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Ruth King

BOOKS Comments turned off

Debunking FDR: The Man and the Myths by Mary Grabar (Author)

By on March 11th, 2025

The myths about Franklin Delano Roosevelt live on.

For the Left, FDR was a champion of the working class and the oppressed, suffering abuse as a “traitor to his class.” He gave up the lifestyle of the Hudson River gentry to lead his country out of the Depression and to victory against fascism. For many on the Right, FDR was out of his depth on economics but provided Americans with the optimism and confidence necessary to prevail during the Depression and gain victory in World War II.

Debunking FDR: The Man and The Myths exposes the suppressed and distorted facts about FDR’s life and the legends about him (many invented by FDR himself!) promoted by generations of historians. Born into immense wealth and insulated from the struggles of everyday Americans, FDR’s young life was one of vast privilege and mediocre talents. Mary Grabar chronicles FDR’s path to the presidency: his second-rate studies at Harvard, his indifference to law school and the legal profession, and his steady, insouciant rise through the government ranks. You will not think of FDR the same way again.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The memory-holing of a pogrom The Jew hunt in Amsterdam last November was even worse than we thought. Brendan O’Neill

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/10/the-memory-holing-of-a-pogrom/

They called their rampage a ‘Jew hunt’. They incited each other to violence, saying ‘[we] may never get this chance [again] to beat up some fucking Jews’. They called for a city-wide ‘rage’ against ‘cancer Jews’ and ‘cancer Zionists’. They damned the Jews as a ‘cowardly’ people. They shared information about the arrival of a ‘train full of Jews’ and said everyone should be there to greet it, because ‘we have to make those cancer Jews feel what they did to our brothers’. The train could be late, one of them joked, because it might be a ‘special train’ laid on by Hitler, ‘with gas for [the Jews]’.

Where were these racist obscenities uttered? Where was this violent hunt for Jews carried out? Germany in 1938, perhaps? No, it was in Amsterdam, last year. This was the jodenjacht of November 2024 when visiting Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were ‘hunted’ by mobs of mostly Arab men in the streets of Amsterdam. More details about this pogrom emerged during the latest court cases last week, and they heap yet further shame on the pogrom deniers of the Western left who insisted these were just street clashes, not a Jew hunt.

Five more of Amsterdam’s alleged Jew hunters found themselves in the dock last week. One – Mounir M, aged 32 – is charged with being an administrator of the WhatsApp group in which the violence was incited and organised. Originally called ‘Free Palstine’ (sic), the group later changed its name to ‘Buurthuis 2’ (Dutch for ‘Community Centre 2’). Racial animus and open calls for violence swirled through this ominous chat. Drive your car ‘into those people’, one participant said. ‘Hit them hard’, said another. There must be ‘at least one death’, dreamed one messenger. There were also tips for how to incite the Maccabi fans. Shout ‘Free Palestine’ at them, the mob was advised.

Mounir M is said to have helped oversee this group that seethed with Jew hate. As the Dutch daily paper Het Parool reported, last week’s court proceedings ‘left little to the imagination: participants in the group… incited each other to hunt down Jews’. The court heard that the group was full of ‘insulting words about Jews’, alongside calls for action. There were ‘quips’ too, like the one about Hitler’s special train, with gas in it. Mounir M is accused of responding in the most chilling way to a message about the hotel in which Maccabi fans had taken refuge from the blows of the Jew hunters. ‘Get rid of it’, he allegedly wrote.

Another suspect in the current trial – Mahmoud A, a Palestinian asylum seeker – faces a more serious charge: attempted manslaughter. A video clip allegedly shows him kicking a Maccabi supporter in the head four times as he was lying on the ground. The three other suspects face charges of ‘providing information to commit violence’, trivialising and condoning the Holocaust, and using a belt to whip an elderly visiting Israeli. The Dutch paper De Telegraaf said at the end of last week that this latest ‘Trial of the Jew hunters’ has ‘severely shocked’ the people of the Netherlands. It is horrifying, it said, that an event of such a ‘clearly anti-Semitic character’ could take place in modern-day Amsterdam.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Tommy Robinson’s Ramadan While Muslims party at Windsor Castle, a heroic critic of Islam is locked away at Belmarsh prison. by Bruce Bawer

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tommy-robinsons-ramadan/

It’s the holiday season again in Britain. The West End of London is bright with lights. Children with lanterns paraded around Leicester Square. At Windsor Castle, more than 360 guests gathered in St. George’s Hall for a celebratory meal sponsored by King Charles III.

