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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association appears to have a strong ‘pro-Mexico’ agenda By Sierra Rayne

According to FactCheck.org, “it’s not accurate to call the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association ‘very pro-Mexico’ or ‘very strongly pro-Mexican.'”

The same article claims that Donald Trump’s comments that U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel is a “member of a club or society very strongly pro-Mexican” are “an inaccurate description of a group for Latino lawyers and law students in San Diego.”

To clarify, membership in the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association also includes judges, in addition to lawyers and law students, and one could reasonably argue that not only is it inappropriate, but it also potentially runs contrary to federal statues and the common law for sitting judges to be members of such activist organizations.

Luis Osuna, president of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, is quoted as saying “[w]e have no pro-Mexico agenda.”

That doesn’t appear to be what the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association’s social media feed shows.

On February 3, 2015, the organization tweeted, “Are you a member of House of Mexico? You can learn more about their great work below: http://fb.me/76CDut6Au.”

The House of Mexico, whose home page is the link the association tweeted, has a self-stated mission “to share, celebrate, educate and promote the rich art, culture, and history of Mexico.”

Then, on September 2, 2015, the organization tweeted, “SDLRLA supports House of Mexico San Diego” with an link to a Change.org petition to “Tell House of Pacific Relations that Mexico needs a stand-alone house in Balboa Park.” According to this petition being promoted by the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association:

The continued attacks on Mexico and Mexicans must end. We say, “Basta! Enough!” Mexico deserves its own house in a prominent location.

If this doesn’t reflect a “pro-Mexico agenda” by the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, it will interesting to hear what does.

American Charged With Aiding Islamic State Man accused of joining, then quitting group By Kate O’Keeffe

The Justice Department on Thursday unsealed charges against an American who had allegedly traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State terror group.

While federal prosecutors have been steadily charging people for helping Islamic State from the U.S., there are far fewer cases involving Americans who have allegedly traveled to the Middle East to join the group, become disenchanted, and returned.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, a 26-year-old who last lived in Alexandria, Va., left the U.S. in December 2015 to join Islamic State, alleged the May 11 complaint, which charged him with providing material support to the terror group.

He lived in Islamic State safe houses in Syria and Iraq, told the terror group he would be willing to become a suicide bomber, and participated in Islamic State-directed religious training for nearly a month before leaving the group’s territory and surrendering in March to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, the complaint alleges.

It wasn’t immediately known who Mr. Khweis’s attorney is. A U.S. relative of Mr. Khweis had earlier called him “a very respectful and quiet young man” who had “nothing to do” with Islamic State.

Mr. Khweis will have an initial appearance at the federal courthouse in Alexandria on Thursday afternoon, the Justice Department said.

Though Islamic State’s social media presence remains powerful, the number of Americans traveling to the Middle East to fight alongside the terror group has been dropping, James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told reporters in May at FBI headquarters.

Since August, one American a month has traveled or attempted to travel to the Middle East to join the group, compared with about six to 10 a month in the preceding year and a half, Mr. Comey said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump, the Judiciary and Identity Politics Making an issue of Judge Curiel’s ethnicity was squalid—and the other side of a coin that liberals have played for years. Michael Mukasey

Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was born in Indiana to parents of Mexican origin and belongs to an association of lawyers of Mexican origin, is sitting on a case in the Southern District of California that charges fraud against Trump University. Donald Trump in recent days has attracted much attention by suggesting that Judge Curiel should be disqualified for bias because the judge’s rulings are adverse to Mr. Trump and because, in campaigning for the presidency, the candidate has criticized Mexicans and proposed building a wall on the southwest U.S. border.

Mr. Trump’s claim against Judge Curiel is both baseless and squalid, but some in the chorus of critics are not themselves entirely without fault.

First, let’s dispose of the recusal question. Two statutes bear on recusal of a federal judge; neither remotely supports Mr. Trump’s argument. One, and part of the other, treat recusal for bias in fact. To justify such a finding, the complainant must show that a judge has a financial interest in a case, or that the judge has a relationship with parties or lawyers in it. Sworn evidence of the judge’s personal bias or prejudice is another justification for recusal. No evidence of such bias—indeed no evidence at all—has been submitted to the court by Mr. Trump or his lawyers.
The remaining provision requires a judge to disqualify himself “in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The provision doesn’t require a formal motion, but directs the judge to act, if necessary, on his own, as he would if he had a financial interest of which he was aware.

