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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What You Missed from Michael Horowitz’s Testimony By Julie Kelly

By on June 22nd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/22/trumps-message-full-transparency

In the media’s rush to exploit the plight of migrant children this week, the public testimony of Michael Horowitz has been buried or, more likely, ignored by the news media.

Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, testified for more than 10 hours on Capitol Hill, taking questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday and from a joint congressional committee on Tuesday.

Since the June 14 release of his 568-page report on the department’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, Horowitz has been criticized for concluding that the agency’s decision to forego charges against Clinton was unrelated to the political views of those in charge.

“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations,” Horowitz said, “including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed, or that the justifications offered for these decisions were pretextual.”

That finding seems to runs afoul of much of the report’s content, which included a trove of text messages showing top FBI brass favored Hillary Clinton and despised Donald Trump. (The report did suggest that the decision by lead investigator Peter Strzok to prioritize the Trump-Russia counterintelligence probe over the Weiner laptop investigation in September-October 2016 was not “free from bias.”)

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Immigration Policy : The wrinkle in the German immigration story is Muslim migrant attacks on Jews. Joseph Puder

By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270518/german-immigration-policy-

Germany’s immigration policy under Chancellor Angela Merkel is under attack again, this time from within her own government. There is however another wrinkle to the immigration story, it is the case of Muslim migrant attacks against Jews in Germany. The recent rape and murder of a Jewish girl named Susanna Maria Feldman, 14, from the city of Mainz, in Western Germany, by a 19-year Muslim migrant, that Merkel enthusiastically admitted into Germany, stirred the country, and raised further questions about the open-door immigration policy of Merkel’s government.

Angela Merkel’s coalition government may be torn apart on the issue of immigration. Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian conservative party, has pledged to reverse Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy toward migrants. Germany has absorbed 1.4 million migrants since 2015, the vast majority of them being Muslims from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Seehofer, the Interior Minister in Merkel’s coalition government is concerned by the rise of the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) whose success in the polls, and its surprise showing in the 2017 election (capturing 12.6% of the votes) may now threaten the supremacy of his party in Bavaria. State elections in Bavaria are scheduled for October this year. For now, Merkel and Seehofer have agreed to wait for a resolution to the immigrant issue at next week’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE PERIL OF POLITICIZED ANTISEMITISM Jewish Democrats’ libels against Trump mask a dire problem in their ranks. Caroline Glick

By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-The-peril-of-politicized-antisemitism-560599
Trump shows his friendship and respect for Israel every single day.

A Google search of the terms “Trump Nazi,” brings up 70,900,000 results.

There are a number of distressing aspects to this state of affairs.First and foremost, it is pure libel to call US President Donald Trump a Nazi.

His daughter Ivanka is Jewish. His daughter-in-law is Jewish. Half his grandchildren are Jewish and his non-Jewish ex-daughter-in-law is half Jewish.

How many Nazis have Hanukka celebrations in their homes starring their Jewish grandchildren?

Beyond his Jewish immediate family, Trump has shown extraordinary friendship to the Jewish state. It isn’t simply that Trump kept the promise none if his predecessors kept and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, although that would have sufficed to prove his friendship.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Weaponizing Compassion What the controversy over illegal immigrant families is really about. Bruce Thornton

By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270514/weaponizing-compassion-bruce-thornton

The Democrat “resistance” has managed to break its own record for hysterical and hypocritical invective. Literalizing the clichéd punch line of a thousand gags––“Will no one think of the children!!!” ––the Dems are hyperventilating about the illegal alien parents and their children being separated upon detention, as the law requires. Once again, we see how much “conspicuous compassion,” as Alan Bloom called it, has become a weapon of politics, one that damages our security and interests.

In this case, the disconnect between fact and spin is more glaring than usual. No matter that ICE and Homeland Security are working within the constraints of court rulings and the law that Congress passed and can change any time. No matter that often it’s impossible to certify that the detained adults are the actual parents, or that human traffickers aren’t using this dodge to enter the country with their prey. No matter that the alternative is to turn these poorly vetted illegal aliens loose (as Obama did, as a form of de facto amnesty), merely on their word that they will show up for a hearing. No matter that across the country, Child Protective Services are “ripping children from their parents’ arms,” as are the children of those arrested on suspicion of a crime. Do we set a criminal suspect free on his own recognizance just because he’s accompanied by his kid?

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

TED WILLIAMS: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”

By on June 21st, 2018

Ted Williams was so good at baseball, he had more than one nickname — “The Kid,” “The Splendid Splinter,” and “Teddy Ballgame” — but the only nickname he wanted was “The greatest hitter who ever lived.” During a remarkable 19-year career as a left fielder for the Boston Red Sox (for which he was named an All-Star 19 times), Williams cemented his reputation as one of the best players in the history of the game. But his life was bigger than baseball, and Nick Davis’s film TED WILLIAMS tells the full story of Williams’s life in a delightful, complex portrait of an American hero.

AMERICAN MASTERS PRESENTS
TED WILLIAMS: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”

an Albert M. Tapper Production
in association with Major League Baseball, Nick Davis Productions, and Big Papi Productions

Produced and Directed by Nick Davis
Narrated by Jon Hamm
Edited by Josh Freed
Music by Joel Goodman

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Catcher Was a Spy: Moe Berg Led a Life Worth a Better Biopic Than This By Kyle Smith

By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/movie-review-the-catcher-was-a-spy-moe-berg-biopic/The writing and directing are flat, and Paul Rudd is miscast as the curious, multifaceted Moe Berg.

