NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

William Barr vs. Eric Holder: A Tale of Two Attorneys General By Michael W. McConnell

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/william-barr-vs-eric-holder-a-tale-of-two-attorneys-general/

The differences between the cases are informative.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has declared it a “constitutional crisis” that Attorney General William Barr refuses to divulge the small parts of the Mueller report that contain grand-jury material. By a straight party-line vote, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt of Congress.

What did Pelosi think when Barr’s predecessor, Eric Holder, refused to divulge documents to a congressional committee and was held in contempt? “Ridiculous!” she said. What did Holder and Obama say? That the House subpoena was a violation of “separation of powers.”

To partisans, the difference between the cases is obvious. Barr is defending Trump; Holder was Obama’s self-proclaimed “wing man.” That is enough for many journalists and most politicians. The rest of us might want to know: What is the legal or constitutional difference between Holder’s refusal to provide documents and Barr’s?

Here is the background of the Holder contempt. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), a unit of Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ), conducted an operation called “Fast & Furious,” intended to track illegal gun sales. In fact it put hundreds of weapons in the hands of Mexican criminal gangs, leading to the death of an American officer. On February 2, 2011, after news of the operation emerged, Holder’s assistant attorney general sent a letter to Congress declaring that the Obama administration had no knowledge of the operation. This letter was false, as Holder later admitted.

A congressional committee wanted to know why it had been misled. BATFE employees leaked to Congress that the department was still suppressing the truth about the operation and retaliating against whistleblowers. The committee wanted to dig into that. It demanded DOJ documents “relating to actions the Department took to silence or retaliate against Fast and Furious whistleblowers,” so that it could determine “what the Department knew about Fast and Furious, including when and how it discovered its February 4 letter was false, and the Department’s efforts to conceal that information from Congress and the public.”

The committee’s first request for documents came early in March of 2011. The department did not comply with the request. On March 31, the committee issued its first subpoena. Again the department failed to comply. Over the next six months, the committee held a series of hearings, and Holder eventually admitted that the Fast & Furious operation had been “fundamentally flawed” and that DOJ’s February 4 letter denying administration knowledge was “inaccurate.” DOJ released thousands of pages of documents, but refused to give Congress all the documents it was asking for.

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

With illegals surge, Border Patrol officers are catching the measles and mumps and…By Monica Showalter

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/with_illegals_surge_border_patrol_officers_are_catching_the_measles_and_mumps.html

Should catching the measles, or mumps or chickenpox or tuberculosis, be part of a federal employee’s job description? You know, take the TB the way the military at war with an enemy takes the bullet? Except, of course, that the military can defend itself. Border Patrol agents cannot.

It is now. InfoWars, via Drudge Report, has some news on just this appalling state of affairs:

More agents than ever before are calling in sick to work or showing up sick, says a Border Patrol union representative who worries too many agents are succumbing to illnesses brought by illegal aliens.

Carlos Favela, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1929, says the number of agents affected by illnesses has reached alarming levels in recent years, with an estimated 20 to 25 agents from the El Paso sector calling in sick each day, while others come in to work sick because they’ve used up their sick days.

“I believe this is probably the record, you know, Border Patrol-wide, since ever, of agents calling in sick,” Favela told ABC-7.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Two stunning revelations on Russia hoax investigation yesterday from DC super-lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenovaBy Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/two_stunning_revelations_on_russia_hoax_investigation_yesterday_from_dc_superlawyers_victoria_toensing_and_joe_digenova_.html

Washington, D.C. super-lawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing have consistently been ahead of the news on the course of the unfolding scandal of spying on the Trump campaign and administration.  Appearing last night on Lou Dobbs’s Fox Business Network show, the two law and marriage partners revealed that the DoJ inspector general has already concluded that the last three of four FISA warrants were illegally obtained.Moreover, with the revelation from John Solomon that that “[n]ewly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media,”

Horowitz is re-opening the investigation into the legitimacy of the first of four FISA applications.Watch:Make no mistake: this means that crimes were committed and criminal referrals from the I.G. are coming.  Those who signed the applications — a group that includes James Comey and Rod Rosenstein — face criminal prosecution.The second revelation from the duo is, if anything, even more shocking: the FBI attempted to set up a sting on George Papadopoulos by offering him $10,000 in cash — which he left on the hotel room bed where it was offered to him.  

