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Sort-of-Super Saturday By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

“Anyway, Sort-of-Super Saturday confirmed my feeling that while it is late, it is not yet too late. From where I sit, the candidate who has the best chance of derailing the Trump Express is Ted Cruz. He performed far better than predicted on Super Tuesday and Sort-of-Super Saturday. His talk at CPAC was a masterly performance, full of humor, insight, and sober political analysis. Watch it. Unlike Mitt Romney in 2012, he has a superb ground game. And Donald Trump’s not-so-slow-motion implosion gives Ted Cruz some momentum of his own. It’s by no means a sure thing. It will be an uphill struggle. But the most savvy candidate is also the one most committed to returning the country to its tradition as a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law and a deep respect for individual liberty.”

Impressions

The great Ace of Spades captured the essence of last night in a headline:
Rubio Collapsed, Cruz Surged, Trump Stable

Peeking behind the headline, however, Ace shows that Trump’s “stability” is anything but stable. First, the math. Cruz scooped up 64 delegates last night. Trump took 49. In Kentucky, Trump’s narrow win gave him 17 delegates to Cruz’s 15; in Louisiana, it was even closer: 18 for Trump, 18 for Cruz. In Kansas, by contrast, Cruz walked away with 29 delegates while Trump took 9. In Maine, it was Cruz 12, Trump 9 [NOTE: these figures and those below have been updated since this morning.]

Getting out the abacus and doing the sums that gives us:

Trump: 382 delegates

Cruz: 300 delegates

382 – 300 = 82

So, now Trump, who was supposed to win everything, is only 83 delegates ahead of Ted Cruz. At the moment, Marco Rubio has 128 delegates.

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Your Tax Dollars and UNRWA’s Lobbying Shop in Washington By Claudia Rosett

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

At Geneva-based UN Watch, the invaluable Hillel Neuer reminds us that the head of the Advisory Commission for the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) is none other than Syria. That bit of UN depravity, together with a recent visit to Washington, D.C. by UNRWA’s commissioner-general, Pierre Krahenbuhl, suggest it is high time to revisit the curious matter of why UNRWA these days maintains an office in Washington.

You remember UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, a.k.a. the UN outfit with schools in Gaza that have doubled as rocket depots for terrorists attacking Israel. Opened in 1950 as a temporary jobs and aid program for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has become an ever-expanding fixture of the UN and the Middle East, a de facto patron of Hamas in Gaza, and welfare-dispenser for what is today a population of some 5 million “registered Palestinian refugees” — a project that down the generations has helped foster both a Palestinian culture of grievance and dependency, and money and jobs for UNRWA itself. At the UN, all other refugees come under the aegis of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which seeks to resettle them. Only the Palestinians have a dedicated agency that has turned refugee status into a bizarre form of hereditary entitlement.

It’s bad enough that UNRWA is still operating in the Middle East. But what’s it doing with an office in, of all places, Washington? UNRWA already fields an office right up the thruway, at the UN’s massive headquarters in New York. Why the need for yet another, in Washington?

Washington is not a city known for large populations of those Palestinian refugees UNRWA is supposed to be helping. But Washington is the conduit through which billions of American taxpayer dollars flow annually to various operations of the UN, including hundreds of millions to UNRWA — appropriated by Congress and dispensed by the State Department.

But, it seems more is always preferred.

In 2011 UNRWA opened an office in downtown Washington, choosing a venue located conveniently between the State Department and Capitol Hill. This office does not service “registered Palestinian refugees.” It represents UNRWA’s interests in Washington, and reports on Washington’s doings to UNRWA. It has been staffed since early days by two Americans, both steeped in the ways of Washington: Chris McGrath, a former aide to Sen. Harry Reid, and Matthew Reynolds, who previously worked as an assistant secretary for legislative affairs in the State Department.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Origins of Trump Nihilism By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

During the most recent Detroit debate, even a reformed “inclusive” and “presidential” Donald Trump still was crass and vulgar. (Has a candidate ever crudely referred to the size of his phallus, and in our sick world is that a Freudian admission of doubt, or a macho reassurance in LBJ fashion?)

