NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why was FBI so wrong in Trump-Russia wiretap warrant? by Byron York

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-was-fbi-so-wrong-in-trump-russia-wiretap-warrant

A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI’s secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They also argued over whether the warrant adequately informed the court that the dossier was, in fact, a work of political opposition research, rather than legitimate intelligence gathering.

The arguments ended in impasse, with defenders and detractors set in their positions.

Now, however, we have new evidence, in the form of the Mueller report, to evaluate the Page FISA application. We can ask: Was the information the FBI relied on true? Were the FBI’s representations to the court accurate? The answers do not bode well for the bureau.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Deep Throat and Donald Trump By Sebastian Gorka

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/deep-throat-and-donald-trump/

You have to give it to Democrats; they are organized.

As soon as Attorney General Bill Barr refused to commit a crime by releasing a fully unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, the Democrats’ talking-point team was drafting the mandatory soundbites.

In a flurry of interviews over the past few weeks, everyone has been on message: If they work for, or are related to President Donald Trump, just jail them.

Whether it’s the ongoing calls for the attorney general to be imprisoned or Da Nang Dick Blumenthal (D-Conn.)—the only senator in office who lied about serving in Vietnam—calling for the imprisonment of the president’s son or whether Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saying she doesn’t have enough prison cells to lock up all the “criminals” in the Trump administration, the refrain has been remarkably consonant.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media Wounded By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/the-media-wounded/

There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on.

Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher agendas of social justice, identity politics, “equality” and diversity. To the degree a news account is expanded or ignored, praised or blasted, depends on its supposed utility to the effort to fundamentally transform the country into something unlike its founding.

At the recent third president-less White House Correspondents’ Dinner, passive-aggressive journalists whined that they were victims, standing on the barricades against the all-powerful, all-evil—and all absent—Donald Trump. If the attempt was to return professionalism to the evening and eschew the pathological celebrity obsessions of the past, the result was only more confirmation of the self-referential and narcissistic culture of the Washington press corps.

Why should we believe reporters suddenly worried about ethics, and free inquiry and speech?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European elections 2019: What date does the UK vote – and why are we even taking part? Peter Foster

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/european-parliament-elections-2019-date-does-uk-vote-even/

With the date for the European Elections coming closer, we take a look at when the vote is, why we are still expected to take part and what it means for British MEPs.

Here’s everything you need to know ahead of polling day in May.
When is the vote?

The polls will take place on May 23 2019.
Why is the UK taking part?

Because Brexit has now been delayed for six months, with a new date set for October 31 2019, which means the UK must now participate in EU polls.
Seems crazy if the UK is leaving anyway. Can EU polls still be avoided?

Yes, but the timetable is very tight indeed. Leading Cabinet members are determined to avoid holding the elections, but that will mean Parliament agreeing on the Withdrawal Agreement well before the end of April.

The EU are insistent that the Withdrawal Agreement must be approved and all of the implementing legislation must be passed to avoid the need to hold EU elections.

Given the generally low expectations of an imminent breakthrough in cross-party talks, the overwhelming likelihood now is that the UK will take part in the polls.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Palestinian Leaders Punish Patients by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14208/palestinian-leaders-punish-patients

“By Allah, even if we have only a penny left it will be spent on the families of the martyrs and prisoners, and only afterwards will it be spent on the rest of the people.” — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Media Watch, July 24, 2018.

Evidently, the “rest of the people” includes not only the Palestinian Authority (PA) employees, but also Palestinian patients who are in need of medical treatment. Abbas has now decided to punish these patients by depriving them of medical treatment in Israel.

The PA decision to stop patients from receiving medical treatment in Israel does not apply to senior Palestinian officials.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has decided that Palestinians will no longer be able to receive medical treatment in Israel. Last March, the PA Ministry of Health in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians, announced that it was halting medical transfers to Israeli hospitals and promised to find alternatives for Palestinian patients in private and government hospitals.

The PA says that it took the decision in response to the Israeli government’s deduction of payments the Palestinian government makes to families of security prisoners and “martyrs” from tax revenues the Israelis collect on behalf of the Palestinians.

A new Israeli law allows the government to impose financial sanctions on the PA for its “Pay for Slay” policy, which encourages terrorists to carry out attacks against Israelis because they know they and their families will be receiving salaries (from the PA government) for the rest of their lives.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chinese Sex Trade in Pakistan: Abuse of Christian Girls by Kaswar Klasra

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14210/chinese-pakistan-sex-trafficking

Once purchased, women and girls are typically locked in a room and raped repeatedly, with the goal of getting them pregnant quickly so they can provide a baby for the family. After giving birth, some are allowed to escape — but forced to leave their children behind.

That women and girls are being abused throughout Asia is sickening enough, and warrants immediate attention by the international community. But that Christian girls in particular are being targeted in Pakistan makes the current prostitution ring a double human-rights abuse that needs urgent looking into.

The New York-based international non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch, warned on April 26 that “Pakistan’s government should be alarmed by recent reports of trafficking of women and girls to China. These allegations are disturbingly similar to the pattern of trafficking of ‘brides’ to China from at least five other Asian countries.”

