EDUCATION Comments turned off

Philly Schools Add Muslim Holidays by Cutting Jewish One By Johanna Markind

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/philly_schools_add_muslim_holidays_by_cutting_jewish_one.html

Back when public schools were overwhelmingly Christian, scheduling religious holidays meant closing for Christmas and, in some places, for Jewish high holidays. As American school populations change, deciding for which religious holidays schools should close and on what basis becomes more complex.

According to Anti-Defamation League religious freedom counsel David Barkey, consistently with the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, “[p]ublic schools can’t close to observe a holiday, but can if there’s an appropriate secular reason. The reason usually is the level of absenteeism” that would hamper schooling.

Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney suggested a different standard in announcing the city’s decision to close public schools for Muslim holidays. Rather than focusing on practical need, Kenney explained: “Our city was built on the idea that … the city welcomes all to worship and practice the faiths of our culture or our choosing[.] … We have to take into account how society sometimes ostracizes and eliminates people from the mainstream[.]” In other words, schools should close on minorities’ religious holidays so their adherents feel accepted.

Sadly, Philadelphia’s approach to holiday closures fails both standards. Its public schools closed June 12, 2018, in time for Muslim students to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, beginning June 15. Without determining whether the numbers of practitioners necessitated the change, Philadelphia added Muslim holidays to its calendar to make Muslims feel welcome – and paid for it partly by reducing Jewish holiday observances, school district documents show. What’s more, the school district underhandedly failed to identify the reasons for the change.

Philadelphia Changes Its School Calendar

On May 31, 2016, Philadelphia school district superintendent Dr. William Hite announced: “I’m honored and proud to announce that the school district fully intends to honor the eid celebrations for the many Muslim students and staff that celebrate these holidays.” The 2016-17 academic calendar had already been finalized, Hite explained, so the holidays would be added in future years.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Tommy Robinson’s Last Stand By Anne-Christine Hoff

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/tommy_robinsons_last_stand.html

Tommy Robinson’s imprisonment and the events that followed show just how swiftly Britain has become Sharia-compliant. The country has already submitted to its dhimmi status within Islam even though their Muslim population makes up just 5% of the country’s total population.

According to The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians Under Islam by Bat Yeor, dhimmi is an Arabic term used to describe the second-class status of non-Muslims in Islamic-conquered lands. Sharia deemed dhimmis to be subjugated individuals with fewer legal and human rights than Muslims. Laws in these lands denied due process to dhimmis. Strict rules of behavior r vis-à-vis the conquering Muslims were enforced by law. Dhimmis by law had to treat Muslims with deference, meaning they had to control their natural resentments against their subjugation or else face severe punishments. They had to, for example, not wear certain colors. Their dress had to be distinctive and identify them as dhimmis so as to prevent non-Muslims from walking in Muslim areas or mixing with Muslims.

The tragedy of Britain’s appeasement is that its dhimmitude is being enforced for the most part by the non-Muslim British majority — by the British police, the British elites, the British media, and the British government — while there is a campaign of terror being waged against the sensible majority who rightly resist being made into dhimmi subjects while they still constitute the demographic majority.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What You Missed from Michael Horowitz’s Testimony By Julie Kelly

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/22/trumps-message-full-transparency

In the media’s rush to exploit the plight of migrant children this week, the public testimony of Michael Horowitz has been buried or, more likely, ignored by the news media.

Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, testified for more than 10 hours on Capitol Hill, taking questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday and from a joint congressional committee on Tuesday.

Since the June 14 release of his 568-page report on the department’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, Horowitz has been criticized for concluding that the agency’s decision to forego charges against Clinton was unrelated to the political views of those in charge.

“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations,” Horowitz said, “including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions we reviewed, or that the justifications offered for these decisions were pretextual.”

