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Ruth King

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The Reparations Primary

By on February 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/democratic-primary-reparations-discussion/

There is a strange political conversation under way as the 2020 Democratic presidential primary gets under way, and it goes like this: One group of Democrats proposes something daffy, vague, and impractical, and another group of Democrats says, “Of course that’s daffy, vague, and impractical — but at least they started a conversation!” This is said in the tone kindergarten teachers use with toddlers who test the maxim that there is no such thing as a dumb question. It’s something to see: a political party condescending to itself.

None of the Democratic 2020 contenders currently talking up reparations for slavery is serious about the project. Those of them who are serious about anything are serious only about winning the party’s nomination and the role that flattering a small but influential congregation of left-wing intellectuals might play in that.

Call it the Ta-Nehisi Coates primary.

It’s an unserious proposal, but we’ll do its authors the courtesy of offering a serious answer, anyway.

Paying reparations for slavery is a terrible idea because there is no one to pay reparations and no one to pay them to. There are not any slave-owners left among us and haven’t been for some time. There aren’t any liberated slaves, either. Slavery was a terrible crime and, like all such enormities, it was carried out by real people who inflicted unconscionable suffering on real people — specific people, individuals.

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The Left’s Next Target: Noncitizen Voting By Rep. Jeff Duncan(R- S.C. District 3)

By on February 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/noncitizen-voting-the-lefts-next-target/

The practice has a history, but today its ideology is flawed

The impermanent nature of politics being what it is, what was unthinkable in the past becomes debatable in the present and conventional wisdom in the future. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s call for a borderless hemisphere in the 2016 election has given way to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s declaration that illegal aliens are actually more American than those who would strengthen our borders, which has in turn given way to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s endorsement of noncitizens’ voting in American elections.

This latter idea may strike many conservatives as another example of the Left’s new leaders embracing radicalism, but the history and ideology of this issue are more interesting than that. I strongly oppose noncitizen voting, and have introduced a bill to ban all federal funding for states and municipalities that allow the practice, but I fear that, unless we understand the history of noncitizen voting and the ideology that underpins it, conservatives will be ill-equipped to oppose future waves of activism in this area.

Noncitizen voting was actually the status quo for much of U.S. history. It wasn’t until 1926 that Arkansas became the last state to ban noncitizens from voting, and 1928 that the first federal election without enfranchised aliens occurred. Since Article I of the Constitution provides that those who can vote in elections for the most numerous house of their state legislature may vote in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, many congresses in our history have seen members elected from constituencies with significant populations of alien voters.

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A Young Woman from Libya By Jay Nordlinger

By on February 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-young-woman-from-libya/

I’ve done a podcast, a Q&A, with Asma Khalifa: here. She is in Mexico City, participating in a meeting of the Oslo Freedom Forum. Asma is an extraordinary person. She is a young woman from Libya, a Berber. She is a democracy leader and human-rights activist.

Last year, I heard her tell a very moving story. I asked her to tell it again, on this podcast. During the Libyan Civil War, she sided with the rebels against the dictator Muammar Gaddafi. After a close friend of hers was killed — executed, along with many others — she decided to join up: as a field nurse. She witnessed many terrible things.

She did not like what was happening to her. She was engulfed in hatred. “That’s not me,” she said. So she asked a doctor to assign her to a particular ward of a military hospital: a ward where enemy soldiers — Gaddafi’s forces — were kept. Almost no one went there.

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Sweeney Agonistes: Tommy Robinson Turns the Tables on the BBC By Bruce Bawer

By on February 26th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/sweeney-agonistes-tommy-robinson-turns-the-tables-on-the-bbc/

Tommy Robinson’s courageous truth-telling about Islam has not only resulted in years of harassment by the British authorities, an endless cascade of death threats, and, last year, a thoroughly unjust prison term that might have spelled his demise, but also, of course, a pattern of coverage by the mainstream media that has been almost uniformly deceitful and poisonous. When he heard that the BBC series Panorama, which is the UK’s answer to 60 Minutes, was planning a story on him with the working title “Tommy Takedown,” and that its producers were collaborating with the vile group Hope Not Hate (HNH), which is Britain’s version of the Southern Poverty Law Center — i.e., a shady far-left smear machine masquerading as a noble monitor of bigots, fascists, and hate groups — he decided to go on the offensive.

