Displaying posts published in

April 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

With Mueller Hopes Gone, So Goes Progressive Unity By Victor Davis Hanson

By on April 4th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/03/with-mueller-hopes-gone-so-goes-progressive-unity/

The Democratic Party has lots of radical new ideas, and lots of radical presidential candidates and politicos.

But the common hatred of President Donald Trump has united otherwise quite disparate Democratic leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); former Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

These diverse progressive politicians all shared faith in special counsel Robert Mueller and his “dream team.” They believed over the last two years that the Mueller investigation was slowly grinding down Trump. T-shirts were sold with the slogan “God Protect Robert Mueller.”

The unifying progressive creed assumed that the Mueller’s team would eventually find Trump unequivocally guilty of “collusion” with Russia. That buzzword was the non-criminal euphemism for felonious conspiracy to rig an election.

The hunt for collusion would end with the holy grail of Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. In 2020 there would be an almost automatic progressive takeover of government.

Periodic leaks from Mueller’s team during the investigation’s 22 months prompted giddy media anticipation that “the walls were closing in on” Trump. It always seemed that the “noose was tightening” around him, and that yet another “bombshell” was about to go off.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How to Reform Israel’s Runaway Supreme Court by David Isaac

By on April 4th, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/blog/how-to-reform-israels-runaway-supreme-court/

Israel’s Supreme Court banned Michael Ben-Ari, a member of the Otzma Yehudit or “Jewish Power” Party, from being a candidate in the Israeli elections. The court made its decision even after Israel’s Central Elections Committee said he could run. What especially provoked indignation was that at the same time the Supreme Court rejected Ben-Ari, it also overturned the Central Election Committee’s decision to ban the Arab party, Balad, which rejects the very idea of a Jewish State, and a radical-left Jewish candidate, Ofer Cassif, who is running on a joint list of two other Arab parties, Hadash and Ta’al, and who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and referred to Israel’s War of Independence as the “Naqba” or catastrophe.

The Supreme Court ruling was 8-1. Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked decried the ruling: “The decision by the High Court of Justice to disqualify Ben-Ari [for anti-Arab racist statements] and, on the other hand, to permit terror-supporting parties is a blatant and misleading intervention that goes to the core of Israeli democracy.”

Simcha Rothman, legal adviser to the Israeli Movement for Governability and Democracy, a nonprofit group that has been leading the charge for reforming Israel’s legal system, believes that by employing such a naked double standard, the Supreme Court may have played into the hands of its critics.

“I believe it will bring people out to vote for right-wing parties as a whole and, in particular, for the party that Ben-Ari was part of,” Rothman told the Free Beacon. “People will go to vote for them out of rage, as a vote of nonconfidence in the court.”

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EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Cambridge University’s Shameful Treatment of Jordan Peterson written by Stephen Blackwood

By on April 3rd, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/04/03/cambridge-universitys-shameful-treatment

On Wednesday, March 20, the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge sent the following tweet:

Faculty of Divinity @CamDivinity

Jordan Peterson requested a visiting fellowship at the Faculty of Divinity, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review.

The circumstances around this event bear careful examination. For they reveal not only a betrayal of the university’s fundamental purpose, but also the loss of something far more wide-reaching, something without which no higher civilization can survive: a shared understanding of ourselves.

First, a little background.

Jordan Peterson is an academic and clinical psychologist who has taught at two of North America’s most prestigious research universities (Harvard University and the University of Toronto), and whose academic work is prominent, widely-cited, and non-controversial in his field (see a list of his research publications here). His courageous and articulate defense of free speech, of our political, cultural and religious inheritance, of unpopular but incontestable truths of science—especially biology—and his radical opposition to identity politics of any kind, including that of both Right and Left, have made him an iconic figure. But what is by far the most significant thing about Peterson is that he reaches vast numbers of young people, often through Biblical stories and ancient myths, with perennial truths—of freedom, responsibility, the dignity of the individual, the transcendence of beauty and suffering and, above all, the liberating nature of Truth itself.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

An Open Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee: Don’t Reward Fake News by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on April 3rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14003/pulitzer-prize-fake-news

Julie K. Brown refused to investigate and/or publish highly credible information that undercut the simplistic and largely false narrative fed her by her biased sources. I know, because I have been providing her with much of the documents and information she chose to bury rather than report.

