NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

John Durham vs. the Beltway Swamp Michael Sussmann’s trial showcased the incestuous culture of elite Washington. By Kimberley A. Strassel

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-durham-vs-the-beltway-swamp-dossier-clinton-fbi-trial-expose-politics-11654207276?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The Michael Sussmann trial is over, but the stench lingers. Special counsel John Durham did more than expose Hillary Clinton’s dirty political tricks. He exposed the incestuous elite Washington world that enabled those tricks to succeed. America, meet again the Beltway swamp.

Mr. Sussman was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI, but not before the Durham team revealed the Clinton campaign’s work in 2016 to use both the FBI and the media to smear Donald Trump. The campaign relied on outside techies for false accusations of Trump links to Russia’s Alfa Bank, which Mr. Sussmann fed to the FBI. Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele separately funneled their infamous dossier to the Bureau. Then the Clinton team shopped the dirt to the media, using the fact of FBI investigations as proof it deserved coverage.

Still, it’s a long way from unfounded smears to full-fledged FBI investigations. The entire Clinton operation depended on getting the FBI to bite. The Durham trial was a glimpse at the chummy web of brokers who used their access and influence to make that happen.

One trial revelation was that Rodney Joffe —the tech executive who used privileged access to nonproprietary data to create the Alfa claims—was a confidential human source for the FBI in 2016. Yet Mr. Joffe, according to testimony, didn’t take his accusations to his regular handler. He instead gave them to . . . Mr. Sussmann, a lawyer in private practice whose clients included Mrs. Clinton.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey, Terrorists and NATO by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18581/turkey-terrorists-nato

Turkey, reportedly on the verge of yet another military incursion into Syria, appears up to other fun and games as well.

The so-called “terrorists” to whom Erdoğan is referring are Kurdish politicians, political activists, and refugees who live in Sweden and Finland. In particular, those who engage in advocacy for political equality and the official recognition of Kurds in Turkey and Syria. The Turkish government wants the two Nordic nations to extradite these individuals to Turkey.

Erdoğan’s regime, however, does not see actual jihadists in the region as terrorists and even actively supports them. For instance, news outlets have documented evidence of Erdoğan’s government’s close relationship with ISIS (the Islamic State).

ISIS collaborators received Turkish citizenship, a leaked official Turkish report showed, detailing how the jihadi group used Turkey to traffic money and obtain supplies.

Turkey is also home to Hamas terrorists…. “Hamas operates its headquarters in Istanbul.” — Israel Hayom, February 1, 2022.

Turkey’s Islamist allies in Afrin have since committed many crimes against civilians, including Christians, Yazidis and Kurds. These crimes include extortion, detention, abduction, rape, torture and murder.

For NATO’s well-being, Turkey’s threats, aggression and blackmail must not be allowed.

Turkey, reportedly on the verge of yet another military incursion into Syria, appears up to other fun and games as well.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains ongoing, two Nordic nations have applied for NATO membership: Sweden and Finland.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trumpology The path to the 2024 presidential election will be shaped entirely by how things look for Donald Trump in the wake of the 2022 midterms. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/01/trumpology/

Donald Trump has signaled he will announce his presidential intentions after the November midterm elections. Yet his record of endorsements is quite mixed. By the sheer numbers of winning primary candidates his stamp of approval is impressive, but in a few of the most important races, not so much. 

The disaster that is the Biden Administration has been a godsend for Trump. Had Biden simply plagiarized the successful Trump agenda, there would have followed no border disaster, no energy crisis, no hyperinflation, and no disastrous flight from Afghanistan. 

Had Biden followed through on his “unity” rhetoric, he could have lorded over Trump’s successful record as his own, while contrasting his Uncle-Joe ecumenicalism with supposed Trump’s polarization. 

Of course, serious people knew from the start that was utterly impossible. A cognitively challenged Biden was a captive of ideologues. Thus, he was bound to pursue an extremist agenda that could only end as it now has—in disaster and record low polls. 

Still, how ironic that the Biden catastrophe revived a Trump candidacy. Biden likely will cause the Democrats to lose Congress. His pick of a dismal Kamala Harris as vice president has likely ensured, for now, fewer viable Democratic presidential candidates in 2024. 

So, will Trump run? 

