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Did the White House Use the NSA to Spy on Congress about the Iran Deal? If true, the administration would seem to have violated major privacy laws. By Fred Fleitz —

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

According to a bombshell Wall Street Journal article by Adam Entous and Danny Yadron, published online late Monday, the National Security Agency provided the White House with intercepted Israeli communications containing details of private discussions between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. lawmakers and American Jewish groups on the Iran nuclear deal. If true, this could be the biggest scandal of the Obama presidency.

The Journal article explains that President Obama decided to stop NSA collection against certain foreign leaders after the backlash against Edward Snowden’s disclosure that the NSA had eavesdropped on German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone and monitored communications of the heads of state of other close U.S. allies.

According to the Journal story, President Obama did not halt NSA spying against Netanyahu. This is not a surprise, given the president’s chilly relations with the Israeli leader and Israel’s aggressive spying against the United States. It’s also not a surprise that the Obama administration sought intelligence on Netanyahu’s efforts to undermine the nuclear deal. But it is stunning to learn that NSA sent the White House intelligence on private discussions with U.S. congressmen on a major policy dispute between the White House and Congress.

According to the Journal article, to avoid a paper trail that would show that they wanted the NSA to report on Netanyahu’s interactions with Congress, Obama officials decided to let the agency decide how much of this intelligence to provide and what to withhold. The article cited an unnamed U.S. official who explained, “We didn’t say, ‘Do it.’ We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’”

This suggests major misconduct by the NSA and the White House of a sort not seen since Watergate. First, intercepts of congressmen’s communications regarding a dispute between Congress and the White House should have been destroyed and never left the NSA building. The Journal article said a 2011 NSA directive requires direct communications between foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress to be destroyed, but gives the NSA director the authority to waive this requirement if he determines the communications contain “significant foreign intelligence.”

Netanyahu’s discussions with members of Congress on a policy dispute between Congress and the president do not qualify as foreign intelligence. Destroying this kind of information should not have been a close call for NSA. Congress should immediately ask NSA director Michael Rogers and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to verify the Journal story and explain why intercepts of private discussions of members of Congress were provided to the White House. If this did happen, both officials should resign.

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Who’s Killing the Mentally Ill? Police officers are victims when the mental-health industry refuses to deal seriously with mentally ill patients.By D. J. Jaffe

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

Not again! This past Saturday, a Chicago police officer responding to a 911 call shot and killed Quintonio LeGrier, an allegedly mentally ill man who had been threatening his father with a baseball bat and, bat in hand, was approaching the officer. The officer’s bullets also killed Bette Jones, an innocent bystander. There were 1,126 fatal shootings by police this past year. Half were shootings of persons with mental illness. In Chicago, as elsewhere, families and friends of the deceased called for better police training, echoing a call frequently made by mental-health advocates. But by limiting the proposed reforms to calls for police training, the families and public are letting these mental-health advocates off the hook for their own culpability.

The mental-health system has essentially severed the tie between gaining public mental-health funds and using them to serve the most seriously ill. Police chief (ret.) Michael Biasotti, former president of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, explained the phenomenon to Congress in 2014:

We have two mental-health systems today, serving two mutually exclusive populations: Community programs serve those who seek and accept treatment. Those who refuse, or are too sick to seek treatment voluntarily, become a law-enforcement responsibility. . . . [M]ental-health officials seem unwilling to recognize or take responsibility for this second, more symptomatic group.

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The Numbers Are in: Black Lives Matter Is Wrong about Police By David French

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

Ever since the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement, Americans have been bombarded with assertions that black men face a unique and dangerous threat — not from members of their own community but from the very law enforcement officers who are sworn to “serve and protect” them. Hashtags such as #DrivingWhileBlack and #WalkingWhileBlack have perpetuated a narrative that black Americans risk being gunned down by police simply because of the color of their skin. Using individual anecdotes of police misconduct and the now-discredited “hands up, don’t shoot” rallying cry, Black Lives Matter has built a case that American police are out of control.

The conservative response is clear: While no one believes the police are perfect, on the whole they tend to use force appropriately to protect their own lives and the lives of others. Moreover, racial disparities in the use of force are largely explained by racial disparities in criminality. Different American demographics commit crimes at different rates, so it stands to reason that those who commit more crimes will confront the police more often. Yes, there are rogue officers — and those rogue officers should be prosecuted — but the police are still a force for good in our society.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Marco Rubio Is Plenty Conservative By Jim Geraghty —

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

It is now axiomatic that Marco Rubio is the “establishment” favorite in the 2016 Republican primaries, due for a collision with a conservative alternative such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson.

