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Clinton Classified E-mails Spread Far and Wide By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on February 12th, 2016

In last weekend’s column, I outlined why the damage to national security caused by Hillary Clinton’s reckless mishandling of classified information is so great as to be incalculable. Because Mrs. Clinton’s e-mail system was non-secure, the intelligence community must assume that it was penetrated by hostile foreign intelligence operatives – who, after all, manage to hack into even the government’s secure systems. When even a single national defense secret is deemed to have been compromised – a piece of information, a covert method of obtaining information, a human operative risking his or her life to provide our government with information – intelligence analysts must assume the worst: i.e., that covers have been blown, operations have been corrupted, and lives are in danger.

Here we are not talking about just one secret. To date, 1,600 Clinton e-mails containing classified information have been found.

Moreover, as I elaborated, the intelligence catastrophe is not confined to Mrs. Clinton’s own e-mails. There are also “e-mail ‘trains,’ communications involving several exchanges and multiple participants — as to which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to calculate how often and how widely recipients forwarded the information.”

Today, Fox News’s Catherine Herridge and Pamela K. Browne report report stunning news on that front:

At least a dozen email accounts handled the “top secret” intelligence that was found on Hillary Clinton’s server and recently deemed too damaging for national security to release, a U.S. government official close to the review told Fox News.

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AN IMPORTANT REQUEST FROM GATESTONE INSTITUTE

Posted By on February 12th, 2016

Facebook soon to ban Gatestone? What you can do. Dear Friends, Last week, an important article, “Facebook’s War on Freedom of Speech” by Douglas Murray, detailed a new initiative by Facebook in Germany, to remove supposedly “racist” comments from Facebook. This initiative by Facebook at the moment appears to include anything critical of the EU’s […]

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The UN’s ‘violent extremism’ scam: What to say when ‘radical Islamic terror’ is too scary Anne Bayefsky

Posted By on February 12th, 2016

There is a dangerous scam gaining traction at the United Nations, backstopped by the White House. It’s called “violent extremism.” Given the U.N.’s long and undistinguished history of being unable to define terrorism, and an American president who chokes on the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” pledges to combat “violent extremism” have become all the rage.

It turns out that the terminological fast one is a lethal diplomatic dance that needs to be deconstructed, and quickly.

In 1999, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) adopted an “anti-terrorism” treaty stating that “armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism and hegemony, aimed at liberation and self-determination…shall not be considered a terrorist crime.”

In practice, that means it is open season on all Israelis, as well as Americans and Europeans who get in the way. Each of the 56 Islamic states, and what the UN labels the “State of Palestine,” is a party to this treaty.

The September 11 terror attacks then launched a growth industry in U.N. counter-terrorism chit-chat and paraphernalia.

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MY SAY: THE AGE OF POLITICS

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

Today, a respected columnist referred to Clinton as a “crone” and Sanders as a “museum piece.”

A crone is defined as “an old woman who is thin and ugly.” And a “museum piece” is usually a fossil.

I would not vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, however, criticizing their age in those terms is a cheap shot. Maybe it cuts close to my bone, but being superannuated is not what I dislike about them. There is enough to tarnish them in policies, biographies, agenda, morality, etc. without stooping to nasty allusions to their age.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Student Op-Ed: Trying to Give a Classmate a Ride Is Rape Culture Apparently, looking for somewhere to park to go to class is a sexual activity. By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

According to a student at California State Polytechnic University–Pomona, trying to give a classmate a ride to their car so you can get their parking spot is rape culture.

In an op-ed for the Poly Post, the school’s official newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Adrian Danganan admits that commuting to the campus “has never been more difficult” because “parking is becoming increasingly sparse.”

She explains that “students are struggling to find suitable methods ” to find a spot to park to attend class, and that some have resorted to offering departing classmates rides in order to take their spots when they leave.

But this method, according to Danganan, is far from “suitable.”

Now, she starts off by explaining that it’s generally a bad idea to get into a stranger’s car — which is a totally fair argument. She quickly goes from reasonable to ridiculous, however, when she writes that “pressuring a pedestrian to enter a vehicle only encourages idiosyncrasies that attribute [sic] to rape culture.”

(Yikes! I guess these students would be better off missing class entirely. They might fail out of school, but at least they wouldn’t be contributing to a culture of sexual assault!)

Now, Danagan does concede that “this seems radical and outlandish,” but explains that she’s actually totally right because “trying to ease someone or even guilt him or her in to [sic] doing so is almost like sweet-talking to get what is desired.”

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Student’s Conservative Op-Ed Draws Stabbing Threat By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

A student at the University of California–Santa Barbara had to deal with someone threatening to stab him because he dared to write an op-ed with a conservative point of view.

Jason Garshfield wrote a piece in the Daily Nexus, the school’s official newspaper, criticizing the Department of Feminist Studies.

Basically, Garshfield’s piece argued that the department violated the the University of California Regents Policy 3201, which forbids using the classroom “for political indoctrination.” He explained that he himself once took a course in the department, and that it promoted ideas such as gender as a social construct and the “recognition of male privilege,” and that the lessons were taught as fact without giving students the opportunity to contest or debate them.

“How can an academic department which is explicitly named after a political movement possibly claim to be ‘aloof from politics?’” Garshfield asked. “Imagine how you would feel if there was a Department of Objectivist Studies at UCSB. The department was dedicated to promoting Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. All of the professors were Objectivists, and students in the department were taught heavy doses of Objectivism without being exposed to a single dissenting opinion. Would you consider such a department to be ‘an instrument for the advance of partisan interest?’ You probably would.”

