Inconvenient Genocide The reason that Obama has ignored the mass slaughter of Mideast Christians. Caroline Glick

The Christian communities of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon are well on the way to joining their Jewish cousins. The Jewish communities of these states predated Islam by a millennium, and were vibrant until the 20th century. But the Arab world’s war on the Jewish state, and more generally on Jews, wiped out the Jewish populations several decades ago.

And now the Christian communities, which like the Jews, predate Islam, are being targeted for eradication.

The ongoing genocide of Middle Eastern Christians at the hands of Sunni jihadists is a moral outrage. Does it also affect Israeli national interests? What do we learn from the indifference of Western governments – led by the Obama administration – to their annihilation? True, after years of deliberately playing down the issue and denying the problem, the Obama administration is finally admitting it exists.

Embarrassed by the US House of Representatives’ unanimous adoption of a resolution last month recognizing that Middle Eastern Christians are being targeted for genocide, the State Department finally acknowledged the obvious on March 25, when Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Islamic State is conducting a “genocide of Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ites.”

Kerry’s belated move, which State Department lawyers were quick to insist has no operational significance, raises two questions.

First, what took the Obama administration so long? Persecution of Christians in Iraq began immediately after the US-led coalition brought down Saddam Hussein in 2003. With the rise of Islamic State in 2012, the process of destroying the Christian community went into high gear. And now these ancient communities are on the brink of extinction.

In Iraq, Christians comprised 8 percent of the population in 2003. Today less than 1% of Iraqis are Christians. In Syria, the Christian community has lost between half and two-thirds of its members in the past five years.

One of the appalling aspects of ISIS’s deliberate, open targeting of Christians for destruction is how little resistance it has received from local Sunni populations. As Raymond Ibrahim from the David Horowitz Freedom Center has scrupulously documented, the local Sunnis have not stood up for their Christian neighbors, who have lived side-by-side with them for hundreds of years. Rather, in areas that have been conquered by ISIS, the local Sunnis have collaborated with their genocidal masters in raping and murdering Christian neighbors, plundering their property, destroying their churches, and driving them from their ancestral homes.

Although precise data is hard to come by, it is clear that thousands of Christians have been slaughtered. Thousands of Christian women and girls have been sold as sex slaves in ISIS slave markets, subjected to continuous, violent rape and beatings. Nuns and priests have been enslaved, crucified, mutilated, kidnapped and held for ransom, as have lay members of Christian communities. Christians have been burned alive.

Sanders’ Slanders Against Israel Baseless charges that would make Palestinian propagandists proud. Joseph Klein

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist who is running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton, has made utterly irresponsible accusations against Israel that would make Palestinian propagandists proud.

During an interview Sanders conducted with the editorial board of the Daily News on April 1, Sanders accused Israel of “indiscriminate” attacks against “innocent” Palestinians in Gaza. As a result, he said, “a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed.”

Without citing any basis for his claim, Sanders stated his recollection that “over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza.” The Daily News checked the figure online, which turned out to be about 2,300 killed, and 10,000 wounded. Even those figures are questionable with regard to actual civilian casualties if they rely on United Nations sources. The UN’s sources included the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is run by Hamas’s very own Mufiz al-Makhalalati.

Israel’s former ambassador to the United States Michael Oren was unsparing in his criticism of Sanders’ outlandish assertions: “He accused us of a blood libel. He accused us of bombing hospitals. He accused us of killing 10,000 Palestinian civilians. Don’t you think that merits an apology?”

No, Bill Nye, Millennials Are Not All Climate Alarmists By Tyler O’Neil

On a nightly show following the Wisconsin primary, science celebrity Bill Nye (“the science guy”) argued that the Republican Party will need young people to win in November, and that the vast majority of millennials believe in climate alarmism. As a conservative millennial, I deny his sweeping generalization, and the data back me up.

Nye lamented that the Republican candidates for president are all “deniers,” and argued that the campaign has yet to pivot to real issues. Then he made the ridiculous claim, saying the gap between alarmists and “deniers” is almost entirely generational.

I don’t think the party can quite get enough votes without millennials. Climate denial is almost entirely generational. Only now and then do you meet a young person — nobody your age is a climate denier. very few. It’s all old people.

To his credit, the show’s host, Larry Wilmore, was a bit skeptical. “I don’t know,” Wilmore replied. “I may have to disagree with you a little bit. I think a lot of it is ideological.”

The numbers back Wilmore on this one. In a Harvard Institute of Politics poll released in April of last year, millennials ended up largely agreeing with their older Americans in being skeptical about climate alarmism.

While 55 percent agreed with the statement that “global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities such as power plants and factories,” a full 43 percent disagreed with this alarmist statement. Twenty percent held to a more moderate view: “Global warming is a proven fact and is mostly caused by natural changes that have nothing to do with emissions from cars and industrial facilities.”