There is case law on what circumstances suggest that a judge’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned”—the key word of course being “reasonably.” A judge is enjoined to weigh the importance of public confidence in the courts against the distinct possibility that someone questioning his impartiality might simply be seeking to avoid anticipated adverse consequences of his presiding over the case.

That is, parties shouldn’t use recusal as a device to judge-shop. Because the job of a judge is to rule, and rulings necessarily favor one party or the other, adverse rulings—even a disproportionate number—generally are not considered evidence of partiality.

Race, religion and even gender have been used as suggested bases for “reasonably” questioning a judge’s impartiality. Thus black judges, particularly those with professional histories before they took the bench that included civil-rights work, have been asked to recuse themselves in civil-rights cases. A female judge in the Southern District of New York in 1975 was challenged in a sex-discrimination case, as was a Mormon judge in a 1984 case that allegedly involved the “theocratic power structure of Utah.” These challenges were rejected. CONTINUE AT SITE

Michael Cutler Moment: Obama’s Refugees, Illegal Aliens and the Tsunami of Deadly Diseases in America

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Michael Cutler Moment with Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Special Agent.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/06/09/michael-cutler-moment-obamas-refugees-illegal-aliens-and-the-tsunami-of-deadly-diseases-in-america/

Mr. Cutler discussed Obama’s Refugees, Illegal Aliens and the Tsunami of Deadly Diseases in America, unveiling the lethal violation of the nation’s most basic public health protocols.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch The Michael Cutler Moment: Obama’s Pathway to the “Borderless World,” in which Mr. Cutler unveiled how the Radical-in-Chief is opening America to Islamic terrorists and transnational criminals.

A Moral Disability Dispiriting findings on long-term unemployment By Kevin D. Williamson

When I was a kid, I didn’t have any more appreciation for those “We Had It So Hard” stories you get from your parents and your grandparents than any other callow schoolboy does. But one of them stuck with me.

The elderly, highly regarded gentleman in question had moved to West Texas with his parents in the 1920s where they lived under what were essentially pioneer conditions, hunting rabbits for meat and foraging what other food they could, sometimes even eating green tumbleweeds. If you don’t know what the wind is like in West Texas, it will sound absurd, but, at one point, their house literally was blown away. There was no high school where they were — the place was called Sand — but there was one in a town 15 miles away, so he walked there and went to work at a filling station, a job he kept through high school. He was later accepted as a student at Texas Tech, the campus of which was a little more than 60 miles away. Again, he walked, not knowing where or how he’d live when he got there. The only business he knew was running a filling station, so he and another student started one, and he later used some of the money he made to open a movie theater. What followed was a successful business career and then a career in politics, culminating with his election as Texas governor Preston Smith.

We Americans have always been in motion. The pilgrims in their ships, the pioneers in their wagons, the Okies bound for California however they could get there, Preston Smith and his much-used shoes. It isn’t always great. But it isn’t all that bad, either, especially when you are young: I am sure that many of you reading this have had the experience of moving into an apartment you’ve never seen because you didn’t have the money to go scouting when relocating for a new job. Sometimes it’s better than expected, sometimes not—but it is always a surprise.

I am not among those who believe that poverty builds character — I can do without that kind of character — but I do sometimes almost feel sorry for those friends of mine who’ve always had it a little too good, who don’t have any funny stories about roadside misadventures caused by having a crappy 22-year-old car, the semester they spent semi-homeless, the people they met working on a farm or doing day labor. I don’t want to have those kinds of adventures now, and I didn’t want to have them at the time, either, but sometime between then and now I became glad that they had happened.

One Ohio Mosque Has Been at the Center of SIX Terror Cases By Patrick Poole

The website for Masjid Omar Ibn El Khattab, just a mile from the Ohio State University campus, proclaims itself “the Muslim Heart of Columbus.” And yet the mosque, described as one of the most ideologically hardline in the city, has grabbed the media spotlight once again: former attendees were recently reported as having joined the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria.

As mosque officials struggle to distance themselves from yet another resident terror cell, the recent news raises questions about the extensive history of this Ohio mosque as a turnstile for terrorism.

