RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://kolhabirah.com/index.php/israel-global/1768-why-prohibiting-boycotts-of-israe

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is campaigning against existing and proposed federal and local laws that would deter boycotts of Israel popularized by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS). Their argument is that requiring all businesses who want to contract with the state to certify that they do not engage in a boycott of Israel violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The ACLU’s challenge of such a law in Arizona is now before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Brandeis Center, of which I am president, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the constitutionality of Arizona’s law; the brief was written largely by Akiva Shapiro, a partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and this op-ed borrows liberally from that brief.

Federal, state, and local governments across the United States regularly and appropriately use conditions in government contracts to promote equality under the law, combat discrimination, and ensure that public funds are not used for illegal or invidious purposes. Conditions on contracting are a pillar of anti-discrimination laws at all levels of government. The First Amendment does not require the government to subsidize discriminatory conduct.

However, these regulations only target discriminatory conduct, not speech,by state contractors. Contractors may speak passionately, associate, and advocate openly in any forum and on any subject, even an anti-Israel boycott. They may also forego state contracts if they choose to engage in an active boycott of Israel.

The Arizona legislature found “Companies that refuse to deal with United States trade partners such as Israel, or entities that do business with or in such countries, make discriminatory decisions on the basis of national origin that impair those companies’ commercial soundness.” Arizona joined 25 other states that have imposed similar conditions on those seeking government contracts. A majority of these states require contractors to certify their compliance. The federal government places similar anti-discrimination conditions on funding public and private universities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272599/adls-soros-hamas-and-hitler-anti-israel-conference-daniel-greenfield

Jonathan Greenblatt introduced the ADL’s Never is Now 2018 conference with a full-throated defense of George Soros. It was a strange decision for an organization that had once criticized the radical anti-Israel billionaire’s defenses of anti-Semitism. But under Greenblatt, a former Obama official, the ADL had turned sharply to the left and Never is Now, the ADL’s big shindig, was a disturbing demonstration.

Greenblatt’s opening remarks at the December conference mentioned Soros twice and Israel only once.

And he did not mention Israel to defend it, but to sell out the Jewish State in defense of Soros.

“If your favorite politician is attacking George Soros,” the ADL boss warned, “you must stand up and tell them to stop. And do so even if they profess love for Israel up and down.”

Israel was less important than Soros. And that’s not surprising coming from Greenblatt, who had formerly headed the Aspen Institute, which had received funding from Soros. Instead of standing up for Israel, Greenblatt was encouraging Jews to pick fights with pro-Israel politicians if they insulted Soros.

The ADL had once condemned Soros for using Israel to justify anti-Semitism, now it was all in on Soros and out on Israel.

And it got worse.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/24/terror-linked-muslim-group-pressures-amazon-yanking-products-facilitating-islamic-practices/

The online giant Amazon, which is one of the world’s largest retailers, recently capitulated to a demand by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to remove products the terror-tied pressure group deems to be offensive to Muslims.

Earlier this month, CAIR called on their supporters to complain to Amazon about doormats and bath mats sold by third-party vendors on the Amazon website that were inscribed with Quranic verses of blessing and greeting. The group said it organized the effort because the Islamic references would be stepped on or otherwise disrespected.

Days later, CAIR announced that Amazon had agreed to remove the items. That week, CAIR claimed it had found other offensive items sold on the Amazon website, and asked for those too to be banned. Although they might seem a bit silly, CAIR’s bath mat complaints can be viewed as part of a current strategy to exert influence over tech giants and Silicon Valley powerhouses. While Amazon is chiefly known as an online retailer of almost any item imaginable, it is also one of the world’s largest tech companies.

The bathmat complaint came at exactly the same time CAIR is supporting efforts for Somali workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota, to force the company for greater religious accommodations and other demands. According to The New York Times, Amazon recruited heavily from the Somali community and already designated spaces at the center for prayer and ritual washings dictated by the Quran. For one of its meetings with Somali workers, the company even brought in from Texas a Muslim manager “who works on accommodating Islamic practices.”
Working Hard Is Against Our Religion

ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FATAL FLAW IN AMERICAN POLITICS

1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVUnUnWfHI

2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBbvehbomrY

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trumps-plan-to-fund-wall-fails-two-republican-senators-defect/

The Senate on Thursday voted down a Republican-backed spending bill that would have ended the longest-running government shutdown in history and allocated $5.7 billion for the construction of President Trump’s long-promised wall on the southern border.

The bill was defeated 50–47 in a vote that largely broke down along party lines, with Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas the only Republican’s to vote against and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia the only Democrat to vote in favor.

A Democrat-backed stop-gap spending bill that would have funded the government through February 8 without allocating any additional funds for border security also failed to pass the Senate Thursday afternoon.

The competing bills were widely considered test votes, as the White House and leaders of both parties were aware in advance that they lacked the bipartisan support required to clear the 60-vote threshold.

Mindful that Republicans lacked the seven Democratic votes needed to pass their spending bill, the White House reportedly viewed Thursday’s vote as an opportunity to gauge support for President Trump’s shutdown strategy within the Republican caucus. The Trump-backed bill granted a temporary, three-year asylum to immigrants brought to the country illegally as children in exchange for border-wall funding.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/23/leftist-jew

The ascendancy of the hard Left, which is Barack Obama’s lasting legacy, is transforming life in America for Jews. The comfort, safety, and equality of American Jews are not acceptable to leftists. According to the doctrine of intersectionality, minority groups are united in grievances against Western Civilization and whiteness. The Left began with blacklisting and boycotting conservatives. Now American Jews are in the crosshairs, no matter how liberal their politics.

