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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gaza Conundrum The sooner Israel rids itself of the Hamas menace, the better. Ari Lieberman

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273889/gaza-conundrum-ari-lieberman

Like an open sore that refuses to heel, Gaza continues to be a thorn in Israel’s side. Though things remain on simmer for now, a full scale conflagration against Hamas and its junior affiliate, Islamic Jihad, is inevitable. As if to underscore this point, on Thursday, Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, announced that his group’s rocket capabilities have improved, and threatened that Hamas would not hesitate to launch rockets at Tel Aviv if attacked. He also stated that Hamas-orchestrated protests along the Gaza border would continue and intensify. Tellingly, Sinwar noted that Hamas receives financial and military support from Iran and that but for Iranian assistance, Hamas would not have been able to improve its military capabilities to the level where it’s at today.

Israel is accustomed to such belligerent talk from its enemies, which is often more bark than bite. Nonetheless, Israel’s leaders have every reason to take these types of threats seriously. A miscalculation by Hamas can instantly trigger a wider conflict.

Hamas has two immediate goals. The first is to hold on to the reins of power at all costs. Hamas does this by controlling Gaza with an iron fist, brutally suppressing all forms of dissent. But the terror group also needs to pay the salaries of those who ensure the regime’s survival. To this end, it relies on cash handouts from entities like Qatar and Iran, as well as taxes on goods smuggled in tunnels between Gaza and northern Sinai, and other extortion schemes.

Hamas’s second goal is to maintain relevancy. Wider issues affecting the Mideast, such as the Shia-Sunni divide, Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, the Islamic State, and proxy wars in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya have regulated Gaza and the Palestinian issue at large to third tier. Hamas addresses this problem by causing disruption and mischief. To this end, Hamas employs various schemes to keep itself in the news cycle. But the terror group recognizes that it cannot push the envelope too far lest it incur the full brunt of the Israel Defense Forces and invite disaster upon itself.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

US Ambassador to Germany Appears At Counterprotest to Anti-Israel Rally Daniel Greenfield

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273905/us-ambassador-germany-appears-counterprotest-anti-daniel-greenfield

“Richard Grenell, America’s ambassador to Germany in the Trump era, is infuriating Europeans by standing up to Muslim anti-Semitism.”

Obama’s European ambassadors justified Islamic anti-Semitism.

 “A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Howard Gutman, Obama’s disgraced ambassador to Belgium, had argued.

Richard Grenell, America’s ambassador to Germany in the Trump era, is infuriating Europeans by standing up to Muslim anti-Semitism.

Here he is participating in a counterprotest to the Al Quds hate rally and urging Merkel to ban the Islamic terror group, Hezbollah.

Merkel appears to be less than enthusiastic.

When asked on Wednesday by The Jerusalem Post numerous times if the German government – in response to a demand by the nearly 100,000-member Central Council of Jews – plans to ban the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization, Merkel and Seehofer refused to answer.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Somalis have Changed Minneapolis By Sunny Lohman

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/somalis_have_changed_minneapolis.html

Everyone not lying to themselves predicted when the federal government under Bill Clinton – aided and abetted by Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief Minnesota — plopped 30,000 Somalis down into the midst of the kind, virtue-signaling, eager-to-help Midwesterners of Minneapolis (of which I am one) that it would lead to some grave consequences for our community.

Now, due to continuing refugee placements as well as chain migration there are an estimated 80,000 Somalis living in the Twin Cities metro area, or more like 79,000 if you subtract those who’ve left the country to join terrorist organizations like ISIS.

Anyhoo, here’s a week Minneapolitans had with their Somali neighbors last month:

On Wednesday, May 15th a couple of University students were attacked on campus at the East Bank Train station by two Somali thugs. It was an attempted robbery that the guys rebuffed sustaining injuries that required a hospital visit.

On Thursday, May 16th two Somalis burned down the pavilion at Lake Calhoun [or Lake Bde Maka Ska if you’re a virtue signaler) an eating and hanging out meeting place in the heart of the city enjoyed by generations of Americans around the prettiest city lake you’ve ever seen. This is in the most expensive neighborhood in Minneapolis.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Alone The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness. Kay S. Hymowitz

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-epidemic

Americans are suffering from a bad case of loneliness. The number of people in the United States living alone has gone through the studio-apartment roof. A study released by the insurance company Cigna last spring made headlines with its announcement: “Only around half of Americans say they have meaningful, daily face-to-face social interactions.” Loneliness, public-health experts tell us, is killing as many people as obesity and smoking. It’s not much comfort that Americans are not, well, alone in this. Germans are lonely, the bon vivant French are lonely, and even the Scandinavians—the happiest people in the world, according to the UN’s World Happiness Report—are lonely, too. British prime minister Theresa May recently appointed a “Minister of Loneliness.”

