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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Who’s Afraid of Religious Liberty? by Richard Samuelson

Seeking to prohibit every kind of “discrimination,” activists in and out of government threaten the free practice of, among other faiths, Judaism.

Not so long ago, doubts about the ability of Jews to live and practice Judaism freely in the United States would have been dismissed as positively paranoid: relics of a bygone era when American Jews could be turned away from restaurants and country clubs, when restrictive covenants might prevent their purchase of real estate or prejudicial quotas limit their access to universities and corporate offices.

None of that has been the case for a half-century or more. And yet recent developments in American political culture have raised legitimate concerns on a variety of fronts. To put the matter in its starkest form: the return of anti-Semitism, by now a thoroughly documented phenomenon in Europe and elsewhere around the world, is making itself felt, in historically unfamiliar ways, in the land of the free.

Statistics tell part of the tale. In 2014, the latest period for which figures have been released by the FBI, Jews were the objects of fully 57 percent of hate crimes against American religious groups, far outstripping the figure for American Muslims (14 percent) and Catholics (6 percent). True, the total number of such incidents is still blessedly low; but what gives serious pause is the radical disproportion.

The rise and spread of anti-Israel agitation, particularly on the nation’s campuses, is the most common case. Such agitation, expressed in the form of defamatory graffiti, “Israel Apartheid” demonstrations, and the verbal or physical abuse of pro-Israel students, feeds into and is increasingly indistinguishable from outright anti-Semitism. Even the most zealously “progressive” young Jews are targeted as accomplices-by-definition with the alleged crimes of Zionism. As one student who has fallen afoul of his campus’s orthodoxies has lamented, “because I am Jewish, I cannot be an activist who supports Black Lives Matter or the LGBTQ community. . . . [A]mong my peers, Jews are oppressors and murderers.” Such is the progressive doctrine of “intersectionality,” according to which all approved causes are interconnected and must be mutually supported, no exceptions and no tradeoffs allowed.

Lately, this brand of wholesale anti-Semitic vilification under the guise of anti-Zionism has leapt beyond the precincts of the academy to infiltrate American political discourse, becoming vocally evident on both the political left and the political right and insidiously infecting this year’s presidential campaign and party maneuverings. For an analysis of the campus assault’s underlying mechanisms and wider effects, Ruth Wisse’s Mosaic essay, “Anti-Semitism Goes to School,” is unsurpassed. So far, the trend shows no sign of abating.

But there is another danger, equally grave though as yet less open and less remarked upon. It is connected with longer-term shifts in Americans’ fundamental understanding of themselves and of their liberty, and consequently with the laws that embody and reflect that understanding: in particular, the laws enshrining America’s commitment to religious liberty and, relatedly, liberty of association or, as the Constitution has it, assembly. Coming to the fore over issues of personal identity, most saliently in relation to the gay-rights movement, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights, it has resulted in a legal battle in which the radioactive charge of “discrimination,” borrowed from the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, is wielded as a weapon to isolate, impugn, and penalize dissenting views held by Americans of faith and informing the conduct of their religious lives.

Where Was Hillary Clinton When Captain Khan Gave His Life in Iraq? By Claudia Rosett

What to make of the furor touched off by the speech at the Democratic National Convention of Khizr Khan? Khan spoke about his son, an American war hero, Army Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim, who gave his life 12 years ago in Iraq to save his soldiers from a suicide bomber.

But Khan, the grieving father, did not stop there. In a windup to endorsing Hillary Clinton as “the healer,” waving a copy of the American Constitution, Khan attacked Donald Trump, asking if he has even read the U.S. Constitution, and saying “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump then attacked Khan, implying that his wife, Ghazala Khan, had remained mute onstage because she was a Muslim woman. Ghazala Khan has now written an op-ed in the Washington Post, grieving for her son and attacking Trump: “Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice.” Khizr Khan has just appeared on NBC TV’s “Meet the Press” to denounce Trump as “a candidate without a moral compass.”

