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Ruth King

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Censure Dianne Feinstein By Michael W. Schwartz

By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-hearings-dianne-feinstein-senate-should-censure/The Senate cannot let this wrong go unaddressed.

Regardless of the fate of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, the Senate should censure the ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein. Her deception and maneuvering, condemned across the political spectrum, seriously interfered with the Senate’s performance of its constitutional duty to review judicial nominations, and unquestionably has brought the Senate into “dishonor and disrepute,” the standard that governs these matters. As a matter of institutional integrity, the Senate cannot let this wrong go unaddressed.

Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution provides that each House of the Congress may “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour.” Nine times in American history the Senate has used that power to censure one of its members. Feinstein has richly earned the right to join this inglorious company.

The senior senator from California not only disgraced herself personally in the underhanded and disingenuous way she dealt with the sex-assault charge against Judge Kavanaugh, but she also misused her position on the Judiciary Committee and broke faith with her fellow committee members. She was further, to quote the San Francisco Chronicle, no less, “unfair” to Judge Kavanaugh — manipulating the public disclosure of the charge so as to maximize the adverse publicity Judge Kavanaugh received and minimize the judge’s opportunity to defend himself. Censure is appropriate in this case for the Senate to defend its procedures and institutional reputation.

By her own account, Feinstein was aware of the charge shortly after President Trump nominated Kavanaugh, nearly two months before her committee opened its hearings. She came into possession of the letter making the charge by virtue of her position on the Judiciary Committee. We don’t know what contact she had thereafter with the accuser or the accuser’s Democrat-activist Washington lawyer — but we do know that Feinstein kept the information from her Senate colleagues, ensuring it was untested and unmentioned in the committee’s hearings. This, even though the hearings were accompanied by loud complaints from Democrats that the administration’s document production was insufficient. Indeed, as this is being written, while yet another Judiciary Committee hearing has been scheduled, she still has not released the unredacted text of the letter that made the charge.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No Hearing; Just Vote on Kavanaugh Nomination By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-nomination-stop-stalling-and-vote/

This is about preventing a conservative justice from being added to the Supreme Court, nothing more.

Senate Democrats’ blatant abuse of the hearing process, their “delay, delay, delay” strategy, continues to pay dividends. Putting a stop to it would be long overdue.

Thursday was the day Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s manifestly meritorious nomination to the Supreme Court should have been voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and sent to the full Senate. Instead the nomination languishes because of an eleventh-hour stunt pulled by committee Democrats — led by ranking member Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.).

Notwithstanding that Feinstein was well aware almost three months ago of a flimsily supported allegation against Kavanaugh — to wit, that 36 years ago, as a 17-year-old high school student, he groped and tried to force himself on a 15-year-old girl at an underage beer party — the senator sat on the information rather than submitting it to the hearing process. Although she met face-to-face with Kavanaugh and later questioned him when he was under oath at the hearing, Feinstein did not utter a word about the ancient, unverifiable claim to Kavanaugh.

Instead, the senator referred the allegation to the FBI, without identifying the self-proclaimed witness, despite knowing that:

1) The FBI had no jurisdiction to investigate a state-law assault claim.

2) Even if the FBI had had jurisdiction, it is federal practice not to investigate and prosecute minors, especially for offenses that state authorities have jurisdiction over, except in rare circumstances involving heinous crimes.

3) Even if the FBI had had jurisdiction over the offense, the bureau would never have opened an investigation of a 36-year-old allegation, even if the evidence were strong.

4) Even though the FBI had jurisdiction to conduct a background investigation of Kavanaugh, such investigations are not occasions to trigger full-blown criminal investigations of crimes the Justice Department has no jurisdiction to prosecute, but rather result in a flagging of allegations for the Senate’s consideration (which has been done here).

5) Even though Maryland state and local authorities (to whom neither Senator Feinstein nor the alleged victim apparently referred the allegation) have jurisdiction over any conceivable statutory offenses in question, they would never have opened an investigation based on a sketchy allegation of 36-year-old misconduct for which the statute of limitations lapsed decades ago (i.e., a case it would be impossible to investigate and prosecute).

