ISRAEL Comments turned off

Has Israel advanced US interests? Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

General Omar Bradley, the first Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs-of-Staff, said in July, 1950, in the aftermath of Israel’s War of Independence: “The Israeli army would be the most effective force south of Turkey, which could be utilized for delaying action [extending the strategic hand of the USA]….” General Bradley’s assessment was rejected by the State Department and the Pentagon, which opposed the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State, contending that it would be decimated by the Arabs, a burden upon the US and probably an ally of the USSR.
Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan wrote in the Washington Post, on August 15, 1979: “The fall of [the Shah of] Iran has increased Israel’s value as perhaps the only remaining strategic asset in the region, on which the US can only rely….Only by full appreciation of the critical role the State of Israel plays in our strategic calculus can we build the foundation for thwarting Moscow’s designs on territories and resources vital to our security and our national wellbeing…. Israel is not a client but a very reliable friend…. American policy-makers downgrade Israel’s geopolitical importance as a stabilizing force, as a deterrent to radical hegemony and as military offset to the Soviet Union….”

In 2018, General Bradley’s and President Reagan’s assessments are vindicated, as the pro-US Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman, as well as Jordan and Egypt, seek further strategic ties with Israel. They view Israel as a most effective ally in the face of lethal threats posed by the anti-US Ayatollahs, ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists, irrespective of the unresolved Palestinian issue – which they never considered a crown jewel – and their fundamental reservations about the existence of an “infidel” Jewish State in “the abode of Islam.”

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Somali Refugees Busted in Tucson Immigration fraud is at the heart of a terror case . . . again.

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271095/somali-refugees-busted-tucson-michael-cutler
Once again, immigration fraud has compromised U.S. national security. Fortunately, this time, the discovery was made before a deadly terror attack.

The issue of immigration fraud was the focus of both an extensive article and a booklet I wrote on the topic, Immigration Fraud, Lies That Kill.

This time an alien couple stands accused of fraud when they entered the United States as refugees, and then applied for legal immigrant status, but they hid their ties to Al-Shabab, an Islamic militant group operating primarily in Somalia who itself has links to al-Qaeda.

The case we will examine today, less than one month before the 17th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11, was brought to fruition by the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) as a result of the diligent work of the FBI and a division of ICE known as HSI (Homeland Security Investigations).

As you read my commentary think about the globalists – particularly the leaders of the Democratic Party who refuse to work with ICE, creating “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States” and are now demanding that ICE be utterly and totally dismantled.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Then: “Islamic Europe? Ridiculous!” Now: “Islamic Europe? Inevitable – and Terrific!” European elite changes its tune – to enable surrender.

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271087/then-islamic-europe-ridiculous-now-islamic-europe-bruce-bawer

One week back in 2007, I was paid a not inconsiderable sum of money to fly first class from Oslo to Washington, D.C., on the Tuesday and to fly back on the Thursday, so that I could give a hour-long lunchtime talk on the Wednesday to an audience of American and international diplomats. Given that I had been compensated so well and given, as it was explained to me, that I had been accorded the star spot, the sole solo turn, in the middle of a day-long conference consisting otherwise of panel discussions about Western Europe, I foolishly expected a friendly reception.

My first doubts in this respect began to arise only moments after the event kicked off. Sitting through the morning’s panels, I heard one highly credentialed individual after another – professors, politicians, and retired and active diplomats from various countries – join in predicting a glowing future for Western Europe. Socially and economically, they all agreed, prospects looked a lot brighter for Western Europe than for America. Not a single one of the dozen or so panelists diverged from this consensus.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

#AbolishICE “Abolished” Mollie Tibbetts The greatest monument to Mollie is not a tombstone, but a wall. David Greenfield

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271119/abolishice-abolished-mollie-tibbetts-daniel-greenfield

In July, as the left chanted “Abolish ICE,” calling for the end of immigration enforcement, a Mexican illegal abolished Mollie Tibbetts. The two stories came together in August as Cristhian Bahena Rivera led law enforcement to the body of the 20-year-old college student that he had buried in a cornfield.

On the same day that Mollie was murdered, the House voted on a resolution supporting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) for fighting to keep Americans safe.

34 Democrats and one “Republican,” Rep. Justin Amash, an anti-Trump fanatic who votes with the Dems where it counts, voted against ICE and immigration enforcement. 133 Democrats voted “Present,” including Pelosi and Hoyer. Only 18 Democrats voted in support of H.Res. 990.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Dem Minority Whip, called support for ICE a “sham and a distraction” from the more important issue of “the safety of those who come here seeking asylum.”

