IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Reality of Migrant Crime A catastrophic – and lethal – mess. by Byron York

Posted By on April 16th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-reality-of-migrant-crime/

There’s been an ongoing political debate lately about crimes committed by migrants who entered the United States illegally. Actually, there’s not much to debate about their first unlawful act — entering the United States without authorization — but much disagreement about how many illegal border crossers commit crimes after that.

In recent weeks, Republicans have publicized the murder of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student who police say was abducted and killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan migrant who entered the United States illegally in September 2022, only to be quickly released into the country. Ibarra was one of millions of illegal crossers who rushed into the United States after the implementation of virtually open-border policies by President Joe Biden. In response to Republicans highlighting the murder, some Democrats argued that the “immigrant crime narrative is racist,” in the words of California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia.

The issue popped up in the State of the Union address, when some Republicans tried to goad Biden into saying Riley’s name. Biden did say the name — although he got it wrong — and then referred to the alleged killer, Ibarra, as an “illegal.” Democratic activist groups reacted in anger, not at the murder but at the use of the word “illegal” to describe an illegal immigrant. Biden swiftly apologized, saying he should have called Ibarra “undocumented” instead.

Now there is another migrant crime in the news, this time in New York City. Last week police raided a house in the Bronx that had been taken over by migrant squatters who had entered the U.S. illegally. In addition to arresting eight of them, police confiscated several firearms, extended magazines, ammunition, plus the drugs ketamine and cocaine. The cops moved in, the New York Post reported, after one of the migrants “allegedly flashed a pistol at someone on the property March 27, leading to a 911 call and the discovery of the squatter gang.”

In true New York fashion, a judge quickly freed most of the suspects without bail. At that point, the Enforcement and Removal Operations office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested three of them. How did they do that? Officers just went back to the house in the Bronx, where the suspects had returned to keep doing what they were doing before their arrests. Now, it appears four others have also been picked up by ICE.

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Monsters on the Loose: Israel is the Canary As goes the Jewish state, so goes the West. by J. Christian Adams

Posted By on April 16th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/monsters-on-the-loose-israel-is-the-canary/

Not long ago, the monsters were kept sealed up tight somewhere. Just a few decades ago, western values maintained the international order. But when the monsters escape, as they did on October 7, the monsters go after Jews.

Western values that governed international and domestic norms are being replaced by chaos and authoritarianism around the world, as well as here at home.

First Israel. What makes October 7 so sinister is that the monsters went after Jews in their place of ultimate sanctuary – Israel. They dragged them from their homes and murdered them in Israel instead of Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, the long vanished Jewish quarter, or any of the sites of other pogroms across history.

October 7 was different and illustrated how precarious Israel’s existence is.

The monsters seem to be on the loose around the globe, even in Europe. In eastern Europe the postwar international order is under attack, where even recognized international borders are meaningless.

Perhaps the very term “postwar” no longer has currency. Perhaps we are so far removed from that war which governed so much about the last eight decades – including Israel’s right to exist – that the term “postwar” is obsolete.

The West seems to have forgotten the lessons of 1914 or 1939. Land for peace is back in vogue, despite always being a fool’s gambit – whether in the West Bank, Sudetenland or Donetsk.

Few in the West seem to understand how close to the cliff we are. Too many are too busy staring at their phones.

The only western-style democracy in the middle east is in an existential fight for survival. Meanwhile, domestic anti-Semites are raiding private homes of noted Jewish law professors and bullying students on campus who support Israel’s right to exist.

Initially firmly supporting Israel, since October 7 the radicals who staff this administration – whether at the State Department, White House or Department of Defense – have asserted their influence. Support for Israel in the executive branch is withering.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Iran Attacks Israel – With Assurances From Biden? The Mullahs were committing suicide by attacking the Jewish state. But not if Biden had Iran’s back.Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on April 16th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-attacks-israel-with-assurances-from-biden/

I was wrong.

I believed the Iranians would not attack Israel directly as they had been threatening, because such an attack would green-light an Israeli response on the Iranian homeland that would be devastating for the Islamic regime.

I reasoned that the extraordinary coordination among U.S. and Israeli officials late last week signaled a potential joint U.S.-Israeli counterstrike should Iran’s leaders be so reckless as to attack Israel.

The commander of U.S. Central Command General, Eric Kurilla, visited Israel on Thursday, just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was putting in a public appearance at Tel Nor Air Force base to give a pep talk to Israel F-15 pilots. Also last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held two videonconferences with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, and the Pentagon moved the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its carrier task force closer to Israel from its current duty station further down the Red Sea to better defend the Jewish state.

