ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Relationship Charade: Walking on Eggshells is not Reconciliation by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

Many articles have been written about the growing trend of adult children choosing estrangement in American families. The recent Thanksgiving holiday has highlighted this alarming movement toward the dissolution of family bonds of love and loyalty. What is the source of this dreadful shift? What happened to honor thy father and mother?

Sheri McGregor, M.A. has written an important book titled Done With The Crying that explores the disturbing increase in families with adult children who disown their parents. There are, of course, appropriate conditions for estrangement but the current trend appears baffling to the 9,000 confused and grieving parents surveyed who cannot fathom why the children they have loved for a lifetime are choosing to reject them. Done With The Crying attempts to help devastated parents accept their loss and move on with their lives. McGregor is asking “What now?” I am asking “Why now?”

Generation gaps between parents and their adult children have traditionally been resolved with courtesy, respect, and a sense of humor. Adult children honored their parents even when they disagreed with them and chose a different path for their own lives. A fundamental level of gratitude for the parent’s efforts and dedication allowed the differences to be minimized and the family bonds maximized. What has changed??

The bewildered parents McGregor describes cannot accept the estrangement because they simply do not understand it. She describes the staggering lack of respect, restraint, gratitude, and overarching sense of entitlement in adult children’s demand for parental conformity including restricting their parents’ freedom of speech. In the upside-down world of self-seeking millennials the parent/child role has been reversed. Parents are expected to conform to their adult child’s new norms. If the parent refuses the adult child withdraws himself to a “safe space” seeking protection from the “toxic” ideas of his parents. Toxicity, like hate speech, has been redefined as anything the adult child opposes.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Social Media, Fake News, and Free Speech Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

Free speech has come under attack on two fronts since Donald Trump was elected president. Many unhappy with his victory charge that Russia interfered in our election on his behalf by using social media like Facebook and Twitter, which should be held responsible for the content on their sites. Meanwhile, some political activists and politicians are calling for a revision of our free speech laws to prevent “hate” speech and “fake news” from polluting the public square. Everybody is complaining about false or biased reporting that is distracting and confusing voters with disinformation and appeals to unsavory emotions. One of the pillars of American exceptionalism, the right of citizens to speak freely, no matter how rough or hateful their words, seems to be tottering.

The revelations that Russian propaganda exploited social media to affect the outcome of the election has resulted in Twitter, Facebook, and Google executives getting hauled before Congress to answer questions about the parts their businesses may have played in supposed Russian electoral interference. According to the testimony of these executives, Russian-sponsored Facebook ads reached 135 million American voters over 32 months, and the New York Times reports “more than 126 million users potentially saw inflammatory political ads bought by a Kremlin-linked company, the Internet Research Agency.” Many Congressmen from both parties demanded to know what social media companies will do to control the dissemination of questionable or hostile information.

Similarly, even before the violent demonstrations by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia last summer, critics were demanding a revision of our First Amendment in order to make it resemble the laws in Europe that prohibit “hate speech” and speech that attempts to “spread, incite, promote, or justify hatred based on intolerance.” The “free marketplace of ideas,” critics argue, in the age of the internet is no longer adequate for sorting out “legitimate” speech from hateful propaganda that, if left unchecked, could lead to political tyranny, as happened in Germany under Nazism in the in the 1920s and ’30s. The safety of the larger political community should take precedence over the right of individual citizens to speak their minds.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fourth Amendment Showdown The Supreme Court takes up phone searches in the digital age.

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

How difficult should it be for law enforcement to get cellphone records showing a suspect’s past location? That’s the question before the Supreme Court on Wednesday in Carpenter v. U.S., which challenges decades of Fourth Amendment law.

Timothy Carpenter is serving 116 years in prison for a string of armed robberies. During the investigation, the government obtained 127 days of location data from Carpenter’s wireless carrier, showing that his phone connected to cell towers near the crime scenes.

The first question is whether this constitutes an “unreasonable search,” which would trigger Fourth Amendment protections requiring a warrant. The government says no, arguing the location data didn’t belong to Carpenter, but were business records created by the phone company. This distinction is important, since it invokes the “third-party doctrine” that police investigations have relied on for decades.

