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January 2019

The New Year’s Resolutions We Should Be Making Here’s how to focus on the urgent issues confronting America. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272412/new-years-resolutions-we-should-be-making-bruce-thornton

Since Election Day 2016, one story has dominated our attention––the person and rhetoric of Donald Trump. No amount of achievements by Trump and the Republican Congress at home or abroad can distract the bipartisan NeverTrump chorus from shrieking over tabloid trivia ranging from mysterious nudie selfies, to the president’s fifty-year-old draft deferments.

Expect 2019 to be even more all Trump, all the time. For Democrats, Trump has become their Moby Dick, the hated monster they’ll destroy themselves to kill. For the media, Trump has been a ratings gold-mine. As now disgraced CBS honcho Les Moonves said two years ago, Trump is “damn good for CBS.” This year promises to be no different. The progressive media will likely keep its long-running series, “The Mueller Show,” and the start this year of the 2020 presidential primary season will see “The Primary Follies” improve its ratings with numerous Dem guest-stars for the intergenerational war between the rich, old white establishment, and the “woke” young guns “of color.” And don’t forget the long-running show “Family Feud,” featuring pouting NeverTrump Republicans with their snarky patter and virtue-signaling verbal tics.

All very entertaining, no doubt. But while we gorge on this high-carb junk TV fare, serious issues confront the Republic. We need to make a collective New Year’s resolution to pull the plug, and focus on these looming challenges.

On the foreign policy front, our continued clinging to the old narrative of moralizing internationalism needs to end. The idea that, as Woodrow Wilson expressed this faith in 1917, “National purposes have fallen more and more into the background; and the common purpose of enlightened mankind has taken their place,” began to be exposed as a pipe-dream long before Trump came on the scene. The populist and nationalist revolts across the West have shown that the bulk of ordinary citizens are tired of pampered, patronizing global elites presuming to know what’s best for them, and demanding ever more power in order to effect the improving changes they claim will usher in utopia.

That dream of world governance, moreover, is contrary to the conditions of most peoples’ existence. A critical mass of citizens still finds their identities in the particular traditions, histories, faiths, mores, landscapes, customs, cultures, and languages among which they live. Their revolt is against an imperial cosmopolitanism which demonizes that rich diversity as retrograde and bigoted, a troublesome poltergeist from our benighted past. But there is no “common purpose of enlightened mankind,” for there are no “citizens of the world” or “global community,” apart from the tiny elite of credentialed and privileged managers of the “new world order.” Ordinary people are loath to cede their national identities, freedom, and sovereignty to such haughty, self-selected overseers.

Trump Invites Congressional Leaders for Meeting Amid Shutdown Republicans and Democrats both invited to Wednesday meeting; topics to include border securityBy Peter Nicholas and Natalie Andrews

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-invites-congressional-leaders-to-meet-with-trump-wednesday-11546374858?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

President Trump has invited a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to the White House on Wednesday in a bid to negotiate an end to a partial government shutdown that is now in its second week, a White House official said Tuesday.

The invitation went to the top eight Republican and Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate, and the meeting is expected to include a briefing on border security from the Department of Homeland Security, a congressional aide said.

It was unclear if Democrats planned to attend the meeting. Since the shutdown began in late December, Mr. Trump and congressional Democrats have largely avoided direct negotiations.

The two sides are at odds over spending for a Southern border wall, with Mr. Trump insisting on funding for the wall and Democrats staunchly opposed.

In recent tweets, Mr. Trump has sought to coax Democrats to the negotiating table while also portraying their opposition to wall funding as an irresponsible acceptance of what he called “open borders.”

“Border Security and the Wall ‘thing’ and Shutdown is not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker!” Mr. Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “Let’s make a deal?”

Congress is scheduled to open a new session Thursday, with Mrs. Pelosi taking over the speakership after Democrats won control of the House in November elections.