Despite Iran’s ongoing threats that it would “punish” Israel for its alleged role in bombing the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, where Quds Force war-planning meetings were underway, I believed that even attacks by Iranian proxies in Iraq against Israel would be seen by Israel as a direct Iranian attack. Therefore I was confident that any direct Iranian attack on Israel would greenlight Israel to strike Iran.

I said that publicly last week. A few days later, Israeli minister without portfolio, Benny Ganz, said it on Israeli TV. (In case you missed it, Benny Ganz is the “moderate” Israeli politician Biden & Co. are trying to maneuver into position to replace Bibi.)

Both of us were wrong.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Wars

Posted By on April 16th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/16/joe-bidens-wars/

It’s long been known around Washington, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once said, that Joe Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four” – now five – “decades.”

So the conflicts raging around the world and forecasts of World War III should have been expected.

But, hey, at least we didn’t elect in 2020 the guy who sent impetuous tweets that upset elites and snowflakes.

As president, Biden has projected American weakness in a Carter-esque fashion, starting with his chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, which a State Department report said suffered from “constantly changing policy guidance,” and a top general described as a “strategic failure.”

He’s been no Ronald Reagan. He’s not even been a Donald Trump. So it’s no coincidence that Russia invaded Ukraine a little more than two years after Biden took office. And we all knew it was coming, because three months after Biden stumbled into the Oval Office, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, as Sen. Tom Cotton noted just before the invasion, “sent tens of thousands of soldiers, tanks, and munitions to the Ukrainian border.”

In response, Biden proposed a presidential summit in Geneva, which, says Cotton, elevated “Russia in the eyes of the world” and “allowed the image-obsessed Putin to strut on the international stage and pretend that Russia was once again an equal to the United States.” Apparently, the hotline between Washington and Moscow was soon thereafter cut. Putin recently said he hadn’t spoken to Biden in two years, according to Richard Grenell, acting director of national intelligence for the Trump administration.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Christians Prefer Living in Israel, Not the Palestinian Authority by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on April 16th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20581/christians-prefer-israel-not-palestinian-authority

Among the top 50 countries in which Christians were persecuted in 2023 were Yemen, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries. Israel, needless to say, was not on the list.

Despite these disturbing statistics, US television personality Tucker Carlson, in his interview with the Bethlehem pastor, chose to single out Israel, the only country where Christians feel safe and where their number is increasing every year. Carlson did not bother to ask the pastor about the persecuted Christians of Egypt.

Carlson chose to interview Isaac, who has long history of promoting falsehoods about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict in his roles as pastor, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College (a self-identified “Palestinian Christian Evangelical university college” that promotes a “Palestinian Christian theology”), and director of the “Christ at the Checkpoint” conferences — the infamous venue where anti-Israel libels are proclaimed in the name of Christian love, justice and peace.

“[T]hose of us who track these things know that Munther Isaac has long been the high priest of antisemitic Christianity; sadly, he spreads his hate from the city of Jesus’ birth.” — Rev. Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, jewishinsider.com, April 11, 2024.

“We have a mafia here that is seizing Christian-owned lands. I protested against this Muslim mafia, and I even called a large gathering. I invited 80 people to my home. That same night, fliers were distributed in Bethlehem threatening to kill me. Of course, I am worried about the future of Christians here. Looking at the facts on the ground, you can see that there is no future for the Christians here. We are melting; we are disappearing. I fear the day will come when our churches will become museums. That is my nightmare.” — Samir Qumsieh, prominent Christian leader near Bethlehem, to Gatestone, April 2024.

Since the Palestinian Authority (PA) assumed control of Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian share of the population has dropped from 65% to only 12% today. By contrast, the Christian population in Israel has been on the rise in recent years. “Most of us 180k Christian Israelis prefer to live under Israel freely rather than under a Palestinian Islamic Authority regime controlling Bethlehem. Israel gives us freedom while living under Arabs has been genocidal for Christians all across the Middle East,” says Shadi Khalloul, a Christian Maronite who describes himself as a “patriotic Israeli.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Gaming The 2024 Campaign Will Biden’s feebleness still earn him sympathy? Or will it devolve to the point that the public concludes that Joe Biden would not be able to keep any job in America—except the U.S. Presidency? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 15th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/15/gaming-the-2024-campaign/

We have seen enough of the Biden-Trump race so far to predict what lies ahead over the next seven months of the campaign. Currently, the polls are about dead even. Trump, however, for now enjoys small leads in the majority of the fickle swing/purple states that will likely decide the election.

So here is what we should expect:

Biden

Biden has three major vulnerabilities and three major assets. His fate will depend on how these criteria play out.

First, on the negative side of the ledger, Biden suffers continual mental and physical decline, which is accelerating exponentially. His work week is now more off than on. Aides pray that he can get through a teleprompter without complete incoherence. His speech is so slurred, his syntax so bizarre that he seems to speak a language that is mostly indecipherable.

