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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Naming the Muslim Brotherhood a National Security Threat It’s time to start speaking the truth about the Brotherhood. Daniel Greenfield

The Muslim Brotherhood is to Islamic terrorism what a virus is to disease. Major terrorist leaders from the Caliph of ISIS to Arafat have the Muslim Brotherhood on their resume. And the current leader of Al Qaeda led a Muslim Brotherhood splinter terror group. But its linkages to Islamic terrorism are only a secondary aspect of the organization whose focus is on Islamizing nations through more subtle means.

Paradoxically the Brotherhood has met with far less success in the Muslim world than in the West. Its greatest victories in the Arab Spring would not have happened without Obama’s backing and its takeovers of Egypt and Tunisia were rolled back by popular uprisings while its efforts in Libya, Syria and Yemen were stymied by armed conflict with other Muslims.

The Muslim Brotherhood is unpopular in Egypt these days. It’s also unpopular with Americans.

In one poll, 61 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the Muslim Brotherhood. Only 11 percent had a positive view of the Islamic supremacist organization. Only 5 percent of Americans saw the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt as a positive development.

Was Knife Assault on Staten Island Boy an ISIS Tryout? By Michael Walsh

The war is now on American soil, and everybody except Washington, D.C. knows it:

An alleged jihadist arrested in June on charges that he plotted to blow up Times Square may also be the fiend who stabbed a 9-year-old Staten Island boy in the neck five months earlier in what some investigators now believe was a botched ISIS audition. But NYPD detectives investigating the Jan. 9 knife attack have been frustrated by the feds, who won’t give them access to terror suspect Fareed Mumuni, said a source familiar with the probe.

Mumuni, 21, lived only 600 yards from Jermaine Culver, who was stabbed as he walked to school in the Mariners Harbor section of Staten Island. A surveillance camera on a home across the street captured a stocky attacker as he stalked the boy from behind on Union Avenue before grabbing him around the neck and stabbing him in his back, head, neck and arm.

Jermaine is seen stumbling a few steps before he regains his footing and runs.“It looks like he’s trying to kill that kid,” said Luis Padilla, 44, the home’s owner. “He went straight for the jugular.”

Of course he did. Just following the tenets of his “faith.”

Bitter Clingers 2.0 By Victor Davis Hanson

No other president has so consciously divided the country by race since Woodrow Wilson.

Clingers 1.0: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Clingers 2.0: “Certain circumstances around being the first African-American president that might not have confronted a previous president, absolutel. … If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc., which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials, what I’d say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me and who I am and my background, and that in some ways I may represent change that worries them…. If you are living in a town that historically has relied on coal and you see coal jobs diminishing, you probably are going to be more susceptible to the argument that I’ve been wiping out the economy in your area .… I think if you are talking about the specific virulence of some of the opposition directed towards me, then, you know, that may be explained by the particulars of who I am.”

Barack Obama in the final stretch of his 2008 primary campaign explained away—off the record in an unguarded moment—his unpopularity in Pennsylvania. The problem then was a biased “them”—not so much the hard-left policies and principles of Barack Obama.

Go Live Elsewhere, We’re Cutting Carbon Here The Newhall Ranch project near Los Angeles is green but not green enough for the antidevelopment crowd. Allysia Finley

Earlier this month California Gov. Jerry Brown promised to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. This goal will be nearly impossible to achieve with California’s current population, projected to grow by 30% over the next 35 years to 50 million. So ecovangelists are trying to block any economic development that could help support more people.

The Newhall Ranch project in north Los Angeles County, which aims to provide housing for nearly 60,000 people as well as tens of thousands of jobs at stores, schools and recreational centers, is the most recent target. With energy-efficient lighting, comprehensive recycling, bike trails and drought-tolerant landscaping, the 12,000-acre planned community would be a green Levittown. But the proposed development—one of the biggest in state history—has been under siege from its inception in 1994 by environmental activists.

The California Supreme Court recently rejected Newhall’s final environmental-impact report. The court’s legally nebulous decision could delay construction for years—and cast a pall over future development.

Newhall’s report, which the Department of Fish and Wildlife approved in 2010, was more than 5,000 pages, with hundreds of pages dedicated to analyzing its greenhouse-gas emissions as required by recent regulatory amendments to the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The state wildlife agency projected that Newhall would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 31% by 2020 relative to the California Air Resources Board’s 2008 “baseline” model. This was a larger reduction than the 29% cut that the board has mandated statewide.

The report also included measures for the developer to restore habitat for species potentially affected by the development, such as the coast horned lizard and Townsend’s big-eared bat. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials would move any unarmored threespine stickleback—a tiny fish protected under state and federal law—out of harm’s way.

No matter. The Center for Biological Diversity, along with other local green groups, sued to block the development, arguing that the state wildlife agency’s methodology for analyzing its greenhouse-gas emissions was flawed. They also contended that the stickleback conservation plan violated California’s prohibition against “taking” and “live transplanting” legally protected species—although state law allows “regulated taking” of threatened species.