That finding seems to runs afoul of much of the report’s content, which included a trove of text messages showing top FBI brass favored Hillary Clinton and despised Donald Trump. (The report did suggest that the decision by lead investigator Peter Strzok to prioritize the Trump-Russia counterintelligence probe over the Weiner laptop investigation in September-October 2016 was not “free from bias.”)

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Immigration Policy : The wrinkle in the German immigration story is Muslim migrant attacks on Jews. Joseph Puder

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270518/german-immigration-policy-

Germany’s immigration policy under Chancellor Angela Merkel is under attack again, this time from within her own government. There is however another wrinkle to the immigration story, it is the case of Muslim migrant attacks against Jews in Germany. The recent rape and murder of a Jewish girl named Susanna Maria Feldman, 14, from the city of Mainz, in Western Germany, by a 19-year Muslim migrant, that Merkel enthusiastically admitted into Germany, stirred the country, and raised further questions about the open-door immigration policy of Merkel’s government.

Angela Merkel’s coalition government may be torn apart on the issue of immigration. Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian conservative party, has pledged to reverse Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy toward migrants. Germany has absorbed 1.4 million migrants since 2015, the vast majority of them being Muslims from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Seehofer, the Interior Minister in Merkel’s coalition government is concerned by the rise of the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) whose success in the polls, and its surprise showing in the 2017 election (capturing 12.6% of the votes) may now threaten the supremacy of his party in Bavaria. State elections in Bavaria are scheduled for October this year. For now, Merkel and Seehofer have agreed to wait for a resolution to the immigrant issue at next week’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE PERIL OF POLITICIZED ANTISEMITISM Jewish Democrats’ libels against Trump mask a dire problem in their ranks. Caroline Glick

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-The-peril-of-politicized-antisemitism-560599
Trump shows his friendship and respect for Israel every single day.

A Google search of the terms “Trump Nazi,” brings up 70,900,000 results.

There are a number of distressing aspects to this state of affairs.First and foremost, it is pure libel to call US President Donald Trump a Nazi.

His daughter Ivanka is Jewish. His daughter-in-law is Jewish. Half his grandchildren are Jewish and his non-Jewish ex-daughter-in-law is half Jewish.

How many Nazis have Hanukka celebrations in their homes starring their Jewish grandchildren?

Beyond his Jewish immediate family, Trump has shown extraordinary friendship to the Jewish state. It isn’t simply that Trump kept the promise none if his predecessors kept and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, although that would have sufficed to prove his friendship.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Weaponizing Compassion What the controversy over illegal immigrant families is really about. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270514/weaponizing-compassion-bruce-thornton

The Democrat “resistance” has managed to break its own record for hysterical and hypocritical invective. Literalizing the clichéd punch line of a thousand gags––“Will no one think of the children!!!” ––the Dems are hyperventilating about the illegal alien parents and their children being separated upon detention, as the law requires. Once again, we see how much “conspicuous compassion,” as Alan Bloom called it, has become a weapon of politics, one that damages our security and interests.

In this case, the disconnect between fact and spin is more glaring than usual. No matter that ICE and Homeland Security are working within the constraints of court rulings and the law that Congress passed and can change any time. No matter that often it’s impossible to certify that the detained adults are the actual parents, or that human traffickers aren’t using this dodge to enter the country with their prey. No matter that the alternative is to turn these poorly vetted illegal aliens loose (as Obama did, as a form of de facto amnesty), merely on their word that they will show up for a hearing. No matter that across the country, Child Protective Services are “ripping children from their parents’ arms,” as are the children of those arrested on suspicion of a crime. Do we set a criminal suspect free on his own recognizance just because he’s accompanied by his kid?

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

TED WILLIAMS: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”

Posted By on June 21st, 2018

Ted Williams was so good at baseball, he had more than one nickname — “The Kid,” “The Splendid Splinter,” and “Teddy Ballgame” — but the only nickname he wanted was “The greatest hitter who ever lived.” During a remarkable 19-year career as a left fielder for the Boston Red Sox (for which he was named an All-Star 19 times), Williams cemented his reputation as one of the best players in the history of the game. But his life was bigger than baseball, and Nick Davis’s film TED WILLIAMS tells the full story of Williams’s life in a delightful, complex portrait of an American hero.

