Where Was Hillary Clinton When Captain Khan Gave His Life in Iraq? By Claudia Rosett

What to make of the furor touched off by the speech at the Democratic National Convention of Khizr Khan? Khan spoke about his son, an American war hero, Army Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim, who gave his life 12 years ago in Iraq to save his soldiers from a suicide bomber.

But Khan, the grieving father, did not stop there. In a windup to endorsing Hillary Clinton as “the healer,” waving a copy of the American Constitution, Khan attacked Donald Trump, asking if he has even read the U.S. Constitution, and saying “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump then attacked Khan, implying that his wife, Ghazala Khan, had remained mute onstage because she was a Muslim woman. Ghazala Khan has now written an op-ed in the Washington Post, grieving for her son and attacking Trump: “Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice.” Khizr Khan has just appeared on NBC TV’s “Meet the Press” to denounce Trump as “a candidate without a moral compass.”

By all means, let’s debate these matters. But in an election contest with plenty to deplore on both sides, what’s sauce for the gander should also be sauce for the goose. If we are going to talk about candidates without a moral compass, what about Hillary Clinton?

In finding a way through this minefield — in honoring war heroes and respecting their families, while navigating the sinkholes of this presidential race — I’d say Seth Lipsky’s New York Sun gets it exactly right, in an editorial headlined “Gold Star Hypocrisy.”

The Sun begins, quite rightly:

It was a magnificent thing for Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party to honor the heroism of, in Captain Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American who gave his life for his comrades and country. It was a reminder at a time when America is under attack by an enemy who claims to be acting in the name of Islam that there are millions of loyal Americans who adhere to the Muslim faith. Captain Khan’s heroism is impossible to alloy.

The Sun goes on to express shock that Khizr Khan “used his son’s sacrifice on the field of battle for political purposes,” but underscores that we must respect Khan and his wife: “his and his wife’s grief is unimaginable. They are Gold Star parents, and all Americans will rise in their presence.”

Then the Sun asks, and answers, an important question:

Where was Hillary Clinton at the hour Captain Khan stepped forward in the face of our common foe? She, after all, had cast one of the votes that sent him to war (a majority of Democratic senators did so). Yet as it became clear that the fight would be tougher than she had imagined, Mrs. Clinton had begun to retreat. Though she claimed to Larry King of CNN that she didn’t regret her vote to give the president war authority, she started to cavil.

The ABA’s Plan to Impose Political Correctness on the Practice of Law By Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson

From August 4 through 9, 2016, the American Bar Association (“ABA”) will hold its annual meeting in San Francisco. Among the scheduled events is the business meeting of the House of Delegates, the ABA’s governing body. The Delegates will consider a number of policy recommendations presented as reports from its standing committees. One of these proposals comes from the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and, if adopted, would undermine many of the rights of lawyers, including the historic and absolute right of each lawyer to decide whom he will choose to represent.

The proposal would add a new, vague, and expansive list of prohibitions to Rule 8.4 in the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct governing “Misconduct.” The purpose of the “Misconduct” rule is supposedly to achieve the objective of “Maintaining the Integrity of the Profession,” but this new proposal is all about social engineering, having nothing at all to do with ethics.

The proposal would create a “new Rule 8.4(g) that would make it professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law.” High sounding words indeed — but words that, if adopted by state bar associations, would empower those who run state bar associations — largely establishment lawyers — to selectively discipline and even disbar individual lawyers whose values are traditional rather than progressive.

In justification for creating new favored classes, the proposed Comment blithely asserts: “Conduct that violates paragraph (g) undermines confidence in the legal profession and our legal system and is contrary to the fundamental principle that all people are created equal.” Remarkably, the Committee found only one of the 11 itemized preferred classes — “socioeconomic” — to be even worth debating. As for the other 10 categories, the Committee simply presumed that no one could possibly object, for they are supposedly based on the “fundamental principle” of equality.

But it has long been recognized that the equality principle that applies to race does not apply to other types of classifications, even including sex. If there can be men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, and track teams, why can there not be law firms which limit their practice to only wives or only husbands in family law matters? Why should such firms be outlawed because they make a distinction between clients on the basis of their “marital status”? What about a person’s “sexual orientation”? Or their “gender identity”? Neither of these latter two terms is objectively determinable or even objectively observable. Rather, they are completely subjective, dependent solely on a person’s self-perception. Surely lawyers — of all people — ought to know better than to concoct such a vague and standardless rule.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled again that even race distinctions are not a per se violation of the equality principle when used by numerous colleges and universities in recruitment of faculty and students. If a law firm cannot be denied the right to adopt a discriminatory hiring policy to achieve a desired diversity of the 11 categories within a particular law firm, as the ABA rule allows, why should another law firm be denied the right to adopt a hiring policy to achieve a desired unity within its law firm? Must all law firms look alike? What is wrong with diversity among firms? And why should a law firm with an international practice be barred from seeking to expand by hiring lawyers of a certain national origin or ethnicity to enhance its ability to better serve clients of similar origin or ethnicity?