NYC Will Fine You $250,000 For ‘Misgendering’ A Transsexual Allum Bokhari

Did you call a transsexual person “he” or “she” when they preferred to be called “zhe?” According to a newly updated anti-discrimination law in New York City, you could be fined an eye-watering $250,000.

In the latest, astonishing act of draconian political correctness, the NYC Commission on Human Rights have updated a law on “Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression” to threaten staggering financial penalties against property owners who “misgender” employees or tenants.
Incidents that are deemed “wilful and malicious” will see property owners face up to $250,000 in fines, while standard violations of the law will result in a $125,000 fine. For small business owners, these sums are crippling.
It’s not as simple as referring to transmen “he” or transwomen as “she,” either. The legislation makes it clear that if an individual desires, property owners will have to make use of “zhe,” “hir” and any other preferred pronoun. From the updated legislation:
The NYCHRL requires employers and covered entities to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun and title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification. Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles.
Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir

Abuse of the J-1 Visa Was a Sidelight of San Bernardino Attacks A Russian woman was in U.S. illegally when she married Enrique Marquez Jr., accused of buying rifles By Miriam Jordan

The San Bernardino attacks this month put the spotlight on a type of visa issued to a wide swath of foreigners, from camp counselors to physicians, and how easy it is for recipients to remain in the U.S. after the visa has expired.

A Russian woman who married Enrique Marquez Jr., the man accused of buying rifles used in the Dec. 2 attack, entered the U.S. six years ago on a three-month educational-exchange visa, known as a J-1 visa.

Once that visa expired, she remained for several years in the U.S. without legal status, according to law-enforcement officials.

In late 2014, Mariya Chernykh and Mr. Marquez were married, according to Riverside County, Calif., records. Last week, Mr. Marquez was charged with entering into a sham marriage to enable her to apply for permanent residency in the U.S. Mr. Marquez is also charged with conspiring to support terrorism.

Ms. Chernykh isn’t suspected of involvement in the attack, according to law-enforcement officials. But her case highlights the challenge to deter and identify visa overstays, those who enter the country legally and fail to leave by the stipulated date.

Producer of film Hillary Clinton blamed for Benghazi terror attack interviewed by CB editor Jim Kouri

Following the Islamist terror group’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, Conservative Base’s editor, Jim Kouri, interviewed one of the principles involved in producing the motion picture that Secretary Hillary Clinton blamed for the terrorist attack that killed four Americans including a U.S. ambassador. Kouri interviewed former U.S. Marine Major Steven Klein for NewswithViews.com in May 2013. Below is that interview:

As U.S. lawmakers continue to peel away layers of the Benghazi cover up, the partisan politics involved during the Congressional probes that have been twisted and maligned by members of the news media appear to be the only stories most news organizations are covering.

For example, little attention is being paid to the mysterious filmmaker who created the motion picture, “Innocence of Muslims,” which President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration minions blamed for the deaths of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, according to a former U.S. Marine, who worked on the now famous motion picture, in an exclusive interview with NewsWithViews.com.

Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime Progressives and their media allies have launched a campaign to deny the ‘Ferguson effect’—but it’s real, and it’s increasingly deadly for inner cities. By Heather Mac Donald

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

CHRISTMAS DAY 1776

http://www.nationalreview.com/slideshows/today-history-6
DECEMBER 25, 1776: General George Washington crosses the Delaware River with a force of Continental Army soldiers in what would become an iconic moment of the Revolutionary War. Hoping to surprise a force of Hessian soldiers camped at Trenton, N.J., Washington organized a two-pronged attack, personally leading half the force, some 2,400 soldiers, across the icy river at 11:00 P.M. Christmas night. Reaching Trenton the following morning, Washington’s troops made quick work of the Hessians, groggy from holiday drinking and over-confident of their fighting abilities, and took nearly 1,000 prisoners and valuable supplies. Washington’s daring victory buoyed the spirits of the patriot cause at a pivotal moment when many doubted the war of independence could be won.

U.S. Plans Mass Deportation of Illegal Central American Migrants Authorities face influx of migrants escaping violence in El Salvador and Honduras By Miriam Jordan see note

How disappointing to find such a glaring error in the WSJ….the definition of staunch is : steady, constant, trusty, hard-working, steadfast, redoubtable, unwavering, tireless The correct word should have been stanch which means to stop or restrict….Furthermore, it is the influx of Arab/Moslems that should be stanched ….the immigration policies are idiotic…..rsk
To staunch the flow of illegal migrants to the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security has been preparing a national operation to deport Central American families who have evaded removal orders, according to a government official.

Starting early next month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS unit, plans to start rounding up hundreds of families that entered the U.S. illegally and who have ignored a final order to leave the country, said the official. Such an order is issued by a judge in immigration court.

The number of families showing up at the southwest border has spiked in recent months as gang-related violence grips El Salvador and Honduras. The region also has been plagued by drought.
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