They rightly fear that any young attractive woman or even preteen might earn a trademark Biden weird call-out, a hair- or accustomed ear-blow, or even an attempted presidential too-long hug or neck nibble.

Steps pose an existential threat, given that the president is one trip away from oblivion. Biden is not even the diminished Biden of 2020, when, in his basement, he at least manipulated the COVID-19 lockdown to mask his infirmities and abbreviated schedules.

The odds are 50/50 whether Biden will even make it over the next five months to the August Democratic Convention. And, assuming that he does, can he rein in efforts to push him off the ticket?

Second, the Biden family is corrupt. Hunter still faces spring- and summer-long felony exposure in connection with his Biden-family brand of tax cheating. Joe knows that his own documents, first-hand witnesses, bank statements, Hunter’s emails, and testimonies from Hunter’s associates reveal that the otherwise talentless but high-living Biden extended family was surviving only by the sale of Senator, Vice President, and future President Joe Biden’s name—and his known willingness to pay fast and loose with legal and ethical constraints.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Battle Begins: Trump’s Trial Tests American Justice By going after Donald Trump and putting him outside the protection of the law in order to neutralize him politically, the regime is simultaneously undermining your rights and legal protections.  By Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 15th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-begins-trumps-trial-tests-american-justice/

Monday, April 15, 2024, is not only Tax Day in the United States.  It is also the day that this country will take another fateful step towards banana republic-like tyranny.  For it is the day that New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg—or, to give him his full title, “Soros-funded District Attorney Alvin Bragg”—will begin his 34-count felony trial against Donald Trump.

Exactly what is the presumptive Republican nominee for president charged with by the Biden Department of Justice?  Paying Stormy Daniels—or to give her the invariable epithet, “porn star Stormy Daniels” (think “swift-footed Achilles,” “gray-eyed Athena”)—to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter in 2006 (which Trump has consistently denied).

But is paying someone to sign a non-disclosure agreement a crime?  No.  Then what’s going on here?  As always seems to be the case when the subject is the Byzantine world of Donald Trump’s legal woes, it’s complicated.  One of the best brief summaries I have seen was in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal this weekend. “The facts,” the Journal writers explain, “are these”:

Ms. Daniels has said that in 2006 she and Mr. Trump had one, er, intimate encounter. A decade later, as the 2016 election neared, Mr. Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. A nondisclosure agreement isn’t illegal. Mr. Bragg’s complaint is about the paperwork. Mr. Cohen was reimbursed through 2017 via a monthly retainer “disguised as a payment for legal services,” the DA said. He padded his indictment by separately charging each invoice, check and ledger entry to get 34 counts.

Falsifying business records in New York can be a misdemeanor, but the statute of limitations on that has expired. Mr. Bragg therefore must charge felonies, which under New York law means showing that Mr. Trump cooked the books with “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Pro-Hamas Crowds will Soon Have a Rendezvous with Reality The accounting they’re about to face. Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 15th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-pro-hamas-crowds-will-soon-have-a-rendezvous-with-reality/

For over six months, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have accelerated, and now are predictably incendiary and violent.

Recently, they have jumped the shark with unapologetic chants of “Death to America”. Or so a cheering crowd in Michigan chanted in homage to the late king of all Western-hostage-takers, the murderous Ayatollah Khomeini. And the huckster speaker revved them up by quoting Malcolm X that America is “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth.” (Does such a condemnation of fellow Americans presage mass reverse migration of unhappy Middle Easterners back to the West Bank, Gaza, and Iran?)

The more these demonstrators shut down major bridges at commute hour, defaced iconic government monuments and cemeteries, disrupted Easter and Christmas services (try that with mosques at Ramadan), broke into the Capitol and congressional chambers (no January 6-like penalties to come?), and hunted down Jewish students, the bolder they became.

Apparently, the demonstrators were convinced that they were either exempt under the woke aegis, or too precious in Joe Biden’s Michigan electoral calculus, or too useful to campuses as rich full-tuition-paying foreign students on gold-plated student visas.

But everything and everyone have limits. They have now crossed them, and are about to face an accounting, and for a variety of reasons.

1) News is leaking out that Hamas may have for some time been bluffing about a ceasefire for hostages. Given Hamas has suddenly announced that they cannot meet the conditions of the proposed ceasefire, since not all the forty women and sick and elderly men taken hostage are still alive.

If true, then their months of bartering and “negotiating” were a likely sham, and their earlier claims that three hostages were collateral damage of Israeli strikes become more dubious.

Why would they kill their escape route?

