RUTHFULLY YOURS

Keith Ellison is suddenly very concerned about anti-Semitism.

The former Nation of Islam member who appeared on stage with Khalid Abdul Muhammad (“that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating… just crawled out of the caves and hills of Europe, so-called damn Jew”) and defended the anti-Semitism of Louis Farrakhan (“Do you know some of these satanic Jews have taken over BET?”) is worried about the hatred of Jews.

The leading candidate to head the DNC who used to rant about, “European white Jews… trying to oppress minorities all over the world” denounced President Trump for having, “taken… so long to even say the word ‘anti-Semitism.’”

How long did it take Ellison to stop defending the anti-Semitism of Farrakhan or of Joanne Jackson?

And Ellison isn’t through yet. He associates with CAIR, a hate group that has defended terrorists who target synagogues, and touts an endorsement from Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson.

Keith Ellison put out a press release after the bomb threats to Jewish centers declaring, “To all those who have felt threatened: I stand with you.”

Speaking of threats, the Minnesota Daily opinion editor, Michael Olenick, had described Ellison’s writing as “a genuine threat to the long-term safety and well-being of the Jewish people, a threat that history dictates must not be ignored.”

Except it was ignored.

Ellison is currently opposed to bomb threats to Jewish centers. That’s progress. But he’s closely allied with CAIR and other Islamist groups that have defended actual synagogue bomb plotters. CAIR has spread claims that the Muslim terrorists who plotted to bomb the Riverdale Jewish Center and Temple were really the victims of government entrapment.

When Ahmed Ferhani was arrested for a plot to attack a synagogue, CAIR held a rally to support him.

Linda Sarsour, who had described throwing stones at Jews as “the definition of courage”, accused the Trump administration of anti-Semitism. Sarsour claims to be raising money to repair a vandalized Jewish cemetery. While the campaign was touted by the media, it is unclear who the actual donors are.

What is clear is that Linda Sarsour supported Ahmed Ferhani. Sarsour insisted on calling the anti-Semitic terrorist a “boy” or a “kid”. She also defended the Riverdale Jewish Center bomb plotters.

At his trial, Ahmed Ferhani had boasted, “I intended to create chaos and send a message of intimidation and coercion to the Jewish population of New York City.”

On Monday, for the fourth time since the beginning of the year, bomb threats shut down multiple Jewish Community Centers across the country. The calls are the latest in a series: Sixty-nine threats have been called into 54 Jewish Community Centers in 27 states and a Canadian province since January 1, according to the JCC Association of North America. Meanwhile, also on Monday, vandals toppled nearly 200 tombstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis.

Anti-Semitism has been on the rise in Europe for several years. In April 2015, Jeffrey Goldberg penned a long essay for The Atlantic entitled “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” In the final paragraph, he wrote: “I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly.” But the prospect of rising anti-Semitism in the United States, which does not share Europe’s tragic history, seems different — and perhaps, for that reason, even more troubling.

Taking that increase for granted, commentators have been quick to pin the blame on Donald Trump. After a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on Tuesday, Trump said in prepared remarks: “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” This, according to Vox’s Dara Lind, is not nearly enough. “It was a fairly rote condemnation of an attack on a minority group, the sort of thing that presidents do all the time,” Lind wrote. “But despite his claim that he denounces anti-Semitism ‘whenever I get a chance,’ until this point, Trump simply hasn’t.” Lind points to Trump’s dalliance with the alt-right, his initial refusal to disavow former KKK leader David Duke, and his White House’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement (which made no mention of Jews) to suggest a pattern of silence that has encouraged anti-Semitic violence.

But the extent of the increase — let alone Donald Trump’s role in it — remains unclear. The most reliable data on hate crimes comes from the FBI, which shows that the number of people victimized for their religion declined dramatically from 2010 to 2014: from 1,552 victims to 1,140 victims, or by 36 percent. The number of victims of anti-Jewish bias declined similarly: from 1,039 to 648 victims, or by 38 percent. The FBI then records an uptick in 2015, to 1,402 total victims and 730 victims of anti-Jewish bias.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker compared the 2011 protests against his government to the protesters at town hall meetings and “angry mobs” blocking campus speakers, calling them “defenders of the status quo” trying to stop elected leaders from implementing their agenda.

Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, Walker did not mention his former challenger in the GOP primary — President Trump — and focused heavily on his record in Wisconsin.

Walker said the current wave of protests across the country is “exactly” like what happened when thousands protested at the state capitol in Madison and elsewhere against the governor’s plan to limit collective bargaining. They culminated in a failed recall effort against Walker in 2012.

Walker said he called Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after she was recently blocked by protesters from entering a D.C. school. “You know what?” he said he told her. “Been there, done that.”

He recalled protesters gluing the doors to an elementary school shut when he was heading there to read to children. He entered the school after the door hinges were removed.

Walker said his programs in Wisconsin prove “common sense conservative reforms work.”

