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May 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rein in politicized judges and their injunctions

By on May 25th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/rein-in-politicized-judges-and-their-injunctions

Federal district judges aren’t emperors for the whole United States. Congress and the Supreme Court should both remind them of that reality.

By issuing putatively national injunctions, Attorney General William Barr said in a May 21 speech to the American Law Institute: “One judge can, in effect, cancel the policy with the stroke of the pen. No official in the United States government [rightly] can exercise that kind of nationwide power, with the sole exception of the president. And the Constitution subjects him to nationwide election, among other constitutional checks, as a prerequisite to wielding that power.”

The subject arises because, on issue after issue, liberal district judges have blocked President Trump’s executive orders or rules promulgated by his administration. The most prominent example occurred when Trump ordered an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program. Even though DACA was created out of thin air by an executive memorandum by President Barack Obama, three separate district judges ruled that Trump could not undo it using the same presidential power. All three said their orders apply nationwide.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Finland: Will the Social Democrats Retain a Pro-Iran Anti-Semitic MP in Its Ranks? by Kenneth Sikorski

By on May 25th, 2019

A few days after the Finnish elections, Hussein Al-Taee, the son of the governor of Najaf in Iraq and a pro-Iranian regime advocate, was exposed for having spent eight years posting anti-Semitic, anti-American and homophobic comments on Facebook… For four of these years, Al-Taee served as an adviser on Middle Eastern affairs to the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a state-run conflict-resolution firm… currently headed by former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb.

Although Stubb publicly condemned Al-Taee’s hate-filled social media comments… he has not been asked why a pro-Iranian regime advocate was working for CMI in the first place.

In other words, Al-Taee was expressing “embarrassment” about his “prejudices, thoughts and language” — and lying about them — but did not disavow the sentiments.

Failure on the part of the “center-left” Social Democrats to oust Al-Taee would constitute hypocrisy of the highest order, or else a tacit agreement with hateful positions that the MP has not denied espousing.

A political crisis that has been brewing in Finland over the past few weeks sheds light on the ills of the so-called “center left.”

The crisis surrounds Hussein Al-Taee, a new member of parliament from the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which won a narrow victory in the April 14 elections.

A few days after the Finnish elections, Al-Taee, the son of the governor of Najaf in Iraq and a pro-Iranian regime advocate, was exposed for having spent eight years posting anti-Semitic, anti-American and homophobic comments on Facebook. For four of these years, Al-Taee served as an adviser on Middle Eastern affairs to the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a state-run conflict-resolution firm founded by the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, and currently headed by former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

French Authorities Investigating Lyon Explosion as Potential Terror Attack By Mairead McArdle

By on May 25th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/french-authorities-investigate-explosion-lyon-potential-terror-attack/

French authorities are treating an explosion in the city of Lyon on Friday evening as a possible terror attack.

The explosion of what investigators believe was a parcel bomb filled with screws, nuts, and bolts injured seven people, including an eight-year-old girl, around 5:30 p.m. local time in a busy shopping area on Rue Victor Hugo. No one died in the blast. Authorities are searching for a male cyclist between 30 and 35 who was seen putting the parcel on the street outside a bakery, his face reportedly concealed by a mask and dark glasses.

French interior minister Christophe Castaner said security will be upped in public areas. President Emmanuel Macron called the disaster an “attack” and said, “As far as I can say there are no victims — there are wounded.”

  

“Tonight I think of the wounded in the explosion in Lyon, their families affected by the violence that has befallen their loved ones in the street, and all of Lyon. We are by your side,” Macron wrote on Twitter.

Over 250 people have died in France as a result of terrorist attacks in the last four years.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: REMEMBERING OUR HEROES- CAPTAIN BENJAMIN LEWIS SALOMON

By on May 24th, 2019

They come from everywhere, cities , towns, villages throughout the nation. Every generation has them.

Benjamin Lewis Salomon (September 1, 1914- July 7, 1944) was a Jewish Dentist from Milwaukee Wisconsin who was drafted as a Private in 1940. By 1942, he was declared the “best all around soldier” of the 102nd Infantry Regiment and by 1944 he was promoted to Captain. In 2002 he received a posthumous  Medal of Honor America’s highest and most prestigious decoration awarded to military service members.

Citation

Captain Ben L. Salomon was serving at Saipan, in the Marianas Islands on July 7, 1944, as the Surgeon for the 2d Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division. The Regiment’s 1st and 2d Battalions were attacked by an overwhelming force estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 Japanese soldiers. It was one of the largest attacks attempted in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Although both units fought furiously, the enemy soon penetrated the Battalions’ combined perimeter and inflicted overwhelming casualties. In the first minutes of the attack, approximately 30 wounded soldiers walked, crawled, or were carried into Captain Salomon’s aid station, and the small tent soon filled with wounded men.

