Displaying the most recent of 91299 posts written by

Ruth King

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

What Did Brett Kavanaugh Do at the Junior Prom? by David C. Stolinsky ****

By on October 5th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13084/brett-kavanaugh-nomination

One can have complete sympathy for someone who underwent the trauma of experiencing attempted sexual assault, but the fishy timing and discrepancies of this reported incident make it hard not to ask what unprovable and undefendable allegations will the next character assassin toss out. Hard-drug use? Child abuse? How pervasive and surreal are such fact-challenged defamations going to get?
According to a report by Congressman Louie Gohmert, Senator Ted Stevens “was not only completely innocent of the manufactured case against him, he was an honest and honorable man. Under Director Mueller’s overriding supervision, the wrongdoer who helped manufacture the case stayed on and the whistleblower was punished.”
Back where I come from, officials investigate crimes that can be named and that have occurred; they do not go around trying to manufacture them. Back where I come from, officials investigate crimes to discover who committed them; they do not investigate people to see if they can come up with one.
I come from America. It is a nice place to visit, but it is a really great place to live. One day I hope to live there again. A good way to make that day come sooner is to end the government’s framing people, and presumptions of guilt. Ending politically motivated prosecutions, criminal conspiracies to overthrow a duly elected president, and ending criminal abuse of power might also help.

Was it the junior prom or just a high-school party? Was Christine Blasey Ford, who says she was the victim of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault, 15 or 16 years old at the time? Were there four boys present during the incident, as in the notes of Blasey Ford’s therapist, or two, as she says now? Did Kavanaugh’s friend, Mark Judge, who strongly denies the incident, participate? Was it even Kavanaugh who participated, or perhaps someone who looked like him? Why did the alleged victim wait 35 years (or was it 36) to come forward? Why did Senator Dianne Feinstein refer the complaint to the FBI, which has no jurisdiction?

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Georgetown Professor’s Castrating Rage The face of leftist academic hate. John Perazzo

By on October 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271530/georgetown-professors-castrating-rage-john-perazzo

Taking her place among the gaggle of leftists who have felt compelled to broadcast their opinions regarding the sexual-abuse allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, Georgetown University Associate Professor Carol Christine Fair has weighed in on the matter numerous times in recent days. By any measure, Fair ranks as one of the more overtly angry and unrestrained of Kavanaugh’s critics.

Professor Fair’s reflexive rage may stem, in part, from the tragic fact that in her youth, as she has previously disclosed, she was repeatedly molested by an uncle for about a decade. When Christine Blasey Ford went public with her unsubstantiated, uncorroborated allegation about an event from 36 years ago, Fair promptly used her Twitter and Tumblr accounts to characterize Judge Kavanaugh as a “rapist” and “perjurer,” and to depict Republicans generally as “a fu**ing death cult” of “filthy swine” who are “pro-rape, pro-pederasty, pro-perjury, pro-corruption, pro-Russian hacking, pro-child trafficking, pro-white male supremacy, pro-VERY-late-term abortion of children with AR-15’s.” She also characterized Trump voters as “Trumpanzees,” and she described their pro-Trump “MAGA” hats as “socially-acceptable Klan hoods.”

After watching Republican senators defend Kavanaugh in the televised hearing last week, Fair tweeted: “Look at [this] chorus of entitled white men. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

Fair later told the website Heavy.com: “This [Trump] regime is hell-bent upon disenfranchising women, POC [people of color], non-Christians, LGBTQI and empowering a larger role for corruption in our governance…. This is only the beginning of fascism in America.”

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Believe all women… unless they accuse the Left. Daniel Greenfield

By on October 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271538/nobody-believes-all-women-daniel-greenfield

fter Christine Blasey Ford’s confused testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bumble took out full page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in its trademark black, white and yellow, “Believe Women”.

Probably not a good idea with a dating app accused by some users of fooling them with fake profiles.

Nobody believes all women. The Democrats certainly don’t. Just ask the two women who accused Keith Ellison, the DNC’s number two, of domestic abuse. A Minnesota poll showed that 42% of Republicans believed Ellison’s latest accuser, while only 5% of Democrats did. 71% of Minnesota Democrats didn’t think Al Franken should resign even when the line of accusers stretched out the door and then some.