This doctrine mirrors the basic idea that law enforcement may gather evidence from witnesses. Just as police can canvass neighborhood shopkeepers, they ought to be able to ask a phone carrier whether its network “saw” the suspect. Ten minutes before the robbery, did he make a call that was handled by a cell tower down the street? Or was he texting in Toledo?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Denzel Washington Is Making Sense He emphasizes the need for discipline at home, while Betsy DeVos considers withdrawing a decree against discipline at school. Jason Riley

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

Denzel Washington made some remarks the other day that bear highlighting if only because sensible social commentary from Hollywood celebrities is so rare.

At a New York screening of Mr. Washington’s latest film, “ Roman J. Israel, Esq. ,” the actor was asked by a reporter: “For black people in particular, do you think that we can truly make change as things are right now?”

Mr. Washington, who is 62, gave a pointed response. “Well, it starts in the home. If the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets. I saw it in my generation and every generation before me and every one since.” He added, “If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother and prison becomes your home.”

In the film, Mr. Washington portrays a defense attorney, and reporters at the screening pressed him to weigh in on current debates about race and the U.S. criminal justice system. Instead, the actor doubled down on his message of strong families and personal responsibility. “It starts with how you raise your children,” he said. “If a young man doesn’t have a father figure, he’ll go find a father figure. So you can’t blame the system. It’s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them.”

What is remarkable is not that the Oscar-winning actor, who has been the national spokesman for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America since 1992, expressed these sentiments. Such talk is commonplace in black churches and beauty salons and barbershops and community centers. What’s remarkable is that Mr. Washington opted to say what he did within earshot of so many whites. Black political leaders and activist organizations, in an effort to raise money and stay relevant, much prefer to focus on racial prejudice when publicly discussing black-white disparities. Mr. Washington broke with that protocol. In private, those on the black left might acknowledge that black children watch too much television and read too few books. In public, however, they blame the achievement gap on biased standardized tests and racist school administrators.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told reporters Monday that the administration is “looking closely” at reversing the Obama administration’s controversial approach to school discipline, which urged schools to take race into account when deciding whether to suspend a disruptive student. “It would be premature to say anything about that right now, but we want to make sure that all students have an opportunity to learn in an environment that’s safe,” she added. A 2014 guidance letter sent by Mrs. DeVos’s predecessor warned school districts that any racial imbalance in suspension and expulsion rates could trigger a federal civil-rights investigation. Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to attend violent schools and thus more likely to become the targets of bullies, policies that go easy on misbehaving students inevitably hurt low-income minorities the most.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Drama Queen Loses Her Head The woman who put the acting in acting director is deposed.

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

More hilarity ensued in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s game of thrones Tuesday when the acting acting director Leandra English got her head handed to her by a federal judge.

After doing photo-ops with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ms. English continued pretending to be the CFPB acting director. But by the day’s close, the drama queen was formally deposed. Federal judge Timothy Kelly denied Ms. English’s petition for a temporary restraining order to block Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney from serving as the real acting director. President Trump appointed Mr. Mulvaney on Friday under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act after Richard Cordray resigned and anointed Ms. English.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel affirmed the President’s authority to appoint Mr. Mulvaney. And even CFPB general counsel Mary McLeod affirmed this legal interpretation in a memo to staff on Saturday.

The opinion “confirms my oral advice to the Senior Leadership Team,” she wrote, which suggests that both Mr. Cordray and Ms. English were aware that their political stunt was illegal but went ahead anyway. So the supposedly noble Mr. Cordray was setting up his young protégé to be embarrassed.

Ms. English called up former CFPB senior attorney Deepak Gupta, who filed the lawsuit for her as an individual. To obtain a temporary restraining order, she’d have to show she would suffer immediate irreparable harm from being usurped—beyond the humiliation she’s inflicted on herself. She couldn’t and now must decide whether to continue as deputy under the real acting director or quit in embarrassment.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

IN PRAISE OF TRADE SCHOOLS : JIM CLEMENTS

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

From Trades to Riches: Profiting from Past Mistakes

Spray painting walls and hotwiring cars are not experiences most business leaders look for in job candidates. But a new focus at Boys Town is not only teaching at-risk kids how to overcome past mistakes but also to learn – and profit – from them.

Of course, helping at-risk youth conquer daunting obstacles is nothing new. This December, Boys Town celebrates 100 years of providing love and support to neglected children.