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BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Future of the Nation A historical description—and intellectual defense—of nationalism Daniel P. Schmidt Michael E. Hartmann

By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/intellectual-defense-of-nationalism-16187.html

“Nationalism was not always understood to be the evil that current public discourse suggests,” philosopher Yoram Hazony notes in the introduction to his new book, The Virtue of Nationalism. Hazony is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and director of the John Templeton Foundation’s Jewish Philosophical Theology project. His previous books include The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul and The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture.

In The Virtue of Nationalism, Hazony defines nationalism principally by distinguishing it from imperialism. He begins by offering an overarching historical framework, describing how English, Dutch, and American Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries revived the Old Testament’s strong affinity for individual liberty, thereby freeing large parts of the world from the system of universal empire promoted by Holy Roman Emperors under the aegis of the Catholic Church. This individual-centered vision gave birth to an intellectual current against empire-building after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, according to Hazony, resulting in the rise of independent nation-states worldwide.

Since the middle of the last century the tide has turned against nationalism. “Globalists” argued that nationalism brought about two world wars and the Holocaust. Their primary solution has been the promotion of the idea of world governance, either to a limited or more total extent, ordered by a set of liberal democratic values devised by experts, and run by professional administrators. Hazony persuasively argues that this internationalist approach represents a return of the imperial, totalizing vision of the world, which, rather than initiating a golden age of peace and humanism, has aroused old sectarian hatreds, and sown chaos and revolt across the globe. We will soon be forced, Hazony predicts, to make a stark choice between a world in which people, upholding their natural and inalienable rights, are able to choose their destiny within the framework of nation-states; or a renewal of universal empire—probably in the form of the European Union, or the hegemony of America or China. “The debate between nationalism and imperialism is upon us,” he writes.

In this debate, the defense of a centralized global order based on the familiar rationales of either economic efficiency or security is “too narrow to provide an adequate answer to the question of the best political order. In reality, much of what takes place in political life is motivated by concerns arising from our membership in collectives such as families, tribes, and nations.” In this alternate vision of human collectivity, religion, culture, and tradition are primary motivating influences and provide the major sources of value, rather than strictly economic or security factors. This implicit acknowledgement of the importance of national identity—though Hazony never uses that term—is a virtue of The Virtue of Nationalism. In large part because of that recognition, he quite cogently argues in the book that anyone who values his freedom should reject universalism and fight for a future of nations.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

How Bitter Political Disputes Made America Great In Jay Cost’s latest book, ‘The Price of Greatness,’ the scholar and journalist lays out a compelling analysis of the feud between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison showing that their disagreements resulted in a synthesis of differing opinions that allowed our early republic to thrive. Kyle Sammin

By on September 21st, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/21/bitter-political-disputes-made-america-great/

Historical reputations are fickle things. Most national figures vanish into the misty past not long after their deaths. For those who are truly influential, the way they come to be remembered can flit back and forth according to the whims of historians, politicians, and the people at large. That fluctuation often tells us as much about us as it does about them.

Alexander Hamilton is a case in point. It was not long ago that he was derided as an elitist and quasi-monarchist, despite his own humble beginnings and meritocratic rise to prominence. His one-time friend James Madison, on the other hand, was seen as a tribune of the people, a leveler and wise statesman, notwithstanding his great wealth and ownership of scores of black slaves.

Trends in historical scholarship have begun to cast aspersions on slave-owning Founding Fathers, pushing Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other great Virginians further down the scale of opinion in the academy, if not elsewhere. Meanwhile, a popular musical poured fresh enthusiasm into the old Federalist wineskin and made Hamilton great again, just as his fellow northern Federalist John Adams gained in popular renown following David McCullough’s biography of him and the subsequent HBO miniseries based on it.

The fashions of scholarship can make us lose sight of the men behind the myths. In The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy, Jay Cost returns to the beginning and analyzes the political theories that brought Hamilton and Madison together and, later, drove them apart. Concentrating on ideas rather than personalities, he lays out the conflict at the heart of the early republic’s politics and the compromises that led to its resolution. Along the way, the reader may gain a true appreciation for the ideological conflict of the United States’ first decades and may come to understand how that conflict, in various forms, is still debated today.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN Asked Five Women If They Believed Kavanaugh. CNN Didn’t Like Their Answers ‘In the grand scheme of things, my goodness, there was no intercourse, there was a touch,’ one of the Republican women said. By Bre Payton

By on September 21st, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/21/cnn-asked-five-women-if-they-believed-kavanaugh-cnn-didnt-like-their-answers/

CNN asked five Republican women if they believe Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s denial against an allegation of sexual assault. They all said yes.