Democrats are more likely to believe female accusers in the abstract, not when they have political skin in the game. That’s why fewer Democrats were willing to believe the allegations against Al Franken than against Bill Clinton, even though there were far more Franken witnesses and even a photo. Bill Clinton was yesterday’s news, while Franken, like Ellison, was a current progressive champion.

The willingness of more Democrats to believe Bill Clinton’s accusers isn’t evolution, it’s hypocrisy.

Democrats covered for Bill Clinton as long as the Clintons were a viable political dynasty. Only when Hillary went down in flames, and Bill Clinton seemed to spend most of his time playing with balloons, was it safe to start believing the same women they had been ridiculing and demeaning all these years.

And maybe when Keith Ellison retires to practice corporate law or plant bombs in synagogues, the Democrats will finally come around to believing the women who have accused him of abusing them.

Local Democrats are also less likely to believe the women accusing their own politicians than national Democrats are. The left supports #BelieveAllWomen in the abstract, but not when it hits home.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Arab political-incorrectness on the Palestinian issue Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on October 5th, 2018

https://bit.ly/2Qzzmgj
While Iraq delivers staunchly pro-Palestinian talk, a 2017 Iraqi law has reversed Saddam Hussein’s pro-Palestinian policy, depriving Palestinians (including those born in Iraq) of free education, healthcare, travel documents and employment in state institutions.

While Jordan calls for sweeping Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, and while the Hashemite regime has absorbed over one million Syrian refugees, Amman stopped (since 2012) admitting Palestinian refugees from Syria. Furthermore, the significantly enhanced trilateral Jordan-US-Israel strategic cooperation has become a major artery of the Hashemite regime’s national and homeland security.

While Egypt urges Israel to satisfy Palestinian demands, Egypt-Israel strategic cooperation, especially (but not only) in the area of counter-terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza, has surged unprecedentedly.

While there is no progress on the Israel-Palestinian front, Saudi Arabia and all other pro-US Arab Gulf States have substantially expanded military and commercial cooperation with Israel. Riyadh has never considered the Palestinian issue a top geo-strategic priority – except its generous talk, but no walk – as demonstrated from 1979-1989 by its $1BN annual aid to the anti-Soviet Islamic campaign in Afghanistan, compared with $100MN annual aid to the PLO. Also, while UNRWA highlighted a “$50MN landmark contribution by Saudi Arabia” on behalf of Palestinian refugees, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman put it in realistic perspective by purchasing a 440ft-long yacht for $588MN and a Leonardo da Vinci painting for $450MN.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

KEN LANGONE :”I LOVE CAPITALISM-AN AMERICAN STORY”

By on October 5th, 2018

Ken Langone is an American original whose book could easily be titled “I Love America.” The narrative describes his life as a poor boy in Long Island who became one of America’s most successful businessman, former director of the New York Stock Exchange, a co founder of Home Depot, and a black-belt philanthropist who most recently guaranteed all tuition costs to all accepted students at NYU’s medical school.

Langone is proud of his Italian heritage and family but eschews hyphenation. He is a religious Catholic who prays and attends mass often. He attributes his outsize success to capitalism-free enterprise that gives inspiration and impetus and possibilities to every American. In his words:

This book is my love song to capitalism. Capitalism works! And I’m living proof — it works for everybody. Absolutely anybody is entitled to dream big, and absolutely everybody should dream big. I did. Show me where the silver spoon was in my mouth. I’ve got to argue profoundly and passionately: I’m the American Dream.

His book is an optimistic and patriotic and sunny paean to America.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Theresa May’s Long Goodbye By John O’Sullivan

By on October 5th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/theresa-mays-brexit-policy-change-or-be-voted-out/

Either she will have to change her Brexit policy, or her party will change its leader.

When Prime Minister Theresa May danced onto the stage at the Tory conference yesterday to speak to the assembled Tories, she did so as a leader whom 80 percent of Conservatives want to see replaced before the next election. Admittedly, polls show that only about one-third of Tories said they wanted her replaced at once. An easygoing 40 percent would be content if she departed sometime between now and July 2022. Still, only one-fifth of Tories want May to stay leader past that point. They’re old-fashioned: They disapprove of assisted suicide.

