Can we finally—finally!—be done with the Clintons? As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton schemed to subvert record-keeping and transparency rules for reasons that are probably more or less communicated by her surname: The Clintons are creeps and liars and scoundrels and misfits, always have been, always will be. They are the penicillin-resistant syphilis of American politics. The Democrats’ response to Herself’s trouble has taken three main forms:
1) What she did wasn’t technically illegal, says David Brock and other slavish Clinton retainers, even hauling out that old Al Gore classic, “no controlling legal authority”;
2) What about Scott Walker, huh? say the Democratic-party operators, pointing out that as a county executive Walker also used a private email system — and, to be honest, Walker’s response to the terrorist assault on Milwaukee County’s consulate in Benghazi has never been explained to my satisfaction; and
3) the president repeats his favorite mantra: Wuddint me!
Chairman Trey Gowdy knew about Clinton’s secret server six months ago, and that too is a scandal. In assessing the Benghazi select committee headed up by Chairman Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), there are two possibilities, and they are not mutually exclusive: (1) The committee is just a Potemkin probe erected by the Republican establishment to get restive conservatives to pipe down, and (2) the committee is incompetent. The panel, of course, was commissioned by the Republican-controlled House to investigate the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2012, attack in which al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists killed Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans — information-management officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, contract employees whose valor saved dozens of lives during the siege.
Netanyahu’s powerful new language. At last.
Those were strong words that came from Benjamin Netanyahu when he finally got to speak before Congress.
Just as strong were three words he left unspoken.
Israel’s war is everybody’s war. It’s Jihad, silly. It’s ISIS, stupid.
The Israeli prime minister did not even whisper that hallucinatory nonsense about a “two state solution” so favored by the Left.
If the Left still thinks whoring for peace is the way to go, as appears to be the case from the Labor Party’s most recent effort at appeasement (turning the “West Bank” judenrein and into the next Gaza-type hellhole) Netanyahu offers something else entirely – a war to be won on the frontline of words.
Washington: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has awarded a prestigious prize to Zakir Naik, a televangelist and religious scholar from India, heralding him as “one of the most renowned non-Arabic-speaking promulgators of Islam”. Naik, a trained doctor, founded the Peace TV channel, which supposedly reaches an audience of 100 million English-speaking Muslims. His popular YouTube stream includes videos titled “Who is deceived by the Satan, Christians or Muslims?” and “Does eating non-vegetarian food have any effect on the mind?”
Naik’s creed is an expansive one. “Islam is the only religion that can bring peace to the whole of humanity,” he said in a video biography aired at the ceremony.
It’s a Tuesday night three weeks before election day, and Naftali Bennett, the head of one of Israel’s oldest religious parties, is speaking in English to 1,000 mostly young, secular Israelis. For Bennett, 42, an ambitious, talented, American-style politician seeking to catapult his Jewish Home faction to third place among Israel’s parties, this isn’t all that surprising.
The contest is widely seen here as a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s second-longest-serving prime minister and a lightning rod for criticism across the political spectrum. The yard signs and billboards of the opposition declare “It’s us or him,” and an American-style PAC, reportedly funded, indirectly and in part, by the U.S. State Department, has launched ubiquitous anti-“Bibi” ads urging Israelis to “Just change.” Netanyahu’s highly controversial address to Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat only added fuel to the fire.
Her support seems a continent wide, a cracker deep, and just as prone to crumble. Like snowflakes on a frozen sidewalk, the latest damaging revelations about Hillary Clinton are starting to stick. More than that, Servergate raises the question: Why, precisely, should she be president anyway? This week brought news that then–secretary of state Clinton never had a State Department e-mail address. Instead, she exclusively used a private account to e-mail others in the Obama administration, including some of her staffers who communicated via their own private accounts. Clinton did not simply keep using an old account. She launched hdr22@clintonemail.com as her Senate confirmation hearings opened. Rather than have her e-mails automatically available on government computers for permanent scrutiny, Team Clinton gave State 55,000 pages of handpicked e-mails. What they may have withheld is anyone’s guess.
It is a seductively attractive notion, that Islam might reform itself and its more ardent, violent followers, as did Christianity in bowing to the separation of church and state. Alas, such optimism ignores the very nature of the religion and the bloody lessons of the West’s own history
Contemporary commentary on the crisis of Islam is bedevilled by several important misconceptions about religious history and the nature of Islam.
It is commonly claimed — for example, by the New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman – that the crisis of the Muslim world will only be resolved when Islam undergoes a Reformation similar to that experienced by the Christian West. Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, claimed on Radio National’s Between the Lines “there is a problem in the religion [Islam], it has not been reformed to enable it to coexist with Western notions of human rights.” According to Phillips, the medieval Christian Church carried out beheadings and burnt people alive before reforming itself at the beginning of the Modern Age: “It came to an accommodation in the Reformation with secular authority. It divided church and state. Islam has not had that kind of Reformation”. Phillip’s argument was cited by Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian beneath the headline “Battlefield of ideas is where fanatics will fall”.
Aaron David Miller, an American expert for the Middle East, six times adviser to US Treasury Secretaries Democrats and Republicans, 24 at the US State Department, State ex-advisor on Arab-Israeli negotiations and agreements between Israel, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians, answering the question of whether the decision to Netanyahu speaking before the US Congress despite opposition from the US President will have negative consequences for the relationship between the two countries, said on Fox News:
“The relationship between Israel and the United States, unlike Lehman Brothers, are too big to fail (TBTF)”
He also noted the attitude that I call infant President Obama declares not to have listened to the President Netanyahu and gives a press conference a few minutes later by commenting in detail … the speech he does not listen. I have not failed to notice the hypocrisy of the US president who expressed concern that Netanyahu would reveal confidential aspects of the ongoing negotiations with Iran, then, instead of congratulating him on not disclosing anything, quipped that he “did not say anything new” can not both fear that Netanyahu may say too much, and blame him for not having said enough.
A historic speech
This week, a photo of a dress went viral on the Internet, with people from all corners of the globe expressing an opinion about it. The article of clothing in question is nothing special, though its fame has made it a hot commodity on the market. No, what is causing this particular “fashion” sensation is the fact that the garment’s colors are a matter of controversy. Indeed, viewers of its picture are sharply divided between those who see stripes of gold lace on white fabric, and those who see them as black and blue. I am among the former.
As it happens, the actual dress, according to its designer and subsequent photos taken in a different light, prove the latter to be correct. But, even after knowing this, neither I nor others in the gold-and-white camp are capable of seeing the item’s true colors for what they are.
Explanations for this, too, have been circulating since the onset of the color war. The discrepancy apparently has to do with a trick the brain plays on the optic nerve of part of the population, under certain conditions — or something to that effect.
Confronted with such a phenomenon, one cannot help but be reminded of the saying: “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a haunted man. He is haunted by the history of the Nazi Holocaust, by Iran’s threats to annihilate his tiny nation, and by the fact that Israel’s once-faithful American ally is about to ensure that Iran will possess the weapons with which it will be able to make good on that threat.
Another nation, in another time, faced an existential threat equal to that which Netanyahu and Israel face today. Echoes of that nation’s leader’s speeches – and personal courage – were heard more than once in Netanyahu’s speech. Netanyahu, a student of Winston Churchill, spoke as if the shade of Churchill were standing beside him.
When Churchill became Britain’s prime minister, war was already upon his nation. Britain had been abandoned by the isolationist United States and its European allies had been defeated. But Churchill – by virtue of his personal courage and powerful rhetoric – managed to maintain his nation’s resolve and resist demands to sue for peace.
