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Ruth King

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President, Democrats should seal a deal: Trade the wall for Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court by Clarence Schwab

By on October 25th, 2018

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/412683-president-democrats-should-seal-a-deal-trade-the-wall-for-merrick-garland

Donald Trump has won big with Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. He also is leaving his imprint on the lower courts. These results are paying real-world political dividends, as Republicans appear poised to keep control of the Senate. This is the moment for President Trump to win big with “The Wall” along our southern border.

Yet, with Democrats about to take control of the House, the wall will likely be as real as Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, without some Democratic support.

President Trump should start thinking about making a deal, and the next Supreme Court seat vacated by a liberal justice may be just the pressure point. How about offering assurances to Senate Democrats that Judge Garland, the stalled Supreme Court nominee of the Obama administration, would fill the next seat vacated by a liberal justice, in return for full funding of a “big and beautiful wall”?

The last time the wall was part of a possible deal, the price was DACA, and ultimately the GOP and White House balked. But offering to trade the wall for Merrick Garland, with a Supreme Court firmly in conservative control, leaves the Trump political base with little to lose.

In fact, the House Republicans’ Freedom Caucus would have plenty to cheer about. Rank-and-file Republicans could sleep easier at night knowing that the southern border was safer. Like the president, Senate Republicans have some room to give, and the president could smile because he didn’t have to give anything on immigration to get the wall.

As for the 2020 re-election, such a trade would highlight Trump’s political deal-making prowess, and show him to be capable of compromise. For Independents, that could ease doubts about the president’s capacity to govern effectively. It could increase Trump’s chances of getting their votes and, in so doing, of maybe winning the popular vote.

To be sure, the Federalist Society may oppose this proposal. But the Federalists would still get to name every other appointment to the federal bench while Trump remains as president. And, lest anyone forget, Trump’s brand is on the ballot, not theirs.

So, how might congressional Democrats react?

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Britain’s Grooming Gangs: Part 3 by Denis MacEoin

By on October 25th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13169/britain-grooming-gangs-part-3

This reformist activity in the migrant community needs to be encouraged and backed by government resources.

“On one level, most imams in the UK are simply using their puritanical sermons to promote the wearing of the hijab and even the burka among their female adherents. But the dire result can be the brutish misogyny we see in the Oxford sex ring.” — Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation.

There are decent Muslims everywhere who work hard to counter all the anti-social and criminal activities in which so many of their co-religionists engage and the theological positions through which they try to justify what they do. But terrorist attacks, anti-Semitic hate speech, and sexual harassment of young white women are real crimes committed by a different kind of Muslim and must be addressed as such.

“Women in some communities are facing a double onslaught of gender inequality, combined with religious, cultural and social barriers preventing them from accessing even their basic rights as British residents. And violence against women remains all too prevalent….” — Dame Louise Casey, The Casey Review, 2016.

Not all Muslims remained silent about the grooming gang problem. We have already seen how the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, took rapid action to open an enquiry into the crimes. A number of Muslim organizations and individuals have spoken out against the gangs, and condemned them for bringing their faith into disrepute. The integrative Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), for one, has spoken out strongly about grooming culture.

In May 2013, Julie Siddiqi, chief executive of the ISB, coordinated a Muslim-led coalition to campaign against offenders, known as The Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which, in turn, was launched in Bradford with the backing of the Bradford Council of Mosques. The following month, a Muslim group called Together Against Grooming (TAG) declared that a Friday prayer sermon (khutba) would be read out in around 500 mosques across the country to draw attention to the grooming issue. The sermon was written by Alyas Karmani, an imam who has a background in psychology and serves at several mosques around Bradford. Karmani specializes in sexual counselling from a non-fundamentalist perspective and has worked on a PhD entitled, “The Crises of Masculinity and Urban Male Violence”. His detailed understanding of the grooming gangs and their various motivations are perhaps the most sophisticated yet advanced by a Muslim expert and should be taken into account by any present or future investigation.

