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Ruth King

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‘I Threaten Their Entire Narrative’: John James Responds to Democrats’ Attacks by Reagan McCarthy Reagan McCarthy

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2020/09/02/john-james-i-threaten-their-entire-narrative-n2575524

Michigan’s GOP nominee for the Senate, John James, responded to recent attacks by Democrats claiming that he is “owned” by President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The Army combat veteran and businessman set the record straight, and reminded incumbent Democrat Sen. Gary Peters that this is a two-man race.

“You’re [Sen. Peters] not running against President Trump or Betsy DeVos or any other boogeyman. You’re running against me. And this may surprise you, Senator, but no one owns me.”

James continued to call out the tasteless attack ads on Fox and Friends, and pointed to Democrats’ failure to condemn former Vice President Joe Biden’s racially-charged, “you ain’t Black” comments.

“I not only threaten this seat. Democrats are terrified, putting 4 ads up against me in the past week. Because I not only threaten this seat, I threaten their entire narrative. To insinuate that I can’t think for myself, or stand up for myself, when the Democrats have a presidential nominee who says that Blacks don’t have diversity of thought, is unconscionable. And Senator Peters still hasn’t spoken for that.”

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With Election Looming, Judge Sullivan Will Drag Out the Flynn Case By AndrewC. McCarthy

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/with-election-looming-judge-sullivan-will-

There are many words one might use to describe Judge Emmett Sullivan. Chastened is not one of them.

Yesterday, in an en banc (full court) ruling that went 8–2 in Judge Sullivan’s favor, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to order him to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the prosecution of Michael Flynn. (I have a column on the homepage about the Circuit’s decision.) Today, Sullivan has reacted by issuing an order that contemplates several more weeks of litigation before he resolves the motion — a very simple motion, on which he was previously prepared to hold a hearing in mid-July (which itself was a dawdling pace).

The judge is clearly taking the Circuit’s decision as vindication, particularly after the two judges in the minority (Republican appointees on a heavily Democratic court) initially ruled that a writ of mandamus should issue. That prior ruling was wiped out, at Sullivan’s urging, by the en banc decision.

It was probably too much to hope that Judge Sullivan would take solace in yesterday’s victory, get back to work, and make his ruling on the dismissal motion. Moving quickly would have been consistent with the Circuit’s stated expectation, in the last line of its majority opinion, that the district judge “proceed with appropriate dispatch.”

Instead, Sullivan is dragging the case out. His directive today (known as a “minute order”), anticipates that in three weeks (by September 21) Flynn and the Justice Department will submit a joint status report. The judge intimates that this three-week delay is required due to a Circuit rule that orders denying mandamus do not become effective for 21 days unless some accelerating action is taken. But this is sheer gamesmanship. Nothing prevents the judge from acting on the case now. (In fact, he took action while the mandamus litigation was ongoing.) Judge Sullivan knows the parties would not object; they want a quick resolution. And the court doesn’t need a status report. Sullivan knows the status of the Flynn case like the back of his hand. The Justice Department has moved to dismiss, Flynn concurs in that motion; and even though Sullivan should not have permitted and appointed third parties (the amici) to intervene in the case, he did so, and they filed submissions. Sullivan just needs to hold a hearing (if he really thinks he needs one) and rule on the motion.

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ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden Tries To Play Both Sides Of Green Energy Politics

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5

Do you think that Joe Biden has signed on to the Green New Deal? Do you have the idea that Biden is fully committed if he becomes President to doing away with fossil fuel energy and replacing it with the wind and sun as quickly as possible? Where could you possibly have gotten those ideas? More on that later in the post.

Certainly in the past couple of weeks you might have gotten exactly the opposite impression. You probably know that Pennsylvania has in recent years become a major producer of natural gas from “fracking.” Tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians now work in the industry, and hundreds of thousands have jobs in some way supported by the industry. Pennsylvania is a swing state that both Biden and Trump likely need in order to win. In August Trump campaign allies started running ads in Pennsylvania accusing Biden of seeking to ban fracking, which would thereby destroy a substantial Pennsylvania industry. On August 18, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Biden campaign had requested various television stations to take down those ads on the ground that they were “inaccurate.” Then yesterday Biden showed up in Pittsburgh to make a rare campaign speech. Key quote on this subject:

I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again: I am not banning fracking. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me.