The CNN reporter, Radni Kaye, kicked things off by asking them to raise their hands if they believe Kavanaugh. They all raised their hands

“In the grand scheme of things, my goodness, there was no intercourse, there was a touch,” Irina Vilarino, a GOP voter said. “Really? Thirty-six years later, she’s still stuck on that?”

“Why would she come forward if this wasn’t true?” Kaye asked. “Because this has basically destroyed her family. She’s had to move; she’s gone undercover; she’s gotten death threats. So if she’s lying, why come forward?”

“She’s also destroying his life, his wife’s life, his children’s lives, his career,” Vilarino said. “Why didn’t she come out sooner if she’s telling the truth?”

“Why didn’t she come out when he was going into the Bush White House?” Angie Vasquez said. “He’s been a federal judge for over a decade!

“Why not have a thorough investigation instead of just the two of them ‘he said, she said?” Kaye asked.

“Because it doesn’t matter!” another woman said.

“Do you have some sympathy for her for what she’s going through?”

“No,” Lourdes Castillo de la Peña responded. “I have no sympathy.”
Bre Payton is a staff writer at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Tensions Mount at Israel-Gaza Border as Talks Stall Hamas militants organize protests amid worsening conditions that end with several Palestinian deaths in clashes with Israeli forces By Felicia Schwartz in Tel Aviv and Abu Bakr Bashir in Gaza City

By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tensions-mount-at-israel-gaza-border-as-talks-stall-1537548967

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, is stepping up protests at its border with Israel to signal frustration with stalled talks with its neighbor, prompting new deadly clashes with Israeli forces.

In recent days, the Palestinian group has organized more frequent protests, including one involving 10,000 people on Friday in which one person was killed and 41 injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Two Palestinians were killed on Tuesday during a protest against Israel and Egypt’s longstanding economic blockade on Gaza. A demonstrator was killed Wednesday in a separate demonstration.

Israel’s military defends its response to the protests, saying it is necessary to defend its borders from explosive devices, flaming kites, rocks thrown at Israeli forces and attempts to breach the border security fence.

Abdelateef Al Kano, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel is “burning time” and that the uptick in protests is aimed at demonstrating frustration in the Gaza Strip, as prospects dim for a long-term calm with Israel and an easing the blockade.

Talks this summer between Israel and Hamas—with Egypt as an intermediary—aimed at calming tensions that have bubbled up after relative calm since the end of the 2014 war between them haven’t yielded results. The two sides remain at an impasse over a prisoner exchange and other issues.

The Palestinian Authority, which leads Palestinians in the West Bank and is the international community’s only recognized negotiating partner, has refused to engage in a peace process led by the Trump administration, which they say is biased toward Israel and has taken unduly harsh measures against them.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Is Trump Creating New Republicans? Much of the media is trying to persuade Latinos to dislike the GOP but it’s a tougher sale than expected. By James Freeman

By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-trump-creating-new-republicans-1537560515

Current polls suggest that Republicans could be in for a rough November, but not as rough as one might expect among a key voting constituency.

Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report writes today that Democrats are confident about their support among suburban women, but enthusiasm among female Democratic voters “isn’t being replicated among another group of voters that theoretically should be as motivated — or more — to vote for Democrats: Latino voters.”

Ms. Walter explains:

Latino voter drop-off in midterm elections is nothing new, but the thinking was that President Trump’s rhetoric and policies around immigration, especially the issue of separating children from their parents at the border, would be a catalyst for higher Latino engagement in 2018. At this point, however, recent polling by New York Times Upshot/Siena College and Monmouth University, suggests that’s not the case.

In California’s 39th district — a racially diverse district that Hillary Clinton carried 52 to 43 percent — a Monmouth poll out this week found Republican Young Kim leading Democrat Gil Cisneros 46-42 percent.