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Serving Spartacus With all of New Jersey’s problems, guess which bill is moving in the Garden State legislature. By James Freeman

By on October 24th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/serving-spartacus-1540414712

A seemingly never-ending caravan of migrants has been fleeing New Jersey for years as the Garden State economy sputters under the weight of high taxes and dysfunctional government. Residents who haven’t yet joined the caravan might be hoping for some relief from state legislators. But lately politicians in Trenton have prioritized relief for just one particular resident who spends much of his time in Washington, D.C.

Politico’s Ryan Hutchins reports:

New Jersey Democrats are clearing the way for Sen. Cory Booker to run for reelection and president at the same time — and they’re not being bashful about their motivations.

State lawmakers on Monday quickly introduced and advanced a bill that would ensure no one could mount a legal challenge should Booker — or, in theory, another federal elected official — decide to run for the White House while trying to retain his current job.

The measure could land on Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk next week, and his office has already said he’s willing to sign it.

Mr. Hutchins notes that the “loquacious, coffee-chugging” Mr. Booker appears to be considering a run for President in 2020. Fellow Democrats want to ensure that there’s no risk of him having to give up his Senate seat in order to seek the highest office in the land.

New Jersey homeowners would also love to have downside protection until the day they decide to join the caravan. Actually, many of them are already participating in a harrowing daily journey as they attempt to cross the Hudson River in search of better economic opportunities in New York City. As the New York Times reported in September, attempting such crossings has lately become more difficult:

New Jersey Transit, which has been struggling for months to maintain its already reduced commuter train service, plans to take more trains off its schedule next month and to temporarily eliminate some routes…

The statewide transit agency has been canceling trains on short notice, infuriating its customers as they have to scramble to get to work on time and keep appointments. New Jersey Transit, the country’s second-busiest commuter rail system, has blamed the failures on its rush to meet a Dec. 31 federal deadline to install an automatic braking system. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Zero Hour for the Islamic Republic The time has come for the world to unite against Iran’s regime. 3 Comments By Danny Danon

By on October 24th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zero-hour-for-the-islamic-republic-1540422152

Iran has long been a subject of intense discussion during the United Nations General Assembly. But in years past the world lacked the leadership and political will to confront Tehran over its nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism. This year is different. With the regime facing political unrest at home and escalating sanctions from abroad, the international community can block its expansionist and dangerous designs.

The Iranian leadership is beleaguered. It faces protests that directly challenge its legitimacy. Iranians are outraged that their leaders have funneled the billions of dollars their government received from the nuclear agreement to support terrorist proxies. Protesters are shouting “Death to Palestine”—repudiating the regime’s anti-Israel eliminationism—and “Leave Syria and think of us.”

Financial pressure from U.S. sanctions has compounded this domestic turmoil, as companies around the world end their commercial dealings with Iran. The value of the Iranian rial has plummeted, while Iran’s oil exports have fallen 25% since June. In November a second round of sanctions will target the backbone of Iran’s economy, its oil and gas sectors.

When the General Assembly convened in September, President Trump advised the international community to join the U.S. in isolating the regime. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the existence of a new nuclear site constructed in violation of the nuclear agreement. He invited the International Atomic Energy Agency, or anyone with a smartphone, to inspect the site: latitude 35.5022, longitude 51.2997.

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Bolivia promoting another anti-Israel event at UN Security Council Ariel Kahana

By on October 24th, 2018

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/24/bolivia-promoting-another-anti-israel-event-at-un-security-council/

Bolivian ambassador invites Randa Siniora, a known supporter of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, to ‎address the Security Council • “Circus of Bolivian hypocrisy continues,” Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon says.

