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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Build That Wall . . . and Pay for It By gratuitously insulting Mexico, Trump risks turning a boon into a bust By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 28th, 2017

Amid American cheers and a gratuitous swipe at our neighbor to the south, President Trump forged ahead this first dizzying week of his administration with the groundwork for his signature campaign promise: The Wall.

The president continues to insist that he will not only build the wall along the southern border, the very notion of which makes Mexicans seethe, but force Mexico to pay for it. The contretemps induced President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a planned trip to Washington for talks with his new American counterpart about trade, immigration, and border security. On the upside, though, it was grist for a great Jonah Goldberg column on national honor and the wages of besmirching it.

I’ve been a skeptic about the wall from the start: I do not believe it is plausible as promised, for reasons not just for financial (it would require cooperation from Congress) but topographical. In his Encounter Broadside, The Case Against Trump, our Kevin D. Williamson explained the terrain challenges:

The idea of a point-to-point wall on the border stretching uninterrupted from Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas to Border Field State Park on the Pacific Ocean in California is a logistical impossibility (it would require, among other things, building a wall atop several substantial bodies of water, including the Rio Grande and the 65,000-acre Amistad Reservoir, to say nothing of steep canyons and other obstacles, and expropriating enormous amount[s] of privately owned land along the border).

It was no surprise, then, to find President Trump tempering his extravagant campaign promise. This week’s executive order on border security proclaims the policy of constructing “a physical wall on the southern border” but takes pains to define “wall” as “a contiguous, physical wall or other similarly secure, contiguous, and impassible barrier.” That gives the administration wiggle room to secure by other means (no doubt involving surveillance technology) areas where wall-building is neither practical nor necessary.

We can certainly use the kind of barrier outlined in the executive order. If the president wants to call it a “wall,” great. He can call it “Matilda” for all I care if it improves border security, which it obviously would. Nor, in this regard, am I the least bit concerned about Mexican national honor. When we have a situation in which kids in the southwest get sent home from school for wearing American-flag T-shirts but Cinco de Mayo is observed like a national holiday, I’m more worried about American national honor.

But like Jonah, I also draw the line at making Mexico pay for the wall. If it improves our national security against illegal immigration (not nearly all of which is Mexican) as well as jihadist networks and drug traffickers, then we should pay for it. Why would a superpower make its comparatively poor but amicable neighbor pay for our security while our government, with the nation $20 trillion in the red, diverts taxpayer funds to boondoggles like an oceanographic study that plopped mudskippers on a treadmill to see how long they can exercise?

Extorting Mexico to pay for the wall would be like Michael Corleone squeezing Senator Geary to pay for the gaming license. And there is not a prayer it will happen.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Secrets of New York City’s Policing Success The Big Apple’s new top cop on how to protect citizens from both street crime and terrorism. By William McGurn

By on January 28th, 2017

When James O’Neill first put on the blue uniform and gold badge of law enforcement, it was 1983, and he was a rookie with the New York City Transit Police, riding the subways from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. Those were the bad old days of buildings encrusted in grime and graffiti, parks and public places overrun by the homeless, and a murder rate rising relentlessly.

“In the 1980s and 1990s,” Mr. O’Neill recalls, “the police were just holding on.”
New York is different today. In 1983 there were 1,622 murders in the city—and the peak was still years away. In 2016 the city reported only 335 murders, and Mr. O’Neill says total shootings were below 1,000 for the first time in the city’s modern history.

As the journal City & State noted, New York now has “one-fifth the crime of 1990 with a million more people.” It’s not the only thing that’s changed. That rookie transit officer is now Gotham’s top cop.

On its own, the success of New York’s Finest in bringing down murder and other violent crime is a remarkable achievement. What makes it more extraordinary is how hard it seems to be for other big cities to replicate. A month ago The Wall Street Journal released a survey that found 16 of the nation’s 20 largest police departments reported more murders in 2016 than the year before.

The city grabbing the most attention is Chicago. Other, smaller towns (Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis) have even higher levels of murder relative to population, but there’s good reason to focus on the Windy City. The liberal Brennan Center for Justice reports that Chicago’s skyrocketing murder count—762 in 2016, up from 480 in 2015—accounts for nearly half the homicide increase in the nation’s 30 largest cities. This week President Trump focused attention on Chicago when he threatened on Twitter to “send in the Feds” if local officials fail to address the “horrible ‘carnage.’ ”

In a meeting Tuesday with Wall Street Journal editors, Commissioner O’Neill declined to comment on the Chicago police. But the Windy City’s troubles go beyond the cops. For example, while in New York someone convicted of carrying a loaded firearm faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 3½ years, in Chicago the law gives judges more discretion, which they use to give gun offenders lighter sentences.