Religion, likewise, is wholly unlike race. Statutes accommodating religious conscience abound at both the state and federal level. Law schools with an overtly religious mission, including the hiring, faculty, and admission of students, enjoy ABA accreditation. Nationwide, lawyers and law firms hold themselves out to the public as Christians, letting the community know that they are dedicated to practicing law in accordance with ethical rules of their personal faith. Why should such law firms be barred from hiring lawyers which share the same religious convictions? Indeed, the Holy Scriptures counsel believers not to become “unequally yoked” with nonbelievers. 2 Corinthians 6:14. Are Christian lawyers to be barred by ethics rules from obeying Biblical statutes? Why should lawyers not be free to hire and fire staff on the basis of fidelity to their shared moral code? In truth, doesn’t everyone make distinctions based upon their personal moral code? Why should a lawyer be penalized if he candidly advises potential clients what that code is? Would not prospective clients be better served by such candor and transparency?

Who is Khizr Kahn, the father of a fallen US solder? By Clarice Feldman

Khizr Kahn is the father of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq who spoke poignantly of the loss of his son and then used that platform to attack Donald Trump. On Sunday he tweeted further disparaging remarks about Melania.

Google shows this for his law practice:

His NYC address is here (but the phone number is in DC)

Khan, Khizr M. CFC

Law Offices of KM Khan

415 Madison Avenue

15th Floor

New York, NY 10017

Phones: 202.279.0806

Fax: 646-673-8401

Contact Us

I was surprised that a NY law office would list a D.C. telephone number, so I called it to check and was told by the man who answered it was not Khazir Khan’s law office, but the man who answered would not tell me who it was.

So I did more digging and learned that is also the phone number of a group called American Muslims Vote, which says its mission is to:

To create an enlightened community by providing and developing Patriotic American Muslim leadership and

Encouraging American Muslims to participate in the democratic process at local, state and national level and vote on the election day.

I did some further research into who registered this domain name and when? Khizr Khan registered it on July 23, 2016.

He’s looking increasingly like a plant to me — a Muslim Cindy Sheehan playing on people’s sympathies to foster a Democratic Party political agenda. And of course, in that goal he has the full throated support of the American media:

Polish Experts: ‘Europe is at The End of its Existence. Western Europe is Practically Dead’ Oliver Lane

Speaking to Polish television, a former member of Poland’s counter-terror police and an academic expert on information warfare and terrorism have articulated their concern about the intellectual and spiritual collapse of European civilisation, remarking it is “at the end of its existence”.

Former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBS) officer Jacek Wrona and military history academic Dr. Rafa³ Brzeski were guests on the Polish TVP Info programme discussing the Munich shooting in which nine were killed, and were forced to conclude it was a symptom of the end of European Civilisation. Information warfare expert Dr. Brzeski rejected the suggestion in German media that the Munich killer — an 18 year old Muslim — was mad, pointing out the killing had “an element of planning”, reports wPolityce.

As for the treatment of the attack in the mainstream media, the academic said it was a case of the “ministry of propaganda at work… it is self-censorship. There is nothing worse than self-censorship in journalism”. Rejecting the reluctance of mainstream media to recognise the killings as a terrorism, he said: “this is definitely an act of terror… the execution of an act of terrorism. He was setting out to scare people, and that is an act of terror”.

Pre-empting the emergency press conference held by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which she said her government stood by its policies and decisions which helped create the migrant crisis, and recognising the frustration of the German people with this approach, the academic remarked: “The Germans have had enough of this, which does not mean the government has had enough. These are two different approaches”.

Hillary Clinton’s School Choice She used to support charters. Now she’s for the union agenda.

No one would call the 2016 election a battle of ideas, but it will have policy consequences. So it’s worth noting the sharp left turn by Hillary Clinton and Democrats against education reform and the charter schools she and her husband championed in the 1990s.

Mrs. Clinton recently promised a National Education Association (NEA) assembly higher pay, student-loan write-offs, less testing and universal pre-K. She had only this to say about charter schools, which are free from union rules: “When schools get it right, whether they are traditional public schools or public charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working” and “share it with schools across America.”
The crowd booed, so Mrs. Clinton pivoted to deriding “for-profit charter schools,” a fraction of the market whose grave sin is contracting with a management company. Cheering resumed. When she later addressed the other big teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), she began with an attack on for-profit charters.