Never in the history of Britain has there been such a big, public, official commemoration of the beginning of Ramadan.

On social media, the Royal Family issued a statement: “Wishing all Muslims in the UK, the Commonwealth and around the world a blessed and peaceful Ramadan.”

London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, also commented on the start of Ramadan: “London was the first city in the Western world to host a Ramadan Lights display. It’s a powerful symbol of who we are as Londoners.”

Just days later came Ash Wednesday – the start of the Christian season of Lent. As the musician and social commentator Winston Marshall noted, the Royal Family had nothing to say on social media about Lent – even though King Charles is head of the Church of England.

As it happens, Mayor Khan did put out a statement at the beginning of Lent. But oops, this one, too, was about Muslims: “London owes a great debt to Muslims! They have made our community a better, brighter and more prosperous place!”

On March 5, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales came out with what could easily be interpreted as a Ramadan gift for the Muslim community. A new set of guidelines, scheduled to take effect in April, recommended that when just-convicted criminals are evaluated for sentencing, judges should exhibit an extra measure of mercy toward those belonging to “an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community.”

In other words, as the Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, complained in the House of Commons, members of minority groups would be less likely to be given a term in prison than other offenders. “Why is the Justice Secretary enshrining this double standard, this two-tier approach to sentencing?” asked Jenrick.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Department of Education’s Time Has Come And another Deep State force needs a reckoning as well. by Lloyd Billingsley

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/the-department-of-educations-time-has-come/

President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has terminated nearly $1 billion in contracts with the federal Department of Education (ED) and cut 29 DEI programs costing taxpayers $101 million. While further revelations await, the people should know that ED has no constitutional foundation – education is the purview of the states – and has existed only since 1979.

In 1976, the National Education Association, the nation’s most powerful teacher union, endorsed Jimmy Carter for president. The Georgia Democrat returned the favor by establishing the federal Department of Education, which did nothing to improve student achievement. That was confirmed in 1983 by A Nation at Risk, which contended that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.”

ED was more about fattening the government payroll and boosting government power. Consider the actions of Biden education secretary Dr. Miguel Cardona, for example. Cardona’s “doctoral degree,” like Jill Biden’s, is in education, a non-discipline most useful as a bureaucratic credential. A classic zealot, Cardona used new Title IX regulations to impose gender junkthought.

“In a nutshell, the new rewrite means: – men can take academic AND athletic scholarships from women,” Riley Gaines explained. “Men will have FULL access to bathrooms, locker rooms, etc – men could be housed in dorm rooms with women – students and faculty MUST compel their speech by requiring the use of preferred pronouns If the guidelines above are ignored or even questioned, then YOU can be charged with harassment.” Cardona also deployed ED against schools congressional Democrats don’t like.

Grand Canyon University is an independent college that “reaches a broad variety of like-minded Christian congregations and organizations,” and many students want to attend. By contrast, Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro called GCU a “predatory for-profit school.” The dutiful Cardona told her ED was aiming “to shut them down” and hit GCU for $37.7 million, the “largest fine in history against a school that lied about costs,” and so on. Compare Cardona’s predations with Obama ED boss Arne Duncan.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian liberation scam: A global failure By Greg Denham

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/the-palestinian-liberation-scam-a-global-failure.html
Greg Denham is the Senior Pastor of Rise Church in San Marcos, Ca. He is the founder of “The Context Movement” and spearheads yearly “Friends of Israel Weekends” to fight anti-Semitism and champion friendships between Christians and Jews. He is the author of the new book, Rediscovering the Original Jesus Movement (How 1st Century Context Clarifies God’s Will & Course-Corrects the Church Today!).

What will it take for the world to confront the evil realities being carried out in the name of “Palestinian liberation?”

I still have a vivid picture of the stunningly beautiful Bibas children with their red hair — full of life and laughter.  Violently kidnapped from their home in Israel, they have now returned from Gaza in coffins, as forensic evidence revealed having been brutally murdered.