In 2011 Mayor Rahm Emanuel brought in an NYPD vet, Garry McCarthy, as police superintendent. For 2014 Chicago police reported the lowest number of homicides in almost 50 years, though the total remained over 400 throughout Mr. McCarthy’s tenure and in 2012 had swelled to more than 500. In any case, Mr. McCarthy was sacked in 2015 after a horrendous video emerged showing a Chicago police officer firing 16 shots into a man who did not appear a threat.

The video set off a perfect storm that has contributed to the current mayhem. The officer faces charges of first-degree murder. On its way out the door, President Obama’s Justice Department dropped a report accusing Chicago cops of a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional force.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Supreme Choices William Pryor doesn’t deserve the attacks from some on the right.

By on January 28th, 2017

President Trump says he’ll make his first Supreme Court nomination next week, and it will be a telling moment. The power to fill the High Court seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia is a major reason Mr. Trump won the election, and the right choice is vital to keeping faith with conservative voters.

Mr. Trump understands this, as he showed with his campaign list of 21 talented potential nominees. The White House appears to have whittled the list down to three appellate court judges. All three look distinguished before close inspection and would face a rough confirmation assault from the left. But it’s a particular shame that Judge William Pryor is taking abuse from some on the right for the sin of acting like a good conservative judge.

Judge Pryor, who is 54 years old, is a star on the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and may be the closest of the three to Justice Clarence Thomas in philosophy. He has a long record of conservative jurisprudence, and he has displayed the kind of judicial modesty and respect for precedent that the Constitution intends for appellate judges.

This seems to have upset some on the right who prefer their judges to act like liberals and rule by policy preferences, not the law. They’ve criticized Judge Pryor for concurring in 2011 in Glenn v. Brumby in which a transgender male was fired when he began his transition to a woman. The employee sued claiming sex discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the 11th Circuit panel upheld the lower-court decision in favor of him who became a her.

Whatever one thinks of the LGBT agenda, Judge Pryor’s decision showed appropriate deference to Supreme Court precedent. The 11th Circuit’s decision faithfully followed the Supreme Court’s 1989 ruling in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that sex discrimination can also exist in the form of hostile sex stereotyping. Conservatives should want circuit-court judges to follow Supreme Court precedent—and it’s a sign of how a judge will treat the law if he’s elevated to the Supremes.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Stop American Aid to the Palestinians Until the Terror Ceases Trump halted an 11th-hour transfer of $221 million. But more can be done to end pensions for killers. By David Aufhauser and Sander Gerber See note please

By on January 28th, 2017

Even more pernicious than the money to terrorists is the promise that if they suspend the carnage for a month, the two state dissolution of Israel will resurface….Time to end the delusion of any solution that deprives Israel of total control of Judea and Samaria….rsk

In the twilight hours of the Obama administration, Secretary of State John Kerry authorized the transfer of $221 million to the Palestinian Authority—in violation of an informal agreement with Congress not to do so. Fortunately, President Trump stopped the transfer before the money left America’s shores. Now he has the opportunity—and the responsibility—to do more.

Lawmakers had good reason to oppose the transfer. Much like with the $400 million cash ransom paid to Iran last year, no meaningful effort was made to account for how the money was to be spent or to prevent it from being used to kill innocents.

Since 9/11, it has been accepted wisdom that stopping funds flowing to terrorism is a vital way to diminish its reach and incidence. In the fight against Islamic State, much of the success—albeit too little and too late—can be traced to efforts to target some of its principal sources of money: oil, trafficking in antiquities, and regional money exchangers that provide the commerce necessary for the killing.

A second operating principle growing out of 9/11 is that people who underwrite terrorism bear culpability equal to those who commit it. Much of the antiterrorism framework established in the Bush administration focused on imposing responsibilities on the international financial community to identify and prevent the transfer of terrorist funds. It is a difficult task because money intended to kill bears few DNA markers, whether transferred by ancient means (gold) or modern ones (digital). Notwithstanding those challenges, financial institutions that have turned a blind eye have faced punishing billion-dollar consequences.