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Challenging SJP Chicago’s Lies and Toxic Radicalism The Freedom Center’s leaflets expose Jew-hatred. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/challenging-sjp-chicagos-lies-and-toxic-radicalism-richard-l-cravatts/

In yet another revealing example of its hypocrisy and obtuseness when assessing the consequences of its own behavior, the University of Chicago’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was again whining about being victimized by ideological opponents.

What was SJP’s complaint this time? In a letter to the editor in the university’s newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, SJP expressed its displeasure with the fact that on May 23rd, “the David Horowitz Freedom Center plastered more than 5,000 leaflets on and around campus demonizing Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students.”

Employing its tired tactic of whining that any effort by SJP’s critics is motivated by a desire to shut down any support of Palestinian self-determination, the letter preposterously suggested that the leaflets were posted on campus solely “in order to muzzle and disparage pro-Palestinian activism . . . .”

More absurdly, SJP claimed that the Horowitz Center’s “work aims to censor and misrepresent our academic production and to create an environment of surveillance and fear surrounding scholarship about Palestine.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Energy Chickens Coming Home to Roost Never in history has a civilization willfully embarked on destroying its own material foundations. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/green-energy-chickens-coming-home-roost-bruce-thornton/

This year will graphically demonstrate the malign consequences of the misguided efforts to replace cheap, reliable fossil fuel energy with unreliable, inefficient “renewable” energy like wind and solar. Never in history has a civilization willfully embarked on destroying its material foundations, based solely on a hypothesis rather than scientifically established fact.

The first red flag alerting us to this feckless policy appeared during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Much of Europe––the most aggressive nations in replacing fossil fuels with wind turbines and solar panels––has grown dependent on Russian exports to make up for the energy lost from shutting down nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Since directly helping Ukraine by fighting is politically impossible, sanctions were imposed on Russia’s oil and gas industries.

But sanctions severe enough to concentrate Putin’s mind carried a political cost as well as an economic one. So Europe is still buying Russian energy, postponing tougher sanctions until the end of the year. The result has been the embarrassing and dishonorable spectacle of European countries helping to finance Russia’s brutal war crimes. Indeed some have accepted Putin’s condition that purchases be made in rubles, thus mitigating the damage to Russia’s economy.

Here at home, warnings of electricity blackouts across the country this summer have not slowed down many states’ increased efforts to shutter electrical plants powered by coal, natural gas, and nuclear fission. In New York, Governor Kathy Holchul has announced the state’s commitment to enforcing a requirement that new power plants must achieve “zero on-site greenhouse gas emissions for new construction no later than 2027.” This policy of wishful thinking follows New York’s Climate Act of 2019, which requires that all power generation comes from “green” sources by 2040, including 70% from renewable energy by 2030.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Democratic Circus Is Shaping up in the New York Tenth Congressional District Primary: John Fund

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-democratic-circus-is-shaping-up-in-the-new-york-tenth-congressional-district-primary/?utm_

“As depressing as politics is, we need to look for any entertainment available. It looks like the Democratic primary in New York’s tenth congressional district will provide as many laughs, groans, pratfalls and surprises as a world-class circus when it comes to town.”

Now that New York’s highest court surprised everyone by tossing out the state’s blatant Democratic gerrymander of its congressional districts, voters can look forward to real competitive races in many of the districts.

A new congressional district that includes Lower Manhattan and the “woke” Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn won’t be competitive in November, but the wide-open Democratic primary will provide a fascinating look at every crazy form of leftism ever catalogued.

The most well-known candidate is former NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio, who left office loathed by even most Democrats, but who’s banking on some people forgetting his two failed terms.

Yuh-Line Niou represents Manhattan’s Chinatown in the state assembly, but is best known for embracing the Black Lives Matter campaign, as when she liked a tweet that contained a photo comparing the attendees at a recent police funeral to Nazi storm troopers.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Colleges Are Creating Adult Children By Jack Wolfsohn

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/colleges-are-creating-adult-children/

College students are increasingly childish, unable to think for themselves, and follow the crowd rather than pursue their own interests, according to William Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale University who discusses this in a recent guest post on Bari Weiss’s Substack Common Sense. They are ultimately unable to grow up. Students immediately turn to their professors for direction rather than confront issues themselves, he writes.