The trap this represented was fully revealed when Papadopoulos returned to the USA and customs agents unsuccessfully searched for the $10,000.  One of them told Papadopoulos, “This is what happens when you work for Donald Trump.”  They make the point that the rot at the FBI is not confined to a few appointees at the top.  A large number of lower-ranked officials were involved in these stings and associated frauds, and not a single one spoke up as a whistleblower.  A heartening assertion from the two well connected figures is that they are confident that justice will be done — that grand juries and indictments are in process. Watch:

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Even Architectural Criticism Must Follow The Correct Political Narrative Francis Menton

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-5-8-modern-architecture-theres-no-accounting-for-taste

This past Sunday I joined the good people from Maggie’s Farm on their annual “Urban Hike” in New York City. This year they rounded up a group of about 13. The hike started at the Museum of Natural History (80th Street and Central Park West — near the geographical center of Manhattan Island) and proceeded uptown on a meandering path of about 9 miles, stopping at sites that included things like Pomander Walk, Straus Park (Leo Straus was the founder of Macy’s who died on the Titanic), and Columbia University. The weather was chilly with persistent rain. Toward the end of the hike, at about 155th Street, we had just stood on Edgecomb Avenue at the top of the bluff overlooking the spot where once had stood the Polo Grounds (actually a baseball stadium that was the original home of the Mets, and before them the New York Giants baseball team), and we turned the corner, and suddenly this:

Several gasps and “Oh my God”s erupted spontaneously. I heard the words “Darth Vader building” uttered behind me. Whatever this black block might be, there had been no mention of it in the hike itinerary that had been provided to us; and yet this building was clearly the dominant presence in the neighborhood. Viewing it from the street, its function was not obvious. Had this thing been dropped in by space aliens? What could it possibly be, and why was it here?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Eagle and the Dragon: Destined for Rivalry:By:Srdja Trifkovic

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-eagle-and-the-dragon-destined-for-rivalry/

A new round in the U.S.-China trade dispute has started in earnest. Last Sunday (May 5) President Donald Trump tweeted that he would raise the current 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent. The President doubled down on his trade war threats with China early today (May 10), just hours after last Sunday’s decision went into effect. In addition he warned that he’d continue raising tariffs on Chinese imports if there was no agreement: the Chinese “should not renegotiate deals with the U.S. at the last minute.”

Only last week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin sounded optimistic about the latest round of bilateral negotiations, with Mnuchin telling Fox Business that the deal was “close to done.” The Chinese then suddenly revised some of the key provisions of the 150-page draft agreement. Specifically they tried to soften the language on the theft of intellectual property, financial services, forced technology transfers, and currency manipulation. Lighthizer and Mnuchin were taken aback at the extent of the changes in the draft and on Monday told reporters that Chinese backtracking had prompted Trump’s tariff order.

The current talks in Washington between China’s trade delegation and U.S. officials nevertheless will continue. Trump’s team has a strong hand, while the Chinese may have overplayed theirs. The U.S. economy grew by an annualized 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019, easily beating market expectations and following a 2.2 percent expansion in the previous three-month period. By contrast, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, the Chinese economy grew 1.4 percent in the first quarter, compared to a 1.5 percent expansion in the previous period. It was the weakest quarterly growth rate since the first quarter of 2016. New U.S. tariffs could further slow China’s growth rate and jeopardize President Xi Jinping ambitious “Made in China 2025” program of economic, technical and scientific development. Right now China needs an agreement far more badly than the U.S.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Don Corleone Offer to China on Trade :Charles Lipson

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/10/a_don_corleone_o

You don’t have to like tariffs to like President Trump’s strategy of imposing harsh ones on China. Those he imposed overnight are punishing, not only to China but to American consumers. The longer they last, the more they will cost. Yet serious trade sanctions are the only hope of getting Beijing to roll back its abusive economic practices and open its markets to U.S. exporters and investors.

China won’t act unless it feels real pain in its export sector, which is a powerful economic driver. And pain is what Trump means to inflict unless China provides much greater market access.Half measures and paper promises won’t do. The U.S. wants a big deal, and it wants teeth in it to prevent cheating. To get it, Trump is willing to threaten a trade war. We don’t know if it will work.

We do know that Trump’s threats are credible. He began saying how much he loved tariffs long before he ran for office. The irony is that his protectionist stance could pave the way for freer trade, first with China and then with the European Union.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK Disabled Students’ Group Endorses BDS By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

http://politicalmavens.com/
There are many adjectives that have been used to amplify anti-semitism — racist, bigoted, ignorant, evil – but never has a situation so perfectly demanded the word “ironic.” The UK Disabled Students Campaign which affiliates with the UK National Union of Students issued the following resolution at their annual conference: “We are proudly antiracist, anti-colonial, anti-Zionist and thus support the Palestinian struggle for their liberation.” Ironically, Israel is at the forefront of technological development to assist disabled and severely handicapped people throughout the world. Had the students bothered to google prosthetic devices or medical technology developed by Israel, they might have thought twice before espousing something that if successful, would end up shooting themselves in the proverbial foot with their knee-jerk intersectionalism.