Here is the truthful narrative Brown refused to report. Every fact can be documented…. The only problem is that Secret Service and other records conclusively proved that none of them was ever on that Island and that the Gores didn’t even know Epstein…. Yet her own employment records prove that she was well above the age of consent when she claims these liaisons occurred— in the unlikely event they ever occurred at all.

A careful review of these records led Giuffre’s own lawyer to conclude — in a lawfully recorded conversation— that it would have been impossible for me to have been where she falsely claimed to have had sex with me, and that his client’s accusations against me were “wrong,” “simply wrong.”… Even Giuffre’s best friend said that Giuffre told her she had never accused me until she was “pressured” by her lawyers to do so.

So shame on Brown. Shame on the Miami Herald. And shame on the Pulitzer Committee if it fails to investigate Brown’s reporting and encourages such fake news and shoddy journalism by rewarding it.

Among the leading candidates for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism is the Miami Herald and its reporter Julie K. Brown for its series on the Jeffrey Epstein case. The series, however, was not based on rigorous and objective investigation, but rather on one sided, and largely false tips from self-interested lawyers who used the series to their financial advantage. Brown refused to investigate and/or publish highly credible information that undercut the simplistic and largely false narrative fed her by her biased sources. I know, because I have been providing her with much of the documents and information she chose to bury rather than report. Had she reported this contradictory material, she would have endangered the Pulitzer Prize she has been aiming to win. The Pulitzer Committee should not reward such biased and result oriented “reporting” by giving her the prize.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Brewing Rebellion in the Emerald City Seattle residents are losing patience with the city’s out-of-control homelessness problem. Chris Rufo

By on April 3rd, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-residents-rebelling-homelessness

For the past five years, like many of its West Coast counterparts, Seattle has endured a steady expansion of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, crime, and street disorder. But the activist class—a political and cultural elite comprising leaders in government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and media—has enforced a strict taboo on declaring the obvious: something is terribly wrong in the Emerald City.

Last month, veteran Seattle reporter Eric Johnson of KOMO violated that taboo with a shocking, hour-long documentary called Seattle is Dying, which revealed how the city has allowed a small subset of the homeless population—drug-addicted and mentally-ill criminals—to wreak havoc. Johnson’s portrait is backed up by evidence from King County homelessness data, by city attorney candidate Scott Lindsay’s “prolific offender” report on 100 homeless individuals responsible for more than 3,500 criminal cases, and by my own reporting on the homelessness crisis.

In the past two weeks, Seattle Is Dying has garnered 38,000 shares on Facebook and nearly 2 million views on YouTube. The report has clearly resonated with anxious, fearful, and increasingly angry Seattle residents. Exhausted by a decade of rising disorder and property crime—now two-and-a-half times higher than Los Angeles’s and four times higher than New York City’s—Seattle voters may have reached the point of “compassion fatigue.” According to the Seattle Times, 53 percent of Seattle voters now support a “zero-tolerance policy” on homeless encampments; 62 percent believe that the problem is getting worse because the city “wastes money by being inefficient” and “is not accountable for how the money is spent,” and that “too many resources are spent on the wrong approaches to the problem.” The city council insists that new tax revenues are necessary, including a head tax on large employers, but only 7 percent of Seattle voters think that the city is “not spending enough to really solve the problem.” For a famously progressive city, this is a remarkable shift in public opinion.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Homosexuality, Adultery Now Punishable With Death by Stoning in Brunei The new code also introduces public flogging as a punishment for abortion.

By on April 3rd, 2019

http://www.realclearlife.com/daily-brief/homosexuality-adultery-now-punishable-death-stoning-brunei/

Despite heavy backlash from the international community, Brunei, the small nation of about 450,000 people on the island of Borneo, went ahead with enacting its new Islamic criminal laws Wednesday, which makes gay sex punishable by stoning to death.

The draconian penal code, enacted by the Southeast Asian country’s sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, is part of the predominantly Muslim country’s rollout of Sharia law, Time reported. In October of 2013, Bolkiah first announced that his nation would practice Sharia law.

Some of the proposed phases of the new laws, like making certain offenses punishable by amputation or death, were delayed amid global censure. But this week, Bolkiah defied critics and enacted legislation that allows ruthless punishments, some of which may even apply to children and non-Muslim foreigners.

