding the exhibition of contempt by NFL players during the playing of the national anthem, this puts me, quite unusually, at odds with a number of my friends and colleagues at National Review (Jonah Goldberg and David French, for example).

To my mind, to say that the president made things worse is to understate how bad things were — i.e., how appalling the fraud behind the kneeling protest has been. More damaging than anything Trump has said, moreover, is the indulgent reaction to the protest: The received wisdom that even if we find the tactic of the protesters objectionable, we owe them respectful attention because their cause — which they claim is racial equality — is an urgent and honorable one.

To the contrary, the protest promotes a false narrative. And we are not required to take at face value the protesters’ representation that they seek racial equality in the name of justice. Patently, what they are seeking is a perversion of justice based on racial inequality.

Furthermore, there is no First Amendment right to political speech in the workplace. Since the NFL is under no obligation to make its private platform a soapbox for promoting a false narrative — and particularly given that the NFL does not hesitate to suppress expression to which it objects — its decision to allow the exhibition of contempt for symbols of nationhood is a free choice, an implicit endorsement.

If the commissioner and the owners are now made uncomfortable because President Trump pointed out that they need not tolerate the exploitation of their forum by athletes who insult the nation and slander its police, good.

It is beyond cavil that the president’s impetuous remarks, his at times reckless and even offensive blathering, often make things worse, including for the president himself. To take just one example (there are numerous we could cite), his tweets accusing President Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phone lines were not just ill-informed and indecorous; they detracted from what may be a real political-spying scandal. They gave the media a rationale for focusing on Trump’s misstatements to the exclusion of indications that the Obama administration abused its foreign-intelligence collection power in order to monitor the opposition party’s presidential campaign.

But the spiteful public debate over the NFL’s kneeling protesters? He didn’t make that worse. He drew attention to its fraudulent underpinnings.

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The Pope, Peace and Islamic Fundamentalists by A. Z. Mohamed

By on October 1st, 2017

Islamist terrorists in Egypt bombed Coptic churches and killed dozens of innocent people on Palm Sunday, and Saudi Arabia, which finances and hosts the Muslim World League (MWL), is the global purveyor of extremist Wahhabism. More importantly, it sends a signal to persecuted Christians and moderate Muslims that they really have nowhere to turn. In his attempt at appeasing Muslims, then, the Pope is actually emboldening the “arsonists,” not the “firefighters.”

Perhaps the Pope is unaware of the nature of the MWL and Al-Azhar. If so, here is a brief description of each:

“MWL has a long history of ties to, and financial support for, Islamic extremists, terrorist operatives, and terrorist organizations including Hamas, the Abu Sayyaf Group, al-Ittihaad al-Islami, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Jemaat-al-Islamiyya, and al Qaeda…. MWL has often provided a platform for hateful, inflammatory rhetoric directed against Jews and the state of Israel.” — Discover the Networks.

“Any Muslim can kill an apostate and eat him, as well kill infidel warriors even if they are young or female and they can also be eaten, because they are not granted any protection..” — Al-Azhar book for high school students; 2015 investigative report conducted by the Egyptian newspaper El-Youn el-Sabi.

After a visit to the Vatican on September 20, a delegation of the Muslim World League (MWL), an international NGO based in, and funded by, Saudi Arabia, lauded Pope Francis for his past statements rejecting the link between Islam and violence. During their “historic meeting,” MWL Secretary-General Muhammad Abdul-Kareem Al-Issa and the Pope exchanged gifts and reportedly vowed to enhance cooperation “in all areas to achieve common goals, notably the spread of peace and harmony.”

The next day, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the WML held an “informal meeting… during which it was repeated that:

Religion and violence are incompatible;
Religions have moral resources capable of contributing to fraternity and peace;
The phenomenon of fundamentalism, particularly when violent, is troubling and joint efforts are required to counter it, and
Situations exist where freedom of conscience and of religion are not entirely respected and protected, so there is an urgent need to remedy this, renewing ‘religious discourse’ and reviewing school books.”

The two groups then agreed to establish a joint permanent committee “in the near future” to address these issues.

Similar sentiments were expressed by the leaders of Cairo’s al-Azhar University — the world’s leading Islamic center of learning for Sunni Muslims — at its International Peace Conference in April, after Pope Francis delivered an address for which the audience awarded him much applause. According to an account in the National Catholic Register, “Probably to avoid offending its Muslim members, who consider Jesus only a prophet, [Pope Francis] seemed to deliberately omit any explicit mention of the Lord’s name, preferring to focus more generally on ‘God’ and the ‘Absolute.'”

The report went on to summarize “key points” of the Pontiff’s speech, among them:

“Despite the need for the Absolute, we must reject any ‘absolutizing’ that would justify violence which is the ‘negation of every authentic religious expression.'”

“Religion is not meant to only unmask evil but promote peace, perhaps today ‘more than ever,’ but without ‘giving in to forms of facile syncretism’ [and instead] ‘praying for one another.'”

“It is of little or no use to raise our voices and run about to find weapons for our protection: what is needed today are peacemakers, not fomenters of conflict; firefighters and not arsonists; preachers of reconciliation and not instigators of destruction.”

Thanking the Pope for his “defense of Islam against the accusation of violence and terrorism,” the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed Muhammad al-Tayyib, said in his speech that humanity ought to “stress the value of peace, justice, equality and human rights regardless of religion, color, race, or language.” He added:

“We need to liberate the image of religions from false concepts, misunderstandings, malpractices, and false religiosity attached to them. These evils bestir conflicts, spread hate, and instigate violence… [W]e should not hold religion accountable for the crimes of any small group of followers.”