US giving green cards to more than twice as many Muslim country entrants than Europeans By Thomas Lifson

The de facto immigration policy of the United States is to rapidly increase the number of Muslims in this country. I doubt very much that this has been articulated, but it is what is happening, beneath the radar. Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim entry has riled the elites but received majority support in every poll that I have seen. The plain fact is that Islam is a political ideology that requires its adherents to support the imposition of sharia law, which is deeply antithetical to our Constitution.

Now comes a report from the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest that the Daily Caller News Foundation has gained access to:

From 2009 to 2013, the U.S. issued 680,000 green cards to migrants from Muslim countries, more than twice the approximately 270,000 green cards issued to migrants from European countries. Green cards entitle migrants to legal permanent residency in the country and work authorization, federal benefits, and the chance to apply for citizenship.

The numbers are illustrated in a chart below by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. If laws are not changed, the U.S. is expected to issue another 680,000 green cards in the following five-year period.

University to build $110,000 solar road that will power just 40 personal computers for 8 hours/day By Sierra Rayne

Money is certainly tight in the post-secondary system nowadays, which raises the question of why a Canadian university in the province of British Columbia is going to spend $110,000 in up-front costs to construct a solar road that will provide enough electricity to power only 40 personal computers.

As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

A decorative compass that students and others at Thompson Rivers University [TRU] walk over to enter the campus’ Arts and Education Building will soon start generating solar energy as a “solar roadway.” …

[According to Michael Mehta, a geography and environmental studies professor at TRU,] “People will be able to walk on it, vehicles will be able to drive on it and it will — in the same way as these other rooftops systems — capture the energy from the sun and produce electricity to operate the Arts and Education building.” …

“It’s expected to produce about 10,000 kilowatt-hours a year of power, which we estimate is the equivalent of running all the computer labs in the building, about 40 computers, for eight hours a day on an annual basis.”

Mehta said he hopes the project will inspire others to make use of the technology, which is already being used in other places around the world. He said the Netherlands already has a 70-metre bicycle path made from solar panels, and France is planning to build long stretches of “solar roads”.

The project’s proposal states that “this array will produce on average 9700 kWh/year of electricity over its planned 25-30 year lifetime.”

Fighting Junk Science By Norman Rogers

Dictionary.com defines junk science as: “faulty scientific information or research, especially when used to advance special interests.” Junk science is going strong. Many junk science enterprises are deeply embedded in universities, the federal government and the public consciousness.

Some junk science is very bad science that is just wrong and can be easily dismissed. For example, the theories that vaccines cause autism or that power lines cause cancer. Some junk science lacks scientific support but catches the public imagination and is used by special interests to make money. An example is organic food. Organic food is food grown by methods popular prior to 1930. The theory is that the old ways were somehow more pure and noble than modern methods. This is only carried so far. The shoppers at Whole Foods aren’t wearing homespun clothes. The government has generated regulations defining organic food and thus has bestowed legitimacy on a fad with little scientific basis. Next our representatives may be licensing psychics and promulgating standards for snake oil. If you want to have a laugh, or get some natural herbs to supposedly improve your sex life, browse the quack medicine aisle at any Whole Foods market.

Often junk science is based on distorting real science. Global warming is an example of junk science where there is a kernel of scientific truth that has been abused and beaten into a junk science edifice supporting huge money flows. There are good reasons for supposing that adding CO2 to the atmosphere might warm the Earth. The evidence is that the warming effect of CO2 is slight and not necessarily bad. (The Earth has failed to warm for over 18 years.) It is clear that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a massive positive effect on agriculture because plants have to work hard to absorb CO2. Increased CO2 concentrations enable plants to grow faster, an incontrovertible scientific fact proved by many experiments. Global warming is promoted by entrenched scientific bureaucracies and by the huge alternative energy industry. Scientific organizations vigorously attack anyone who criticizes global warming junk science and thus threatens their members’ paychecks.

The Civil Illiberties Union Targets a Yeshiva New Jersey’s college grants set off church-state alarms—and years of litigation. By Avi Schick

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-civil-illiberties-union-targets-a-yeshiva-1460069202

Rabbi Aharon Kotler arrived in the U.S. on April 10, 1941, having escaped Lithuania as the Nazis approached. Even as the Holocaust proceeded to destroy Jewish life in Europe, Rabbi Kotler declared that he would rebuild it in America.

He convinced 13 students to join him in Lakewood, N.J., where in 1943 he founded Beth Medrash Govoha. Today, BMG enrolls more than 6,800. Another mark of its success is that the school now has become caught up in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 2013 the state of New Jersey decided to give grants to colleges and universities to promote business and job opportunities. BMG was awarded $10.6 million to help build a new library and improve other of its facilities.

But the ACLU filed a lawsuit against New Jersey, objecting that the grant violates the state constitution. It is also offended that BMG is an all-male school, even though that is perfectly legal. After years of procedural wrangling, the lawsuit will be heard in a New Jersey appellate court on Monday—75 years, almost to the day, since Rabbi Kotler debarked in San Francisco and set about to transform Jewish life in America.

If that isn’t a sufficient good omen, there is also Harvard Law School Prof. Noah Feldman’s prediction, in a Bloomberg article shortly after the lawsuit was filed, that the ACLU’s challenge “is on shaky constitutional grounds and will probably fail.”