The hard evidence for a loneliness epidemic admittedly has some issues. How is loneliness different from depression? How much do living alone and loneliness overlap? Do social scientists know how to compare today’s misery with that in, say, the mid-twentieth century, a period that produced prominent books like The Lonely Crowd? Certainly, some voguish explanations for the crisis should raise skepticism: among the recent suspects are favorite villains like social media, technology, discrimination, genetic bad luck, and neoliberalism.

Still, the loneliness thesis taps into a widespread intuition of something true and real and grave. Foundering social trust, collapsing heartland communities, an opioid epidemic, and rising numbers of “deaths of despair” suggest a profound, collective discontent. It’s worth mapping out one major cause that is simultaneously so obvious and so uncomfortable that loneliness observers tend to mention it only in passing. I’m talking, of course, about family breakdown. At this point, the consequences of family volatility are an evergreen topic when it comes to children; this remains the subject of countless papers and conferences. Now, we should take account of how deeply the changes in family life of the past 50-odd years are intertwined with the flagging well-being of so many adults and communities.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Iran Puts Trump to the Test He’s restored U.S. credibility. Now he needs to maintain it. By Michael Makovsky

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-puts-trump-to-the-test-11559507350

President Trump’s Iran policy has so far been effective at keeping the regime off balance. He especially distinguished himself by defying conventional opinion and withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, and imposing painful economic sanctions, which have undercut Tehran’s finances and exacerbated internal pressures.

But American reliance on sanctions, which Iran has weathered in the past, signals an unwillingness for confrontation. Tehran is pushing back. First, it announced it would stop abiding by certain JCPOA restrictions on its nuclear program. Second, despite Mr. Trump’s warnings and swift deployment of U.S. assets to the region, Iran-backed forces sabotaged oil tankers off the Emirati coast and a Saudi pipeline, and launched a rocket that landed near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Third, Iran followed up with defiant rhetoric. Mr. Trump warned, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the end of Iran”—but eight days later he played down any chance of conflict, clarifying that “we’re not looking for regime change.” Tehran acted as if it had succeeded in calling the president’s bluff. “The Americans are unwilling and unable to carry out military action against us,” a military aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei asserted.

Deterrence requires Mr. Trump to maintain U.S. credibility. Otherwise, Iran will intensify its aggressive behavior and ratchet up its nuclear effort, making conflict likelier. Most immediately, the U.S. must retaliate with precise military action against critical Iranian assets. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

William Barr’s Fresh Air The AG is taking flak because he’s asking questions that others won’t.

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/william-barrs-fresh-air-11559510133

If you want to know why William Barr is under political attack, consider his interview last week with Jan Crawford of CBS News. It’s a humdinger, in which the Attorney General challenges the received wisdom about the investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.

Nearby we excerpt Mr. Barr’s comments about the behavior of former top FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe. Note how he disagrees with President Trump’s charge of “treason.” As the AG points out, the Constitution specifically defines treason as “only in levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

But note too that Mr. Barr takes seriously the bias displayed by FBI officials against Mr. Trump. And he calls out the press for a double standard in failing to be alarmed about a potential abuse of power by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in spying on an American presidential campaign.

“The fact that today people just seem to brush aside the idea that it is okay to, you know, to engage in these activities against a political campaign is stunning to me especially when the media doesn’t seem to think that it’s worth looking into,” Mr. Barr says. “They’re supposed to be the watchdogs of, you know, our civil liberties.” This is not something the press corps likes to hear about its own biases.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mueller must testify publicly to answer three critical questions Jonathan Turley

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/446457-mueller-must-testify-publicly-to-answer-three-critical-questions

In that twinkling zone between man and myth, Robert Mueller transcends the mundane. Even in refusing to reach a conclusion on criminal conduct, he is excused. As Mueller himself declared, we are to ask him no questions or expect any answers beyond his report. But his motivations as special counsel can only be found within an approved range that starts at “selfless” and ends at “heroic.” Representative Mike Quigley defended Mueller’s refusal to reach a conclusion as simply “protecting” President Trump in a moment of “extreme fairness.”

Yet, as I noted previously, Mueller’s position on the investigation has become increasingly conflicted and, at points, unintelligible. As someone who defended Mueller’s motivations against the unrelenting attacks of Trump, I found his press conference to be baffling, and it raised serious concerns over whether some key decisions are easier to reconcile on a political rather than a legal basis. Three decisions stand out that are hard to square with Mueller’s image as an apolitical icon. If he ever deigns to answer questions, his legacy may depend on his explanations.

Refusal to identify grand jury material

One of the most surprising disclosures made by Attorney General William Barr was that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein expressly told Mueller to submit his report with grand jury material clearly marked to facilitate the release of a public version. The Justice Department cannot release grand jury material without a court order. Mueller knew that. He also knew his people had to mark the material because they were in the grand jury proceedings.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Report: Nearly 90 Percent of Illegals Fail to Show Up for Court Hearings By Rick Moran

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-nearly-90-of-illegals-fail-to-show-up-for-court-hearings/

A report from the Justice Department on a pilot program to discover if illegal aliens applying for asylum actually showed up for their initial court hearing found that 90 percent of those who file asylum papers and are released into the interior of the country never show up.