But if Rubio really represents the new GOP “establishment,” then the fight is over and the conservatives won. Despite infuriating many grassroots conservatives by pushing the failed Gang of Eight immigration-reform bill and advocating a path to legalization, Rubio has an indisputably conservative record as a senator.

This is a man who has a lifetime ACU rating of 98 out of 100. A man who has a perfect rating from the NRA in the U.S. Senate. A man who earned scores of 100 in 2014, 100 in 2013, 71 in 2012, and 100 in 2011 from the Family Research Council. A “Taxpayer Super Hero” with a lifetime rating of 95 from Citizens Against Government Waste. A man Club for Growth president David McIntosh called “a complete pro-growth, free-market, limited-government conservative.”

Across the board, Rubio’s stances, policy proposals, and rhetoric fall squarely within the bounds of traditional conservatism.

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Trump and Sanders Break the Mold for Populist Politicians By Jonah Goldberg

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

Populism is typically born in places like Nebraska, Louisiana, Kansas, and the other places given short shrift in that famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cartoon showing the view of the world from Ninth Avenue.

It’s not supposed to hail from Brooklyn or Queens, never mind Burlington, Vermont, or midtown Manhattan. But that’s where the two reigning populists of the 2016 cycle call home.

You could say that Donald Trump, the son of a rich real-estate developer in Queens, was always a populist at heart. All his life he wanted to break into the fancy-pants world of Manhattan real estate. Despite his wealth, he still has that bridge-and-tunnel chip on his shoulder. And that chip explains the garishness of his publicity-seeking lifestyle, as well as his politics.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders grew up in Brooklyn, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. He followed a somewhat familiar path to politics. As Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina quipped in one of the recent Republican debates, Sanders went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon and never came back. In reality, he ended up in Burlington and became the socialist mayor of one of the very first latte towns.

Looked at through a historical lens, a billionaire Manhattanite from Queens and a Jewish socialist from Brooklyn should be standing at the pointy end of the pitchforks, not leading the mobs holding them. Nearly all of the famous populists hated the East Coast, the super-rich, and the big cities. A good number — but not all — of them disliked Jews.

And yet, what you might call “blue state populism” is here.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Muslims “Have Nothing Whatsoever to do with Terrorism” Muslim Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

Muslims “have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” — Hillary Clinton.

“We have been forced to live under a climate of fear, this is not England. I grew up in in to a free decent country accepting British values and the British rule of law. … I think there is two laws, one for them and one for us.” — Nissar Hussain, former Muslim.

“They wanted to kill us by burning us alive, but we managed to escape. We have lost everything.” — Ramni Das, 57, accused of witchcraft in Bangladesh.

Iraq’s parliament passed a law that will force Christian children to become Muslim if their father converts to Islam or if their Christian mother marries a Muslim.

In Pakistan, an 8-year-old girl, Sara Bibi, was beaten and locked in a school bathroom by her Muslim head teacher for using the same toilet as Muslims. She was then expelled from the school.

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Iran Executes Three Iranians Every Day; The West Rewards It. by Judith Bergman

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

“Death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality. They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or for acts that should not be criminalized at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation” — From a July 2015 Amnesty International report.

How ironic that Europeans have no problem stuffing themselves with syrupy Iranian dates exported by this regime, knowing full well that there are thousands of prisoners are being tortured in Iran while awaiting their executions.

Amnesty International reports that in the fall of 2015, cartoonist Atena Farghadani was forced to undergo a “virginity and pregnancy test” prior to her trial. The charge? “Illegitimate sexual relations,” for having shaken hands with her lawyer.

Iran nevertheless won a top seat on the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women in April 2014. Not a single UN member, not even the US, objected.

On the UN’s Human Rights Day, observed December 10, an Iranian woman was sentenced to death by stoning in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran is believed to have imposed death by stoning on at least 150 people, according to the International Committees against Execution and Stoning.

BOOKS Comments turned off

DOMINIC GREEN: POLITICAL PLAYPEN

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

Brandeis University, near Boston, has a booming business school, new science buildings that generate patents and medicines, and a small cadre of Humanities professors dedicated to ‘”social justice”, whatever that is.

