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Canadian Court Rules Parents Can’t Stop 14-Year-Old From Taking Trans Hormones by Jeremiah Keenan

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/01/canadian-court-rules-parents-cant-stop-14-year-old-taking-trans-hormones/

The Supreme Court of British Columbia thinks it’s okay for doctors to override a parent’s wishes and administer trans hormones to his child.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada ordered that a 14-year-old girl receive testosterone injections without parental consent. The court also declared that if either of her parents referred to her using female pronouns or addressed her by her birth name, they would be considered guilty of family violence.

As previously reported, Maxine* was encouraged by her school counselor in BC’s Delta School District to identify as a boy while in seventh grade. When Maxine was 13 years old, Dr. Brenden Hursh and his colleagues at BC Children’s Hospital decided that Maxine should begin taking testosterone injections in order to develop a more masculine appearance.

Although Maxine’s mother was ultimately willing to support hormone injections, her father Clark* was concerned about the permanent ramifications of cross-sex hormones. Suspecting that his daughter’s mental health issues might be more the cause than the effect of her gender dysphoria, he ultimately decided that it would be better for her to wait until she was older before she embarked on any irreversible course of treatment.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bernie Sanders: Government ‘Cannot Go Too Far’ in Addressing Climate Change By Jack Crowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-government-cannot-go-too-far-in-addressing-climate-change/

Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) dismissed Friday the notion that the recently introduced Green New Deal plan is extreme and unrealistic, arguing instead that there is no action too drastic for the government to take to address climate change.

“Does the Green New Deal go too far?” Sunny Hostin asked Sanders Friday on ABC’s The View.

“No. You cannot go too far on the issue of climate change. The future of the planet is at stake, ok? . . . According to the best scientists in the world, we have twelve years to begin substantially cutting carbon emissions,” Sanders responded.

Hostin also pressed Sanders on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent suggestion that couples are rightfully hesitant to have children because of the threat of climate change.

“[Ocasio-Cortez] claimed that the looming threat of climate change that continues to exacerbate global conflicts has gotten so dire that it is a legitimate question to ask whether it is moral for people to have children now. Does she have a point there or is that too radical?” Hostin asked.

“Obviously that’s an enormously personal choice that every couple is going to have to make,” Sanders said before redirecting the conversation to President Trump’s past skepticism of the threat posed by climate change.

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Washington Governor Announces Presidential Bid With Focus on Climate Change By Jack Crowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/washington-governor-announces-pre

Washington governor Jay Inslee announced Friday that he will enter the already crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, citing the “existential threat” of climate change as the primary motivation for his run.

Inslee, who represented Washington in Congress for 20 years before becoming governor in 2012, sought to differentiate himself from the eleven other Democrats in the field by emphasizing his commitment to addressing climate change.

“I’m Jay Inslee and I’m running for president because I’m the only candidate that will make defeating climate change our number one priority,” Inslee said in his announcement video released Friday

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Don’t Root for a Trump Primary Challenge By Rich Lowry

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-primary-challenge-2020-trouble-republican-party/

Does anyone really believe that Weld, Hogan, or Kasich is going to define the future of the post-Trump Republican party?

The race for 2020 is taking shape, although there are still significant unknowns, including whether Donald Trump will get a serious primary challenge.

His fiercest Republican critics say, “Yes — please, please, yes.”

They are probably wrong, and it’s certainly nothing to root for.

Trump’s dominance of the party begins with his lockdown support of the right, forcing any primary challenger to the left. This isn’t fertile territory. Self-identified moderates and liberals are only a fraction of the party, and it is grass-roots conservative activists who have fueled the most potent Republican primary challenges (Ronald Reagan in 1976, Pat Buchanan in 1992).

Because a primary challenge would naturally come from the left and is unlikely to succeed, it will tend to attract people who don’t have a future in GOP national politics and lack conservative bona fides — the wayward former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld; the centrist governor of Maryland Larry Hogan; the former Ohio governor John Kasich, who convincingly demonstrated his lack of national electoral appeal in 2016.

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Takeaways from the House Democrats’ Cohen Hearing By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/takeaways-from-the-house-democrats-cohen-hearing/

It was cinéma not so vérité.