The Bolivian mission to the United Nations, which ‎holds the Security Council presidency this ‎month‎, ‎announced Tuesday that it plans to host another anti-‎Israel event at the forum.‎

Bolivian Ambassador to the U.N. Sacha Sergio ‎Llorenti Soliz has invited Randa Siniora, director ‎of the Ramallah-based Women’s Center for Legal Aid ‎and Counselling and former director of Al-Haq – both ‎groups that promote anti-Israel lawfare and support ‎the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – to ‎address the Security Council.‎

Al-Haq’s delegitimization campaign against Israel ‎is especially virulent, and past ‎officials in the organization have been convicted of ‎affiliation with the Popular Front for the ‎Liberation of Palestine, designated by Israel as a ‎terrorist group.‎

Soliz was also the driving force behind inviting ‎Hagai El-Ad, director of the human rights group B’Tselem to ‎address the Security Council.‎

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Report: Jordanian MPs demand review of peace treaty ‎with Israel ‎ Daniel Siryoti

By on October 24th, 2018

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/24/report-jordanian-mps-demand-review-of-peace-treaty-%e2%80%8ewith-israel-%e2%80%8e/

In wake of a decision to void clauses in 1994 peace deal leasing borderlands to Israel, hawkish lawmakers urge King Abdullah to exit treaty altogether • Security around Israeli Embassy in Amman increased ahead of a mass anti-Israel march planned for Friday.

Members of the Jordanian Parliament on Tuesday demanded a special session be held to review the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, and some hawkish lawmakers urged King Abdullah to cancel the agreement altogether, local media reported.

The move followed an announcement by Abdullah on Sunday that he has decided ‎to pull out of clauses in the ‎agreement that allow Israel to lease two small areas – ‎Baqura, known as Naharayim in Hebrew, in the northern Jordan Valley, and Ghamr in ‎the south – from the Jordanians for 25 years. ‎

The leases expire next year and the deadline for ‎renewing them is Thursday.‎

Naharayim, a small parcel of land also called the “Isle of Peace,” has become the center of recent friction between the longtime peace partners.

The 1994 peace treaty, signed between then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, is vastly unpopular in Jordan, where ‎‎pro-Palestinian sentiment is widespread.

‎‎Activists and politicians have been vocal against a ‎‎renewal of the lease clauses, which they say is ‎‎”humiliating” and perpetuates “‎Israeli occupation” ‎of Jordanian territory.‎

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Peter Smith: Exorcising Marx and His Economics

By on October 24th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/10/exorcising-marx-economics/

Regard Marxism as the economic equivalent of a dead language and it makes some sort of sense — worthy of study for its place in the pantheon of human knowledge and doleful impact when implemented, but otherwise having no contemporary utility

How do you tell a communist? Someone who has read Marx and Lenin. How do you tell a non-communist? Someone who has understood Marx and Lenin.
—President Reagan
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“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” wrote Adam Smith philosophically in the late eighteenth century. He no doubt thought it would be ever thus. He was oblivious, of course, to the claimed curative powers of Marxism as practically expressed in communism. However, as a man of practical affairs, Smith today would not be impressed. After all, Marxism in practice has always produced the most dreadful results imaginable. What kind of people would downplay this overwhelming evidence and hold to the faith? In a word, idealists, the same kind of people who subscribed to Robert Owen’s utopian socialism before Marx and Engels came on the scene. They are a legion to this day.

This is what the renowned historian of economic thought Mark Blaug wrote in 1968, in Economic Theory in Retrospect: “Marx is alive and well today. He has been reassessed, revised, refuted, and buried a thousand times; but he refuses to be relegated to intellectual history.” Fifty years on, Blaug would not need to change a word.

As old Marxists fade away new ones replace them. Marx’s resilient spirit stalks the corridors of humanities departments in most Western universities, ready to possess those amenable to believing in the promise of nirvana in the here and now. Saul Alinsky (in Rules for Radicals) has a nice take on this promise:

to seize power and give it to the people; to realise the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.

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Here they come! Another illegal immigrant caravan forming in El Salvador By Rick Moran

By on October 24th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/here_they_come_another_illegal_immigrant_caravan_forming_in_el_salvador_.html

NBC News is reporting that another illegal alien caravan is forming in El Salvador and will begin its trek to the U.S. border soon.

