Displaying posts published in

December 2022

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Democracy at Work: Supporting Israel Regardless of its Government by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on December 9th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19214/israel-democracy-support

Israeli governments come and go based on the results of elections; Israel has had five of them in the last four years. But one’s support for Israel should not vary with whether one agrees or disagrees with the outcome of a particular election, any more than one’s support for the United States depends on whether Democrats or Republican are in control at a given time. One can be a patriotic American who stands and salutes the star-spangled banner even when one disagrees with policies of the government. One can work hard to change such policies. Sometimes they change. Sometimes they do not. That is democracy at work.

One can also be a fervent Zionist, which simply means that one strongly believes in the concept of a secure and democratic nation-state for the Jewish people. That is all Zionism means. It does not entail support for particular Israeli policies….

As then-President Bill Clinton once complained: “Israel is a democracy, damn it!” His point was that he could simply call the leader of a non-democratic ally and tell him what do. He could not do that to Israel, where the citizens decide what their government should do.

Democracy does not assure good outcomes. It only assures a fair process.

Those who understandably disagree with the outcome of the recent Israeli election should recognize that it is the product of factors that generally affect democratic elections: changing demography, economic considerations, external threats and numerous other variables.

So please, as Israel approaches its 75th birthday, look at the big picture: no country has contributed more to the world in its first three quarters of a century than has Israel; no country faced with dangers comparable to those faced by Israel has had a better record of human rights, compliance with the rule of law and concern for enemy civilians than Israel.

Governments and policies change. Support for the only democracy in the Middle East should remain constant.

Israel’s prime minister-designate is brilliant, hardworking and dedicated to the survival of the nation-state of the Jewish people. One may not like all the ministers in his likely new government. Neither do other longtime supporters of Israel. Some have questioned whether they can continue to support Israel in the face of certain policies proposed by some potential ministers. It is important to continue to support Israel even if one disagrees with some policies of a particular government.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

These 7 Trump-Critical GOP Senators Have No Plan To Deal With Unconstitutional, Election-Altering Censorship By: Evita Duffy

By on December 9th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/08/these-7-trump-critical-gop-senators-have-no-plan-to-deal-with-unconstitutional-election-altering-censorship/

The Federalist asked the seven senators if they have a plan to remedy the unconstitutional censorship of voters and news during the 2020 election. Not one of them responded.

Seven Republican U.S. senators who slammed former President Trump for suggesting that new censorship revelations warranted a reconsideration of the 2020 presidential election results have no plan to address the First Amendment-violating censorship Trump was reacting to in “The Twitter Files.”

More and more evidence is exposing how our corrupt FBI brazenly violated the Constitution by dictating to social media monopolies what speech to censor from public and private discourse ahead of the 2020 election. Yet GOP senators are more preoccupied with Trump talking about altering the Constitution than they are with the deep state committing actual violations of it.

After revelations uncovered that Twitter colluded with the Biden campaign to censor content in the lead-up to the election and misused its “hacked material policy” to annihilate the Hunter Biden laptop story, Trump posted to Truth Social:

So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

Trump clarified his comments on Monday, saying that he does not want to terminate the Constitution, but that there was “‘MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION’” that has been “irrefutably proven in the 2020 Presidential Election” and “steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Fake, and Real, Domestic Terrorists Who successfully sought a “revolution” in Washington—a bunch of random dudes in Michigan or the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world? By Julie Kelly

By on December 9th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/08/the-fake-and-real-domestic-terrorists/

To hear the government tell it, a homeless guy who lived in the dilapidated basement of a vacuum repair shop with no running water is as much a danger to society as was Timothy McVeigh and the Tsarnaev brothers.

Adam Fox, according to the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, should spend the rest of his life in prison for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. After a jury could not reach a verdict in Fox’s case last April, the Department of Justice retried Fox and his remaining co-defendant Barry Croft, Jr. in August; both men were found guilty the second time around.