In a nod to the progressive platform of free college, Walker noted he has frozen tuition fours years in a row and guarantees “actual free speech for everyone” including conservative students, teachers and speakers at state colleges.

While slamming his 2011 protesters and drawing parallels to today’s demonstrations, Walker emphasized, “This is America; anyone can say what they want about the government.”

“I wasn’t going to let the noise of the protests drown out the voices of the majority who elected us to do the things we were going to do,” he said.

It is ironic that liberals who insisted we stay out of the bedrooms of homosexuals and lesbians now insist that transgendered people should not stay out of the wrong bathroom

Let me be so indelicate as to suggest that the issue is common sense simple — where you pee ought to be determined by what you pee with. Period. This nonsense about self-identifying as a woman so a man can use the same restroom as someone else’s daughter is just that — nonsense. Just as it is nonsense about the Almighty putting you in the wrong body. You might be confused, but God is not. Male and female He created them and I’m quite sure He knew the difference.

So it was welcome news that President Trump has revoked the Obama administration’s “guidance” to educational institutions that requiring bathroom use based on birth gender and genitalia constitutes sex discrimination:

The Trump administration revoked an Obama-era mandate compelling public schools nationwide to permit restroom and locker room access on the basis of gender identity — a move that could have significant ramifications for a case before the Supreme Court concerning transgender rights.

The Departments of Education and Justice issued a joint guidance Wednesday evening rolling back the order. The two-page “Dear Colleague Letter” said the Obama administration had failed to substantiate the claim that Title IX’s prohibition on “sex” discrimination in education also applies to gender identity.

“In these circumstances, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have decided to withdraw and rescind the above-referenced guidance documents in order to further and more completely consider the legal issues involved,” the order reads. “The Departments thus will not rely on the views expressed within them.”

The guidance also said the federal government must recognize “the primary role of the States and local school districts in establishing education policy.”

This nod to states’ rights as well as common sense is hopefully a sign that the federal government under President Trump is ending the abuse of federal power to social engineer society along progressive and liberal lines. It is good news and legal ammunition for states that have resisted this absurd form of political correctness, like North Carolina

North Carolina rightly resisted the politically correct federal bully challenging its commonsense law, HB 2, which says restrooms should be limited to people with the appropriate plumbing, and that cross dressers sharing the facilities with your daughter, wife, and daughter is not a good, or safe idea.

One hundred years ago, on Feb. 26, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson learned about the telegram that would pull the U.S. into World War I. The Zimmermann Telegram—a secret offer by Germany to help Mexico reconquer the American Southwest—not only compelled Washington to end a tradition of neutrality, but transformed the balance of world power for the next century. It’s a historical episode with important lessons as President Trump contemplates how to conduct international politics in the 21st century.

In 1914 Germany had launched its U-boat campaign, using submarines to sink ships without warning, including those from neutral nations. In May 1915 a German sub torpedoed a British civilian liner, the Lusitania, killing 128 Americans. Wilson threatened military action if it happened again, which forced Germany to impose restrictions on its U-boats.

As the war ground on, however, Germany began to view submarine warfare as its route to victory. By 1917 the German high command believed it could bring Britain and France to their knees in six months by sinking neutral ships and depriving the Allies of food and supplies. Yet the Germans knew this would arouse the ire of Wilson, who had won re-election only months earlier, running on the slogan “he kept us out of war.”

How to counter America’s potential response? On Jan. 19, 1917, Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, sent a coded telegram to his ambassador in Mexico. The ambassador was instructed to offer the Mexican president, Venustiano Carranza, an alliance: If America entered the war, Germany proposed that Mexico open a second front against the U.S. The Germans would then help “regain by conquest her lost territory in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.”

In some ways, it was a clever move. Carranza was still smarting from President Wilson’s decision three years earlier to send an American force to occupy Veracruz, as well as Gen. John J. Pershing’s 1916 expedition against the bandit Pancho Villa. If there was a country in the Western Hemisphere ready to ally with Germany against the U.S., it was Mexico.

But if anything was set to turn American public opinion against neutrality, it was a secret plan to invade the U.S. The British, who had intercepted the diplomatic cable, knew this. So once they had fully decoded the Zimmermann Telegram, they made sure it landed on Wilson’s desk. They gave it to the U.S. ambassador in London on Feb. 24.

When Wilson released it to the public, the telegram rallied patriotic sentiment like nothing since the burning of the White House during the War of 1812. Yet the president remained hesitant. He still believed American neutrality was the best way to promote peace. Even after Zimmermann confirmed the authenticity of the message on March 3, Wilson waited nearly a month before asking for a declaration of war.

Every military tactician fears the Pyrrhic victory—winning a battle but losing the war. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis might want to brush up on his Plutarch, as he continues to fight a one-man personnel skirmish.

President Trump promised to rebuild our hollowed-out military, a cause as urgent as any domestic priority. Years of Obama budget cuts and neglect slashed force sizes and provoked a readiness crisis. Over half the Navy’s aircraft are grounded. Of 58 Army brigade combat teams, only three are ready to immediately join a fight. The Air Force is short pilots and aircraft maintenance workers.

