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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bill Barr and the Law vs. The Lie Thomas McArdle

By on May 4th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/02/bill-barr-and-the-law-vs-the-lie/

Attorney General William Barr in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday was a living, breathing representation of the Constitution of the United States.

At one point during five hours that included a shower of insults from Senate Democrats, he put it all in a nutshell: special counsel Robert Mueller’s “work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general,” Barr said, pointing out that as AG he “effectively overrode the regulations, used discretion, to lean as far forward as I could to make that public.”

As Barr added, “The job of the Justice Department is now over; that determines whether or not there’s a crime. The report is now in the hands of the American people. Everyone can decide for themselves. There’s an election in 18 months. That’s a very democratic process. But we’re out of it. And we have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinian Leaders and Inconvenient Truths by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on May 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14167/palestinians-inconvenient-truths

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas understood that he had made a grave error in calling out his Arab brothers for their tightfistedness. This was a massive mistake because his Arab brothers do not tolerate any form of criticism. For them, Abbas should only be criticizing Israel and the US.

This is the old Palestinian blame game: always make Israel or the U.S. appear responsible for the suffering you inflict on your own people.

Like most Palestinians, Abbas is well aware that the Arab states are no longer willing to serve as a cash machine for ingrates. Under the current circumstances, the Palestinians are more likely to succeed in cajoling money from duped Western donors than from their loving brothers. From the Palestinian leaders’ point of view, however, this is an inconvenient truth best hidden from their people.

The Arab states continue to lie to the Palestinians. At the last meeting of Arab foreign ministers in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, the Arabs “affirmed their commitment to support the budget of the state of Palestine by activating the resolution of the Arab summit in Tunisia to provide a $100 million safety net [to the Palestinians] each month.”

The Arab foreign ministers announced their decision after listening to a speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who complained that his government was facing a financial crisis because of Israeli and US measures.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Standing Against Psychiatry’s Crazes By Abigail Shrier *****

By on May 4th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/standing-against-psychiatrys-crazes-11556920766

In 1979 Dr. Paul McHugh closed the sex-change clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the ’80s he testified against phony ‘recovered memories.’ He hasn’t given up the fight.

You might have heard this joke: A man in a car gets a call from his wife. “Honey, be careful,” she says. “A car is going the wrong way on the highway.” He replies: “It’s not just one car. It’s hundreds of them!”

If it were a psychiatrist joke, Paul McHugh, 87, could be that driver. A professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a tenacious skeptic of the crazes that periodically overtake his specialty, Dr. McHugh has often served as psychiatry’s most outspoken critic. Either he’s crazy, or all the other psychiatrists are.

The best-known, and most controversial, decision of his professional life is newly relevant—and recently reversed. In 1979, as psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he shut down the Gender Identity Clinic, which performed sex-change operations. In his view, the hospital had “wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it,” as he wrote in 2004. In 2017 the clinic was reopened as the Center for Transgender Health, performing what it now calls “gender-affirming surgeries.” Its medical-office coordinator, Mellissa Noyes, told me “the demand is massive.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Best of All Possible Government Ministries by Mark Steyn

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9346/the-best-of-all-possible-government-ministries

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai, is the driving force between government reforms aimed at making the United Arab Emirates the “best country in the world” by 2021, which is certainly faster than, say, the US Congress or Mrs May’s cabinet could pull it off.

So last week His Highness launched a new government ministry, with the inspired name of the Ministry of Possibilities. “The word impossible does not exist in our dictionary,” he declared. He could well be right on that – his dictionary’s in Arabic, after all.

The Ministry of Possibilities will have four subsidiary departments, including the Department of Behavioral Rewards (to be headed by Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif) and the Department of Anticipatory Services (to be headed by Ohoud bint Khalfan al Roumi, Minister of State for Happiness and Wellbeing). These are ingenious names of government departments for those of us who come from countries with dreary ministries like treasury and foreign affairs.