By all means, let’s debate these matters. But in an election contest with plenty to deplore on both sides, what’s sauce for the gander should also be sauce for the goose. If we are going to talk about candidates without a moral compass, what about Hillary Clinton?

In finding a way through this minefield — in honoring war heroes and respecting their families, while navigating the sinkholes of this presidential race — I’d say Seth Lipsky’s New York Sun gets it exactly right, in an editorial headlined “Gold Star Hypocrisy.”

The Sun begins, quite rightly:

It was a magnificent thing for Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party to honor the heroism of, in Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American who gave his life for his comrades and country. It was a reminder at a time when America is under attack by an enemy who claims to be acting in the name of Islam that there are millions of loyal Americans who adhere to the Muslim faith. Captain Khan’s heroism is impossible to alloy.

The Sun goes on to express shock that Khizr Khan “used his son’s sacrifice on the field of battle for political purposes,” but underscores that we must respect Khan and his wife: “his and his wife’s grief is unimaginable. They are Gold Star parents, and all Americans will rise in their presence.”

Then the Sun asks, and answers, an important question:

Where was Hillary Clinton at the hour Captain Khan stepped forward in the face of our common foe? She, after all, had cast one of the votes that sent him to war (a majority of Democratic senators did so). Yet as it became clear that the fight would be tougher than she had imagined, Mrs. Clinton had begun to retreat. Though she claimed to Larry King of CNN that she didn’t regret her vote to give the president war authority, she started to cavil.

The ABA’s Plan to Impose Political Correctness on the Practice of Law By Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson

From August 4 through 9, 2016, the American Bar Association (“ABA”) will hold its annual meeting in San Francisco. Among the scheduled events is the business meeting of the House of Delegates, the ABA’s governing body. The Delegates will consider a number of policy recommendations presented as reports from its standing committees. One of these proposals comes from the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and, if adopted, would undermine many of the rights of lawyers, including the historic and absolute right of each lawyer to decide whom he will choose to represent.

The proposal would add a new, vague, and expansive list of prohibitions to Rule 8.4 in the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct governing “Misconduct.” The purpose of the “Misconduct” rule is supposedly to achieve the objective of “Maintaining the Integrity of the Profession,” but this new proposal is all about social engineering, having nothing at all to do with ethics.

The proposal would create a “new Rule 8.4(g) that would make it professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.” High sounding words indeed — but words that, if adopted by state bar associations, would empower those who run state bar associations — largely establishment lawyers — to selectively discipline and even disbar individual lawyers whose values are traditional rather than progressive.

In justification for creating new favored classes, the proposed Comment blithely asserts: “Conduct that violates paragraph (g) undermines confidence in the legal profession and our legal system and is contrary to the fundamental principle that all people are created equal.” Remarkably, the Committee found only one of the 11 itemized preferred classes — “socioeconomic” — to be even worth debating. As for the other 10 categories, the Committee simply presumed that no one could possibly object, for they are supposedly based on the “fundamental principle” of equality.

But it has long been recognized that the equality principle that applies to race does not apply to other types of classifications, even including sex. If there can be men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, and track teams, why can there not be law firms which limit their practice to only wives or only husbands in family law matters? Why should such firms be outlawed because they make a distinction between clients on the basis of their “marital status”? What about a person’s “sexual orientation”? Or their “gender identity”? Neither of these latter two terms is objectively determinable or even objectively observable. Rather, they are completely subjective, dependent solely on a person’s self-perception. Surely lawyers — of all people — ought to know better than to concoct such a vague and standardless rule.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled again that even race distinctions are not a per se violation of the equality principle when used by numerous colleges and universities in recruitment of faculty and students. If a law firm cannot be denied the right to adopt a discriminatory hiring policy to achieve a desired diversity of the 11 categories within a particular law firm, as the ABA rule allows, why should another law firm be denied the right to adopt a hiring policy to achieve a desired unity within its law firm? Must all law firms look alike? What is wrong with diversity among firms? And why should a law firm with an international practice be barred from seeking to expand by hiring lawyers of a certain national origin or ethnicity to enhance its ability to better serve clients of similar origin or ethnicity?