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Meet the Travel Act By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/meet-the-travel-act/

Joining President Trump in Kenosha yesterday was Attorney General Barr, who did not mince words about mounting an aggressive federal response to the violence roiling the country. The AG asserted that “radicals” are crossing state lines and “carrying out, planning a coordinated attack on law enforcement, on public property, and on private property. And that can’t be tolerated.”

It is thus worth making a few observations about the Travel Act.

The Travel Act is codified as a crime in the anti-racketeering chapter of the federal criminal code, specifically, in Section 1952. It has been a staple of organized crime cases since the 1980s. As a prosecutor, I charged it more times than I could hope to remember.

In essence, the Travel Act makes it a crime to travel across state lines, or otherwise to use facilities in interstate commerce (e.g., the U.S. mail and electronic communications devices), to commit acts of violence, or otherwise to promote “unlawful activity” (which Section 1952 broadly defines — a definition that explicitly includes arson and extortion). There is a broad range of penalties. If the offense involves carrying out violent activity, there is a potential 20-year prison sentence; if death results, a defendant can be sentenced to “any term of years or for life.”

The Travel Act is very attractive to federal prosecutors for three reasons.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, MEDIA Comments turned off

‘You’re nothing but a stooge’: C-SPAN callers go all in on Brian Stelter and trash CNN as ‘the enemy of the truth’ Spencer Neale

By on September 2nd, 2020

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/youre-nothing-but-a-stooge-c-span-callers-go-all-in-on-brian-stelter-and-trash-cnn-as-the-enemy-of-the-truth

One of CNN’s top political commentators sat through a string of frustrated C-SPAN callers during a Tuesday morning segment on the network.

Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, two separate callers criticized Brian Stelter, decrying his anti-Trump obsession and accusing his home network of obfuscating the news cycle. One caller from Minnesota said Stelter’s new book, Hoax, is propaganda that would be used to divide the nation during unprecedented levels of tension across the political aisle.

“I don’t know if there’s any journalists left at CNN, but I know that if I were to estimate about 300 different distortions or misinformation that we get out of CNN … if you added all that up to 46 months, it comes out to be 300,000-plus distortions of truth,” the caller said. “This is how low you’ll go is that you went out, and you made lies, and you defamed a child, and then, you had to settle out of court to pay this child for distorting information about this young individual.”

Video HERE.  

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Biden Has Become a Tragic Prisoner of His Own Paradoxes . By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/02/biden_has_become_a_tragic_prisoner_of_his_own_paradoxes_144120.html

Joe Biden and his handlers know that he should be out and about, weighing in daily on the issues of the campaign.

In impromptu interviews, Biden should be offering alternative plans for dealing with the virus, the lockdown, the economic recovery, the violence and the looting, and racial tensions.

Yet Biden’s handlers seem to assume that if he were to leave his basement and fully enter the fray, he could be capable of losing the election in moments of gaffes, lapses or prolonged silences.

So wisely, Team Biden relied on the fact that the commander in chief is always blamed for bad news — and there has been plenty of bad news worldwide this year.

That reality was reflected in the spring and early summer polls that showed growing discontent with the incumbent Trump, as if he were solely responsible for one of the most depressing years in U.S. history.

But news cycles, like polls, are not always static.

What was true in July is not necessarily so in September and especially in November. Volatile years produce volatile voters. Now, many voters think they see a waning of the virus, a need to get their kids back in school, and a glimmer of hope that the economy is recovering.

A large segment of the public is becoming irate at the nightly looting, destruction and arson that no longer seem to have much to do with the May death of George Floyd while in police custody. Where are the police, the mayors and the governors to protect the vulnerable, the law-abiding and the small-business owners?

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From riots to the filibuster, liberal America won’t accept political opposition Scott Jennings

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/02/democrats-liberal-intimidate-silence-trump-conservatives-column/5683248002/

This is a frightful, dangerous moment for America, where free speech and robust debate are under assault by one half of America’s political spectrum.

America’s left-wing has taken a dark and dangerous turn, now openly expressing a desire for its political opposition to be delegitimized, criminalized, intimidated and ultimately banished.

This attitude has been boiling since Donald Trump became president. He’s too dangerous to be allowed to speak, they said, as the likes of Sen. Kamala Harris called on Twitter to suspend his account.

But that seems quaint compared to the left’s rhetoric of the last few days. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi labeled Republicans “domestic enemies” and “enemies of the state” in an unhinged rant rivaling any of Trump’s crazier tweets. And that was after Rep. Ayanna Pressley called for GOP officials to be harassed with “unrest in the streets.”