As the perimeter began to be overrun, it became increasingly difficult for Captain Salomon to work on the wounded. He then saw a Japanese soldier bayoneting one of the wounded soldiers lying near the tent. Firing from a squatting position, Captain Salomon quickly killed the enemy soldier. Then, as he turned his attention back to the wounded, two more Japanese soldiers appeared in the front entrance of the tent.

As these enemy soldiers were killed, four more crawled under the tent walls.

Rushing them, Captain Salomon kicked the knife out of the hand of one, shot another, and bayoneted a third. Captain Salomon butted the fourth enemy soldier in the stomach and a wounded comrade then shot and killed the enemy soldier.

Realizing the gravity of the situation, Captain Salomon ordered the wounded to make their way as best they could back to the regimental aid station, while he attempted to hold off the enemy until they were clear.

Captain Salomon then grabbed a rifle from one of the wounded and rushed out of the tent. After four men were killed while manning a machine gun, Captain Salomon took control of it. When his body was later found, 98 dead enemy soldiers were piled in front of his position. Captain Salomon’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

His memory is a blessing…..God bless our troops rsk

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Joe Biden is about to be embarrassed again as Trump enforces his law on migrant welfare use By Monica Showalter

By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/joe_biden_is_about_to_be_embarrassed_again_as_trump_enforces_his_law_on_migrant_welfare_use.html

With no cooperation from Democrats on resolving the migrant surge at the border, President Trump is getting creative:

Here’s the Real Clear Politics report:

Anyone sponsoring an immigrant who collects welfare benefits before becoming a legal permanent resident could be on the hook for the bill. That’s according to a new presidential memorandum set to be released Thursday by the White House.

President Trump will sign the memorandum directing federal agencies to ensure that any individual sponsoring a noncitizen must take financial responsibility for any income-based welfare benefits that immigrant receives.

The move is meant to promote self-sufficiency for noncitizens and preserve the social safety net for people living legally in the country, a senior administration aide told RealClearPolitics.

“This is a historic, transformative action to restore the foundational principle of U.S. immigration law: that those seeking to join our society must support themselves financially.  Furthermore, those who, for whatever reason, cannot support themselves financially, must turn to their sponsor — not the federal government,” the aide said.

The move is a strongly common-sense measure, given that voters do oppose to extending welfare benefits to illegal migrants who’ve contributed nothing to this country, and whose succor has left citizens without resources as well as cheated legal migrants waiting in line.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

College Professors Are The Reason Students Are Crazy People For too long, parents have allowed their children to be indoctrinated and corrupted by radical leftist professors—now they need to fight back.By Richard B. Corradi

By on May 24th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/24/college-professors-reason-students-crazy-people/

Bring together immature adolescents with leftist professors and the inevitable outcome is the current crisis in higher education. The conditions on most American campuses should not surprise any people who are aware of the nature of adolescence. The educators running them, however, seem particularly ignorant. They condone incivility, tolerate infantile behavior, and encourage such silliness as “redefining gender.” They cave under threats and apologetically submit to the most outrageous student demands.

Contemporary educators are curiously insensitive to one aspect of adolescent development in particular. When immature youths with fragile impulse control get no help (e.g., firm limit-setting) from adults in authority, their control over their sexuality and aggression worsens, and they act on their impulses more often.

This behavior reflects not only diminished self-control, but also an attempt to locate desired boundaries. However, neither meeting the developmental needs of students nor providing them a liberal education are primary concerns of many American academics. More important to them is inculcating students with the leftist political and cultural ideology they champion.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Al Jazeera Writes Another Chapter in Its Own Ugly History By Marlo Safi

By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/al-jazeera-anti-semitic-video-controversy-radical-agenda/

An anti-Semitic video posted by the Qatari outlet last weekend is just the latest example of its radical, bigoted agenda.

While Al Jazeera’s English-language channel is known in the U.S. for its progressive bent and seemingly fitting slogan “Experience. Empower. Engage,” the outlet’s flagship Arabic channel showed its true colors last weekend, in a since-deleted video that denied the magnitude of the Holocaust.