In what must be one of the most dishonest motions filed by the government perhaps in recent history—for example, prosecutors insist two men acquitted during the same April trial are Fox’s co-conspirators despite being cleared of all charges by a jury—the Justice Department described the kidnapping plot as an act of domestic terrorism in a memo arguing 

Fox, 38, should die in jail. Fox, who had to use the Mexican restaurant in the same strip mall where his vacuum repair flophouse was located to brush his teeth, somehow had the wherewithal to attempt to “light the fire of a second revolution,” assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge wrote in Fox’s sentencing memo.

“While the plot to kidnap a sitting state governor is shocking for its temerity, it is not without recent antecedents. For Fox’s paranoid fantasies of government ‘tyranny,’ one need look no further than the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The defendant’s plan to use homemade explosive devices to kill and maim recalls the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.” (Fox also was convicted of planning to use a weapon of mass destruction.)

Setting aside the government’s despicable comparison of Fox’s half-baked (and sometimes, literally baked) bull-session planning to two deadly terror attacks, both of which resulted in the murder of children, the plot to kidnap Whitmer existed only in the “paranoid fantasies” of agents and informants working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Continue reading →
MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

A Sexplanation A new documentary, recommended for children, raises more questions than it answers. by Danusha V. Goska

By on December 9th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-sexplanation/

A Sexplanation is an 81-minute, 2021 documentary that recommends rejection of a perceived, specifically American and Judeo-Christian mishandling of sex. The documentary recommends a shame-free and judgment-free approach to sex for American schoolchildren. The documentary stars 36-year-old Alex Liu, a gay Chinese-American. Liu co-wrote the script, and co-produced the film.

Liu’s biography states that his work “explores taboo topics like sex and drugs in order to broaden our understanding of science, morality, and how to negotiate a meaningful life. He’s developed two YouTube channels focused on sex and drug education, totaling over five million views.” Liu’s work has appeared on NOVA scienceNOW, CNN Health, and NPR.

A Sexplanation enjoys a 100% professional critics’ score at RottenTomatoes. The L.A. Times called the film “admirable” and “entertaining.” Other reviews are equally laudatory: “illuminating and funny”; “educates while entertaining”; “full of wisdom”; “timely and hilarious; a big brain event”; “a sex-positive breath of fresh air and an encouragement that we can break the cycles of shame … and finally move enthusiastically toward the enjoyment of pleasure, intimacy, and a healthier sexuality.” “This is a film that the whole family can watch … to get over the shame of who we are … Alex Liu can save us all!”

The New York Times selected A Sexplanation as a “Critics’ pick” and called the film “insightful.” A Sexplanation is “suitable to be shown in a classroom.”

A Sexplanation immediately begins with its America-bashing premise. “Sex. In America, an obsession. In other parts of the world, a fact,” reads a text on the screen. The quote is attributed to Marlene Dietrich.

America is “a country raised to fear sex,” Liu intones. Because of America, Liu has been so terrified that he considered taking his own life. “I love dick. The way they look, the way they feel, the way they taste,” he says, holding up what appears to be a chocolate-covered ice cream treat in the size and shape of a penis and testicles. He takes a bite, and then says he wants to “blame my mommy and my daddy” for his psychological problems.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Beheading in Philadelphia Are Islamic honor killings really just “domestic violence”? by Thom Nickels

By on December 9th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-beheading-in-philadelphia/

EXCERPT

In the Lawndale section of Philadelphia recently, a 41-year-old woman, Leila al Raheel, was decapitated by her 34-year-old husband in the kitchen of their home. Ahmad Shareef was apprehended six blocks from the scene of the murder, hiding behind a clump of bushes. The mainstream news media reported the crime as yet another example of “generic” domestic violence. The police even called it a “domestic homicide,” without elaborating or speculating on a motive, as well as hiding the fact that the alleged killer was Muslim.

Joanne Otero-Cruz, who runs Women Against Abuse, a nonprofit in Philadelphia, was quoted in reference to the above murder as saying, “A lot of people actually experience this. There is help out there.”

Let’s step back a moment.

