Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Sri Lanka Bombings Terror group’s video shows what it says are Easter attackers, as authorities search for accomplices, weapons By Niharika Mandhana and Jon Emont

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sri-lanka-bombings-linked-to-new-zealand-mosque-shootings-government-says-11556009023

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka—Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings that killed more than 300 people in Sri Lanka, and posted a video that it said showed the suicide bombers, dressed in black robes, declaring their loyalty to the group.

“The executors of the attack that targeted citizens of coalition states and Christians in Sri Lanka two days ago were Islamic State fighters,” Islamic State said, according to SITE, a security consulting firm that tracks militant groups.

Hours earlier, Sri Lanka’s defense minister said the government had information indicating the plotters were reacting to last month’s terrorist attack in New Zealand, but the prime minister later Tuesday made clear no direct link had been established.

“It’s possible it could have been because of Christchurch,” said Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. “We don’t know.”

The prime minister said there could be additional attackers still at large, some armed with explosives.

Bernie Sanders: All Felons, Including Boston Marathon Bomber, Should Be Able to Vote In Prison By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-all-felons-including-boston-marathon-bomber-should-be-able-to-vote-in-prison/

Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said Monday that all felons, including terrorists and rapists, should be able to vote while serving out their prison sentences.

Asked during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire whether he believed people like the Boston marathon bomber should be disenfranchised, Sanders said no, and suggested that all restrictions on voting rights erode American democracy.

“If somebody commits a serious crime, sexual assault, murder, they’re going to be punished,” he said. “They may be in jail for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole lives. That’s what happens when you commit a serious crime. But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.”

“Because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘well that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote,’ or ‘that person did that, not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope,” he continued. “So, I believe that people commit crimes, they pay the price. They get out of jail, I believe they certainly should have the right to vote. But I believe even if they’re in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.”

The Cathedral: Mirror of the West, Then and Now By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-religion-decline-western-civilization/

We are not much interested today in building such expressions of transcendence.

The recent fires at the medieval Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris almost immediately were seen as a referendum on the West, even by those who are not Christians.

How at the supposed apex of Western technology, science, and affluence could a sudden inferno devour the spire, roof, and some of the interior icons of the nearly 800-year-old cathedral, itself perched on the bank of a river, and the survivor of centuries of desecrations, remodels, expansions, and repairs, when the arts of preservation, fire prevention and response, and engineering were supposedly backward by our standards?

Logically or not, many saw the fire as a curtain call for the West, or at least an eclipse of the ancient marriage of European Christian belief and scientific brilliance that together produced the most impressive and beautiful expressions of Western transcendence.

And now the second-most-revered church in the West smolders — something that neither French revolutionaries nor World War II bombers could accomplish.

In our smug era of high tech and conspicuous consumption, Western Europeans and Americans do not build Christian cathedrals anymore. Our challenge is simply to keep standing — at least sort of — what we inherited.

The Impeachment Fantasy By Rich Lowry

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/democrats-trump-impeachment-fantasy/

Impeachment has a long history in Anglo America, yet it is widely misunderstood.

The collusion fantasy has officially given way to the impeachment fantasy.

The passionate investment of the Left in the Mueller investigation had much to do with shock and disbelief at Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 and the hope of early deliverance — the special-counsel probe as delectable revenge and deus ex machina.

The expectation that Robert Mueller would blow Trump out of the White House with proof of collusion with Russia has, not surprisingly, come up empty. No worries. If Volume I of the Mueller report, on Russia, didn’t pan out, there’s always Volume II, on alleged obstruction.

When you are desperate to, in the memorable words of Democratic freshman congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, “impeach the motherf—–,” any rationale will do.

If House Democrats impeach Trump, though, they will be sorely disappointed. They will wake up the day afterward and, after all the drama and wall-to-wall coverage, he’ll still be president of the United States, tweeting per usual.

The Democratic Presidential Primary Is An Arms Race In Crazy Let’s have a conversation! By David Harsanyi

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/23/the-democratic-presidential-primary-is-an-arms-race-in-crazy/

When asked at a CNN town hall this week if he believed that incarcerated felons should be allowed to vote, socialist presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders responded: “This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy, and I believe every single person does have the right to vote.”

What about someone like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber? “Yes,” Sanders went on, “even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

Slippery slope, indeed.

After spending decades incessantly repeating the “America is a democracy” lie—liberals, of course, tend to scoff when you point out this jejune detail —the only logical conclusion, ideologically speaking, is terrorist suffrage, I guess. “Every vote” means every vote.

Now, there’s a rational argument to be made for allowing Americans who have served their time and paid their debt to society to fully participate in American political life. Certainly those who’ve never committed violent crimes shouldn’t have to surrender their civic rights forever. The notion that incarcerated murderers should be weighing in on gun laws or that child molesters should have a say on local school bond issues or that a terrorist’s vote should have an effect on American foreign policy, however, undercuts the liberal contention that casting a ballot is a sacred act.

