Europeans Ease Pressure on Iran in Bid to Revive Nuclear Talks With U.S. Britain, France and Germany, with U.S. support, scrapped a planned censure resolution over concerns about Tehran’s response

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europeans-ease-pressure-on-iran-in-bid-to-revive-nuclear-talks-with-u-s-11614875541

The U.S. and European powers are giving Iran a last chance to start cooperating with a United Nations atomic agency probe of Tehran’s nuclear activities, backing away from a formal censure of Iran in a bid to revive nuclear diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.

Britain, France and Germany decided Thursday not to present a resolution censuring Iran that they had floated to other International Atomic Energy Agency member states earlier in the week. Iran had warned the move could lead it to further curtail international inspections of the country and dissuade it from engaging in direct talks with the U.S. on its nuclear program.

The decision was backed by Washington, senior diplomats said, reflecting U.S. concerns that renewed pressure on Iran could derail diplomacy.

At a press conference on Thursday, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Iran had agreed to sit down for what he described as “a focused and systematic effort” to clarify a series of so-called safeguards issues the IAEA has been asking Iran about for the last two years.

The concerns center on several discoveries of sites in Iran where nuclear material—various kinds of uranium—has been found. Under its international nonproliferation obligations, Iran is obliged to declare nuclear material in the country. The agency wants to know where the uranium traces come from and has asked about the whereabouts and use of specific nuclear material including uranium metal discs it believes Iran has possessed since the early 2000s.

Dems Claim Republicans Helped the Capitol Rioters. Now the Feds Are Taking a Look By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/03/04/feds-probe-contacts-between-capitol-rioters-and-members-of-congress-n1430223

Federal authorities are investigating records of communications between members of Congress and pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, an unnamed U.S. official told CNN. The investigation appears to involve whether or not lawmakers wittingly or unwittingly helped the mob.

“The data gathered so far includes indications of contact with lawmakers in the days around January 6, as well as communications between alleged rioters discussing their associations with members of Congress, the official said,” CNN reported.

Such communications do not necessarily indicate any wrongdoing, and investigators have not begun to target members of Congress in the investigation, the source added. “Should investigators find probable cause that lawmakers or their staffs possibly aided the insurrectionists, they could seek warrants to obtain the content of the communications. There’s no indication they’ve taken such a step at this point.”

Federal officials have arrested and charged about 300 people, and the investigation is shifting to focus on the people who allegedly conspired and planned the riot. The Justice Department has assigned more than two dozen prosecutors to examine complex issues like the funding behind the riot and whether lawmakers assisted in the attack, the official told CNN.

The Dems’ Voting Fraud Encouragement Bill A blatant power grab. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/dems-voting-fraud-encouragement-bill-joseph-klein/

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed the inappropriately named “For the People Act” (H.R.1) on Wednesday evening by the largely party line vote of 220 to 210. It now goes to the Senate. This bill, if enacted into law, will be a gift that keeps on giving to Democrats who care only about staying in power rather than securing the integrity of the electoral process. “This bill makes elections less trustworthy, not more,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas.

The right to vote in a free and fair election requires procedural protections to ensure that elections are conducted in an honest manner. We must have guardrails to protect against potential election fraud, voter intimidation, illegal votes, and inaccurate vote counts. The American people’s willingness to accept the results of an election, whether a voter’s favored candidate wins or not, depends on their being convinced that the election was carried out in a legitimate manner. H.R.1 strips away any semblance of guardrails. Instead, H.R.1 creates multiple paths to election fraud, including the following:

Online Registrations: Let’s start with the provision that mandates online voter registration in federal elections, which would also allow registered voters to update their voter registration information online. With no more paper registration forms as backup, this is an invitation for hackers inside and outside the country to run amok. Hacking last year by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies of the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, nuclear labs, various cabinet department, and Fortune 500 companies should provide a clear warning that even highly secure systems are vulnerable. States’ voting registration databases will be easy pickings.

