Displaying posts published in

April 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Is the FBI Hiding? The bureau still won’t comply with an eight-month-old subpoena from Congress. Kimberley Strassel

By on April 7th, 2018

Bit by bit, congressional investigators have wrested important truths from a recalcitrant Federal Bureau of Investigation about its suspect 2016 election dealings. But there’s one secret the G-men jealously guard: how central that Steele dossier was from the start.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes on Wednesday sent another letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to demand yet again that they comply with an August 2017 subpoena and hand over, among other things, the electronic communication—“EC” in investigative jargon—that officially kicked off the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.

That EC has taken on a central importance thanks to the FBI’s own leaks. The bureau exploded it on the country at the end of last year after the news broke that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National had paid for the infamous dossier. The public still doesn’t know how much the FBI used it. Critics started asking: Was it part of the application for a surveillance warrant against Carter Page ? Could it even have launched the investigation?

Thus the FBI’s scramble to minimize the dossier. And sure enough, the New York Times in December ran what became the “origin” story, titled “How the Russia Inquiry Began.” The story asserted definitively that the cause of the investigation “was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign.” It was rather information from an Australian diplomat claiming to have heard a drunk Trump junior aide, George Papadopoulos, talking about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Yet despite that claim being out there, the FBI and Justice Department have refused to verify it. The Nunes letter says the FBI has provided only a “heavily redacted” version of the EC and indicated on March 23 that it would “refuse to further unredact” the document.

The only plausible reason the FBI might have for denying House Intelligence access to an unredacted EC is that it contains intelligence from foreign sources. Intelligence-sharing agreements between allies sometimes include restrictions on dissemination. But it was precisely that intelligence that was already leaked to the press. We know the Papadopoulos story came via Australia, and we know what was said.

The media only recently reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was fed up with the FBI’s spurning Congress and ordered it to be more cooperative. Yet here it is again inviting a contempt citation, and that says something about how badly the FBI wants this EC kept out of sight. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Broken FBI Promise A week after the bureau promised cooperation, it’s back to obstruction.

By on April 7th, 2018

Just last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray released a statement saying he was unhappy with how the bureau was responding to “legitimate congressional requests” for information—and promised a “transparent and responsive” FBI. But already both the FBI and the Justice Department are back to their old tricks.

At issue is a memo related to the opening of a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties with Russia in 2016. Such information is crucial for Congress to get an accurate picture of how Justice and the FBI handled this investigation. House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) has written to both Director Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asking for an unredacted version for all committee members to see. The bureau says it will not provide the material because it is too sensitive.

Mr. Nunes notes this is ridiculous, given that the document “is not highly classified.” More to the point, if an Intelligence Committee made up of elected representatives of the American people is not qualified to see such material, no one is.

Mr. Nunes says he’s willing to go to federal court to enforce his subpoena. We are further told that the House leadership supports this and other efforts to compel cooperation from Justice and the FBI.

In a better world Mr. Wray and Mr. Rosenstein would have worked out a good faith solution. In the apparent absence of that good faith, we hope Congress is willing to use all its powers, including contempt and impeachment if necessary, to persuade Mr. Wray and Mr. Rosenstein it is in their interests to make good on the FBI’s promise of transparency and responsiveness.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism? Democrats are ignoring — and worse, rationalizing — the bigotry in their midst. By David Harsanyi

By on April 7th, 2018

This week, an assemblywoman from Brooklyn — the New York City borough with approximately 2.7 million people, not some far-flung hamlet in flyover country — went on an near-hour-long rant in which she accused Jews of conspiring to gentrify her district and steal her home. In the midst of this outburst, Diane Richardson reportedly referred to one of her rivals as the “the Jewish senator from southern Brooklyn.”

This incident comes not long after a DC Council member named Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who represents the Eighth Ward of the capital of the free world in the twenty-first century, posted a video offering some of his thoughts on how “the Rothschilds” were controlling the climate to squeeze money out of the oppressed.

