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May 2017

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dartmouth Appoints Anti-Semitic Terrorist Enabler As Its New Dean A letter to the faculty at Dartmouth College. Alan Gustman

By on May 5th, 2017

Editor’s note: The following letter was written by the author to all of the faculty at Dartmouth College asking them to fight the promotion of a new pro-BDS dean.

Dear Colleagues:

As you know, Dartmouth has appointed N. Bruce Duthu as its new Dean of the Faculty. What you may not know is that Professor Duthu is an active advocate of the BDS movement, a movement that proposes boycotting, divesting and sanctioning Israeli academic institutions. As the Treasurer of the Council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), Professor Duthu coauthored a statement in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions as follows: “The NAISA Council encourages NAISA members to boycott Israeli academic institutions because they are imbricated with the Israeli state and we wish to place pressure on that state to change its policies.” The document our presumptive Dean coauthored can be found at http://www.naisa.org/ (scroll down to “NAISA Council Declaration of Support for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions”).

In advocating the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, BDS is anti-Semitic. The chant of the BDS movement, from the river to the sea, is anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and profoundly anti- Jewish. It refers to sweeping the Jews out of Israel. Where else do we find movements advocating action against the academic institutions in any country but Israel, including many truly bad actors in the world? BDS is singling out Israel – the one country in the world that has a majority Jewish population. Indeed, this movement has become a cover for many anti-Semites who like nothing better than to once again be free to exercise their prejudices. It also is important to understand, especially when evaluating the significance of appointing a BDS advocate as the Dean of the Faculty, that BDS is not just a statement of beliefs or a philosophical movement: it is a statement of action.

Given my concerns about this matter I wrote letters to President Hanlon, to Professor Duthu, and individually to members of Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees. President Hanlon responded that he would never accept anti-Semitism at Dartmouth and reminded me of a letter he circulated to the Dartmouth campus against any boycott advocated by the BDS movement. Professor Duthu also states that he is not anti-Semitic and would not permit anti-Semitic acts at Dartmouth. Some of his friends, including those from the Jewish Studies Program, also argue that he is not anti-Semitic. In personal correspondence he cites a portion of the resolution as a defense of his position: “The NAISA statement, which you can find on the organization’s website, explicitly champions and defends intellectual and academic freedom with a recognition that “collaboration with individuals and organizations in Israel/Palestine can make an important contribution to the cause of justice.” Note that this statement does not support academic freedom in general. It supports Professor Duthu’s notion of justice. No member of the Board of Trustees responded to my email.

I have no reason to believe that Professor Duthu is anti-Semitic. His friends and colleagues do not consider him to be anti-Semitic, and are sincere in their opinions. What is relevant here is that he is supporting a movement that is substantially anti-Semitic, and that he has taken a position with regard to the BDS movement that is in opposition to the position and responsibilities he will have as Dean of the Faculty. Most importantly, he has not publicly renounced his public NAISI statement on the BDS movement.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Partial Obamacare Repeal Passes House Congressional Republicans finally get their act together. Matthew Vadum

By on May 5th, 2017

Republicans claimed victory as their Obamacare-replacement bill that pundits pronounced dead a few weeks ago passed the House of Representatives.

Many conservatives say the bill is a step in the right direction, but they dispute the idea that is a true repeal of Obamacare, the GOP’s signature campaign promise for the last seven years. Although Obamacare is collapsing as premiums rise and insurers flee certain areas, it leaves much of the structure of Obamacare intact.

The legislation is a modified version of the measure that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) dramatically pulled from the House floor on March 24. The House narrowly approved the legislation yesterday afternoon on a vote of 217 to 213. All of the 193 Democrats who showed up to vote, voted “no.” There were 20 Republicans voting “no.”

Americans “suffered with Obamacare,” a triumphant President Trump said in the Rose Garden. “I went through two years of campaigning, and I’m telling you, no matter where I went, people were suffering so badly with the ravages of Obamacare.”

With the passage of the revamped proposed “American Health Care Act,” “your premiums, they’re going to start to come down,” he said. “Your deductibles … were so ridiculous that nobody got to use their current plan – this nonexistent plan that I heard so many wonderful things about over the last three or four days.”