Even so, anyone who knows the Tory party will find this level of internal opposition extraordinary. Grassroots Tories have traditionally been deferential — they know their place — and Tory MPs have been clever at disguising their opposition until some dramatic event gives them license to rebel respectably. Election defeats usually provide this: Alec Douglas-Home, Ted Heath, John Major, William Hague, Michael Howard, and David Cameron all fell in this way.

Theresa May did not actually lose the 2017 election — she led Labour by two points in the popular vote — but she lost her party’s parliamentary majority in an election that was generally expected to produce a Tory landslide. That near-defeat was plainly attributable both to her own robotic campaign performance and to her policies — such as the so-called “dementia tax” that alienated older voters, a natural Tory constituency. She should have been defenestrated then.

May was able to hold on as PM because Conservatives thought she would unite the party in support of implementing Brexit, after which she would smilingly resign and be given the credit for a historic achievement. That was naïve, of course: What political leader resigns after a great achievement? But what no one then expected is that May would pursue a policy designed to ensure that Brexit never occurs — or that what does occur is Remain lightly disguised as Brexit, or worse.

Worse than Remain? Well, yes. May’s Brexit proposals — now known as “Chequers,” after the PM’s country house, where they were imposed on a surprised cabinet days after May had personally assured the secretary of state for exiting the EU that she had no such intentions — would effectively keep Britain inside the EU’s single market (i.e., by accepting its current and future regulations) and its customs union, and keep it subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice while forfeiting its votes in all EU institutions.

Not enough for you? Then ponder this: The London Times has reported that the government is now prepared to cut a deal with the EU that would prevent a post-Brexit U.K. from reaching free-trade deals with other countries such as Australia, Canada, and . . . the United States. Such a deal would breach the reddest of red lines laid down by Theresa May and the Tory party since the 2016 referendum. Yet no one thinks the report is mistaken. And May has continued to say in interviews that final agreement with the EU will require concessions from both sides. But what has May left to concede?

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

I Am an Independent, Impartial Judge Yes, I was emotional last Thursday. I hope everyone can understand I was there as a son, husband and dad. By Brett M. Kavanaugh

By on October 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-am-an-independent-impartial-judge-1538695822

I was deeply honored to stand at the White House July 9 with my wife, Ashley, and my daughters, Margaret and Liza, to accept President Trump’s nomination to succeed my former boss and mentor, Justice Anthony Kennedy, on the Supreme Court. My mom, Martha—one of the first women to serve as a Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, and my inspiration to become a lawyer—sat in the audience with my dad, Ed.

That night, I told the American people who I am and what I believe. I talked about my 28-year career as a lawyer, almost all of which has been in public service. I talked about my 12 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the second most important court in the country, and my five years of service in the White House for President George W. Bush. I talked about my long record of advancing and promoting women, including as a judge—a majority of my 48 law clerks have been women—and as a longtime coach of girls’ basketball teams.

As I explained that night, a good judge must be an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no political party, litigant or policy. As Justice Kennedy has stated, judges do not make decisions to reach a preferred result. Judges make decisions because the law and the Constitution compel the result. Over the past 12 years, I have ruled sometimes for the prosecution and sometimes for criminal defendants, sometimes for workers and sometimes for businesses, sometimes for environmentalists and sometimes for coal miners. In each case, I have followed the law. I do not decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.

As Justice Kennedy showed us, a judge must be independent, not swayed by public pressure. Our independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic. The Supreme Court is the last line of defense for the separation of powers, and for the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Brett Kavanaugh Reader

By on October 4th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-reader/

Only a lengthy and voluminously footnoted book could paint the full picture the judge’s ordeal on his way to the US Supreme Court. Nevertheless, what Roger Kimball, John Hinderaker and others have had to say sheds a grimly unflattering light on the tactics and motivations of his accusers.