As of Tuesday afternoon, it was uncertain who would attend Mr. Trump’s meeting. Some congressional Democratic leadership aides said the meeting might not happen, or would need to be postponed, because all of the lawmakers invited might not return from their New Year’s break to Washington, D.C., in time.

Aides to Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), as well as their two deputies, all confirmed Tuesday afternoon that they had received the invitation, but declined to say whether they would attend.

CONTINUE AT SITE

Cleveland Doctor Ousted After Anti-Semitic Social Media Posts Exposed By Patrick Poole

https://pjmedia.com/trending/cleveland-doctor-ousted-after-anti-semitic-social-media-posts-reported/

A medical resident at the Cleveland Clinic was ousted from her position after an organization reported on her long history of making anti-Semitic statements on social media.

Among the comments made by Dr. Lara Kollab cited by watchdog group Canary Mission was a statement that she would give all Jews the wrong medicines.
Canary Mission @canarymission

#8: Recent @WeAreTouro med school grad Lara Kollab said this before enrolling: “ill purposely give all the yahood [Jews] the wrong meds…”https://canarymission.org/individual/Lara_Kollab …

The Canary Mission report records dozens of statements made by Kollab calling for violence against Jews, defending Hamas, and supporting terrorists. She also described her activities working with anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) groups.

Kollab was a supervised resident at the Cleveland Clinic, which is consistently ranked among America’s top hospitals. She graduated from medical school earlier this year and began working at the clinic in July.

Last night, the Cleveland Clinic posted a statement saying that she was no longer employed there:

Cleveland Clinic was recently made aware of comments posted to social media by a former employee.

Multiculturalism and the Transformation of Britain in 2018: Part I January-June 2018 by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13494/britain-multiculturalism-transformation

“We demand the legal right to Free Speech, in an Act which will bring an end to the ludicrous notion that ‘hate speech’ and ‘offensive speech’ deserves people be imprisoned or charged. In short, an Act to codify the citizens’ right to freedom of speech without government intervention.” — Petition (ultimately rejected) to the British government calling for codifying free speech.

“A hate crime is any criminal offense, for example assault or malicious communications, which is perceived [emphasis added] to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s actual or perceived race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.” — From the British government’s response to the petition.

A Home Office review proposed legislative changes that would require Muslim couples to undergo a civil marriage before or at the same time as their Islamic ceremony. Such a requirement would provide women with legal protection under British law. The review said that nearly all those using Sharia councils were females seeking an Islamic divorce. As a “significant number” of Muslim couples do not register their marriages under civil law, “some Muslim women have no option of obtaining a civil divorce.”

The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 4.2 million in 2018 to become around 6.3% of the overall population of 64 million, according to data extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France, then Germany.

The rapid growth of Britain’s Muslim population can be attributed to immigration, high birth rates and conversions to Islam.

The European Union: An Authoritarian Body with a Humanitarian Face by Jiří Payne

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13476/european-union-authoritarian

What the Lisbon Treaty actually created was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.

Article 4 states in part: “…The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives.” In other words, the interests of the Union are above the interests of individual states and citizens.

In a democratic system with a healthy balance of power, a ruling coalition can be challenged or replaced by the opposition. This is precisely what is lacking in the EU, as the Treaty of Lisbon requires that European Commission members be selected on the basis of their “European commitment.” This means, in effect, that anyone with a dissenting view may never become a member of the Commission. As history repeatedly demonstrates, where there is no opposition, freedom is lost.

The Treaty of Lisbon — drafted as a replacement to the 2005 Constitutional Treaty and signed in 2007 by the leaders of the 27 European Union member states — describes itself as an agreement to “reform the functioning of the European Union… [it] sets out humanitarian assistance as a specific Commission competence.”

What the Lisbon Treaty actually created, however, was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.

Take the mandate of the European Commission (EC), for instance. According to Article 17 of the Treaty:

“The Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union… In carrying out its responsibilities, the Commission shall be completely independent… the members of the Commission shall neither seek nor take instructions from any Government or other institution, body, office or entity.”