Lunch Box Donald Why blue-collar workers are going red. Don Feder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/lunch-box-donald-why-blue-collar-workers-are-don-feder/

An NBC News poll released last week reflects one of the most significant political trends of the past 30 years – the realignment of blue-collar workers who’ve left the party of Planned Parenthood and Drag Queen Story Hour for the party of energy-independence, fair-trade deals and border security.

The poll shows that between 2010 and 2020, the Republican share of blue- collar votes rose from 45% to 57%. Within the same demographic, its Hispanic vote went from 23% to 36%, while its black working-class vote went from 5% to 12%.

In 1992, Bill Clinton carried 49% of counties where at least 25% of the workforce was employed in manufacturing. In 2016, Donald Trump took 95%. What used to be one of the left’s most reliable constituencies is now going the way of evangelicals in their flight from a party that’s lost both its mind and its soul.

Writing in The Detroit News on April 10, 2019, Terry Bowman (a 22- year UAW/Ford worker) charges: “While Democrats fight for policies that crush working-class communities, Republicans and our president are fighting for blue-collar jobs and traditional American values.”

The geezer in the White House is becoming a job-killing machine. On Day One, the Keystone XL-Pipeline was axed. And that’s just a down-payment on Biden’s debt to the Greenies. But, not to worry. As John Forbes Kerry assured us, unemployed pipeline workers can get good-paying jobs manufacturing solar panels – in China.

Cornel West and Stealth Anti-Semitism at Harvard Welcome to the moral trap for Israel-haters. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/cornell-west-and-stealth-anti-semitism-harvard-richard-l-cravatts/

As evidence of what the late Professor Edward Alexander has called “the explosive power of boredom” in rousing the liberal professoriate to its ideological feet, Harvard’s own Harvard Divinity School professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy, Cornel West, recently wondered out loud why the university might have denied him tenure. His explanation: that because he is a relentless critic of Israel, and because he thinks so highly of his academic accomplishments and record, it must be his pro-Palestinian leanings that spooked the Harvard committee making his tenure decision. “This is my hypothesis,” West said, “because given the possibilities of why they would not be even interested in initiating a tenure process, what else it could be?”

Ignoring the possibility, of course, that the reason he was not offered tenure has more to do with his uneven academic reputation and credibility than with his criticism of the Jewish state, West conjured up a familiar trope of Jew-haters: that if you condemn Israel and denounce its policies and behavior, you potentially have to pay a high reputational price. “The problem is that [critiquing Israel] is a taboo issue among certain circles in high places,” West said. “It is hard to have a robust, respectful conversation about the Israeli occupation because you are immediately viewed as an anti-Jewish hater or [having] anti-Jewish prejudices.

Criticism of Zionism and Israel is, of course, an issue about which Professor West and others have many notorious opinions, but which are being threatened, in his view, through the suppression of Palestinian solidarity and an unrelenting cataloging of the many predations of Israel. Professor West’s implication is that on this one issue—criticism of Israel—the sacrosanct notion of “academic freedom” is being threatened by those pro-Israel opponents who wish to stifle any and all speech critical of the Jewish state. West goes even further, suggesting that Jewish power “among certain circles in high places”—and those who are afraid of it on the Harvard campus—is so pervasive and influential that it shapes tenure decisions and plays a role on who advances academically and who does not.

‘Neanderthal’ Governors Outscore Biden On The COVID Science

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/05/neanderthal-governors-not-biden-are-following-the-science/

President Joe Biden wasn’t too happy when Texas and Mississippi decided to reopen their economies and liberate their people from statewide mask mandates, calling it “Neanderthal thinking.”

But wait a minute, who’s following the science here, and who isn’t? While Biden is clearly in love with the idea of the government forcing Americans to wear masks and keeping heavy restrictions on businesses, the science is piling up showing that these measures are not very effective, if they are at all.

One Swiss group, for example, found 10 studies challenging the effectiveness of masks. One is a Danish review that compared a control group that followed social distancing guidelines but didn’t wear masks, while another group wore high-quality surgical masks. It found no statistically significant difference between the two groups.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine, meanwhile, noted that “Focusing on universal masking alone may, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of COVID-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.”