As the Trump administration makes preparations to combat the 6,500-member Honduran migrant caravan making its way toward the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is also tracking a new caravan taking shape – this time from El Salvador, according to two U.S. officials, a local source on the ground in Central America and an internal U.S. government report obtained by NBC News.

The El Salvadoran caravan is still forming, but its members have plans to begin their journey northward toward the U.S. next week, according to the sources.

The internal report indicates that DHS is tracking the communications of caravan members, including a 230-member WhatsApp group that intends to leave on Oct. 31.

With the DHS “tracking the communications of caravan members,” you have to believe it has a pretty good idea of who is organizing these invasions.

Some international do-gooder organizations are saying it’s not they.

It’s unclear exactly how the caravan started in Honduras, but it appears to have no formal leadership.

“No one is capable of organizing this many people. Nobody,” said Irineo Mujica of Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders), which is providing support to the group. “It’s an exodus.”

Many Mexicans have turned out to help the migrants, handing out food and sometimes clothes in each town where they stop.

That woman is either naïve or disingenuous. There are many groups capable of organizing such a caravan. All it takes is a little money and a few people who know what they’re doing.

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The Pipe-Bombs Story: Another Example of Why No One Trusts the Media By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 24th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pipe-bombs-story-why-no-one-trusts-media/

The political Left has been known to orchestrate frame-up attacks designed to make it appear that right-leaning opponents are responsible for violent acts and plots.

If I wrote the paragraph above in the context of reporting or commenting on the pipe bombs that were reportedly sent by an unidentified person or persons to prominent Democrats, many people would react angrily, and rightly so. After all, there is no evidence that the atrocious but thankfully unsuccessful targeting of the Obamas, the Clintons, CNN, George Soros, and Eric Holder (as well as Debbie Wasserman Shultz, whose Florida office was given as the return address on some of the packages) was carried out by political leftists. There is no proof that any Democrat was hoping to cast suspicion on Republican supporters, to suggest to voters, less than two weeks before the midterms, that Trump and GOP rhetoric incites violence. To intimate, in the absence of any proof, that left-wing agitators may be responsible would be a condemnable smear.

That’s why this paragraph, by the usually sensible Will Rashbaum in the New York Times’s report on the apparent attempted bombings, is so infuriating:

Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Soros and CNN have all figured prominently in conservative political attacks — many of which have been led by President Trump. He has often referred to major news organizations as “the enemy of the people,” and has had a particular animus for CNN.

The report goes on to say that the CNN bomb package was addressed to former Obama CIA director John Brennan (who is actually a commentator at MSNBC, not CNN). The Times then adds, gratuitously, that Brennan “is a harsh critic of Mr. Trump,” who revoked Brennan’s security clearance “in what was seen as an act of retribution.”

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Papadopoulos Told FBI Informant in 2016 There Was No Russian Collusion in Trump Campaign By Debra Heine

By on October 24th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/papadopoulos-told-fbi-informant-in-2016-there-was-no-russian-collusion-in-trump-campaign/

For months, Republicans have been claiming that classified documents revealed exculpatory evidence that should have been included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Carter Page — and now The Hill’s John Solomon has the scoop.

In mid-September of 2016, weeks after the Russia counterintelligence probe was launched, then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an FBI informant there was no collusion going on between the campaign and Russia that he knew of, and that such activity would be “treasonous.”

Papadopoulos told Solomon that he made the comments to London-based professor and FBI informant Stefan Halper.

“He was there to probe me on the behest of somebody else,” Papadopoulos said. “He said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, it’s great that Russia is helping you and your campaign, right George?’”

Papadopoulos said Halper also suggested the Trump campaign was involved in the hacking and release of Hillary Clinton’s emails that summer. “I think I told him something along the lines of, ‘I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with that, so stop bothering me about it,’” Papadopoulos recalled.

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