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French Court Convicts Seven Tied to Islamic Extremist Group Brother of a Paris suicide attacker among those sentenced to prison terms

Posted By on July 7th, 2016

PARIS—A French court on Wednesday convicted seven young men who returned from weeks among the ranks of Islamic State extremists in Syria, including the brother of one of the suicide attackers who targeted Paris in November.

The defendants, ages 24 to 27, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to nine years for taking part in a group recruiting French jihadists to join a “terrorist group” in Syria in 2013-14—namely Islamic State—and for participating in military training and other activities.

Karim Mohamed-Aggad, the older brother of one of the extremists who attacked Paris’ Bataclan concert hall on Nov. 13, received a 9-year term, the harshest penalty among the seven, since the prosecutor said he was one of the ringleaders.

Mr. Mohamed-Aggad claimed he went to Syria only for humanitarian purposes and accused the French government of putting him on trial instead of his brother Foued, who returned to France with a Kalashnikov and suicide explosives strapped to his body in an operation that killed dozens in Paris.

Foued also went to Syria with the group.

In its ruling, the Paris court said while some of the defendants left Syria of their own free will, Karim Mohamed-Aggad was “in no hurry to return” to France and “showed a persistence in his active interest for jihadism.”

After the verdict, Mr. Mohamed-Aggad’s lawyer, Françoise Cotta, told reporters the ruling was “a decision of fear, returned in a France of fear, by a judge who is here to respond to the fear.”

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The Trumpen Proletariat Barack Obama’s presidency of moral condescension has produced an electoral backlash.Daniel Henninger

Posted By on July 7th, 2016

Karl Marx, in a particularly dyspeptic moment, offered this description of what he dismissed as the lumpen proletariat:

“Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars—in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.”

Even Donald Trump’s critics would not go so far as to suggest that his voter base consists of vagabonds, pickpockets or even, ugh, “literati.” But for the longest time, the American media saw the Trump base as an “indefinite, disintegrated mass” of mostly angry, lower-middle-class white males. The early Trump adopters often looked like bikers, with or without jobs. The Trumpen proletariat.

This was the original Trump bedrock, the proles who could look past him saying that John McCain, though tortured for years by the Vietnamese, wasn’t a hero. Even now they’ll blink right by Mr. Trump’s remark this week that Saddam Hussein was “good” at killing terrorists (“they didn’t read them their rights”), despite the unhappy fact that Saddam was a psychopathic, blood-soaked torturer responsible for the deaths of perhaps a half million non-terrorist Iraqi citizens.

(Still, one may ask: When the day after her Comey pardon, Hillary Clinton proposes “free” tuition at public colleges for families earning up to $85,000 a year, and $125,000 by 2021, how come her campaign isn’t universally laughed and mocked off the map?)

The media originally looked upon the emerging Trump base with suspicion and distrust, regarding it as a volatile and possibly dangerous political faction but one that would slip back to the shadows as the Trump candidacy faded.

We are 10 days from the party conventions, and Mr. Trump sits, uneasily as always, close to the polling margin of error against the former Secretary of State, former U.S. senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton. The Trumpen proletariat turns out to be bigger than imagined.

In the nonstop conversation about the 2016 election, the question at the center of everything is whether one is a “Trump supporter.” But if it is true that in this election all the rules have been broken, couldn’t it also be true that Donald Trump has himself become a bystander to the forces set in motion this year? CONTINUE AT SITE

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Clinton Casino Royale She says Donald Trump killed Atlantic City. Here’s the real story.

Posted By on July 7th, 2016

Hillary Clinton on Wednesday accused Donald Trump of looting his casinos and pillaging Atlantic City, and that was the gracious part. If she’s going to criticize Mr. Trump’s business record, she should also have to defend the failure of Atlantic City’s model of progressive governance.

Democrats aim to rehash the story of how Mr. Trump loaded his casinos with debt and declared bankruptcy four times—stiffing creditors and workers while shielding himself personally—ad nauseam through November. “He doesn’t default and go bankrupt as a last resort,” Mrs. Clinton declared. “He does it over and over again on purpose.” She’s one to talk about incorrigible behavior.

While Mr. Trump may have contributed to Atlantic City’s downward spiral by oversaturating the casino market, it takes more than one man to raze a city. The businessman experienced a moment of lucidity—if only he could expand beyond 140 characters—when he fired back in a tweet that “Democrat pols in Atlantic City made all the wrong moves—Convention Center, Airport—and destroyed City.”