Most female domestic abuse victims do not experience decapitation. Decapitation with a knife by a “loved one” has a decidedly Muslim flavor — but of course it was impossible for Otero-Cruz to reference this subtext, or to bring up the possibility of an honor killing. Had she done so this would have led to charges of stereotyping and “Islamophobia,” as every mainstream news reporter by now realizes. Multiple reports of the Lawndale murder kept to the “generic” domestic abuse scenario, as if something had gone terribly wrong in (yet another) Brady Bunch household.

Freedom Center website Jihad Watch, the notable exception when it came to reporting about the murder, published the following headline:

“Philadelphia: Muslim accused of beheading woman who was treated like a slave.”

Finally, some honesty…

Most of the big news media outlets mentioned nothing about the victim being treated like a slave, although NBC10 did manage to quote a neighbor of the victim, who said, “The woman…they treat her like a slave. She runs in and out of the house barefoot. She really never goes anywhere else. She carries all of their bags in. They scream at her…”

The neighbor, Nyiha Richardson, also told reporters that she had witnessed “several problems at the home in the past, including Shareef running outside half naked and threatening neighbors to the point in which one family moved away.”

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Top Biden National Security Official Served On Pro-Terror Group Our national security is being dismantled from the inside. by Daniel Greenfield

By on December 9th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/top-biden-national-security-official-served-on-pro-terror-group/

When Jose Padilla, a Muslim terror convert was arrested, Human Rights First became his loudest defenders. The leftist group, originally founded under the auspices of France’s Human Rights League, which historically included many Communists including Ho Chi Minh, was one of the most extreme voices against our effort to fight the Islamic terrorists murdering us.

Human Rights First continues to demand that Gitmo be shut down and warned that even saying the words “Islamic terrorism” was wrong. It bizarrely argued that there is “no reliable data to substantiate a claim that the United States is disproportionately threatened by foreign terrorists”. And it warned that designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group would only fuel more terrorism by the religion that shall not be named lest its members blow us up.

Last year, HRF commemorated the anniversary of September 11 by blasting “the post-9/11 policies that have given rise to anti-Muslim sentiment” and demanded that America “leave behind the short-sighted narrowly focused security approach… in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11.”

With its own people on the inside, HRF is well positioned to dismantle our national security.

The Biden administration rewarded HRF with two high-profile roles for members of its board of directors. Secretary of State Blinken, who had been the vice chair of HRF’s board of directors, was put in charge of our overall foreign policy, and Matthew G. Olsen was nominated to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for National Security for the Justice Department.

Matthew Olsen, who had made millions working as the chief security officer for Uber, now, in the words of a bio, “leads the Department of Justice’s mission to combat terrorism, espionage, cyber crime, and other threats to the national security.” No one could be less fit for the job.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Teaching that Grammar is Racist Profile of a leftist white supremacist. by Jason D. Hill

By on December 9th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/teaching-that-grammar-is-racist/

If you’ve wondered what the literal face of an evil left-wing Woke Supremacist looks like, look no farther than the face of Marta Schaffer. She seems like an ordinary, nerdy woman, does she not? Do not be beguiled. She is a California English teacher who teaches her students that grammar is part of White Supremacy. Her goal as an educator is to “undermine that B.S.”

According to the news report, Schaffer fights white supremacy by alerting her students to, and teaching them about, the overemphasized importance of grammar usage and writing rules. She uses her social media posts on Tik Tok to sell an even wider audience on the idea that proper grammar and syntax are part of the White supremacy she claims is an entrenched part of our culture. She maintains that she teaches the rules that “we actually use to communicate instead of the made-up rules that White supremacy created for when we write papers and stuff, which is what scholars call the language of power.”

She is a profound advocate of academic essays written by African American students using African American Vernacular English, otherwise known as “AAVE” language.

She worries that standard usage of theses statements in writing assignments, proper citation of sources (which we must remember is a preventative measure against plagiarism), and transition words like “however” and “therefore” are coterminous with misogyny, white supremacy, and colonization.

