POLITICS Comments turned off

In Republican Debate, Tough Talk on Terror Reveals Party’s Rifts Candidates clash over how to combat Islamic State, and over their attitudeBy Gerald F. Seib

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

The Republican presidential field agreed easily enough Tuesday night on the imperative of defeating the threat from Islamic State. They had much more trouble agreeing on whether the most important tool in that fight is a plan, or an attitude.

Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz came to the stage offering detailed plans, as did former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. They clashed on the details of those plans, particularly when the two senators disagreed on whether Mr. Cruz had undermined the effort to collect intelligence on terror programs by voting to curtail a program for gathering Americans’ phone data.

But Donald Trump, still the leader of the Republican pack, offered less in the way of an agenda for defeating Islamic State, also known as ISIS. More important, he said, is simply a hard-nosed attitude.

“The problem is we need toughness,” he said at one point. “We need tough people.”

Republican candidates disagreed over strategies to defeat Syrian President Bashir al Assad and whether or not an overthrow of of the leader is wise. Photo: AP

He said he was willing to shut down part of the Internet to stop terrorists from communicating with one another, but he was unclear on what that meant. He said he would enlist “brilliant people” to figure out how to stop their communications without interfering with the communications of others.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Is Trump Paving the Way for Ted Cruz? By Walter Hudson

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

“I can’t believe I’m saying this. But I might prefer President Trump,” writes liberal columnist Ruth Marcus for the Washington Post in a piece declaring Texas Senator Ted Cruz “more dangerous” than the real estate mogul. Marcus argues that Trump would be far more likely to cut deals with Democrats “on taxes, on funding Planned Parenthood, on implementing Obamacare, you name it.” Cruz, by contrast, would die hard on such issues.

Marcus offers an enlightening glimpse into the fears of the political establishment. Of particular note is this unexpected benefit of Trump’s candidacy:

… Trump’s ascendancy and the outrageousness of his pronouncements have made Cruz appear like the more reasonable alternative. As Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) told me in an interview for Washington Post Live, “I don’t think six months ago anybody would have thought that Ted Cruz was mainstream. . . . Trump has made Cruz mainstream.”

That’s one way to look at it. Perhaps the Republican Party will ultimately end up with a nominee other-than-Trump who Trump effectively enables. Wouldn’t that be something?

POLITICS Comments turned off

Report: Review Finds That Hillary Clinton Received ‘Top Secret’ Emails Despite State Department Challenge By Debra Heine

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

Hillary Clinton received at least two top-secret emails to her unsecured email server, an intelligence community review has found, despite State Department claims to the contrary.

At least two intelligence sources told Fox News that the dispute over whether the two emails were classified at the highest level is now a “settled matter.”

The agencies that owned and originated that intelligence – the CIA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or NGA – reviewed the emails to determine how they should be properly stored, as the State Department took issue with their highly classified nature. The subject matter of the messages is widely reported to be the movement of North Korean missiles and a drone strike. A top secret designation requires the highest level of security, and can include the use of an approved safe.

The sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, told Fox News that while the emails were indeed “top secret” when they hit Clinton’s server, one of them remains “top secret” to this day — and must be handled at the highest security level. The second email is still considered classified but at the lower “secret” level because more information is publicly available about the event.

POLITICS Comments turned off

In the Shadow of George W. Bush: Rubio and Cruz By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

President George W. Bush left office seven years ago, but his shadow still weighs heavily on the Republican Party. His failures, along with those of President Barack Obama, arguably inspired the anti-establishment furor of 2015 — with media mogul Donald Trump leading the polls and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush floundering despite his money lead. The two rising challengers to Mr. Trump — Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz — represent two transformative approaches to the legacy of one of America’s most controversial leaders.

According to CBS, President George W. Bush left office with a depressing 22 percent approval rating, with 73 percent saying they disapproved of his performance as commander in chief. The unpopularity of the Iraq War and the housing market crash in 2008 propelled Barack Obama to power. But four years later, Bush’s legacy enjoyed an upswing, as his approval rating rose to nearly half in 2013.

This year, with the rise of the Islamic State, the continuing struggles of Obamacare, and a sluggish economic recovery, George W. Bush’s more famous policy positions — compassionate conservatism and a hawkish foreign policy — might just seem attractive once again.

According to The Federalist’s Ben Domenech, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has largely endorsed George W.’s old positions, giving the 2004 winning coalition a new face. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, by contrast, has taken a more nuanced position — opposing big government even when used for conservative aims, and supporting civil liberties over NSA surveillance.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Taking Over Latin America by Joseph Humire

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

“This is a matter of life or death. I need you to be an intermediary with Argentina to get help for my country’s nuclear program. We need Argentina to share its nuclear technology with us. It will be impossible to advance with our program without Argentina’s cooperation.” – Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

According to Venezuelan informants, whitewashing Iran’s accused from the AMIA attack was only a secondary objective in its outreach to Argentina. The primary objective was to gain access to Argentina’s nuclear technology and materials — a goal Iran has for more than three decades.

During the last 32 years, Iran has achieved a resounding success in promoting an anti-US and anti-Israel message in Latin America. Its state-owned television network, HispanTV, broadcasts in Spanish 24 hours a day, seven days a week in at least 16 countries throughout the region.

The lifting of sanctions and influx of billions of dollars as a result of Iran’s nuclear deal will undoubtedly help Iran in Latin America, where many countries face economic turmoil and can use an Iranian “stimulus.”