‘Lanny Davis Productions.” That should have been the credit on this week’s big Michael Cohen drama. It’s a better fit than “House Oversight Committee.”

Knowledge may be power, but electoral victory is subpoena power. That’s of more practical use when the objective, under all the chatter about “collusion” and impeachment, is to render Donald Trump unelectable. Expect another 18 months of this.

The Democrats are entitled to the spectacle orchestrated Wednesday by Chairman Elijah Cummings and Cohen lawyer (and, not coincidentally, sharp Democratic strategist) Lanny Davis. They won the midterm elections, not just fair and square but going away. The spoils that go to the victor include the authority to compel the appearance of witnesses who will support the 2020 narrative: Trump as “racist, conman, and cheat,” the theme of Cohen’s opening statement — which we may suspect the rough-edged, ambulance-chaser-turned-wannabe-Trump-bullyboy had just a tad of Lanny’s help writing. Chairman Scorsese, um, I mean Cummings, gave Cohen an extraordinary half hour to read it to America without interruption.

Republicans are not nearly as good at this stuff, mainly for reasons beyond their control. While in the House majority, they tried their best to put the Obama legacy Justice Department and FBI under the microscope for politicization and abuses of power in the investigations that bore on the 2016 election. But the anti-Trump press didn’t care, which meant the public never heard much about it.

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North Korea’s Single-Minded Ambition by Peter Rowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine

THINK of North Korea as a liberation movement with unfinished business—the reunification of Korea—and you have the surest guide to explain its past actions and likely future behaviour. It is vital to keep this in mind, as President Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in claim success in reducing the threat from North Korea.

Summits between enemies like Trump and Kim Jong-un, and Kim and Moon, may grab attention as firsts and breakthroughs. But they do not signal a shift in the North’s ambitions. Rather, they fit into patterns of tactical manoeuvring that Pyongyang has engaged in for decades to meet short-term goals. This is especially necessary for a regime like North Korea which sees itself as an insurgency pitted against a superior occupying force like the US.

North Korea is one of the few successful Stalinist dictatorships. In a small, compact country with a manageable population, the founder, Kim Il-sung, was able to wipe out all his opponents and opposing factions in the first ten years of his rule. His successors, chosen for their ruthlessness, have been able to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the North’s Stalinist party organisation, the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), both to them personally and to their vision of a unified state. The North’s state apparatus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a shadow, even less well-formed than other Leninist countries. It has no independent existence. The premier and cabinet ministers are all senior members of the ruling KWP. They carry out administrative functions decided and overseen by the party.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Three-Front War Scenario The daunting challenges of confronting symmetrical and asymmetrical threats. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273003/israels-three-front-war-scenario-ari-lieberman

With the conclusion of Operation Northern Shield, Israel’s successful effort to locate Hezbollah-constructed cross-border tunnels, Israeli residents of the north can breathe a sigh of relief. In all, six tunnels of various lengths and complexity were uncovered. While a tense calm prevails in the north, there is still no respite for Israel’s southern residents, particularly for those living in the Gaza periphery who must endure kite terror, periodic rocket attacks and daily violent riots along the border.

Adding fuel to the fire, this week the Gazan-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad unveiled a rocket construction/storage facility housing rockets that the group claims can hit Tel Aviv and beyond. The PIJ alleged that the rocket was designed and developed with assistance from Iran demonstrating once again the Islamic Republic’s malign influence on the world stage.

The PIJ and Hamas, the entity that controls the Gaza Strip, share similar goals and ideologies but their tactics somewhat differ. Both groups are funded by Iran but Hamas is the principle orchestrator and instigator of the ritual weekly riots that occur along the border. Hamas is also the principle schemer behind the systematic effort to cause ecological mayhem in Israel’s south using incendiary balloons. As Gaza Strip’s governing entity, Hamas is constrained by political and military realities and is not as ready to deploy its rocket arsenal as its smaller but no less pernicious ally, the PIJ. Hamas prefers to keep tensions simmering in an effort to maintain relevancy but has no interest in sparking another war that it will surely lose.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Mark Penn: Socialism is a rising danger in Democratic Party

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mark-penn-socialism-is-a-rising-danger-in-democratic-party

The Democratic Party is reaching a dangerous tipping point over socialism and what it really stands for as the American economy grows nearly 3 per cent, poverty is down and the number of people employed is at a record high.