The Immorality of Illegal Immigration By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-immorality-of-illegal-immigration/

New House majority leader Nancy Pelosi reportedly spent the holidays at the Fairmont Orchid on Kona, contemplating future climate-change legislation and still adamant in opposing the supposed vanity border wall.

But in a very different real world from the Fairmont Orchid or Pacific Heights, other people each day deal with the results of open borders and sanctuary jurisdictions. The results are often nihilistic and horrific. Here in California’s Central Valley over the holidays we were reminded of the wages of illegal immigration in general — and of California’s sanctuary-city laws in particular, which restrict formal cooperation between local and state law enforcement with federal immigration authorities in matters of deporting illegal aliens under detention.

In the first case, one Gustavo Garcia, a previously deported 36-year-old illegal alien, murdered a 51-year-old Visalia resident on December 17, gratuitously shooting his random victim, Rocky Jones, at a gas station. He apparently had been arrested two days prior and released.

Garcia entered the U.S. illegally in 1998 and was deported for a second time in 2014. He has been charged with at least three immigration violations since illegally returning to the U.S., and has been a convicted felon since at least 2002 for assaults with a deadly weapon, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, possession of a controlled substance, etc. In addition to the murder of Jones, Garcia shot a farmworker who was on a ladder working, and followed a woman to her car at a Motel 6 and shot her too. At the beginning of his violent spree, he seems also to have murdered Rolando Soto, 38, of nearby Lindsay.

Indeed, Garcia was a suspect in a number of prior shootings and thefts. During his final rampage, inter alia, Garcia tried to shoot his ex-girlfriend, then stole a truck from farmworkers and led police on a chase, deliberately veering into opposing traffic, and by intent injuring four more innocents, one critically. During the chase, he fired on police, who returned fire, before Garcia finally wrecked the stolen vehicle and perished in the crash.

‘Free Speech’ Means Just That By John Yoo & James C. Phillips

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/constitution-free-speech-clause-supreme-court-interpretation/

A too-broad interpretation of the Constitution’s free-speech clause protects things that have nothing to do with speech and makes other clauses superfluous.

Editor’s Note: The following is the seventh in a series of articles in which Mr. Yoo and Mr. Phillips lay out a course of constitutional restoration, pointing out areas where the Supreme Court has driven the Constitution off its rails and the ways the current Court can put it back on track. The first entry is available here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here, and the sixth here.

Earlier this year, the Defense Department limited the right of the transgendered to serve in the military. Three federal courts blocked the policy for infringing the constitutional rights of the transgender individuals. One of the judges relied on the same clause of the Constitution as the cake maker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage. The Supreme Court has invoked that same clause to defend the right to burn the American flag, dance in the nude, and make unlimited campaign contributions.

What is this constitutional catch-all? The free-speech clause.

The Supreme Court’s current law of free speech will perplex the ordinary American. After all, changing sex, making a cake, burning the flag, dancing nude, and contributing money have little in common, least of all speech.

The imperialistic expansion of free speech would not just surprise most 21st-century Americans; it would also make little sense to the 18th-century Americans who ratified the First Amendment. They would find it astounding that the courts have not just read speech to include many forms of conduct, but also have failed to establish any objective test for what constitutes speech. The Supreme Court appears to apply the perpetually malleable standard that emerged when it has sought to identify obscenity: It knows it when it sees it.

When the Court agrees that something is speech, however, it gives it the highest of protections known to constitutional law. The Court allows government to restrict the time, place, and manner of speech, as long as the state does not discriminate based on its content or the speaker. But if government tries to regulate content or discriminate between speakers, it must demonstrate that the law is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Observers once thought that this “strict scrutiny” test was “strict in theory, fatal in fact” because no law could survive it.