The key to Tommy’s plan was Lucy Brown, a former employee whose job with him had ended in a shouting match. After their split, she was offered £5,000 by HNH to badmouth Tommy for a cover story, and had to contact a lawyer to prevent a major daily from falsely claiming she’d accused Tommy of sexual allegations. When Panorama reporter John Sweeney asked her to talk to him for what he promised would be a “definitive documentary” uncovering Tommy in all his “horribleness,” Brown got in touch with Tommy and agreed to wear a hidden camera when she met with Sweeney to discuss his plans.

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Doctors Insist Canadian 14-Year-Old Needs No Parent Consent For Trans Hormone Injections Maxine’s rapidly changing identities seem like a coping mechanism or phase. Her father thinks doctors should hold off on pumping her full of hormones.By Jeremiah Keenan

By on February 26th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/26/doctors-insist-canadian-14-year-old-needs-no-parent-consent-trans-hormone-injections/

Clark* first found out that his 12-year-old daughter Maxine was being treated as a boy by her school when he saw her new name in her class’s grade seven yearbook. “Quinn” was the new name her counselor had helped her pick out, and Maxine’s school district in Delta, British Columbia, Canada, had decided that “Quinn” should be treated, for all intents and purposes, as a boy.

The district apparently felt justified in leaving Maxine’s father completely out of the loop. Maxine’s school district was operating by the BC Ministry of Education’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policy, according to which Clark had no right to know his daughter’s “preferred sex, gender, or name” at school.

Presented with a fait accompli from the school district and a daughter who was becoming increasingly passionate about her transgender identity, Clark found himself in a difficult situation. He did not want to reject his daughter’s newfound passion outright but, at the same time, he was cautious about her moving into transgenderism too quickly.

Ever since her parents separated in 2013, Maxine had struggled emotionally to cope, experiencing behavioral problems and depression which Clark felt left her “very vulnerable” and searching for a place to belong. During the same school year that she took on a transgender identity, Maxine had apparently also gone through a lesbian phase. Clark couldn’t help but wonder if her new transgender identity might likewise come and go.

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How do you cover a ‘national emergency’? Depends who’s president… Compare the media’s coverage of the border wall to Obama’s 2011 Libya strikes. The contrast is shocking Barbara Boland

By on February 26th, 2019

https://spectator.us/national-emergency-president/

When Trump declared the border situation a national emergency, you couldn’t move for breathless headlines questioning the constitutionality of his order. But has the mainstream media always held this deep commitment to reporting on the limits of power of the nation’s chief executive?

Trump is hardly the first president to make use of an executive order in order to circumvent Congress. Back in February, 2011, President Obama began contemplating strikes against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Article I, Section 8, of the US Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. But a search of contemporaneous headlines quickly reveals that extremely few news stories from the time mentioned the device by which the President would impose strikes on Libya – an executive order.

After Obama decided on military action without Congressional approval, almost no stories mention ‘executive order’ or national emergency or the Constitutionality of this decision; in stark contrast to stories on Trump’s border decision, which has always been framed by in these terms.

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Former Federal Prosecutor Sidney Powell: The Entire Russia Collusion Narrative Was Made Up By Tim Hains

By on February 26th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/25/former_federal_prosecutor_sidney_powell_the_entire_russia_collusion_narrative_was_made_up.html

Journalist Sharyl Attkisson, the host of “Full Measure,” interviews former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell about her allegation that the “entire Russia collusion narrative was made up” by anti-Trump political partisans in the FBI and Department of Justice:

SHARYL ATTKISSON, FULL MEASURE: Nearly two years ago, Special Counsel Mueller was named to investigate whether President Trump broke the law by somehow conspiring with Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the presidency. We still don’t know the outcome of that. But we’ve learned a lot about what some in our intelligence community have been up to. And some argue that’s proving to be an equally important— and chilling— story.

From Trump associate Roger Stone to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the Trump-Russia probe has indicted or convicted 34 people so far. And although Special Counsel Robert Mueller has yet to publicly pinpoint illegal Russia collusion on Trump’s part he’s still looking. Meantime, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell is making an explosive allegation. She’s among those who believe there’s now compelling evidence pointing to a parallel scandal.