Just a few weeks ago, I reported here at PJ Media that three individuals who lived just yards from Masjid Omar for two years joined ISIS in Syria in July 2014. Rasel Raihan was killed in Syria in a U.S. airstrike. His older sister Zakia Nasrin and her husband Jaffrey Khan are still in Raqqa, according to internal ISIS documents which NBC News obtained from an ISIS defector.

In that NBC News report, the mosque’s president, Basil Gohar, tried to distance the trio from the mosque. He said that Jaffrey, despite living so close to the mosque for two years, had only attended the mosque for a few weeks and had kept to himself.

When a local TV station caught up with him a few days later, Gohar again tried to distance the mosque from the ISIS recruits — as well as from the previous convicted terrorists who had attended the mosque:

We share the shock and horror of these actions, and we wish that we could have found out or stopped them … It’s quite unfortunate what these people went and did, but the fact they attended has no bearing on their actions. Anyone can come to our mosque. We have an open door policy. It’s not possible for us to screen someone’s ideology.

NY Times Columnist Goes Bonkers Over Trump Comment about Black Supporter What the media omitted from their coverage of Trump’s remarks.Crystal Wright

Democrat New York Times columnist and certified Democrat water boy Charles Blow couldn’t wait to pounce on Donald Trump’s comment about a black supporter at a recent rally.

Blow tweeted:

If anyone ever says of me, “look at MY African-American,” I’m going ALL THE WAY off… ‪#YouDontOwnMeFool

Of course, Blow — who is black and has almost singularly focused his column on trashing Trump — is perfectly okay with being owned by Democrats and having candidates like Hillary mock him to his black face. Over the last 50-plus years of blacks showing slavish devotion to Democrats, blacks like Blow have received zero in return but insults. Hillary Clinton has again adopted a black dialect when talking to black audiences, like she did in her 2008 campaign. During a radio interview on an urban station, she even joked about carrying hot sauce in her bag — you know, like the blacks do.

But I never saw Charles Blow “go all the way off” on Hillary’s insults. Looks like somebody is the fool. I also don’t recall Blow being outraged when Bill Clinton blew up at Senator Ted Kennedy in 2008 when Kennedy endorsed then-Senator Barack Obama over Hillary. Clinton told Kennedy that not too long ago (black) Obama would have been fetching them (white men) coffee.

Back to Trump’s comment. The presumptive GOP nominee did single out a black person at a campaign event in California. But the liberal media mob, which includes Blow, took Trump’s comments out of context. What a shock.

First, Trump addressed violent protestors who tried to disrupt his recent rally in San Jose. Liberals far and wide blamed Trump for the violence. The GOP nominee said that he urges supporters not to fight protestors but smile if they punch you in the face “as your nose [is] pouring blood out of it.”

“Be very, very nice,” advised Trump.

Then, Trump went on to recount this story:

We had a case where we had an African-American guy, who was a fan of mine. Great fan, great guy. In fact I want to find out what’s going on with him. You know. . .

Look at my African-American over here, look at him. Are you the greatest? You know what I’m talking about? OK.

Muslim Leader Advertises that 9/11 was ‘Israeli-Jewish Job’ Hamas and David Duke supporter, Sofian Zakkout, once again finds way to target Jews. Joe Kaufman

Sofian Zakkout, President of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), is always looking for new ways to promote hatred of Jews. Recently, he advertised on his Facebook page an article about how the Nazi Holocaust was “faked.” Now, he is targeting Jews by posting onto social media a claim that they perpetrated the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Will any of the hate he is peddling do harm to the relationships he and his group have made, both financial and otherwise, with organizations associated with fighting crime?

Usually, anti-Semites — those rabid ones who are violently opposed to Jews — attach themselves to one of two categories, white supremacists or Muslim terrorists. Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, who is Muslim himself, strongly supports both.

When it comes to white supremacy, Zakkout is a fervent follower of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Zakkout has described Duke as “David Duke, a man to believe in!” and Zakkout has said of Duke, “I respect him for his honesty!” Zakkout’s Facebook page and the websites of his organization AMANA each have been used to promote Duke and his bigoted videos. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has previously cited Zakkout and his group for posting what the ADL described as a “venomous” anti-Semitic Duke video onto AMANA’s official site.

This past February, Zakkout advertised on social media a report claiming that the horrors committed by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s were fabricated. Aptly titled ‘How the Holocaust was faked,’ it begins: “The alleged ‘Holocaust’ of ‘6 million Jews’ at the hands of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany during WWII is the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity.” It was produced by The Realist Report, an anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-gay independent media outlet, which describes Hitler as “the greatest leader in modern Western history.”

