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Ruth King

After the Coup is Gone By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/14

As the perpetrators of one of the most shameful scandals in American political history begin slowly to retreat, we are left to ponder one overarching question:

What now?

The tale we’ve been told for more than two years—that Donald Trump’s campaign team, possibly even the candidate himself, colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election—has been exposed as a lie. Various investigations into this alleged conspiracy are coming up empty and the accomplices are trying to change the subject. Even more pathetically, some still are clinging to the farce, desperate to salvage whatever still remains of their already sketchy credibility.

To describe it as a witch hunt, the president’s preferred term, is too generous. The American public has witnessed a seditious attempt by powerful interests garrisoned throughout our political complex to overthrow a sitting U.S. president. The orchestrated and failed coup has exceeded the routine combat of our two-party system, where out-of-power partisans disrupt and agitate the other side. No, this has been a full scale insurrection that has violated the boundaries of law, normalcy, and civility in an unprecedented way.

Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit. The national news media have acted as hatchet men. Influential public officials, operating both inside and outside of government, have aided the stratagem. One of the main culprits just revealed—no, bragged—how a handful of corrupt bureaucrats plotted unlawfully to remove the president from the Oval Office based on the fantastical scheme.

Fact Checking The “Fact Checkers” on Illegal Aliens “Outing” Orwellian fake news. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272861/fact-checking-fact-checkers-illegal-aliens-michael-cutler

On Monday, February 11th I was a guest on a radio show, “The Americhicks” on radio station KLZ to discuss a Feb 4, 2019 CBS News article, The facts on immigration: What you need to know in 2019- CBSN fact-check on immigration.

The CBS article ostensibly responded to nine questions about immigration raised by President Trump. I was asked to weigh in about the honesty and accuracy of the “Facts” published by CBS to discredit what the President had said.

I reviewed the article during the weekend that preceded that show and found that falsehoods permeated this supposed “fact-check on immigration.”

Unfortunately this sort of deceptive “reporting” is all too common.

By understanding how to unravel the tapestry of lies contained in this article will provide a methodology that can be brought to bear to critically analyze all supposed “news” articles.

To begin with, the late criminal defense attorney Johnnie Cochran remarked at the O.J. trial, “If you can’t trust the messenger, you cannot trust the message.”

Trump To Formally Declare Border Emergency The battle over America’s security heats up. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272878/trump-formally-declare-border-emergency-matthew-vadum

A defiant President Trump promised yesterday to declare a national emergency to get the wall he promised to build constructed on America’s porous southern border, as Congress gave him funding –with plenty of strings attached– to build 55 miles of border barriers.

“President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action—including a national emergency—to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border[,]” the White House tweeted Thursday at 3:44 p.m.

Trump, who said he was “not thrilled” with the omnibus spending bill, is nevertheless expected to sign “and declare the national emergency in an appearance Friday morning, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” the Washington Post reports.

On the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said declaring an emergency was “a very wrong thing to do.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) indignantly tweeted, “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities.”

Rep. Omar’s Anti-Semitism is Just CAIR’s Anti-Semitism Pull on the string of Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitism and you go right back to the Muslim Brotherhood. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272879/rep-omars-anti-semitism-just-cairs-anti-semitism-daniel-greenfield

Rep. Ilhan Omar defended the anti-Semitic Black Israelites hate group in January. In February, she was originally scheduled to speak at an Islamic Relief USA dinner alongside IRUSA’s Yousef Abdallah who had endorsed violence against Jews and described former Governor Chris Christie “down on his knees before the jewish lords and masters… only money makes stuff like this happen.”

Abdallah’s comments were very similar to the anti-Semitic Twitter slurs that got Omar in trouble.

That’s not a coincidence. Omar’s worldview, including her anti-Semitism, was shaped by a familiar network of Islamist organizations which control life for most Muslims in the United States.

In March, Rep. Omar is headed to California to speak at CAIR’s Los Angeles dinner. There she will appear alongside CAIR’s Florida boss Hassan Shibly who has defended Hamas and vocally praised Hezbollah. “Israel & it’s supporters are enemies of God and humanity!” he had tweeted.

Shibly has vocally defended Rep. Omar over her comments about Jews.

Rep. Omar’s comments about Jews are a commonplace CAIR talking point. Nihad Awad, the co-founder and executive director of CAIR, had made an even more explicit version of the same argument. “Who of Clinton’s advisors … is opposing the latest agreement with Iraq? Look at their names. Look at … their ethnic or religious or racial background.”

