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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence By Thomas Lifson

By on July 29th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/trump_to_nominate_rep_john_ratcliffe_to_replace_dan_coats_as_director_of_national_intelligence.html

The appointment of a former US Attorney, who is also a master of the details of the attempted plot to oust Trump, signals that the “investigate the investigators” phase of the biggest political scandal in history is moving into high gear.

Jonathan Swan of Axios published a scoop, now confirmed by presidential tweet, that Rep. John Ratcliffe will be nominated to replace Dan Coast as the Director of National Intelligence. This almost certainly means that the “investigate the investigators” phase of the biggest political scandal in American history is going to get very serious, with the intelligence community cooperating rather than stonewalling.

Two guys who like each other. A lot.

Ratcliffe has deeply impressed me with his questioning of witnesses and comments on television interviews. He is right up there with Devin Nunes in terms of his mastery of the details of the plot.

Swan writes:

President Trump announced on Twitter Sunday that he will nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, confirming Axios’ earlier reporting that Ratcliffe was favored for the job. Coats will leave office on August 15.

Behind the scenes: Trump was thrilled by Ratcliffe’s admonishment of former special counsel Robert Mueller in last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing. “The special counsel’s job, nowhere does it say that you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence or that the special counsel report should determine whether or not to exonerate him,” Ratcliffe, a former prosecutor, said to Mueller.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fossil Fuel Divestment versus Institutional Neutrality: A North Carolina Test Case By Stanley Kurtz

By on July 29th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fossil-fuel-divestment-versus-institutional-neutrality-a-north-carolina-test-case/

An important test of “institutional neutrality” — a pillar of campus free speech — is now playing out in North Carolina, where the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA) recently chose to divest a portion of its endowment from companies selling “fossil fuels” (coal, oil, and natural gas).

Institutional neutrality means that universities should avoid taking official political stands at the institutional level, such as divestment from fossil fuels, since such actions tend to pressure faculty and students holding contrary views into silence. This is particularly true for public universities such as UNCA, for they belong to every citizen of the state.

What makes the UNCA test case especially important is that two years ago North Carolina passed HB 527, one of the first comprehensive campus free-speech laws in the country. HB 527 not only affirms institutional neutrality as a foundational principle of campus free speech at UNC schools, it mandates that an annual report by a committee of the UNC Board of Governors (which oversees the entire state university system) weigh in on any “difficulties, controversies, or successes in maintaining a posture of administrative and institutional neutrality with regard to political or social issues.”

The question now is how the annual report, due in September, will handle this decision by a public university to throw in its lot with the fossil-fuel-divestment movement. More broadly, the question is whether the UNC Board of Governors will act to halt and reverse this clear violation of institutional neutrality by UNC Asheville. Students and administrators at UNCA intend their move to pressure the entire UNC system to divest. That means the UNC Board of Governors’ response to UNCA’s divestment bandwagon will have an enormous impact on the survival of institutional neutrality at every public campus in the state.

Students and faculty at public universities have every right to take whatever stand they like on issues like fossil-fuel divestment, climate change, and the Green New Deal. It is precisely the neutrality of public universities at the official institutional level that supports and guarantees the ability of individual faculty and students to freely speak their minds on these issues. Public universities shouldn’t have an official political line. We wouldn’t tolerate a public university endorsing Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump for president. Nor should a public university throw its official institutional weight behind a thoroughly political movement whose aims are the subject of active, widespread, and unresolved public debate, particularly when state law cites the principle of institutional neutrality as an essential component of campus free speech.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Elizabeth Kantor: The jaw-dropping account of the personal life of Harvard Law professor Bruce Hay is yet another morality tale about the utter chaos fueled by our late-term sexual revolution world.

By on July 29th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/29/lesbian-transgender-partner-wants-hook-run/

We’re hurtling to hell in a handbasket so fast it makes you think of those calculus problems where you have to find the increase in the rate of increase. “We went from ‘Bake the cake, bigot’ to ‘Wax my [testicles], bigot’ really fast,” to quote Erick Erickson’s snappy comment on the “transgender woman” who is demanding that a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal force female beauticians to handle his junk or be driven out of the bikini waxing business.

That wasn’t even the most telling story to emerge that week from the fever swamp that is our culture in the Year of Our Lord 2019. The highly competitive prize for the culture-off-the-rails news of last week goes to the jaw-dropping account of the personal life of Harvard Law professor Bruce Hay, as told by Kera Bolonick in an article that ran on social media under the headline “The Harvard Professor and the Paternity Trap.”

That doesn’t even begin to do justice to the story. Hay’s tortuous relationship with a purported lesbian and her main squeeze, a “transgender woman,” who seem to have set out with dogged energy to destroy Hay’s already rather unconventional relationship with his three children and their mother, beggars belief. Hay and his children’s mother were no longer legally married, and two of their three children together were conceived after their divorce, but they were living and raising the kids together. They had a mutual understanding—or, rather, one that turned out not to be so mutual—that they would not become sexually involved with other people.