Both of these people have been treated as raving lunatics, which they might very well be. But a person could easily imagine the fate of any elected official in a large city had he or she aimed similar conspiracies at African-American neighbors. We would almost assuredly be plunged into a national conversation about the shameful bigotry that plagues our cities.

That’s not to argue that we should overreact to these incidents. Although certainly a serious concern, anti-Semitism is a relatively minor problem in American life. It is, however, getting difficult not to notice a trend among liberals of either ignoring, rationalizing, or brushing off anti-Semitism, which seems to be more commonplace on the Left than it has been in a long time.

But when identity politics and class warfare propel your movement, as it does the progressivism that’s becoming increasingly popular on the American Left, it’s almost inevitable that the Jews, who’ve tended to successfully navigate meritocracies, will become targets. This hate has traveled with socialists since Karl Marx first declared that “Money” was the god of the Jews.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Judicial Watch: Obama State Dept. Gave Soros $9 Million to Support ‘Socialist-Communist’ Activities in Albania By Debra Heine

By on April 7th, 2018

The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2016 sent $9 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to a Soros-backed group which used the money to fund far-left political activities in Albania, newly released documents show.
Judicial Watch
✔ @JudicialWatch
Important Judicial Watch obtained docs revealing the Obama Admin sent U.S. taxpayer funds overseas to a group backed by billionaire George Soros – which used the money to fund left-wing political activities benefiting the socialist government in Albania.http://jwatch.us/aWfFnm
According to Judicial Watch, which obtained the 32 pages of records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the American tax dollars were used to help the country’s socialist government push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also provide insight into how the Soros operation “helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Blasts ‘Ludicrous’ Obama-Era School Discipline Policy that Turned Schools into War Zones By Debra Heine

By on April 7th, 2018

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to scrap a controversial Obama-era education regulation that penalized schools for having disparate rates of discipline and turned school districts across the country into war zones.

The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice issued the federal directive jointly in 2014, warning public school districts receiving federal funding that they “could face investigation and funding cuts if they fail to reduce statistical ‘disparities’ in discipline by race,” the New York Post reported.

After Mayor de Blasio adopted the more lenient school discipline standards in early 2015, “more schools saw fighting, disrespect, drugs, gang activity,” said Max Eden, an education policy expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

While NYC school suspensions are down, crime has spiked in the city’s public schools, including major crimes such as robbery and arson, new NYPD data show. The current academic year has seen the first school murder in more than 20 years — a stabbing at a Bronx high school — and the first time a gun was fired inside a school in more than 15 years. What’s more, new state Education Department data reveal there were more rapes and other sex crimes at NYC public schools during the 2017-2018 school year than any year since 2007.

The Obama-era school discipline policy received fresh scrutiny in the wake of the Parkland school shooting when critics said it prevented police from using available tools that could have stopped it.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

EPA Leads the Way on Permitting Reform By Timothy Doyle

By on April 7th, 2018

Now more than ever, as the economy continues to pick up steam, it is vitally important to reduce the barriers to economic growth. Nowhere is this more important than in the manufacturing sector.

In manufacturing, lengthy permitting processes can still be the death knell for projects that would otherwise expand operations and create new jobs. The Clean Air Act (CAA) has created delays so great that they kill some projects in their infancy before the permitting process has even started. While there has been bipartisan support for addressing permitting delays, Congress has only recently laid out a starting point from which improving efficiencies in permitting can be obtained.

In the meantime, the Environmental Protection Agency has stepped in to make some common sense reforms that were long overdue. Citing President Trump’s push to streamline regulatory permitting, the EPA recently announced its intention to clarify the permitting process under the New Source Review (NSR) analysis, which pertains to potential increased emissions at project sites.

Simply stated, the CAA’s NSR considers whether a manufacturer’s expansion of operations will result in a significant increase in emissions. Then, if there is a projected significant increase, the agency looks to see if there are any potential offsets to mitigate the net increase. Previously, the EPA calculated off-sets during the first step of the review process in such a way that it added unnecessary time and complexity.

As testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee revealed last year, going through the analysis could result in unnecessary delays even when there was no chance of a significant increase. In some cases, manufacturers decided to abandon projects altogether and put their resources elsewhere. The EPA’s proposed modification would address this problem by first asking whether there will be a significant increase in emissions, and if the answer is “no,” the project is allowed to move forward without a permit.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Why the Democrats won’t win big in November Roger Kimball

By on April 7th, 2018

Is a big blue Democratic wave poised to sweep the Republicans out of Congress in the 2018 mid-term election?

To listen to much of the media, you might think so. A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post quoted Nate Silver, the Yoda of Dem pollsters, who suggested that the “Democratic wave in 2018 may be swelled substantially by the enthusiasm gap into a tsunami.” Last month, when the conservative Democrat Conor Lamb eked out a narrow victory over Rick Saccone in a special Congressional election in Pennsylvania, CNN gleefully reported that “Lamb’s performance is ominous for Republicans as the November midterm elections approach.” As I write, Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is warning about an impending “blue wave” after a liberal won a judicial seat on his state’s court. There are intermittent bulletins urging caution about these prognostications, but prevailing meme emitted by the punditocracy forecasts a huge Democratic victory.

Let me introduce a dollop or two of doubt into this orgy of excited anticipation.

In the first place, Conor Lamb’s victory, far from limning the future, suggests why the Democratic Party as currently configured is likely to continue to lose seats. Forget that Lamb squeaked to victory by a margin of 755 votes. More important is his ideological profile. An ex-Marine, he is a patriotic pro-Second Amendment social conservative, i.e., an extreme outlier in a party whose right wing is tacked down by the socialist Bernie Sanders and whose left-wing is represented by the faux Injun Elizabeth Warren and whatever species of incontinent glossolalia Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi represent. If the Democratic Party had more Lamb Chops, they might look forward to more victories, but then the Democratic Party would not be the modern Democratic Party, whose cynosure is class-warfare fired by identity politics and various forms of exotic sex panic.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The New EPA And Why The Radical Left Is Losing It Steve Forbes

By on April 7th, 2018

It should come as no surprise how the man who is boldly redirecting the EPA — a once rogue agency that operated far beyond its constitutional authority — is now the subject of routine attacks from liberal news outlets and activists who want him fired. Scott Pruitt has taken his job as EPA Administrator seriously and has done more to reinstate the EPA’s true, core mission than any of his modern-day predecessors.

Pruitt’s sharp focus is correct — to restore contaminated lands, safeguard our nation’s air and water, and do so by respecting real science rather than the ideologically driven fake science of his predecessors. He is demonstrating that we can both have a cleaner environment and greater economic growth and job creation. Contrary to the extreme environmentalist, prosperity and a safer environment can go hand-in-hand.

As Scott Pruitt observes, our nation can be, “pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-environment.”

He is absolutely correct.

In just over a year as EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt has worked with the president to roll back dozens of needless regulations that will save America’s manufacturing and energy sectors billions annually.

Most recently the Pruitt EPA announced how his agency will take much more realistic view of how the automobile industry can work with government regulators to reduce vehicle emissions. Liberals and green activists immediately cried foul — making chicken little claims of how the sky will immediately fall.

The truth is for many years EPA has issued regulations and mandates by bureaucrats who are completely ignorant of how real businesses and industry sectors operate or the compliance costs they already must endure. What’s even more appalling is how these bureaucrats blatantly ignored or distorted inconvenient facts in conjuring up their suffocating, anti- growth decrees.