Obama should have moved Hillary to the Department of Anticipatory Services (run out of the Clinton Foundation) and Justin Trudeau should have punished Jody Wilson-Raybould by moving her from Justice to the Department of Behavioral Rewards.On the other hand, the Ministry of Anticipatory Behavior would make a grand name for Theresa May’s new Internet thought-crimes apparat.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Let Them Speak Attempts by Jewish groups to stop a panel of anti-Israel speakers at UMass are misguided and bound to backfire By K.C. Johnson

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/284319/let-them-speak

Several Jewish students at the University of Massachusetts, UMass, have filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts state court seeking to block the school from hosting a May 4 panel that includes Linda Sarsour, Marc Lamont Hill, The Nation sportswriter Dave Zirin, and British singer Roger Waters. The students are right to draw attention to the noxious views of the speakers and the support for anti-Israel extremism within their school’s own administration. But they are wrong, and perhaps dangerously so, to mount a legal case that relies on shutting down speech by equating it to a form of intimidation. That stance not only pits them against the deep, and mainstream, American tradition of defending free expression, but it also legitimates a set of ideas that will be used against Jewish groups who, as a minority on campus, are especially reliant on the First Amendment.

An organization called Not Backing Down had invited the quartet, and two UMass academic departments—Communication, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies—found the Sarsour-Hill-Waters message significant enough to co-sponsor the event.

News of the panel has generated widespread condemnation from local and national Jewish organizations. The ADL’s regional director, for instance, wrote to the UMass chancellor to express concerns about the program “featuring speakers who engage in rhetoric that demonizes the State of Israel and seeks to marginalize its supporters,” raising “significant consternation among Jewish students and many others on campus and in the community.” Dozens of pro-Israel organizations added their concerns, though they made clear they were “not asking that this event be shut down.”

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BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When Obama’s ego blew out of his earsBy Monica Showalter

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/when_obamas_ego_blew_out_of_his_ears.html

We all saw the famous picture from the Obama administration on the day after President Trump was elected president in 2016. But now it’s coming out about just how bad it was at the top, according to a new book cited by Fox News.

Former President Obama took President Trump’s win and Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 as a personal insult, according to a newly updated book.

The former president was “shocked” by the election results and felt the American people had turned on him, The Washington Examiner reported, citing New York Times correspondent Peter Baker’s book “Obama: The Call of History.” It was originally published in 2017. He was also reportedly frustrated by Hillary Clinton’s “soulless” campaign after believing his legacy “was in safe hands.”

Personal insult? As if he didn’t start it (and keep at it), with his ‘clinging to guns and religion’ quote, one of his most famous? As if his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton, didn’t refer to Americans in less than coastal places as ‘deplorables’?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pompeo: Omar’s Venezuela Comments ‘Ignorant’ and ‘Disgusting’ By Mairead McArdle

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mike-pompeo-ilhan-omars-venezuela-comments-ignorant-and-disgusting/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday evening that he finds Representative Ilhan Omar’s comments blaming the U.S. for the political crisis in Venezuela “disgusting.”

“The nicest thing I can say is, it is unbelievable ignorance. It’s just factually wrong,” Pompeo told Fox News. “The problems in Venezuela have been years in the making. It’s been a socialist regime, first with Chavez now with Maduro. And for a member of Congress, who, frankly — one who sits on an important national-security committee — to make a statement blaming America first in this way, it’s not only ignorant, it’s disgusting.”

Omar, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked Wednesday by PBS’s Democracy Now! about the “U.S.-supported coup attempt against President Maduro,” to which the Minnesota Democrat responded that America’s push for regime change in Venezuela does not help the country’s citizens.

“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has [sic] kind of helped lead [to] the devastation in Venezuela,” Omar said. “And we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI Official’s Testimony Raises New Questions about Surveillance of Trump Campaign By Eric Felten

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/fbi-official-testimony-surveillance-trump-campaign/

Deputy assistant director Jonathan Moffa’s testimony, which has been obtained exclusively by National Review, suggests there was more going on than has yet been admitted.