Breitbart:

Since December 21, 2018, DHS  has released at least 190,500 border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the United States. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan  told Congress this month that those foreign nationals are eventually given work permits that allow them to take U.S. jobs while awaiting their asylum hearings.

In testimony before Congress this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said that the agency had recently conducted a pilot program with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to test how many recent illegal aliens would show up to their asylum hearings after being released into the U.S.

The results, an ICE official told Congress, were that about 87 percent of illegal aliens, or almost 9-in-10, recently released by DHS into the U.S. did not show up to their asylum hearings. With illegal aliens not showing up to their scheduled hearings, the ICE official said, the agency is then forced to grapple with attempting to locate and deport each illegal alien, an almost impossible task that strains federal resources.

This report flies in the face of other studies that show 65-70 percent of illegals showing up for court. But that information comes with two big caveats.

First, the most recent data is from 2016 — before this most recent tidal wave of asylum seekers began arriving. It should be noted that as the numbers of asylum seekers rose, the no-show rate in court rose as well. The significance is that there are two kinds of asylum seekers; those who show up at the border and report directly to immigration officials asking for U.S. protection and those who are caught entering the country illegally. The first kind is called an “affirmative” asylum request while the second group usually makes their plea for asylum during their court appearance. These are called “defensive” claims of asylum.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Making Sense of the New American Right Column: Keeping track of the Jacksonians, Reformicons, Paleos, and Post-liberals Matthew Continetti

By on June 2nd, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/columns/making-sense-of-the-new-american-right/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I like to start my classes on conservative intellectual history by distinguishing between three groups. There is the Republican Party, with its millions of adherents and spectrum of opinion from very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, and yes, liberal. There is the conservative movement, the constellation of single-issue nonprofits that sprung up in the 1970s—gun rights, pro-life, taxpayer, right to work—and continue to influence elected officials. Finally, there is the conservative intellectual movement: writers, scholars, and wonks whose journalistic and political work deals mainly with ideas and, if we’re lucky, their translation into public policy.

It’s a common mistake to conflate these groups. The Republican Party is a vast coalition that both predates and possibly will post-date the conservative movement. That movement has had mixed success in moving the party to the right, partly because of cynicism and corruption but also because politicians must, at the end of the day, take into account the shifting and often contradictory views of their constituents. The conservative intellectual movement exercises the least power of all. You could fit its members into a convention hall or, more likely, a cruise ship.

Ideas matter. But the relation of ideas to political action is difficult to measure and often haphazard. The line between shaping a politician’s rhetoric and decisions and merely reflecting them is awfully fuzzy. The conservative intellectual movement, in addition to generating excellent writing, has had seven real-world applications since its formation after the Second World War: originalism and supply side economics in the 1970s; welfare reform and crime policy in the 1980s and ’90s; educational choice and reform over the last two decades; James Burnham’s anti-Communist strategies that found expression in the Reagan Doctrine; and the counterinsurgency plan known as the “surge” that prevented the defeat of American forces in the second Iraq war. There have been other successes, for sure, but also plenty of setbacks. What’s important to remember is that liberals as well as Republicans, conservative activists, and conservative intellectuals contested every single one of these policies.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘David French–ism’ without David French By J. J. McCullough

By on June 2nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/david-french-ism-without-david-french/

French has been unfairly caricatured — but the caricature is worth defending.

Near as I can tell, the David French controversy revolves around allegations that the man is too much of an accommodating pragmatist on social issues. The charge is amusing to me, given that one of my defining experiences here at NR occurred when French denounced a column I wrote last year about the need for conservatives to pragmatically accommodate transgender Americans.

I don’t bear David any ill will over that. Conservatives can read our dueling articles and reach their own conclusions over whose case is more convincing. But I trust the episode does illustrate the degree to which the real-world David French is quite distinct from Sohrab Ahmari’s depiction in First Things: a man uncritically enthusiastic to accept the “pagan and libertine” so long as “traditional Christians [are] granted spaces in which to practice and preach what they sincerely believe” in return.

As Argentina’s longtime dictator Juan Perón entered his later years, many of his onetime followers sought to sever the increasingly unpopular president from the ideology he was associated with. “Perónism without Perón!” was their curious cry for revolution. Without implying any unflattering analogies, this idea occurred to me while reading Ahmari’s piece. “David French–ism” of the sort Ahmari angrily decries struck me as a perfectly defensible philosophy — even if David French himself may not be its best embodiment.

Many of the things Ahmari asserts French “sees” or “views” or “embodies” about the American political order are not French’s opinions, but the Constitution’s. It is that document, not French, that acknowledges the free exercise of religion as a fundamental American right, while also acknowledging the existence of many other liberties against which it must be balanced.

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