Shockingly, most government bureaucrats and liberal agency heads haven’t even tried to seek input from the very people operating in the industry sectors they regulate. Scott Pruitt is eliminating the “silo” mentality at EPA and will seek an honest discussion with the people who operate our factories, power plants and heavy industry to find realistic, workable ways to protect our environment while allowing American industry to grow.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Abbas Targets Hamas, Then Condemns Israel for Targeting Hamas by Bassam Tawil

By on April 6th, 2018

Here is the situation: Abbas is arresting and torturing Palestinians on suspicion of being affiliated with Hamas at the same time that he is criticizing Israel for killing or arresting members of Hamas.

Mahmoud Abbas and his government actually owe Israel a massive debt of thanks for targeting their enemies — the same enemies they just accused of trying to assassinate Abbas’ prime minister in the Gaza Strip last month.

Abbas, of course, knows the truth: that Hamas is sending Palestinians to be killed and disabled near the border with Israel just to be able to hold up dead Palestinian babies with which to blame Israel in front of the press.

Abbas, however, is not only hypocrite, he is a coward. He knows it is safer for him to turn the heat falsely against Israel — the same Israel that is propping up his regime in the West Bank and ensuring that Hamas does not drag him to the center of Ramallah and hang him for as a traitor.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), now calling for an international inquiry into the March 30 events along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, says that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have the right to demonstrate and protest against Israel.

Ironically, however, when it comes to areas under the control of the PA in the West Bank, Palestinians are banned from staging protests in front of President Mahmoud Abbas’s “presidential” Mukata headquarters in Ramallah. In general, the PA leadership does not tolerate any form of criticism — which happens to be the reason that protests against Abbas and his government are virtually unheard of.

The only protests the PA accepts and welcomes are those directed against Israel. Yes, in PA-controlled territories in the West Bank, Palestinians can stage daily protests against Israel anywhere and at any time they wish! They can throw stones at IDF soldiers and Jewish settlers, and the Palestinian policemen will do nothing to stop them. Does any Palestinian, however, dare to throw a stone at a Palestinian policeman? You guessed it. Definitely not.

In a similar vein, the PA security forces feel free to arrest any Palestinian they want, even for the most trivial infraction. They are allowed to hold Palestinians in detention without trial and deny them visits by their family and lawyer. They are allowed to arrest any Palestinian journalists they wish for posting supposedly critical remarks on Facebook. Rami Samara, for instance, was arrested by PA security forces on April 3. for criticizing “arbitrary measures” taken by the PA against Palestinian journalists. Unwilling to face the strong protests by human rights organizations and Palestinian journalists, Abbas ordered the release of Samara hours after the journalist was taken into custody.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Right of No Refusal By Michael Walsh

By on April 6th, 2018

The cultural-Marxist Left’s war on Western civilization and American society is conducted on many fronts, including the courts and the streets, but also on a daily basis in the arena of public opinion, via the language. One prominent example has been their transformation of the two human sexes, male and female, first into “genders” (a term drawn from English grammar, and of which there are three, including neuter) and then into multiple genders. This of course demands a new set of pronouns which promptly are given “identity” characteristics, the better to tribalize and thus weaponize these hitherto unknown species of human beings.

Another example is the transformation of the words “immigrants” and “asylum,” which in the space of a decade or so have now acquired a host of subtextual signifiers of race and class in order to change their meaning. To those of us who are the descendants of the last great wave of genuine immigration, which ended around 1920, the words have a sentimental patina about them, recalling the great-grandparents from the old countries of Europe still glimpsed in sepia-toned photographs—the folks who arrived with nothing, worked hard, married either within or without their ethnic group, built houses, started families, moved up and moved out into the mainstream of American society and disappeared into history.

They are our familial heroes who arrived with no entitlement chips on their shoulders, and asked for nothing but an opportunity to work hard and do well. And in exchange, they promised allegiance to their new land, swore to put aside, insofar as possible, the old ways, customs, and conflicts, endure nativist tribulations, and subsume themselves into something larger called the United States of America. None of them arrived with a “right” to enter the country, none expected either a handout or the immediate right to vote, and all understood they were here at the sufferance of the American people.

Continue reading →