The keyboard that allowed paralyzed UK physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking to type with nothing more than the movement of his eyes was developed by Israelis and fine-tuned at the Technion Institute in Israel. The computerized exoskeleton that allows paralyzed people to stand upright and walk – the only one that successfully achieved this miracle – was developed by Israelis. The mini-camera that can be swallowed for assistance with diagnosing disabling gastro-intestinal diseases, prosthetic limbs, devices for seeing, hearing, speaking and healing after strokes , all are part of Israel’s innovative contributions to the fields of medicine and physical therapy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Skyrocketing Attacks On NYC Jews Ignored Because Of Race An epidemic of anti-Jewish violence in Brooklyn is being virtually ignored because many of the assailants are black and Hispanic. By David Marcus

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/10/skyrocketing-attacks-nyc-jews-ignored-race/

Imagine that members of a religious minority were being frequently physically assaulted in America’s largest city at alarming rates. Imagine if members of that minority were being cold-cocked or spit on randomly for doing nothing more than being who they are and dressing how they dress. Imagine what a powerful and important story this would be to our country, how mobilized the media and government would be to stop it. But what if I told you that this is happening in New York City right now, and nobody seems to care very much? How can this be? I’ll explain it.

Orthodox Jews in New York City, specifically in Brooklyn, have experienced alarming rates of physical assault over the past year. The New York Police Department says that hate crimes in the city are up 67 percent this year. Of those, a whopping 80 percent have been anti-Semitic hate crimes. Just this week an Orthodox Jew just walking down the street was attacked from behind, punched in the head by an attacker who then ran away. In another incident this week, an Orthodox Jew was attacked by a group of men, one of whom shouted “You (expletive) Jew.”

This is an all too familiar story in Brooklyn these days, and there is a reason it isn’t being treated as a crisis by our media or government. That reason is that many if not most of the assailants are black or Hispanic men. In an article in The New York Times last October that was careful to point out, although without much evidence, that people of all descriptions are committing acts of anti-Semitism, Ginia Bellafante writes (emphasis mine), “In fact, it is the varied backgrounds of people who commit hate crimes in the city that make combating and talking about anti-Semitism in New York much harder.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Oregon Elementary School Teacher Tried to Convince 8-Year-Old Student He’s Transgender By Michael van der Galien

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/oregon-elementary-school-teacher-tried-to-convince-8-year-old-student-hes-transgender/

It doesn’t get much crazier than this. According to KPTV-TV, an Oregon elementary school teacher tried to convince an 8-year-old student that he was transgender. The schoolteacher did this without involving the parents. The result? The boy is now aggressive, depressed and confused.

The teacher at Nellie Muir Elementary School in Woodburn targeted the boy for transgender indoctrination when he started using the staff restroom after a stomach issue made him feel uncomfortable about using the boys’ toilet. The teacher took the 8-year-old aside, spoke shortly to him, and then proceeded to share all kinds of transgender literature and videos with him. The teacher asked the boy several times whether he thought he was a girl and even held him out of recess in order to read transgender books and watch transgender videos. Oh, and to top it off, there were one-on-one conversations about transgenderism.

All this was done without the parents’ consent or even their knowledge. It only came out when the boy came home with a book about transgenderism and when he talked to a therapist (while crying his eyes out).

As The Blaze reports, the effects of the transgender propaganda on the boy have been significant:

“He feels different now, he feels confused,” the mother told the station, which didn’t reveal her identity or the father’s identity…

“Still today, a year later, if he plays with my niece, he’s a girl in that moment … if he plays with my nephew, he’s a boy,” the mother added to the station.

Also, the boy now shies away from playing with “girl” toys or playing “girl-related” games and underwent personality changes, becoming more depressed, aggressive, and isolated.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Conservatives Must Stand Up to Climate Change Bullying By Tom Harris and Dr. Jay Lehr

Posted By on May 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/conservatives-must-stand-up-to-climate-change-bullying/

Canada and the United States have many things in common – we love our hockey players, our astronauts and our veterans. We value freedom and prosperity and, when push comes to shove, will fight tooth and nail against those who would take either from us. We also have our shares of misguided conservative politicians who think they can win over left-leaning voters by promoting the climate scare.