Religion, likewise, is wholly unlike race. Statutes accommodating religious conscience abound at both the state and federal level. Law schools with an overtly religious mission, including the hiring, faculty, and admission of students, enjoy ABA accreditation. Nationwide, lawyers and law firms hold themselves out to the public as Christians, letting the community know that they are dedicated to practicing law in accordance with ethical rules of their personal faith. Why should such law firms be barred from hiring lawyers which share the same religious convictions? Indeed, the Holy Scriptures counsel believers not to become “unequally yoked” with nonbelievers. 2 Corinthians 6:14. Are Christian lawyers to be barred by ethics rules from obeying Biblical statutes? Why should lawyers not be free to hire and fire staff on the basis of fidelity to their shared moral code? In truth, doesn’t everyone make distinctions based upon their personal moral code? Why should a lawyer be penalized if he candidly advises potential clients what that code is? Would not prospective clients be better served by such candor and transparency?

Who is Khizr Kahn, the father of a fallen US solder? By Clarice Feldman

Khizr Kahn is the father of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq who spoke poignantly of the loss of his son and then used that platform to attack Donald Trump. On Sunday he tweeted further disparaging remarks about Melania.

Google shows this for his law practice:

His NYC address is here (but the phone number is in DC)

Khan, Khizr M. CFC

Law Offices of KM Khan

415 Madison Avenue

15th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Phones: 202.279.0806

Fax: 646-673-8401

Contact Us

I was surprised that a NY law office would list a D.C. telephone number, so I called it to check and was told by the man who answered it was not Khazir Khan’s law office, but the man who answered would not tell me who it was.

So I did more digging and learned that is also the phone number of a group called American Muslims Vote, which says its mission is to:

To create an enlightened community by providing and developing Patriotic American Muslim leadership and

Encouraging American Muslims to participate in the democratic process at local, state and national level and vote on the election day.

I did some further research into who registered this domain name and when? Khizr Khan registered it on July 23, 2016.

He’s looking increasingly like a plant to me — a Muslim Cindy Sheehan playing on people’s sympathies to foster a Democratic Party political agenda. And of course, in that goal he has the full throated support of the American media:

Hillary Clinton’s School Choice She used to support charters. Now she’s for the union agenda.

No one would call the 2016 election a battle of ideas, but it will have policy consequences. So it’s worth noting the sharp left turn by Hillary Clinton and Democrats against education reform and the charter schools she and her husband championed in the 1990s.

Mrs. Clinton recently promised a National Education Association (NEA) assembly higher pay, student-loan write-offs, less testing and universal pre-K. She had only this to say about charter schools, which are free from union rules: “When schools get it right, whether they are traditional public schools or public charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working” and “share it with schools across America.”
The crowd booed, so Mrs. Clinton pivoted to deriding “for-profit charter schools,” a fraction of the market whose grave sin is contracting with a management company. Cheering resumed. When she later addressed the other big teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), she began with an attack on for-profit charters.

We remember when Mrs. Clinton wasn’t so easily intimidated by unions. Bill Clinton’s grant program took the movement from a few schools to thousands. In Mrs. Clinton’s 1996 memoir, “It Takes a Village,” she wrote that she favored “promoting choice among public schools, much as the President’s Charter Schools Initiative encourages.” And here’s Mrs. Clinton in 1998: “The President believes, as I do, that charter schools are a way of bringing teachers and parents and communities together.”

But now Mrs. Clinton needs the support of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation known as teacher unions, which loathe charter schools that operate without unions. The AFT endorsed Mrs. Clinton 16 months before Election Day, and the NEA followed.

