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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Norman Borlaugh: The man who helped feed the world By Tim Harford

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47643456?utm_source=pocket-newtab

In the early 1900s, newlyweds Cathy and Cappy Jones left Connecticut in the US to start a new life as farmers in north-west Mexico’s Yaqui Valley, a little-known dry and dusty place, a few hundred kilometres south of the Arizona border.

When Cappy died in 1931, Cathy decided to stay on. By then she had a new neighbour: the Yaqui Valley Experiment Station, a grand agricultural research centre with impressive stone pillars, and cleverly designed irrigation canals.

For a while, the centre raised cattle, sheep and pigs, and grew oranges, figs and grapefruit.

But by 1945, the fields were overgrown, the fences fallen and the windows shattered. The station was infested with rats.

So when Cathy heard strange rumours about a young American man setting up camp in this dilapidated place – despite the lack of electricity, sanitation, or running water – she drove over to investigate.

There she found the Rockefeller Foundation’s Norman E Borlaug, who was trying to breed wheat which could resist stem rust, a disease that ruined many crops.

Stone defense team exposes the ‘intelligence community’s’ betrayal of their responsibilities By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/manafort_defense_team_exposes_the_intelligence_communitys_betrayal_of_their_responsibilities.html

As the Russia Hoax is being unwound, we are learning some deeply disturbing lessons about the level of corruption at the top levels of the agencies charged with protecting us from external threats.  One jaw-dropping example has just been exposed by the legal team defending Roger Stone.

Foundational to the entire narrative that Russia “interfered” with our election and that President Trump “colluded” with this interference is the conclusion issued by the “intelligence community” that the DNC emails were hacked by Russia.  According to this assertion, the exposure of those emails affected the election, and therefore Trump benefited from Russian interference, and colluded by joking that Russia should locate the 30,000 emails Hillary Clinton deleted and BleachBitted, making recovery impossible.

There has already been ample reason to dismiss this collective judgment from the Intelligence Community, primarily focusing on the fact that the download speed of the emails could only have been achieved by loading it on a device attached to the server itself.  It was too fast to have been sent via the internet to a hacker.  But now, the Department of Justice had made an admission in response to a filing by Manafort’s defense team that reveals they did not carry out their basic responsibilities.

Democrats’ Hypocrisy on ‘Foreign Interference’ By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/foreign-interference-trump-comments-democrat-hypocrisy/

When a Republican benefits, it’s treason; when Democrats are in charge, the intelligence agencies serve their candidates.

Here’s the main question that arises from Media-Democrat shrieking over President Trump’s twaddle about taking campaign-related information from foreign powers: Is it just silly or actually dangerous?

In our latest episode of Un-reality Government, the president was egged on by — who else? — George Stephanopoulos, a partisan Democrat who is the face of ABC News. When last noticed in an election cycle, the Clinton confidant was setting up Mitt Romney with a question about whether the Constitution permitted the banning of contraceptives. Of course, no one was proposing a ban on contraceptives; the question was strategically planted to seed the Democrats’ War on Women narrative. Common sense, if there were any, would have the administration asking: Why would we give George Stephanopoulos two days of access? If your answer is “Because that worked out so well with Michael Wolff,” pull that résumé together, because there’s surely a White House staff job waiting just for you.

So what did George ask this time? He wanted to know whether, with the lessons of 2016 in mind, the president thought it would be appropriate to let a foreign government “interfere” in our elections by taking from that government information damaging to the opposing candidate.

Naturally, Stephanopoulos did not preface his query with, “You know, the way that Ukrainian parliamentarian who was a source for Hillary’s campaign leaked that oppo about the secret payments to Manafort.” And the president was not swift enough to ask Stephanopoulos for clarification: “You mean, like, an amateur-hour arrangement where I, or my son, take the information directly from Russia? Does it count if I’m smart enough to have my cut-out law firm hire the cut-out grifters from Fusion GPS, and then they do the dirty work of hiring the foreign spy to tap the Russian sources — in their spare time from helping Putin’s cronies beat back the Justice Department?”

Godspeed, Sarah Sanders The outgoing press secretary was a breath of fresh air Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/godspeed-sarah-sanders/

THIS IS AN EXCERPT…..BRILLIANT!!!!RSK

“Then we come to another leitmotif in the anti-Sanders orgy that has so delighted the anti-Trump stalwarts commenting on Sanders’s departure. I mean the fact that she long ago dispensed with daily press briefings. ‘Other press secretaries and the administrations they served have catered to us, why don’t you?’

