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May 2019

What We Know So Far About The Justice Department’s Spygate Scandal Investigations by Margot Cleveland

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/17/know-far-justice-departments-spygate-scandal-investigations/

When Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he provided many clues to the wide-ranging scope of malfeasance the Department of Justice is now investigating.

Conservatives cheered the recent news that Attorney General William Barr had assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the launch of the investigation into the Trump campaign. After his name hit the press, journalists covering the Spygate scandal quickly realized that Durham was the prosecutor investigating former FBI lawyer James Baker for potential illegal leaks.

During his October 3, 2018, testimony to the House judiciary and oversight committees, Baker testified about his long-time friendship with Mother Jones reporter David Corn. But when Rep. Jim Jordan asked whether he had spoken with Corn about any FBI investigations, and specifically the Steele dossier, Baker’s attorney shut down the questioning. Baker’s lawyer told the committee Baker would not discuss any conversations with reporters because Baker was still the subject of a criminal investigation into illegal leaks. When pushed on who was handling that investigation, Baker’s lawyer said, “John Durham.”

In addition to Durham’s appointment, we know that former attorney general Jeff Sessions tapped Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber more than a year ago to investigate aspects of the Russia-collusion hoax. The office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz is also conducting an internal review, focusing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance order.

Why Is Fat a Feminist Issue? By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/why-is-fat-a-feminist-issue/

In a speech on the topic of “radical fat liberation” jointly sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Department and the Center for Equity and Inclusion (what else?) at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, the prodigiously overweight Sonalee Rashatwar, a self-proclaimed Fat Sex Therapist, compared fitness trainers to Nazis, defined child dieting as sexual assault, attributed the Christchurch shooting to ‘thin” white supremacism, and condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.”

She wonders, rhetorically, “is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?” She goes on to blame the Reagan administration for having refused to provide “social supports that also help me to subsidize my food costs.” Believe it! We have entirely transcended the realm of reason, sanity and common sense, and tossed the concept of personal responsibility into the cultural dumpster.

Rashatwar, of course, is not alone in pursuing her redemptive mission. Fat is big in the feminist Weltanschauung. Virgie Tovar’s influential You Have the Right to Remain Fat is a case in point, resting on a subtle distinction between fat positivity and fat activism. Lindy West, whose book Shrill is a feature on Hulu, tells us she had “always been a great big person,” but uses her natural condition as a kind of license for voluntary accumulation. If we are to be honest, we would have to say that we are witnessing a grotesquerie in progress—which is, again to be honest, what feminism has become.

The Coming Democrat Civil War By Stephen Green

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/the-coming-democrat-civil-war/

“I’m not a member of any organized political party — I’m a Democrat,” Will Rogers is supposed to have quipped nearly a century ago, but his assessment has never been truer than it is right now.

Early polls show former Vice President Joe Biden — who first ran for president when I was a freshman in college; I’m now 50 — with a commanding lead, and that has some Democrats very upset. A recent Fox News poll shows Biden up 2-to-1 over nearest rival (and fellow Old White Dude) Bernie Sanders, 35-17. That puts Biden up a couple of points and Bernie down six since March.

But is Biden really the candidate Democrats crave?

Writer and Progressive activist Touré went on quite the Twitter rant this morning, arguing that “it’s a mistake to take progressive voters for granted and think they’ll all come out based on Trump-hatred.” He’s calling for a more radical approach than Seemingly Safe Joe is willing to offer, and that the nominee needs to excite the party’s Progressive wing: “Thinking ‘the left is in the bag,’ is a path to defeat. Serving the base has got to be priority #1. Not winning over the middle.”

And Touré is hardly alone.

Growing International Movement to Boycott Israel Is Condemned by Germany Support for the BDS initiative is broad-based across Europe’s center-left, but Berlin’s resolution says its methods recall Nazi-era campaigns By Bojan Pancevski

https://www.wsj.com/articles/growing-international-movement-to-boycott-israel-is-condemned-by-germany-11558108099

BERLIN—The German parliament condemned as anti-Semitic a growing international movement that targets Israel and called on the government to withdraw funding for events or institutions affiliated with the initiative.

The Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement, which originated in Palestinian circles, calls for academic, cultural, economic and academic boycotts of Israel. Support for BDS is broad-based across the European center-left, but it also has backing among segments of the far-right and the far-left as well as in some Islamist groupings. It has also gained traction in the U.S.

On Friday, a broad majority of German legislators supported a resolution titled “Decisively Oppose the BDS Movement and Fight Anti-Semitism” that strongly condemned the initiative and compared its methods to Nazi-era campaigns targeting Jewish businesses in Germany.

The resolution will immediately stop funding and other forms of support for BDS-related events from the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, but it isn’t binding on the government. A spokesman for the German government didn’t immediately comment on whether it would follow parliament’s lead.

When Did the Spying Begin? U.S. Attorney General William Barr says he’s going to find the answer. By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-did-the-spying-begin-11558105067

Americans are getting closer to learning how the surveillance tools of the U.S. government were turned against the party out of power during the 2016 presidential campaign. This morning the Journal’s Sadie Gurman and Aruna Viswanatha report on their interview with the head of the U.S. Department of Justice:

Attorney General William Barr said his review of the origins of the Russia investigation is focused on U.S. intelligence gathering before the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened its formal inquiry in July 2016 and could lead to rule changes for counterintelligence investigations of political campaigns.

“Government power was used to spy on American citizens,” Mr. Barr told The Wall Street Journal, in his first interview since taking office in February. “I can’t imagine any world where we wouldn’t take a look and make sure that was done properly.”

He added: “Just like we need to ensure that foreign actors don’t influence the outcome of our elections, we need to ensure that the government doesn’t use its powers to put a thumb on the scale.”

We absolutely do. And to ensure that this never happens in the future, it’s important to learn precisely when and how government spying powers were directed against associates of the Trump campaign—and by whom.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI WARNS OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM By Janice Arnold,

https://www.cjnews.com/

“Ali described “Islamist-driven anti-Semitism as the reigning anti-Semitism of the day,” and said that it’s distinct from the “classic” European variety, or today’s white supremacy movement.“Little attention is paid (to it) and that is a pity because it is the most zealous, most potent Jew hatred,” she said. “It both condemns Jews wholesale and seeks to destroy the State of Israel.”

Islamic anti-Semitism is of a “scale and scope” that most people in the West do not understand and is therefore all the more insidious, the controversial critic of the Muslim religion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, told a capacity audience at the Jewish Public Library (JPL) in Montreal on May 13.

The Somali-born Ali, 49, grew up being told that Jews were evil and reflexively hated them, even though she had never met one. In her teens, she joined the Muslim Brotherhood, in which she was indoctrinated to believe that Jews were a sub-human enemy and that their state occupies Muslim lands and must be destroyed.

After fleeing to avoid a forced marriage, Ali found refuge in the Netherlands, where her views were transformed. She became an activist for Muslim women’s rights and was elected to the Dutch parliament.

She wrote the short, but incendiary, 2004 film Submission, a critique of Islam’s subjugation of women, whose director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist.

Antisemitism, migrants and integration We asked interviewees their opinion about the statement that Jews cannot be trusted. By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23863

In the six countries we conducted the survey , approximately 45% of Muslims agreed with this claim. Among non-Muslims it was eight percent.

Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews Ruud Koopmans

“Antisemitism in the Netherlands has grown in the past 10-20 years like in other countries in Europe. It is difficult to prove the spread of verbal antisemitism which can hardly be quantified. The rise of social media has increased this type of abuse. It aims at many targets, including Jews, Zionists and Israel. I do not give much weight to it.

“A stronger and more severe form of antisemitism is threats and violence. We know that this violence has also grown in Europe. Sometimes it is even lethal.”

Dr. Ruud Koopmans was born in the Netherlands in 1961. In 1992 he received his Ph.D in sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He is professor of Sociology and Migration Research at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the research unit “Migration, Integration and Transnationalization” at the WZB Berlin Social Center.

