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Africa’s Terror Crescent A spate of attacks shows jihad’s long reach on the Continent.

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

For all the attention attracted by the battle against Islamic State in the Middle East, Islamism is also wreaking havoc in Africa. Jihadist groups control territory stretching from the Horn of Africa to the Mediterranean coast and south to Nigeria, and that crescent was ablaze this weekend.

Al Shabaab on Saturday took responsibility for a bomb that ripped a yard-long hole in a Daallo Airlines plane while it was flying from Mogadishu to Djibouti on Feb. 2. The would-be bomber blew himself out of the cabin, while in a miracle the other passengers and the crew survived.

Al Shabaab, which is al Qaeda’s Somalian franchise, called the attack “retribution for the crimes committed by the coalition of Western crusaders.” Al Shabaab said it intended to bomb a Turkish Airlines flight but switched targets after bad weather forced the Turkish carrier to cancel. The Daallo plane was carrying many of the passengers from the cancelled Turkish flight. Ankara, a NATO member, is building a military base in Somalia and contributes to antiterror efforts in Africa. READ MORE AT SITE

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Armed federal marshals arrest Houston man for student loan debt crime By Martin Barillas ???!!!

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

US Marshals Service arrested a Houston man for allegedly failing to repay a $1500 federal student loan that he had received in 1987. According to Paul Aker, he was arrested at his home last week by a group of seven armed deputy US Marshals. He was then taken to a local federal court, where he signed a payment plan for the nearly 30-year-old loan.

U.S. House Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) said that the federal government is recurring to private debt collectors to hunt down debtors. The collectors are obtaining judgements in federal courts and are thus enabled to seek debtors’ arrest by federal marshals. Green said “There’s bound to be a better way to collect a student debt.”

Media reports contend that federal marshals deliver between 1200 to 1500 warrants per year throughout the United States to persons who have not repaid their federal student loans.

According to a reporter for Fox 26 news, the marshals arrived at Akers’ home in “combat gear and automatic weapons.”

Aker expressed incredulity that he had to repay his loan. He said, “I’m home. I haven’t done anything. Why are there marshals on my door?” When he was brought before a federal judge in Houston, Akers said it was “mind-boggling” that he was required to make a payment agreement for the money he owed. He also claimed that he was not read out his Miranda rights nor offered any legal representation. Akers claimed that he had never received a notice of default on the loan for 30 years.

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No Deference Is Called For on Judicial Nominees There will be no reason for the Senate to vote on Obama’s nomination to replace Justice Scalia. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

I’m sorry that the crucial importance of Justice Scalia’s now-vacant seat on the Supreme Court meant that the heated battle over filling it was already well underway while most of us, reeling from the profound loss, craved a respectable interval to console his loved ones and reflect on his epic legacy. Yet when I groused to a friend about the unseemliness of it all early Saturday evening, I was gently admonished with this thought: Antonin Scalia loved America, lived to preserve what was great about America, accomplished more in that regard than almost anyone in our history, and would have hoped that we’d follow that example — not just honor his legacy but act on it.

So right.

Thus, a few thoughts about the nomination battle that should not happen.

Of course President Obama is going to propose a nominee. It is a legitimate exercise of his authority to do so. But it is also a legitimate exercise of the Senate’s authority not to entertain the nomination. That is clear from the Constitution’s plain language and attested to by the history of Democratic obstruction of judicial nominees by senators named Obama, Clinton, Schumer, Leahy, et al.

The presumption that a president is entitled to his nominees if they satisfy basic criteria of competence and probity applies to executive-branch officers, not judges. Officers of the executive branch exercise the president’s power and are removable at the president’s pleasure, so naturally the president is entitled to deference in this area — although (a) not if the nominee has a history of misconduct (see Eric Holder), (b) not if he nominates someone who says she will support executive-branch lawlessness (see Loretta Lynch), and (c) there cannot be unilateral surrender — if Democrats reject executive nominees for philosophical reasons, Republicans would be foolish not to respond in kind.

Judicial nominations are a different matter entirely.

Even in traditional, pre-Bork times, the courts were a discrete branch of government. Judges get lifetime appointments that stretch well beyond the presidency in which they are nominated, and far from wielding the president’s power, they are often a check on the president’s abuse of that power. So clearly, even before 1987, the president would not be entitled to the kind of deference that he deserves on executive appointments.

