NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

20 questions for Robert Mueller By Jonathan Turley,

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/450481-20-questions-for-robert-mueller

The “American Sphinx” will be called to Congress on July 17 to provide answers to our most intriguing questions. Special counsel Robert Mueller spoke only briefly about his Trump-Russia report on May 29 and made clear that he was appointed to ask, not to answer, questions. He said “the report is my testimony” and added: “I hope and expect this will be the only time I speak to you in this manner.”

Sphinxes, of course, are not accustomed to answering questions. And speaking to a sphinx is a precarious practice since, according to mythology, you would be devoured if you got her answers wrong. Of course, Mueller may be aware that, when a sphinx is outsmarted, it is the end of the sphinx. In mythology, the Sphinx threw herself from a great height.

When Mueller ascends Capitol Hill, the question is whether he will take a pass or a header from that great height. If he sticks with his earlier position, he will do little but repeat findings from the report. If, however, Congress truly wants to question this sphinx, here are 20 questions to ask. Most concern the process or the law that should not be subject to any privilege or confidentiality claims as a basis for refusing to answer.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: STOP THE WORLD, THEY WANT TO GET OFF

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

Did you notice that any real discussions on national defense, foreign policy,  China, North Korea, Russia, the Middle East and other “hot spots” were  absent at last night’s debate?

These blatheroons want to be President?  rsk

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Fatah: Participants in Bahrain are backstabbing Palestine By Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=27739

Abbas’ Fatah Movement is publishing numerous photos from Palestinian demonstrations against the current Bahrain Conference that discusses economic aspects of US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan. The demonstrations, the slogans and posters, and Fatah’s visual coverage of the protests emphasize the Palestinian hate towards Trump, the US, and Israel, as well as the Palestinian rejection of Trump’s Middle East peace plan – the so-called Deal of the Century – and the Bahrain Conference.

At a demonstration organized by the PLO in Bethlehem, at which Bethlehem District Governor Kamel Hamid was present and gave a speech, Palestinians hung an effigy of Trump on the gallows and later burned it as seen in the photo above and here: CONTINUE AT SITE

POLITICS Comments turned off

Mueller’s ‘Reluctant Witness’ Pose Is Another Impeachment Ploy John Merline

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/27/muellers-reluctant-witness-pose-is-another-impeachment-ploy/

Twenty-eight days after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller declared that he had nothing more to say about the results of his 2-year investigation into President Trump, he unreservedly agreed to testify before Congress. It almost seems as though his playing coy was just part of some broader impeachment strategy.

In his statement at the conclusion of his investigation on May 29, Mueller said: “I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress. And it’s for that reason I will not be taking questions today, as well.”

In case the meaning was lost on anybody, he stated that “the report is my testimony.”

That what he claimed, anyway. But in that very statement, he went beyond the report, adding new impeachment bait by stating that the only reason he didn’t pursue an obstruction charge was that he couldn’t prosecute Trump while he’s in office. 

Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy of National Review called it an explosive statement, that “runs against what we had heard up until now … that the Office of Legal Council guidance was the reason why they didn’t make a decision about obstruction.”

So let’s review. 

Mueller’s 400+ page report goes public on April 18, with half the report spent on the question of whether Trump tried to obstruct justice. Mueller says the investigation couldn’t decide whether what Trump did was a crime or not, but nevertheless detailed everything they could find that hinted at it — thereby adding a new and horrible new wrinkle to American jurisprudence: not innocent.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats’ Cirque De Absurdite

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/27/democrats-cirque-de-absurdite/

When it was time to call the candidates on stage for Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, did one of the moderators yell “send in the clowns?” If not, someone should have. What a bunch of buffoons.

We don’t use that word lightly. One definition of buffoon is “a person who amuses others by ridiculous behavior.” That’s a description that fits every candidate on the stage. Each was hilariously solicitous and comically transparent.

Almost before the game show applause had settled, Beto O’Rourke launched into a juvenile Spanish-language hustle that left Sen. Cory Booker wide-eyed and most everyone else rolling their eyes.