He continued:

After that, I mean, it’s – I don’t think you’re going to hear so much. Right now, the insurance companies are fleeing. It’s been a catastrophe. And this is a great plan. I actually think it will get even better. And this is, make no mistake, this is a repeal and replace of Obamacare. Make no mistake about it. Make no mistake.

Trump added, “very importantly, it’s a great plan. And ultimately, that’s what it’s all about.”

Now the legislation goes to the Senate where it faces an uncertain future.

Senate leaders don’t like that the measure has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which means it isn’t clear how much it will cost. Nor are they happy that the bill was rushed – in their view – through the House.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) praised the conservative House Freedom Caucus for improving the bill but said it’s still a bad piece of legislation.

But what I’m still concerned with is, this’ll be the first time that Republicans have affirmatively put their stamp of approval on a program where federal money, taxpayer money, is paid to insurance companies. … And it boggles my mind how that became a Republican idea.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The French Illusions That Die Hard Free markets and ‘globalists’ didn’t wreck the French economy. The political class did.By Sohrab Ahmari

By on May 5th, 2017

A representative of the globalist elite faces a tribune of globalization’s victims. That’s the superficial read on Sunday’s presidential runoff between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in France. The deeper question is whether French voters accommodate themselves to reality or cling tighter to their economic illusions. Plenty of clues about which path France might take were on display during the May Day holiday.

Start with the France of illusions. An estimated 40,000 red-clad activists snaked their way from the Place de la République to the Place de la Nation in the early afternoon. Hammer-and-sickle flags abounded. So did portraits of beloved mass murderers like Che Guevara. Gangs of masked youth set off firecrackers that boomed like gunshots.
One placard showed Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Macron side by side, asking: “Plague or Cholera?” A typical slogan was “Neither nation nor boss!”—a double rejection of Ms. Le Pen’s nationalism and Mr. Macron’s free-market liberalism. These sum up the views of supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist firebrand who was eliminated, barely, in the first round last month.

The Mélenchonists have a great deal in common with Ms. Le Pen’s National Front, which held its own angry rally earlier in the day. Both camps would lower the retirement age to 60 from 62. Ms. Le Pen would keep the 35-hour workweek while Mr. Mélenchon would shorten it to 32 hours. Both would boost welfare spending and sever or strain the country’s trade ties in various ways.

The Le Pen-Mélenchon Venn diagram has a large overlapping set, because both camps blame everyone but the French for the country’s malaise.

“The French try to erase historical experience,” Pascal Bruckner tells me. The literary journalist is one of a very few classical liberals among French public intellectuals. He says his compatriots “have forgotten the experience of 1989 and only see the bad aspects of capitalism and liberal democracy.”

The tragedy of France, Mr. Bruckner says, is that the country never had a Margaret Thatcher or Gerhard Schröder to implement a dramatic pro-growth program. Incremental, haphazard changes have only prolonged the crisis. “So if you’re unemployed it must be because of the market economy.”

Yet it wasn’t shadowy globalists who in 1999 imposed a 35-hour workweek to make overtime labor prohibitively expensive. The law was meant to encourage firms to hire more workers, but like most efforts to subjugate markets to politics, it ended up doing more harm than good. Now it’s the main barrier to hiring in a country where the unemployment rate is stuck north of 10%.

Nor was it global markets that levied a corporate tax rate of 33% (plus surcharges for larger firms), a top personal rate of 45%, and a wealth tax and other “social fees” that repelled investors and forced the country’s best and brightest to seek refuge in places like London, New York and Silicon Valley.

Nor did globalization build a behemoth French bureaucracy that crowds out the private economy. As of January, this has created a 98% public-debt-to-GDP ratio. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

San Diego: Ground Zero for Islamic Indoctrination in American Public Schools By Janet Levy

By on May 5th, 2017

With a decade-long history of yielding to Islamic demands and recent, more alarming submissions, San Diego city schools appear to be ground zero for Islamic indoctrination within American public schools. The current capitulation includes an Islam-centric curriculum with input and resources from a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organization, which raises First Amendment issues as well as serious concerns of favoritism toward Muslims students over students of other faiths.

