HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Overwhelmed Immigration System Endangers America 9/11 Commission warned “Border security is national security.” Michael Cutler

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273363/overwhelmed-immigration-system-endangers-america-michael-cutler

The 9/11 Commission staff authored an official report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, that focused specifically on the ability of the 9/11 terrorists to travel around the world, enter the United States and embed themselves here as they went about their preparations to carry out a deadly attack.

The preface of this report begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

On March 29, 2019 Real Clear Politics posted three videos concerning the immigration crisis. To begin with, they posted a video of President Trump explaining his plan to completely shut down the U.S./Mexican border if Mexico continues to permit “migrant caravans” of aliens from Central America to travel through Mexico with the ultimate goal of entering the United States even though they have no visas to be lawfully admitted.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Islamist Deputy Sheriff Nezar Hamze has Sit-Down with Taliban Imam In South Florida, terror has a badge and a gun. Joe Kaufman

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273369/islamist-deputy-sheriff-nezar-hamze-has-sit-down-joe-kaufman

After leaving his job at CAIR, Nezar Hamze has now settled into his new position as Executive Director of the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF), an umbrella organization for most if not all of the area’s Islamic extremist groups, including CAIR. Last month, SFMF held a meeting at a radical mosque with a number of SFMF affiliate imams, one of which was previously arrested and charged with conspiring to provide funding to the Pakistani Taliban. All of this should be unsettling for Floridians and Americans, but what is most alarming is the fact that Hamze also serves as a Deputy Sheriff in one of the most prominent law enforcement offices in the nation.

On March 23, 2019, SFMF’s Council of Imams held its second meeting at the Islamic Center of Greater Miami (ICGM), a.k.a. Muslim Communities Association of South Florida (MCA), a.k.a. Masjid Miami Gardens. According to SFMF, the meeting was called to discuss various community issues, such as mental health, marriage/divorce, parenting, “political anxiety,” senior issues, anti-Muslim bigotry, and religious outreach. Leading the meeting was SFMF Executive Director Nezar Hamze. The attendees of the meeting comprised of a number of imams representing mosques with strong links to terrorism.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Texas Teacher Assigns Anti-Trump Essay as Class Homework Seventh grade assignment characterized the president as “racist” and questioned whether he should be impeached. Sara Dogan

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273374/texas-teacher-assigns-anti-trump-essay-class-sara-dogan

A middle school teacher in the public Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District near Houston assigned 12 and 13 year old seventh grade students to read and answer questions on an essay blasting President Donald Trump as “racist,” “insensitive,” and counter to American values as part of a lesson on inferring information from written text.

Even for seventh grade students who are not overly familiar with politics, it is easy to parse the message of the piece which essentially translates as ‘Dump Trump.’ Titled, “Trump Against American Values,” the essay begins, “Throughout Donald Trump’s time in the American spotlight, we have come to see his true colors. From the beginning of his presidency, we have witnessed insensitive remarks toward other racial and cultural groups.”

The assignment goes on to say that “Some of Trump’s policies have gone against what Americans value most, like the freedom of opportunity” and labels the president as “insensitive” for his focus on building a wall on the border with Mexico.

The piece concludes with remarks that could well have been lifted from a campaign commercial for one of Trump’s 2020 Democratic challengers:

“With all of these racist remarks by our president, I think that we as a people need to take a stand and show that we will not accept this kind of leadership in our country.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

God, Ancient Israel, and Nationalism By Rich Lowry

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/god-ancient-israel-and-nationalism/

“……I wasn’t arguing that God ordained nationalism (I did jokingly say that God was the first nationalist, and I believe the record will show that people laughed). My point was that, via the influence of the Bible, Ancient Israel was the model of the nation that the West looked to, and that the national idea has been incredibly powerful throughout Jewish history.