According to Bolonick, not only did these adventurers convince Hay that he was the father of a child who turned out not to be his, he was hurled into Title IX hell on his campus by allegations of rape and abuse. He is still barred from the classroom at Harvard. Also—this takes the cake—the couple apparently stole his house while he was on vacation.

Well, as Bertie Wooster frequently remarks, it just goes to show that half the world doesn’t know how the other three-quarters live. Reading about Hay, it’s hard for those of us with more conventional love lives to avoid the Pharisee-and-the-Publican trap: “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.”

But the most fascinating part of the story is a point of commonality, not of contrast.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Condemning The Racist And Anti-Semitic Views Of The Reverend Al Sharpton By Joe Scarborough

By on July 29th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/29/condemning-reverend-al-sharpton/

The text of this resolution, sponsored by Joe Scarborough, was introduced 03/08/2000.

Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as “bloodsucking [J]ews”, and “Jew bastards”;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as “white interlopers” and “diamond merchants”;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl;

Whereas, to this day, the Reverend Al Sharpton has refused to accept responsibility and expresses no regret for defaming Mr. Pagones;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton’s vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith, and in particular, a Jewish landlord, arising from a simple landlord-tenant dispute with a black tenant, incited widespread violence, riots, and the murder of five innocent people;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton’s fierce demagoguery incited violence, riots, and murder in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, following the accidental death of a black pedestrian child hit by the motorcade of Orthodox Rabbi Menachem Schneerson;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest in the Crown Heights neighborhood and marched next to a protester with a sign that read, “The White Man is the Devil”;

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has insulted members of the Jewish faith by challenging Jews to violence and stating to Jews to “pin down” their yarmulkes; and

Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has practiced the politics of racial division and made inflammatory remarks against whites by characterizing the death
of Amadou Diallo as a “racially motivated police `assassination”:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the Congress–

(1) condemns the practices of the Reverend Al Sharpton, which seek to divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion;

(2) expresses its outrage over the violence that has resulted due to the Reverend Al Sharpton’s incendiary words and actions; and

(3) fervently urges elected officials and public servants, who have condoned and legitimized the Reverend Al Sharpton’s incendiary words and actions, to publicly denounce and condemn such racist and anti-Semitic views.

(Hat tip @ReaganBattalion)

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islamic Terrorists Boko Haram Kill at Least 23 Funeral Mourners By Stephen Kruiser

By on July 29th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/islamic-terrorists-boko-haram-kill-at-least-23-funeral-mourners/

Boko Haram — aka “The Deadliest Islamic Terrorist Group That Almost No One Talks About” — is at it again, this time opening fire on a crowd of funeral mourners in Nigeria’s Borno state.

The number of casualties is unclear, but this is from one of the first reports:

That number could be much higher, according to the BBC:

Eyewitnesses say militants on motorbikes and in vans opened fire on mourners in a village on the outskirts of the state capital, Maiduguri.

The death toll could be as high as 65, AFP news agency reports.

There has been an increase in attacks by Boko Haram and other Islamist groups in Nigeria and across the region.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and more than two million displaced over the past decade of conflict.

Despite being perhaps the most frightening and murderous Islamic terror faction in the past several years, Boko Haram almost flies under the media radar relative to how prolifically evil it is.

They prey on the most vulnerable, so slaughtering funeral-goers is really nothing out of the ordinary for these monsters. When they are not kidnapping children, they are burning them alive.

The BBC also notes that the group “has splintered into competing factions” in the past few years yet still remains very active.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Omar: The ‘Blame is on Us’ for ‘Acceleration’ of Suffering in Iran, Venezuela By Nicholas Ballasy

By on July 29th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/omar-the-blame-is-on-us-for-acceleration-of-suffering-in-iran-venezuela/

Rep. Ilhan Omar said the “blame” for the “acceleration” of poor conditions in Iran and Venezuela is on the United States because of the economic sanctions the government has imposed against those countries.

“The regime in Venezuela is to be blamed for this condition but the acceleration of these conditions, that blame is on us and the same is true for Iran,” Omar said at the recent Netroots conference in Philadelphia. “So if we do want to be a helpful ally to people who are suffering around the world then we cannot continue to cause an acceleration in their suffering.”

Other nations have imposed sanctions on the Maduro regime in Venezuela including Canada, Panama, Mexico, the European Union and Switzerland. The United Nations sanctions against Iran were lifted in 2016 but the Trump administration imposed new sanctions after it decided to withdraw from the nuclear deal.

“There is space for us to use sanctions to move a country to do what we want it to do but these are not the kind of sanctions we impose on countries we do not like, right, countries we don’t like — it’s leaders, we don’t like its values or we don’t think they are our values so we put crippling sanctions on them — that does not change any behavior in that country,” Omar said at the conference.   CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Attack on Baltimore Doesn’t Go Far Enough John Merline

By on July 29th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/29/trumps-attack-on-baltimore-doesnt-go-far-enough/

Say what you want about President Trump’s Twitter habits, he has a way of suddenly bringing an issue to the surface that people have long known about, but never wanted to confront. The only problem with his latest tweetstorm about Baltimore is that he hasn’t gone far enough.