Trump gave more than enough evidence that his positions are liquid and change as often his perceptions of his flatterers and critics. He is a blank slate, who as president could build or tear down a southern wall with equal ease, depending on the dynamics of the political deal of the moment. Has there ever been a Republican candidate that Republicans feared was too liberal and Democrats too reactionary? Planned Parenthood advocates usually do not wish to build a wall on the southern border. Trump’s perceived danger to the Republican Party is that he would move not only to the Left, but do so in an especially crass and crude way—expanding the party by not being of the party, winning as a Republican precisely by not being a Republican. To the degree that he would succeed as a president, liberals would applaud his conversion to liberalism; to the degree that he would fail, they would cite his innate conservatism.

In the debate, in passive-aggressive fashion Trump pouted and pounced, furious that others had broken the Golden Rule and done unto him what he has done unto others. His entire moral universe is predicated on a preteen morality of liking those who praise him, and hating those who criticize him. For Trump, to the extent that Megyn Kelly or Bill O’Reilly is or is not a good journalist depends entirely on his own transitory perceptions of how obsequious or prickly each was to Trump in their last encounter. All politicians operate like that; Trump’s great strength or weakness is that he is not shy in expressing it. (And that he knows most journalists wish to be liked rather than respected, and so make the necessary adjustments for Donald J. Trump.)

All that said, I doubt Trump will lose much of his 35-45% support in the next rounds of elections. It does no good for his critics to point out that he never reaches 50% margins in either elections or polls, when he can still win primaries well enough without gaining half the electorate. His genius so far has been to turn his third of the electorate into proof he’s a winner because his opponents never united to marshal a majority against him. In other words, Trump counted on the egos of his opponents to outweigh their concerns for their establishment party. His 35% is unimpeachable, and the anti-Trump 65% is at this late date still hopelessly fragmented. The more candidates talk about “uniting” around an anti-Trump candidate, the more they sound like medieval proverbial mice who dream of someone else putting a warning bell on the marauding cat.

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Rural Mosque or Trojan Horse? By Janet Levy

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

Four years after opposition from residents and a lawsuit forced the withdrawal of plans for a multi-purpose Islamic center in rural San Martin, California, the proposal is back, tripled in size and with a burial center double the original capacity. The Southern Valley Islamic Center (SVIC) again calls its center “Cordoba,” a reference to the so-called “Golden Age of Islam,” after 8th-century Islamic invaders converted the Spanish city into a center for religious learning under Islamic rule for two centuries, restricting others to second-class status. Like those invaders from another age, the Cordoba Center may well be part of a larger plan to usurp American values and lifestyle and replace them with Muslim ideology and culture.

As I reported here in 2012, the SVIC proposal included a prayer hall, community center, cemetery and play area on a 15-acre parcel in the unincorporated town of San Martin, population 7,500, known for producing garlic, mushrooms and wine. In 2013, the SVIC withdrew their proposal and relinquished a Santa Clara County permit after a lawsuit was filed by a local group, the People’s Coalition for Government Accountability. The coalition’s suit against the county, the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission sought to stop planning and construction on the center for a rigorous and thorough environmental impact review.

At the time, residents were concerned that failed soil-percolation tests made the site susceptible to poor drainage and flooding and that decaying human remains would pollute the local water supply. They worried about the impact of increased traffic in their pastoral oasis as well as noise from dawn-to-dusk calls to prayer. Anxious about decreased quality of life, they sought a full discussion of issues that had received short shrift during permit review.