In the simplest of terms if possible, what do you think is the story that’s been uncovered in the past two years?

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Democrats block bill to stop infanticide. Politico smears Republicans for the effort Quinn Hillier

By on February 26th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-block-bill-to-stop-infanticide-politico-smears-republicans-for-the-effort

If anyone wonders why so many people hate, detest, despise the establishment media, witness Politico’s “news” article Monday night about Senate Democrats’ defeat of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

There will be more to say about the substance and repercussions of Senate Democrats’ vote last night refusing to protect infants delivered still alive after failed abortion attempts. What immediately rankles, though, is that Politico went to stupendous lengths to make Republicans look like cynical “bad guys” in the whole affair.

No neutral reporting allowed. No explanation of the New York, Virginia, and Vermont bills that catalyzed Republicans to introduce this Senate legislation, other than a sentence buried deep within the story mistakenly describing those state bills as merely having “loosened restrictions on third-trimester abortions.” Not even a semi-adequate recounting of the concerns forwarded by the bill’s Republican sponsors.

This was the headline: “Senate defeats anti-abortion bill, as GOP tries to jam Dems.”

Yes, really.

The smaller problem with the headline was that this bill would do nothing to stop a single abortion. It only applies to babies completely outside the mother’s body, after an attempted abortion has failed. (Also note: Politico puts quotation marks around “attempted abortion,” as if even that is a politically loaded term.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Space Force Takes One Step Forward, Two Back . . . Again By Angelo Codevilla

By on February 26th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/25/space-force

In the October 15, 2018 edition of Strategika I wrote: “Three cheers for President Trump’s decision to add a Space Force to the Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard.” I was enthusiastic because, “though the logic of war and technology has long counseled establishing a U.S Space Force, the logic of military bureaucracy has forestalled it. . . .For human beings to turn any technology’s potential to military effect, those who really want to do it must be in a position to make it happen . . . that is why establishing the U.S Space Force is no mere rewiring of bureaucratic diagrams.”

But the directive that formally establishes that force, which Trump signed last Tuesday in response to bureaucratic and corporate resistance, is nothing more than a dysfunctional rewiring.

Specifically: though dominance of orbital space has become ever more vital to all other military functions, as well as for protection of our satellites and for defense against ballistic missiles, U.S. space policy has been in the hands of the Air Force, which has regarded what happens in space as subordinate to its traditional missions and—to say the least—has not made a priority of either satellite warfare or missile defense.

Establishing the U.S. Space Force was supposed to change all that. It won’t. Trump’s words notwithstanding, the directive he signed reaffirms the Air Force’s control over orbital space matters.

At the February 19 signing ceremony, Trump said, “With today’s action, we will ensure that our people are secure, our interests are protected, and our power continues to be unmatched. There will be nobody that can come close to matching us. It won’t be close.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Wolves and Their Sheep’s Clothing By Julie Kelly

By on February 26th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/25/media-wolves

During his fierce news conference last Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson blasted the accomplices who publicly validated Jussie Smollett’s bogus claim that he was attacked last month by two white Trump supporters.

“To make things worse, the accusations within this phony attack received national attention for weeks,” said the chief. “Celebrities, news commentators, and even presidential candidates weighed in on something that was choreographed by an actor.”

Chicago media won plaudits for their coverage of the hoax: Local reporters, gifted with finely tuned bullshit detectors from covering the cutthroat world of Chicago politics each day, remained skeptical as the story unfolded, refusing to be suckered like their counterparts in the national media were.

Johnson’s condemnations—combined with the fact that Chicago reporters were applauded for the mere fact of doing their jobs correctly—starkly illustrate the cultural and political crisis now engulfing the country: The legacy media’s instant legitimization of scoundrels, insofar as the sympathetic subject plays the foil to Donald Trump.

Every huckster, hoaxster, swindler, cheater, publicity hound, and flat-out liar immediately earns rock-star status as long as the charlatan offers the confirmation bias that Trump haters need in order to prove their twisted and unsubstantiated conclusions about the president.

Victim of a nonexistent hate crime? Corrupt law enforcement official? Sniveling congressman with laughable tales about the Ruskies?

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