Shortly after, in a strange coincidence, Mrs. Clinton began repeating union misinformation: “Most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids,” she said on a South Carolina campaign stop in November. But Mrs. Clinton used to know that nearly all charter schools select students by lottery and are by law not allowed to discriminate. The schools tend to crop up in urban areas where traditional options are worst. A recent study from Stanford University showed that charters better serve low-income children, minority students and kids who are learning English.

The Clinton Foundation, State and Kremlin Connections Why did Hillary’s State Department urge U.S. investors to fund Russian research for military uses? By Peter Schweizer

Hillary Clinton touts her tenure as secretary of state as a time of hardheaded realism and “commercial diplomacy” that advanced American national and commercial interests. But her handling of a major technology transfer initiative at the heart of Washington’s effort to “reset” relations with Russia raises serious questions about her record. Far from enhancing American national interests, Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in this area may have substantially undermined U.S. national security.

Consider Skolkovo, an “innovation city” of 30,000 people on the outskirts of Moscow, billed as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley—and a core piece of Mrs. Clinton’s quarterbacking of the Russian reset.

Following his 2009 visit to Moscow, President Obama announced the creation of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission. Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state directed the American side, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented the Russians. The stated goal at the time: “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the Russian and American people.”

The Kremlin committed $5 billion over three years to fund Skolkovo. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department worked aggressively to attract U.S. investment partners and helped the Russian State Investment Fund, Rusnano, identify American tech companies worthy of Russian investment. Rusnano, which a scientific adviser to President Vladimir Putin called “Putin’s child,” was created in 2007 and relies entirely on Russian state funding.

What could possibly go wrong?

Soon, dozens of U.S. tech firms, including top Clinton Foundation donors like Google, Intel and Cisco, made major financial contributions to Skolkovo, with Cisco committing a cool $1 billion. In May 2010, the State Department facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital—and weeks later the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies. CONTINUE AT SITE

Domesticating Donald- What’s Not to Like? By David Solway

One notices that when the current nomination cycle began, Donald Trump was more often than not referred to by his full name: Donald Trump. Or by his surname: Trump. As time went by, his iconic sobriquet began to be used on a regular basis, generally in a not unkindly way: The Donald, as if he were a reified entity, a theatrical performance, or even a sort of force or condition, like The Weather. Now he is increasingly addressed simply as: Donald. The outsider, the mogul, the thespian has become a household guest, someone many of us know—with the exception of his enemies or professional skeptics—as a friendly and companionable figure. This is the other “nomination” that has occurred.

Despite the media hype painting him as an unprincipled opportunist, it appears that he has gradually earned the trust of millions of voters, including the initially undecided. That is, he has become Donald, familiar, admired and likeable.

Indeed, what’s not to like?

He has solemnly promised to fix America’s porous border situation and put paid to the violence and fiscal burdens that attend the vast influx of illegal migrants among ordinary, tax-paying Americans.

He has thrown down the gauntlet before the Islamic terror industry, vowed to halt the flow of “Syrian” refugees into the country, and pledged to set up screening mechanisms to repair a broken immigration system and weed out the carriers of an ideology hostile to the preservation of a free and democratic society.

He has presented himself as the law and order candidate in a nation careening toward anarchy in the streets and open war on the police, which has put every citizen at risk.

He has expressed his contempt for political correctness, a species of evasion and outright lying that is weakening the cultural sinews of the nation and its ability to defend itself against a host of enemies, internal and external.

He is committed to restoring an enfeebled military to its former status as the world’s mightiest fighting force. Additionally, he will honor and support America’s veterans, left to malinger by the Obama administration.

He has promised to renegotiate unfavorable trade deals that have left America at a competitive disadvantage, cost millions of jobs, and led to the gutting of the blue collar, middle class and small entrepreneurial strata of society.