Many students come to our community because they have lived in a world without parental affection, without structure or boundaries. Many act out because they are bored and simply seeking attention; others have faced unthinkable abuse and neglect.

And while our overall mission of helping kids build happy, healthy and successful futures has stayed the same over these 100 years, the means by which we do that have changed with society.

Nowadays, a lot of kids are told their whole lives that they need to go to college and are made to feel inadequate when they don’t have a shot. At Boys Town, many of the students grew up in environments where they never even had a voice telling them about college.

That’s why classes teaching trades – like automotive, welding and electrician skills – are the perfect tools to capture the attention of otherwise distracted students while conveying some of life’s most important responsibilities. Kids who used to spray paint in the streets can use their talents in a productive environment. As a more extreme example, I’ve seen kids who used to hotwire cars learn to fix an engine. We take their real-life experience and apply it toward a positive end.

New research has found that a college degree no longer guarantees a higher income. Trade school is seen as an increasingly viable option to fix the country’s income gap, as well as an answer to the competitive challenges found in a world driven by artificial intelligence.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s in the Right in CFPB Tiff The law gives him the authority to appoint an acting director. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

Some legal questions are tough. The question of who should lawfully be considered the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is not one of them. President Trump unquestionably has the power to name Mick Mulvaney (his Senate-confirmed budget director) to the position, and he has done so. The lawsuit seeking to block this appointment, filed by the CFPB’s deputy director Leandra English — who hopes to take the job herself — is frivolous and offensive.

The CFPB is an unconstitutional monstrosity that ought to be abolished. Indeed, the current tiff is but a symptom of the underlying disease: The political progressives who created the CFPB sought to make it an “independent” agency, beyond political accountability and inter-branch checks and balances. It would be a boon if the dust-up over the acting leadership of the agency would spur a case that could invalidate the entire enterprise.

That is unlikely, though, so let’s stick to the narrow, easy question before us.

The CFPB, brainchild of former Harvard law professor (now senator) Elizabeth Warren, was rammed through by the Democrat-dominated Congress in 2010. Under the statute creating the CFPB (section 5491 of Title 12, U.S. Code), the director is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and the deputy is appointed by the director.

There was partisan infighting over leadership of the agency. Finally, in January 2012, President Obama unconstitutionally installed Cordray as a “recess appointment” despite the fact that the Senate was not actually in recess. Cordray was nevertheless confirmed in 2013, and he failed to fill the deputy position after it became vacant in August 2015. The acting deputy was David Silberman. Leandra English was Cordray’s chief of staff. On his last day in office, Cordray abruptly appointed English as deputy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Carr: OK, Fake Indian, time to either give up the claim or prove it

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

How much longer do we have to pretend that Elizabeth Warren is anything but a Fake Indian?

It happened again yesterday — President Trump referred to the senior senator from Massachusetts as “Pocahontas,” and the alt-left media went into paroxysms of fake outrage, as if it’s somehow “racism” to call out a fraud like the Fake Indian.

Isn’t the left supposed to despise “cultural appropriation?” What greater cultural appropriation could there be than for Elizabeth Warren to have falsely claimed an ethnic heritage in order to win not one, but two tenured Ivy League law professorships she had absolutely no shot of ever getting until she checked the box?

All of the alt-left pajama boys and trust-funders who were hyperventilating about this yesterday, let me ask you a question:

How come Pocahontas won’t take a DNA test so that we can find out, once and for all, how much Indian blood she really has, if any? Why has she refused my multiple generous offers to pay for her DNA test?

We know she has no card from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, because if she had one, we would have damn well seen it five years ago, when the questions were first raised.

Here’s some other stuff we know:

The New England Historic Genealogical Society can find zero — repeat, zero — evidence of any Native American “ancestors.” We do know that one of her forebears was in the Tennessee militia that forced the Cherokee west toward Oklahoma, and that another ancestor shot a drunken Native American off a horse in the Indian Territory at the turn of the 20th century.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

A Post ISIS Middle East Without A Strategy By Herbert London

Posted By on November 29th, 2017

The much discussed “Shiite Crescent” or an Iranian land corridor from Tehran to the Mediterranean may be a reality. To make matters even more complicated, U.S. policy or the lack thereof may have contributed to Iran’s regional hegemony.

