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July 2018

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A Senate Deadline for Kavanaugh Schumer wants to delay a confirmation vote past Election Day.

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-senate-deadline-for-kavanaugh-1531265850

Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination now heads to the Senate, and the most important fact to understand is that the debate in the world’s greatest nondeliberative body is not about the future of the Supreme Court. That’s a sideshow. The real debate is about the future of the Senate—specifically, which political party will control that now narrowly divided chamber in 2019.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already said he will “oppose Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination with everything I have.” Nice to know he’s given it such careful thought. But Mr. Schumer knows defeating the judge is a long shot, especially after Maine Senator Susan Collins made encouraging comments Tuesday about Judge Kavanaugh’s lower-court opinion on ObamaCare and his statement in 2006 that Roe v. Wade is a binding precedent.

In any case, what Mr. Schumer cares about more than defeating Donald Trump’s nominee is to be the next Majority Leader. Toward that end he wants to help his 10 incumbent Senators running in November to navigate between a political base that demands opposition to all things Trump and broader state electorates that might come to think that Judge Kavanaugh is an excellent nominee.

The best way to do that is to postpone a confirmation vote beyond Nov. 6. That way Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Joe Manchin in West Virginia wouldn’t have to take a politically difficult vote before Election Day.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Left’s Immigration Con Game Breaking through the lies about Ellis Island and more. Michael Cutler

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270686/lefts-immigration-con-game-michael-cutler

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

With that famous quote George Orwell warned decades ago against history revisionists and that which has come to be referred to as “fake news.”

On July 4, 2018, the New York Post headline read, “Statue of Liberty Climber Identified as Immigrant Activist.”

The Post and other news outlets have identified this ”immigrant activist” as Therese Patricia Okoumou — a 44-year-old originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

How better to celebrate the birth of our nation than stage a dangerous illegal protest against the enforcement of America’s immigration laws at the Statue of Liberty? Okoumou’s actions threatened to severely damage a precious national landmark and endangered the lives of hundreds of tourists — who had patiently waited in line, then paid a steep admission fee to ferry to Liberty Island — only to be evacuated because of her illegal hijinks.

Officers of the NYPD were also endangered by Okoumou’s stupid trick when they had to neutralize her threat to the public and to the Statue of Liberty when they took her into custody.

According to various reports about Okoumou, she is quite comfortable with both law-breaking and initiating lawsuits against businesses for alleged “racism.”

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Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Penned Healthcare Dissent Focused On Tax Kelly Phillips Erb

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2018/07/10/supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaugh-penned-healthcare-dissent-focused-on-tax/#72fd0b0f4d6c

President Trump has announced his nomination to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) created by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement. On Monday, the President gave the nod to District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh has close ties to the Supreme Court. He clerked for Kennedy in the 1990s with another Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch. For the past dozen years, he’s been a fixture in the D.C. courts, which have produced other SCOTUS Justices, including Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chief Justice John Roberts.

SCOTUS Justices typically don’t cut their teeth on tax cases, and Kavanaugh would be no exception. There is one tax-related case in his career, though, that stands out: Seven-Sky v. Holder (Susan SEVEN–SKY, Also Known as Susan Sevensky, et al., Appellants v. Eric H. HOLDER, Jr., et al., Appellees, No. 11–5047).

The case was a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (also called “ACA” or sometimes “Obamacare”). The Act was passed by Congress on March 21, 2010, and signed into law by then President Barack Obama two days later. A number of lawsuits followed, including Seven-Sky, which involved a challenge to the “minimum essential coverage provision.” The minimum essential coverage provision required that folks purchase and maintain healthcare insurance. It’s more commonly known as the individual mandate, and if you don’t have coverage—and don’t qualify for a waiver or an exemption’you’re subject to a penalty. (Er, tax? Keep reading.)

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Trump’s Stellar Supreme Court Pick A look at Brett Kavanaugh’s real judicial record. Joseph Klein

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270704/trumps-stellar-supreme-court-pick-joseph-klein

President Trump has nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the seat vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his retirement late last month. Judge Kavanaugh, 53, who has served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for 12 years, said that he was “deeply honored” to be nominated to replace Justice Kennedy, for whom he once clerked. If confirmed by the Senate, where the Republicans hold a razor-thin majority, Judge Kavanaugh, a principled strict constructionist, will help solidify a reliably conservative Supreme Court.

The left is in full resistance mode. It believes that the judiciary should serve as an additional but unelected political branch, whose duty it is to enact the left’s progressive policy agenda. They want activist justices who will treat the Constitution as a malleable instrument that can be twisted into the image of what the left thinks society should be.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, kowtowing to his base, wasted no time in viciously attacking Judge Kavanaugh, claiming that his nomination puts abortion rights and health care protections for women “on the judicial chopping block.” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon declared, “There can be no mistaking Trump’s Supreme Court nomination for anything but what it is: a direct attempt to overturn Roe. v. Wade.”