The Original Meaning
The Court’s failure to apply a consistent test for conduct-as-speech is not really the problem. Rather, the problem is that its First Amendment standards are judicial inventions. The Court’s definition of speech is unmoored from the Constitution’s text and original understanding, which should set the only lodestar for the Roberts Court, now up to full conservative strength with the addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: DECEMBER 2018-THE MONTH THAT WAS

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

January is not only a time we look back, but, like Janus, it is a time we try to penetrate an impenetrable future. In doing so, we must remember that predictions, no matter how analytical and allegedly impartial, are influenced by ideologies and biases. However, I suspect we all agree that the 2020 Presidential race began as soon as the ball dropped in Times Square. The Democrat field will be crowded. Youth and idealism will challenge age and experience. Far-Left socialists will combat centrists. On the Right, the big questions: Will Republicans try to unseat President Trump? Or will Mr. Trump decide one term was enough, declare victory and retire? After all, he will turn 74 in 2020, and the Presidency is not where most people would choose to spend their “golden” years. Of course, he is not “most people.”

………………………………………………………….

Back to December. It was a month of contrasts, like the opening sentence in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” The economy was the strongest in a dozen years, yet stocks fell. Equities saw their biggest Christmas Eve sell-off in history. On the next trading day, they had their largest point gain ever. Questions arose: Should President Trump be true to his campaign promises, or should he compromise? He is condemned for not doing so; he is condemned when he does so. Is nationalism a force for evil, as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron claim? Or is nationhood necessary for liberty, as most conservatives believe? Are those who voted for Brexit and Donald Trump, and who have rallied against the state and the corrupt policies of elites in business, finance and government ignorant, or are they battling elitism, statism and the status quo? Are people better off when the focus is on identity – intersectionality – rather than the individual? Will millennials bend toward capitalism, or will they lean toward socialism? Did Michael Flynn lie, or was he entrapped? Has an increase in carbon dioxide allowed the earth to become greener and more productive, as a NASA survey last month alleged, or will it be the death of the planet, as Kyoto and Paris assert? Has there ever been a U.S. President more critically scrutinized and more vilified by MSM than Donald J. Trump?

Hypocrisy among politicians is an unfortunate fact, as is affectation in the media. We saw it in the multi-day George H.W. Bush memorial and burial, which was an over-the-top extravaganza, even for a decent and accomplished man – Air Force One from and to Houston, a memorial service at the National Cathedral and another the next day at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church and then a slow train ride to the burial site in College Station. It was a send-off usually reserved for kings and potentates. But it felt like those who had long condemned the man and his politics were trying to atone for what they had done, or were they using his death to contrast the polished, gracious Mr. Bush with the brash, artless Mr. Trump?

Wealth, Poverty, and Flight: The Same Old State of California By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/california-coastal-elites-poor-immigrants-fleeing-middle-class/

Insulated coastal elites, impoverished immigrants, and a fleeing middle class

California ranks first among the states in the percentage of residents over 25 who have never finished the ninth grade— 9.7 percent of California residents, or about 4 million Californians. It also rates 49th in the number of state residents who never graduated from high school — or about 18 percent of the current population.

In other words, about 7 million Californians do not possess a high-school diploma, about equal to the size of the nine counties of California’s Bay Area, roughly from Napa to Silicon Valley. In some sense, inside California, there is a shadow state consisting of high-school dropouts that’s larger than 38 other U.S. states.

Yet California also is home to some of the most highly educated municipalities in the United States. In fact, Palo Alto claims that 40 percent of its city population has an M.A, degree or higher, making it No. 1 among American cities with a population above 50,000.

In the same ranking of wealthiest communities, two other California municipalities, nearby Cupertino and Mountain View, were also in the top ten. How can a single state be calibrated as both so educated and so uneducated?

In many global ratings of world research universities, California has four universities (Cal Tech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UCLA) in the top 20 — more than any other single nation except the United States itself. Yet the 23-campus California State University system — the largest university in the world — has a student body in which about 20 percent are not proficient in English. The remediation rate (unable to meet minimum college admittance standards in math and English) of incoming freshmen was about 35 percent — at least until such gradations, along with required remedial education, were recently considered archaic, offensive, or worse, and thus scrapped.