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Ruth King

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Ruthie Blum Netanyahu pulls the rug out from under his rivals

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/netanyahu-pulls-the-rug-out-from-under-his-rivals/

Hours before the ceremony in Washington with U.S. President Donald Trump to present the Mideast peace plan, including a map of the borders of the proposed demilitarized Palestinian state, the Israeli premier announced that he was withdrawing his request for immunity.

Justifiably emboldened by his warm reception at the White House—and by the imminent unveiling of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 80-page “deal of the century”—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw a curve ball at his rivals back home. Key among these was Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz, who had flown to Washington separately from his nemesis to meet with Trump so as not to come off as an irrelevant tag-along on the trip. Gantz claimed that he was going to have to miss the big reveal on Tuesday afternoon because of the urgent need to be in Israel that very day to participate in the Knesset proceedings surrounding Netanyahu’s request for temporary immunity from prosecution in three corruption cases.

But he and the other legislators who have been trying to defeat Netanyahu in court, rather than at the ballot box—the same figures who are attributing the timing of Trump’s declaration to an attempt on his part to influence Israel’s March 2 Knesset elections in Netanyahu’s favor—were suddenly outmaneuvered.

On Tuesday morning Israel time, several hours before the ceremony at which Trump was scheduled to present the plan in its entirety, including a map of the borders of the proposed demilitarized Palestinian state, Netanyahu announced that he was withdrawing his request for immunity. Addressing the “citizens of Israel” in a post on Facebook, Netanyahu explained why he was making this move.

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Alan Dershowitz Addresses Times Report On Bolton Manuscript In Senate Arguments VIDEO

By on January 28th, 2020

https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/27/alan-dershowitz-john-bolton-impeachment/

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s Time to Question Michael Atkinson on FISA Abuses by Julie Kelly

By on January 28th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/27/its-time-to-question-michael-atkinson-on-fisa-abuses/

Now that the Justice Department and the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court have confirmed at least two of the warrants for Carter Page were unlawfully obtained, it is time to ask Atkinson—in the open, for all to hear—what role he had in helping to orchestrate the illicit spying on the Trump campaign.

In a fair world—one with responsible media organizations that didn’t act as propagandists for the Democratic Party—the news that a secret government court admitted it authorized unlawful warrants to spy on an innocent American based on his political activity would be front-page news.

The January 7 order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealing that at least two of the four warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page were “not valid”—meaning they were illegally obtained—would be on a nonstop loop at CNN and would dominate the news and opinion pages of the Washington Post.

But alas, the average CNN viewer or Post reader will be hard-pressed to find coverage of such a shocking disclosure; after all, how could either outlet report that bombshell when two signers of the garbage applications—former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe—now work as paid contributors to those same news organizations?

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CDC is monitoring 110 possible coronavirus cases across 26 states in US

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/27/cdc-is-monitoring-110-possible-coronavirus-cases-across-26-states-in-us.html

U.S. health officials are currently monitoring 110 people across 26 states for the coronavirus, including the five patients who contracted the deadly infection in China and brought it back to America.
The disease isn’t spreading within the community in the U.S. and the risk to the public right now is still considered low, the CDC says.

U.S. health officials are currently monitoring 110 people across 26 states for the coronavirus, including the five patients who contracted the deadly infection in China and brought it back to America.

The disease, which has killed at least 81 people in China and sickened more than 2,800 worldwide, isn’t spreading within the community in the U.S. and the risk to the public right now is still considered low, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call Monday.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Deep State Tapestry of Deceit is Beginning to Unravel By Brian C. Joondeph

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/the_deep_state_tapestry_of_deceit_is_beginning_to_unravel.html?utm_source=vuukle&utm_medium=newsfeed

Deep state players in the Obama administration wove an elaborate tapestry of collusion, subterfuge, and electoral chicanery. While better suited for a Robert Ludlum novel, it played out in real time over the past four years.

Stars of the drama include familiar names such as James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe. Supporting actors played an unwitting role, namely Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. The victim was then candidate Donald Trump. Heroes of the saga include Attorney General William Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham, and a mysterious group simply called Q.