Words have consequences. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, were put in danger as they walked out of Trump’s GOP acceptance speech in Washington on Thursday night.

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Our current maelstrom Dave Rubin and I discuss the state of the western world Melanie Phillips

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/our-current-maelstrom?token=

I was pleased to join the American commentator, Dave Rubin, on his show The Rubin Report. After acknowledging some of the milestones on my own political journey over the years, we talked about the great movements of thought that have precipitated our current cultural maelstrom on both sides of the Atlantic.

For me, the immediate cause of this turmoil lies in the terminal weakness of liberalism: its embrace of cultural relativism, the doctrine that all cultures and lifestyles have equal value. This prevents liberals from acknowledging that their core values, such as respect for all human life, freedom of conscience or equality for women, make the west superior to cultures which deny freedom and equality and treat human life as expendable.

The tragic paradox of liberalism is therefore this: that its core value of equality means it can’t uphold and defend its values, institutions and historic traditions in order to ensure its own survival. That’s why the west is in such trouble.

I also talked about how conservatism, which no longer understands what it needs to conserve, has lost the cultural plot. Oh – and how the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as US president signalled a fight-back by millions who are not prepared to stand by passively as their civilisation disintegrates.

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Academe’s Poisoned Groves: Lee Oser Reviews “The Breakdown of Higher Education” by John Ellis*****

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/academes-poisoned-groves/

The irony of the year 2020 is that our culture is blind. By forsaking the light of history, our universities appear worthy of a new Dunciad, where “universal darkness buries all.” We come late in a long history, and we are (or used to be) sensitive to the philosophical and political problems that defy simple narratives. But the story of how the modern world came about is our story. To “cancel” those who would tell this complex story accurately is to bury ourselves in darkness.

John M. Ellis’s urgent and indispensable book The Breakdown of Higher Education reaches us at a time when the cancel culture shows no sign of abating. Fortunately, Ellis possesses an acute consciousness of history. Knowing history, he puts the anarchy-inducing accusations of systemic racism and ubiquitous sexism in perspective. He shows where in our culture these familiar charges and their attendant moral commitments originated. It is brazenly ignorant to condemn the past according to present-day moral standards that are the product of that past.

Historical sensitivity is increasingly rare. The professoriate, with little exception, can no longer think historically. It is too wedded to political radicalism, which wants to destroy Western civilization and replace it with a society so righteous that people will have no use for history at all. In fact, Ellis cites research indicating that our college graduates know next to nothing about history. Most of them wouldn’t know the U.S. Constitution from a hole in the wall. Ellis reminds us that the Constitution was written and vetted by scholarly men who’d mastered one key lesson: don’t give tyranny an opening. Sadly, that kind of learning-opportunity is now forbidden, because the West is contaminated by racism and sexism. Ironically, then, the great if imperfect good of the U.S. Constitution, which laid the groundwork for the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, must be jettisoned because James Madison and his colleagues were no better than inspired geniuses working within their timeframe. They were not transcendent beings. They were not woke.

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Palestinians: Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity Rejecting peace for an entire century. Joseph Puder

By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/palestinians-never-miss-opportunity-miss-joseph-puder/

Israel’s legendary Foreign Minister Abba Eban had famously quipped that “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” It is the most fitting attribute for the Palestinians. Historically, they have said no to the British Peel Commission of 1937, which promised them a state on 75% of mandatory Palestine. The Yishuv, Palestine’s Jews, who were originally called Palestinians during the British Mandate (1920-1948) said yes, despite of being offered a small piece of the second partition of Palestine. In the first partition of Mandatory Palestine, in 1922, Winston Churchill, then British Colonial Secretary, sliced off 34,495 miles originally slated to be part of the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish homeland, to create the Emirate of Trans Jordan. Of the remaining 10,309 miles, Jewish Palestine would be allocated a measly 2,577 miles.  

Instead of accepting self-determination for his people, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Arab-Palestinian leader also titled Mufti of Jerusalem, and Hitler’s ally, ordered the Arab Revolt (1936-1939). Arab-Palestinian violence was repaid by British appeasement in the form of the White Paper, which shut the doors of Palestine to European Jews in the face of the looming Holocaust. In 1947, the Palestinian Arabs said no once again when offered an independent state by the United Nations General Assembly. Instead, they launched a war of annihilation against the newly born Jewish state of Israel, which accepted partition, and declared statehood on May 14, 1948.

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