While Latin America is often regarded as a foreign policy backwater for the United States, it is the geopolitical prize for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

During the last couple months, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been playing a political tug of war over Latin America. On November 10, 2015, Iran’s deputy foreign minister held a private meeting with ambassadors from nine Latin American countries to reaffirm the Islamic Republic’s desire to “enhance and deepen ties” with the region. This was followed by similar statements from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Tehran later that month.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Irony alert: Saudis announce formation of ‘anti-terrorism’ coalition By Rick Moran

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

A nation ruled by an extremist Islamic sect known as the Wahhabis announced that it has formed a grand coalition of mostly Muslim countries to fight terrorism. Saudi Arabia and 33 other nations will coordinate their efforts to end terrorism – they say.

Presumably, the government of Saudi Arabia and the coalition won’t fight any of the Islamist militias the Saudis are currently supporting in Syria. And Pakistan, a member of the coalition, will somehow forget that it is supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The fact is, many members of this coalition are supporting their own pet terrorist outfits to advance their own interests.

Fox News:

The announcement published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency said the alliance will be Saudi-led and is being established because terrorism “should be fought by all means and collaboration should be made to eliminate it.” The statement said Islam forbids “corruption and destruction in the world” and that terrorism constitutes “a serious violation of human dignity and rights, especially the right to life and the right to security.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Auditor: EPA broke the law in social media campaign to push water rule By Rick Moran

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

For the fourth time this year, the Environmental Protection Agency has been accused of breaking laws governing its operations.

Last July, the agency was accused of colluding with left wing environmental groups to push its new carbon regulations. In October, a federal appeals court said the EPA broke the law when it illegally approved a pesticide.

In August, the EPA was responsible for a toxic spill at an abandoned mine that polluted rivers in three states.

Now the Government Accountability Office reports that the agency’s social media blitz to approve the new rules governing the protection of just about every acre of water in the country violated strictures against lobbying.

Fox News:

The EPA’s campaign violated restrictions against lobbying and propaganda by federal agencies, the Government Accountability Office said in a 26-page report. The agency blitzed social media in a campaign that urged the public to submit comments on the draft water rule. The effort reached at least 1.8 million people.

Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said the GAO finding confirms what he has long suspected: “that EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its activist environmental agenda.”

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biggest Liar of 2015: The Washington Post and Its Pinocchios By Colin Flaherty

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

Colin Flaherty is the only two-time winner of the Washington Post’s Summer Spy Novel writing contest.

In its annual roundup of this year’s biggest lies and liars, the Washington Post forgot the largest liar of all: The writers and editors of the Washington Post.

We are of course talking about the Post’s recent decision to name the “hands up, don’t shoot’ campaign as one of its “Biggest Pinocchios of 2015.” But the collection of prevarications was curiously incomplete.

The Post reporter had no trouble identifying the biggest liars behind the other lies: Trump, Hillary, Kerry, Warren, whatever: The liars and lies were locked together.

Except for the biggest lie of all; the lie the Post left for last. The lie that took more ink, and went unchallenged by more professional skeptics than all the other lies put together. A lie that, apparently, told itself, because this was the only Pinocchio unmatched with a specific liar.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Hello, Old Friend, Time to Read You Again On the fresh pleasures and insights that can come from revisiting a favorite book. By Christopher B. Nelson

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

As Christmas approaches, many Americans are making their holiday reading lists—and their plans to cozy up over a long vacation with the year’s hot books or their piles of unopened magazines. But it’s important, too, to think about the value of rereading favorite works: Robert Frost’s poems, perhaps, or George Eliot’s “Middlemarch.”

We do a lot of rereading at my college. Students are instructed to reread assignments once or twice before going to class, and professors in faculty study groups must reread books from the college’s core list.

Yet some regard rereading as a guilty pleasure. After all, new books come out all the time. “With the shelves thus groaning,” Hephzibah Anderson wrote last year for the BBC, “pulling down a well-thumbed favourite feels like an unconscionable indulgence.”

Surely we shouldn’t give in to this feeling. There may have been a time when so few books had been published that one could read everything. But that was several centuries ago. It doesn’t make much sense to feel guilty for failing to attain an impossible goal.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Evidence Is Piling Up That Higher Minimum Wages Kill Jobs President Obama says there is ‘no solid evidence.’ Yes there is—lots of it. By David Neumark

Posted By on December 16th, 2015

The movement to raise the federal minimum wage has become ever more ambitious. In 2013 proponents deemed $9 an hour acceptable; today the demand is for $15.

Economists point to a crucial question: Will a higher minimum wage reduce the number of jobs for the country’s least skilled workers? President Obama says “there is no solid evidence that a higher minimum wage costs jobs.” On the contrary, a full and fair reading of the evidence shows the opposite. Raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, particularly those held by the least-skilled.

Economists have written scores of papers on the topic dating back 100 years, and the vast majority of these studies point to job losses for the least-skilled. They are based on fundamental economic reasoning—that when you raise the price of something, in this case labor, less of it will be demanded, or in this case hired.

Among the many studies supporting this conclusion is one completed earlier this year by Texas A&M’s Jonathan Meer and MIT’s Jeremy West, which reaffirmed that “the minimum wage reduces job growth over a period of several years” and that “industries that tend to have a higher concentration of low-wage jobs show more deleterious effects on job growth from higher minimum wages.”

The broader research confirms this. An extensive survey of decades of minimum-wage research, published by William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board and me in a 2008 book titled “Minimum Wages,” generally found a 1% or 2% reduction for teenage or very low-skill employment for each 10% minimum-wage increase.