Deresiewicz borrows a term from one of his former students — “excellent sheep” — to describe the majority of the students he taught and those who populate elite college campuses today. He points out that despite the rise of campus wokeness, with its “radical-sounding sloganeering,” students are not becoming more creative and independent-minded. Deresiewicz stresses that excellent sheephood is really about acquiring more — more money, power, status, and connections — while claiming, to make oneself feel better, that one is doing it for altruistic reasons. This, he says, explains things like the alarming lack of protests against out-of-control tuition, strangulating pandemic policies, and many universities’ investments in China. 

While the campus protests of the 1960s challenged the authority of professors and campus administrators, Deresiewicz observes, protesters today do not demand more power from their higher-ups. In fact, they just put what they have been taught into action. Social-justice warriors lobby those in power to do their bidding for them. They are much more comfortable acting as the children rather than as the adults in the room. And those in authority accede to their demands rather than assert their dominance. They’re all on the same side, after all. Deresewicz states the reality bluntly: “College is now regarded as the last stage of childhood, not the first of adulthood. . . . Society has not given them any way to grow up — not financially, not psychologically, not morally.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Iran Plotted Cyberattack on Boston Children’s Hospital during Nuclear Talks By Jimmy Quinn

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/iran-plotted-cyberattack-on-boston-childrens-hospital-during-nuclear-talks/?utm_source=

FBI director Christopher Wray revealed that Iran plotted a cyberattack against the Boston Children’s Hospital last summer, as the Biden administration negotiated a return to the nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Wray, speaking to a Boston College cybersecurity conference today, called the attempted attack “one of the most despicable cyberattacks I’ve seen.”

He said the FBI worked to thwart the plot after receiving a tip from an intelligence partner, and that the agency notified the hospital.

“And quick actions by everyone involved, especially at the hospital, protected both the network and the sick kids who depend on it,” he said.

Wray didn’t specify whether the attack, which was planned by “hackers sponsored by the Iranian government,” would have been a ransomware attack. He did, however, elaborate on the threat posed by such schemes.

“Unfortunately, hospitals these days — and many other providers of critical infrastructure — have even more to worry about than Iranian government hackers.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Unsafe At Any Speed? Electric Cars Keep Catching Fire

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/02/unsafe-at-any-speed-electric-cars-keep-catching-fire/

In Vancouver, Canada, in late May, a Tesla Model Y burst into flames while the driver was waiting for a light at an intersection. He had to kick out a window to escape.

Around the same time, a new Tesla burst into flames in Brooklyn, Illinois, and a week before that a Model 3 caught fire in California City, California, while it was parked in a driveway.

In April, a deadly lithium-ion battery fire occurred in a Tesla car crash in Houston.

Last year, a Tesla caught fire while charging overnight in a garage, which the Washington Post described as “one in a string of recent examples showing what can happen when electric cars are left parked in garages to charge overnight” and which promoted electric vehicle (EV) makers to warn “owners not to leave the cars charging unattended in certain circumstances, or sitting fully charged in garages.” (This site keeps tabs on Tesla fires.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Title IX Rewrite Is an Assault on Women’s Rights The administration’s new draft rules redefine the word ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity.’By Jennifer C. Braceras and Inez Feltscher Stepman

Posted By on June 2nd, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-title-ix-rewrite-is-an-assault-on-womens-rights-schools-protected-speech-education-harassment-11654114281?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

“Out of a single sentence barring discrimination on the basis of sex, the Biden administration is illegally rewriting federal law to erase women and undermine constitutional liberties. Because the scope of the proposed rules is so vast, and its implementation is being managed by bureaucrats behind the scenes, average Americans may not have noticed. They need to wake up.”

Title IX is a simple anti-discrimination mandate that prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” Yet, without congressional authorization or other constitutional authority, the Biden administration is writing new Title IX rules to socially engineer every aspect of the educational experience—from student speech and school athletics to high-school locker room use and relationships between adult college students.

These draft rules, leaked to the media in dribs and drabs, have been delayed repeatedly to avoid organized backlash. Behind the scenes, the administration is telling educational institutions that the rules are a fait accompli, demanding enforcement that curtails freedom of speech, due process and women’s rights.

Although Title IX makes no mention of sexual harassment or assault, the Supreme Court has held that a school that tolerates sexual misconduct may be found to have violated Title IX. At the same time, the high court has been clear that most speech (including speech about sex roles) does not rise to the level of unlawful sexual harassment.