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Ruth King

Liberal Elites Against Democracy Biden’s polling is in the gutter, and the Democrats’ sprawling anti-Trump lawfare apparatus is on life support. Laugh all the way to a crushing loss in November, ladies. Let’s see who’s laughing then. Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/09/liberal-elites-against-democracy/

I remember learning about democracy back in grammar school. We learned about it in the context of the American Revolution: Britain’s King George III may have ruled as a capricious monarch, but the intrepid colonists fought for the then-novel concept of democratic self-government.

A cursory glance at Merriam-Webster is instructive. That venerable dictionary defines “democracy” as “government by the people” or, more elaborately, as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”

Simple enough. But someone ought to remind our nation’s liberal elites and the foot soldier activists of today’s Democratic Party.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous rebuke of the recent Colorado chicanery that rendered former President Donald Trump ineligible for the state’s GOP presidential primary ballot. That all nine justices agreed with Trump’s core legal argument—state actors cannot strike from the ballot alleged “insurrectionists” absent specific implementing legislation from Congress—is nothing short of remarkable.

For months, liberal pundits and anti-Trump legal “experts” assured us that the 14th Amendment “insurrection clause” argument for Trump’s ballot disqualification was ironclad. Who can forget how, after the Colorado Supreme Court legitimized Trump’s removal in December, one-time conservative judicial stalwart turned Trump Derangement Syndrome patient zero J. Michael Luttig opined that the court’s logic was “masterful,” “brilliant,” and “unassailable.” Left-wing cable news outlets platformed countless other guests who ceaselessly pushed the same argument.

In the end, the argument garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court. Even Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t debase themselves by going along with such a half-baked, anti-democratic ruse. So much for “unassailable” logic!

MIT Is Next on Congress’ List as It Investigates Antisemitism at Elite Universities If MIT fails to comply with Congress’s documentation request, it will risk the same fate of Harvard, which was subpoenaed for information over the issue. M.J. Koch

https://www.nysun.com/article/congress-adds-mit-to-its-list-of-targets-in-investigation-into-antisemitism-at-elite-universities?

Et tu, MIT?

A House committee has already subpoenaed Harvard’s top leaders and demanded documentation from Columbia as part of an unprecedented inquiry into antisemitism at elite universities. Now, it’s throwing the spotlight at yet another top school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for its alleged failure to protect its Jewish students.

“We have grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of MIT’s response to antisemitism on campus,” the House Committee on Education and the Workforce said in a letter sent on Friday to MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, and the chairman of the school’s corporation, Mark Gorenberg. Since October 7, the school has been engulfed by anti-Israel and pro-Palestine protests, which have taken up campus buildings, disrupted the educational experience, and targeted Jewish students. 

Ms. Kornbluth was the only one out of the three university presidents to remain in her post after they testified before the Committee in December on the issue of antisemitism. Amid national outcry over what many deemed a damning testimonial performance, Penn’s president, Liz Magill, resigned the next week. Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, lasted another month. 

Yet MIT’s board quickly expressed their “full and unreserved support” for Ms. Kornbluth in a statement endorsing her leadership. That show of support could come crumbling down at the hands of the committee, led by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx.

She told the Sun she has made it her mission to hold elite universities accountable for surging antisemitism which she says is undermining their reputations for academic excellence — even if means suspending federal grant money.

Harvard, in a Dramatic Development as Antisemitism Engulfs the University, Asks Bay State Taxpayers for a Bailout Conference is set for next week on whether Massachusetts would issue up to $2 billion in tax-exempt bonds for America’s richest university. Ira Stoll

https://www.nysun.com/article/harvard-in-a-dramatic-development-as-antisemitism-engulfs-the-university-asks-bay-state-taxpayers-for-a-bailout?

Should the state of Massachusetts issue up to $2 billion in tax-exempt bonds to help Harvard build a new building for its economics department, renovate dormitories, and modernize the medical school dean’s office?

That is the question the board of the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency will consider in a teleconference scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on March 12, according to a hearing notice issued Monday.

That it’s even under consideration shows the pressure Harvard is under. When the university was in stronger shape, it relied on private donors to fund new buildings, or renovate old ones, voluntarily.

Now, with several large donors reportedly having cut ties to Harvard or “paused” giving because of concerns about Harvard’s maladroit response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack, the university is increasingly turning to the lender of last resort, the government.