After President Trump assumed office, he indicated a primary policy of defeating ISIS. Uniting U.S. Special Forces with Iraqi troops and Qud Revolutionary soldiers, the caliphate was destroyed including the stronghold in Raqqa and its last foothold in Syria’s Dair Ezzor province. The problem in the aftermath of these battles is that a plan for the future has not been forthcoming. In fact, the Iranian role in the defeat of ISIS elevated its stature and influence.

If the U.S. is serious about countering Iranian aggression, steps must be taken across this regional battle space. Should the Trump administration do nothing – a likely response – the Iranian Revolutionary Forces will assert political and economic dominance over the entire northern tier of the Middle East.

The last remaining obstacle to the realization of Iranian goals is a coalition of Syrian Kurds and Arabs known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Kept apart at present by a U.S. Russian confliction channel, both sides are securing critical territory. The question that remains about Trump’s Syria policy is whether it was designed to defeat the Islamic state or whether it is informed by the larger strategic view of Iran’s regional dominance. If the latter, President Trump must decide how and when he will deploy American troops as a counterweight to the Iranian surge. United States air power and Special Forces remain at the center of a capable combat force. Using these assets effectively Washington can assure SDF partners that it will remain in Syria even after Islamic State is defeated.

Finally, the U.S. and allies in Europe and the Gulf hold tens of billions of dollars in international assistance that Syria will need to recover from the Civil War. The U.S. also contends Assad must go and the basic rights of minorities, especially the Kurds, must be guaranteed. In order for these aims to be achieved the Iranian and Shia proxies in Syria must be displaced.

Surely this will not be easy since it involves new risks and costs. But doing nothing is costly as well. President Trump should articulate a strategy that boldly announces the U.S. opposition to the Shia Crescent with a ground game that consciously works to block Iranian hegemony in Iraq and Syria. To do less is to invite a war between Israel and Hezbollah – a proxy of Iran – and to cede vast control of strategic positions to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Sexual Power Dynamics: Examining the Missing Part of the Story To resolve the wave of sexual-assault allegations, it will be necessary to have a discussion that is capable of raising inconvenient, even unpleasant, facets of this whole business. By Douglas Murray

Posted By on November 28th, 2017

My essay last week on the worrying elision of the criminal and the minimal in the current wave of sexual-assault allegations seems to have stirred some colleagues. So at the risk of being accused of never taking “no” for an answer, let me jump straight back on in. For as Jonah Goldberg mentioned in his recent column, this whole realm is in flux, and debate is going to be needed if this panic is going to be resolved in a sensible manner.

In a column yesterday, Christina Hoff Sommers brilliantly dissected as well as lampooned some recent heights of the present frenzy, such as Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times who recently asked: “I seriously, sincerely wonder how all women don’t regard all men as monsters to be constantly feared.”

To which Sommers rightly responded by asking: “Does Manjoo include himself? Are his female colleagues at the Times suddenly in constant fear of him?”

Of course not. Manjoo is simply engaging in male posturing of the most prostrate and supplicant variety. If we are going to get beyond such posturing, it will also be necessary to have a discussion that is capable of raising inconvenient, even unpleasant, facets of this whole business.

To that end, there is still one aspect of all this that seems cordoned off. That is the whole issue of “power”: Who has it, who gives it, and who wields it. Given that it is almost impossible for a man to write about a woman’s experience in this area without being flayed alive, let me relay the story of somebody I once met some years ago.

The man was an acquaintance of a friend, was fairly attractive, and as such had decided to become an actor. Since acting is not, alas, an art in which talent will always out, a degree of networking is usually necessary for someone to succeed. Though heterosexual himself, this young man had come within the circle of an actor who was known to be gay. And since acting, like sport, is one of the few areas left where being gay is still thought to be a vast career drawback, the celebrated actor had kept the whole gay thing an open-ish secret.

Anyhow — the straight, aspiring actor mentioned in passing that he had been out on a couple of dates with this actor, though added that things had ended cooly. The cause was that a couple of dates in, the aspirant actor guessed that it might be time to drop into the conversation the fact that he happened to have a girlfriend. I recall that he explained the need to make this admission with a certain regret, for relations with the gay actor had, understandably, wound down after that. The older actor had not been back in touch, and the younger actor seemed slightly resentful that he had spoilt what could have been an ongoing bit of career-furthering by not continuing to play along with the whole gay-date thing.