The twin messages at each occasion — Al-Azhar in Cairo and the Vatican in Rome — were the same: that religion is the vessel through which peace is achieved, and that Islam is no more violent than Christianity.

This is not merely ironic, as less than three weeks earlier in Egypt, Islamist terrorists bombed Coptic churches and killed dozens of innocent people on Palm Sunday, and Saudi Arabia, which finances and bases the MWL, is the global purveyor of extremist Wahhabism. More importantly, it sends a signal to persecuted Christians and moderate Muslims that they really have nowhere to turn.

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Green Bay Packers Asked Fans To Link Arms During National Anthem. Most Refused By Joy Pullmann

By on October 1st, 2017

Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers, who have a deep history of fan support through good times and bad, asked fans to join them in linking arms during the national anthem at last night’s home game against the Chicago Bears. Most fans refused.

While Packers and Bears players and coaches linked arms on the field, a plethora of little American flags popped up all over the stadium. Fans shouted “USA! USA!” while a large flag unfurled over the field. Local reports say some people even went farther in their displays of respect for the United States:

In the concourse, some people removed their hats as the anthem started to play, some stopped walking, some even saluted towards the TV’s displaying what was happening on the field, while crowds continued to move around them to get to their seat before kickoff. Some fans outside the stadium also stopped for the anthem.

Two days before the game, the Pack released a statement asking fans to join them in linking arms at this game to celebrate “diversity” and “justice”:

The image you will see on September 28th will be one of unity. It will represent a coming together of players who want the same things that all of us do—freedom, equality, tolerance, understanding, and justice for those who have been unjustly treated, discriminated against or otherwise treated unfairly. You will see the sons of police officers, kids who grew up in military families, people who have themselves experienced injustice and discrimination firsthand, and an array of others all linking together in a display of unity.

Those of us joining arms on Thursday will be different in so many ways, but one thing that binds us together is that we are all individuals who want to help make our society, our country and our world a better place. We believe that in diversity there can be UNI-versity.

At last Sunday’s game, during which an NFL-wide protest had been announced, several Packers players linked arms on the sidelines during the national anthem, while “Three players – veteran tight ends Martellus Bennett and Lance Kendricks, along with rookie cornerback Kevin King – sat on the bench during the anthem behind the rest of the team, all for different reasons.” Afterwards, the team decided to try this week for a unified display.

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The Quiet Islamic Conquest of Spain by Giulio Meotti

By on October 1st, 2017

“Evicted five centuries ago by crusading Christians, the Arabs are back in Spain, using their oil dollars to buy land that was seized from their ancestors by the sword”. — James M. Markham, The New York Times, 1981.

The Madrid daily ABC wrote that 800 mosques in Spain are out of control. The Spanish daily La Razon charged that Gulf donors, such as Qatar, were a source of Spain’s Islamization. The Saudis also launched a new Spanish television channel, Córdoba TV, as did Iran.

They dream of, and work to, regain the “lost Caliphate” of Spain. Some Islamists do it with bombs and car-ramming attacks. Others, more surreptitiously, do it with money and dawa, Islamic propaganda. The second way may be even more effective than the first.

The ceremony in 2003 was announced with bombastic headlines: “After a wait of more than 500 years, Spanish Muslims, have finally succeeded in building a mosque of their own in the shadow of the Alhambra, once the symbol of Islamic power in Europe”. A troupe from al Jazeera was sent to follow the event: a muezzin climbed to the minaret of the Great Mosque of Granada to call the faithful to prayer for the first time in five centuries.

From Osama bin Laden to the self-proclaimed Caliph, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, all the leaders of the global jihad — including the terror cell that killed 17 people in Barcelona — have mentioned Spain among the lands to be conquered by Islam. There is, however, not only jihad. There is also “the quiet conquest”, as it has been dubbed by the French magazine, Valeurs Actuelles. The quiet conquest is a sinuous attempt to re-Islamize Spain through cultural centers, mega-mosques, proselytizing, conversions and financial investments. This pacific attempt to elicit submission has been underway for some time and has been backed by a flow of money from countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. According to a former commander of British forces in Iraq, General Jonathan Shaw, these two countries in particular have ignited a “time bomb” by funding the global spread of radical Islam.

The New York Times first detailed in 1981 that, “evicted five centuries ago by crusading Christians, the Arabs are back in Spain, using their oil dollars to buy land that was seized from their ancestors by the sword”. Spain back then did not even recognize the State of Israel, and the Spanish monarchy regularly visited Saudi Prince Fahd while he was relaxing in the south of Spain. After that, it was Kuwait’s turn: “During the late 1980’s, when Spain was booming, Kuwait came shopping for corporations and investments”.

Since then, the Arab monarchies have targeted Spain with huge investments. Some emblematic buildings in Madrid and Barcelona, ​​not to mention the Costa del Sol, are now owned by Arab investment groups, from the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid to the W Hotel in Barcelona. In Marbella, just a few meters away from the King Fahd Mosque, there is the Alanda Hotel, which offers halal food and services to meet the demands of the Muslim clients. In 2011, the International Petroleum Investment Company, controlled by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, purchased Cepsa, the second-largest Spanish company in the oil sector.

Last January, Spain’s King Felipe VI visited Saudi Arabia and announced that Spain would boost economic, trade and investment relations with the Islamic kingdom. Before that, in 2012, Saudi Aramco awarded Spanish companies projects worth $700 million. Spain and Qatar are now discussing the formation a $1 billion joint investment fund that would help the Gulf state invest in Latin America. The Arab Emirates’ media called Spain “a hotspot for investment from the Arab world”. After Qatar, it was the Oman’s turn to invest in the Spanish market: Oman just agreed to invest up to $120 million in a uranium mine in Spain, to be used for Omani nuclear energy plants.

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