Zakkout is also very open about his strong support for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. In August 2015, he wrote in Arabic on Facebook, “Hamas is in my heart and on my head.” In July 2014, Zakkout organized a pro-Hamas rally held outside the Israeli Consulate in downtown Miami. On video, Zakkout is shown smiling, as event goers repeatedly shout, “We are Hamas.” Following the rally, Zakkout wrote the following in Arabic, above photos from the event: “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

Trump and Democratic Political Incorrectness If Democrats are truly outraged by Trump, they might want to try looking in a mirror. June 8, 2016 Daniel Greenfield

Remember the time a presidential candidate suggested that Gandhi used to run “a gas station down in St. Louis.” No it wasn’t Trump. That was Hillary Clinton. Had Trump said it, we would still be hearing about it. But since Hillary Clinton was responsible for it, it went down the memory hole.

Along with her more recent “Colored People Time” gag.

And who can forget the time that Trump said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” But that wasn’t Trump. It was actually Vice President Joe Biden.

But still it was indisputably offensive when Trump told the Asian Chamber of Commerce, “I don’t think you’re smarter than anybody else, but you’ve convinced a lot of us you are.”

Then he followed that up by joking, “One problem that I’ve had today is keeping my Wongs straight.”

You would have to be ridiculously politically incorrect or an outright buffoon to say something like that to the Asian Chamber of Commerce. And this is exactly why Trump is… but wait, those lines actually came from Democratic Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

Reid recently popped up to call Trump’s comments racist. And he ought to know. Harry Reid believed that Obama was electable because he was “light-skinned” with ”no Negro dialect”.

Memories are short when it comes to Democratic racial and ethnic stereotypes. Not to mention slurs.

Trump is certainly not the only prominent politician who says wildly politically incorrect things. Democrats do it all the time. And they do it in more pointed ways.

Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez is running for the Senate. Sanchez is a racist who accused the “Vietnamese” of “trying to take this seat” when running against a Vietnamese-American candidate. Last year she managed to ridicule both Hindus and Native Americans with one slur.

There was the time that Bill Clinton suggested that, Obama “would have been getting us coffee”. Or when Biden described his future boss as the, “first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking guy.” Despite two terms in which Republicans were accused of racially stereotyping Obama with secret dog whistles, nothing any major Republican figure said was anywhere as bad as what Obama’s Democratic predecessor and his own Senate ally had said about him.

Democrats actually say politically incorrect things all the time. Trump has become famous because he’s one of the few Republicans who talks like a Democrat and says the sort of things that Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid have no problem saying in private and even in public speeches.

Regressive media applaud the San Jose violence By Bill D’Agostino

The far-left media are excusing the behavior of San Jose rioters, instead blaming the violence on Trump and rally attendees. Some journalists have gone so far as to encourage the attacks.

In the wake of the outrage over the violent protesters’ behavior, online leftist publications churned out a flurry of articles that stank of damage control. But unlike of the apologia they exhibited during the Baltimore and Ferguson riots, the authors of these pieces went a step farther than merely excusing the mob attacks in San Jose. They endorsed them.

On the night of the protests, Emmett Rensin, a deputy editor at Vox, tweeted, “Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot.”

Rensin was temporarily suspended from his position for the tweet. But this did not stop him from engaging in a two-hour rant on Twitter the following day, attempting to further justify physical attacks against Trump supporters.

Meanwhile, writers at other far-left outlets were given passes for their support of the violence. On June 3, Salon author Chauncey Devega published an article openly condoning the protesters’ actions:

In a functioning democracy, political violence should almost always be condemned. However, we must not forget that Donald Trump and his supporters are on the wrong side of history.

In March, Salon published a series of opinion pieces in a similar vein, exalting Trump protesters as heroes and blaming any violence they engaged in on Trump’s own rhetoric.

Excusing otherwise unacceptable behavior, so long as it comes from the “right” people, is a new favorite tactic of the regressive left. However, in blaming the behavior of a violent mob on the very people it targeted, authors like Emmett Rensin have taken their invective mentality to a new low. Though this double standard has yet to make its way to large news networks like CNN and MSNBC, it nonetheless reflects a troubling shift in the tone of mainstream regressive rhetoric.