In Quadrant‘s October issue, Hal G.P. Colebatch contributes the second installment of his two-parter on TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome — and notes how hatred of this outsider president has drawn forth a venomous insanity wherever the Left prevails. “The Sydney Morning Herald in October, 2016, claimed that ‘Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler Have More in Common than Slogans‘,” Hal writes, adding that the globe-girdling hysteria on the Left has seen “the institutionalisation and acceptance of violence and lies.” If you scratch from the ledger of ‘progressive’ bullying the attempted massacre by a Bernie Sanders supporter of congressional Republicans training for a charity baseball game, an outrage seldom mentioned since in the manistream media, the most vile manifestation of the Left’s principle- and decency-free strategy has been the Borking of US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Below, a selection of the slanders and misrepresentations masquerading as commentary, interspersed with rebuttals the mainstream media has found it convenient to omit. In a better world you might have come across the facts on the ABC, rather than the by-rote Democratic Party talking points the national broadcaster serves up as news. And when an agent of accuracy does get a word in edgeways, the get the treatment accorded Judith Sloan on The Drum. Skip to the 40-minute mark of this video when Judith is repeatedly shouted down by the customary stacked panel. That’s the ABC’s idea of debate, just as this off-with-the-fairies polemic from a US contributor proceeds from the premise that Kavanaugh is the beast from Central Casting and must he held responsible for the ills inflicted on women. (…the image of Dr Ford, giving her testimony, now will accompany Mr Kavanaugh for the rest of his career. The image, in fact, is that of American women of her generation and everything that they have tried to become, and what they have had to endure to do so.)

Roger Kimball’s observations are especially worthwhile, but first a couple of cartoons that further the Democrats’ guilty-until-proven-innocent framing of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings:

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Anjali Nadaradjane Africa’s Looming Venezuela

By on October 4th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/africas-looming-venezuela/

There are better ways for South Africa to implement land reform than expropriation without compensation. Vast swathes are owned by government and much of this, rather than properties seized by parliamentary decree, could easily be transferred to deserving families and communities.

The South African government’s planned land grab from farmers, known as Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC), sets a damning precedent for the country by threatening both fundamental property rights as well as South Africa’s economic prosperity.

Earlier this year, the parliament of South Africa supported the EWC resolution to amend section 25 of their Constitution. Currently, S25 mandates that the government must pay just and equitable compensation when it expropriates land. South African president, Ramaphosa claims that EWC Is necessary for restoring land stolen during apartheid, redistributing land so that home ownership correlates with racial demographics in order to appease the electorate which he argues, has been clamouring for land reform. He believes that the country’s economy will not be adversely impacted, yet the evidence suggests otherwise.

The EWC will weaken fundamental property rights and causing destitution and strife. The International Property Rights Alliance (IPRA), an international coalition of property rights advocacy groups of which the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance is the local affiliate, have cautioned the South African government against continuing with its proposed policy of expropriating private property, arguing that the proposed policy will undermine constitutional democracy. The proposed amendments would apply to both physical and intellectual property, from trademarks and patents to houses, vehicles and even heirlooms. The government may be tempted to abuse the new powers in order to undermine their political opponents. Land could be arbitrarily expropriated, as well as other forms of property such as pensions to fund government programmes.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tomorrow’s Elite Lawyers Disavow Due Process Law students at Yale and Harvard, triggered by Kavanaugh, skip class and file Title IX complaints. By Heather Mac Donald

By on October 4th, 2018

At last count more than 1,700 law professors have signed an open letter complaining that Judge Brett Kavanaugh “displayed a lack of judicial temperament” in responding to uncorroborated sexual assault accusations against him. In his 12 years on the federal bench, Judge Kavanaugh has produced ample evidence of his judicial temperament. If anyone’s temperament should be of concern to these professors, it’s that of their students, enthralled by identity politics and victim ideology.

Immediately after President Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh in July, hundreds of Yale law students, alumni and faculty signed a petition claiming the nomination presented an “emergency . . . for our safety.” When Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations became public in September, Yale law students convened a town hall to combat a “culture” on campus “that privileges power and prestige over safety and wellness, [and] that precludes many of us from flourishing in this space.”

When the New Yorker published its own uncorroborated account of lewd conduct purportedly committed by Mr. Kavanaugh as a Yale freshman, Yale law-school alumnae organized an open letter supporting “all women who have faced sexual assault, not only at Yale, but across the country.” Thirty-one Yale law professors canceled classes to facilitate student protests against Judge Kavanaugh, both in New Haven and on Capitol Hill. The Office of Student Affairs put out a plate of cookies to let students “know we are thinking of you.”

Not to be outdone, Harvard law students walked out of their classes the day after the New Yorker article appeared, wearing pink buttons declaring “I Believe Christine Blasey Ford.” America must “stand by these survivors,” the president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association told the crowd. The dean of students announced, “We are supporting our students as they grapple with these issues.” Whether she provided cookies is unknown.

Continue reading →