He has vowed to replace globalism with Americanism and to require NATO allies to pay their fair share for defense rather than rely on continued American largesse to make up for shortfalls. Who respects a sucker?

He has promised to end the disaster of Obamacare, to tackle the national debt, to revitalize American manufacture, and to open up a restrictive, dumbed-down, “assembly line” educational system.

Considering this bordereau of serious and meaningful pledges, what’s not to like?

Trump—sorry, Donald—enjoys four distinct advantages over all other political actors on the national stage. He is not a beltway politician, which means he has not been corrupted by the perks and privileges so dear to the political elite. He is self-funded and therefore not beholden to major donors and lobbyists. He is a hands-on person, who pays attention to detail, where the devil is said to live, which accounts for his efficiency in keeping the devil’s handiwork of distraction and error at a minimum. And he possesses the ability to spot talent, to put the right people in place to ensure the success of his various projects. Donald is now “Donald” because he has become a member of the American family.

ABC News – Report: VA Spent Millions on Costly Art as Veterans Waited for Care By Elizabeth McLaughlin See Video

A new report alleges that the Department of Veterans Affairs spent $20 million between 2004 and 2014 on costly artwork.

The expenditures included more than $1 million for a courtyard with a large sculpture at a Palo Alto veterans facility; $330,000 for a glass-art installation; and $21,000 for an artificial Christmas tree, according to the report.

Open The Books, a nonprofit that claims to be the world’s largest private database of government spending, in conjunction with Cox Media used government data to examine the Veterans Affairs Department’s (VA) spending on art for their facilities in the decade ending in 2014.

Much of the spending occurred at a time when veterans were experiencing lengthy waits for treatment at VA facilities. After as many as 40 veterans died while seeking care at the VA’s Phoenix Healthcare System, the federal agency’s inspector general found in 2014 that lengthy waits for treatment might have contributed to the deaths but did not definitively cause them.

The Veterans Affairs agency admitted publicly around this time that its health care operations were overwhelmed and understaffed.

Now this new report is sparking fresh anger from both veterans and lawmakers.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican, wrote Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald on July 26, demanding a “moratorium on art spending by the VA.” In his letter, Kirk mentioned that a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing last fall highlighted what he said were excessive expenditures, $6.3 million, by the VA on artwork at the Palo Alto Healthcare System.

A spokesperson for the Palo Alto facility told ABC News that it had more than $4 million in art contracts in 2013 and 2014, including for an installation on the side of a parking garage. The installation, meant to honor blind veterans, featured quotes by Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt in Morse code that light up. The irony, critics point out, is that a blind veteran would be unlikely to see the massive artwork that cost $280,000.

No, the Constitution Does Not Bar ‘Religious Tests’ in Immigration Law Properly vetting would-be immigrants’ religious beliefs is not only legal — it would be wise and prudent. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Of all the ignorant pronouncements in the 2016 presidential campaign, the dumbest may be that the Constitution forbids a “religious test” in the vetting of immigrants. Monotonously repeated in political speeches and talking-head blather, this claim is heedless of the Islamic doctrinal roots on which foreign-born Islamists and the jihadists they breed base their anti-Americanism. It is also dead wrong.

The clause said to be the source of this drivel is found in Article VI. As you’ll no doubt be shocked to learn, it has utterly nothing to do with immigration. The clause states, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” (emphasis added). On its face, the provision is not only inapplicable to immigrants at large, let alone aliens who would like to be immigrants; it does not even apply to the general public. It is strictly limited to public officials — specifically to their fitness to serve in government positions.

This is equally clear from the clause’s context. Right before the “no religious Test” directive, Article VI decrees that elected and appointed officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution[.]” An oath of office customarily requires the official to “solemnly swear” that he or she will support and defend the Constitution, “so help me God.” (See, e.g., the oath prescribed by federal law.) The Framers tacked on the “no religious test” clause to clarify that the mandate of a solemn oath before taking office did not mean fidelity to a particular religious creed was required. The same principle informs the First Amendment’s prohibition on the establishment of a state religion.