Moments later, Booker found common ground with Friedrich Engels, grousing about how the economy wasn’t working for everyone, a common thread throughout the “debate.” Still later, he too resorted to Spanish, competing with O’Rourke to show he is the most Hispanic candidate, even more Hispanic than someone named Castro and far more Hispanic than the Irish guy.

A few beats after O’Rourke’s first foreign-language outburst, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the media’s pre-selected winner, made the brave declaration she wanted to return government to the people — while pointing at herself. Well done, Senator. Now we know who she wants to vest the power of government in.

In English, former Obama Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro resorted, to no one’s surprise, to identity politics, insisting the country “pass” — hey, how about taking a remedial class in constitutional process before running for president — the Equal Rights Amendment.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK: A Clash of Educations, Part II by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14432/uk-clash-educations-ii

“It seems it was far less politically complicated to keep quiet.” — Baroness Cox, address on grooming gangs to the House of Lords, May 14, 2019.

“In the context of schooling, it manifests itself as the imposition of an aggressively separatist and intolerant agenda, incompatible with full participation in a plural, secular democracy…. It appears to be a deliberate attempt to convert secular state schools into exclusive faith schools in all but name. (5:2)” — Peter Clarke, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner and head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism branch, in a report for the House of Commons, July 22, 2014.

Is Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, still hampered by an unwillingness to ask hard questions and a desire to “avoid giving offence”?

Recent protests about supposed LGBT lessons in a school in Birmingham, England, have drawn attention from the media, politicians, the High Court, and the National Secular Society. While the protests may well spread to other cities, for the moment they are contained. When these lessons, which are based on the “No Outsiders” curriculum within the international system of “Diversity Education,” become legally compulsory for almost all schools in 2020, either the protests will die out or become more clamorous in a struggle to rescind the law — an act to which the government might well not agree.

The question of demands placed on Western governments to alter national laws in order to accommodate religious rulings remains an issue that is divisive, notably between secular states and citizens who might not want a secular state but a religious one instead.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America Can Afford to Stay Calm with Iran By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/26/america-can-afford-to-stay-calm-with-iran/

President Trump recently ordered and then called off a retaliatory strike against Iran for destroying a U.S. surveillance drone. The U.S. asserts that the drone was operating in international space. Iran claims it was in Iranian airspace.

Antiwar critics of Trump’s Jacksonian rhetoric turned on a dime to blast him as a weak, vacillating leader afraid to call Iran to account.

Trump supporters countered that the president had shown Iran a final gesture of patience—and cleared the way for a stronger retaliation should Iran foolishly interpret his one-time forbearance as weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated.

The charge of Trump being an appeaser was strange coming from leftist critics, especially given Trump’s past readiness to bomb Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons, his willingness to destroy ISIS through enhanced air strikes, and his liberation of American forces in Afghanistan from prior confining rules of engagement.

The truth is that Iran and the United States are now engaged in a great chess match. But the stakes are not those of intellectual gymnastics. The game is no game, but involves the lives, and possible deaths, of thousands.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Julián Castro Says ‘Reproductive Justice’ Means a ‘Trans Female’ Can Get an Abortion By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/julian-castro-says-reproductive-justice-means-a-trans-female-can-get-an-abortion/

In the first 2020 Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Julián Castro said that “reproductive justice” involves allowing “trans females” to get abortions. Even in terms of pandering to the transgender community, this was a huge fail.

“I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom. I believe in reproductive justice,” Castro declared. “Just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise this right to choose.” He went on to pledge that he would appoint judges who would uphold Roe v. Wade (1973).

In this brief statement, the former HUD secretary not only supported taxpayer funding for abortion, overturning the Hyde Amendment (which protects pro-life taxpayers from having their money being used to fund abortion). Castro also mixed up the meaning of transgender identities.

According to transgender identity, gender identity is more real than biological sex. A “transgender male” refers to a biological female who identifies as male. A “transgender female” refers to a biological male who identifies as female.