ISIS claims responsibility for Sri Lanka Easter bombings that killed over 300 By Morgan Winsor and Dragana Jovanovic

https://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-claims-responsibility-sri-lanka-easter-bombings-killed/story?id=

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a wave of coordinated bombings at churches and high-end hotels across Sri Lanka.

The terrorist organization offered no evidence to support that assertion, which was initially announced in a statement in Arabic published by its Amaq news agency on Tuesday, saying the attackers were “among the fighters of the Islamic State,” according to a translation by SITE Intelligence Group, a company that tracks extremist groups.

ISIS later issued a longer, formal statement identifying the seven suicide bombers who detonated explosive-laden vests at the churches and hotels and a housing complex on Sunday.

Persistence and Political Correctness at Amherst By Richard Bernstein,

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/04/22/persistence_and_political_correctness_at_amherst.html

Sometimes in the culture wars, the identity-politics camp leans so far to a politically correct extreme that liberals and conservatives alike reject it. Or so it would seem. A recent episode at Amherst College is worth examining less as a defeat for political correctness than a tactical retreat illustrating that the cult of identity politics on campus shows little sign of weakening.
Withdrawn from circulation, but why?
www.scribd.com

What happened is this: Last month Amherst’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion sent all 1,850 or so students at the elite western Massachusetts school an attractively produced 36-page brochure called the Amherst Common Language Guide, with definitions of “key diversity and inclusion terms.” Its clear emphasis: “Marginalized groups” were being oppressed by what the document called the “cisheteropatriarchy” — a system of domination by straight white men – through racism, sexism, oppression, hegemony, and exploitation.

Within hours of the guide’s release, a member of the Amherst College Republicans leaked the brochure to the conservative Daily Wire website, which pronounced it “something out of ‘1984.’ ” A crescendo of ridicule from conservative websites and blogs followed.

7 Glaring Omissions In The Mueller Report That Kill Its Credibility While there is much within the Mueller report that suggests skepticism was well-founded, what is perhaps most probative is what the report omitted. Ben Weingarten

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/23/7-glaring-omissions-mueller-report-kill-credibility/

Robert Mueller’s special counsel was presented to the American public as unimpeachable. From its beginning, a distinct minority in politics and media, including several Federalist writers, were skeptical, citing the special counsel’s past prosecutorial abuses, the past alleged misconduct of its pivotal investigators, and the team’s peculiar partisan makeup.

Once in action, its seemingly limitless powers, heavy-handed usage of such powers, and more questionable if not dubious indictments, far removed from “collusion,” seemed to confirm our worst fears. While there is much within the Mueller report that further suggests this skepticism was well-founded, what is perhaps most probative is what the report omitted.

The following are seven of the most glaring omissions from the collusion section of the redacted Mueller report—since collusion, not obstruction, was the theory from which the investigation stemmed.

Democrats’ Relentless, Fruitless Hunt for the Great Orange Whale By Charles Lipson

https://amazingsaleonline.com/bibcntfas/?sxid=4zxvbykj4b41&c=0.0146875&siteid=3955&campaignid=35239&placementid=68179&channel=News&subchannel=Conservative+News&creative=

Democrats are trying to spin the Mueller Report as welcome news. Good luck with that. Legally, they’ve got no case left. Politically, they are making a serious mistake.

They do have some material to work with, especially the report’s second volume, which portrays a vulgar, deceitful president. The details are new, but the portrait itself is not. What’s new are some cases where the president came close to obstructing justice, according to the special counsel’s investigators. Even so, they did not say he crossed the line.

The most important news, of course, is the report’s basic findings. It clearly demonstrates Russia tried to influence the 2016 election and favored Trump, but it kills the assertion that Trump or his campaign cooperated with them. For two years, Democrats and the mainstream media said the opposite about Trump — repeatedly, loudly, insistently. To continue that attack now is ludicrous. That doesn’t mean they will retract, apologize, or return their Pulitzer Prizes. They prefer to change the subject.

Bob Woodward: FBI, CIA Reliance on ‘Garbage’ Steele Dossier ‘Needs to Be Investigated’ By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bob-woodward-fbi-cia-reliance-on-garbage-steele-dossier-needs-to-be-investigated/

Veteran reporter Bob Woodward said Monday that the intelligence community’s reliance on the infamous Steele dossier “needs to be investigated” in the wake of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s failure to corroborate many of the document’s key claims.

Woodward told Fox News’s Chris Wallace that he was disturbed to learn that the CIA cited information included in the Clinton-funded dossier in a rough draft of their January 2017 intelligence-community assessment detailing Russian election-interference efforts.

“What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really has got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence-community assessment on Russian interference, in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box,” Woodward said.

“I think it was the CIA pushing this. Real intelligence experts looked at this and said ‘No, this is not intelligence, this is garbage,’ and they took it out,” he continued. “But in this process, the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments, as Mueller also found out, is highly questionable. Needs to be investigated.”