This is as it should be. The Constitution prescribes very few qualifications for even the highest offices because its purpose is to promote liberty, which vitally includes the freedom to elect whomever we choose, to vote our own private consciences. The principal check on public officials is the ballot box, not the law’s minimalist requirements.

As voters, we have the right to weigh a candidate’s religious beliefs as a significant part of the total package. We have done so from the Republic’s founding — and to this day, virtually all candidates take pains to wear their faith, however nominal, on their sleeves. When the loathsome Jeremiah Wright fleetingly became an issue in the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama did not thunder, “Under the Constitution, you must not inquire into my religious beliefs!” He threw the Rev under the bus. When it comes to choosing those who will represent us, we do not limit ourselves by intrusive laws, but we reserve the right to bring to bear any consideration, including religion, that we deem relevant.

What works in the narrow context of qualification for public office does not extend to other aspects of governance — in particular, security.

Stuck in the ‘Village’ Where’s the individual in Mrs. Clinton’s America? James Taranto

PHILADELPHIA—Last night Hillary Clinton reminded us of what is least appealing about Donald Trump. She then proceeded to remind us of what is least appealing about her. (To be more precise, what is least appealing about her apart from the corruption and nepotism.)

“Don’t believe anyone who says, ‘I alone can fix it,’ ” she exhorted the audience at home and here, in the Wells Fargo Center:

Yes, those were actually Donald Trump’s words in Cleveland. And they should set off alarm bells for all of us. Really? I alone can fix it? Isn’t he forgetting troops on the front lines, police officers and firefighters who run toward danger, doctors and nurses who care for us, teachers who change lives, entrepreneurs who see possibilities in every problem, mothers who lost children to violence and are building a movement to keep other kids safe? He’s forgetting every last one of us.

And remember, remember, our Founders fought a Revolution and wrote a Constitution so America would never be a nation where one person had all the power.

Two hundred forty years later, we still put our faith in each other. Look at what happened in Dallas after the assassinations of five brave police officers. Police Chief David Brown asked the community to support his force, maybe even join them. And you know how the community responded? Nearly 500 people applied in just 12 days.

That’s how Americans answer when the call for help goes out.

This was excellent work by Mrs. Clinton’s speechwriters, at once inspiring to the listener and merciless to her opponent.

In fairness to Trump, it was based on a misinterpretation of his comment—and surely a deliberate one, as there is no question of the literacy of Mrs. Clinton’s speechwriters. Here is what he said last week in Cleveland, with some context:

I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people who cannot defend themselves.

Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders—he never had a chance.

(As an aside, that last bit turned out to be truer than anybody outside the Democratic National Committee and WikiLeaks knew, didn’t it?)

Trump didn’t say, “I can fix it alone,” which is the claim Mrs. Clinton rebutted so effectively. His meaning was Only I can fix it—a more highly energetic formulation of a vanquished rival’s slogan, “Jeb can fix it.” Whether it is true that Trump can fix it, or that nobody else can fix it, is an open question.

But understood properly, the claim is no more than a bit of promotional hyperbole, similar to the assertion, often repeated in Philadelphia (though not by Mrs. Clinton herself) that she is the “most qualified” man, woman, other type of adult, or child ever to seek the presidency. It’s laughable when taken literally, but then so are most sales pitches.

Further, “I alone can fix it” had rubbed us the wrong way, and the subtle difference between it and “I can fix it alone” didn’t occur to us until after Mrs. Clinton had finished speaking and we were thinking about what to write about her speech. That means it likely occurred to very few of her listeners. And by the standards of political rhetoric, her twisting of his meaning was quite mild.

In sum, Mrs. Clinton effectively exploited her opponent’s poorly chosen phrase, and did so in a way that was almost fair. Good show. But then she went on: