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Ruth King

POLITICS Comments turned off

Ocasio-Cortez realizes she said something stupid and reacts badly By Thomas Lifson

By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/ocasiocortez_realizes_she_said_something_stupid_and_reacts_badly.htm

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finally understands that her claim that we have only 12 years to save the world from global warming disaster was a ridiculous statement. Having been mocked by her many enemies, and unable to defend the absurdity, she is actually digging a deeper hole for herself, trying to maintain the self-righteousness that seems to power her drive for political power.

In a tweet Sunday morning, she implausibly claimed that the 12 years ’til doom prediction was “dry humor” and that the GOP is too stupid to grasp her wittiness:

This is a provable lie. She spoke in public last January about her claim of 12 years to escape doom, and nobody laughed.  Her audience clearly did not think it was a joke, and she did not pause for laughter at the punch line.  Rather, she was greeted by applause:And she doubled down in April on Instagram, without a trace of a smile or humor. (view here).  The only mention of laughter was her explicit denial of any humor in the situation:For everyone who wants to make a joke about that, you may laugh, but your grandkids will not.

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HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Immigration Offenses Topped List of Federal Crimes in FY 2018 By Mairead McArdle

By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/immigration-offenses-topped-list-of-federal-crimes-in-fy-2018/

Immigration offenses became the biggest category of federal crime in fiscal year 2018, surpassing the number of drug offenses.

Crimes relating to immigration comprised 34.4 percent of all federal sentencing cases, an increase from last year’s 30 percent, according to the United States Sentencing Commission’s annual report. While the vast majority of crimes in the U.S., including most violent crimes, are dealt with at the state level, immigration offenses stand out as as category under the purview of federal authorities.

96.3 percent of the 23,883 immigration cases recorded in the report involved Hispanics, 92.7 percent of them male. Approximately 94.7 percent of the cases led to prison sentences, and 13,500 led to supervised release. Only 866 cases involved a defendant under 21 years old.

“In fiscal year 2018, 54.3 percent of all offenders were Hispanic, 21.2 percent were white, 20.6 percent were black, and 3.8 percent were of another race. Non-U.S. citizens accounted for 42.7 percent of all federal offenders,” the report stated.

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MEDIA, POLITICS Comments turned off

CNN Fact Checks Tlaib’s Holocaust Comments: ‘She Can’t Rewrite History’ By Jack Crowe

By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cnn-fact-checks-tlaibs-holocaust-comments-she-cant-rewrite-history/

CNN’s John King corrected Representative Rashida Tlaib’s (D., Mich.) revisionist history of the Holocaust on Monday, pointing out that Palestinian leaders supported the German extermination of Jews and violently resisted the creation of a Jewish state.

“It was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity. Their existence, in many ways, had been wiped out,” Tlaib said last week on the Yahoo News Skullduggery podcast. “I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.”

“[Tlaib] ignored the fact that Palestinian leaders at the time allied themselves with Hitler and that total war is how the Arab world reacted to the declaration of Israeli independence,” King said Monday. “She can’t rewrite that history and you can’t project revisionist history,” he added before introducing his guest, Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to six secretaries of state, who castigated Tlaib for enflaming divisions by resorting to ahistorical Holocaust references.

“They were considering extermination of the entire Jewish community there as well,” Miller said of Palestinian leaders who believed German forces might arrive in the region after defeating allied forces in North Africa. “So this was ill-timed, ill-advised, and I think it clearly is simply going to antagonize and polarize the already polarized debate in Washington.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Against Progressive Plans to Tinker with the Senate By Jay Cost

By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/progressive-plans-change-senate-response-jamelle-bouie/

I n a provocative Sunday opinion piece for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie takes aim at the United States Senate. It is “is highly undemocratic and strikingly unrepresentative” institution, dominated by a “Republican coalition of rural whites, exurban whites and anti-tax suburbanites.” This needs to be changed — because everybody knows it is un-American to oppose higher taxes!

Bouie offers an outside-the-box idea. Rather than change the Senate via constitutional amendment, progressives should look to increase the number of Democrats in the Senate by giving representation in the Senate to non-state units—“Washington, D.C., the Atlantic territories, the Pacific territories and the Native tribes.”

Normally, I do not write columns responding to other columns. But Bouie’s piece is typical of the progressive Left’s frustration with the Senate, as well as of an inability to reckon with its role in our constitutional regime. For these reasons, it merits a thorough examination.

For starters, full disclosure: I get it. The Senate is not democratic, and in a republic, that is problematic. All else being equal, I would agree with Bouie. But all else is not equal. This is in fact a very old debate, whose context demands some thoughtful appreciation before slashing changes are made. Why do you think the Constitutional Convention dragged on through the entire summer of 1787? James Madison, James Wilson, and other federalists from the large states insisted on a fully majoritarian system. But the small-state representatives, including John Dickinson and Roger Sherman, said, No dice — you want our assent to this Constitution, we need guarantees.

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ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

David Harsanyi :Rashida Tlaib’s Lies Remind Us Why Israel Must Exist The Palestinian tragedy is self-perpetuating, led by those unable to come to terms with history.

By on May 13th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/13/rashida-tlaibs-lies-remind-us-why-israel-must-exist/

During a recent SkullDuggery Podcast on Yahoo!, Rep Rashida Tlaib dropped a few historically illiterate thoughts on the Holocaust and Israel. None of it was especially surprising to anyone who’s followed far-left or Palestinian rhetoric for any amount of time.