This is only a small taste of the demagoguery, outright lies and outrageous ad hominem attacks against Judge Kavanaugh we can expect in the weeks ahead. Those who revere the Constitution, and who believe, like Alexander Hamilton, that the “rules of legal interpretation” should apply the laws in “conformity to the source from which they are derived,” must get out in front with the truth about this eminently qualified “judge’s judge.”

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Kavanaugh Visits Capitol Hill as Durbin Predicts ‘Wild West D.C.’ If Confirmed By Bridget Johnson

By on July 11th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kavanaugh-visits-capitol-hill-as-durbin-predicts-wild-west-d-c-if-confirmed/

Senate Dems vow to “look into what went on and what assurances were made that brought this name to the top of the list.”

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats vowed today to try to use deep investigation and grassroots activism to stop President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court as federal appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh began making the rounds on Capitol Hill to meet GOP lawmakers.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared in a press conference in front of the Supreme Court this morning that “anyone who gets the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society and from the Heritage Foundation is not moderate, is not mainstream, is hard right and wants to move America back decades.”

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who has been in the upper chamber for the past 17 Supreme Court nominations, protested that “the Constitution doesn’t direct the president to nominate justices with the advice and consent of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation; the Constitution gives that role to the Senate.”

“But I think the president looks at our independent courts like he does the Justice Department,” Leahy added. “He thinks the courts, as well as the Justice Department, should be an arm of the White House.”

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) charged that “Washington, D.C., where he grew up, would be Wild West D.C. if Judge Kavanaugh had his way,” with views on the Second Amendment “straight out of the gun lobby’s playbook.”

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Catcher was a Spy: A review By Marion DS Dreyfus

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/emthe_catcher_was_a_spyem_a_review.html

One of the best films of the year, The Catcher was a Spy stars the superb Paul Rudd — more familiar to audiences as a light and lovable comic persona, or the droll Ant-Man (Ant-Man and the Wasp), in the Marvel franchise now doing boffo box office. Here, Rudd is enigmatic, restrained, a never-less-than compelling presence.

Here, he is the remarkably accomplished Moe Berg, who is scooped up by the Office of Strategic Services from the field as a catcher in the Boston Red Sox in the early 1940s, to stymie the potentially terrifying development of the atomic bomb by a German scientist, played by chameleon-actor Mark Strong as Professor Werner Heisenberg.

If you recall your high school physics, that is the very same Heisenberg as the originator of the Heisenberg Principle, which posits that you cannot pin anything atomic down, since the very act of studying it changes it, so uncertainty is the only certainty. (NB: My slight interpretation, of course.)

Playing with an accent and a curly hairstyle that irritated my colleague at our viewing, Paul Giamatti nicely conveys the heebie jeebies of a scientist, Samuel Goudsmit, guide-along who of necessity accompanies Moe Berg as Berg infiltrates, leads a double life, trying to reach and charm his way into the needed contacts behind enemy lines and execute his mission.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Racism of the Alleged Affronted By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/the_racism_of_the_alleged_affronted.html

At the Consortium of Higher Education for LGBT Resource Professionals, one learns that at an upcoming webinar, “queer and trans people of color are welcome to join and engage in or observe the space. However, we do want to provide a content warning that in these spaces we hope white folks will process our thoughts and behaviors in a learning environment so we can address them and discuss and [sic] tactics of decentering whiteness.”

The topic is “How our institutions center whiteness as a dominant narrative and how we can decenter whiteness at an organizational level. Facilitators: Jesse Beal, they/them, Director, Women’s and Gender Center, Amherst College” and “Kayla Lisenby, they/them or she/her, Assistant Director, LGBTQ Center, Wake Forest University.”

Under the social justice rubric, being born white makes one evil, plain and simple. In fact, according to Dr. Kathy Obear, one can either be a good white ally or a bad one. Thus, everything is seen through the prism of race.

If white people ask people of color to teach them how to say things correctly to avoid racism, this actually results in a burden on people of color to constantly educate. Thus, you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

In fact, calling on someone to check his so-called privilege is an ad hominem attack. In particular, this logical fallacy is guilt by association. Being a part of the Caucasian race automatically makes a person guilty.

In actuality, white privilege is predicated on the idea that there needs to be “universal white guilt on the one hand and universal black innocence on the other.” For example, at the Crunk Feminist Collective, one learns that in 2012 Arizona governor Jan Brewer should have kept her fingers to herself when she confronted President Barack Obama about his immigration policies. Brewer was engaging in white female privilege and was “being disrespectful as hell.” Rather than explaining that she was incensed that a president of the United States could trample over the rights of American citizens, this episode is seen only through the prism of race and gender.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Wrecking NATO By Shoshana Bryen

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/wrecking_nato.html

The Washington Post headline blared, “Trump is bent on wrecking NATO. Prepare for catastrophe.” The Post fears that President Trump’s diplomacy will benefit Vladimir Putin to the detriment of American and European interests. European Council president Donald Tusk sniped, “Dear America, appreciate your allies. After all, you don’t have that many.”