The notice makes it sound like Harvard is seeking to borrow money for at least some projects that are already well under way, a reversal of the standard sequence for financing construction. It mentions “renovation of the Adams House undergraduate housing project.” Yet the university announced in September 2023 “the completion of the second phase of Adams House renewal,” declaring that “the third and final phase…is currently underway.”

It also mentions “renovation of Gordon Hall, a Harvard Medical School administration building.” Yet the 2023 medical school dean’s report said, “construction has begun on transforming the Gordon Hall of Medicine, our signature campus building, into a flexible co-working space. This design will create a positive work community for our administrative units.”

Is Israel taking Ramadan restraint too far? By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/is-israel-taking-ramadan-restraint-too-far/

“Israel’s policy has always been, and always will be, to safeguard freedom of worship for all faiths,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday at the start of a special session with cabinet members and security chiefs to prepare for the imminent month-long Muslim holiday that begins this year on March 10-11. “This is what we have also done during Ramadan, and this is what we will do now.”

He went on: “We will do everything to safeguard freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, while appropriately taking into account security and safety needs, and will enable the Muslim public to mark the holiday.”

This was a reference to the location of the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a house of prayer that doubles as a base of violence. Because radical Islamists around the world have turned it into a dual symbol of victimhood at the hands of the “infidels” and victory over them, it is always an incendiary hotspot.
It is especially so during spikes in Palestinian terrorism and Ramadan, which usually go together. This is bad news for Muslims who treat the holiday—one of the Five Pillars of Islam—as a period for spiritual contemplation and self-discipline.
It’s far worse, however, for the Jews targeted by those who consider the 30 days of fasting and feasting an opportune time for waging jihad. Not that the latter need Ramadan or Al-Aqsa as an excuse.
Indeed, they’re just as happy to commit mass murder on Jewish and Christian holidays. Hamas’s genocidal Oct. 7 massacre on Simchat Torah and a Shabbat morning is only the most recent example.
But it was the casus belli of the current war in Gaza. Yes, Israel realized on that day five months ago that it had no choice but to destroy the terrorist organization that perpetrated the rape, immolation, decapitation, maiming, slaughter and abduction of hundreds of innocent men, women and children.

Palestinian ‘hate-crime’ hoax Moshe Phillips

https://www.jns.org/palestinian-hate-crime-hoax/

Statistics show that antisemitism is on the rampage, while Islamophobia is minuscule. And that’s bad for the Palestinian cause.

The Vermont man charged with shooting three Palestinian-American college students on Nov. 25 was a defender of Hamas, The New York Times has belatedly acknowledged—and with it, the No. 1 example of an “anti-Palestinian hate crime” has completely crumbled.

For the past three months, the Times and other major news media have portrayed the incident in the city of Burlington as proof that Palestinians are victims of hate crimes in America. Whenever somebody points to the outsized number of recent antisemitic incidents, Arab advocates cite the Vermont shooting as evidence that Arabs and Muslims are just as much victims as the Jews.

It’s reached the point that when some universities announce they are forming a committee to investigate antisemitism, they also announce one to investigate Islamophobia—as Harvard recently did. Even the Biden administration, after unveiling its U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, then announced it is preparing a national strategy to counter Islamophobia, too.

But it turns out that Exhibit A of “anti-Palestinian hate” apparently was nothing of the sort.

As early as last December, local media in Vermont reported that the alleged shooter’s social-media accounts included pro-Hamas statements.

The major news media ignored this myth-busting news—until now. The New York Times Sunday Magazine, in its March 3 edition, included a long essay by Rozina Ali, formerly a Cairo-based journalist who now teaches adjunct at New York University. She is writing a book on “the recent history of Islamophobia in the United States.”

What would building an ‘army of Palestine’ look like? By Moshe Phillips

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-790620

While some advocates of a Palestinian state have been claiming that the state would be demilitarized, others are already making the case for building up a Palestinian army.

A feature in the Washington Post this week warned that the Palestinian Authority’s security forces are not yet big enough or powerful enough for the Palestinian state that the Biden Administration is now advocating. The PA forces are “underfunded and widely unpopular [and] ill-equipped to take on the massive responsibilities that their Western backers are envisioning.”
 
So what will the Palestine statehood crowd prescribe as the solution? Give them more funds and more weapons, of course. Build them into a full-fledged army, disguised as a “security force.”

The excuse will be that the PA needs the money and guns to fight terrorism. Everybody seems to have forgotten that the PA was supposed to have been fighting terrorism since it was created back in the 1990s by the Oslo Accords—but it never has done the job.

The first Oslo Agreement, in 1993, stipulated that the Palestinian Arabs would have “a strong police force.” (Article VII) It didn’t say anything about the formation of an army. But the Palestinian Authority quickly exploited the opportunity. The original 12,000 man “security force” ballooned to 60,000—and the international community didn’t say a word. 

Then came Oslo II, in 1995, which spelled out more specifically that the PA security forces are obligated to “apprehend, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence and incitement.” (Annex I, Article II, 3-c). 

Lessons for the Future Republic By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/lessons_for_the_future_republic.html

Victor Davis Hanson and Dennis Prager are keen observers of American society.  Like honored physicians who examine the body politic for disease, they expertly diagnose what ails our country.  What they say and write matters.  It is significant, then, when both reach the conclusion that the United States is disintegrating.  

In an essay entitled “American Paralysis and Decline,” Hanson begins by quoting Roman historian Livy: “We can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.”  He then walks us through America’s open border crisis, unsustainable debt, epidemic of crime, and weaponization of the criminal justice system.  In every instance, he argues, Americans know that the disease is killing us, yet we lack the courage to choose the proper remedy.  Instead, our tormentors bully us into submission with meaningless taunts that we are politically incorrect, racist, nativist, uncaring, cruel, or bad Christians.  As the Roman Republic collapsed in Livy’s time, Hanson worries that the American Republic will fall during his.  When societies “are so paralyzed by their fear that the road to salvation becomes too painful to even contemplate,” he concludes, “they implode gradually, then suddenly.”

Within days of Hanson’s essay, Prager published an essay entitled “The Left-Right Divide Is Not Bridgeable.”  Whereas Hanson’s essay diagnoses America as suffering from a state of “paralysis” in which we are unable to confront what is destroying us, Prager recognizes that even if we were able to snap into action, we are entirely too divided to heal ourselves.  “Millions of Americans,” he begins, “harbor a wish that something or someone can bridge” our ideological divisions.  That wish is “understandable” but a total “fantasy.”  He then takes us through a compendium of symptoms that spell doom for the Union.  Americans sharply disagree about such fundamental issues as biological sex, colorblind meritocracy, Hamas terrorism, childhood sexualization, law enforcement, free speech, respect for opposing points of view, and the nature of democracy.  “Today’s left-right divide is at least as great as the North-South divide before and during the Civil War,” Prager laments.  “The only thing that remains the same is that it was the Democratic Party that opposed freedom then, and it is the Democratic Party that opposes freedom today.”  

Note the common warning from both Hanson’s and Prager’s respective diagnoses: American society is showing identical symptoms to societies that disintegrated into civil war.  Both are plainly saying that, although we have detected the cancer destroying us, we have failed to treat it in time.  The options still available to us are grotesque: amputation, debilitation, or even death.  It is no longer clear that the patient can be saved or, if it is saved, whether it will resemble anything like its former self.  Will the American Republic, like the Roman Republic, become a dictatorship and a slowly dying empire?  Many would say we are already far along that path.  Will Americans descend into such bloodshed as to destroy the Union for good?  Many might agree that the U.S. government’s aiding and abetting of the criminal invasion at our borders has already precipitated so many drug-related or violent deaths as to constitute civil war.

Joe Biden Says He’s ‘Ready to Fix’ the Border, Ignores His Role in Breaking It

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/joe-biden-says-hes-ready-to-fix-the-border-ignores-his-role-in-breaking-it/

President Joe Biden said during a feisty State of the Union address on Thursday that he was “ready to fix” the southern border, and he blamed Donald Trump for pressuring congressional Republicans to derail a bipartisan border-security bill that he said would have allowed him to do so.

Despite the border chaos on his watch, Biden touted his immigration efforts, declaring that “on my first day in office, I introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure the border, and provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and so much more.”

But while he tried to point the blame at Trump and Republicans, Biden failed to acknowledge that he and his administration bear most of the blame for the historic surge of illegal crossings that began shortly after his inauguration in 2021. And he didn’t acknowledge that he already largely has authority to take action on his own to improve security at the border.

Biden said the bipartisan border bill would have hired more border-security agents, immigration judges, and asylum officers, and it would have given him “new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.” Republicans jeered.

“What are you against?” Biden said. “Look at the facts. I know you know how to read.”