Here I come to a melancholy truth that, being of a charitable disposition, I hesitate to impart to the yapping pack of sensitive and entitled scribes who have closed ranks against the president and his staff. It is this: Donald Trump does things differently from other presidents. You may have been used to being fed pabulum daily by previous administrations, some of which you treated with hostile disdain, some with uncritical adulation.

But nowhere, except in the odiferous annals of your inflated self-importance, is it written that you are entitled to daily, weekly, or monthly press briefings. I know that is a blow to your vanity, but there it is. Mirabile dictu, the republic survives, even in the face of your neglect. The truth is, as any dispassionate observer will acknowledge, that Donald Trump and Sarah Sanders have treated the press with far more courtesy and candor than they have treated them.

What the press cannot abide is their continued existence: that Donald Trump is still, even now, even after they, thundering bullfrogs of the press, have laid out their objections to an indifferent populace. How could they, the ingrates. And now a Trump loyalist is departing. Let’s hound her on the way out and exhibit just how small, ungracious, and craven we are.

As Donald Trump said, Sarah Sanders is a brave and generous-hearted woman, a ‘warrior’ whose hem the mirror-gazing minions of the press are unworthy to touch. They’ll read each other’s headlines and smirk, but that will be paltry gratification in the face of six more years of Trump and a justly proud and successful Sarah Sanders, who might just take Donald Trump’s advice and run for the governorship of the great state of Arkansas. Godspeed to her.”

Misleading While Muslim The politics of a Yemeni-American educational activist and by now mainstream Democrat. by Andrew Harrod

https://spectator.org/misleading-while-muslim/

At a recent appearance in Washington, D.C., leading Muslim-American educator Debbie Almontaser hawked her new book, Leading While Muslim: The Experiences of American Muslim Principals After 9/11. The book grew out of her own personal experiences as the founding principal of the long-troubled Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), a New York City public high school with a focus on Arabic instruction.

In 2007, Almontaser resigned from KGIA after praising a t-shirt bearing the phrase “Intifada NYC” — an apparent reference to violence against Jews in Israel and the Palestinian territories. “Intifada,” Almontaser insisted, “basically means ‘shaking off. ’” Almontaser argued that although the word was “developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas,” it was nonetheless “an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society” and are “shaking off oppression.” Her comments sparked storms of protest from the New York Post, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and local parents.

The group that produced the t-shirt, Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), shared office space with the Saba Organization of American Yemenis, of which Almontaser was a board member and spokesperson. AWAAM also shared officials with Al-Awda, an anti-Israel organization that the ADL has accused of openly supporting terrorism and violent anti-Semitism.

$40 Million Actor to Testify at Slavery Reparations Hearing Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274014/40-million-actor-testify-slavery-reparations-daniel-greenfield

Finally, millionaire celebrities can explain to Congress why new Chinese immigrants should be paying them reparations. 

The topic of reparations for slavery is headed to Capitol Hill for its first hearing in more than a decade with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and actor Danny Glover set to testify before a House panel.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is scheduled to hold the hearing next Wednesday, its stated purpose “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice.” 

Ta-Nehisi Coates is notable as our greatest living starving racist.

Fresh from the success of Between the World and Me, professional literary victim Ta-Nehisi Coates snapped up a luxurious landmarked brownstone for $2.1 million. The brownstone featured original Tiger Oak, Maple, and Mahogany wood floors, a chef’s kitchen, wedding cake moldings, a tin ceiling, terrace, garden, carved woodwork, a fireplace and all the other expected trimmings of the downtrodden.

Danny Glover’s estimated net worth appears on a number of sites as being between $15 million and $40 million.

I don’t know how accurate those figures are, but I don’t see a compelling argument for a Cuban refugee paying a million reparations for a slave trade that he had nothing to do with.

But I can see a pretty solid case for moviegoers demanding reparations from Danny Glover for Lethal Weapon 4.

How about a House hearing?

On the Moral and Legal Status of Islam in the United States By Jason D. Hill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/on_the_moral_and_legal_status_of_islam_in_the_united_states.html

Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy, cosmopolitanism and race theory

Last week, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and Canada’s leading intellectual, Jordan Peterson, met to lambast illegal immigration and political correctness which they believe make sensible public discussions impossible. Peterson also made a noteworthy claim worth thinking about. He said that Islam is not compatible with democracy and that this issue has been barred from public discussion.