One week later, Pakistani authorities arrested 12 suspects — eight Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis — in a case involving the sex trafficking of young Pakistani women to China. Many had been sent as so-called “brides.” Most of them, some as young as 13, belong to Pakistan’s Christian minority.

After the arrests, Jameel Ahmed Khan, a senior official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), told Gatestone Institute that a preliminary investigation revealed that the sex traffickers lured young Christian girls from poverty-stricken families to China by promising them a “better life” there — and providing their parents with a monthly stipend. Khan said that although it appears that hundreds of girls have been sold this way into prostitution, the exact number is under investigation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Were the Mueller Report’s Hired Guns? . By Paul Sperry

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/11/who_were_the_mueller_reports_hired_guns_140289.html

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it’s not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile “investigative reports” and other “information.”

The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel’s office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.

They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller’s operation – and even had a hand in his final report – because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller’s lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard professor out as dean amid backlash for representing Harvey Weinstein Joey Garrison

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/11/harvard-professor-representing-harvey-weinstein-out-faculty-dean/1175463001/

BOSTON – A Harvard Law School professor who became a lightning rod on the Ivy League campus for working on the legal defense team of Harvey Weinstein has been let go as a faculty dean.

Neither Ronald Sullivan Jr. nor his wife, Stephanie Robinson, will continue as faculty deans of Harvard’s Winthrop House when their terms end next month, the university said Saturday.

Rakesh Khurana, dean of Harvard College, announced his decision in an email to residents of the school’s Winthrop House, calling the situation “untenable” and saying it was “informed by a number of considerations.”

Sullivan has been under fire from students since January when he emerged as one of the attorneys representing Weinstein in the media mogul’s upcoming trial where he faces multiple sex-crime charges.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Florida Democratic Party’s Own Muslim Anti-Semite Rasha Mubarak believes Israel has no right to defend herself. Joe Kaufman

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273741/florida-democratic-partys-own-muslim-anti-semite-joe-kaufman

Anti-Semitism is quickly on the rise within the Democratic Party, and the poster children for it are two high-profile freshmen US Representatives, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Florida, too, has its own Democrat Islamist anti-Semite, anti-Israel activist Rasha Mubarak. Mubarak is on a mission to destroy the Jewish state, Israel, and she is taking the Florida Democratic Party with her.

Elected in November 2018, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are the first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress. Recently, both have been cited for making anti-Semitic statements, relative to the issue of Israel. And while no one suggests that criticism of Israel is out of bounds, the statements that these women have made have crossed the line. This includes bringing up the ‘dual-loyalty’ canard, which has been used against Jews for millennia, and suggesting that Jewish money is buying off politicians. These assertions and more have led to both Omar and Tlaib being reprimanded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and members of their own party.

Minnesota and Michigan are not the only states where Democratic Party leaders are spouting anti-Semitism. It is happening, as well, in the Sunshine State and in a big way.

On April 9th, the Florida Young Democrats (FYD) released, in part, the following message: “We are excited to officially welcome Rasha Mubarak to our FYD Board as Central Florida Regional Director. Though a new addition to our board, Rasha has already been hard at work with chartering a new Osceola Young Democrats, working on this year’s Campaign Academy programming and leading our 2019 Convention planning in Orlando.”

In Mubarak’s statement accepting the role as FYD Central Florida Regional Director, she announced that she was ending her two-year term as President of the Young Democrats of Orange County (YDOC).

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Impeachment Con is Killing Dem 2020 Chances They won’t stop trying to destroy Trump even if it destroys them. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 13th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273717/impeachment-con-killing-dem-2020-chances-daniel-greenfield

The Democrats have become a cult of anti-personality.

The ‘anti’ phenomenon is not unique. Past Democrat generations had built their identity around hating Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan. But the internet monetized the cult of anti-personality in a big way.

And Democrats are paying the price.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Dem House leadership have tried everything possible to stop the talk of impeachment. But nothing that she and her deputies can do has made a dent in the madness.

In a sign of pure desperation, Pelosi has begun insisting that impeachment is a Trump conspiracy.

“Trump is goading us to impeach him,” she actually claimed.

The Dem House leader is hoping to dissuade her faction from its self-destructive orgy of Trump hatred by tapping into that hatred to convince them that impeaching Trump is exactly what he wants.

And it won’t work.

Impeaching Trump is the obsession of a narrow slice of the Dem base. But it’s the one that provides much of the money and the manpower. The Democrats wouldn’t have won in 2018 without the Trump-haters, but they won’t be able to win in 2020 with them. Their fanaticism proved crucial in midterm elections where Democrats traditionally suffered from low voter turnout. But in a presidential election, voter turnout will be high. And the Democrats will need to win over independent voters.

A majority of Americans opposes impeachment. But impeachment fever turned otherwise obscure Dem politicians like Rep. Maxine Waters, Red. Ted Lieu and Rep. Adam Schiff into resistance celebrities.