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Western Europe’s Disconnect On Islamic Antisemitism From Sweden to Germany, Europe’s justice system fails its Jewish citizenry. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270580/western-europes-disconnect-islamic-antisemitism-ari-lieberman

This past week, a Swedish court found two “Palestinians” and a Syrian guilty of attempting to set fire to Sweden’s second largest synagogue through use of petrol bombs. The terrorist attack occurred on December 9, 2017 in the city of Gothenburg, and though no one was hurt, some 20 people present in the synagogue at the time of the attack were briefly forced to seek shelter in the synagogue’s cellar.

Two of the perpetrators received two years in prison for their respective roles in the hate crime while a third was sentenced to one year and three months. The punishment meted out by the court represents a travesty of justice and is nothing short of farcical. In the United States, a similar crime would have resulted in far greater punishment.

Under the New York Penal Law for example, this form of arson would have generated a term of between 5 to 25 years. In other words, had these criminals committed the crime in New York, their minimum sentence would have been more than double than what was handed down by the Swedish court. The meek and utterly pathetic Swedish sentence demonstrates a persistent unwillingness on the part of Sweden’s political and judicial echelons to address the growing problem of anti-Semitic hate crimes committed by Sweden’s migrant population.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Trump Administration Combats Discrimination Against American Workers ICE investigation uncovers company that defrauded Americans out of jobs. Michael Cutler

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270570/trump-administration-combats-discrimination-michael-cutler
Immigration fraud has been identified as a key method of entry and embedding for international terrorists, and fugitives from justice and for transnational gang members. This was the underlying premise for my booklet, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.

However immigration fraud may also be committed by companies who seek to create the illusion of complying with our nation’s immigration laws while, in reality, discriminating against American workers by hiring foreign workers for whom they apply for temporary work visas such as the H-2B visa.

It is important to remember that prior to World War II the primary authority for the enforcement and administration of our nation’s immigration laws was primarily vested in the Labor Department to protect American workers from unfair competition from foreign workers. This was of particular importance back then as America was attempting to dig out of the Great Depression.

Our immigration laws were enacted to protect national security, American lives and the livelihoods of Americans.

Nevertheless, wacky candidates for political office such as television actress Cynthia Nixon, who is seeking to unseat New York Governor’s Andrew Cuomo, has called for dismantling ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as reported in the June 22, 2018 New York Post article, Cynthia Nixon labels ICE a ‘terrorist organization’

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Left Loses the Judiciary The golden age of conservative jurisprudence is here. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270583/left-loses-judiciary-daniel-greenfield

Fisher v. University of Texas protected racial discrimination in college admissions.

Justice Kennedy wrote the decision joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Breyer. The court’s only African-American justice dissented. As did Roberts and Alito. Scalia had been the most vigorous of the Supreme Court members in challenging racial preferences in college admissions. But he had passed away.

The 4-3 decision that continued the shameful tradition of progressive racist jurisprudence will become an impossible relic once President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee joins Gorsuch on the bench.

As we wrap up a season of Supreme Court decisions successfully reaffirming constitutional law, if at times only narrowly, it’s time to look forward to the coming restoration of our founding document.

And the restoration of our freedoms, our dignity and our honor.

The early years of the Trump administration have seen both the worst and the best of the judiciary. Federal judges joined the leftist resistance by seizing the power to decide everything from immigration policy down to whom the President of the United States can block on Twitter. These decisions weren’t just power grabs, they ignored basic law and precedent, and not to mention checks and balances.

The President spent months having his legitimate authority of office crippled while waiting for the Supreme Court to intervene. And sometimes these interventions, as in Trump v. Hawaii, were shockingly narrow. Without Gorsuch, the 5-4 decision, in which the court’s four leftists insisted on denying Trump the authority of his office, would have been the verdict of the Supreme Court and the law of the land.

During the election, Never Trumpers told us that a Republican Senate could check Hillary Clinton. Now, George Will and other GOP defectors insist that the Senate needs to be turned over to the Democrats.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Success of Socialist Candidates Would Mean a Return to Poverty and Tyranny By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/socialists-like-ben-jealous-and-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-would-bring-back-the-dark-ages/
“Ben Jealous and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t really “progressives.” Their big government platform is actually quite regressive. ”

On Tuesday, two veterans of the 2016 campaign launched by self-identified socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won important upsets in Democratic primaries. Sanders himself congratulated Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and former NAACP Chair Ben Jealous, who each defeated rivals endorsed by the Democratic Party. Their victories have been hailed as “progressive,” but the socialist ideology they pursue is truly regressive, and would resurrect the age-old tragedy of a pre-free market command economy with fewer options and more poverty.

Sanders declared that Jealous’ victory “showed that running a progressive, issue-oriented campaign can bring all working people together in the fight for justice.”

What issues does Sanders consider “progressive”? An ever-increasing government control of the economy, heavy on redistributing wealth. But don’t take my word for it — examine Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign platform. Here it is, complete with some snarky explanations courtesy of America Rising.