I believe Peterson is correct. Islam is not only incompatible with democracy. It is inimical to America’s fundamental values and principles. More important, it is in violation of the United States Constitution. It is time for the United States to take a pre-emptive strike against a moral and political ideology whose stated goal is the abolition of our political system.

When we examine the application of Sharia law in the West, most particularly in Europe where it is gaining ascendancy, people will come to see a few fundamental tenets about Islam. Its foundation and governing principle is that Sharia law regulates the personal and public behavior of all Muslims and non-Muslims under its governance.  When we think of Islam mainly as a religion, we cannot disambiguate it from Sharia law which, when examined, allows us to see that the legal, cultural and political aspects of the religion supersede the purely private religious aspects of it. World Islam, above all, has become a political ideology.

Sharia law is a weaponized political tool supervening the public sphere that violates every sacred tenet of American life.

US Army War College Surrenders to CAIR By Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/us_army_war_college_surrenders_to_cair.html

The U.S. Army War College (USAWC) has just surrendered to the demands of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an “unindicted co-conspirator,” to quote the U.S. Dept. of Justice, in the largest terror funding case in American history.

The June 19, 2019 planned lecture on my book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks was canceled due to a CAIR-induced hysteria that focused on presenting me — a native Arabic speaker of Egyptian/Middle Eastern descent — as a “racist” and “white nationalist” who is out to incite American soldiers to murder Muslims.

Although the USAWC claims that the event has been “postponed” — and that CAIR’s smear campaign has nothing to do with its decision — what really happened, along with the troubling lessons learned along the way, follow:

On January 4, 2019, I received an email, portions of which follow:

Mr. Ibrahim: On behalf of the Director and Staff of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC), I am honored to invite you to speak as part of the USAHEC’s 2019 Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series… [W]e would like you to speak about your new book, “Sword and Scimitar.”  The Perspectives series attracts a wide audience including the U.S. Army War College students, faculty, and staff, ROTC cadets, Soldiers from regional military bases, university students and faculty, and the general public.

“On a personal note,” the author of the email added, “I think your new book, and a lecture based on it, will resound very well with the primary audience of our lecture programs — the students and faculty of the U.S. Army War College.”

After I accepted the invitation, my USAWC contact reiterated: “I am excited to book you, I think your topic will be perfect for my audience.”

Aside from a few more exchanges on dates and logistics, that was that — until CAIR got wind of the event.

FLASHBACK: Two Obama-Era Officials Violated Hatch Act But Weren’t Removed from Office By Nicholas Ballasy

https://pjmedia.com/trending/flashback-2-obama-era-officials-violated-hatch-act-but-werent-removed-from-office/

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Special Counsel has recommended the removal of White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway over violations of the Hatch Act.

The OSC wrote that her “violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law.”

This isn’t the first time a White House or cabinet official violated the Hatch Act. It happened several times in the Obama administration but the OSC didn’t recommend the removal of the official.

In 2012, the OSC said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made “extemporaneous partisan remarks” in her official capacity in violation of the Hatch Act. Sebelius acknowledged her remarks were a “mistake” and she was not removed from her position due to the violation.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who is now a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, violated the Hatch Act in 2016 by praising then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in an interview at his HUD office, but President Obama did not remove him from his position.

Special Counsel recommends firing Kellyanne Conway over alleged Hatch Act violations Brooke Singman

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/special-counsel-recommends-firing-kellyanne-conway-over-alleged-hatch-act-violations/ar-AACPSk8

The Office of Special Counsel recommended Thursday that Kellyanne Conway be fired from the federal government for violating the Hatch Act on “numerous occasions.”

The Hatch Act is a federal law that limits certain political activities of federal employees.

The OSC, which is separate from the office with a similar name previously run by Robert Mueller, said in a report released Thursday that White House Counselor Conway violated the Hatch Act by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”

“Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system — the rule of law,” the OSC said in a statement Thursday, noting that Conway has been a “repeat offender.”

The law’s purpose is to ensure federal programs are “administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation,” according to the OSC. The office is an independent federal agency that monitors compliance with that law and others.

The White House on Thursday blasted the OSC ruling as “unprecedented.”