To hide their torturing and raping of the kidnapped? In furor at their own-self-inflicted dilemmas? Sick hatred of Jews?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sen. John Kennedy Wrecks Biden Over Iran Appeasement, ‘Go to Amazon and Buy a Spine Online’ By Bob Hoge

Posted By on April 15th, 2024

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/04/14/sen-john-kennedy-wrecks-biden-over-iran-appeasement-go-to-amazon-and-buy-a-spine-online-n2172766

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is a national treasure. He dissects arguments with his razor-sharp wit, but his humor doesn’t hide his intelligence nor the fact that he’s often dead right about issues. 

Here are a few of his most recent greatest hits:

John Kennedy Demolishes Dems Over Their Desperate Effort to Hinder Mayorkas Impeachment Process

WATCH: Sen. Kennedy Gives Masterful Takedown of Alejandro Mayorkas to His Face During Committee Hearing

WATCH: In Which Sen. John Kennedy Expertly Destroys the Credibility of Woke Climate ‘Expert’ Witness

He appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and tore into the president over his weakness toward Iran, which many argue emboldened the Islamic regime to attack Israel Saturday. Speaking with host Shannon Bream about a possible Israel aid bill, the senator turned the subject over to Biden’s incompetence:

The big issue will be Israel because it is clear that President Biden is being influenced by the Hamas wing of the Democratic Party… 

In the past 60 days, we have seen President Biden go wobbly in his support of Israel. With respect, go to Amazon and buy a spine online. Peace through weakness never works, not with these hard, armed men…

The American people may be poor under Biden, but they’re not stupid. We need to stand with Israel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Destroys Gaza, Now Trying to Claim That a ‘Victory’ by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on April 15th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20569/hamas-destroys-gaza-victory

The prospect of Hamas declaring or celebrating “victory” worries not only Israel, but many Arabs — including Palestinians — who want to see the terrorist group completely destroyed and removed from power, but are often afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation.

“The continuity of Hamas’s rule in Gaza is an ultra mega major disaster for the Palestinian people’s aspirations, cause, hope for the reconstruction of the battered coastal enclave, and prospects for a new path forward to bring about progress, reconciliation, coexistence & peace.” — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, “Proud American from Gaza City; pro-Palestine, pro-peace, anti-Hamas”, X, April 8, 2024.

Hamas, clearly buoyed by having the US on their side, has unsurprisingly hardened its position. It is now and is saying it wants Israel to make even more concessions.

Where is any US pressure on Hamas, Iran or Qatar?

“Yes, Hamas thanked the United States. When a terrorist group is thanking you, you’re probably doing something wrong.” — Joe Truzman, senior research analyst, X, April 9, 2024.

The Hamas terrorists have only been emboldened by the Biden administration’s growing hostility towards Israel and its demand that Israel end the war, a move that would effectively be a surrender to Hamas.

“What victory are you talking about? Are you in your right mind? [Hamas has brought] complete devastation; thousands killed and displaced…. This is what the terrorist Hamas group, Iran’s puppet, brought upon the people of Gaza. The leaders of Hamas defeated the people of Gaza and exterminated them without mercy.” — Omar Shaybalras, X, April 9, 2024.

“Gaza has been destroyed, starved, slaughtered…. The people of Gaza are cursing Hamas, [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad, and Iran…. The members of Hamas’s armed wing use children as human shields.” — Osama al-Ali ,member of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO’s parliament-in-exile, television interview, X, December 7, 2023.

“As long as [Hamas leaders Ismail] Haniyeh, [Yahya] Sinwar and [Khaled] Mashaal are alive, it is a victory for them, As for the destruction and the blood of the women and children of Gaza, it is a profitable enterprise as far as Hamas is concerned.” — Abdallah Abou Aymen, April 9, 2024.

Unlike the Biden administration and anti-Israel protestors in the West, these observers understand that Hamas, Iran and Qatar are fully and solely responsible for the mass destruction and high casualties in the Gaza Strip…. We are already seeing calls for “Death to America” in America. A ceasefire would save Hamas, allow it to continue preparing for future massacres against Israelis, and enable Iran and Qatar to “export the Revolution” even more aggressively.

Above all, a US-bestowed, fake “victory” for Hamas would assure China, Russia and other predators that belligerency works and incentivize them to put the finishing touches on what many perceive as an “ultra mega major disaster” of a presidential legacy.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is reportedly preparing to hold “victory” rallies if and when the war in the Gaza Strip ends. Many Arabs, however, have scoffed at Hamas’s expected celebrations and accused the terrorist group and its patrons in Tehran of destroying the Gaza Strip.

“A friend in the City of Rafah told me he saw large signs and banners being printed/prepared by Hamas to hold ‘victory rallies’ that the Islamist group plans on having when a ceasefire/hostage deal is announced, highlighting the withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza as an achievement,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who describes himself as a “proud American from Gaza City; pro-Palestine, pro-peace, and anti-Hamas,” who lost 31 family members in the Israel-Hamas war.