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Ruth King

Denouncing Israel’s judicial reforms won’t have the effect Herzog desires By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/denouncing-israels-judicial-reforms-wont-have-the-effect-herzog-desires/

 Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s latest plea for judicial-reform compromise was more than merely impassioned. Indeed, his speech to the nation on Thursday evening was downright angry, and with good reason.

As he pointed out in his concise address—delivered with a cracking voice and grim facial expression—he spent the previous 10 weeks “working around the clock, meeting with everybody, including with those who don’t agree with [him], even those who refuse to admit it.” He also mentioned the “harsh and hurtful” criticism he’s received for his efforts, though he claimed to take it “with love.”

That’s a bit hard to believe, given the wrath he incurred from anti-government protesters last month, when he dared to express sympathy for “both sides” of the debate. As a former head of the Labor Party, he wasn’t accustomed to the level of vitriol typically reserved for the right in general and Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu in particular.

But all he had to do to spark hate-filled demonstrations outside his residence—rife with threats against him and his wife—was acknowledge the concerns of each camp. The one that favors judicial reforms, he said on Feb. 12, “feels that an imbalance has developed between the branches [of government] and that lines have been crossed for years,” while the opposition considers the bills put forth by Justice Minister Yariv Levin to be “a real threat to Israeli democracy.”

To ignore either, he stressed—before presenting a five-point alternative plan as a “basis for immediate and decisive negotiations”—would be a “grave mistake.”

Convert, Marry Me, or Die by Acid: Christian Women in Muslim Pakistan by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19464/pakistan-acid-attacks-christians

“As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian.”— Daily Mail, July 12, 2012.

Not one of these attacks, with the exception of Julie Aftab, was reported on the mainstream media. Even then, no mention was made that such attacks on Christian women follow a pattern in Pakistan.

Perhaps that is something for all those who claim to care about women’s rights to think about.

A Muslim man recently splashed acid onto the face of a teenage Christian girl, disfiguring her permanently. Her crime? Refusing to convert and turning him down.

The March Madness of the President Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/12/the-march-madness-of-the-president/

Another couple of weeks, another bout of madness from Joe Biden and his team. Of recent Biden delusions, consider:

Biden went off in one of his impromptu Corn Pop, or “beat-up-Trump-behind-the-bleachers” fables. These often slurred and nearly unintelligible tales characteristically virtue signal Biden’s own victimhood and “courage.” 

They are interspersed with his bizarre propensity for eerie female contact. So we see or hear of his long record of blowing into the ears and hair, or squeezing the necks of young girls. He hugs, for far too long, mature women. He can call out among a crowd an anonymous attractive teen stranger. Or, recently he relates an incoherent but quasi-sexual vignette. 

So Joe recalled his patient days in his usual off-topic “no lie/not kidding/no joke” manner (i.e., tip offs that he’s lying). He told us that a noble nurse once would “come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical school—in nursing school.” The president got a nervous laugh from the apparent quasi-pornographic reference (but then again Joe is excused because he is a “feminist”), before he detailed her technique:  

She’d whisper in my ear.  I didn’t—couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was—there was a connection, a human connection.

A woman leaning over to blow into a prone man’s ear certainly constitutes a “human connection.” Yet all of Joe’s fables have different Homeric-style retellings. Two years ago he claimed that the same nurse in question actually blew into his nostrils. What a strange air-pressure technique that must have entailed for a person recovering from brain surgery. But perhaps it was consistent with biblical references to God blowing the spirit of life into the nose of man.

About a week later, referencing that hospital stay, Biden added that doctors “had to take the top of my head off a couple times, see if I had a brain”—a reference that did not reassure the nation he is not enfeebled. 

No one in the media had much of a reaction because Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs. 

Liberating Ourselves from Dystopia By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/liberating_ourselves_from_dystopia.html

More Americans grasp how the U.S. government actually works.  Large corporate interests pay off politicians and bureaucrats to advance their financial interests.  In return, those politicians and bureaucrats are responsible for creating new problems for the American people that can be exploited to justify spending huge sums of money — the bulk of which falls into the laps of the large corporate interests. 

The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, would love for lawmakers to mandate that Americans purchase and use their products in perpetuity.  Big Pharma then pays hospitals, research scientists, and medical doctors to push its products.  It privately funds public health agencies, while rewarding ostensibly objective bureaucrats with research grants and promises of future lucrative employment.  Through its lobbying arms, Big Pharma fills the campaign coffers and family foundations of elected officials and works hand in glove with lawmakers to craft legislation that simultaneously expands Big Pharma’s profits and lawmakers’ personal stock portfolios.  Lawmakers who refuse to play this corrupt game end up becoming the electoral targets of all those extra dollars in industry profits, and the stick-or-carrot system effectively works to eliminate ethical politicians, while elevating criminals.  It’s plain old bribery and extortion, and it is how Washington, D.C. operates.