The major-league baseball catcher Moe Berg had a lengthy if undistinguished career on the diamond: 15 seasons, including five with the Chicago White Sox and five more in the rival hosiery of the Boston team. But it was his off-field hobby that earned him the honor of a 1994 biography by Nicholas Dawidoff and a new film adaptation, both entitled The Catcher Was a Spy.

Tinker, Tailor, Catcher, Spy? Movies telling yarns about the dark arts of espionage are notoriously difficult to pull off, being cerebral and internal, which is why most spy movies are simply action movies with some intel jargon thrown in. That isn’t really an option when dramatizing the case of Berg, though the movie tries to James Bond-ify him with, for instance, a ludicrous early scene in which the veteran, nearly washed-up ballplayer (Paul Rudd) beats a rookie teammate into strawberry jelly because the younger man is snooping on him. In life, unlike in spy movies, you’re not actually entitled to assault someone for observing you in a public place, and the scene has the further fault of showing the elusive, pensive Berg acting completely out of character.

Berg’s life proved well worth a biography, full of incident and intrigue and unanswered questions, but it isn’t obvious that there is a movie in here, given the lack of any overtly cinematic accomplishments on his résumé. A bit desperate for filler, the movie at one point resorts to showing Berg starring in a pickup game of baseball amongst G.I.s. As he was an actual professional baseball player, though, albeit one with a career .243 batting average, it’s hardly surprising that he can knock the hide off a baseball that’s being served up to him by a non-athlete.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

America’s Withdrawal from the UNHRC Is a Win for Human-Rights Promotion By Jimmy Quinn

By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/americas-united-nations-human-rights-council-withdrawal/

There’s more to be gained at the U.N. by sidelining dictators through structural reform than by abetting their treachery through acquiescence.

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, keeping her promise to “take names” at the U.N., announced America’s withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council — “a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias” — beside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Objections abounded. Human Rights Watch complained that the withdrawal represents a “one-dimensional human rights policy in which the US defends Israeli abuses from criticism above all else.” Kremlin officials crowed that the U.S. had “inflicted a powerful blow to its human rights reputation.” Amnesty International secretary-general Salil Shetty said that the decision demonstrated a “complete disregard for the fundamental rights and freedoms the U.S. claims to uphold.”

Once again, Haley was right and her critics were wrong. America’s withdrawal from the UNHRC is a boon for human-rights promotion and a win for multilateral diplomacy that actually falls far afield of the Trump doctrine’s hard-edged unilateralism and apparent disregard for values-based diplomacy. The move constitutes a redoubling of America’s commitment to its fundamental ideals and the rules-based international order.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up? James Hansen issued dire warnings in the summer of 1988. Today earth is only modestly warmer. By Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue

By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up-1529623442

James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obama’s environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have done—and to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A “business as usual,” as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and ’80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the “most plausible,” and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist Charles Krauthammer Dies at 68 Conservative columnist had been told he had weeks to live By Lukas I. Alpert

By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist-charles-krauthammer-dies-at-68-

Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist whose incisive critiques made him an influential voice in Washington for decades, died Thursday. He was 68.

Mr. Krauthammer had said earlier this month that he was battling an aggressive form of cancer and his doctors told him he had weeks to live.

A Harvard-educated psychiatrist, Mr. Krauthammer was paralyzed below the neck in a freak diving accident in his 20s while in medical school. He used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

After practicing medicine for a few years, he moved to Washington to direct planning in psychiatric research during the Carter administration and became a speech writer for Walter Mondale.

He then began contributing articles and political commentary to the New Republic, where he would eventually become a full-time writer and editor. In 1984, he won a National Magazine Award and began writing a regular column for the Washington Post. The column later was nationally syndicated.

“This is a hugely sad day for me, and I know in that I’m no different than so many Post readers,” said Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, on Thursday. “For decades Charles has written a column of unparalleled principle and integrity, not to mention humor and intellectual virtuosity. There will be no replacing him.”

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A screaming rabid radical, employed by the Department of Justice By Monica Showalter

By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/a_screaming_rabid_radical_employed_by_the_department_of_justice.html

A far-left mob claimed a public relations victory this week, surrounding and screaming at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she dined in a Mexican restaurant, eventually driving her out. The news stories featuring the screamers drew hundreds and hundreds of stories in the press. But what was really notable was who was doing it – the lowlife division of the Deep State: an openly far-left activist actually employed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Daily Caller had the story:

One of the activists who chased Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen out of a Mexican restaurant Tuesday night over the Trump administration’s immigration policies is an employee of the Department of Justice, The Daily Caller News Foundation has confirmed.

Members of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America crashed Nielsen’s meal with a demonstration full of chants and other outbursts.

One of those participants, Allison Hrabar, actually works for the Trump administration — as a paralegal in the DOJ.

“Kirstjen Nielsen, you’re a villain, locking up immigrant children,” activists can be heard saying in a video.

Now, you expect someone working at the Department of Justice to be an even-tempered person, someone concerned about fairness to all, whether on the right or the left, someone who actually believes in the law, and not someone who would politicize government, as Hugo Chavez did. Whoops, forgot – both Hugo Chavez and the activist involved in this protest, Allison Hrabar, are socialists, meaning, party over state, along with the end justifies the means.

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