For 12 days in late November, members of “Brandeis Students of Color” and “Concerned Students 2015” squatted in the corridor outside the president’s office, demanding that the university hire more black faculty and admit more black students. On a Facebook page detailing their “activism” was guff about the “intersectionality” of race, class and gender oppression, mixed with requests for vegan food, accusations of “white supremacy”, and encouraging comments from various faculty members. “This is a revolution,” one student opined, before falling silent, stupefied by his own vacuity.

True to Sixties precedent, the Humanities faculty suddenly noticed that they were jailers at a racial gulag, and issued messages of support. Helpfully, several departments offered to undo academic apartheid by expanding their budgets for faculty hiring. Interim president Lisa Lynch surrendered immediately.

I took my doctorate at Brandeis. I could feel my degree devaluing as I read Lynch’s email. To foster a “more diverse, inclusive, and academically excellent community”, Brandeis will hire a Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, to issue an annual “report card” on the university’s moral failings. More “faculty of colour” will be hired, more “students of colour” admitted; degree requirements may be lowered accordingly. Still, many of Brandeis’s non-academic staff are already cleaners and gardeners of colour, so full marks to Brandeis on that front.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Wrong Strategy Alexader Woolfson

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

The Commons debate on whether the existing British air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq should be extended to Syria revealed the strategic black hole at the heart of Westminster. Despite the stirring calls to arms from both David Cameron and Labour’s potential leader Hilary Benn, this was less a debate about Syria and more of a litmus test for the principle of intervention. It was also clear that Labour can no longer make a meaningful contribution to debate about national security with a leader whose ideological commitment to pacifism allows no circumstances in which force would ever be used. The result is that the only formal opposition to government policy is binary — intervention or no intervention. The effect on national security should not be underestimated. The lamentable lack of strategic content in almost 12 hours of debate made clear that despite the outcome, the practice, if not the principle, of military intervention is in poor health on both sides of the House.

It is hard to imagine an intervention with a stronger moral and strategic mandate — a UN resolution and a request for assistance after an attack on a Nato ally. Nonetheless, political will must be matched by a commitment to a strategy that has a strong chance of succeeding. Yet militarily the plan under debate will not prove to be decisive. At best the extension of air strikes represents the correction of a logical deficit in the UK’s contribution to the fight against IS. We are in practice at war with a pseudo-state that requires conventional land forces to defeat. Western politicians still do not seem to have grasped that unlike al-Qaeda, whose aim was the removal of infidels from the region, IS seeks control of territory with no borders because all must be enfolded into the caliphate. Clearly, special forces and air power alone won’t decisively change the facts on the ground.

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Top 6 Military Missteps of 2015 By James Jay Carafano

Posted By on December 30th, 2015

Sometimes calling the five-sided Pentagon the “puzzle palace” makes perfect sense. Though the name purports to describe the maze of hallways that traverses the Department of Defense, on occasion the tag explains the state of military decision-making.

The Defense Department has its own year in review, which is all happy-face.

Here is mine–six examples from the last twelve months that make one wonder if those providing for the common defense are using common sense.

#6. Arming the “moderate” Syrian opposition. This has looked like a Keystone Kops short from day one. The Defense Department estimated training about 60 fighters at a cost of about $10 million per fighter. In October, the Pentagon announced it was suspending the program. “I was not satisfied with the early efforts,” declared Defense Secretary Ash Carter in what might rank as the understatement of the year. Since everything was going so well, Obama signed a bill in November authorizing $800 million for training rebels next year.

#5. Crash diet in Afghanistan. Remember all those ads on how to lose weight without diet or exercise? That’s what US defense policy sounds like some times, particularly in Afghanistan where the administration has shorted the size of the force again and again and promised everything would be cool. In October, the president reversed his decision to the troop levels to zero by the end of the year. But while something is better than nothing, the brutal facts are that the future of the country is now in jeopardy. There are even new al Qaeda training camps popping-up in the country.

#4. Death on the Homefront. In July, five US service members were killed in a terrorist attack on recruiting station in Tennessee. While the deaths themselves were tragic enough, the incident raised legitimate questions over whether the US military was taking appropriate measures to protect the force at home, including permitting service members to bring personal firearms to work and be armed on duty.