The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) history of accommodation to the demands of Muslim students began in 2007. That year, Carver Elementary School in East San Diego ignited controversy when 100 Somali Muslim students transferred from a closed charter school. To accommodate these new students, the school rescheduled its recess periods to allow a 15-minute break each afternoon for Muslim prayer. The school also added Arabic to its curriculum and removed pork and other non-halal food from the cafeteria. The outcry forced the school to rescind the break, but it simply shifted the lunch hour to accommodate Muslim prayer. SDUSD wasn’t as accommodating to a Christian student in 1993 and was successfully sued when it denied a high school student’s request for a lunchtime Bible study.

This past week, SDUSD, in collaboration with the Council on American Islam Relations (CAIR), instituted an anti-bullying campaign aimed specifically at protecting Muslims students. In launching the initiative, SDUSD cited an unsubstantiated study by CAIR claiming that 55% of American Muslim students surveyed in California said they were bullied because of their religion. The new program will include adding lessons on Islam to the social studies curriculum that emphasize prominent Muslims in history, creating Muslim-only “safe spaces,” adding Muslim holidays to the school calendar, and providing support and resources for Muslim students during Ramadan.

According to Stan Anjan, SDUSD’s executive director of family and community engagement, the new program will focus on promoting a positive image of Islam. Special disciplinary measures will also be created for the so-called bullying of Muslims cited by CAIR. Instead of detention, the school plans a “restorative justice” program in which students dialogue with each other about perceived bullying words or actions. Educational materials on Islam and resource listings will be provided to parents and school personnel as well.

CAIR, “a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas,” according to terrorism expert Steve Emerson, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding case brought by the Justice Department in 2007. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce terrorist groups Hamas and Hezb’allah, and several CAIR executives have been successfully prosecuted and incarcerated for terrorist activities. CAIR was designated as a terrorist group by the UAE in 2014.

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EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Keith Windschuttle A Disaster of the Active Kind

By on May 5th, 2017

Did you know that our “genocidal history” is even worse than that of Nazi Germany? Come as a surprise, does it? If that it happens to be the case there is a safe assumption to be made: you haven’t been studying at one of our Australian university where mendacity meets mediocrity.

Only the students in the queue awaken me from my complacency. Where do we turn for comfort, they ask, when our reading lists are gibberish about which we can understand only that it is all left-wing? Is there no network, no secret society, no alternative reading list to get us through the next three years? Is there, in a modern university, no “safe space” for conservatives?
—Roger Scruton, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, August 2016

These observations by the English philosopher Roger Scruton at a book signing of his recent work on the dominance of neo-Marxist and postmodernist intellectuals in Western universities, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, describe a situation that is now ubiquitous throughout the English-speaking world. The humanities faculties of our public universities have been so comprehensively captured by the Left that they create an intellectual environment that leaves students of a conservative disposition completely out in the cold.

If anything, Australian students are in an even worse position than those in Britain and the United States. Most finish their degrees today largely ignorant of the great canon of Western literature that once formed the bedrock of academic degrees. Instead, they are indoctrinated in anti-Western theory from the gurus of cultural studies, critical theory, radical feminism, neo-Marxism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and postmodernism.

So it was an heroic decision on the part of healthcare and media entrepreneur Paul Ramsay, who died in 2014, to bequeath a large part of his $3 billion estate to the establishment of a foundation to promote the study of Western civilisation. Chairman of the board of the Paul Ramsay Foundation now administering the fund, John Howard, has explained that Ramsay “became concerned that as a people we had begun to lose sight of the collective impact of culture, history, religion, literature and music, comprising Western civilisation, which had been so important in conditioning the modern Australia. Not least of these was the great Western tradition of liberal democracy.”

The foundation has appointed the expatriate literary scholar Simon Haines as chief executive. Haines takes up the job on May 1 with the aim of establishing new degree programs in Western civilisation at some of our major universities. In an interview in the Higher Education Supplement of the Australian, Haines said the foundation would design the degrees but the universities would be free to manage their own teaching programs.