Mr. Trump chose a man singularly gifted to take on such a huge challenge. “Mad Dog” Mattis is a highly intelligent and revered Marine, whose time on the battlefield has made him intimately familiar with the needs of a fighting force. He’s a steely-eyed warrior who’ll fight for the rebuild mission, and who is willing to speak truth to his boss and Congress about what it will require. That is, if he will stand down long enough to get the project started.
Because right now, Mr. Mattis is fighting alone in the Pentagon, a situation of his own design. He was confirmed on Inauguration Day, yet as March approaches the White House hasn’t nominated a single subcabinet position in the Defense Department. No deputy secretary. No undersecretaries. No assistant secretaries. This is because Mr. Mattis is battling with the White House over who gets the jobs.

A soldier first—a politician only by presidential request—Mr. Mattis hews to the honest belief that defense should always be a bipartisan cause. He wants to choose his own team based on the strength of their views, political affiliations be damned. He wanted, for instance, former Obama undersecretary Michèle Flournoy for a top post. He’s looked to recruit from Ms. Flournoy’s liberal-hawk think tank, the Center for New American Security. And he’s pushed for some names who hail from Never Trump backgrounds, including Mary Beth Long, an official in George W. Bush’s Pentagon.

Perhaps only to make a point, Mr. Mattis is blocking some rock-star conservative talent. One is Mira Ricardel, a former Boeing executive and Bush Pentagon alum who helped with the Trump transition. Mr. Mattis continues to nix a long list of names offered by the White House team.

This defense secretary has one of the biggest jobs in the administration, and he’s right to want to be consulted and to have a team he trusts. There’s also nothing wrong with looking outside the partisan box.

At the same time, Mr. Mattis surely understands the chain of command. This isn’t just a question of choosing random “staff.” These are presidential appointments for consequential positions, with authority over budgets, personnel and operations. The Trump White House has a right to want people it trusts as much as it trusts Mr. Mattis. The former Marine is accorded influence. The president is accorded the call. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Framers designed a system whereby the primary method of protecting individual rights lay in dividing the power of government both vertically and horizontally (federalism and the separation of powers, respectively). This innovation, applying a blend of ancient and Enlightenment-era political philosophy, would prevent anybody in the ruling class from gaining too much power over the people.

But our constitutional jurisprudence has not always reinforced this structure. Indeed, over the past century we have seen more and more power transferred from the states to the federal government — and from the judicial and legislative branches to the executive. The main protection for freedom became what the Founders originally considered a redundant afterthought, the Bill of Rights (which, as the late Justice Scalia liked to say, most tin-pot banana republics have). With the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, however, there is renewed hope for a renaissance in enforcing the Constitution’s structure as the means for securing and protecting ordered liberty.

Like Justice Scalia — whose seat Gorsuch is tapped to fill — the nominee applies the Constitution’s original meaning to these structural provisions, and he recognizes the importance of limiting government to protecting rights. But Gorsuch has been more willing than Scalia was to take them seriously and not just defer to executive agencies, because he recognizes the damage that the modern administrative state has wrought on individual liberty.

In United States v. Nichols (2015), Gorsuch confronted the delegation of the legislative power to the executive branch. And so he considered the “non-delegation doctrine,” which comes directly from Article I of the Constitution: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” That seems pretty clear, but the Supreme Court, in nodding toward the practicalities of modern government, has allowed congressional delegation of the lawmaking power if there is an “intelligible principle” for the executive to follow. In practice, Congress gives very few principles, much less intelligible ones; instead, it passes vague statutes with little guidance for how to implement them. This gives the executive free rein to promulgate rules that have the binding force of law.

In his Nichols dissent, Gorsuch invoked the Framers to explain the importance of keeping legislative power in Congress:

The framers of the Constitution thought the compartmentalization of legislative power not just a tool of good government or necessary to protect the authority of Congress from the encroachment by the Executive but essential to the preservation of the people’s liberty. . . . By separating the lawmaking and law enforcement functions, the framers sought to thwart the ability of an individual or group to exercise arbitrary or absolute power.

Gorsuch’s opinions have also questioned the constitutional implications of granting deference to administrative agencies through judge-made doctrines. These doctrines — emanating from the cases in which they were derived, such as Auer, Chevron, and Brand X — require courts to defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes and regulations. Chevron and Auer deference allow agency “experts” to fill gaps in these ambiguities to craft policy — essentially letting the executive write legislation. Brand X, for its part, requires courts to defer to post-hoc executive interpretations of statutes even after a federal court has already construed the statutes’ meaning — conferring on the executive the judicial power to have the final say on “what the law is” (to quote Chief Justice John Marshall in the foundational case of Marbury v. Madison). Gorsuch wrote a much-heralded opinion (and separate concurrence!) in Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch (2016) analyzing whether these doctrines violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.