While transgender activists would call for abortion access for transgender people, they would demand it for “transgender men,” not “transgender women.” It is impossible for a “transgender female” to get an abortion, unless he gets a womb transplant.

Feminist author Sady Doyle called his error “a wild rollercoaster of emotion.”

“Castro supports overturning Hyde and confuses trans women with trans men in the same sentence, which is a wild rollercoaster of emotion,” she tweeted.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Loses an Ally by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14389/turkey-sudan-ally

Erdogan’s close ties to Bashir appear to have had the goal of expanding Turkey’s economic and military influence in Africa as well as in the Gulf. After the ouster of Bashir, however, all of Turkey’s endeavors in Sudan, including a key Turkish strategic project on the Red Sea, could now be in jeopardy — bad news for a Turkish government that already facing serious economic problems.

Bashir granted Erdoğan the use, near Egypt and Saudi Arabia, of Suakin Island, a Sudanese port city in the Red Sea…. The Turkish press reported that Ankara was preparing to build a “military base” on the island, which would turn it into the “second Turkish eye in the Mediterranean after Cyprus.”

According to the Turkish financial newspaper, Dünya, billion-dollar business deals — including Turkey’s investment in a new airport in Khartoum, as well as in the fields of agriculture, textiles, and oil — could also be in jeopardy.

The April 11 military coup that ousted Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir after 30 years of Islamist rule seems to have the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan extremely worried.

The Turkish government, in its attempts to prop up Bashir’s ailing government, had invested heavily in Sudan. The ouster of Bashir, after months-long protests, has thrown the cooperation between the Turkish and Sudanese regimes in intelligence, economics and military, among other matters, into uncertainty.

Although Turkey is a member of NATO with long-standing aspirations to become part of the European Union — while Bashir came to power in 1989 by overthrowing Sudan’s democratically elected government and was later indicted by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal — Erdoğan and his loyalists are blaming the United States, Israel and other “global powers” for toppling their ally.

Turkish newspapers aligned with Erdoğan are even claiming that Bashir’s ouster was indirectly aimed at Ankara. The reason for this false accusation is that Sudan — which borders Egypt and Libya, and is close to Saudi Arabia — has held both strategic and political significance for Turkey. Erdogan’s close ties to Bashir appear to have had the goal of expanding Turkey’s economic and military influence in Africa as well as in the Gulf. After the ouster of Bashir, however, all of Turkey’s endeavors in Sudan, including a key Turkish strategic project on the Red Sea, could now be in jeopardy — bad news for a Turkish government that already facing serious economic problems.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Old Wisdom, Modern Folly The wages of modernity’s technocratic hubris. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274035/old-wisdom-modern-folly-bruce-thornton

The central fallacy of modernity is the belief that science and technological progress have made traditional wisdom and the insights of earlier thinkers irrelevant or malign. This presentist hubris of what G.K. Chesterton called the “small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about” is particularly misplaced when it comes to understanding human nature and behavior, especially political action. Since “enlightened” moderns believe they know more about human nature and possess the technical means of altering it, they dismiss or ignore earlier wisdom and common sense based on centuries of experience and observation of how humans consistently behave over time.

When it comes to America’s political order, no commentator today has yet come close to the brilliance of Alexis de Tocqueville, who was astonishingly prescient in pointing out the dangers inherent in the democracy he so admired. The political dysfunctions and crises roiling our nation today were predicted by Tocqueville in Democracy in America, published in 1835 when the United States was not yet fifty years old.

Take the age-old complaint that democracy indiscriminately empowers the many, who may not have the knowledge and judgement of character necessary in choosing a leader. Hence Tocqueville’s observation that in America, “the ablest men . . . are rarely placed at the head of affairs.” With the citizens’ attention focused on their private affairs and necessity to make a living, “it is difficult for [them] to discern the best means of attaining the end,” which is “the welfare of the country.” Hence the voters’ “conclusions are hastily formed from a superficial inspection of the more prominent features of a question.” As a result, “mountebanks of all sorts are able to please the people, while their truest friends frequently fail to gain their confidence.”