On Friday, Trump attacked Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, who had been complaining about conditions at the border, by saying “his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous.” Trump called it “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

He’s right about the rats. Last year, the pest-control service Orkin rated Baltimore as one of the “rattiest cities,“ behind Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

Naturally, Trump’s tweets are being labeled as racist. Never mind that Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders was saying far worse things about the city a few years ago, when he said that when you go to west Baltimore you “would think you were in a Third World country.” 

Trump, meanwhile, extended his attack to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home town of San Francisco. 

He should widen his lens even further. 

Take a look at the eight other cities that beat Baltimore on Orkin’s rattiest cities list. What do they all have in common? We’ll, let’s see:

Chicago hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1931. Philadelphia last saw a Republican mayor in 1952, Detroit in 1962. San Francisco has been Democrat-controlled since 1964. Washington, D.C., has never had a Republican mayor.

In Los Angeles, Democrats have run the city in all but eight of the past 58 years, in New York, it’s eight in the past 74 (not counting John Lindsay, who switched parties while in office). Cleveland’s been run by Democrats in all but 16 of the past 78 years.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Will The Global Warming Hysterics Never Tire Of Being Wrong? J. Frank Bullitt

By on July 29th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/29/will-the-global-warming-hysterics-never-tire-of-being-wrong/

Prince Charles’ recent pronouncement that we have only 18 months to save the planet from man-made global warming was followed up by a BBC report telling an identical tale. (Is there something in the Thames?) Nothing new here, though. The same wild, irresponsible guesses have been made for decades, and so far none has been right.

“Now it seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges,” BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath wrote last week with great certitude.

“Observers recognize that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.”

The year 2020, McGrath continued, “is a firm deadline” because “one of the world’s top climate scientists … eloquently addressed” the danger in 2017.

We’ve had “firm” deadlines before. Nothing happened. But we’re supposed to believe this one is really “firm.” That it can’t be ignored. Forget all those previous predictions of doom, they tell us, because this time they have it right. And maybe the window is not even 18 months. Those grand ruminators at Think Progress are sure we have only 14 months.

While the alarmists are busy today foretelling the coming climate disaster, they’ve conveniently forgotten the encyclopedic catalog of failed predictions. They just delete them from memory much the way that Moscow erased historical figures whose existence reflected poorly on the Soviet way, or displeased the thugs in power.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: ABOVE AND BENEATH THE LAW

By on July 29th, 2019

The left is always in high dudgeon. After the Mueller soap opera, the hue and cry was  ” no one is above the law.” The no one referenced is the President. Natch.

What about those millions of illegal residents and the “sanctuary” groupies, including legislators who advocate and abet breaking immigration laws?

I guess they are beneath the law…..rsk

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Food Labeling Follies By Henry I. Miller

By on July 29th, 2019

https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/M7HMpG

California’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL) recently made it official: Your morning cup of coffee won’t give you cancer. Next week’s newsflash probably will be, swallowing an orange seed doesn’t cause a tree to grow in your stomach.

After more than a year of legal wrangling, OAL signed off on a proposed rule exempting coffee from Proposition 65, a decades-old voter-approved measure that requires warning labels on products that contain chemicals the state has deemed potentially carcinogenic. So that means cancer warning labels and the universally ignored coffee shop warnings can be removed at long last.

That’s good news for anyone who was actually worried. But this the whole silly struggle over coffee warnings highlights an explosion of exaggerated food fears, a bureaucracy run amok, and the baleful influence of trial lawyers who have generated over $500 million in settlement payments for Proposition 65 nuisance lawsuits (not including awards from cases that went to trial).

The public never faced a real risk of coffee related cancer, of course. But prodded by activists and lawyers, California’s Office of Environmental Health and Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) wildly overstated the risks of a natural substance called acrylamide that’s found in many cooked and roasted foods, including french fries, potato chips, bread, cookies, breakfast cereals—and coffee. It ignored the assessments of the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and more than 100 studies showing coffee is safe and instead followed the dubious lead of a little known and completely unaccountable international organization called the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

IARC, which is known to do the bidding of trial lawyers and which relied on questionable laboratory studies in animals, classified acrylamide as a “probable carcinogen.” In the real world, adults with the highest acrylamide exposure could consume 160 times as much as they now do and still not reach a level that toxicologists think would cause tumors in mice. Drowning in coffee, in short, is a greater risk than contracting cancer from it.

Consumers need useful, scientifically accurate, and truthful information about the possible health effects of the foods we eat, but this is not the way to get it. No one viewing this pseudo-controversy over coffee could conclude that Proposition 65 and OEHHA served the public well. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times predicted last year, the opposite is true. Millions of coffee drinkers simply ignored the warnings (and added what some trial lawyer would likely argue are dangerous levels of cream and sugar to boot).

Thus, we’ve reached the point where we need warnings about food warning labels, because they’ve become so confusing, complicated, and uninformative that the most rational course of action is to ignore them.

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