“The Jews plan to distort Islam’s image and have succeeded in their plans,” he later claimed.

‘The Road to Shariadom’ in America By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/the_road_to_shariadom_in_america.html

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA) is part of an international network of Muslim scholars that preaches shariah rule as a government system, even issuing a fatwa delineating sharia’s “superiority” over democracy. It is one of many Muslim organizations now dangerously and politically active in the United States. They include the 25-year-old Council of Islamic Relations, CAIR, self-described as a “Muslim civil rights organization” with an Islamic perspective on American public issues. More recent organizations – created in 2015 and similarly politically dedicated – include JETPAC, the Justice, Education and Technology Policy Advocacy Center, which encourages American Muslims to get involved in local politics, and MPower Change, committed to creating a political platform for Muslim issues and organizing around it.

All these politically active Muslim-American groups, prominent Muslims and other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations within the U.S. publicly avow that they have no intention of implementing sharia in the U.S. Yet, their stated political goals, public statements and recent reports, betray their true intentions: to grow in political strength sufficient to replace our democracy with their religious governance.

More than 100 top Muslim leaders belong to AMJA, which began in 2003. Imams at over 3,100 U.S. mosques look to AMJA for instructional guidance to lead their congregations. The group’s name in Arabic, “The Group of Sharia Specialists in America,” implies its purpose: to impel Muslims to follow its comprehensive, sharia-compliant fatwas. Many of the group’s leaders attended Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the world’s highest academy of Islamic learning and interpreter of the definitive sharia text – The Reliance of the Traveller.

Stop the Impeachment Fishing Expedition Congress has no business investigating the president for conduct that occurred before he took office. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-the-impeachment-fishing-expedition-11550188732

As William Barr begins his term as attorney general, House Democrats are aiming a “subpoena cannon” at President Trump, hoping to disable his presidency with investigations and possibly gather evidence to impeach him. Mr. Trump fired back in his State of the Union address: “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.” To protect the presidency and separation of powers, Mr. Barr should be prepared to seek a stay of all congressional investigations of Mr. Trump’s prepresidential conduct.

The president is not one among many, as are legislators and judges. Crippling his ability to function upsets the constitutional balance of power. For this reason, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has repeatedly concluded that a sitting president may not be indicted or prosecuted. The same logic should apply to congressional investigations.

Congress is targeting Mr. Trump’s actions before becoming president because there are well-established constitutional limits, grounded in separation-of-powers doctrine, on its ability to investigate his official conduct. In U.S. v. Nixon (1974), the Supreme Court recognized a constitutionally based, although not unlimited, privilege of confidentiality to ensure “effective discharge of a President’s powers.” In Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), the justices held that presidents and ex-presidents have absolute immunity against civil liability for official presidential acts.

Executive immunity for prepresidential activity is less clear. In Clinton v. Jones (1997), which arose out of Paula Jones’s accusation that Bill Clinton sexually harassed her while he was governor of Arkansas, the justices reasoned that Ms. Jones’s lawsuit could proceed because the burden on the presidency objectively appeared light. Specifically, because only three sitting presidents had been sued for prepresidential acts, the justices thought it “unlikely that a deluge of such litigation will ever engulf the presidency.”

The court did, however, consider the question of whether civil litigation “could conceivably hamper the President in conducting the duties of his office.” It answered: “If and when that should occur, the court’s discretion would permit it to manage those actions in such fashion (including deferral of trial) that interference with the President’s duties would not occur.” CONTINUE AT SITE

A Lesson in Anti-Semitism Look across the pond to see where the Democrats could end up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-lesson-in-anti-semitism-11550189084

Bipartisan support for Israel has long been a feature of American politics. But as the Democratic Party moves further left, it is increasingly home to vociferous anti-Israel voices. An anti-Semitism crisis in the United Kingdom’s Labour Party shows what happens when a political party doesn’t rebut such views.

Labour General Secretary Jennie Formby recently announced that the party had received 673 complaints of anti-Semitic acts by its members in the past 10 months. These numbers are likely low. Margaret Hodge, a longtime Labour Member of Parliament, said she had filed some 200 grievances since the fall. Well-known television personality Rachel Riley has been subject to vile online abuse for her efforts to expose Labour anti-Semitism.

This is a lesson for U.S. Democrats tempted to excuse anti-Semitism in their ranks as over-enthusiastic political opposition to Israeli policies from neophyte politicians. That’s how Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn got his start, attacking Israel from Parliament’s back benches. After hailing Hamas and Hezbollah representatives as “our friends” and attending a wreath-laying at the graves of 1972 Munich terrorists, Mr. Corbyn and Labour tried last summer to blur the line between anti-Israel views and anti-Semitism when adopting a definition of the latter for use in party disciplinary matters.