Unfortunately, none of Australia’s major public universities that would be in the running for the reported $25 million a year funding are fit for the task. They are all dominated by left-wing politics intent on seeing the civilisation created in the West turned upside down. Instead of cultivating the culture, history, religion, literature and music of Western civilisation, their humanities departments and arts degree programs are dedicated to at best belittling and at worst crushing the traditional study of these fields, and replacing them with their own perspectives that profess to liberate the purportedly oppressed minority group victims of Western civilisation. Of course, when the universities apply for the funding they will deny all this, but when those that are successful appoint the teachers and administer the classes, that is what the foundation will get for its money.

As an alumnus of the University of Sydney, last month I received an e-mail newsletter announcing the appointment of a new Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Looking at the front-page photograph of the dean standing next to a bicycle, hands in trouser pockets, I couldn’t tell whether this was a man or a woman. When I read the accompanying text, I found this was intended. Here is the newsletter’s description of the new dean’s qualifications:

Annamarie Jagose is internationally known as a scholar in feminist studies, lesbian/gay studies and queer theory. She is the author of four monographs, most recently Orgasmology, which takes orgasm as its scholarly object in order to think queerly about questions of politics and pleasure; practice and subjectivity; agency and ethics.

Professor Jagose was formerly a member of the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne and is the former editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. She lists her research interests as “queer theory, feminist theory, cultural studies and everyday life”. She has received recent research grants for projects such as “The individual, the couple, the society: Rethinking relationality in queer social theory” and “Real sex in the cinema: revisiting indexicality, realism and temporality”.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Falls Down ‘Peace Process’ Rabbit Hole By Avner Zarmi

By on May 5th, 2017

The chimerical prospect of peace in the Middle East, which has eluded every well-meaning American president since the founding of Israel in 1948, has now claimed its latest victim.

President Trump has met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. (Their joint press conference can be seen here.)

Abbas has signed a declaration of principles which is as meaningless as any other declaration of principles signed by Palestinian leaders, and has been allowed to engage in the same meaningless rhetoric which has characterized the “peace process” since it began in 1993.

Immediately after the announcement, two things occurred which guarantee the failure of any new peace initiative. First, Abbas’ empty rhetoric about seeking peace based on the “two-state solution” was immediately denounced by Hamas, the governing party in the Gaza Strip. Second, and equally predictive of failure, was the denunciation of any attempt to reopen negotiations with the Palestinians by members of Israel’s HaBayit haYehudi party. The defection of this party would topple the current governing coalition, leading to new elections in which the alignment might be quite different than it is now.

A recent poll shows the following results for parties currently represented in the Knesset: Yesh Atid, 25; Likud, 23; HaBayit haYehudi, 13; Joint List (Arab), 13; Zionist Camp, 11; Yahaduth haTorah, 9; Kulanu, 7; Shas, 6; Yisrael Beytenu, 7; Meretz, 6.

Either a coalition would be formed with Yesh Atid’s head, Ya’ir Lapid, as prime minister, with unpredictable results, or (more likely) an even more right-wing coalition than at present would result, with a weaker Likud and a much larger Bayit Yehudi faction than now.

For comparison purposes, the current coalition is: Likud, 30; Kulanu, 10; HaBayit haYehudi, 8; Shas, 7; Yahadut haTorah, 6; Yisrael Beytenu, 6.

Abbas, in his remarks, demands “peace” on the basis of the “two-state solution” with Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian capital in Eastern Jerusalem. This completely ignores that, according to current Israeli census figures, there are now 406,302 Jewish Israelis residing in the West Bank. They are not all going to be evacuated; it simply isn’t going to happen.

Another factor is the mendacity of Abbas’ speech. He asserts, for instance, that Palestinian Arab children are being raised with the desire for peace with Israel. This is outrageously false. Cartoons on PA television encourage children to aspire to kill Jews. Killing Jews is a regular topic of sermons in mosques and on radio and television broadcasts. No Arab leader has been willing to prepare the Palestinian Arabs for the painful compromises a real peace solution would entail. Palestinians have been encouraged always to take maximalist positions concerning Arab refugees and their descendants in the camps, and concerning the use of violence and terror. There are near daily reports of stabbings and attempts to murder with vehicles.