The NATO countries are, indeed, among America’s closest allies, but some of them appear more interested in oil, natural gas, and trade with Iran than in the Fulda Gap. Some of our “closest allies” have been working overtime to undermine America. If Mr. Trump is irritated with them, there is a reason.

Iran is preparing to take $300 million in cash out of German banks to get ahead of impending U.S. banking sanctions. While American intelligence officials are concerned that the money will finance terrorism, the German government says it has “no evidence” to that effect. According to the German newspaper Bild, “Iran … says that they need the money ‘to pass it on to Iranian individuals who, when travelling abroad, are dependent on euros in cash due to their lack of access to accepted credit cards.'” The German government appears to think that one million Iranian tourists might need $300 each – or perhaps 300 tourists might need $1 million each.

The plan to send dollars to Tehran is in line with European negotiations, led by Germany and France, to help Iran mitigate the economic fallout of the American withdrawal from the JCPOA – the Iran deal. The E.U. has also begun to update its “blocking statute,” the rule that will prevent European companies from complying with impending Iran sanctions.

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Making American Jews Right Again By Larry Greenfield

By on July 11th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/11/making-american

In his book Why Are Jews Liberals, Norman Podhoretz described a “Torah of Liberalism” as the guiding political philosophy of contemporary American Jews.

Lacking religious devotion to the ancient Biblical text and Rabbinic tradition, or to the ritual observances practiced by “Orthodox” Jewry, Jewish Americans affiliated with liberal denominations, or disaffiliated completely from religious life, not only mimic predominant secular, urban political faith, they often lead it.

For many decades, prominent political movements of the Left—Communism, socialism, feminism, environmentalism, statism, welfarism, gay rights activism, and pro-abortionism—have been led by Jewish atheists, academics, and activists replacing God-based religious belief and behavior with a secular “social action” agenda. Podhoretz argued these Jews are religiously passionate, it’s just that their religion is now liberalism (not classical liberalism but modern progressivism).

The common Hebrew term heard at left-wing Jewish seminaries, synagogues, temples, summer camps, and communal organizations is “tikkun olam,” translated as “repairing the world.” The actual historical term, “L’taken olam b’malchut shaddai” was once an idea that served the social order, for example, by endorsing capital punishment to protect the community. Some leaders of the American Jewish establishment now selectively hijack Jewish law to authorize a range of social justice warfare intent on moving objectively nuanced and long-debated Jewish ethical concepts into subjective partisanship.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Michael Galak The Legacy and Lessons of Barbarossa

By on July 10th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/07/legacy-lessons-barbarossa/

The hallmark and genesis of the Great Patriotic War, as Russians call it, was the political incompetence of the Soviet leadership, their naiveté, paranoia and blind reliance on a Marxist interpretation of world events. Marx is no longer the Kremlin’s sacred text, but all else has changed little if at all.

June 22, 1941 – its the date which is engraved in memory of all who had a misfortune to be born in the USSR. This was the day Operation Barbarossa began, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. By today’s date, July 10, German forces were at Kiev’s doorstep and, behind the rapidly advancing front line, the Wehrmacht and SS were firmly in control. On this day Jews were being massacred in the Polish town of Jedwabne, as they would be in countless other locations.

In retrospect, the clash between Hitler and Stalin was inevitable, two predators willing and ready to spill blood generously to achieve their delusional dreams of world dominance. Both required enemies to hate to consolidate their hold on their respective populations. The Nazis were focusing their need for hatred on the Jews. The Soviets were concentrating on the ‘evil’ of the international bourgeoisie. The Soviets adopted pseudo-scientific Marxist theories of class struggle as the basis for the extermination of millions of unwanted souls. The Nazis based their extermination programs on the equally pseudo-scientific theories of race and social Darwinism. Both regimes were quite successful in brainwashing their followers. Both were socialists with insignificant ideological variations. Even flags, songs and holidays were similar. The difference between the Nazis and the Soviets, described as the divide between the evil ‘Right’ and the noble ‘Left’, has always struck me as being contrived and nonsensical.

The beginning of the direct war between the USSR and the Nazi Germany was characterized by the extraordinary series of events. The two countries were allies and, following the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty, which stunned the world at the time, were busily dividing Europe. Hitler was grabbing France, Netherlands, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Greece, Yugoslavia and the Western half of Poland. Stalin, not to be outdone, was getting Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, parts of Hungary, Romania and Eastern Poland. Stalin demanded an increase of his share of the European spoils during the Molotov’s visit to Berlin in 1940. Hitler refused and activated the contingency plan of attack on the Soviet Union ‘Barbarossa’ almost immediately after Molotov’s departure. Both countries were planning to attack each other sooner or later.

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