But there was no asylum for Mollie and other American women from the illegal migrant murderers.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the first to call for abolishing ICE and replacing it with a pro-illegal organization, responded to Mollie’s murder by gazing blankly at the camera, and saying, “I know this is hard” for her family and people in Iowa, but that the “real problems” lie in the suffering of illegal aliens.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Bombs of August By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/23/the-bombs-of

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium-fueled atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 repeated the attack on Nagasaki, Japan, with an even more powerful plutonium bomb.

Less than a month after the second bombing, Imperial Japan agreed to formally surrender on Sept. 2. That date marked the official end of World War II—the bloodiest human or natural catastrophe in history, accounting for more than 65 million dead.

Each August, Americans in hindsight ponder the need for, the morality of, and the strategic rationale behind the dropping of the two bombs. Yet President Harry Truman’s decision 73 years ago to use the novel, terrifying weapons was not considered particularly controversial, either right before or right after the attacks. Both cities were simply military targets.

Hiroshima was the headquarters of a Japanese army unit, and a key manufacturing center and port. Nagasaki—a secondary target after clouds and smoke obscured the city of Kokura—was the site of a huge Mitsubishi munitions plant.

Yet the sheer destructive power of the two bombs—the 15-kiloton “Little Boy” Hiroshima bomb, and the 21-kiloton “Fat Man” Nagasaki bomb—ensured catastrophic civilian casualties well beyond soldiers and munitions-plant workers. During the blasts, and long afterward due to radiation showers, perhaps 150,000 Japanese were killed.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Not So Fine Madness By Michael Walsh

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/22/a-not-so

Today, the emperor to be feared is not Donald Trump, it is the D.C. mob itself, inflaming the nation via the media, both social and anti-social. And mob rule never ends well, neither for the country nor the mob.

Near the end of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, in the first century A.D., with the emperor having removed himself from Rome and living out his dissipated life on the isle of Capri, the Eternal City was gripped by a kind of madness. Plots and rumors of plots were everywhere; senators of high standing and noble birth were accused of everything from treason to the slightest trifle, and were executed—their veins were opened, they were strangled in jail, or they fell on their swords. Noblewomen were banished or murdered on whispers of adultery. To even associate with one who had fallen into the chaos of disfavor was tantamount to a death sentence.

Guilt-by-association was rampant, especially in the wake of the plot by Sejanus—as Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, once numbered among Tiberius’s intimates—against the emperor. Anyone associated with Sejanus effectively was liquidated. The madness persisted through the brief reign of Caligula, and extended into the rule of Claudius and, of course, Nero. Any chance Rome might have had of a restoration of the Republic vanished in a welter of blood and legal savagery. Forget Gibbon’s theory about the destructive nature of Christianity upon the Roman spirit: practically from the birth of Christ, the Empire had already sown the seeds of its destruction in the ambition, venality, and cruelty of men—and all based on a lust for absolute power.

POLITICS Comments turned off

More Muslim Candidates for Political Office By Janet Levy

Posted By on August 23rd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/more_muslim_

According to an Associated Press report issued in July this year, close to 100 Muslims filed to run for federal or state offices in the current election cycle, and nearly half made it through to the primaries. Meanwhile, numerous other Muslim candidates are campaigning for seats on local planning commissions, school boards, library committees, and other positions of influence at the county and city levels.

The proliferation of Muslim candidates may appear to some as positive and benign participation in American democracy by an emerging minority, but it cannot be denied that a Muslim plan to usurp American democracy has existed for decades. Careful scrutiny of this new wave of Muslim candidates yields a number with questionable backgrounds, motivations, and support groups, whose motives may be to implement the plan.

The plan to infiltrate and take over American democracy is explained in a 1987 strategic document, “An Explanatory Memorandum,” written and approved by the Muslim Brotherhood, a political organization with ties to the fundamentalist terrorist organization Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood has itself been designated a terrorist organization by seven nations, including Egypt, where the Brotherhood began in 1928. The memorandum calls for the elimination of the U.S. Constitution and its replacement with an Islamic government under sharia law. It spells out its “process of settlement” as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within. It calls for the establishment of political organizations designed to train and promote the Muslim Brotherhood goal of establishing the Quran as the sole authority for the Muslim family, individual, community, and state.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Kavanaugh Legitimate? Senate Democrats now want to deny Trump the appointment power.

Posted By on August 22nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-kavanaugh-legitimate-1534979653

We figure we’ve seen everything, but then Chuck Schumer keeps providing a daily education in weird political science. The Senate Democratic leader on Tuesday attempted the double bank shot of claiming that Brett Kavanaugh shouldn’t be confirmed for the Supreme Court because Michael Cohen copped a guilty plea.

“It is unseemly for the President of the United States to be picking a Supreme Court Justice who could soon be, effectively, a juror in a case involving the President himself,” Mr. Schumer declared, picking up a trope that has quickly become part of the liberal echo chamber. Senators Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Ed Markey (his own private Idaho) cancelled meetings with Judge Kavanaugh, with Mr. Markey saying he is now an “illegitimate” nominee.