Notice that for this system to thrive, industry and government agents must continue to create new crises for the American people.  Far from being motivated to build a healthy future where humans are free from disease, Big Pharma has an incentive to invest in viral gain-of-function research or other dangerous experimental work that might inadvertently leak from a lab and unleash the next big pandemic.  A healthy world is profitless.  Likewise, defense industry interests have every incentive to see mortal threats throughout the globe and no incentive to sue for peace.  Only endless war can sustain regular investment growth.  If politicians and bureaucrats were slightly less immoral than they really are, then perhaps they could agree to just pay off Big Pharma and Big Defense with big bags of printed bills, rather than force their products on new victims around the world.  Alas, as the stick-and-carrot machinery continues to corrupt the system, the politicians and bureaucrats become only more committed to total destruction both here at home and abroad.  

That operation to destroy everything for an extra buck is D.C.’s mission, and if you are willing to concede that Big Pharma and Big Defense might have nefarious motivations but are still 100% convinced that government agencies are reliably warning about the “existential threat” from man-made climate change out of some altruistic obligation to humanity, then you have deluded yourself into thinking that evil government actors will, from time to time, generously tell the truth.  Evil liars are evil liars; they do not lie about health emergencies, open borders, election integrity, and the need for war while embracing honesty when it comes to “global warming,” “white supremacy,” or “transgenderism.”  There is no spectrum where this subject is held reverently off-limits from government manipulation, while this other subject is deemed not worthy of providing the public with accurate information.  Once you accept that the government is in the business of lies, you must scrutinize anything that it says and act accordingly.

Biden is Su-ing America Inside the incompetent, anti-worker and unaccountable world of Labor Secretary pick Julie Su. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-is-su-ing-america/

Joe Biden hails Julie Su as a “tested and experienced leader” and has tapped her for Labor Secretary, subject to confirmation by the Senate. The hearing gives senators a chance to expose Su’s leadership of California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) which oversees the Employment Development Department (EDD) responsible for unemployment claims.

On Su’s Watch the EDD sent more than $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims to people in California, out of state, and even out of the country. In 2020 alone, Su confirmed, fraudsters stole at least $11.4 billion in California unemployment benefits. As it happens, fraud was not a new problem at the EDD.

As California’s state auditor reported, “EDD had no comprehensive plan for how it would respond if California experienced a recession and UI claims increased accordingly.” Su had failed to modernize outdated EDD technology, and in the early days of the pandemic relaxed eligibility requirements for EDD claims. Criminals took full advantage.

The state approved more than $140 million for at least 20,000 prisoners. Convicts who made fraudulent claims included convicted murderers Scott Peterson and Cary Stayner. Death row inmates accounted for at least 158 claims landing more than $420,000 in benefits.

Inmates used their real names, fake names and fake Social Security numbers. One convict filed a claim under the name “poopy britches,” but Fontrell Antonio Baines of Memphis, Tennessee, took it to another level. The rapper obtained debit cards pre-loaded with unemployment benefits administered by the California Employment Development Department, issued in the names of third parties and victims of identity theft.

Baines, also known as “Nuke Bizzle,” posted a video titled “EDD,” bragging about “my swagger for EDD,” as a second rapper says “You gotta sell cocaine. I just file a claim.” And as Nuke Bizzle explains,  “I done got rich off EDD. . .I just might swipe me a lump sum. I’m in Dior havin’ money fun. . . Ten cards, I’m swiping 10K a day. Counting up bills like a CPA.”

5 of the Most Important Stories in the History of America All in one week. by Wayne Allyn Root

https://www.frontpagemag.com/5-of-the-most-important-stories-in-the-history-of-america/

I’ve written literally thousands of commentaries, and I’ve never had this problem before. I have five of the biggest stories in the history of America to tell you about — all at the same time. They’re all so important, I can’t decide which one to write about. So, I’m going to write about all five.

I’ll let you choose which one I should write about in expanded detail next week. Send me an email. Vote for the story you’d like me to write about in detail: WayneRoot@gmail.com

In the meantime, here is a short and sweet “Cliff Notes” version of all five.

STORY No. 1: Of Course China Likely Intentionally Released COVID-19. But Even More Shocking is Who Helped Them

Everyone in power is finally in agreement that COVID-19 most likely came from a Chinese biowarfare lab. I told you that three years ago. But even that is not the real shocker. Tucker Carlson had a doctor who escaped China on his show this week. She says China intentionally released COVID-19 to destroy America and the Western economies. This was a planned attack upon America.

I’ve been predicting that story for three years too. China had just lost the trade war. Their entire economy was about to collapse. At that exact moment, COVID-19 was unleashed on America and the Western world. That was never a coincidence. But I’ve got an even bigger shocker…

The biggest story is that China did not do this alone.

Stanley Kurtz:DeSantis Is Putting the Public Back in Public Universities Florida’s extraordinary House Bill 999 is the most ambitious legislative pushback against the woke university yet.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/desantis-is-putting-the-public-back-in-public-universities/?utm_

Florida’s extraordinary House Bill 999 is the most ambitious legislative pushback against the woke university yet. Sponsored by Representative Alex Andrade, H.B. 999 is the legislative flagship in Governor Ron DeSantis’s armada of higher-education reforms.

