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February 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Rob Porter Mess A fiasco that hurts part of the White House that was working.

By on February 10th, 2018

The story of Rob Porter has escalated from a personal and domestic trauma to one about failed White House vetting, and this time President Trump seems to be blameless. The damage would be compounded if it blows up the vast improvement that Chief of Staff John Kelly has brought to the West Wing.

Mr. Porter resigned this week after news broke that he was accused of abusing two former wives during their marriages. The truth of the accusations is impossible for an outsider to know at this point, and Mr. Porter has denied the allegations as “vile” and part of a “coordinated smear campaign.”

But by all accounts the allegations were holding up Mr. Porter’s security clearance, which he needed in the crucial job of staff secretary who controls the daily paper flow to the President’s desk. Both ex-wives say they shared this information with the FBI a year ago, and the Daily Mail is reporting that Mr. Porter’s former girl friend spoke to Mr. Kelly about the allegations in October.

The White House review process served the President poorly. The FBI typically takes such charges, and its impact on a security clearance, to the White House counsel’s office, whose job is to determine if those charges are disqualifying. They are automatically so if a clearance is denied, unless the President himself overrules the FBI.

One issue is whether anyone told any of this to Mr. Trump, who brought reporters into the White House Friday to wish Mr. Porter well and say his former aide had denied the accusations. We also don’t know what Mr. Porter told White House counsel Don McGahn or Mr. Kelly when confronted with the charges. But they ought to have recognized that sooner or later such allegations would become public—and that when they did it would embarrass the President.

Already New York Democrat Nydia Velazquez tweeted that the Porter affair exposes “a culture of misogyny” at the White House. But even before the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, such serious accusations from three women would have driven someone out of such a prominent White House job.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Free Speech Gets Expensive A university sent the College Republicans a $17,000 security bill.

By on February 10th, 2018

When University of Washington’s College Republicans invited controversial activist Joey Gibson to speak, administrators gave them the OK—and sent them a $17,000 security bill. The student group sued Tuesday, and in an 11th-hour ruling Friday a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the college, saying the bill “runs afoul [by] chilling speech.”

The free-speech rally will proceed Saturday on the university’s main plaza, the Red Square. Administrators are urging students to stay away for their own safety. University President Ana Mari Cauce said Friday that campus police have “credible information that groups from outside the UW community are planning to join the event with the intent to instigate violence.”

The threat is real. In 2017, when the College Republicans hosted alt-right parvenu Milo Yiannopolous, masked activists showed up to protest, while other nonstudents showed up to counter-protest. By the end of the night Joshua Dukes, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, was hospitalized with critical injuries. The woman charged with shooting him in the stomach, Elizabeth Hokoana, told law enforcement Mr. Dukes was wielding “a big knife” and was “about to gut my husband.” She and her husband have pleaded not guilty to assault.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Brussels Neighborhood Struggles to Break Ties to Terrorism Molenbeek confronts legacy as caldron of Paris and Brussels attacks with policing and job trainingBy Valentina Pop

By on February 10th, 2018

BRUSSELS—This week’s trial of the only surviving assailant from the November 2015 Paris attacks has refocused attention on the Brussels district of Molenbeek where he grew up and was captured.

Salah Abdeslam’s trial for attempted murder is a painful reminder for the neighborhood of its role as the breeding ground of the terror cell that killed 130 people in those attacks and another 32 in Brussels in suicide bombings on March 22, 2016.Molenbeek Mayor Françoise Schepmans, who has lived in the neighborhood for over 50 years, keeps the memory of those attacks alive, among other things with a monument to Brussels victims installed in front of the district’s opulent 19th-century town hall. “This is part of our history,” she said. “Molenbeek was a fertile ground for terrorism.”

Now she says her office is working to make it less so, both by stepping up policing and by promoting efforts to improve cultural and economic opportunities for Molenbeek’s residents.

Under the authority of zoning regulations, district authorities have launched periodic checks to ensure Molenbeek’s mosques aren’t fostering militant versions of Islam. Five of the neighborhood’s 25 mosques and Quranic schools have been shut down on those grounds over the past two years.

Law-enforcement efforts have also increased since 2016, with a doubling of surveillance cameras and a beefed-up police force. Molenbeek now has three rather than just one security official charged with keeping tabs on two-dozen families suspected of radicalism.

Belgian prosecutors on Thursday asked that Mr. Abdeslam be given 20 years in prison for his involvement in a shoot-out with police officers in Brussels days before the Brussels attacks. Mr. Abdeslam’s lawyer on Thursday demanded his acquittal on procedural grounds and said there was no evidence his client opened fire. The trial will resume on March 29.Molenbeek, once home to Mr. Abdeslam and many of the dead men alleged to have been his co-conspirators, faces daunting economic challenges. Located just west of central Brussels, it is among the poorest of Belgium’s 589 districts, and its 27% unemployment rate in 2016—the latest year with available data—was more than triple the 7.8% national level. Youth unemployment was 38%, compared with 20% nationally, and youth workers say a third of local students are two or more years behind in school. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Strikes Syrian Targets After Intercepting Iranian Drone Jet crashes in Israeli territory, but military says it wasn’t shot down By Rory Jones

By on February 10th, 2018

Israel’s military said it carried out extensive airstrikes on Syrian targets Saturday after it intercepted an Iranian drone launched from Syria that had infiltrated its airspace, intensifying tensions between the two neighbors.

The Israeli jets came under fire from Syrian antiaircraft missiles and one crashed in Israeli territory, the military said. The F-16 aircraft wasn’t shot down and the pilots ejected, with one evacuated to the hospital in a serious condition, it added.

Syrian state media called the strikes a “new Israeli aggression.” The shots set off warning sirens in northern Israel of an imminent rocket attack, the Israeli military said.

While Israel and Syria have exchanged volleys frequently in recent months and the Israeli military has intercepted enemy drones, the incident Saturday was unusual in that Israel for the first time claimed it involved an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle.

It was also the first time Israel has lost a jet during a strike in Syria, despite dozens of airstrikes in recent years.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Zionist answer to Arab and Muslim Terror Victor Sharpe

By on February 10th, 2018

Facts on the ground. Let the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah and Hamas goons see before their very own eyes how their encouragement of Muslim terror results in new Jewish communities.

The two wonderful women, Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katsover, founders of Women in Green and leaders of the Sovereignty Movement, call for the application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

They do so in a Press Release in which they condemn the latest Muslim Arab atrocity against a Jewish Israeli civilian, 29 year old Itamar Ben Gal Hy”d (may G-d avenge his blood) who was struck down near the entrance to Ariel in Samaria.

The murderous knife attack was perpetrated by a Muslim Arab with Israeli citizenship calling himself a Palestinian. His vile act, as with all other atrocities,was encouraged by the grisly terrorist, Mahmoud Abbas, whose so-called Palestinian Authority reeks of hatred against any and allmembers of the Jewish faith and people – including myopic liberal and left wing Jews.

The PA’s territory occupies large swathes of the Jewish ancestral and Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria – territory which too many nation states and hostile organizations still prefer to call by the Jordanian Arab name: West Bank.

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