We remember when Mrs. Clinton wasn’t so easily intimidated by unions. Bill Clinton’s grant program took the movement from a few schools to thousands. In Mrs. Clinton’s 1996 memoir, “It Takes a Village,” she wrote that she favored “promoting choice among public schools, much as the President’s Charter Schools Initiative encourages.” And here’s Mrs. Clinton in 1998: “The President believes, as I do, that charter schools are a way of bringing teachers and parents and communities together.”

But now Mrs. Clinton needs the support of the Democratic get-out-the-vote operation known as teacher unions, which loathe charter schools that operate without unions. The AFT endorsed Mrs. Clinton 16 months before Election Day, and the NEA followed.

Shortly after, in a strange coincidence, Mrs. Clinton began repeating union misinformation: “Most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids,” she said on a South Carolina campaign stop in November. But Mrs. Clinton used to know that nearly all charter schools select students by lottery and are by law not allowed to discriminate. The schools tend to crop up in urban areas where traditional options are worst. A recent study from Stanford University showed that charters better serve low-income children, minority students and kids who are learning English.

The Clinton Foundation, State and Kremlin Connections Why did Hillary’s State Department urge U.S. investors to fund Russian research for military uses? By Peter Schweizer

Hillary Clinton touts her tenure as secretary of state as a time of hardheaded realism and “commercial diplomacy” that advanced American national and commercial interests. But her handling of a major technology transfer initiative at the heart of Washington’s effort to “reset” relations with Russia raises serious questions about her record. Far from enhancing American national interests, Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in this area may have substantially undermined U.S. national security.

Consider Skolkovo, an “innovation city” of 30,000 people on the outskirts of Moscow, billed as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley—and a core piece of Mrs. Clinton’s quarterbacking of the Russian reset.

Following his 2009 visit to Moscow, President Obama announced the creation of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission. Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state directed the American side, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented the Russians. The stated goal at the time: “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the Russian and American people.”

The Kremlin committed $5 billion over three years to fund Skolkovo. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department worked aggressively to attract U.S. investment partners and helped the Russian State Investment Fund, Rusnano, identify American tech companies worthy of Russian investment. Rusnano, which a scientific adviser to President Vladimir Putin called “Putin’s child,” was created in 2007 and relies entirely on Russian state funding.

What could possibly go wrong?

Soon, dozens of U.S. tech firms, including top Clinton Foundation donors like Google, Intel and Cisco, made major financial contributions to Skolkovo, with Cisco committing a cool $1 billion. In May 2010, the State Department facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital—and weeks later the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies. CONTINUE AT SITE

European Prisons Fueling Spread of Islamic Radicalism Convicted terrorists sit atop the social pecking order in many facilities, using jail time to plot new attacks or groom petty criminals for jihad By Noemie Bisserbe

PARIS—After his capture in Belgium, the Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam was transferred to a prison cell in France where the paint on the walls was still fresh.

Prison staff had spent three weeks renovating the space, bolting down furniture and installing video cameras to make sure the 26-year-old’s solitary confinement went smoothly, said Marcel Duredon, a guard at Fleury-Mérogis, the high-security facility on the outskirts of Paris.

Still, the measures did little to calm the ruckus that erupted in the cell blocks as dusk fell and word spread about the prison’s newest inmate, the last surviving suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks.

“Some welcomed him as the messiah,” Mr. Duredon said.

The rise of Islamic State has caught Europe’s prison systems flat-footed. Convicted terrorists, some of whom serve prison terms as brief as two years, sit atop the social pecking order in facilities like Fleury-Mérogis.

Many use jail time to forge ties with petty criminals from the predominantly Muslim suburbs that ring European cities, authorities say, grooming them for jihad missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria—or attacks at home.

Now the return over the past year of an unprecedented number of jihadists from Islamic State territory is placing European prisons in an even bigger bind. To keep militants off the streets, authorities are throwing many of them in jail, but that is injecting battle-hardened radicals into overcrowded prisons. Researchers estimate that 50% to 60% of the roughly 67,000 inmates in the French prison system are Muslims, who represent just 7.5% of the general population.

Prison officials are also faced with a difficult choice between absorbing hardened militants into the general prison population, where they might radicalize others, or to concentrate them in special wards where they may be better able to hatch plots.