Ocasio-Cortez promises “Medicare For All,” the standard Sanders approach to health care, “free” public universities and trade schools, guaranteed jobs for everyone, a 100 percent renewable “infrastructure overhaul,” and guaranteed housing. How would she pay for all this largess? “Taxing Wall Street.”

Riiiight. Even if you confiscated every single dollar in the stock exchange, that would not come close to covering the cost of all these programs. In the process, you would be killing the engine of growth that enables jobs, goods, and services to exist in the free market in the first place.

In short, full implementation of this plan is not only economically infeasible, it would derail America’s wealth-creating machine, bringing back a poverty and injustice all too familiar in human history. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Southeastern Louisiana University: Students Have Free-Speech Rights for Only Two Hours Per Week By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

The university has earned a “red light” rating — the worst possible — from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Southeastern Louisiana University, a public school, allows its students to exercise their rights to free speech and free assembly for only two hours per week.

The university’s speech-limiting rules can be found in its University Policy on Public Speech, Assembly, and Demonstrations:

“In accordance with US Federal Court decisions, the University has the right to regulate the time of speech or assembly activities. A two (2) hour time period will be provided to individual(s) and/or organizations for these purposes at Southeastern,” the policy states. “Speech/assembly activities will be limited to one two hour time limit per seven-day period, commencing the Monday of each week.”

In addition to restricting when speech is allowed, Southeastern also strictly limits where it is allowed. According to the policy, “Public discussion and/or peaceful public assembly or demonstration” is allowed “without prior administrative approval” in three locations only: the steps of and the “grassy area” near the Student Union Annex, the “grassy area in front of” a student-activity center, and the “Presidential Plaza area.” Furthermore, students need to register to use these spaces for “public speech or assembly a minimum of seven (7) days in advance through the office of Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs.”

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

NYU Prof.: People Are Calling For ‘Civility’ to Protect ‘White Supremacy’ By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/nyu-professor-says-calls-for-civility-protect-white-supremacy/Apparently, calling for respectful political dialogue now aides white-nationalist extremists.

An educator at New York University is claiming that the real reason why people are calling for “civility” is because they want to protect “white supremacy.”

Simran Jeet Singh, the Henry R. Luce Initiative in Religion in International Affairs Post-Doctoral Fellow at NYU’s Center for Religion and Media, published a series of tweets about civility and whiteness on Monday night:

✔ @SikhProf
25 Jun

“Given how whiteness is rooted in European colonialism, it is easy to see how and why whiteness aims to make an exclusive claim to civility.”

Now, people have been debating “civility” ever since White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was kicked out of Red Hen restaurant for her association with President Trump. The controversy heated up even more after Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters defended the Red Hen, saying that people should accost Trump administration officials when they appear in public and “tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Of course, I certainly would defend the right of any private business-owner to kick someone out of his or her establishment for political reasons. That’s just how things work in a free society, and living in a free society is a good thing. Personally, however, I would never do such a thing. Yes, I am among those who think that there’s a lot to be said for civility — and, regardless of what Singh may believe, that doesn’t make me a fan of white supremacy.

Like many people who have engaged in this debate, I would argue that civility is important on both sides of the aisle. I think that Democrats and other non-Trump supporters should behave civilly toward Trump supporters, and that Trump supporters should behave civilly toward their political opponents as well. I’ve seen people on each side display hostility toward those on the other, and I think that that’s always the wrong way to go. For one thing, it just isn’t nice. Having a political disagreement with a person isn’t a reason to dismiss that person’s humanity, and I’ve seen far too many people fail to recognize this fact.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Supreme Court Delivers Another Stinging Rebuke to Anti-Free-Speech Authoritarians By David French

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/janus-case-free-speech-wins-supreme-court-again/

In Janus v. AFSCME, the court struck a strong blow against government-compelled speech for the third time this term.

Perhaps the worst government affront to the rights of conscience, far worse than mere censorship, is compelled speech, the practice of forcing Americans to fund or express ideas they find abhorrent. It’s one thing to tell a man or woman that they can’t speak. It’s another thing entirely to compel them to use their voice, their artistic talents, or their pocketbook in support of a cultural, political, or religious enterprise with which they disagree.

Yet that’s exactly what the state of Colorado tried to do in punishing Christian baker Jack Phillips for refusing to use his artistic talents in the service of a gay-marriage ceremony. That’s exactly what the state of California tried to do in legally mandating that pro-life pregnancy centers advertise for free abortions. And that’s exactly what the state of Illinois tried to do in requiring non-union public employees to fund union activities.

Today, the Supreme Court released its decision in the last of these cases, Janus v. State, County, and Municipal Employees. At issue was an Illinois law that forced state employees to subsidize public-employee unions, “even if they choose not to join and strongly object to the positions the union takes in collective bargaining and related activities.” Illinois required these employees to pay a so-called agency fee that funded (among other things) collective bargaining, lobbying, social activities, membership meetings, and litigation.