Further, they felt that with no significant Muslim population in the surrounding area and several mosques nearby, the large-scale Islamic center failed to meet the county’s requirement that projects be kept to a size, scale and intensity that serves local needs. The county general plan requirements were created to minimize impacts from outside the community.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Muslim Responsibility and Western Inaction By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

In the March 2016 issue of National Geographic it is noted that a marble dolphin with a fish in its mouth turned up at a site in the Negev Desert in Israel. The 16-inch statue was embedded in the floor of a seventh-century building. Although some archaeologists believe it may have been part of a statue of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, others maintain that “a dolphin eating a fish symbolizes the persecution of early Christians [.]”

And thus, persecution and murder of Christians continues into the 21st century. In Nigeria, violent killings of Christians are up 62 percent according to Open Doors which monitors religiously motivated violence and persecution. In 2015 there were 4,028 killings and 198 church attacks, nearly double those of the previous year. Since 2009, 11,500 Christians were killed, 13,000 churches were destroyed and 1.3 million Christians have fled to safer areas of Nigeria or have attempted to reach Europe.

According to Rose Gamble, “the persecution of Christians is carried out by three groups: Islamist terror group, Boko Haram, Muslim Fulani herdsmen; and the Muslim religious and political elite that dominate northern Nigeria. In fact, several areas of northern Nigeria have seen Christianity virtually wiped out.”

The ongoing ISIS slaughter of Christians has resulted in the European Parliament unanimously passing a resolution referring to the Islamic State’s (ISIS) killing of religious minorities under its control as “genocide” in the Middle East. But the Obama administration dithers and when asked, White House spokesman Josh Earnest claims that the word genocide “involves a very specific legal determination that has, at this point, not been reached.” This should come as no surprise since the FBI has “released a new edition of its anti-terror video game, ‘Don’t Be a Puppet’ that scrubs all references to Islamic terrorism” per the demands of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Thus, as Clare M. Lopez explains, “Islamic jihad is now excluded from a list of potential terror threats.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s Latin Role Models Far from respecting the Constitution, the candidate promises to out-Obama Obama. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

Donald Trump supporters believe that they’ve got a novel candidate whose ideas have never been tried. They might be disappointed to learn that Mr. Trump’s political playbook is right out of 20th century Latin America. If he should become president, the country is likely to be about as successful as the region has been under this kind of leadership.

As Latin America has learned the hard way over the last 100 years, capital goes, and stays, where there is a rule of law that treats it well. It’s why the U.S. has developed and most of the rest of the hemisphere has been left behind.

Mr. Trump believes the rule of law is for pansies. His fans adore him because he promises to override institutional inertia and simply decree whatever is on his mind, like a caudillo. This won’t end well.

If elected, Mr. Trump would inherit a country where the rule of law is already under attack by President Obama. Long-winded and ruling by decree whenever Congress—the constitutionally coequal branch of government—does not accommodate him, Mr. Obama is a classic Latin American demagogue.

Conservatives despise the 44th president’s refusal to acknowledge the pluralistic traditions of the republic and its constraints on the executive. Yet there was a time when the loyal opposition viewed this abuse of power as an anomaly, a blip in an otherwise institutionally robust nation.

Now the Republican Party is host to another faction and it is asking for its own mano dura. Far from restoring respect for the Constitution, Mr. Trump is promising to be more Obama than Obama. His supporters are fine with that; it’s their turn. Which is to say, we’re becoming Bananalandia. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Pyongyang Issues Fresh Threat as U.S.-South Korea Drills Begin Pyongyang commonly makes threats during joint exercises, in part for domestic consumption By Alastair Gale

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

SEOUL—North Korea issued a new nuclear threat against the U.S. and South Korea as the allies began major joint military exercises.

Pyongyang commonly makes threats during joint exercises—in part, experts say, to solidify support among its military for the North Korean leadership.

This year’s annual spring exercises in South Korea are some of the biggest ever, involving 17,000 U.S. troops and around 300,000 South Korean troops. Starting Monday and running through April, they are intended to ensure readiness for any North Korean attack through a combination of battlefield and computer-simulated exercises.

The simulations will include offensives against North Korea’s top leadership and its nuclear and missile arsenal in the event of a war, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported, citing unnamed South Korean military sources.

