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May 2019

Justice Kavanaugh is Still Triggering the LeftBy Nicholas J. Kaster

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/justice_kavanaugh_is_still_triggering_the_left.html

Normally, one would expect that a university fortunate enough to get a sitting Supreme Court Justice to join its faculty would be receiving accolades from its students. But of course, these are not normal times. Thus, when George Mason University recently announced that Justice Brett Kavanaugh would co-teach (along with Professor Jennifer L. Mascott) a summer class at its Antonin Scalia Law School, the campus Left was seriously triggered.

Students immediately launched protests, a petition drive, and an ad campaign claiming that they would suffer harm due to the uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault made against Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings last fall.

Reason’s Robby Soave described the unhinged response:

‘The hiring of Kavanaugh threatens the mental well-being of all survivors on this campus,’ said one female student during the public comment period of GMU’s board meeting last week… Another student, a survivor of sexual violence, claimed that her mental health had already suffered as a result of the Antonin Scalia Law School’s decision to hire Kavanaugh. ‘It is affecting my mental health knowing that an abuser will be part of our faculty,’ she said. A third student said, ‘As someone who has survived sexual assault three times, I do not feel comfortable with someone who has sexual assault allegations walking on campus.’

The First Jabs of 2020 There are signs that the dam of goodwill among Democratic presidential candidates is about to break. By David Catanese

https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2019-05-03/2020-democrats-begin-to-joust-while-joe-biden-stays-focused-on-trump

The opening months of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary have largely been an amicable, well-mannered affair.

There are sudden signs that’s about to change.

This week, several candidates tossed brushback pitches against rivals, with most of the heat being directed at Joe Biden, whose newly minted front-running candidacy appeared to open the door to a more contentious phase of the campaign.

“The Democratic race began in earnest last week,” says Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network think tank. “And Biden’s surge is likely to cause other candidates to start going after him.”

Both Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts served up policy contrasts with the former vice president, pointing out past positions he took that they believe are out of sync with today’s Democratic Party.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey swiped at Sanders for advocating for voting rights for the incarcerated. And Jay Inslee, the Washington governor who is making climate change the centerpiece of his longshot bid, took aim at Beto O’Rourke’s commitment to a plan to solve the problem.

Victory for State-Funded Hate Speech at UMass

https://www.peaceandtolerance.org/get-involved/

Jew Haters CelebrateA Massachusetts state court has refused to block the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from hosting an anti-Semitic panel featuring  Linda Sarsour and Roger Waters. The court’s opinion recognized that “[t]he Verified Complaint and supporting legal papers reflect a genuine concern by the plaintiff students who filed this motion that the panel discussion will engender anti-Semitism.” Unfortunately, the court also ruled that Plaintiffs had a very high bar to overcome before the court could order the antisemitic event off campus. They had to prove that the speakers were likely to incite or produce “imminent lawless action” at the event, or that “any expected speaker has personally threatened any of the Plaintiffs with physical harm or any other type of harm.”

Anti-Israel hate groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have attempted to mischaracterize this lawsuit as an attack on their First Amendment rights. But, according to Karen Hurvitz, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students, the lawsuit never challenged their rights to engage in free speech. It challenged the use of taxpayer monies to pay for discriminatory hate speech. Private individuals like Linda Sarsour are free to advocate for discrimination against Jews, and even for the destruction of the Jewish state. The Plaintiffs never tried to restrain that freedom. But government entities, like UMass Amherst, should not be free to involve themselves in private discrimination by placing their power, property, and prestige at Sarsour’s disposal.

Bill Barr and the Law vs. The Lie Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/02/bill-barr-and-the-law-vs-the-lie/

Attorney General William Barr in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was a living, breathing representation of the Constitution of the United States.

At one point during five hours that included a shower of insults from Senate Democrats, he put it all in a nutshell: special counsel Robert Mueller’s “work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general,” Barr said, pointing out that as AG he “effectively overrode the regulations, used discretion, to lean as far forward as I could to make that public.”

As Barr added, “The job of the Justice Department is now over; that determines whether or not there’s a crime. The report is now in the hands of the American people. Everyone can decide for themselves. There’s an election in 18 months. That’s a very democratic process. But we’re out of it. And we have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”

Palestinian Leaders and Inconvenient Truths by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14167/palestinians-inconvenient-truths

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas understood that he had made a grave error in calling out his Arab brothers for their tightfistedness. This was a massive mistake because his Arab brothers do not tolerate any form of criticism. For them, Abbas should only be criticizing Israel and the US.

This is the old Palestinian blame game: always make Israel or the U.S. appear responsible for the suffering you inflict on your own people.

Like most Palestinians, Abbas is well aware that the Arab states are no longer willing to serve as a cash machine for ingrates. Under the current circumstances, the Palestinians are more likely to succeed in cajoling money from duped Western donors than from their loving brothers. From the Palestinian leaders’ point of view, however, this is an inconvenient truth best hidden from their people.

The Arab states continue to lie to the Palestinians. At the last meeting of Arab foreign ministers in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, the Arabs “affirmed their commitment to support the budget of the state of Palestine by activating the resolution of the Arab summit in Tunisia to provide a $100 million safety net [to the Palestinians] each month.”

The Arab foreign ministers announced their decision after listening to a speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who complained that his government was facing a financial crisis because of Israeli and US measures.

Standing Against Psychiatry’s Crazes By Abigail Shrier *****

https://www.wsj.com/articles/standing-against-psychiatrys-crazes-11556920766

In 1979 Dr. Paul McHugh closed the sex-change clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the ’80s he testified against phony ‘recovered memories.’ He hasn’t given up the fight.

You might have heard this joke: A man in a car gets a call from his wife. “Honey, be careful,” she says. “A car is going the wrong way on the highway.” He replies: “It’s not just one car. It’s hundreds of them!”

If it were a psychiatrist joke, Paul McHugh, 87, could be that driver. A professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a tenacious skeptic of the crazes that periodically overtake his specialty, Dr. McHugh has often served as psychiatry’s most outspoken critic. Either he’s crazy, or all the other psychiatrists are.

The best-known, and most controversial, decision of his professional life is newly relevant—and recently reversed. In 1979, as psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he shut down the Gender Identity Clinic, which performed sex-change operations. In his view, the hospital had “wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it,” as he wrote in 2004. In 2017 the clinic was reopened as the Center for Transgender Health, performing what it now calls “gender-affirming surgeries.” Its medical-office coordinator, Mellissa Noyes, told me “the demand is massive.”