Meanwhile on the right coast of the country, it seems that voters are also stubbornly refusing to play the roles they’ve been assigned in the conventional media narrative. Ms. Walter elaborates:

Republicans in Latino majority districts in South Florida are holding up better than their underlying infrastructure suggests they would. In a district Hillary Clinton carried with almost 57 percent, Republican Carlos Curbelo (FL-26) has a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent in the NY Times Upshot/Siena poll. And, in the 27th district, where moderate GOPer Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring, private polls show former Clinton administration HHS Director Donna Shalala struggling to open a lead in a district Clinton carried by more than 58 percent.

In the sprawling southern Texas 23rd district — a district that is more than 70 percent Latino and voted narrowly for Clinton in 2016, Republican Rep. Will Hurd had a solid 51-43 percent lead over his Democratic opponent in the latest NY Times Upshot/Siena poll.

Finally, in the Los Angeles County 25th CD, a district that is majority minority and which Clinton won with 50 percent of the vote in 2016, the NY Times Upshot/Siena poll found Republican Steve Knight with a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent.

There’s another interesting campaign update, this one from the middle of the country. This week the Texas Monthly reports that expected Hispanic support for Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, who’s running against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, hasn’t met expectations. Notes the Texas Monthly:

First came news that Valdez’s lackluster campaign is delivering equally lackluster results. A new Quinnipiac University poll on Tuesday—the first this season to measure sentiment among likely voters in Texas instead of simply registered voters—shows that Hispanics actually prefer Abbott to Valdez. Hispanic respondents, in fact, preferred the incumbent Republican by a margin of 49 percent to 45 percent over Valdez. While the 4.1 percent margin of error tightens that race a bit, the fact that Abbott leads with his substantial war chest mostly intact, suggests an election night slaughter for that race that could extend to higher than normal Hispanic support for the governor and potential coattails for people like Cruz. CONTINUE AT SITE

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Antifa Website Calls for ‘Slaughter’ of ‘Fascistic Border Patrol Dogs and Their Bosses’ By Debra Heine

By on September 21st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/antifa-website-calls-for-slaug

In a post Thursday at far-left antifa website Incendiary News, an activist advocated for revolutionaries to rise up and “slaughter” what he called “fascistic Border Patrol dogs and their bosses,” Far Left Watch reported on Friday.

Disturbingly, far-left activists have in recent months become more brazenly militant and violent in their rhetoric on their websites and social media, as PJ Media has documented here, here, here, here, and here.

The author of the Incendiary News piece, Ulrike Salazar, likens Border Patrol agents to SS troops who “take away young boys and girls, tear apart families, throw away undesirables into dark and cramped dungeons.”

Then, after decrying all of the so-called atrocities committed by Border Patrol against illegal immigrants, Salazar writes: “This author only hopes that this chapter in American history will also include the moment when revolutionaries rose up with the masses and slaughtered the fascistic Border Patrol dogs and their bosses, slaying them with revolutionary fire and justice.”

By “bosses,” he presumably means Carla L. Provost, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol; her boss, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen; and her boss, President Donald J. Trump.

In an attempt to fan the flames, Salazar adds: “Who can read this, knowing the plight of the undocumented immigrant masses who struggle daily not for supremacy but basic economic survival, and have the gall to suppress that uncontrollable rage that builds inside you?”

He also calls on fellow radicals to destroy the “settler-colonialism imperialism” of Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the whole U.S. covernment from “without, not within,” implying through mass violence.

Salazar goes on to praise the Red Guards, a Maoist group that hopes to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao’s Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The group identifies as “antifascist” and has cells throughout the United States. According to Far Left Watch, Incendiary News is run by Red Guards – Austin (RGA).

“Revolutionary organizations throughout the country such as the Red Guards appear to be organizing among the immigrant masses in forming defense units, rallying around the shared slogan of ‘fight ICE with fire!'” he writes, adding, “the time for activism is over. Now is the time for war.”

Now is the time to mobilize the masses, particularly the immigrant masses from Central America and Mexico, to exact revolutionary vengeance and seize power. Without it, everything is just empty words. End the barbarism. End U.S. imperialism!

