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The Pink Wig Brigade By Robert Knight

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

President Obama’s bombshell transgender edict on bathroom and locker rooms last week to all American school districts did not come out of the blue.

Friday’s joint letter from the Departments of Education and Justice, plus Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s mind-bending comparison of separate sex bathroom policies to Jim Crow laws, was just the latest chapter in the assault on social norms begun in earnest by former Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. as soon as he took office in 2009.

If the Trump campaign were wise, it would not blow kisses to the tiny, tiny percentage of the population that identifies as the other sex, and instead put Hillary Clinton in a vise — caught between her legions of LGBTQ supporters versus millions of average Americans shocked by the intrusion of the federal government into school restrooms. This issue is a visceral example of the dangers of overweening, centralized, establishment power without effective checks and balances. It’s made to order for the Trump insurgency.

But I digress. The main point is that this is not new. Here’s a case summarized in 2011 by American Civil Rights Union Policy Board member J. Christian Adams in his book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, which I offer with his permission:

Pink Wigs and Stiletto Heels

“Americans might be shocked to learn that the Obama DOJ thinks it is a federal civil right for boys to wear stiletto high heels and pink wigs to a public high school. In the Mohawk Central School District near Utica, New York, a 15-year-old male student wanted to come to class dressed as a flamboyant transvestite. Unsurprisingly, other students teased the boy, and the school attempted to enforce a reasonable dress code to maintain classroom order. But in the age of Eric Holder, this became a federal civil rights issue.

“The Civil Rights Division intervened in the affair to force the school to allow for child-transvestites. Where in the Constitution might this power be found? What could the legal theory possibly be? What federal right was at stake that could overcome the well-established power of schools to enforce order to facilitate learning? The answer, incredibly, is sex discrimination.

“’Gender non-conforming’ behavior has been elevated to a federal civil right under the Obama DOJ’s bizarre legal application of Title IX. This is not even within paddling distance of the mainstream. The law was intended to prevent discrimination against women, not against those who fantasize about having a different gender.

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How Terrorists and Dictators Silence Arab Journalists by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: “If you’re not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth.” A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a “traitor.”

Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station broadcasted “incorrect news” about the situation in the Gaza Strip. The closure did not receive much attention from the international community and human rights organizations. Had the office been closed by Israel, there would have been an international outcry, with journalists screaming about Israeli “assaults on freedom of the media.”

Al-Arabiya, like many other Arab TV stations, has a bureau in Israel, and its reporters enjoy more freedom reporting out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv than they do in the Arab world. Today, the only free and independent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East can be found inside Israel.

Thirty-five Arab journalists have been fired since the beginning of April as a result of a campaign of intimidation and terrorism waged against them by Hamas and Hezbollah.

The journalists were working for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al-Arabiya television news channel, based in Dubai Media City in the United Arab Emirates. The network was previously rated by the BBC among the top pan-Arab stations.

But life for Al-Arabiya reporters has never been easy. Like most Arab journalists covering the Arab and Islamic countries, they too have long faced threats from various parties and governments.

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The West Must Say “Je Suis Asia Bibi” by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

“I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?” — Asia Bibi.

It is the West’s indolence and cupidity that has condemned Asia Bibi to death. No one in Europe has filled the streets to ask for the liberation of this courageous woman, or even to protest Pakistan’s anti-Christian laws.

Even Pope Francis stood silent. The emblem of his reticence is the 12 seconds of face-to-face time the Pope had with Bibi’s husband and her daughter in St. Peter’s Square. Francis barely touched the two. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, publicly called many times for her release.

The mainline Protestant churches of America, too busy demonizing Israel, also stood silent. Meanwhile, Christianity is being erased from its own cradle.

The death sentence for Asia Bibi is like Chernobyl’s nuclear cloud: it contaminates everything around it. After Asia’s arrest, her husband, Masih, and her children went into hiding. They have moved house 15 times in five years. They could not even attend Asia’s judicial hearings. It is too dangerous for them. Her husband was forced to quit his job.

Asia’s “crime” was to use the same water glass as her Muslim co-workers. She was sentenced to death because she is Christian and she was thirsty. “You defiled our water,” the Muslim women told her. “Convert to Islam to redeem yourself from your filthy religion.”

