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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

University of Cheech and Chong UC Davis protects cheerleader for cop killers — and awards posthumous degree to racial supremacist. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274140/university-cheech-and-chong-lloyd-billingsley

On June 19, Adel Ramos, a thug with a history of violence, gunned down Sacramento police officer Tara O’Sullivan, 26, who was helping a woman move out of her home after a domestic dispute. The city paid tribute to O’Sullivan, a graduate of Sacramento State University, but over at UC Davis things were rather quiet.

In January, convicted criminal Kevin Limbaugh gunned down Davis police officer Natalie Corona, 22. Police came from across the nation to pay tribute to Corona, by all accounts a rising star in the department. The UC Davis Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission issued a Facebook post complaining that the “thin blue line” flag Corona was shown carrying “represents an attempt by law enforcement to undermine the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Then in February, The California Aggie journalist Nick Ervin unearthed posts from UC Davis English professor Joshua Clover that cops “need to be killed,” shot in the back, and so forth. Clover specializes in “critical theory, Marxism, political theory,” and other subjects including “crisis theory and the end of capitalism.”

Clover was unapologetic and crime victims thought it strange that such a person should be on the payroll of a public university. UC Davis issued a statement condemning Clover and finding it “unconscionable that anyone would condone much less appear to advocate murder.” Even so, they duly kept Clover on the job. That is a tough act to follow, but UC Davis bosses are up to the task.

On June 21, 25 years after his death, the Sacramento Bee reported, Oscar Gomez Jr. “was finally awarded a posthumous degree in Chicana/o Studies and Community Development at the Chicanx and Latinx Graduation Celebration of 2019. (Chicanx and Latinx are gender-neutral alternatives to Chicano and Latino.)”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Debate of the Losers 9 radicals with no shot at being elected to anything redistribute each other’s time. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274144/debate-losers-daniel-greenfield

On a sweltering night in Miami’s Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, a 90-year-old building slightly older than Joe Biden, 9 candidates with no shot at anything and the tenth, the first fake Native American candidate, gathered to humiliate and be humiliated on national television.

On a set designed to look like a cardboard cutout White House, 10 cardboard cutouts of candidates, hoping to sit in the real White House, frantically searched for their 15 seconds of fame, while ignoring moderator questions and going over time.

All the millionaire candidates agreed that the economy wasn’t working for ordinary Americans like the ones they see on TV.

The speeches about the misery suffered by ordinary Americans in a booming economy at the hands of giant evil corporations fell flat to a base in which a third of Democrat primary voters earn over $100,000.

“Who is this economy working for?” Elizabeth Warren asked, doing a hand hatchet chop in a tribute to her imaginary Native American heritage while claiming that it was just working for those at the top.

Like her.

Not only was Warren wealthier than most of the other candidates on stage, but she was called on three times as often.

As part of their commitment to redistribution, the socialist candidates redistributed each other’s time. But, despite their supposed commitment to redistribution, they resisted speaking time socialism.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The President, China and the Spooks By David P. Goldman

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-president-china-and-the-spooks/

“I’m an Always Trumper. I want the president to win another term. If I complain about tactics, it’s because I want him to succeed. The right thing to do now is to declare an armistice in the long-run economic war with China, and concentrate on building up American semiconductor and communications manufacturing to out-compete the Chinese.”

Why is it that every time Donald Trump gets together with Xi Jinping, someone gets busted on a sanctions violation? I’m not privy to the inner workings of our cops and spooks, so I’m just asking. While Trump and Xi sat down to dinner at the November 2018 Group of 20 meeting in Argentina, the chief financial officer of Huawei was arrested in a Vancouver airport transit lounge. Now that Trump and Xi are meeting again next week at the Osaka Group of 20 meeting, there are reports of a contempt-of-court order against Chinese banks for violation of North Korea sanctions. This has caused more than a flutter, as I report this morning at Asia Times.

President Trump’s relationship with the U.S. intelligence establishment is less than satisfactory. The spooks didn’t like it when Attorney General William Barr proposed to declassify documents relating to surveillance of his 2016 presidential campaign. Elements of spookdom evidently conspired with the FBI to sandbag the Trump campaign using alleged Russian contamination as a pretext. I have argued in this space that CIA set up Gen. Michael Flynn, the only senior intelligence official to call them out for incompetence and (probably) corruption.

During the past month, we’ve observed a president who steers away from unnecessary confrontation. He suppressed the advice of his National Security Adviser and chose to sanction and threaten Iran rather than start a firefight. In May, Trump overruled his advisers and declared that North Korea’s latest missile launch was not a violation of UN resolutions, contradicting then Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. Shanahan since stepped down, reportedly for personal reasons. He chose to declare victory with Mexico and forbear from imposing tariffs over the immigration issue. And, unlike most of his administration and the Senate neo-cons (Romney, Rubio, et al.), he wants to fold the Huawei issue into the broader trade negotiations.