To show how convoluted the path toward this “peace” is, consider one major point which Mr. Trump raised with Abbas — that he pays salaries to terrorists.

For years, the PA has been paying terrorists salaries to conduct attacks in Israel, and has been paying the families of terrorists who are killed or captured and imprisoned by Israel.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rep. Gowdy Says Congress May Subpoena Susan Rice By Debra Heine

By on May 5th, 2017

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) suggested on Fox News Thursday morning that Congress may soon subpoena former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice to appear in a closed-door setting. His comments came after Rice declined a request to testify next week before a Senate subcommittee, with Rice citing “separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches and the fact that the invitation was not bipartisan.”

Many Republican members of Congress are interested in questioning Rice about her unmasking of names from surveillance records, particularly her requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance.

President Trump brought attention to the issue on Twitter this morning, criticizing Rice for refusing Sen. Lindsey Graham’s invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee — which is holding a hearing looking into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — on Monday:

Gowdy quipped:

There are other ways to invite people other than via letter. There are things called subpoenas. … You shouldn’t have to use it with a former national security adviser but if you do, you do.

He called Rice a “very important witness” who may feel like she can’t testify in an open setting, and suggested she be invited to testify before the committee in a closed door hearing instead.

Members of the House intelligence committee, which Gowdy sits on, is questioning FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers today behind closed doors. Asked to respond to Comey’s testimony before the Senate yesterday, Gowdy said:

He is a foundational witness who touches on all tranches of Russia and masking and unmasking and dissemination of classified information.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

ISIS to Jihadists: Use Fake Apartment, Job, Craigslist Ads to Lure Hostage, Murder Victims By Bridget Johnson

By on May 5th, 2017

The Islamic State magazine that has published tutorials on vehicle, knife and arson attacks as a tool of lone jihad is now encouraging terrorists to acquire guns at shows and shops and take hostages not for ransom but “to create as much carnage and terror as one possibly can.”

The latest issue of Rumiyah magazine, distributed online in 10 languages including English, offers another installment of the “Just Terror Tactics” series, praising lone jihadists including U.S. terrorists who have “set heroic examples with their operations.”

The objective of taking hostages, would-be jihadists are told, is “not to hold large numbers of the kuffar hostage in order to negotiate one’s demands,” but to sow terror with “the language of force, the language of killing, stabbing and slitting throats, chopping off heads, flattening them under trucks, and burning them alive, until they give the jizyah [tax] while they are in a state of humiliation.”

“The scenario for such an attack is that one assaults a busy, public, and enclosed location and rounds up the kuffar [disbelievers] who are present. Having gained control over the victims, one should then proceed to slaughter as many of them as he possibly can before the initial police response, as was outstandingly demonstrated by the mujahidin who carried out the Bataclan theatre massacre during the course of the blessed Paris raid,” the article instructs.

Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen “superbly demonstrated this scenario” of taking hostages simply to delay police while killing them “when, having armed himself with an assault rifle and a handgun, he single-handedly slaughtered 49 sodomites.”

Jihadists are told that Europeans should try to acquire guns in conflict zones or from underground dealers, and “much like its Crusader European counterparts, the UK faces a gun control dilemma as it feebly attempts to fend off the influx of weapons, but to no avail” so attackers are advised to find guns “readily available for purchase on the streets of Britain.”

In the United States, “anything from a single-shot shotgun all the way up to a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle can be purchased at showrooms or through online sales – by way of private dealers – with no background checks, and without requiring either an ID or a gun license,” ISIS states. “And with approximately 5,000 gun shows taking place annually within the United States, the acquisition of firearms becomes a very easy matter.”

They include a picture of an unidentified gun show with the caption, “Gun conventions represent an easier means of arming oneself for an attack.”

Jihadists are advised to refrain from casually asking people where they can get guns, lest they end up “bringing upon oneself unnecessary suspicion.”

Another suggestion for gun acquisition in the ISIS article is staging a ram-and-grab burglary driving a car into a gun shop when it’s closed.