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Hopeless but not Syri-ous E :David “Spengler’ Goldman

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

Welcome to Permanent War, as Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev dubbed today’s Middle East. It isn’t as bad as it sounds, provided, of course, that you’re not in it. The bonfire built on tribal enmity and national disillusionment will have to burn itself out over time. The risk lies in the possible spread of the fire outside the region.
First, a quick review of what is not going to happen in Syria, rhetoric to the contrary:

Neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia will send ground troops into northern Syria and fight US-backed Kurdish militia. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz declared on Sunday that his country had “no intention” of sending its army into Syria, while Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said that deployment of Saudi forces is up to the United States.
Turkey won’t send combat aircraft into Syria to be shot down by Russian air defenses. Turkey would only sacrifice its aircraft in the hope of drawing the United States into a showdown with Russia, and the United States has evidently told Ankara that it’s on its own. Saudi Arabia may base some aircraft in Turkey, but won’t use them. The United States does not want to finnd out how good Russia’s S-400 air defense system actually is; Pentagon analysts believe that it is very good indeed.
The Russian-Iranian reduction of Aleppo will add little to the flood of Syrian refugees. Perhaps 40,000 people have fled Aleppo and nearby towns. Syria’s refugee count had already reached 5 million in late 2013.
Russia and the United States will not stumble into a strategic confrontation over a long-since-unsalvageable patch of Levantine desert.

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Appalled by Anti-Semitism, Oxford University Club Co-Leader Resigns At an Oxford University Club, it had become routine for certain members to freely express outright anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel; one student leader had enough. By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

It may be difficult for many to relate to the rarefied air of Oxford University’s student clubs, but nearly everyone will understand the gravity of the decision made by one leader of such a group who, in his resignation notice, called the club on its hideous anti-Semitism.

Perhaps more shocking, sadly, than that the anti-Semitism was so thinly veiled is that the student who resigned from the Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, was willing to go public with his denunciation, which he delivered on Facebook on Monday, Feb. 15.

Chalmers, a second year student in Oriel College, Oxford, explained that the trigger for his resignation was the decision earlier the same evening by the OULC to endorse Israel Apartheid Week, which begins next week.

The Oxford student was horrified that the Club chose to endorse Israel Apartheid Week. IAW typically includes the harassment of Jewish students and provides a forum for bringing anti-Semitic speakers to campus. This decision, Chalmers explained, belied the claims some had made that the OULC was interested in improving an increasingly intolerant atmosphere.

Even prior to the vote to endorse the famously distorted annual attack week targeted against Israel were numerous incidents of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel expressions by members of the OULC, including members in leadership positions, cited by Chalmers.

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How to Enable Islam…and Evil by Edward Cline

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

Daniel Greenfield, in his Sultan Knish columns, writes about Islam from a perspective that is 100% objective and rational, a perspective I wish more people were capable of grasping. They don’t need to emulate his writing style or acquire as in-depth knowledge of Islam as his to appreciate the value he offers readers, indeed, offers the nation. Grasping the unchanging and unchangeable nature of Islam is a simple exercise in non-contradictory identification. A is A. Islam is Islam.

“Bad” Islam is just “Good” Islam in a bad mood, he writes. “Bad” Islam has nothing to do with Islam. It’s as though “Bad” Islam were not quoting from the Koran, but from the Peanuts cartoons and the translation always gets skewed in the process.

Greenfield is not an Islam-basher for the sake of bashing Islam. With his unbeatable gift for irony, he unleashes the same no-holds-barred passion as he bashes phony politicians (is there a difference?), and phony technologies (like solar and wind power), and phony humanitarians who profit from phony charities and leave chump change for the alleged beneficiaries (re Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the Clintons, George Clooney, and two or three dozen more extraordinarily rich people who want to “do good”). The private organizations “resettling” Muslim “refugees” in American cities, and which are paid and subsidized by the U.S. government, are a case in point.

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Bernie Sanders: Socialist, Progressive, Jew Edward Alexander

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

In the course of his mercurial rise to national prominence, Senator Bernard Sanders has diligently affixed the adjective “democratic” to the “socialism” that is the name of his desire for America. Unlike the semi-educated “millennials”and historical amnesiacs who now flock to him, he is old enough and smart enough to recall such monstrosities as Germany’s “National Socialism,” the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” (and its numerous Eastern European satellites), and — lest we forget — the Oceania of Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, where Ingsoc, (Newspeak for English socialism) is the political ideology of totalitarianism. With that single adjective, Sanders seems to align himself (but only up to a point) with such estimable figures as Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, who founded Dissent magazine in 1954 primarily to declare their severing of ties to Bolshevism. They also made, in Howe’s words, “the indissoluble connection between democracy and socialism a crux of our thought.”