The response from the mainstream Democratic Party has been to jump on the bandwagon. Will American Jews jump off? Not as long as they continue to live in Democrat communities and work in the professions on the two coasts and college towns, where becoming Republican means losing your friends, being shunned at synagogue, and stunting your career—or if you are starting out in life, being shut out of careers in academia, the arts, mainstream journalism, and Silicon Valley. For most Jews, the social and career cost of changing party affiliation is a such a tall cliff, it feels suicidal, that is, the loss of their entire identity. People don’t make changes like that easily.

Why do American leftists have such a problem with Jews? The short explanation is the identity politics that are President Obama’s toxic legacy to the country, by which he and his thousands of trained activists have redefined the Democrat Party. You’ve got to fit into a favored grievance group, and no matter how left-wing they are, Jews are white. Equally bad, their ethnic group as a whole is wildly successful. Jewish success strips the grievance crowd of their main argument.

Jews have suffered huge discrimination in America. They arrived penniless and made it in one or two generations, embracing America with love despite the discrimination they faced everywhere. Jews do not do grievance and envy and self-destructive addictions, it is just not in their Biblical culture. Shut out of corporate America, elite colleges, medical schools, law offices and banks, they created their own. As small and large independent businessmen, Jews made it in America. Jews are living proof that nothing can stand in your way in America if you have good values like education and a strong family. The identity politics, blame-America crowd can’t stand the Jewish-American success story.

American Jews count their blessings for our wonderful country where we all have the God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in recognition that God created all men of equal worth in His eyes. America is the only country on earth, outside of Israel, where Jews have been treated fairly and allowed to flourish. The left hates America. Sohrab Ahmari points out “The intersectional left is committed to the opposite idea–that everywhere in the West, there are hidden ‘structures of oppression’ that trap minorities along the lines of race, gender and sexuality.” Jews have no place in this ideology. So they are cast out.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/23

The Roman satirist Juvenal, in a famous passage, asked, “Who will watch the watchmen?”

That problem of policing the police has troubled Western thinkers from Plato to the American founders.

The framers of the Constitution set in place a brilliant series of legislative, executive and judicial checks and balances to thwart the abuse of power by the powerful. Their pessimistic take on human nature was that all power corrupts. Inevitably, elites will insist that they should not be subject to the very rules they enforce on others.

The sexual-abuse crises within the contemporary Catholic Church arose from the de facto exemptions from the law given to priests. Too many assumed that men of faith were exempt from prosecution because as holy men they would be the last to violate the trust of minors.

One of the ironic things about the Me Too movement was that some of the worst offenders were powerful progressive men such as Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, NBC host Matt Lauer and PBS interviewer Charlie Rose. They all apparently believed that their loud liberal credentials gave them immunity from being held accountable for their harassment.

Some of the feminist organizers of the recent Women’s March, such as Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, have been linked to racist and anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. They apparently assumed that as supposed victims, they could not be viewed as being sympathetic to victimizers.

Given President Trump’s unconventional background, his wheeler-dealer past and the hatred he incurs from the left, few ever give him the benefit of the doubt. The paradoxical result is that his tenure in just two years has become the most investigated, the most audited and the most closely examined presidency in history.

Half the country apparently believes Trump cannot be trusted. The result is that everything he says and does is the object of pushback, opposition and audit.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/01/23/trump-says-hell-wait-until-shutdown-over-to-make-state-of-the-union-address/23651264/

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a late night Tweet on Wednesday that he will wait until the government shutdown is over to deliver a State of the Union address from the House of Representatives.

Trump also criticized House leader Nancy Pelosi for withdrawing a previous invitation to deliver the address. The House Speaker said she changed her mind because of the shutdown, which has lasted more than a month and affected 800,000 federal workers.

“This is her prerogative – I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over. I am not looking for an alternative venue for the SOTU Address because there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber,” the president said in the tweet.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-if-the-fbi-had-probed-obama-11548287966

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly opened a counterintelligence investigation in 2017 to find out if President Trump was a Russian agent. What if the FBI had similarly looked into whether President Obama was an agent of Iran?

Counterintelligence agents would have examined the target’s personal and professional networks. The FBI investigated at least four Trump campaign figures for supposed ties to Russia. Only one, Mike Flynn, worked in the administration, and for less than a month. The Obama administration had a few senior officials with personal ties to Iran.

Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett was born in the Iranian city of Shiraz and reportedly led back-channel talks with the Iranians in 2012. Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter quashed right-wing rumors that her Iranian-American husband’s best man was the son of Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. But under the FBI’s Trump procedures, that denial might have made her suspect. A month after Trump adviser Carter Page publicly asked then-Director James Comey for an interview to clear his name, the FBI obtained a warrant to wiretap him.

As Mr. Trump’s desire for improved relations with Russia raised eyebrows at the bureau, a 2008 article written by John Brennan—who went on to serve as White House counterterrorism adviser and Central Intelligence Agency director—advocated a grand bargain with Iran. In 2009 the Obama White House conducted secret negotiations with Tehran.

Mr. Obama later sidelined Project Cassandra, an investigation of illicit trafficking networks employed by Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese franchise. Launched in 2008, the investigation was run by a multiagency task force, including the FBI itself. Then for 18 months in 2014-15, the Obama White House gave the Iranians $700 million a month in sanctions relief. In January 2016, Mr. Obama sent Iran another $1.7 billion in cash. The administration also had a habit of leaking news of Israeli strikes on Iranian arms convoys and depots in Syria. CONTINUE AT SITE