The non-sequiturs involved in her line of reasoning do nothing to help her case. And yes, she is a tenured high-school teacher.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

How Do They Know This? An informative and apolitical new book reminds us that statistics are not always what they seem. Christopher J. Snowdon

By on December 9th, 2022

https://quillette.com/2022/12/08/how-do-they-know-this/

“If you take one point away from Bad Data it should be that the vast majority of statistics are estimates, some of them are very rough estimates, and statisticians are constrained by limited resources and bounded knowledge. It is not a crisis. Outright fraud is rare, but when confronted with an impressive statistic, especially when it seems surprising, it is worth asking, “How do they know this?” Very often the answer will be that they don’t really know it at all.”

A review of Bad Data by Georgina Sturge, 288 pages, The Bridge Street Press (November 2022)

H.G. Wells once predicted that “statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” It was a slight exaggeration, but in an age of big data in which governments pride themselves on being “evidence-based” and “guided by the science,” an understanding of where facts and figures come from is important if you want to think clearly.

Georgina Sturge works in the House of Commons Library where she furnishes UK MPs with statistics. If Bad Data is any guide, she also provides them with caveats and other words of caution, which are ignored. This informative, reasoned, and apolitical book offers a string of examples to show that statistics are not always what they seem. Some statistics are rigged for political reasons. Others are inherently flawed. Some are close to guesswork. Even crucial variables such as Gross National Income and life expectancy are shrouded in more uncertainty than you might think. We don’t really know how many people live in Britain legally, let alone illegally. The number of people who are living in poverty varies enormously depending on how you measure it.

Crime and unemployment are hugely important to voters and therefore susceptible to manipulation by the authorities. England and Wales have data on recorded crime stretching back to 1857, but most crimes are not reported to the police and even when they are reported they are not necessarily recorded by police officers. Setting the police targets to reduce crime creates incentives for the police to allow possible crimes to go unrecorded. This has happened so much in Britain since the 1990s that the UK Statistics Agency stripped the recorded crime figures of their “national statistics” status in 2014.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What is treason? By Bob Ryan

By on December 9th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/what_is_treason.html

“Some 1.7 billion dollars was sent by Obama and Kerry to Tehran, in cash. There was no consent by Congress. That cash was the giving of aid and comfort to funders of international terrorism while America remains at war. That is the very definition of treason.”

The charge of treason is thrown around by people on both ends of the political aisle who fail to show an understanding of what the word legally means in America.

Treason has a very narrow definition that prevents most people accused from having committed actual treason.

18 USC Ch. 115, S2381 defines Treason as:

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

In order for an American to commit treason, war must be declared by Congress. Without war against a declared enemy, there can be no aid and comfort given to an enemy, which means there can be no treasonous activity committed.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were not tried for treason since war was not declared against the Soviets. They were convicted and sentenced to death for espionage.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Karine Jean-Pierre Storms Out of a White House Briefing in a Huff By Lincoln Brown

By on December 9th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2022/12/08/karine-jean-pierre-storms-out-of-a-white-house-briefing-in-a-huff-n1652100

Another day, another disaster for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Eventually, she is going to burn out on the continual slapstick comedy bits that the press briefings have become. She can only wipe the pie off of her face so many times before she hands in her two weeks’ notice. Then she’ll take a gig with CNN where nobody will ask her anything and she can become the star she was destined to be.

That will be a sad day, since waiting for the story of the latest flub or blooper has become a bit of a tradition. A fun, if cringe, Advent calendar, if you will. And while these moments in which the White House yet again becomes a whoopie cushion are somewhat entertaining, one stares at them with the same mixture of horror, curiosity, and fascination as one does a crash scene.

The Daily Caller reports that the latest episode of the wheels coming off a White House presser took place on Thursday. Simon Ateba is a reporter for Today News Africa. He had a question for Jean-Pierre about the U.S.-Africa Summit, in which President Biden will host leaders from 50 African nations. A perfectly reasonable expectation for a reporter from an African news agency at a White House presser. In fact, I can’t think of a better venue.

Not only did Jean-Pierre not answer the man’s question, but she also would not explain why she could not answer the question. She became so frustrated that she called an early lid and left the room. You can watch the exchange below:

Continue reading →