Let’s start with a stated purpose of the grants, which were intended to help spur economic development. BMG’s primary achievement is as an academic institution, but along the way it has transformed its hometown. Thousands of its alumni have purchased homes, raised families and created businesses in Lakewood and across New Jersey.

A 2015 report commissioned by the school shows that its alumni have created more than 3,000 businesses and employ about 11,000 people in Lakewood alone. The report credits the BMG community with paying more than $100 million in annual property and other local taxes. All of which is to say that the yeshiva fits the profile to be eligible for the grant. CONTINUE AT SITE

A Vast Email Conspiracy Hillary’s biggest problem isn’t Bernie. It’s the Freedom of Information Act. By Kimberley A. Strassel

Hillary Clinton is good at imagining partisan plots, and to listen to her team, no less than several inspectors general, the intelligence community, and the entire Republican ecosphere are colluding to turn her home-brew email system into a fake scandal. To this conspiracy, she must now add the federal judiciary.

In recent weeks, not one, but two, esteemed federal judges have granted an outside group—Judicial Watch—the right to conduct discovery into the origins and handling of her private email system. It’s a reminder that Mrs. Clinton’s biggest problem this election isn’t Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Her problem is a 1966 statute known as the Freedom of Information Act, and the judges who enforce it.

The judges have taken unprecedented steps to resolve this case. It is exceedingly rare—almost unheard of—for a judge to allow discovery in a FOIA proceeding. This is a testament to how grave Mrs. Clinton’s email problem is. In the usual course of things, an outside group demands documents, a judge requires a federal department to hand them over, and the public learns something.

In this case—as we all know—the problem is that the State Department doesn’t have the documents. Or rather, it can’t confirm that it has them all, because State left it to Mrs. Clinton and her aides to possess them, and then to unilaterally decide what to hand over. To Judge Royce Lamberth, this is cut and dry “evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith,” and the law demands a full accounting of how this situation came to be, what records exist, and where they are now.

Speaking of the judge’s words, they too are a testament to Mrs. Clinton’s mess. Judge Lamberth was unplugged in his order, calling the former secretary of state’s email set up “extraordinary,” and slamming “constantly shifting admissions by the government and former government officials” about the setup. Judge Emmet Sullivan, the first to allow discovery, referred in his own hearing to Mrs. Clinton’s “totally atypical system” and noted that it “boggles the mind that the State Department allowed this circumstance to arise in the first place. It’s just very, very, very troubling.”CONTINUE AT SITE

Hamas’s New Way of Poisoning the Minds of Palestinian Children by Khaled Abu Toameh

The preachers, who belong to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry in the Gaza Strip, enter schools and ensure, through the exorcism rite, that the children are repentant and faithful to Islam.

These are the children who are later recruited as “warriors” in the jihad against Israel and the “infidels.”

The Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders’ brainwashing and abuse of their own children.

Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.

Hamas has spent years poisoning the hearts and minds of Palestinian children. The Islamist movement is now trying a new brainwashing tactic: exorcism.

The practice, which aims to cast out “demons” that might have wormed their way into the children’s souls, has shocked many Palestinians.

This newest Hamas-perpetrated child abuse was exposed in a video that was leaked to Palestinian social media. The cruelty of the behavior has caused an uproar among Palestinians.

Yes, Let’s Prosecute Climate-Change Fraud — and Start with the Scaremongers If propounding pseudoscience in pursuit of self-serving goals is a crime, here are some hardened offenders. By David French

The attorneys general of New York and California are on the warpath. They’re fed up with dissent over the science and politics of global warming, and they’re ready to investigate the liars. California’s Kamala Harris and New York’s Eric Schneiderman have Exxon in their sights, and they’re trying to pry open the books to see whether the corporation properly warned shareholders “about the risk to its business from climate change.” Not to be outdone, Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed that the federal Department of Justice has “discussed” the possibility of civil suits against the fossil-fuel industry. The smell of litigation is in the air.

Some people are worried about little things like the “First Amendment,” “academic freedom,” and “scientific integrity.” Not me. I hate unscientific nonsense. So if Harris and Schneiderman are up for suing people who’ve made piles of cash peddling exaggerations and distortions, let’s roll out some test cases. I’ve got three ideas:

United States v. Al Gore. Ten years ago, the former vice president of the United States launched an extraordinarily lucrative career by selling climate doomsday. While promoting his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, he made a shockingly false statement. He said that unless the world took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gases, it would reach a “point of no return” in ten years.

Ten years have passed. Is there a scientific consensus that the world has reached a “point of no return?” No? Gore’s documentary grossed almost $50 million worldwide. I’d suggest that number as a starting point for damages. But of course you’ll need to subpoena all his business records and communications. We wouldn’t want him hiding his ill-gotten gains, and goodness knows that public schools could use some cash.

New York v. ABC/Walt Disney Company: If you thought the case against Gore was compelling, I present to you this complete absurdity from ABC: