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March 2022

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s crash-and-burn foreign policy exposed By Francis P. Sempa

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/joe_bidens_crashandburn_foreign_policy_exposed.html

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Hudson Institute’s Walter Russell Mead pronounces the Biden administration’s great power diplomacy an unmitigated failure.  Mead’s criticism cannot be dismissed as a partisan attack — he is a member in good standing of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  Mead is also steeped in history and geopolitics — two subjects that appear to have eluded the stalwarts of President Biden’s foreign policy team.

“Most … of the ideas Team Biden brought to the White House,” Mead writes, “failed to work,” and most of the changes that U.S. foreign policy will require today and in the immediate future “will be toxic to much of the Democratic base.”  And while Mead suggests that Team Biden was right about NATO and “democratic values” as necessary elements of U.S. foreign policy, he understands that providing peace and stability in the world requires paying more attention to hard-headed and emotionally unsatisfying geopolitics.

And it is here — on the playing field of geopolitics — where Mead rightly claims that Biden’s approach to great power politics has “comprehensively failed.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Nuclear Deal With Iran Is Set To Be Even More Disastrous Than Obama’s By: Fred Fleitz

By on March 18th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/17/bidens-nuclear-deal-with-iran-is-set-to-be-even-more-disastrous-than-obamas/

Russia’s demand for a sanctions exemption is the only thing stopping the new, deeply flawed nuclear deal from going forward.

Under the Biden administration, the “worst deal ever” is getting even worse. When President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), he rightfully called it “the worst deal ever” because of its many serious flaws. But now, the Biden administration is close to announcing a new agreement to reinstate the JCPOA that is not only weaker but puts Russia in charge.

Making this worse, Russia is trying to exploit its prominent role in the new agreement by demanding that Russian trade with Iran — much of it weapons-related — be exempted from tough global sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday claimed the Biden administration conceded on this issue.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden Shields All Afghans He Illegally Brought Here From Deportation Daniel Greenfield

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/03/biden-shields-all-afghans-he-illegally-brought-daniel-greenfield/

That’s Step 1. Wait for Step 2 which will protect Afghans from even having to apply for asylum (because they don’t qualify.)

As I discussed in my article on the ‘Afghan Adjustment Act’, Biden keeps trying to do an end-run around the rules for the Afghans he brought here.

Despite the virtual lack of vetting, hundreds of the Afghan migrants are being flagged as security risks. 50 believed to be security risks were already released in this country and the majority of them are in the wind. Four have already been involved in sexual assault cases. Considering how much the Afghans have misbehaved in so little time, the refugee resettlement contractors are understandably worried that much more damaging information will come out after two years.

After lying to us about saving “interpreters”, and lying about the Afghans being carefully “vetted”, they’re trying to pull off the biggest scam yet by retroactively legalizing their illegal evacuation under the umbrella of an Afghan Adjustment Act which will shut down any further scrutiny.

Why don’t they want the Afghans to apply for asylum? The answer is painfully obvious. Just as it was obvious why they dismantled the visa standards for Afghans every single step of the way.

The Biden administration never vetted the tens of thousands of Afghans it imported into America. It and its refugee resettlement allies want to make sure that they never are.

Now Step 1 is giving the Afghans Temporary Protected Status so they can’t be removed.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Islamic State is Back . . . in America The dire cost of Biden’s weakness. Robert Spencer

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/biden-so-weak-another-big-threat-organizing-us-robert-spencer/

The Islamic State (ISIS) is back. Five years after Donald Trump entered the Oval Office and quickly brought about the destruction of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is resurgent and wealthy. Could this have anything to do with Old Joe Biden’s misrule? Of course.

To be sure, there are other factors at play as well. An Iraqi security official said Friday that “recent assessments … put the group’s reserves at between $25 million and $50 million.” That could be a conservative estimate: the Wall Street Journal reported in September 2020 that ISIS had “assets ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars across the Middle East and Central Asia,” according to “officials and government records.”

The Iraqi official said that ISIS got its cash from “opportunistic extortion, looting and kidnap for ransom,” but those are not the only sources of the jihad terror group’s income. WSJ added that ISIS “still extorts local populations in areas it controls or has supporters; receives income from businesses it seized during its rule; and collects payments from human trafficking.” It also controls “a growing share of illicit tobacco markets in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Nor is even that all: “donors in several Middle Eastern countries work on raising funds,” says the WSJ, in an understated reference to wealthy Muslims around the world who believe that ISIS is a worthy Islamic organization and keep it afloat financially with substantial donations.

On Friday, the group announced that it had chosen a new caliph, the brother of the former ISIS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. raid in 2019. The new top dog is Juma Awad al-Badri, a.k.a. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, succeeding Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, who blew himself up to avoid being captured in a U.S. raid in Syria in February.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Disturbing Details About Biden’s SCOTUS Pick Just Keep on Coming By Matt Margolis

By on March 18th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/17/the-disturbing-details-about-bidens-scotus-pick-just-keep-on-coming-n1567263

Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was briefly hailed (by some) as a consensus nominee that even some Republicans could support.

I’m starting to think that Republican support will be much harder to get than Biden had hoped.

Last month, we learned that in 1996, Jackson wrote a “Note” for the Harvard Law Review arguing that convicted sex offenders were treated “unfairly” in the courts. Earlier this week, her past work advocating on behalf of Guantánamo Bay terrorists also became an issue that will undoubtedly come up during her confirmation hearings.

Completing the trifecta of disturbing aspects of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s radical record is her repeated embracing of champions of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in lectures and speeches and her belief that “microaggressions” are real.

If confirmed, Jackson won’t alter the court’s ideological balance, but that’s no reason for Republicans not to stand up for American values and vote “nay” on her confirmation.

According to the Daily Wire, “A review of a handful of Jackson’s lectures and speeches from the past seven years shows that the nominee has a strong appreciation for leading proponents of CRT, a progressive idea that holds in part: ‘racism is endemic to, rather than a deviation from, American norms,’ legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term, wrote in 1989. While Jackson has avoided openly championing CRT, she has complimented its advocates and suggested that the progressive theory informs her legal analysis.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Conservatism’s Unsung Hero By Lee Edwards

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/04/04/conservatisms-unsung-hero/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=third

Who wrote the Sharon State­ment, the conservative move­­ment’s most enduring state­ment of principle? Who founded the National Journalism Center, which has graduated more than 2,000 aspiring reporters, including such luminaries as Greg Gutfeld, Ann Coulter, John Fund, Timothy Carney, and William McGurn?

Who wrote a revisionist history on Senator Joe McCarthy proving he was wrong about the number of communists in the U.S. government — that he un­der­estimated their number? Who was the chairman of the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which became the movement’s largest public gathering? Who appeared on more campuses starting in the 1950s and into the 2010s than almost any other conservative speaker? Who coined axioms such as “The trouble with con­servatives is that too many of them come to Washington thinking they are going to drain the swamp, only to discover that Washington is a hot tub” and “When ‘our people’ get to the point where they can do us some good, they stop being ‘our people’”?

One person accomplished all this and more — the wise and ever witty M. Stanton Evans, the subject of a marvelous biography by conservative his­torian Steven Hayward. We are often told we “must” read this or that book, but M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom is truly a must-read because it is the story of one of the most consequential but unsung heroes of the conservative movement.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s Low-Energy Policy By Dominic Pino

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/04/04/bidens-low-energy-policy/#slide-1

The long-term danger in the president’s antipathy to fossil fuels.

Gas prices are high. Voters are upset. And Republicans want to blame Joe Biden’s energy policy.

It might be smart politics to do so, but it’s not exactly honest. Joe Biden has been in office only a little over a year, and he hasn’t undone decades of American energy progress. Oil production has risen on his watch, and depending on the week, we are still a net exporter of crude oil and other petroleum products.

That doesn’t mean Biden’s energy policy is any good. On the contrary, it should be opposed at every turn because it would make today’s anomalous situation the norm for years to come.

First, let’s dispel some myths about so-called energy independence. After a steady decline in net imports that began around 2006, the U.S. became a net ex­porter of crude oil and other petroleum products for the first time ever the week of November 30, 2018.

The United States has never been a net exporter of crude oil alone, and it has never really been all that close to being one. The week of April 10, 2020, saw U.S. net exports of crude and other petroleum products reach their highest level on record, at over 2 million barrels per day. That week, the U.S. imported over 2 million barrels per day of crude oil on net but exported over 4 million barrels per day of other petroleum products on net.

The reason for that is America’s re­fineries. There are 126 oil refineries in the U.S. and only about 700 in the entire world. Companies from around the globe send their crude oil to American refineries, which counts as crude-oil importation to the U.S. Then the refined products get shipped around the world, which counts as other-petroleum-product exportation.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

D.C. Judge Suggests Yale Students Who Shouted Down Speakers Should Be Barred from Clerkships By Zachary Evans

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/d-c-judge-suggests-yale-students-who-shouted-down-speakers-should-be-barred-from-clerkships/

A D.C. appellate judge urged colleagues to consider whether Yale University students who shout down speakers on campus should be be barred from clerkships, in an email to fellow judges published by lawyer David Lat on his Substack.

Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals emailed all Article III judges on Thursday, according to Lat, following news that about 100 Yale Law School students protested a panel discussion on civil liberties. The disruption of the panel event, hosted by the Yale Federalist Society, was reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

“The latest events at Yale Law School, in which students attempted to shout down speakers participating in a panel discussion on free speech, prompt me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted,” Silberman wrote in the email.

“All federal judges—and all federal judges are presumably committed to free speech—should carefully consider whether any student so identified should be disqualified from potential clerkships,” Silberman added.

Several other judges replied to Silberman in an email chain.

“Thank you for your email. I couldn’t agree more,” wrote Judge John Walker of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, according to Slate.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Anyone Actually Fooled by Lia Thomas? By Charles C. W. Cooke *****

By on March 18th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-anyone-actually-fooled-by-lia-thomas/

At Swimming World magazine, John Lohn neatly sums up the farce:

“No, this title-winning effort in the 500-yard freestyle should be met with nothing less than a head shake, an eye roll or a shrug of the shoulders. Why? Because Lia Thomas’ victory is an insult to the biological women who raced against her. Against those who fought for Title IX and equal opportunities for female athletes. Against science, and the unmistakable physiological differences between the male and female sexes.”

From the Times:

ATLANTA — Lia Thomas, the transgender woman whose record-threatening times on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team made her a star of college athletics and a symbol of the debate over sports and gender identity, won an N.C.A.A. championship in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday.

Thomas, a fifth-year senior who arrived for the swimming championships in Atlanta as the top seed in the 500 and 200 freestyle races, completed the race in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds, more than a second ahead of the runner-up.

I would like to know who is fooled by this. My suspicion is that almost nobody is fooled by this, but that almost everybody is scared to admit that in public.

However “Lia Thomas” might self-identify, he has the body of a man. This matters, because he is competing in a women’s sports league, and because there are profound biological differences between men and women in that sport, as in almost every other. The Times reports that Thomas “that left opponents far behind and put some collegiate records under new pressure.” Well, yeah. This is because Thomas is a man, and because Thomas’s “opponents” — two of whom were Olympians — are not.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

PUTIN’S INVASION SHOWS THAT GREEN ACTIVIST ARE STILL RED ON THE INSIDE

By on March 18th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/18/putins-invasion-shows-green-activists-still-red-on-the-inside/

The old yet always relevant joke is that environmentalists are like watermelons, green on the outside but red(s) on the inside. If there have ever been any delusions to the contrary, they should have been erased by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, paid for by energy bought from Russia because eco-radicals have successfully cut fossil fuel production in the West.

Last week, the ​​Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee held a “hearing to examine the use of energy as a tool and a weapon.” In the hands of Russia, the tool has been sharpened, the weapon made more lethal by advanced nations’ increased reliance on that country’s oil and gas due to policy decisions demanded by green zealots.

Maybe there’s an argument to be made that environmental activists and their allies among elected officials (and unelected United Nations officials who wield great power) are merely useful or accidental idiots, their goals coincidentally empowering regimes that are hardly democratically representative of their populations.

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