Homosexuality, which was already illegal and punishable with prison time, is now a crime that can lead to death by stoning, according to Time. This sentence now also applies to those who commit rape, adultery, sodomy, extramarital sex and for insulting the Prophet Muhammed.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

House Judiciary Committee Votes to Subpoena Mueller Report By Mairead McArdle

By on April 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-judiciary-committee-votes-to-subpoena-mueller-report/

The House Judiciary Committee Wednesday approved subpoenas demanding that the Justice Department provide Congress with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s full, final report on the results of the his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The Committee voted 24 to 17 in favor of a resolution that authorizes subpoenas for the unredacted version of the special counsel’s report, all accompanying exhibits and attachments, and the evidence Mueller used to write it.

Attorney General William Barr submitted a four-page summary of the almost-400-page report to Congress last week and promised in a meeting with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Friday to release a redacted version of the full report by “mid April, if not sooner.” Barr’s summary said Mueller did not find any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin but did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice during the investigation.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) said that Barr is “refusing” to cooperate with him in legally obtaining certain materials but added, “I will give him time to change his mind” before issuing the subpoenas.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Brutal Month for Brexit By Madeleine Kearns

By on April 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/brexit-theresa-may-march-brutal-month/

March has seen the unraveling of the Brexit process and the ruin of Theresa May.

When Harold Macmillan became Britain’s prime minister, or so the story goes, a young reporter asked what would decide his government’s course. Macmillan’s reply? “Events, dear boy, events!” But Theresa May’s government will not be remembered for decisive events. Rather it will be remembered for a series of failures that led to the most catastrophic non-event in recent British history — Brexit.

As you know, Britain was scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29. The country voted to leave in a 2016 referendum. March 29 was supposed to be a decisive, historic event. Ever since Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was triggered two years ago, the main political players all committed to it. And yet cometh the hour, cometh no Brexit. . . .

March 1: Theresa May’s former chief of staff told the BBC that the prime minister always saw Brexit as a “damage-limitation exercise.”

March 4: Theresa May was accused of “bribing MPs” in “a desperate measure to buy votes” in the form of a £1.6 billion fund for constituencies that voted Leave.

March 8: Theresa May warned that if her deal was rejected by Parliament for a second time, then “we may never leave at all.”

March 12: The blunt legal advice of Britain’s attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, advised members of Parliament that the legal risks of May’s deal, which was rejected by a historic margin in January, remained fundamentally the same. In other words, the deal on the table would keep the U.K. on the EU’s regulatory leash and would force Northern Ireland to heel.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

2020 Democrats go silent after Senate’s Green New Deal debacle To quote John McEnroe: ‘You cannot be serious!’David Winston

By on April 3rd, 2019

http://www.rollcall.com/news/the-green-new-deal-you-cannot-be-serious

In the awkward aftermath of the Green New Deal’s rollout, perhaps the most appropriate question for its supporters, especially the Democratic presidential field, is one often posed by tennis bad boy John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!”

But, apparently, when New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey introduced their proposal in February, they were deadly serious, and breathless progressives couldn’t wait to hop aboard the climate change express. First in line, the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate who were eager to offer up their enthusiastic support.

There was just one snag. The Green New Deal, in reality, wasn’t serious. These weren’t well-thought-out ideas or vetted policies. They were far left talking points that couldn’t possibly survive any real scrutiny. And they didn’t.

The blowback was epic. Critics pounced on the resolution’s absurd provisions. America would have to retool every structure in the country to maximize energy efficiency. No cars. No planes. Trains to everywhere. Well, except from L.A. to San Francisco, where fiscal reality has already ended that green dream.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The real scandal in U.S. higher education

By on April 3rd, 2019

https://openthebooks.lpages.co/education-report/

Today we launched our newest oversight report on the U.S. Department of Education with a focus on higher education.

Our breaking oversight report reveals outdated policies, misaligned priorities, and weak accounting controls at the Department of Ed.The facts are so revolting, the Washington Times just broke the story in a big way. 

Yesterday, economist Stephen Moore, Trump’s nominee for the Federal Reserve Board, also broke our preliminary findings in an editorial at the Washington Times.

In our deep dive report, we spelled out exactly how much federal funding is being poured into the nation’s richest colleges, the worst performing junior colleges, nontraditional colleges you didn’t know existed, for-profit schools, and more.We’re shining a light on corruption at its worst, and your ongoing support makes that possible.

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