The Red Guards’ far-left comrades, “Serve the People L.A.,” are showing their revolutionary, anti-capitalist zeal by selling “Fight ICE with Fire” t-shirts: CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Refusing study in Israel is a bitter lesson in discrimination By Alan M. Dershowitz

By on September 21st, 2018

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/407647-refusing

Imagine a white university professor telling a highly qualified African-American student that he refused to recommend her for a year-abroad program to an African country because he disapproved of the way that country treated its white minority. That professor would be ostracized, boycotted, reprimanded, disciplined or fired.

Well, now the shoe is on the other foot: A left-wing professor at the University of Michigan, John Cheney-Lippold, has refused to recommend a highly qualified Jewish student for study in Israel. How do we know she was qualified? Because the professor already had agreed to recommend her. Then he noticed that she wanted to study in Israel, with whose policies he disagrees. So he withdrew his offer to recommend her based on his support for the boycott of Israeli universities.

This pernicious boycott tactic is designed to cut off all academic, scientific, cultural and other contacts with only one country: the nation state of the Jewish people. Many who support singling out Israel will actively encourage academic contacts with Russian, Cuban, Saudi, Venezuelan, Chinese, Belarusian and Palestinian universities, despite the horrid human-rights records of these undemocratic countries and the discriminatory policies of their universities. Israel is one of the world’s most democratic nations, with one of the best human-rights records and among the freest, most diverse universities. Yet it is the only target of this bigoted academic boycott. And the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) tactic applies only to Jewish Israelis, not Muslims.

This hypocritical professor probably would not hesitate to recommend his student to universities that discriminate against gay and transgender, women, Jewish or Christian students. Israeli universities do not discriminate against anyone; on the contrary, they have affirmative-action programs for Muslim and black students. They are on the forefront of scientific, technological and medical innovations which benefit the entire world, and would be set back by boycotts.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Menendez in Jeopardy as Senate Challenger Makes Push By Adele Malpass

By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/21/menendez_in_jeopardy_as_senate_challenger_makes_push_138139.html

The New Jersey Senate race was supposed to be a done deal with incumbent Bob Menendez easily cruising to re-election. It’s rated solid or likely to remain Democratic by most election watchers, and the Democrats were certainly putting it in their win column as they mapped out plans to retake the Senate.

But someone forgot to tell New Jersey voters that this race was uncompetitive. The polls show it to be tight — Menendez simply has not shaken Republican challenger Bob Hugin in a state Hillary Clinton carried by 14 points over Donald Trump two years ago.

Part of the reason seems to be that despite his acquittal in court on federal corruption charges, Menendez has not escaped the taint that came with his 2015 trial. Another is that Hugin, the wealthy former CEO of a biopharmaceutical company, had already spent nearly $16 million in the race. Throw into this mix a state with the worst affordability index in the country and an expected increase in the gasoline tax on Oct. 1 — on top of significant increases in state taxes enacted this spring. It seems a combustible mix in which an attractive and well-funded outsider with a sterling resume can give the political establishment heartburn.

Meanwhile, Menendez has a lot of baggage to defend. In 2015, he was indicted on federal corruption charges pursued by his fellow Democrats — the first U.S. senator to be indicted by the administration of his own party in 30 years. He was accused of doing favors for Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, who is now serving 17 years in prison for Medicare fraud. Prosecutors presented evidence of 19 free private plane trips and campaign donations, which they asserted came in exchange for political favors. According to prosecutors, one such trip to the Dominican Republic supposedly involved underage prostitutes. Menendez strongly denied those allegations, but in the #MeToo era, any lingering suspicion is unhelpful for a politician. And though he was not found guilty by the jury, Menendez was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee.

While he may have survived his legal battles, New Jersey voters have apparently not forgotten. In a June primary, an unknown Democratic opponent who raised less than $5,000 got 38 percent of the vote against Menendez. That challenger, Lisa McCormick, didn’t have enough money to run ads reminding the electorate of Menendez’s legal troubles. But Bob Hugin did. Hugin’s campaign began running hard-hitting television spots against the incumbent in February. Menendez was pounded by ads titled “Guilty,” “Screwed” and “Dead Last.” By July, Menendez was leading Hugin by two percentage points, and in an August poll he was up by only six.

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