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Israel, Gaza and “Proportionality” by Louis René Beres

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel.

The authoritative rules of war do not equate “proportionality” with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.

Under pertinent international law, the use of one’s own people as “human shields” — because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians — represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as “perfidy.” This is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is simply a Palestinian manipulation of legal responsibility. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government’s war crimes.

International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their “inherent right of self-defense.”

Already, calls from various directions have begun to condemn Israel for its recent retaliatory strikes in self-defense at Gaza.[1] The carefully-rehearsed refrain is all-too familiar. Gazan terrorists fire rockets and mortars at Israel; then, the world calls upon the Israel Air Force (IAF) not to respond.

Although Israel is plainly the victim in these ritualistic cycles of Arab terror and required Israeli retaliations, the “civilized world” usually comes to the defense of the victimizers. Inexplicably, in the European Union, and even sometimes with the current U.S. president, the Israeli response is reflexively, without thought, described as “excessive” or “disproportionate.”

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Israel Plans to Expand ‘Iron Dome’ to Warships to Protect Offshore Facilities Successfully tested a naval version of the land based missile-defense system By Rory Jones in Tel Aviv and Robert Wall in London

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

Israel on Wednesday said it plans to expand a key missile-defense system to warships, in a bid to protect the country’s lucrative offshore gas fields amid growing aerial threats from regional adversaries.

Israel’s military said it had successfully tested a naval version of its land-based Iron Dome system in recent weeks and would begin deploying it on its newest frigates to protect the country’s strategic assets, including its gas rigs.

The naval system is a combination of the land-based Iron Dome missile interceptor and radar systems on ships, the military said. “We call it the Iron Dome of the sea,” Col. Ariel Shir, head of operational systems in the Israeli navy, told reporters on a phone call.

Israel’s land-based Iron Dome missile defense system intercepts short-range rockets and has become a bedrock of the country’s defense since its introduction in 2011.

The ship-based Iron Dome system would augment a combination of land-based systems that Israel has jointly developed with the U.S., and that it hopes will provide a layered defense against a variety of short range missile threats to those capable of flying more than 600 miles.

The Iron Dome system intercepted 700 rockets fired by Islamist movement Hamas during the war in Gaza in 2014, a 90% success rate that effectively blunted the Palestinian group’s aerial threat.

During that conflict, Israeli defense officials say Hamas tried to fire rockets at the country’s two gas rigs that sit about 20 miles from Israel’s shore. Since then the military, in coordination with Israeli defense companies, has been developing a naval-based system to negate such a threat. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Who’s Who on Trump’s Supreme Court Wish List

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

Donald Trump on Wednesday disclosed the names of 11 candidates he would consider to fill the current vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court. The list includes six federal appeals court judges appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, as well as five state Supreme Court justices with conservative credentials.

Here’s a quick look at the Trump 11:

• Steven Colloton

Judge Steven Colloton, who lives in Iowa, has been a judge since 2003 for the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers a large swath of the Midwest. He was appointed to the position by President George W. Bush. Prior to becoming a federal judge, he served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and had been a federal line prosecutor in that district for eight years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton and law degree from Yale. After law school, the 53-year-old clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.

Judge Colloton’s name had already been floated as a potential Supreme Court nominee in 2012, during GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s bid for the White House. In 2011, he voted in favor of owners in the National Football League to allow a lockout by the players to continue indefinitely. He also voted in a unanimous decision last year to side with religious nonprofits challenging the Affordable Care Act’s rules for contraceptive coverage.

• Allison Eid

Allison Eid, 51, has been an associate justice on the Colorado Supreme Court, the state’s highest, since 2006, appointed by former Republican Colorado Gov. Bill Owens. Before joining the bench, she served as Colorado’s solicitor general representing state officials and agencies in court. She also taught at University of Colorado Law School and worked as a litigator at the Denver office of Arnold & Porter LLP. She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford and law degree from the University of Chicago.

In 2012, Judge Eid wrote the majority opinion ruling that the University of Colorado’s policy to ban students from carrying handguns on campus was unlawful. She also wrote a decision last year that said companies in Colorado, which has decriminalized most marijuana use, can fire employees for using marijuana outside of work because the activity still violates federal law.