Many of those items directly impact key and contentious elements of public policy, matters of public concern. And public employees themselves have widely divergent opinions. Yet they were all forced to fund the same point of view. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, spoke clearly:

When speech is compelled, however, additional damage is done. In that situation, individuals are coerced into betraying their convictions. Forcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning, and for this reason, one of our landmark free speech cases said that a law commanding “involuntary affirmation” of objected-to beliefs would require “even more immediate and urgent grounds” than a law demanding silence.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Solzhenitsyn 40 Years Later By Herbert London

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/solzhenitsyn_40_years_later.html
Herbert London is president of the London Center for Policy Research

In June 1978 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard titled “A World Split Apart.” It was a speech devoted to the emergence of “different worlds,” including our own Western society. On one side of the divide is a freedom diverted to unbridled passion with the accumulation of material riches to be valued above all else. Man is the center in this equation, as there isn’t any power above him, resulting in a moral poverty searching for meaning.

In days after this speech, the Fourth Estate accused Solzhenitsyn of “losing his balance,” of representing a “mind split apart.” He thought one could say what one thinks in the USA, but democracy expects to be admired. The press argued “the giant does not love us.”

Was Solzhenitsyn right? He did use positive signs in the heartland. “Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small town, and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing this speech.”

Now we have the luxury of examining the address forty years later. As I see it, Solzhenitsyn was “cautious” based on the way cultural conditions have unfolded over these four decades. The U.S. is preoccupied with material goals, a condition that has reached full efflorescence from the rationalist humanist tradition. The Higher Power to which Solzhenitsyn refers is in serial descent, having gone from more than 90 percent of the populace embracing God to about 70 percent, with the trend line in descent well established.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Scrubbing Laura Ingalls Wilder Is A Dangerous Step Toward Ignorance Pretending things that make us uncomfortable never happened isn’t going to make America better, or make American children more informed. By Holly Scheer

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/27/scrubbing-laura-ingalls-wilder-is-a-dangerous-step-toward-ignorance/

Few people are unfamiliar with the Little House on the Prairie book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her simple retellings of her childhood memories of life in the big woods of Wisconsin, to the prairie of the Dakota territories, to her life as a married frontier wife have captured the imaginations of generations of readers.

Wilder’s stories of her family’s journey west in a covered wagon, the careful details of the minutiae of their daily lives, and her descriptions of an America most commonly seen in history books should, without question, cement her place in history as a talented and important author. Wilder’s books also have served to introduce children for decades to disability issues, specifically blindness, and are an important look at the positive difference a supportive family can make for people with special needs. The enduring nature of her work is a testimony to her ability to write, and that talent and ability to capture reader’s minds and hearts led the Associate for Library Service to Children to name a literary award after her in 1952. Now her presence has been stripped from the the award, which has been renamed the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

Wilder’s removal came after repeated rounds of criticism that her books, written about her girlhood in the 1800s, contained racist and offensive characterizations most commonly of Native Americans. These complaints started in the 50s with a reader writing into Harper, the publisher of Wilder’s books, about sentences that she disagreed with. The publisher responded by rewording sections. These gentle rewordings quelled critiques until more recently, when statutes and school names became battle grounds for removing the presence of people with problematic parts of their history. No longer can Confederate leaders of the past have any public monuments. Their part in the Civil War renders them best forgotten, ripped from places where their names and images could remind people of uncomfortable parts of history. And here is where Wilder’s name and image are now being stripped away.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Court After Kennedy The consequential jurist has done the country a favor by retiring.

Posted By on June 28th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-court-after-kennedy-1530142949

Anthony Kennedy acted in the best interests of the Supreme Court and his own legacy Wednesday by deciding to step down after 30 years as an Associate Justice. The fight to replace him was always going to be titanic, and by retiring on July 31 he gives a Republican President and Senate an opening to nominate and confirm a replacement with the best chance of keeping the Court tethered to the Constitution.

The raw political reality is that Democrats will refuse to confirm any nominee likely to be chosen by Donald Trump if they win Senate control in November. They are still furious that Senate Republicans refused to confirm Merrick Garland in 2016 after the death of Antonin Scalia, and the political left would insist that they return the favor through 2020, and 2024 if they have to.

That could leave the Court with eight Justices for as long as three years or more, with a 4-4 ideological split on many contentious issues. The Court now has a chance for a full complement again by the start of its October term. The 81-year-old Justice Kennedy has done right by the country and the Court.

A Republican nominee also offers the best chance to sustain Justice Kennedy’s legacy, despite the fear and loathing you hear on the left. Democrats are already predicting the demise of abortion rights, the end of gay marriage, and no doubt we’ll be hearing about the revival of Dred Scott before the confirmation hearings on Justice Kennedy’s replacement are over. But that overlooks the entirety of Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence, which is far richer than the cultural cases like Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Obergefell v. Hodges for which he is celebrated on the left.