In Canada we had Stephen Harper who was elected prime minister as a conservative and a committed climate sceptic but changed sides after being elected in an apparent attempt to curry favor with the left. It did him no good whatsoever and he was crucified by mainstream media, which swept the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into power. Today’s federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is no better, promoting the climate scare and promising to present his party’s climate change plan by the beginning of summer with a focus on so-called clean energy.

In the U.S., we have seen many prominent Republicans actively supporting, or at least acquiescing to, climate alarmism. After all, it was the late President George H. W. Bush who signed U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. The UNFCCC dictated the climate alarmist stance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that set the stage for the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Bush also started the National Climate Assessment through legislation he signed in 1990. The NCA has been a thorn in the side of Republican presidents ever since.

More recently, we have Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and even former Texas governor and current U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, embracing what are essentially climate alarmist views.

“I believe climate change is real. I believe man has an impact,” Chatterjee said at the 6th annual Columbia Global Energy Summit in New York City on April 10, 2019. “And I believe that we need to take steps to mitigate emissions urgently.”

After dismissing Republicans who do not support global warming alarmism, Graham’s comments at the April 24 EarthX2019 conference in Dallas on climate change were truly absurd. “The first thing you gotta do is say greenhouse gas emissions are real and they are caused by C02 emissions. They trap heat,” said the senator, concluding, “Climate change is real, the science is sound and the solutions are available.”

Perry was less ridiculous in his remarks at the EarthX2019 event, instead supporting the climate scare indirectly. In a bombastic, rambling presentation, the energy secretary boasted that the United States “continue[s] to lead in reducing energy-related carbon emissions. That’s something to be proud of… We are determined to lead the drive for cleaner energy in this world… Back in Washington, people argue endlessly on what “clean” or “cleaner” means. Does it mean carbon-neutral or carbon-free?”

All of these statements are stupid. They are either wrong or irrelevant, both scientifically and politically.

Perry’s “carbon” is actually carbon dioxide (CO2). In contrast to carbon, which is a solid, CO2 is an odorless, colorless gas. It is crucial for plant photosynthesis and so required for life. That’s why the CO2 concentrations inside commercial greenhouses are often kept up to 1,500 parts per million (ppm), a level at which plants grow far more efficiently than at the 410 ppm in the outside atmosphere. We should not spend a single cent trying to reduce the air’s CO2 content.

And of course, climate change is real. So is continental drift. But no sensible person would conclude that humans are the master controller of either. And despite the demands of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project that media “Call it a Climate Crisis” in their May 7 “day of action” Twitter storm, recent climate change has been well within expected natural variability.

Concerns about dangerous human-caused global warming are based on only one thing: computer model forecasts of the future. But these models simply do not work, having predicted three times the warming that has actually occurred between 1979 and 2017. Contrary to Graham’s assertion that “the science is sound,” our understanding of the science is so poor that we do not even know what mathematical equations to program into the models.

That abandoning their base and supporting the climate scare is terrible political strategy for Republicans was well demonstrated in the 2018 midterm elections. Only 53 percent of the 43 House Republican seats that were occupied by members of the bipartisan congressional Climate Solutions Caucus remained in Republican hands. In contrast, almost 90 percent of the seats held by House Republicans who did not belong to the caucus remained Republican after the election.

In support of his position, Graham argued that Republicans need to appeal to young people who support the climate scare. Marc Morano, publisher of the influential Washington DC-based Climatedepot.com, responded, “I can’t imagine that any millennial who cares about this is going to be voting Republican because they are activists at their core. If you’re a millennial and you’re skipping school and all excited about the Green New Deal (GND), there is no way Republicans can appeal to them with some sort of lite version of the GND.”

“You don’t capitulate to young voters because they have been brainwashed into believing that mankind is driving a climate ‘crisis,’” said Morano. “You lead and reveal to them that what they think they know just ain’t so.”

Morano explains why so many Republican support climate alarmism: “They just don’t want to be seen as ‘evil deniers’ and they are prepared to give in wherever they can. They want to have less toxicity in the media, in town halls, in social circles around the Washington establishment. By supporting the climate scare, they’re going to be better liked, less embarrassed by their positions and can say, ‘you can’t call us deniers anymore!’ That gives them a level of comfort at parties, campaign events, speeches and town halls.”

Clearly, what is now urgently needed is for the Trump administration to go ahead with the President’s Commission on Climate Security. Then there would be an alternative federal climate change report with the seal of the U.S. government on it. Morano summed up, “We’ve never had a challenge to the UN from an official source. A Presidential Commission report would be the first one ever. Let’s just hope that it goes through.”

Indeed. For the sake of the country and all other nations which depend on a free and prosperous America for their survival, let’s hope it does.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with ICSC and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank headquartered in Illinois.

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