British teen Shamima Begum, who fled to join ISIS, wants to come home “I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago,” she told The Times. “And I don’t regret coming here.”By Alexander Smith

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/british-teen-shamima-begum-who-fled-join-isis-wants-come-n971446

“Officially, it is U.K. policy to tell British women in this situation to get themselves to the nearest consulate to be repatriated. Unofficially, the government “would rather they did not come back,” Gardham said. “They don’t want jihadi brides back and they don’t want jihadis back.”

A British teenager who fled her home and joined the Islamic State in Syria says she now wants to come home — not because she is remorseful for joining the violent extremist group but so her unborn child will be safe.

The case of Shamima Begum will be seen as part of a wider dilemma for Western governments about what to do with people who want to return now that ISIS’ control of swaths of Iraq and Syria has all but dissolved.

Begum, 19, was one of three British schoolgirls who abandoned their lives in east London almost overnight in 2015, traveling to join ISIS and each marrying a group militant.

Her fate was largely unknown until Thursday when the British newspaper The Times tracked her down in a refugee camp. She said she wanted to come home but said she wasn’t sorry.

“I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago,” she told The Times, referring to her neighborhood in East London. “And I don’t regret coming here.”

Begum, who told the Times she is nine months pregnant, is like thousands of people all over the world who were lured by ISIS propaganda to join the militant movement then marauding the Middle East and beyond.

The Hypocrisy of Honoring Henry Ford By Alex Grobman, PhD

https://www.jewishlinknj.com/features/29563-the-hypocrisy-of-honoring-henry-ford

The decision by the city of Dearborn, Michigan, to honor Henry Ford should raise concerns for all Americans, not only Jews. Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, accused Jews of being the cause of World War I. He also made references about the house of Rothschild being the symbol of avaricious bankers who plotted conflict for financial gain. As the hostilities in Europe increased, accusations that Jews were the instigators of wars for profit became more frequent.

In 1920, the first American edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a known forgery published by the Czarist Russian secret police to justify persecution and pogroms directed at Russian Jewish citizens, was published in The Protocols and World Revolution by Boris Brasol, a leader of the Russian monarchist movement in the U.S. By the end of the year there were three editions from which to choose. Brasol was responsible for convincing Henry Ford of the authenticity of the Protocols, which Ford then published in his “International Jew” series in the Dearborn Independent.

Titled “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” the first article in this consecutive series appeared on May 22, 1920, and then sporadically until 1927.

The hostile slanderous nature of Ford’s antisemitic articles is evident in their titles, which included “The Scope of Jewish Dictatorship in America,” “Jewish Gamblers Corrupt American Baseball,” “How the Jewish Song Trust Makes you Sing,” “Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music,” “How Jews Gained American Liquor Control” and “The Jewish Associates of Benedict Arnold.”

Yanxi Palace: Why China turned against its most popular show By Andreas Illmer

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-47084374

Shortly after the piece was published, Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace were pulled from state-run TV channels.

The shows are, however, still available on iQiyi, the place that Yanxi Palace was initially produced for and was first shown.
Rival versions of history

“It’s not the first time something like this has happened,” Prof Stanley Rosen, a China specialist at the University of Southern California, told the BBC.

“But I would say the censorship is certainly getting worse.

“Yanxi Palace was seen as promoting incorrect values, commercialism and consumerism; not the socialist core values that Beijing wants to see promoted.”

“For those who are overseeing those productions there should always some educational value or some promotion of Chinese cultural values or some sort of historical narrative that matter,” explains Manya Koetse, editor-in-chief of What’s on Weibo, a website tracking Chinese social media.

Prof Zhu Ying of the Film Academy at Hong Kong’s Baptist University told the BBC. “Censors tend to turn a blind eye to entertainment programs of frivolous nature.

“But that’s only until they become too popular and threaten social norms, morally and ideologically. Yanxi is a perfect example of such a show.”
Too successful abroad?

Another problem might have been the attention Yanxi Palace received from international audiences.

“It could be that the show became too popular outside China,” says Mr Rosen. “It’s a contradiction of wanting to succeed overseas but also wanting to control the message.”

Beijing wants Chinese culture to be promoted outside of China but showing the values that the authorities want to see portrayed. CONTINUE AT SITE