The deputy assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jonathan Moffa, was involved with the Russia–Trump investigation from the start. He was asked, in a closed-door Capitol Hill interview on August 24, 2018, to describe his role: “I was the section chief over counterintelligence analysis during the period of the election,” Moffa told lawmakers and staff. “And as a result, I had analysts who reported to me who supported the full range of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigations and counterespionage investigations during that period. So in a sense, if there’s a Russian-election-related investigation underway in the division at that point, personnel reporting to me are a part of it.”

Moffa’s congressional interview was private, and no transcript has been released. But National Review has obtained a copy. The interview transcript reveals that the FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources and other counterintelligence assets was far more extensive than has previously been acknowledged.

Much of the questioning of Moffa was done by Robert Parmiter, the chief counsel for the Republican staff on the Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. He asked Moffa about August 2016 text messages between Moffa and FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was putting together a meeting to discuss the initial organization of the investigation. Even at that early date, Strzok specified that they needed to discuss the use of “CHS” and “liaison.”

Parmiter asked about the acronym CHS: “What does that stand for?”

Moffa replied: “Confidential human source.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Sharia Truth and the ‘Progressive Muslim’ Feminist [on Saadia Yacoob; incl. Jonathan Brown] by Andrew Harrod

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/58387/sharia-truth-and-the-progressive-m

As a “Muslim feminist scholar,” Williams College Assistant Professor of Religion Saadia Yacoob has a “very complicated relationship” with her Islamic faith, as her Duke University dissertation explains. This research, the basis for an April 3 presentation at Georgetown University’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), reveals the chasm between her “progressivism” and historic Islamic orthodoxy.

The leftist Jewish publication The Forward wrote over 15 years ago that Yacoob is a founder of the Progressive Muslims Network, whose members “appear to be working toward a new Islam.” She was a “heterosexual ally of Al-Fatiha,” a now defunct “national organization of gay Muslims.” Recently she has helped found the Feminist Islamic Troublemakers of North America (FITNA).

These biographical facts reflect the personal faith conflicts of Yacoob, a Pakistani-born woman who grew up in America, as noted in her dissertation:

As a Muslim woman raised in a devout and religious family that cultivated in me the love for my religious heritage as well as independence and confidence as a woman, I found certain aspects of that tradition oppressive as a woman, creating a sense of alienation.

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HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the American Jewish Press :Alex Grobman

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://thejewishvoiceandopinion.com/the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-in-the-american-jewish-press/

On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of Jewish resistance in German-occupied Poland undertaken to oppose the Nazis’ final effort to transport the remaining 55,000-60,000 Jews in the ghetto to extermination camps, began.

The effort to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto had begun after the summer of 1942, when the German Nazis deported more than a quarter of a million Jews to be murdered in Treblinka.

On April 19, 1943, the ghetto refused to surrender to the Nazi police commander SS- Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop.

First Report

The first news of the ghetto uprising was published three days later, on April 22, on the front pages of the New York Times and the Yiddish daily Forward.

The Times transmitted a dispatch from the Associated Press in Stockholm, Sweden, which reported that, one night earlier, April 21, the secret Polish radio had appealed from Poland for help after which “suddenly, the station went dead.”

The AP report continued, “The broadcast, as heard here, said: ‘The last 35,000 Jews at Warsaw had been condemned to execution. Warsaw is again echoing to musketry volleys. The people are murdered. Women and children defend themselves with their naked arms! Save us….’”

Appeals

On April 22, the Forward reported that the Nazis were slaughtering the last Jews in Warsaw, explaining that, on January 21, an appeal was sent by these Jews that was not received by the Jewish Labor Committee in New York until April 21.

According to the Forward, six requests were made, only a few of which could be revealed to the public. One was that 10,000 of the remaining children in the ghetto be exchanged for German prisoners of war. The Jews of the ghetto also demanded material help, including food.

The appeal ended with the warning: “Brothers, the remaining Jews in Poland believe that in these most frightening days of our history, you didn’t help us. Answer now at least in these last days of our lives; this is our last appeal to you.”

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