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine noted last July that “despite two decades of pandemic preparedness, there is considerable uncertainty as to the value of wearing masks.”

The Madness of Nancy Pelosi

Responding to a question about the need for fencing and troops at the Capitol:

“Between COVID where we need to have vaccinations more broadly in the Capitol so that many more people can come here and do their jobs, and the threat of them of–of all the president’s men out there, we have to–we have to ensure with our security, that we are safe enough to do our job.”

‘Equity’ Is a Mandate to Discriminate The new buzzword tries to hide the aim of throwing out the American principle of equality under the law.Charles Lipson

https://www.wsj.com/articles/equity-is-a-mandate-to-discriminate-11614901276?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

On his first day as president, Joe Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees must now explain whether this commitment to “equity” means they intend to abolish “equal treatment under law.” Their answers are a confused mess.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton raised the question explicitly in confirmation hearings. Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland responded: “I think discrimination is morally wrong. Absolutely.” Marcia Fudge, slated to run Housing and Urban Development, gave a much different answer. “Just to be clear,” Mr. Cotton asked, “it sounds like racial equity means treating people differently based on their race. Is that correct?”

Ms. Fudge’s responded: “Not based on race, but it could be based on economics, it could be based on the history of discrimination that has existed for a long time.” Ms. Fudge’s candid response tracks that of Kamala Harris’s tweet and video, posted before the election and viewed 6.4 million times: “There’s a big difference between equality and equity.”

Ms. Harris and Ms. Fudge are right. There is a big difference. It’s the difference between equal treatment and equal outcomes. Equality means equal treatment, unbiased competition and impartially judged outcomes. Equity means equal outcomes, achieved if necessary by unequal treatment, biased competition and preferential judging.

I’m rubbing my eyes more and more these days. This could get interesting. Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/03/04/the-morning-briefing-democrats-hr-1-is-a-force-multiplier-for-election-fraud-n1429841

It’s tough to watch this most spectacularly awful presidency play out in front of us every day. Joe Biden and his handlers don’t move goal posts anymore, they just keep lowering the bar and still not clearing it. The drooling husk in the White House has deteriorated so much that his puppet masters are afraid to let him face a press corps that’s a thousand percent in the bag for him. When they do let the Babbler in Chief near a camera, things get a bit…weird.

Again, those of us who never wanted things this way are left to retrace how we got here, reliving the historical horror that was November, 2020, when four hundred and eleventy kajillion billion people voted for this guy. No, really, social media says it’s true!

There are things that happened in the last election that are cause for legitimate concern. We’re still referring to them as irregularities for a variety of reasons that we don’t need to go into right now. The House just passed HR 1, which they’re laughably calling the the “For the People Act.” This monstrosity takes everything that made us nervous about the 2020 presidential election and puts it on federal steroids.

Israeli ex-generals battle over the Iran deal By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israeli-ex-generals-battle-over-the-iran-deal-opinion-661017

   
Two groups of retired IDF generals, Shin Bet operatives, Mossad agents and Israel Police officers are currently engaged in combat. But the battle is not against the enemies of the Jewish state that the organizations’ members devoted much of their adult lives to protecting. 

No, the war in question is being fought between Commanders for Israel’s Security and Habithonistim-Protectors of Israel. The casus belli in this case is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers from which former US president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. 
Following clear indications that the new administration in Washington was eager to return to the JCPOA – both as part of its obsession with diplomacy, and to undo as many of Trump’s policies as possible – CIS announced support for US President Joe Biden’s stance.

In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 22, CIS said that it “welcomes the American initiative to get Iran to again transparently follow the guidelines in the JCPOA, as long as it includes an Iranian commitment to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 2231.”

To refresh our collective memory, Resolution 2231, which constitutes an affirmation of the JCPOA, mentions an “implementation structure” for the UNSC to “review and decide on proposals by [member] states for nuclear, ballistic missile or arms-related transfers to or activities with Iran.”