“We’re sitting on a time bomb,” says Adeline Hazan, who heads a state agency tasked with auditing French prisons. CONTINUE AT SITE

Germany: “Because I am a Muslim”: Media cover-up as Afghan smashes up church By Robert Spencer

And the first thing Western leaders will say is, “No, you did not actually do this because you’re a Muslim. You did this because you’re poor, or disenfranchised, or discriminated against. We need to give you a job and some cash, and all will be well.”https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/germany-because-i-am-a-muslim-media-cover-up-as-afghan-smashes-up-church

The second thing they will say is, “More migrants. Bring us more!” The mainstream media, by covering up such incidents, aids in the migrant importation enterprise by keeping the public as ignorant as possible about the devastation the Muslim migrants are causing.

Because I am Muslim

“‘Because I am a Muslim’: Media cover-up in Germany as Afghan smashes up church,” Diversity Macht Frei, July 29, 2016:

It happened a week ago, but the police kept quiet about the incident and the church management did not file a complaint, it has only just come out: last Friday a 19-year-old Afghan stormed into the Versöhnungskirche [Church of Reconciliation] at around 7.20 pm in an open community evening in the Eilbek district of Hamburg. He threw chairs and benches around, kicked over a Bible stand, splintered the glass and threw hymn books onto the ground. According to an eye-witness, the church-goes present were very afraid and let him continue his destruction. No wonder, he was wearing swirling Islamic dress, which might have hidden a suicide belt.

The Muslim did not speak during his destructive rage and also had no connections to Salafists, therefore the State Protection department of the state criminal prosecution agency assumes there was no “Islamist” motive.

…Eyewitness Peter H, who sent PI the photo of the Afghan attacker, reports that he asked the Muslim in front of the church why he had done it as he ended his affray. The Afghan then screamed the answer: “Because I am a Muslim!”

BUSY WEEK FOR JIHAD

Jihad Report
Jul 23, 2016 –
Jul 29, 2016
Attacks 48
Killed 409
Injured 700
Suicide Blasts 9
Countries 13

Domesticating Donald- What’s Not to Like? By David Solway

One notices that when the current nomination cycle began, Donald Trump was more often than not referred to by his full name: Donald Trump. Or by his surname: Trump. As time went by, his iconic sobriquet began to be used on a regular basis, generally in a not unkindly way: The Donald, as if he were a reified entity, a theatrical performance, or even a sort of force or condition, like The Weather. Now he is increasingly addressed simply as: Donald. The outsider, the mogul, the thespian has become a household guest, someone many of us know—with the exception of his enemies or professional skeptics—as a friendly and companionable figure. This is the other “nomination” that has occurred.

Despite the media hype painting him as an unprincipled opportunist, it appears that he has gradually earned the trust of millions of voters, including the initially undecided. That is, he has become Donald, familiar, admired and likeable.

Indeed, what’s not to like?

He has solemnly promised to fix America’s porous border situation and put paid to the violence and fiscal burdens that attend the vast influx of illegal migrants among ordinary, tax-paying Americans.

He has thrown down the gauntlet before the Islamic terror industry, vowed to halt the flow of “Syrian” refugees into the country, and pledged to set up screening mechanisms to repair a broken immigration system and weed out the carriers of an ideology hostile to the preservation of a free and democratic society.

He has presented himself as the law and order candidate in a nation careening toward anarchy in the streets and open war on the police, which has put every citizen at risk.

He has expressed his contempt for political correctness, a species of evasion and outright lying that is weakening the cultural sinews of the nation and its ability to defend itself against a host of enemies, internal and external.

He is committed to restoring an enfeebled military to its former status as the world’s mightiest fighting force. Additionally, he will honor and support America’s veterans, left to malinger by the Obama administration.

He has promised to renegotiate unfavorable trade deals that have left America at a competitive disadvantage, cost millions of jobs, and led to the gutting of the blue collar, middle class and small entrepreneurial strata of society.

He has vowed to replace globalism with Americanism and to require NATO allies to pay their fair share for defense rather than rely on continued American largesse to make up for shortfalls. Who respects a sucker?

He has promised to end the disaster of Obamacare, to tackle the national debt, to revitalize American manufacture, and to open up a restrictive, dumbed-down, “assembly line” educational system.

Considering this bordereau of serious and meaningful pledges, what’s not to like?

Trump—sorry, Donald—enjoys four distinct advantages over all other political actors on the national stage. He is not a beltway politician, which means he has not been corrupted by the perks and privileges so dear to the political elite. He is self-funded and therefore not beholden to major donors and lobbyists. He is a hands-on person, who pays attention to detail, where the devil is said to live, which accounts for his efficiency in keeping the devil’s handiwork of distraction and error at a minimum. And he possesses the ability to spot talent, to put the right people in place to ensure the success of his various projects. Donald is now “Donald” because he has become a member of the American family.