Yet among young people and a large part of Congress now, socialist sentiment is rising sharply and could be the defining issue of the next elections.

In the February Harvard-Harris Poll, 64 per cent of registered voters said that the Democratic Party is supporting socialism. This is a major shift in the image and perception of the Democratic Party and it could have enormous consequences.Only about 27 per cent of people classify themselves as liberals, so liberalism and socialism are now about the same in terms of electoral strength.

In the same poll, 65 per cent of Americans said they personally favor mostly a capitalist system for America, indicating a huge and growing disconnect between the Democrats and the rest of the country. Capitalism was particularly strong with voters over age 65 as nearly 80 per cent of them are capitalist.

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CASE NOT CLOSED BY ANDREW McCARTHY

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

http://edition.washingtonexaminer.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=213c

Even if Mueller’s report is a dud, Washington will freak out. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report is said to be close to completion and ready for submission to the Justice Department.

There is even conjecture that it is already finished, but Mueller decided, or was perhaps persuaded by newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr, to delay submission until President Trump returns from the Southeast Asia talks with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un.

In a perfect world, the final report would be a nonevent. Alas, that is not our world, so Mueller’s conclusion will be only the beginning of a free-forall, featuring Washington hypocrisy at its worst.

The special counsel has conducted a legal probe, but the Trump-Russia narrative has always been political, more about ramifications for 2020 than accountability for 2016.

In that imaginary, perfect world, the Mueller report would be a nonevent for three reasons.

First and foremost, the report should not tell us much that we do not already know. Of course, there are fascinating facts to be learned. What was the precise nature of “collusion” between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign? What exactly happened at the Trump Tower meeting between top campaign officials and a lawyer connected to the Putin regime — the meeting at which Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive information that might devastate Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, but that we’ve been led to believe was a dud? Did the president obstruct the Russia investigation by firing FBI Director James Comey? Did he obstruct justice by earlier leaning on Comey to drop the investigation of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, the national security adviser Trump had just fired for allegedly misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.? All interesting questions. But they’re not supposed to be answered publicly unless charges are filed.

The media-Democrat complex has been extremely supportive of Mueller in hopes that he would transcend what, in the end, is his modest role: that of prosecutor. Democrats prefer to see him as counsel to a congressional impeachment committee, on the hunt for high crimes and misdemeanors, unconstrained by the federal penal code.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What’s Next After the North Korea Nuclear Summit Breakdown? by Charles Lipson

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/03/whats-next-after-the-north-korea-nuclear-summit-breakdown/
The Trump-Kim Hanoi Summit ended without any agreement, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.

Now that the Hanoi nuclear summit talks have ended in failure, the two crucial questions are (1) whether there will be a major escalation of tensions and (2) whether the North Koreans have made a fundamental decision to keep their nuclear program, despite the pressures.

Only Kim Jong-Un can answer the second question.

Pres. Trump himself clearly wants to avoid an escalation. His comments were firm but not harsh, giving Kim a chance to reconsider. He continued to stress the good personal relations between the two leaders, referred to his counterpart by his honorific title, “Chairman Kim,” and avoided diminutive nicknames like “Rocket Man.” That keeps the door open for negotiations, but Trump will not make any more goodwill payments like those that suckered his predecessors. Trump himself has already made one gesture by suspending joint US-South Korean military exercises. One important question now is whether Trump intends to resume those regular exercises.

For Kim, the main question is what it always was: Will he take costly, irreversible steps to begin dismantling his nuclear program? The summit failure shows he has not yet decided to do that, which is different from saying he has definitely decided to keep the weapons and rocket program. We already know North Korea is still building new facilities. We don’t know if the US will call them out on that, either publicly or through leaks.

To prevent an escalation, Kim must avoid any actions to show how “powerful” and independent he is, such as testing a missile. In making these decisions, Kim faces his usual problem: he cannot get good information about the risks and rewards because he is so isolated. Offer the Big Boss advice he doesn’t like and you die, as one of Kim’s aides did simply for falling asleep in a meeting.