Koopmans says: “I have done some research on antisemitism. In 2015, I studied religious fundamentalism in six European countries including the Netherlands. One question asked interviewees their opinion about the statement that Jews cannot be trusted. In the six countries concerned approximately 45% of Muslims agreed with this claim. Among non-Muslims it was eight percent.

‘Both in the Netherlands and in Germany there is good data about punishable antisemitic acts. Statistics are however rather vague about the perpetrators’ origins. The situation in Germany is even worse than in the Netherlands. It is impossible to obtain data about the share of migrants in various crimes.

The GOP’s commitment to electing talented women can help party retake the House see noteBy Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.)

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/444173-the-gops-commitment-to-electing-talented-women-can-help-party

West Virginia’s other Representatives are Republican and up for re-election in 2020 as is Rep. Miller who is in her first term. The Senators are Joe Manchin a Democrat and really good and independent person, who is up for reelection in 2024 and Shelley Capito a Republican who will be an incumbent candidate in 2020…..rsk

As the 2020 campaign season starts up, a narrative that many in the media like to discuss is a supposed problem within the Republican party with electing women. As the only new female Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, in my experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. During my campaign, I received support from many people. I met terrific, dynamic Republican women around the country who shared my goals – to make our country a better place to live, work, and raise a family, now and for generations to come.

The one story that has not been written, is that so many talented Republican female candidates faced unprecedented opposition in order to keep us out of Congress. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent to increase the barriers for Republican women to serve their country in the U.S. House of Representatives was very calculated and effective. It was disappointing and destructive. As liberal groups replenish their coffers to once again target Republican women, the media continues to attack and undermine those working hardest and making a real difference to elect Republican women – groups like Winning for Women. Despite the constant negativity, we remain optimistic and undeterred.

Pompeo and Bolton tensions escalate as Iran debate intensifies The Secretary of State has bridled at the seasoned national security adviser’s grip on the policy process, but is more in sync with the president they serve. By Eliana Johnson

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/17/bolton-pompeo-trump-iran-1329833

Rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran are also magnifying strains among President Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against the mullahs in Tehran has exacerbated fissures between the two men over the tight control Bolton has tried to exert over the national security decision-making process — and introduced new ones over the direction of U.S. policy.

Pompeo and his special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, have indicated that the administration’s goal in squeezing Iran is renewed negotiations with Iranian regime, according to two sources familiar with their thinking — something Trump has expressed a desire to do. But Bolton is a deep skeptic of the value of negotiating with adversaries who, before joining the White House, called publicly for regime change in Tehran.

While Pompeo has worked to carry out the president’s foreign policy directives, Bolton has done more to try to shape them — at times contradicting the president, as when he walked back Trump’s call for a rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria.

The Hard Politics of U.S.-China Trade Talks: Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/17/the_hard_politics_of_us-china_trade_talks_140352.html

Since neither side benefits from a trade war, why are both sides threatening one?The answer is straightforward. Although both sides could benefit from a deal, one side could benefit more — a lot more — depending on the final terms.Two key issues dominate the current stalemate. The first is how many of China’s mercantilist practices will be rolled back. These include tariffs on imports from America, required partnerships with Chinese firms, forced transfers of intellectual property, and sometimes outright theft of trade secrets. The second is whether the terms are precise, enforceable, and undertaken as formal commitments by China’s highest-level institutions.China’s problem is that its economy depends on these unfair practices, and communist leaders benefit from them, politically and financially. Some, like widespread theft of Western intellectual property, help lots of local companies. Others, like the coercion of foreign firms to accept local partners, help the party most because it picks the winners. As with any patronage system, the winners are politically connected firms that share the largess with their benefactors. (Economists call this “rent-extraction” politics.)Chinese political leaders are understandably reluctant to alter these sweet arrangements. They wouldn’t change them at all without significant outside pressure, which is exactly what the U.S. is exerting. Since Beijing has to make some kind of deal, it would prefer informal commitments, the vaguer the better. Later, China could edge away from them, hoping the U.S. would not retaliate.