I think Zionism was the most inspiring nationalist movement of the 20th Century, which is why I dwelled on the amazing return of the Jews to their homeland a couple of millennia after their exile.I also pointed out how important Ancient Israel has been to the American national identity, and how it figured in the freedom rhetoric of Martin Luther King.None of this should be controversial; in fact, it’s all a matter of historical record…..”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

House Dems Request Trump’s Personal and Business Tax Returns, Setting Up Legal Battle By Jack Crowe

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-democrats-request-trump-tax-returns/
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal formally requested President Trump’s personal and business tax returns on Wednesday, setting up what will likely become a protracted and high-profile legal battle between the administration and Congressional Democrats.

In a letter sent to the IRS, Neal requested Trump’s personal income taxes from 2013 to 2018, as well as the tax returns associated with eight of his business entities, and cited his oversight role to justify the request.

“Under the Internal Revenue Manual, individual income tax returns of a President are subject to mandatory examination, but this practice is IRS policy and not codified in the Federal tax laws,” Neal wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by CNN. “It is necessary for the committee to determine the scope of any such examination and whether it includes a review of underlying business activities required to be reported on the individual income tax return.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Stacey Abrams: ‘Identity Politics Are the Politics That Win’ By Jack Crowe

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/stacey-abrams-identity-politics-are-the-politics-that-win/

Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams praised the “identity politics” of the progressive left as both electorally effective and morally right during a speech at Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention in New York on Wednesday.

“Identity politics is nothing more complex than saying, ‘I see you,’” Abrams said. “I lean in to identity politics. I believe in identity politics. And I believe identity politics are the politics that win.”

Abrams went on to fan the speculation surrounding her possible entry into the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, telling the audience that she has not yet made a decision.

“No, I don’t know what I’m doing next yet” she said when asked about a possible presidential run.

The comments come after Abrams shot down the suggestion that she might enter the race as Joe Biden’s running mate early in the primary in order to bolster his credibility among racial minorities and younger progressives.

“I think you don’t run for second place,” she said during an appearance on ABC’s The View last week. “If I’m going to enter a primary, then I’m going to enter a primary. And if I don’t enter a primary, my job is to make certain that the best Democrat becomes the nominee and whoever wins the primary that we make sure that person gets elected in 2020.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

With Mueller Hopes Gone, So Goes Progressive Unity By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/03/with-mueller-hopes-gone-so-goes-progressive-unity/

The Democratic Party has lots of radical new ideas, and lots of radical presidential candidates and politicos.

But the common hatred of President Donald Trump has united otherwise quite disparate Democratic leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); former Vice President Joe Biden; Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

These diverse progressive politicians all shared faith in special counsel Robert Mueller and his “dream team.” They believed over the last two years that the Mueller investigation was slowly grinding down Trump. T-shirts were sold with the slogan “God Protect Robert Mueller.”

The unifying progressive creed assumed that the Mueller’s team would eventually find Trump unequivocally guilty of “collusion” with Russia. That buzzword was the non-criminal euphemism for felonious conspiracy to rig an election.

The hunt for collusion would end with the holy grail of Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. In 2020 there would be an almost automatic progressive takeover of government.

Periodic leaks from Mueller’s team during the investigation’s 22 months prompted giddy media anticipation that “the walls were closing in on” Trump. It always seemed that the “noose was tightening” around him, and that yet another “bombshell” was about to go off.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How to Reform Israel’s Runaway Supreme Court by David Isaac

Posted By on April 4th, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/blog/how-to-reform-israels-runaway-supreme-court/

Israel’s Supreme Court banned Michael Ben-Ari, a member of the Otzma Yehudit or “Jewish Power” Party, from being a candidate in the Israeli elections. The court made its decision even after Israel’s Central Elections Committee said he could run. What especially provoked indignation was that at the same time the Supreme Court rejected Ben-Ari, it also overturned the Central Election Committee’s decision to ban the Arab party, Balad, which rejects the very idea of a Jewish State, and a radical-left Jewish candidate, Ofer Cassif, who is running on a joint list of two other Arab parties, Hadash and Ta’al, and who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and referred to Israel’s War of Independence as the “Naqba” or catastrophe.