It has been introduced in the Florida house, and a hearing has been scheduled.

To be sure, H.B. 999 has its problems. In a follow-up piece, I’ll speak to the need to pare back some of the overreach that’s left critics of DeSantis in a dither. Yet the thrust of H.B. 999 is most welcome — and long overdue. Dealing with the bill’s many initiatives and controversies will take several posts. Last week, I defended H.B. 999’s provisions on faculty appointments. Today, I want to examine the bill’s mandates for civic education and the study of Western civilization.

H.B. 999 directs Florida’s public universities to build general-education requirements around courses that “promote the education for citizenship of the constitutional republic.” H.B. 999 also insists that general-education courses “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization.” On top of that, the bill requires that general-education courses, where appropriate, include “studies of this nation’s historical documents, including the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments thereto, and the Federalist Papers.”

Are you shocked yet? Most people, of course, will find these provisions perfectly ordinary and acceptable. Many professors, on the other hand, see these requirements as downright scary.

The critics will tell you that it’s not so much the content of these requirements that bothers them as the principle at stake. Actually, for many, the content is what they object to. In any case, the principle in play is articulated by liberal campus-free-speech expert Keith Whittington, who frets that “Florida is breaking new ground in insisting that state universities convey the government’s favored message in its classes.” New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall worries about DeSantis laying out “what must be taught.” In Edsall’s view, politicians ought not to be leveraging public universities “in the service of their own agenda.” (Civics and Western civilization: DeSantis’s nefarious agenda exposed!) John Sensbach, chairman of the history department at the University of Florida, says he’s “not convinced that the founding fathers would have endorsed” such an approach.

Some Walls Might Be Closing in on the Biden Crime Family By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/03/13/the-morning-briefing-some-walls-might-be-closing-in-on-the-biden-crime-family-n1677755

We here on the right have long known that the Biden family has business ties all over the place that are rather unsavory. Honestly, most people on the left do too, they just don’t care. That’s why various forms of leftmedia were scrambling before the 2020 election to pretend Hunter Biden’s laptop was a nothingburger story. Their overreaction was the only reaction we needed to know that we were correct.

There is no bombshell news, but it looks like some progress has been made in exposing the depths of the Biden business depravity, especially when it comes to the commies in the country with which we will soon be fighting a war.

Kevin was the bearer of good news over the weekend:

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that people are finally starting to cooperate in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s “business dealings” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Of course, that’s been the problem thus far. Papa B has been using the full power the federal government that’s under his control to block any inquiries into what his ne’er-do-well son has been doing as a side hustle to support his art career.

My friend Stephen Green is fond of saying that “Joe Biden is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party.” Obviously, the ChiComs got a package deal and Hunter was thrown in.

The Toxic Intersection Of Climate Alarmism And Communism

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/13/the-toxic-intersection-of-climate-alarmism-and-communism/

Environmentalists, it’s been said, are like watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside. The term has been around for some time, but it’s just as true as it ever was. Environmentalism has far too much in common with communism. In fact, the parts are so interchangeable that it can be hard to tell the difference.

We are reminded of this by the “degrowth” movement. In the words of some of its adherents, degrowth prioritizes “social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy.” 

In other words, economic growth has to be reversed to save the planet. Poverty, then, is not only locked in, since the economic pie cannot grow larger, it also begins to spread, dragging those who had escaped it back into its grasp.

​​Kohei Saito, an associate professor at Tokyo University, makes the case for strangling economies in his new book “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism,” which has brought him a fair amount of attention. Maybe he should next consult with the staff of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who introduced the New Green Deal, not as an environmental protection policy but rather as a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing.” It would be a fitting match, maybe even become a contest of who could produce the most deranged thinking.

Post-decency politics: House Democrats use a hearing to attack free speech and a free press by Jonathan Turley

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3895242-post-decency-politics-house-democrats-use-a-hearing-to-attack-free-speech-and-a-free-press/

“At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Those words were first asked by lawyer Joseph Welch in his confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) during the Senate’s infamous Army-McCarthy hearings. This week, nearly 70 years later, Welch’s words seem more relevant than ever after House Democrats savaged two journalists who attempted to explain a government effort to censor citizens. 

It was only the latest of a series of hearings in which FBI agents and other whistleblowers, experts and journalists have been personally attacked for raising free-speech concerns. This week’s hearing showed definitively that we live in a post-decency era.

The latest attacks came as journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified about breaking the “Twitter Files” story, detailing how the FBI and other agencies secretly sought to censor or ban citizens from social media. In her opening statement, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee, attacked them as “so-called journalists” and said they were “a direct threat” to the safety of others by reporting the censorship story.

Taibbi pushed back, saying that “I’m not a ‘so-called journalist’” and giving a brief description of his award-winning career at Rolling Stone magazine and other publications. Yet other committee members also attacked the honesty of the two journalists. And after failed efforts to claim they were Elon Musk’s corrupt “scribes,” or limited by him in their investigations, the committee members attacked their ethics.

The witnesses were attacked on everything but their choice of socks.