What is clear is that the Arab states went to war with the State of Israel because they denied the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, instead, insisting that the territory be a single, unified Arab and Islamic state.

Nothing has changed. It is the same reason the Palestinian Arabs have rejected the offer of statehood five times.

The sad truth is that Palestinian Arabs have managed to manipulate the world by gaslighting rather than take any responsibility for their self-defeating failures.  They feed the false narrative that Israel is “the oppressor” in “occupied Arab land,” perpetuating the evil of murder and rape against Jews as justified response. 

German theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who confronted the insanity of Hitler and risked his life rescuing Jews, said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

But it does not stop there because it also extends to the nations that chose to turn a blind eye to fact-based truth, moral clarity and the courage to stand up to the Islamic Nazis of our time by doing the right thing.

Silence in the face of evil is also evil.

When will the world have the courage to face the true nature of the Palestinian issue?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Senate Democrats Stand With Pro-Hamas Columbia Grad: ‘Free Mahmoud Khalil’by Phillip Klein

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/senate-democrats-stand-with-pro-hamas-columbia-grad-free-mahmoud-khalil/?utm_source=recirc-

EXCERPT

Khalil was a leader of last spring’s pro-Hamas protests and just last week participated in the Barnard protest in which activists were handing out Hamas propaganda booklets justifying the October 7 attacks.  It’s fair to debate where the line is between free speech and due process on one end and enforcement of immigration laws and protection of Jewish students on the other end. As much as I loathe Khalil, I’m still working through those issues myself. But Democrats aren’t making a tempered argument that they disagree with Khalil but still think his actions are protected under the First Amendment — they are lionizing him. It’s quite revealing as to whom they consider their core constituency to suddenly turn a pro-Hamas activist into a cause célèbre.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What’s the Best Argument for Columbia Agitator’s Arrest and Deportation? Andrew McCarthy

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/whats-the-best-argument-for-columbia-agitators-arrest-and-deportation/

For now, the Trump administration is trying to do what can be done within the confines of existing law. That law, construed properly, authorizes the government to exclude and deport pro-jihadist agitators.

Earlier today, we posted my piece about the Trump administration’s arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident alien (LPR) — i.e., a green card holder — who was reportedly born in Syria but claims Palestinian ancestry. Khalil has been a prominent figure in the pro-Hamas agitation at Columbia — as late as last week when he reportedly posed as a mediator between the university and “protesters” who occupied a building at Barnard College — an unlawful enterprise that resulted in nine arrests (Khalil was not among them). That uprising was evidently triggered by Barnard’s expulsion of two students who, hiding behind masks, interrupted a “History of Modern Israel” class by barging in and strewing Jew-hatred flyers around the room.

Early this afternoon, President Trump posted on his Truth Social site that the arrest of Khalil, whom he described as “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” was “the first of many to come,” and that the administration would “find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”

The familiar array of Islamist organizations and their media and Democratic Party allies is rallying to Khalil’s defense. The agitator’s apologists contend that his arrest and the government’s plan to deport him are illegal. A lawyer for Khalil has filed a suit in Manhattan federal court (the Southern District of New York) to try to block deportation and compel his release. Khalil’s allies are concerned about reports that, although he was arrested in Manhattan where he was residing, the Trump Homeland Security Department has already whisked him to a holding facility in Louisiana — perhaps hoping to deport him before the courts can intervene, or at least to try to litigate any lawsuits in a district the administration hopes will be more friendly than the SDNY.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Renu Mukherjee Are Universities Following the Supreme Court’s Affirmative-Action Ban? Data suggest that some of America’s top schools may be practicing racial preferences by other means.

By on March 11th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/universities-supreme-court-affirmative-action-racial-preferences

When the Supreme Court, in 2023, banned the use of racial preferences in university admissions, observers expected the number of black and Hispanic freshmen on elite campuses to fall and the number of Asian freshmen to rise. At many schools, however, that didn’t happen.

Admissions data reveal that Yale, Princeton, Duke, and several other highly selective schools enrolled fewer Asian students in their Classes of 2028—the first group admitted since the Court decided Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard—than they did in their Classes of 2027. Black enrollment at these schools, by contrast, remained virtually unchanged.