North Korea responds angrily to any suggestion that dictator Kim Jong Un would be the target of an attack. Its top military body, the National Defense Commission, said in a statement Monday it would take a “pre-emptive and offensive nuclear strike” in response to the exercises. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Turkey Wages Uphill Battle to Stop Migrant Smugglers on Aegean Sea ‘We can’t build a wall on the waters,’ says Turkish coast guard Capt. Murat Yilmazarslan By Ayla Albayrak

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

CESME, Turkey—On a mild winter day last week, Capt. Murat Yilmazarslan and his crew bore down on a dinghy packed with people making a dash across the Aegean Sea—a cheerless victory in the Turkish coast guard’s uphill battle to stop smugglers ferrying migrants to Europe’s door.

Soon, their ship—the Umut, or Hope—and two patrol boats had intercepted the dinghy, filled with dozens of Afghans and others in neon orange life jackets, as a helicopter hovered overhead. The migrants, some who wept as they were ordered to board the Hope, gave up without a fight.

It isn’t always so. Caught within sight of their goal, refugees have held babies above the water and threatened to drop them into the sea if they aren’t allowed to proceed to Greece, coast guard officials say. On occasion, intercepted migrants have held knives to their throats and threatened to kill themselves. In those cases, the officials say they alert the Greek coast guard and let the people continue their voyage.

“We have such a big weight on our shoulders,” Capt. Yilmazarslan said the next day in the Turkish port of Cesme. “Turkey is like a sponge that has been fully soaked, and we shouldn’t be left alone to deal with this refugee flow.”

The Turkish captain and his crew are at the front line of an international effort to stop the people smuggling and defuse the pressure on countries in Europe that say they are reaching, or have exceeded, their ability to take in more migrants from the east. A NATO fleet of five ships has been deployed to help overwhelmed coast guard officials like Capt. Yilmazarslan track and deter the smuggling boats, but the mission has been slowed by disagreement between Greece and Turkey over the specifics for the operation. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Scalia Seat: Let the People Speak The legal stakes are higher than ever, and historic precedent favors waiting for a new president. Ted Cruz

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-scalia-seat-let-the-people-speak-1457307358

Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided over the proper role of the Supreme Court. President Obama and Democrats favor justices who see the Constitution as a potter sees clay—something that can be molded to achieve their desired results. This has led the Supreme Court to invent rights that are nowhere in the Constitution—like the right to an abortion or to same-sex marriage—and ignore or restrict rights that even nonlawyers can’t miss—like the First and Second Amendments.

Republicans view things very differently. We believe the Constitution has a fixed meaning and a judge’s task is limited—to discover what that meaning is, not to make it up.

Justice Antonin Scalia, whose passing we mourn, was a passionate champion of this humbler view of the judicial role. It is nearly impossible to overstate the significance of his passing. If Justice Scalia is replaced by a Democratic nominee, many long-cherished rights will be jeopardized. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Killing ISIS with Kindness by A.J. Caschetta

Posted By on March 7th, 2016

The persistent and unprecedented failure of the Obama administration to conduct foreign policy in ways that promote American interests is baffling to most observers.

The impulse to offer succor to those who would do us harm became almost too absurd to parody when State Department spokesperson Marie Harf suggested in January of 2015 that ISIS could be disarmed with a jobs-for-jihadists program.

A month later, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest answered a question on counterterrorism by claiming that the administration was hard at work developing “some pretty sophisticated social media strategy.”

But it appears now that the administration is contemplating an even less confrontational approach – a widespread effort to “Like” ISIS.

Policymakers must abandon the delusion that our enemies can be swayed or defeated by displays of kindness.

This new low point in foreign policy thinking came in the person of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, an Obama insider who was rumored in 2012 to have been on the short list for a second-term cabinet position. In a January 20, 2016 panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sandberg offered what appears to be a new counterterrorism strategy – the “‘like attack.”