• Raymond Gruender

A 52-year-old Bush appointee, Judge Raymond Gruender has served on the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since 2004. A longtime prosecutor before joining the bench, he served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri from 2001 to 2004 after working as an assistant in that office for many years.

Between stints as a prosecutor, Judge Gruender campaigned for Bob Dole’s failed 1996 presidential bid. He earned law and business degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. In one noteworthy decision he authored, the Eighth Circuit held that it wasn’t sex discrimination for an employer to exclude insurance coverage for birth control.

• Thomas Hardiman

Judge Thomas Hardiman, 50, joined the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007, after serving as a district court judge in Pennsylvania for four years. Both appointments came from George W. Bush. A graduate of University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University Law Center, he worked in private practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and other law firms before becoming a judge. The Trump campaign says he’s the first in his family to attend college. In a decision he authored, which was later affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the appeals court held that a jail’s policy of strip-searching all detainees, even those with minor alleged offenses, wasn’t a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

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EgyptAir Flight MS804 Disappears en Route From Paris to Cairo Airbus A320 vanished from radar over the Mediterranean SeaBy Jon Ostrower and Andy Pasztor

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

EgyptAir said one of its aircraft disappeared early Thursday while flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard, the third major incident to befall the nation’s aviation sector since October.

The Egyptian flag carrier said Flight MS804, which departed Paris at 11:09 p.m. local time, “disappeared from radar” at 2:45 a.m. Cairo time Thursday while at 37,000 feet. It lost communication over the Mediterranean Sea, the airline said, shortly before it was due to land at 3:15 a.m.

An EgyptAir official said military search and rescue teams picked up a possible emergency locator signal at 4:26 a.m. Cairo time, less than two hours after the jet disappeared.

But Egypt’s military, which is leading the search and rescue operation, said shortly after that no such signal had been detected.

A civil aviation ministry official told state television that the initial report had been his ministry’s error.

The Airbus A320, with 56 passengers, including three children, three security personnel and seven crew on board, was last spotted over the Mediterranean Sea on the way to Cairo, according to flight-tracking websites.

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What If Clinton Gets Indicted? It would scramble the campaign if Hillary or her aides lose the vital FBI primary.By Karl Rove

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

Despite losing the Oregon primary while barely eking out a win in Kentucky, Hillary Clinton emerged with 51 of Tuesday’s delegates to Bernie Sanders’s 55. To reach the 2,383 needed for the nomination, Mrs. Clinton now needs only 92 of either the 890 still-to-be-elected delegates or the 148 still-unpledged superdelegates. This is because she is already supported by 524 superdelegates—the Democratic Party’s unelected overclass—to Mr. Sanders’s 40.

Still, she must be concerned about losing the FBI primary. If the bureau recommends that the Justice Department indict Mrs. Clinton or close aides like Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin or Jake Sullivan for acting with gross negligence—disregard of known or easily anticipated risks—in sending classified information over a private email server, the campaign could be completely scrambled.

The FBI may not recommend indictments, or the Justice Department could refuse to issue them. The latter could result in high-profile resignations like those in 1973 with the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre,” when several top Nixon officials were fired or resigned. Only this time, the turmoil would be covered on cable TV and in high-def.

If there are indictments, Team Clinton will dismiss them as an overreaction to unintentional, minor mistakes and try pushing on through. But that may be unacceptable to the party’s hierarchy, especially if indictments occur before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia opens July 25.

The party establishment might balk at having the ticket led by someone mired in a national-security scandal or by Mr. Sanders, a socialist and independent who has never before sought election as a Democrat or attended a state or national convention.

Instead, the party establishment might move to replace Mrs. Clinton with Vice President Joe Biden, a sentimental favorite, or Secretary of State John Kerry, whom many in the party’s leadership think more substantive, less prone to gaffes and, because of his 2004 loss against President George W. Bush, more deserving.

The legally unbound superdelegates hold the balance of power. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Sanders can get the nomination without their votes. And the rest of the Democratic delegates, unlike their Republican counterparts, aren’t bound by state laws or party rules to vote for the candidate they were pledged to in their state’s primary for a certain number of ballots. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Why David Petraeus Really Wants You To Shut Up About Islamism :Christine Brim

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

Christine Brim is a founder of Paratos LLC, a risk communications consultancy. Previously she served at the Center for Security Policy as a vice president and chief operating officer.
On May 13, the Washington Post published an online op-ed by former CIA director and CENTCOM commander David Petraeus, titled “Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists.” The op-ed was noteworthy chiefly for Petraeus’ use of rhetorical clichés more commonly expected from the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s “Islamophobia Observatory,” including such standards as “inflammatory political discourse against Muslims and Islam,” “blanket discrimination on the basis of religion,” “those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims,” “those who demonize and denigrate Islam,” “who toy with anti-Muslim bigotry,” and the ever-reliable “demonizing a religious faith and its adherents.” Although the op-ed seemed to target Donald Trump, it also admonished all Americans to limit what we say about Islam.

Petraeus’s attack was so over-the-top, no expression critical of Islamic doctrine would escape his censorship. Have you criticized mainstream Islamic doctrine or the laws of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates? You’re demonizing a religious faith. Do you object to authoritative Islamic doctrines justifying jihad, proclaimed by both Islamic governments and non-state Islamic militants alike? Stop toying with anti-Muslim bigotry; you’re just aiding “Islamist terrorists.”
Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch expertly summarized Petraeus’s specious logic: “So the upshot of Petraeus’ argument is that we must not say things to which Muslims might object, because this will just make more of them become jihadis. His prescription for minimizing the jihad against the West is for the West to practice self-censorship in order to avoid offending Muslims.”

Sadly, Petraeus’s attacks primarily undercut the foremost critics of Islamic doctrine: Muslim reformers, the group of Muslims who most need our support. A prominent young Muslim reformer, Shireen Qudosi, responded to his op-ed with this poignant tweet: “Petraeus doesn’t see that for much of the maddening world of Muslims and liberals, hate speech is conflated w/ truth.”

The theme of Petraeus’s op-ed, “Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists,” was in line with a campaign to blame ISIS on Western critics of Islamic doctrine. For example, The Mirror: “ISIS wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t Islamophobia”; The Nation: “ISIS Wants You to Hate Muslims”; The Guardian: “Islamophobia plays right into the hands of Isis”; Salon: “After Brussels, far-right Islamophobes are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do”; and last but not least, Hillary Clinton in The Daily Mail: “‘He is becoming ISIS’ best recruiter’: Hillary Clinton blasts Donald Trump for demonizing Muslims and using ‘bluster and bigotry to inflame people.”

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ALICE IN OBAMALAND BY MARILYN PENN

Posted By on May 19th, 2016

If Alice were an 18 year old American college freshman, she would be protected by Title IX from any hint of sexual harassment or molestation. Even if she consented to climb into bed with a guy she had already had sex with many times, voluntarily peeled off all her clothes and had a black belt in karate, if she changed her mind at any time in her romantic encounter, the government would defend her as if she were a hothouse flower outdoors in a hurricane. If she spent her evening getting drunk with her partner, he alone would be held responsible for any advances while she would remain a helpless victim with no agency. Under the same rubric of Title IX, if Alice were a younger girl in elementary or high school, she would be expected to change in a locker room or shower in a communal facility with bi-gender members of the opposite sex. The government now demands that young Alice be cool with seeing boys on hormone therapy with both breasts and penises. How odd that so much more is expected of Alice as a child than when she is actually old enough to be responsible for her own behavior as well as enlist in the army and be killed for her country.

The media coverage of transgender bathrooms usually leaves out the locker room and focuses instead on debunking the likelihood of bathroom rape. That contingency is not the most salient argument for segregating sexes according to their biology. The interjection of civil rights and equality into this LGBT campaign is a canard since physically disabled children have never been defended by the government against the so-called “stigma” of using separate wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. Why should unisex bathrooms be considered more discriminatory than that? Considering the likelihood that there are more disabled youngsters in the population than the tiny percentage of transgender children, why wouldn’t the government be more interested in protecting their civil rights first?