In the run up to SFFA, these elite colleges repeatedly asserted that they could not maintain racial diversity on campuses without affirmative action. Sixteen prestigious colleges filed a joint amicus brief arguing that “no race-neutral alternative presently can fully replace race-conscious individualized and holistic review to obtain the diverse student body Amici have found essential to fulfilling their missions.” Several had advanced the same argument in amicus briefs filed in 2003’s Grutter v. Bollinger and 2016’s Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, earlier cases examining the use of racial preferences.

For more than two decades, universities claimed that socioeconomic preferences, geographic sorting, and other race-neutral alternatives could not achieve the same level of racial diversity on campus as could affirmative action. Yet the demographics of many schools’ Class of 2028 suggest otherwise. It raises an awkward question: Did America’s top universities mislead the Supreme Court then, or are they breaking the law now?

Consider data from an Inside Higher Ed database that tracks the demographics of the Classes of 2027 and 2028 at 31 highly selective universities. The database includes the first-year demographics for 13 of the 15 highly selective universities that alleged, in the SFFA amicus brief, that their campuses would lose racial diversity absent racial preferences. I’ve listed the demographics for 12 of those universities below. (The University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania were not included in the database. I chose to omit the California Institute of Technology because its data appeared unclear.)

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

One Fact Missing From Every DOGE Story

By on March 11th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/11/one-fact-missing-from-every-doge-story/

The next time you hear someone complaining that DOGE is “slashing” federal spending or “dismantling” the government, pay close attention. There will almost certainly be an important fact left out: The gargantuan federal deficit.

Every day brings a new sob story about how someone is being hurt by Elon Musk’s chainsaw because some federal program is being shut down, or because a precious federal job has been axed.

Never in any of these is any context provided. And in this case, context is everything.

By the time President Donald Trump took office – four months into the new fiscal year (which started last October), the federal government was already $840 billion in the red. That’s a 58% increase from the prior year.

If all goes well, the deficit for this year will total $1.9 trillion, according to the Treasury Department, which would be the third annual increase.

The result is that the national debt is now $37 trillion – more than double what it was a decade ago. Interest on the debt took off like a rocket under Joe Biden.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Democratic ‘Allies’ Democrats’ obsessive Trump hatred blinds them to their own unpopularity, making his counter-revolution seem inevitable—and even normal. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on March 10th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/10/trumps-democratic-allies/

Former Clinton strategist James Carville has reinvented himself at age 80 as a sage Democrat podcaster. His predictions—remember, a victorious Kamala Harris?—are usually wrong. He enjoys engaging in public duels with celebrities to gain online clicks and media appearances.

Yet sometimes he appears judicious in his effort to return his party to the Clinton glory days of 1992-2000, before the takeover of the party by the lunatic left. That said, he too has become part of the new left nihilism he supposedly despises.

Most recently, Dr. Carville diagnosed Donald Trump as suffering from tertiary syphilis. Carville’s “proof” was his identification of a bruise on Trump’s much-used shaking hand, along with his supposed brain dementia. As confirmation, Carville described Trump as a “fat f—ing slob” with a “beached whale body.” So, a once top Democratic strategist has gone from his 1992 iconic campaign reminder, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to smearing Trump as a fat slob with syphilis. Carville’s descent sums up his entire party.

Meanwhile, the congressional Democratic opposition finds itself loudly and proudly standing with only 20-30 percent of the American people on matters from biological males competing in female sports to an open border. For years, Democrats claimed the lack of “comprehensive immigration reform” prevented them from securing the border and stopping a 10-12 million influx of illegal aliens. And then they went quiet when Trump, without any new legislation, simply enforced existing immigration statutes and nearly eliminated all illegal entries.

Defeated candidate Kamala Harris is still trying to reassure donors that she did not know how she blew millions of dollars in last-minute 2024 campaign gifts by paying off the likes of Oprah, Al Sharpton, and Cardi B for interviews and endorsements while flying young staffers around the country on rented private jets.

The Democratic Congress under Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffries demonstrates their opposition to Trump by cutting videos in which party luminaries promise to stop the “sh-t.” Fellow Democratic congresswomen rivaled them with a worse ad in which they dressed in macho kickboxing attire and clumsily gyrated as if they were punching out their conservative opponents.

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