In 1976 New Jersey voters approved a referendum that legalized gambling in Atlantic City. The constitutional amendment required casino revenues to fund programs for senior citizens and disabled residents, but politicians have instead funneled the cash to favored projects and businesses under the guise of promoting development. Guess how that’s turned out?

A 1984 law required casinos to pay 2.5% of gaming revenues to the state or “reinvest” 1.25% in tax-exempt bonds issued by the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority for state and community “projects that would not attract capital in normal market conditions.” Investment recipients have included Best of Bass Pro shop, Margaritaville and Healthplex.

A decade later, state lawmakers imposed a $1.50 fee (which has since doubled) on casino parking spots to fund Atlantic City transportation, casino construction and a convention center. In 2004 lawmakers added a $3 surcharge for casino hotel stays to finance new hotel rooms and retail establishments, which had the effect of promoting unsustainable commercial and casino development. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Firepower for the feds? Congress should question the militarization of the bureaucracy By Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on July 7th, 2016

Women’s sanitary pads purchased for the federal prison system and coded as body armor? Cable television purchased by the Coast Guard and $179,418 spent by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on copiers, both of which were coded as guns? Veteran’s Affairs procurement of $31,600 in “assorted bread” coded as “Guns, Through 30MM”?

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convenes a hearing with the Bureau of Prisons and other agencies regarding their inventory and accounting practices for firearms and ammunition. We salute their efforts. Here are some questions the committee may want to ask:

Why are there $173,433 in women’s jumpers, sanitary pads, sheets, pillowcases, inmate clothes and shoes, and various beauty supplies tagged as body armor in the prison checkbook?

Did the federal prisons really purchase $1.4 million in “military chemical weapons” since 2006? Or how about $541,351 in purchases under the federal uniform accounting code of “1310: Ammunition, over 30MM up to 75MM”? It’s doubtful that the prison system is buying bunker-busting missiles, so who is auditing the auditors?

Just how many errors have the federal administrative agencies made in the reporting of their guns, ammunition and military-style equipment?

Despite the dirty data and accounting mistakes, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com recently released an oversight report titled “The Militarization of America.” It quantified the escalating size, scope and power of 67 nonmilitary federal agencies, which spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment since 2006. We also found that there are now more federal officers with arrest and firearms power (200,000-plus) than U.S. Marines (182,000).

Here are some of the public policy issues that have come to light because of our oversight report:

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Meet the man James Comey indicted over a 21-word email By Jonathan Haggerty

Posted By on July 6th, 2016

In April, 2003, investment banker Frank Quattrone was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice by then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York James Comey for one email sent to employees.

Quattrone voiced his discontent with Comey’s recent announcement regarding Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s personal email server. Comey is now the director of the FBI.

Quattrone was the subject of an U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe into his dealings at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he allegedly “doled out hot stock offerings” to his friends. Quattrone hosted initial public offerings for companies like Amazon and Cisco in the late 90s, and his activity led to investigation at the height of the tech bubble.

Leading the charge of the investigation was Comey, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Comey charged Quattrone for a one sentence email in which he “advised colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating Wall Street investment banks” for the way they shared their “lucrative initial public offerings.”

The email that got Quattrone in trouble was “having been a key witness in a securities litigation case in south Texas, I strongly advise you to follow these procedures.”

The procedures Quattrone referred to involved a suggestion from a coworker in an email chain that employees save subpoenaed documents.

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On Hillary, Let the Voters Decide The court of public opinion will make the final judgment. By John Yoo & Robert Delahunty

Posted By on July 6th, 2016

The people, not the prosecutors, should decide whether Hillary broke the law.

That is the real takeaway from FBI director James Comey’s decision not to refer Hillary Clinton and her aides to the Justice Department for prosecution. According to Comey, Clinton was “extremely careless” by diverting classified information through a home-brewed computer network that deliberately avoided the official system of the State Department — even though the FBI found that Clinton had sent 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains contained classified information, that she had not turned over all relevant e-mails, that she had used her private e-mail system while visiting our adversaries, and that her system had probably been hacked by them.

But Comey found that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges because the FBI could find no “clearly intentional or willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or an obstruction of justice.” This makes no sense because the law at issue, Section 793(f) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, does not require such a high level of intent, but only “gross negligence.” It also makes no sense of the facts, as they are known: Why, after all, create a private e-mail system other than to evade the secure, classified system? We agree with Andy McCarthy’s excellent dissection of the interpretation of Section 793(f) and why the case against Hillary is strong.

Comey’s decision also makes no sense as a matter of past prosecutorial practice. John Deutch, director of the CIA under Bill Clinton, was prosecuted for keeping classified material on unclassified laptops. Clinton national-security adviser Sandy Berger was prosecuted for removing classified documents from the National Archives. And of course David Petraeus was prosecuted for sharing classified information with his girlfriend and biographer. And we should not forget the witch hunt for the leaker of Valerie Plame’s covert identity by independent counsel Pat Fitzgerald, which Comey ultimately oversaw. Comey allowed Fitzgerald to bring charges against Scooter Libby, even though Fitzgerald knew that the leaker was another official.

Hence our takeaway: All of them should have gotten out of their prosecutions by running for president, because that is the only significant difference between Clinton’s case and theirs. In fact, the Clinton case exposed far more of U.S. operations to far more dangerous readers, since our global rivals, who have shown no reluctance to hack U.S. government systems, would have easily broken into her system and read the communications of our top diplomatic officials.

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Dictatorship of the Clintontariat by: Diana West

Posted By on July 6th, 2016

Of course, “FBI Director” Comey will not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. But that is not what is worst about this latest wretched day in American history.

What child, what babe, what fuzzy bunny ever expected that he would? Who among us examined the facts of the case as they emerged and rested assured that Justice would be done — that is, done blindly, with no special-case, extra-stretchy, wink-wink regard for the Clintons?

One law for thee and me and one law for the Clintons and ilk, and who doesn’t know it. That is the greatest offense, and it’s nothing new. Just think “Banana Republic.” Just think Soviet regime — but please, spare us the “American exceptionalism.” Even if the strong man who comes to mind wears a uniform, not a blinding pants suit, much is the same.

Once upon a time this was shocking — I do remember being devastated nearly twenty years ago by the perfidy of Trent Lott’s Senate when they show-trialed Bill Clinton’s impeachment charges. “Henry, you’re not going to dump this garbage on us,” Lott, we later found out, told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde on meeting with the 13 House Managers to discuss the Senate “trial.” Then, as now, the establishment (party i.d. irrelevant) was fighting for what it prizes most — its prerogatives. It won.

It always does (another reason the anti-estabishment advent of Trump so electrifies us masses).

Another milestone of note (there are so many) came in 2009 when Hillary Clinton came before the Senate in confirmation hearings on her appointment as Secretary of State. She was already encumbered with the heavy baggage (tens of millions in Islamic dictators’ money, etc.) that instantly and emphatically disqualified her for the position. The Senate closed its eyes and voted 94-2 (thanks again, Sens. DeMint and Vitter).

Yesterday was no different. The Dictatorship of the Clintonariat rules.

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What Is a ‘Reasonable Prosecutor’? By Roger Kimball

Posted By on July 6th, 2016

There has already been a tsunami of commentary about FBI Director James Comey’s remarkable performance today. Director Comey informed the world that he would not recommend that criminal charges be pursued against Hillary Clinton in the matter of her mishandling of classified material on her hombrew email system. There is much disbelief and anguish about this, a lot of it to the point. I think that my friend Andrew McCarthy was particularly astute with his NRO column. The title sums it up: “FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook.”

Andy homes in on the gaping hole at the center of Director Comey’s argument. On the one hand, Director Comey allows that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.” On the other hand, he found “no clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws.”

So, you might be asking yourself, what? As Andy points out,

Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust.

Director Comey admits all this, indeed, he took pains to lay it out carefully. But he concludes that because Hillary Clinton did not intend any harm by her negligent behavior, there were no grounds to recommend prosecution. “Our judgment,” he said, “is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

This makes no sense. Andy:

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.

How are we to understand Director Comey’s conclusion? Some commentators — my friends James Robbins and Roger L. Simon, for example — argue that Director Comey’s withering assessment will in the end be more damaging than an indictment because he has pointedly drawn attention to Clinton’s recklessness and incompetence. “Did Comey,” Roger asks, “Actually Destroy Hillary Clinton by ‘Exonerating’ Her?”

My sad suspicion is that the answer is “No.” Why? Because that would only be the case if there were sufficient public outrage to call her to account. Is there?