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Bitten by the Unresponsive, Irresponsible FDA Regulators are blocking innovative approaches to protecting us from Zika and other viruses. By Henry I. Miller & Drew L. Kershen

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

The mosquito species Aedes aegypti transmits viral diseases, including Zika, dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, and yellow fever, between human hosts. For most of these viral diseases, there are no vaccines and no effective medicines. So until recently, public-health officials have had to use old, low-tech approaches to controlling the mosquito vector and reducing the incidence of infections: pesticide sprays, public education about exposure (DEET, mosquito nets, and clothing that covers as much skin as possible), and control of breeding areas (water in flower pots, tires, drains, etc.).

Oxitec, a British subsidiary of the American company Intrexon, has created a new way to control Aedes aegypti. Male mosquitoes are bred in the laboratory with a specific genetic mutation that, in the absence of a certain chemical, causes their offspring to die before reaching maturity. Male mosquitoes do not bite, so their release presents no health risk, and, because their progeny die, the genetically engineered mosquitoes do not persist in the environment. Releasing the males over a period of several months causes a marked reduction in the mosquito population.

In field tests conducted in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama, Oxitec has shown that the release of these genetically engineered male mosquitoes has consistently reduced wild populations by more than 80 percent, and the most recent field trials show greater than 90 percent reduction. In 2014, on the basis of these field trials, Brazil’s regulatory authority approved the commercial release of these mosquitoes. Brazil approved Oxitec’s approach because the traditional approaches to mosquito control were failing to protect the country’s inhabitants from A. aegypti–borne viral diseases. The apparent association of Zika-virus infection with microcephaly in babies born to infected mothers has only added to the urgency.

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The EPA’s Troubled Waters It claims jurisdiction over drainage ditches, farmland, and even backyards. By Leigh Thompson

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

Clarity!” has been the battle cry of the EPA over the last year as it put the final touches on its expansive and overreaching definition of “waters of the United States” (or “WOTUS”). And yet, a week after the final rule was published, the only clarity the EPA has provided is its intent to snatch up every piece of land that can channel, pool, or absorb water and include it within its newly minted jurisdiction.

The effects of this rule are both far-reaching and disastrous. Tributaries make up only one aspect of this unconstitutional overhaul of the Clean Water Act, but they provide useful insight into the impractical mind of the EPA.

The amended definition of a “tributary” will expand the EPA’s dominion to ephemeral flows — or, as an ordinary person might know them, dry lands where water sometimes flows after heavy rains — as well as many common drainage ditches. If a tributary contributes any flow at all, regardless of frequency or volume, to a downstream water, it is now within the EPA’s purview.

Practically, this means that the average drainage ditch, the channels between rows of planted crops, and the land beneath the crudely formed streams from the torrential rains that carried away portions of central Texas over the last several weeks are now all subject to federal jurisdiction if water from them can be carried downstream at any point. To build one’s home, to plant crops as a means of livelihood, to erect a fence or build a road, the average person will now need to seek a permit from the Corps of Engineers.

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The EPA’s Lawless Land Grab Obama’s power-mad agency claims jurisdiction over land and water use almost everywhere in the United States. By Rupert Darwall

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

In his final book, economist Mancur Olson wrote of the profound and crucial connection between representative government and the property and contract rights important for economic progress. Olson quoted James Madison: “Just as a man may be said to have a right to his property, so he has a property in his rights.” The rule of law is therefore essential for the preservation of constitutional government and for economic growth. In no country have the economic fruits of the rule of law been more plentiful than the United States.

Today there is no greater threat to the rule of law and the right to the peaceful enjoyment of property than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the course of prosecuting its ostensible mission to clean the air and the water. Under the guise of the Clean Air Act, the agency’s Clean Power Plan will take control of America’s electrical-power infrastructure.

Yet Congress did not envisage that the 1970 legislation would be used to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. To get around the inconveniently precise wording Congress provided in the statute, EPA resorted to rewriting the provision of the Clean Air Act that didn’t fit with its regulatory plans — a gambit that has had ups and downs in the Supreme Court, which will soon address the legality of the Clean Power Plan. Until Monday, the timetable was well advanced, with states being required to submit compliance plans this summer. Then, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision agreed to freeze its implementation, showing that the plan’s opponents have a reasonable prospect of persuading the courts to throw out the plan.

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In Search of Fixes for a Fossilized Economy By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 11th, 2016

The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015.

While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor-force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent. More than 90 million able-bodied adults are either not currently in the labor force or have stopped looking for work altogether.

Average household incomes have been mostly stagnant in recent years relative to the rate of inflation. The Dow Jones industrial average fell by 2.2 percent in 2015 and has continued to plummet this year. Most people’s retirement portfolios have been losing money.

Such economic sluggishness, more than seven years after the 2008 financial crisis, was not supposed to happen, given all the traditional economic stimuli.

When times are tough, politicians sometimes call for a reduction in energy taxes to help lower gas prices and bring down household heating and cooling costs. Such cutting usually puts more disposable income into the pockets of families.

Yet, largely because of Persian Gulf oil politics and private-sector fracking and horizontal drilling, U.S. gas prices have already plunged to a national average of less than $1.80. That is a huge drop from the average 2014 price of about $3.34 a gallon — and it should provide an enormous economic stimulus.