The plot was simple. The Obama administration, in 2016 and before, wanted to preordain the 2016 electoral outcome. What better way to do this than to spy on the rival presidential campaign? Since spying is illegal, a pretense was needed.

That’s where the Steele Dossier came in. The DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and top Obama administration officials colluded with multiple foreign governments to fabricate opposition research on the Trump campaign alleging treasonous activities. This allowed the FBI to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, and likely others as well.

The Obama administration colluded with foreign governments to influence an election. How ironic that this is exactly what President Trump was impeached for, and why he is a “dictator” and an “existential threat to democracy”. Can you say projection?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Islamist groups making inroads in local politics in America By Hesham Shehab

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/islamist_groups_making_inroads_in_local_politics_in_america.html

When Sadia Gul Covert was elected in 2018 and sworn into the office of Dupage County commissioner, she took her oath on the “Quran, Torah, and the Bible,” in what seemed at the time like a symbol of unity and moderation.

But Covert’s decision to cast her lot with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) raises questions about the extent of her moderation.

Covert will be a speaker at the CAIR-Chicago 2020 Banquet fundraiser in February, among other Islamist speakers.

CAIR was connected to the terrorist organization Hamas during the terror-financing trial against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).

According to the Justice Department report published in 2009, “HLF became the chief fundraising arm for the Palestine Committee in the U.S. created by the Muslim Brotherhood to support Hamas.”

In 2010, former assistant attorney general Ronald Weich sent a letter to four members of Congress in which he “included trial transcripts and exhibits” “which demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, and the Palestine Committee.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

John Bolton preoccupied the media today, but it’s clear there’s no “there there” By Andrea Widburg

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/john_bolton_preoccupied_the_media_today_but_its_clear_theres_no_there_there.html

The big news on Sunday was a leak claiming that John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, has a book coming out that says Trump told Bolton that he wanted to force Ukraine to investigate Biden before releasing security assistance money. Democrats went wild with delight; Republicans opted to ask questions rather than to come up with instant, wrong answers. They were wise to do so.

Many people noticed that, despite the Democrats’ immediate insistence that it’s absolutely pivotal to their impeachment case that they question Bolton before the Senate, that wasn’t what they were saying last year. Last year, they invited Bolton to testify but he declined . . . only to add that he would appear if they subpoenaed him. That was a bridge too far. Fearing a fight in Court with Trump (which is the usual way disputes between the Executive and Congress are resolved when it comes to subpoenas), the House went full Roseanne Rosannadanna and said, “Never mind.” Apparently Bolton wasn’t that important after all.

The announcement’s timing also made people question its legitimacy. Coming as it did in the middle of the impeachment hearing, it reminded many people of the way in which Christine Blasey-Ford’s allegations suddenly popped up during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. It let Democrats turn his hearing into a circus, so why not do the same to President Trump’s impeachment?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Hold onto your hats: Hillary says she’s got the urge to run again By Andrea Widburg

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/hold_onto_your_hats_hillary_says_shes_got_the_urge_to_run_again.html

Thanks to a 4-hour documentary about herself, which premiered to great Progressive buzz at the Sundance Film Festival, Hillary’s in the news again. More than that, she’s doing so at a time when Democrats are panicking about Bernie’s increasing lead in New Hampshire and the general pressure he’s putting on “mainstream” candidate Joe Biden. Sane Democrats strongly suspect that, while Bernie’s manna for the base, most Americans are not going to vote for a candidate who still adores socialism despite the Gulags, the reeducation camps, and those nasty National Socialist gas chambers.

Because of the buzz, a scrubbed, buffed, injected, stretched, and actually pretty fine looking Hillary got herself an interview with Variety magazine, which is still one of the premier magazines in the entertainment world. Inevitably, Hillary blamed misogyny for her loss:

After “Hillary” premiered at Sundance, you spoke at the Q&A about the misogyny that women candidates face online, particularly women running for president. Why do you think there’s so much hatred for women who are seeking leadership positions?