AMERICAN MASTERS PRESENTS
TED WILLIAMS: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”

an Albert M. Tapper Production
in association with Major League Baseball, Nick Davis Productions, and Big Papi Productions

Produced and Directed by Nick Davis
Narrated by Jon Hamm
Edited by Josh Freed
Music by Joel Goodman

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Catcher Was a Spy: Moe Berg Led a Life Worth a Better Biopic Than This By Kyle Smith

Posted By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/movie-review-the-catcher-was-a-spy-moe-berg-biopic/The writing and directing are flat, and Paul Rudd is miscast as the curious, multifaceted Moe Berg.

The major-league baseball catcher Moe Berg had a lengthy if undistinguished career on the diamond: 15 seasons, including five with the Chicago White Sox and five more in the rival hosiery of the Boston team. But it was his off-field hobby that earned him the honor of a 1994 biography by Nicholas Dawidoff and a new film adaptation, both entitled The Catcher Was a Spy.

Tinker, Tailor, Catcher, Spy? Movies telling yarns about the dark arts of espionage are notoriously difficult to pull off, being cerebral and internal, which is why most spy movies are simply action movies with some intel jargon thrown in. That isn’t really an option when dramatizing the case of Berg, though the movie tries to James Bond-ify him with, for instance, a ludicrous early scene in which the veteran, nearly washed-up ballplayer (Paul Rudd) beats a rookie teammate into strawberry jelly because the younger man is snooping on him. In life, unlike in spy movies, you’re not actually entitled to assault someone for observing you in a public place, and the scene has the further fault of showing the elusive, pensive Berg acting completely out of character.

Berg’s life proved well worth a biography, full of incident and intrigue and unanswered questions, but it isn’t obvious that there is a movie in here, given the lack of any overtly cinematic accomplishments on his résumé. A bit desperate for filler, the movie at one point resorts to showing Berg starring in a pickup game of baseball amongst G.I.s. As he was an actual professional baseball player, though, albeit one with a career .243 batting average, it’s hardly surprising that he can knock the hide off a baseball that’s being served up to him by a non-athlete.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

America’s Withdrawal from the UNHRC Is a Win for Human-Rights Promotion By Jimmy Quinn

Posted By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/americas-united-nations-human-rights-council-withdrawal/

There’s more to be gained at the U.N. by sidelining dictators through structural reform than by abetting their treachery through acquiescence.

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, keeping her promise to “take names” at the U.N., announced America’s withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council — “a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias” — beside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Objections abounded. Human Rights Watch complained that the withdrawal represents a “one-dimensional human rights policy in which the US defends Israeli abuses from criticism above all else.” Kremlin officials crowed that the U.S. had “inflicted a powerful blow to its human rights reputation.” Amnesty International secretary-general Salil Shetty said that the decision demonstrated a “complete disregard for the fundamental rights and freedoms the U.S. claims to uphold.”

Once again, Haley was right and her critics were wrong. America’s withdrawal from the UNHRC is a boon for human-rights promotion and a win for multilateral diplomacy that actually falls far afield of the Trump doctrine’s hard-edged unilateralism and apparent disregard for values-based diplomacy. The move constitutes a redoubling of America’s commitment to its fundamental ideals and the rules-based international order.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up? James Hansen issued dire warnings in the summer of 1988. Today earth is only modestly warmer. By Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue

Posted By on June 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up-1529623442

James E. Hansen wiped sweat from his brow. Outside it was a record-high 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, as the NASA scientist testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a prolonged heat wave, which he decided to cast as a climate event of cosmic significance. He expressed to the senators his “high degree of confidence” in “a cause-and-effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obama’s environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have done—and to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A “business as usual,” as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and ’80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the “most plausible,” and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.