If, however, the connection is really indissoluble, why did Howe, and why does Sanders, find it necessary, compulsively, always to insert the qualifier “democratic”? Does this not suggest that socialism is inherently undemocratic? At least the socialist George Orwell recognized that in societies like the Russia and China of his day, where there is no private property and therefore no separate economic power, the ruling class looks upon political power as its essential and exclusive end; in a thoroughly socialist society, all jobs come under the direct control of political authorities. Orwell understood that a free market is the necessary, although not sufficient, condition of a free society. But Senator Sanders gives no indication that he comprehends how a free market keeps the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority and thus severely limits the coercive power of the state. (What Sanders does understand very well is that, to quote Orwell himself: “The mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist. . .” )

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The Supreme Court Vacancy Explained (in 250 Words)By Charles Lipson

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

No. 1: No nominee for the high court can get through the Senate before the election. No one.

No. 2: President Obama and the Democratic candidates for president know that. So do Republicans. All God’s children know it.
No. 3: Since the nominee will not be approved, Obama will use the opportunity to advance other goals. He will propose someone who burnishes his own progressive credentials and shows why control of the court depends on the November election. Putting Senate Republicans in an awkward position would be a nice bonus. But the target is November.

No. 4: Obama will nominate someone whose demographic characteristics help in the contests for president and U.S. Senate. That is not just his main criterion. It is his only one. The candidate could be from a purple state. Or a Latino. Or openly gay. Having finished law school would be a plus.

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MY SAY: A RECOMMENDED BOOK

Posted By on February 16th, 2016

Now that so many opinions, columns, politicians are focusing on the next appointment to the Supreme Court, let me recommend a book that explains how important it is to replace Antonin Scalia with a learned and principled and genuine Conservative. rsk

“The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution: You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand how Supreme Court Justices have recently substituted their own elitist views for Constitutional guarntees that protect the average American’s security and values”By Gerald Walpin

They’re on a “rampage,” writes Gerald Walpin, one of the country’s top litigators, in his astonishing new book, The Supreme Court Vs. The Constitution.And it takes just five of them to lay waste to the rights of 300 million Americans.

A mostly bare majority of justices of the United States Supreme Court, the only judicial body enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, have spent recent decades reversing, revoking and rescinding the fundamental guarantees of that sacred document to the people of America.

They’ve freed thousands of murderers, rewritten sound and time-tested laws, crippled religious liberty, enabled the spread of pornography and immorality. They have ignored the letter and spirit of the Constitution and its amendments in grabbing power that rightfully belongs to the Executive and Legislative branches, the states − and, ultimately, the people.

Gerald Walpin, who prosecuted criminals and pursued crooked bureaucrats as a federal Inspector General nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and, many years before, as a top prosecutor for the Department Of Justice in New York, dramatically sets out the deliberate push by a bare majority of Supreme Court justices to usurp the role of our country’s elected lawmakers and executives.

The justices time and again seize the rightful authority of those we elect to represent us, and with unchallengeable arrogance undermine the “inalienable rights” that long have made the United States the world’s brightest beacon of freedom, democracy, and personal security.

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Why Leftists Want to Draft Women A real military or social justice brigades? Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 16th, 2016

Hillary Clinton had endorsed forcing women to register for a draft. Now the issue is taking on new urgency. Despite the left’s anti-draft posturing, it has fond memories of its protests during the Vietnam War and it is the biggest supporter of bringing back the draft. Proposals to move to a draft army invariably come from Democrats in Congress and left-wing pundits who believe that a draft will create a higher barrier to any future conflict. Forcing women to register raises the barrier even higher.

And anything that makes it harder for the military to function properly is also part of that agenda.

But the debate over the role of women in the military is also a subset of the bigger debate about the role of our military. The military no longer exists to win wars or even to fight them.

Nobody thinks that Obama will fight China if it tries to take Taiwan or even Japan. If North Korea attacks, our people will have no air support while Kerry pleads with Kim Jong Un to allow them to be evacuated. Obama refused to provide military equipment to Ukraine. If Russian troops march into Poland, Putin knows quite well that NATO or no NATO, we won’t be there.

A global warming treaty, no matter how invalid and unenforceable, will be zealously followed by the White House to the letter. But security agreements and defense pacts are utterly worthless.

Obama is not going to stand up to any major power. That’s a given. He’ll deliver another speech explaining that they’ve isolated themselves and are on the wrong side of history. But that fighting them would only make matters worse. Unless Europe starts deporting Muslims, we are not going to be fighting any world powers or even any countries with any military capabilities worth mentioning.