It’s a great question. I don’t think it’s in any way limited to women trying to run for president. But because of the high visibility of women who try, misogyny that is directed not only to women themselves but to their supporters is so shocking. And I remember in 2016 — look, I have tough skin. I put myself out there. I was the one running. But what was said and done to my supporters, men and women — but predominantly women — who spoke for me or proclaimed their support for me, it was just so vile. And some of the groups, like Pantsuit Nation, they had 4 million members. And people were targeting individual members all over the country, insulting them and threatening them. So I’m seeing the same right now. Some of the organized efforts to undercut, demean, belittle the women who had been running and still are running in this election.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Postmodern Pursuit of Global Governance by Todd Huizinga

By on January 28th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/01/the-postmodern-pursuit-of-global-governance/

Todd Huizinga was a United States diplomat from 1992 to 2012 and is now director of International Outreach at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is author of The New Totalitarian Temptation (Encounter Books). He gave this paper to the Danube Institute, Budapest, in November 2010

We in the West are now living in a world in which our political differences are no longer based, as they once were, on different perspectives within a shared worldview, but rather on diametrically opposed presuppositions about first things: what is good, what is true and what it means to be human. The premise of a basically unchanging human nature embedded in tradition, religion, community and family—a fundamental component of the Western worldview that has grounded individual freedom and self-government for centuries—no longer commands the general allegiance of Americans or Europeans.

Indeed, progressives are committed to a diametrically opposed view: a radically secularist vision of the virtually unlimited flexibility of human nature according to each person’s choice, essentially independent of traditional institutions and social relations. Every day we are witnessing the results: once freedom of choice—the right to choose—has been exalted above all else, there remain no meaningful limits on the social pressure and governmental power that are now wielded to impose “choice” on everyone, whether they want it or not.

This manifests itself primarily in two ways. First, in the increasing polarisation within the nations of the West, and the weakening of our democratic freedoms as the progressive ideology takes root in our societies; and second in the conflict between globalism and national sovereignty that is roiling the trans-Atlantic partnership as the struggle intensifies between the EU’s globalist vision and America’s traditional concern for sovereignty.

First, my home country. In the US, our system of self-government is based on the recognition that certain things are unchangeably true, and thus that government must respect these truths in order to be just. As the Declaration of Independence says:

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Stronger Germany Could Save Europe Angela Merkel’s likely successor wants more defense spending and overseas deployments. By Walter Russell Mead

By on January 28th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-stronger-germany-could-save-europe-11580169200?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Hamburg

It’s time for Berlin to take a more assertive stance in world affairs—that’s the opinion of German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer is the heir apparent to Chancellor Angela Merkel and replaced her in 2018 as party chairman for the Christian Democratic Union. This soft-spoken woman, known as AKK, told me her views on Germany’s position in world politics in an interview here last week and a follow-up exchange of emails.

Germany, and for that matter Europe, can no longer go on in the old way, she said. In a new international reality marked by the “return of great-power competition for spheres of influence and supremacy,” Germany “cannot just wait for others to act. . . . We must develop our own concepts, present our own options. . . . It is our duty as Germans, and it is very much in our own interest, to join in these international debates, to drive them forward, to play a part in protecting the international order.”

Since becoming defense minister last summer, AKK has been making waves, most notably when she delivered a speech in Munich last fall that called on Germany to raise military spending gradually to 2% of gross domestic product and urged Germans to consider deployments as far afield as the Sahel and the Indo-Pacific. Germany already has about 1,000 troops in Mali as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission there.

In the cautious world of German foreign policy, these are radical ideas. After the terrible experiences of the 20th century, many Germans reject power politics. With the fall of the Soviet Union and German unification at the end of the Cold War, most Germans shared the American feeling that history had ended. Germany slashed military spending and focused on issues such as human rights and climate change. Many also believed that the European Union, with its massive consumer market and values-driven approach, would emerge as a major power in a peaceful and rule-driven world.

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