The 17-minute video, featuring a female narrator, was published on May 18 on Facebook with the Arabic caption, “Gas chambers killed millions of Jews, this is what the story is. What is the truth of the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?” The video, according to the BBC, claimed that the toll of the Holocaust had been exaggerated and “adopted by the Zionist movement,” that Israel was the biggest winner from the Holocaust, and that Jews use “financial resources and media institutions” to “put a special spotlight” on Jewish suffering.

Al Jazeera’s statement following the video’s deletion said that the post had “violated the editorial standards of the network” and that two journalists were suspended over its content. But what editorial standards, exactly, is the network referring to? It’s been churning out such anti-Semitic tropes — not to mention Islamist extremism, anti-Shia rhetoric, and Qatari propaganda — since its inception.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

‘The Worst Cover-Up of All Time’ By Rich Lowry

By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-worst-cover-up-of-all-time/

Pelosi, not the president, is ‘obstructing’ an impeachment inquiry in the literal sense of not letting one go forward.

President Donald Trump may be guilty of many things, but a cover-up in the Mueller probe isn’t one of them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attempting to appease forces in the Democratic party eager for impeachment, is accusing him of one, with all the familiar Watergate connotations.

The charge is strange, not to say incomprehensible, in light of the fact that Congress is in possession of a 448-page report produced by the Trump Department of Justice cataloguing the alleged obstruction that Congress now wants to investigate. The report is so exhaustive that many members of Congress haven’t had the time to read it.

If this is a White House cover-up, it’s too late. It’s a cover-up of an alleged crime that has already been extensively exposed, not by whistleblowers, not by Jerry Nadler, not by hostile journalists, but by a DOJ prosecutor who worked under the supervision of Trump’s handpicked deputy attorney general.

Pelosi has rehearsed the cliche, “As they say, the cover-up is frequently worse than the crime.” Or in this case, a substitute for the crime.

Mueller found no Russia collusion or coordination and didn’t even accuse the president of obstruction, instead bizarrely pronouncing him “not exonerated.”

Pelosi hasn’t deemed the alleged obstruction detailed in the Mueller report worthy of impeachment but now insists that Trump’s resistance to congressional probes is itself obstruction and “could be impeachable.”

This is an alleged process crime on top of an alleged process crime, all stemming from an investigation that Trump had the power to stop but never did (even as he openly hated it and came up with various schemes, never effected, to crimp it).

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Pelosi Tries To Play Hamlet On Impeachment — Written by Thomas McArdle

By on May 24th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/24/damned-if

Nancy Pelosi is between impeach and a hard place.

“You want to believe that there’s all this unease in our caucus,” an irritated House Speaker told the press on Thursday, a day when the barbs were flying between herself and President Trump, and when many House Democrats expressed impatience or even dissatisfaction with her leadership to her face.

“That simply isn’t the truth … and I say to the caucus, ‘our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power,’” she said, adding an assurance that House Democrats were “not on a path to impeachment.”

The claimed co-existence of unity and diversity is a tad removed from Ben Franklin’s call to all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. At any rate, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) wasn’t buying it. “She’s either delusional or misrepresenting where her caucus really is,” he told reporters. “Speaker Pelosi is trying to hide what I think is obvious: that the Democratic Party is hellbent on impeaching President Trump no matter what the evidence is and no matter what he does.”

This week opened a new chapter in relations between the White House and Pelosi and the Democrats’ Senate leader Chuck Schumer — with the eyes of all three on November 2020 before the arrival of even Memorial Day 2019.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Orders Declassification of Obama-Era Russia Probe Intel . By Susan Crabtree

By on May 24th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/24/trump_orders_declassification_of_obama-era_russia_probe_intel__140417.html

Democrats leading the impeachment charge against President Trump have repeatedly called on him to justify his assertion that Obama administration officials tried to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign and election. On Thursday night, he took the first step in trying to do just that when he ordered the declassification of intelligence documents that he has said show the pathway Obama officials navigated to spy on the campaign.

In a directive to the CIA, the director of National Intelligence, the Pentagon and several other national security agencies, Trump handed Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify or downgrade “information or intelligence that relates to the attorney general’s review.”  The president ordered the agencies to “promptly provide such assistance and information as the attorney general may request in connection with that review.”  

Barr has begun looking into the origins and timing of the FBI’s 2016 counter-intelligence investigation, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane,” aimed at uncovering evidence that Trump campaign officials were conspiring with Russians to interfere in the election. The FBI’s probe included wiretaps on a Trump adviser Carter Page. 

Trump’s move came earlier than many of his allies and associates had expected. Most had expected him to wait until Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released the results of his year-long investigation into the sources and methods the FBI used to begin surveillance on the Trump campaign based at least in part on discredited information gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele.  

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