“Alternatively, after some simple reconnaissance, one could follow the shop owner after he’s closed for the day, ambush him or run him over with a vehicle, and then take his keys in order to gain access to the store’s arsenal and any other location where he might be storing firearms and ammunition,” the advice continues. “Such targets, though potentially offering a considerable gain in terms of ghanimah [booty], are ambitious in nature and should be pursued while keeping in mind that tactical and gun shop owners are normally the type who arm and train themselves and would not be as averse to engaging in a firefight when attacked.”

Still, the terror group added, a “faint-hearted kafir shop owner in the West” can “be taken by surprise if one takes the means available to him and plans his attack carefully.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Europe: More Migrants Coming “Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way”by Soeren Kern

By on May 5th, 2017

“In terms of public order and internal security, I simply need to know who is coming to our country.” — Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka.

Turkey appears determined to flood Europe with migrants either way: with Europe’s permission by means of visa-free travel, or without Europe’s permission, as retribution for failing to provide visa-free travel.

The migrants arriving in Italy are overwhelmingly economic migrants seeking a better life in Europe. Only a very small number appear to be legitimate asylum seekers or refugees fleeing warzones.

The director of the UN office in Geneva, Michael Møller, has warned that Europe must prepare for the arrival of millions more migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The European Union has called on its member states to lift border controls — introduced at the height of the migration crisis in September 2015 — within the next six months.

The return to open borders, which would allow for passport-free travel across the EU, comes at a time when the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean continues to rise, and when Turkish authorities increasingly have been threatening to renege on a border deal that has lessened the flow of migrants from Turkey to Europe.

Critics say that lifting the border controls now could trigger another, even greater, migration crisis by encouraging potentially millions of new migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to begin making their way to Europe. It would also allow jihadists to cross European borders undetected to carry out attacks when and where they wish.

At a press conference in Brussels on May 2, the EU Commissioner in charge of migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, called on Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden — among the wealthiest and most sought after destinations in Europe for migrants — to phase out the temporary controls currently in place at their internal Schengen borders over the next six months.

The so-called Schengen Agreement, which took effect in March 1995, abolished many of the EU’s internal borders, enabling passport-free movement across most of the bloc. The Schengen Agreement, along with the single European currency, are fundamental pillars of the European Union and essential building-blocks for constructing a United States of Europe. With the long-term sustainability of the single currency and open borders in question, advocates of European federalism are keen to preserve both.

Avramopoulos, who argued that border controls are “not in the European spirit of solidarity and cooperation,” said:

“The time has come to take the last concrete steps to gradually return to a normal functioning of the Schengen Area. This is our goal, and it remains unchanged. A fully functioning Schengen area, free from internal border controls. Schengen is one of the greatest achievements of the European project. We must do everything to protect it.”

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Did AG Loretta Lynch Give Hillary Clinton ‘Political Cover’? FBI Director Comey Says, “Subject Is Classified” : Susan Jones

By on May 5th, 2017

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) raised questions but received no answers from FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday, when Grassley pointed to an April 22 New York Times report saying that Comey believed Attorney General Loretta Lynch gave Hillary Clinton “political cover” during the presidential campaign.

“The subject is classified,” Comey said in response to Grassley’s questions.

The New York Times reported that Comey’s “misgivings” about Lynch were fueled by the discovery last year of a document “written by a Democratic operative that seemed – at least in the eyes of Mr. Comey and his aides – to raise questions about her independence.”

Grassley told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, “The email reportedly provided assurances that Attorney General Lynch would protect Clinton by making sure the FBI investigation, quote, “didn’t go too far.”

Grassley asked Comey, “How and when did you learn of this document? Also, who sent it and who received it?”

“That’s not a question I can answer in this forum, Mr. Chairman, because it would call for a classified response,” Comey replied. “I have briefed leadership of the intelligence committees on that particular issue, but I can’t talk about it here.”

You can expect me to follow up on that point,” Grassley said. And he continued:

“What steps did the FBI take to determine whether Attorney General Lynch had actually given assurances that the political fix was in, no matter what? Did the FBI interview the person who wrote the email? If not, why not?”

“I have to give you the same answer — I can’t talk about that in an unclassified setting,” Comey responded.

“OK, then you can expect me to follow up on that,” Grassley said again.

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