For Tlaib, the Holocaust was primarily a tragedy for the Palestinian people, who were unable to repel Jews’ immigration and stop the formation of a Jewish state. Her words are a helpful reminder of not only why Israel exists, but also that the tragedy of the Palestinian people is neither the fault of the Jews, nor the British, nor the Holocaust.

Tlaib offers two important revisionist claims: The first revolves around the contention that Palestinian Arabs were not only welcoming of the Jews, but actually sacrificed their own dignity and lives so Jews could be safe. The second revolves around the notion that Jews were, or would be, safe under Palestinian rule. Here is how she put it:

I think two weeks ago or so we celebrated, or just took a moment I think in our country to remember the Holocaust. There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports… all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them. And so, when I think about a one-state, I think about the fact that why can’t we do it in a better way? And I don’t want people to do it in the name of Judaism, just like I don’t want people to use Islam in that way. It has to be done in a way of values around equality and around the fact that you shouldn’t oppress others so that you can feel free and safe. Why can’t we all be free and safe together?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The doggedness of William Barr The Democrats won’t give up on impeachment without a fight. Trump and his AG will give them just that Roger Kimball

By on May 13th, 2019

https://spectator.us/doggedness-william-barr/

I am embarrassed to admit that when William Barr became Donald Trump’s Attorney General a couple of months ago, I did not remember that he had been here, done that as George H. W. Bush’s Attorney General back in the previous century.

They did have television back then, however, and students of history, as well as students of politics, can profit from watching Barr’s original confirmation hearings, presided over – drum roll, please – by a younger, much more acute Joe Biden, who, like the poor, we seem to have always with us. It’s a long clip, but very much worth sampling, especially for the adroit, no-nonsense performance of William Barr and mildly challenging but still respectful performance of Joe Biden.

What a difference a few decades make! William Barr, though he has gained a few pounds, is still the razor sharp and amusingly unflappable character he was in 1991. Joe Biden – well, charity requires that we draw a veil over that subject. Let’s just say that President Trump’s epithet of ‘Sleepy Joe’ (or ‘SleepyCreepy Joe’) is generous.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why was FBI so wrong in Trump-Russia wiretap warrant? by Byron York

By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-was-fbi-so-wrong-in-trump-russia-wiretap-warrant

A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI’s secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They also argued over whether the warrant adequately informed the court that the dossier was, in fact, a work of political opposition research, rather than legitimate intelligence gathering.

The arguments ended in impasse, with defenders and detractors set in their positions.

Now, however, we have new evidence, in the form of the Mueller report, to evaluate the Page FISA application. We can ask: Was the information the FBI relied on true? Were the FBI’s representations to the court accurate? The answers do not bode well for the bureau.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Deep Throat and Donald Trump By Sebastian Gorka

By on May 13th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/deep-throat-and-donald-trump/

You have to give it to Democrats; they are organized.

As soon as Attorney General Bill Barr refused to commit a crime by releasing a fully unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, the Democrats’ talking-point team was drafting the mandatory soundbites.

In a flurry of interviews over the past few weeks, everyone has been on message: If they work for, or are related to President Donald Trump, just jail them.

Whether it’s the ongoing calls for the attorney general to be imprisoned or Da Nang Dick Blumenthal (D-Conn.)—the only senator in office who lied about serving in Vietnam—calling for the imprisonment of the president’s son or whether Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saying she doesn’t have enough prison cells to lock up all the “criminals” in the Trump administration, the refrain has been remarkably consonant.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media Wounded By Victor Davis Hanson

By on May 13th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/the-media-wounded/

There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on.

Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher agendas of social justice, identity politics, “equality” and diversity. To the degree a news account is expanded or ignored, praised or blasted, depends on its supposed utility to the effort to fundamentally transform the country into something unlike its founding.

At the recent third president-less White House Correspondents’ Dinner, passive-aggressive journalists whined that they were victims, standing on the barricades against the all-powerful, all-evil—and all absent—Donald Trump. If the attempt was to return professionalism to the evening and eschew the pathological celebrity obsessions of the past, the result was only more confirmation of the self-referential and narcissistic culture of the Washington press corps.

Why should we believe reporters suddenly worried about ethics, and free inquiry and speech?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European elections 2019: What date does the UK vote – and why are we even taking part? Peter Foster

By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/european-parliament-elections-2019-date-does-uk-vote-even/

With the date for the European Elections coming closer, we take a look at when the vote is, why we are still expected to take part and what it means for British MEPs.

Here’s everything you need to know ahead of polling day in May.
When is the vote?

The polls will take place on May 23 2019.
Why is the UK taking part?

Because Brexit has now been delayed for six months, with a new date set for October 31 2019, which means the UK must now participate in EU polls.
Seems crazy if the UK is leaving anyway. Can EU polls still be avoided?

Yes, but the timetable is very tight indeed. Leading Cabinet members are determined to avoid holding the elections, but that will mean Parliament agreeing on the Withdrawal Agreement well before the end of April.

The EU are insistent that the Withdrawal Agreement must be approved and all of the implementing legislation must be passed to avoid the need to hold EU elections.

Given the generally low expectations of an imminent breakthrough in cross-party talks, the overwhelming likelihood now is that the UK will take part in the polls.

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