He blamed the bill’s failure on Trump, whom he did not name. “I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him.” He flubbed a line about the bill, saying “I’d be a winner” instead of “It’d be a winner for America,” and he egged on Republicans, telling them that they “owe it to the American people to get this bill done.”

At one point he appeared to botch the name of Laken Riley, a young Georgia woman who was recently killed by an illegal immigrant while she was jogging — Biden called her “Lincoln.”

“We can fight about the border, or we can fix it,” Biden said. “I’m ready to fix it.”

Biden Delivers the Most Anti-Israel Presidential Speech in History By Philip Klein

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-delivers-the-most-anti-israel-presidential-speech-in-history/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

President Biden was late to deliver his State of the Union address because anti-Israel protesters blocked the traditional motorcade route from the White House to the U.S. Capitol. Rather than have the protesters dispersed for violating traffic laws, he took an alternate route. It was a sign of how intimidated Biden is by the pro-Hamas element within his party. It also turned out to be a fitting prelude to the most anti-Israel speech delivered by a U.S. president in American history.

It wasn’t until Biden nearly reached the end of the speech that he brought up the Israel–Hamas conflict — at which point he tried to turn it into a “both sides” issue describing events as “gut-wrenching for so many people, for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, and so many here in America.”

After a perfunctory mention of October 7 and the hostages, Biden then launched an extended attack on Israel’s response to the war and the conditions in Gaza that accepted, whole cloth, Hamas casualty figures that his own administration had previously questioned as unreliable. For those keeping score, his description of the events on the day of October 7 lasted 42 words (or 77 if you count his shout-out to the hostage families present at the speech). The part of the speech describing the “heartbreaking” conditions in Gaza, demanding that Israel do more, and describing U.S. aid efforts in Gaza was 214 words. 

Speaking of aid. At the start of his speech, Biden spoke of the “unprecedented moment” we’re in — and in his survey of momentous world events, he made the case for the need for the U.S. to support Ukraine. And he pitched his harebrained scheme to have the U.S. military build a port in Gaza to facilitate more aid. At no point did he make the case for the component of the security bill that would provide aid to Israel.

It Is Time for Europe to Stop the Fearmongering About a Second Trump Presidency Europe was better off under Trump’s presidency than it is today, and a second Trump term likely will reverse the global instability caused by the weakness and incompetence of the Biden administration. By Fred Fleitz

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/08/it-is-time-for-europe-to-stop-the-fearmongering-about-a-second-trump-presidency/

Griping by the European elite about a second Trump presidency has reached a fever pitch that is so bad that it borders on attempts to influence the 2024 presidential election.

The UK’s Economist magazine is in full panic mode about the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House, calling Trump “the biggest danger to the world in 2024” and lamenting that Democrats do not have a “plan B” to stop Trump.

London’s Guardian newspaper has called Trump “a clear and present danger to the UK’s vital interests in a way no previous US president has ever been.”

France’s LeMonde newspaper has called Trump’s comeback “as embarrassing as it is worrying for American democracy.”

Other Europeans have called for “Trump-proofing” European foreign policy before Mr. Trump possibly takes office next January.

European elitists despised Donald Trump as president because he was a populist who bucked conventional wisdom and challenged Europe. He pressured European states for fair trade with the U.S. and to meet their NATO treaty obligations on defense spending. He justifiably ridiculed European states—especially Germany—for becoming dependent on Russian energy and withdrew from the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline. European states were irate with Trump for withdrawing from bad agreements and treaties, such as the deeply flawed 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the JCPOA) and the Paris Climate Accord.

European leaders have always hated brash American presidents who act unilaterally without the consent of Europe and the United Nations. This was especially true concerning Donald Trump, whose strong leadership and America First foreign policies drove them crazy.

Europe was therefore greatly relieved when Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election because he shared their liberal ideologies and establishment views on foreign policy. Biden would work through the UN and defer to Europe. There would be no foreign policy surprises. Europe knew it could control Biden.

The European elite was initially ecstatic with the Biden presidency. Biden immediately rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and designated climate change as the primary threat to U.S. national security. The Biden Administration aggressively promoted the far-left “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ideology and forced it on the U.S. military. Biden initiated talks to revive the JCPOA. European leaders were delighted by Biden’s sophomoric declarations in 2021 that “America is back” under his presidency. French President Macron happily welcomed Biden to the “European Club.”