So let’s see. Donald Trump is the elected President with the power of appointment under the Constitution, but because his former lawyer has pleaded guilty to evading taxes and paying off a couple of Mr. Trump’s alleged mistresses, Mr. Trump no longer enjoys the powers of the Presidency under Article II. This novel interpretation of presidential authority somehow eluded James Madison.

As for Judge Kavanaugh being a “juror” for Mr. Trump if he is confirmed to the High Court, the Chief Justice presides over Senate impeachment trials. Associate Justices have no role. The jury is 100 Senators, who get a vote only after the House impeaches a President.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Mueller Can’t Subpoena Trump The president can rely on a Clinton-era precedent—one that doesn’t involve Starr or Lewinsky. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

Posted By on August 22nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-mueller-cant-subpoena-trump-1534973736

Donald Trump’s lawyers have signaled he won’t agree to a voluntary interview with special counsel Robert Mueller. If Mr. Mueller insists, he will have to subpoena the president. To enforce a subpoena, the special counsel would have to go to court and meet a highly exacting standard, showing what he wants and why he needs it. He would be unlikely to succeed, given that Mr. Trump already has cooperated extensively with the investigation, producing 1.4 million documents and making dozens of White House staffers available for interviews.

The leading precedent is a 1997 opinion, In re Sealed Case, by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The case involved the independent counsel investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was accused of receiving unlawful gifts. The independent counsel sought to obtain sensitive documents produced in the course of an internal White House inquiry. These materials involved the preparation of a report to then-President Clinton himself. Although Mr. Clinton had directed that most of the materials be provided, he asserted executive privilege to withhold some items.

At issue in particular was information regarding whether Mr. Clinton should discipline or fire Mr. Espy, who did resign. To justify producing such sensitive materials involving “the exercise of [the president’s] appointment and removal power, a quintessential and non-delegable presidential power,” the court required the independent counsel to demonstrate with “specificity” why he needed the materials and why he could not get them, or equivalent evidence, from another source. (Mr. Espy was acquitted in 1998.)

Mr. Mueller’s initial charge was to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. But his investigation has expanded to cover whether Mr. Trump has obstructed justice. The president’s critics say his obstructive acts include urging then-FBI Director James Comey to “go easy” on former national security adviser Mike Flynn, subsequently firing Mr. Comey, and his public criticism of Mr. Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

There are significant factual disputes about these episodes, but all involve the president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers as chief executive, including the power to appoint and remove high-level executive-branch officials, to supervise the performance of their duties (as in the Espy case), and to determine law-enforcement priorities. We have argued in these pages that the president cannot obstruct justice by exercising the discretionary powers of his office, especially in determining whether and why to fire high-level presidential appointees like Mr. Comey. According to the two leaked letters from Mr. Trump’s lawyers to Mr. Mueller, they take essentially the same view. CONTINUE AT SITE

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Emerging Tech Impacting The Security Industry Chuck Brooks

Posted By on August 22nd, 2018

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/08/22/emerging-tech-impacting-the-security-industry/#61e28aa5429a

Emerging technologies are already impacting how we live and work. They’re also changing how we approach, plan, and integrate security operations. With the advent of artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, the Internet of Things, augmented reality, materials science, 3-D printing, and data analytics, the security industry is being transformed.

Certainly, we are living in an era where innovation, agility and imagination are all essential in order to keep pace with the exponential technological transformation taking place. For security, both physical and cyber, the equation is the same catalyzing many new potential applications for emerging technologies.

Some of the applied verticals in homeland security where I personally see emerging technologies are making an impact include:

Counter terrorism and law enforcement informatics via predictive analytics and artificial intelligence
Real-time horizon scanning and data mining for threats and information sharing
Automated cybersecurity and information assurance
Enhanced Surveillance (chemical and bio detection sensors, cameras, drones, facial recognition, license plate readers)
Simulation and augmented reality technologies for training and modeling
New non-lethal technologies such as: acoustics systems, chemicalsmarkers, communications systems, entanglement systems, optical devices, non-penetrating projectiles and munitions
Safety and security equipment (including bullet and bomb proof) made with lighter and stronger materials
Advanced forensics enabled by enhanced computing capabilities (including future quantum computing)
Interoperable communications, soon to be bolstered by 5G for First Responders
Situational awareness capabilities via GPS for disaster response and crisis response scenarios
Biometrics: assured identity security screening solutions by bio-signature: (every aspect of your physiology can be used as a bio-signature. Measure unique heart/pulse rates, electrocardiogram sensor, blood oximetry, skin temperature)
Robotic Policing (already happening in Dubai!)