Cast your mind back over the many, many scandals the Clintons have been involved in: Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, cattle futures, Monica Lewinsky, etc., etc. Has anything ever stuck? As far as I know, the answer is “No.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Daryl McCann: Losing the Winnable War

Posted By on July 6th, 2016

Ever the prisoner of PC rectitude, President Obama wrongly fears that opposing — or evening naming — global jihadism as the enemy of civilisation is a declaration of war against Islam. By this reticence he has flung petrol on the Islamist fires.

Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War
by Sebastian Gorka
Regnery, 2016, 256 pages, US$27.99
_______________________________

President Obama almost always deports himself in public with poise and dignity. His “New Beginning” speech, delivered at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, was no exception. The address was full of generous sentiment and seeming humility. At one point a member of the audience cried out: “Barack Obama, we love you!” A round of applause greeted the US president’s gracious “Thank you.” President Obama’s 2009 charm offensive throughout the Middle East promised to undo the mistakes of President George W. Bush, and yet his tenure in office has only exacerbated matters. Sebastian Gorka’s Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War goes some of the way to explaining Barack Obama’s failure and a potential way forward for his successor.

At the very heart of President Obama’s misapprehension has been his hubris, the Cairo venture being a case in point. Though Obama acknowledged scientific and other contributions of the Islamic world to the dawn of Europe’s Renaissance, he appeared incapable of comprehending that for many in his audience that day, including high-level members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (which has since been outlawed), the Renaissance and all that subsequently ensued—we might call it secular-powered modernity or individual self-determination—are deeply problematic. Nevertheless, Barack Obama blithely based his foretelling of a united world on the principles of European-style humanism and the particular experience of the United States: E pluribus unum or Out of many, one.

Islamic revivalists, as Sebastian Gorka argues, have a very different interpretation of E pluribus unum. To decode the spirit and ambition of the global jihadist movement, insists Gorka, whose father was a political prisoner in the Hungarian People’s Republic, we should not only employ the term “totalitarian” to delineate our Westophobic enemy but also revisit the origins of the Cold War and the writings of George Kennan and Paul Nitze. We must begin, as Paul Nitze did, with Sun Tsu’s cardinal rule of war—Know both yourself and the enemy if you want to win.

Gorka quotes a key early passage from Nitze’s NSC-68 to define a liberal democracy: “In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.” The global jihadist movement, in contradistinction, abhors the idea of individual freedom; to the extent an apologist speaks of choice they invariably mean the “freedom” to submit to religious authority and the “freedom” that results from submission. It is totally at odds with liberty.

The Obama administration contends that Islamic terrorism—or should we say extremist violence—is “the result of poverty, unemployment and lack of political enfranchisement”. Religion, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of Islam, does not contribute to terrorism but is a safeguard against it, or so the PC narrative goes. Here we have an explanation for Barack Obama’s forbearing relationship with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, naivety about the Arab Spring, support for Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi, intervention in Libya and Yemen, appeasement with Tehran, denial about the motives of domestic terrorists and, of course, why Team Obama insisted on front row seats for the Muslim Brotherhood dignitaries attending the 2009 Cairo University address.

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VICTOR DAVID HANSON: STOP IMPORTING JIHADISTS

Posted By on July 6th, 2016

Washington, D.C.: A new poll suggests that large majorities of Americans agree with the common sense proposition that we should stop importing jihadists. A murderous attack in Orlando heightened concern that we already have too many here.

A public opinion survey conducted this month by Opinion Savvy found that 71% of respondents support “identifying foreign supporters of Sharia law prior to their admission to the United States.” Of those favoring such identification, 80% believe Sharia-supremacists should not be admitted into the country.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump put this issue on the political map last year by calling for a temporary pause in admissions of Muslims until a way can be found to determine whether they are potential terrorists. He cited troubling findings of a 2015 poll of U.S. Muslims conducted for the Center for Security Policy. Twenty-five percent of respondents believed “violence against Americans here in the United States could be justified as part of the global jihad” and fifty-one percent believed “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed by [Islam’s totalitarian] Sharia” code, rather than the Constitution.

In recent days, Mr. Trump has mused publicly about how to differentiate between would-be Muslim immigrants who pose a threat and those who do not. He has suggested applying his proposed restriction to all would-be immigrants from certain countries tied to terrorism.

One of Mr. Trump’s top advisors, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, however, argues that defining test should instead be adherence to Sharia. On Fox News Sunday, Speaker Gingrich said: “I would apply a test for Sharia and a test for loyalty to ISIS rather than geographic test, because we’re fighting people all over the world who are dangerous to us. So, it’s hard to say which countries really are the Islamic terrorist countries.”