The Supreme Court ruling was 8-1. Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked decried the ruling: “The decision by the High Court of Justice to disqualify Ben-Ari [for anti-Arab racist statements] and, on the other hand, to permit terror-supporting parties is a blatant and misleading intervention that goes to the core of Israeli democracy.”

Simcha Rothman, legal adviser to the Israeli Movement for Governability and Democracy, a nonprofit group that has been leading the charge for reforming Israel’s legal system, believes that by employing such a naked double standard, the Supreme Court may have played into the hands of its critics.

“I believe it will bring people out to vote for right-wing parties as a whole and, in particular, for the party that Ben-Ari was part of,” Rothman told the Free Beacon. “People will go to vote for them out of rage, as a vote of nonconfidence in the court.”

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Cambridge University’s Shameful Treatment of Jordan Peterson written by Stephen Blackwood

Posted By on April 3rd, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/04/03/cambridge-universitys-shameful-treatment

On Wednesday, March 20, the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge sent the following tweet:

Faculty of Divinity @CamDivinity

Jordan Peterson requested a visiting fellowship at the Faculty of Divinity, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review.

The circumstances around this event bear careful examination. For they reveal not only a betrayal of the university’s fundamental purpose, but also the loss of something far more wide-reaching, something without which no higher civilization can survive: a shared understanding of ourselves.

First, a little background.

Jordan Peterson is an academic and clinical psychologist who has taught at two of North America’s most prestigious research universities (Harvard University and the University of Toronto), and whose academic work is prominent, widely-cited, and non-controversial in his field (see a list of his research publications here). His courageous and articulate defense of free speech, of our political, cultural and religious inheritance, of unpopular but incontestable truths of science—especially biology—and his radical opposition to identity politics of any kind, including that of both Right and Left, have made him an iconic figure. But what is by far the most significant thing about Peterson is that he reaches vast numbers of young people, often through Biblical stories and ancient myths, with perennial truths—of freedom, responsibility, the dignity of the individual, the transcendence of beauty and suffering and, above all, the liberating nature of Truth itself.

MEDIA Comments turned off

An Open Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee: Don’t Reward Fake News by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on April 3rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14003/pulitzer-prize-fake-news

Julie K. Brown refused to investigate and/or publish highly credible information that undercut the simplistic and largely false narrative fed her by her biased sources. I know, because I have been providing her with much of the documents and information she chose to bury rather than report.

Here is the truthful narrative Brown refused to report. Every fact can be documented…. The only problem is that Secret Service and other records conclusively proved that none of them was ever on that Island and that the Gores didn’t even know Epstein…. Yet her own employment records prove that she was well above the age of consent when she claims these liaisons occurred— in the unlikely event they ever occurred at all.

A careful review of these records led Giuffre’s own lawyer to conclude — in a lawfully recorded conversation— that it would have been impossible for me to have been where she falsely claimed to have had sex with me, and that his client’s accusations against me were “wrong,” “simply wrong.”… Even Giuffre’s best friend said that Giuffre told her she had never accused me until she was “pressured” by her lawyers to do so.

So shame on Brown. Shame on the Miami Herald. And shame on the Pulitzer Committee if it fails to investigate Brown’s reporting and encourages such fake news and shoddy journalism by rewarding it.

Among the leading candidates for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism is the Miami Herald and its reporter Julie K. Brown for its series on the Jeffrey Epstein case. The series, however, was not based on rigorous and objective investigation, but rather on one sided, and largely false tips from self-interested lawyers who used the series to their financial advantage. Brown refused to investigate and/or publish highly credible information that undercut the simplistic and largely false narrative fed her by her biased sources. I know, because I have been providing her with much of the documents and information she chose to bury rather than report. Had she reported this contradictory material, she would have endangered the Pulitzer Prize she has been aiming to win. The Pulitzer Committee should not reward such biased and result oriented “reporting” by giving her the prize.