Not so, however, the U.S. government. Over the past 10 years, Washington has provided more than $4 billion in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. The goal has been to promote a government in the Palestinian territories capable of assuming the responsibilities of a sovereign state, including the recognition of the state of Israel as a legitimate member of the community of nations. The aid has focused principally on security and criminal-justice programs, U.S. Agency for International Development sponsored assistance for schools, health clinics, water and economic development, and generalized support for the Palestinian Authority’s budget. But unlike the many nongovernmental organizations that contribute charitable funds to the region, American assistance programs, while obliged to vet how the money is spent, have yet to ensure effectively that taxpayer dollars are not diverted to support acts of terror.

Yet there is no question that this is happening. First, the State Department has acknowledged the diversion in reports to Congress, as documented most recently in a Dec. 16, 2016, Congressional Research Service report. As a remedy, Washington simply reduced its aggregate aid by an amount that is classified but is reported to be pegged to intelligence estimates of what the Palestinian Authority spends to sponsor acts of terrorism. But money is fungible, and it is sophistry to argue that funds provided for good deeds do not enable the bad deeds of the same political entity, particularly given the scarcity of resources.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Nikki Haley Arrives at U.N., Vowing to Take Names of Opposing Nations New U.S. ambassador says she’ll seek to end U.N. programs deemed obsolete By Farnaz Fassihi

By on January 28th, 2017

UNITED NATIONS—The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley , arrived on Friday with a posture and message that startled many U.N. officials and diplomats and signaled a shift of policy: The U.S., she said, would collect names and respond to countries opposing American interests, and would “do away” with U.N. programs it deems obsolete.

“For those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names—we will make points to respond to that accordingly,” Ms. Haley said to reporters upon arrival.

Ms. Haley presented her credentials to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and held her first one-on-one meeting with him for 20 minutes. Officials didn’t offer details of what Mr. Guterres and Ms. Haley discussed, but a U.N. official said that the “U.S. has always been an important partner for the U.N. for reform.”

Before the meeting, Ms. Haley vowed “a change in the way we do business.”

“Everything that’s working, we’re going to make it better; everything that’s not working, we’re going to try and fix; and anything that seems to be obsolete and not necessary, we’re going to do away with,” Ms. Haley said.

Some U.N. officials and diplomats said privately they had expected Ms. Haley to strike a more diplomatic tone on her first day. She didn’t ease concerns that the U.S. might significantly cut back on funding for many U.N. programs and pursue a more unilateral agenda. In her Senate hearing earlier this month, Ms. Haley came across as a moderate voice with views on Russia, U.N. funds and international engagement that fell in line with those of U.S. allies.

But on Friday, diplomats said her “tone was tough” and that she projected views more in keeping with the new administration’s pledge to upend and overhaul all things policy, from trade deals to refugee regulations and U.N. programs.

“The U.N. is an institution that is often a difficult one to work with for the U.S. but overall it serves U.S. interest, it’s a place where American values of democracy and human rights are voiced,” said Matthew Bolton, an associate professor at Pace University familiar with U.N. matters.

Ms. Haley has plenty of leverage at her disposal. The U.S. is the largest financial contributor to the U.N., providing 22% of its operating budget and 28% of peacekeeping costs in 16 missions around the world, estimated at nearly $8 billion a year.

Diplomats widely agree that the U.N. needs reform. The organization is weighed down by bureaucracy and procedure. Mr. Guterres began his tenure on Jan. 1 with a promise to improve efficiency through structural reorganizing. Some diplomats acknowledge that a little tough talk from the U.S. could benefit the U.N. and force it to accelerate the much-needed changes. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The ‘optics’ of dead Jews : Ruthie Blum

By on January 28th, 2017

Columnist Peter Beinart warned this week that “unless they change course, [U.S. ‎President] Donald Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu are going to ‎get Jews killed.”‎

Writing in The Forward about Palestinian threats of violence in response to Israel’s ‎authorization of 2,500 new housing units in existing settlements, and discussions in ‎Washington over a possible move of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to ‎Jerusalem, Beinart hastily added that, “of course,” neither leader wants Jewish blood to ‎flow. ‎

Nor, he said, was he “trying to detract from the primary moral responsibility of those ‎Palestinians who detonate bombs or shoot guns or stab with knives. Palestinian terrorism ‎is inexcusable. It always has been. It always will be.”‎

And then he got to the crux of the piece: If Netanyahu ignores the assessments of ‎Israeli security experts — as well as the saber-rattling of a member of the Jordanian ‎government and chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat — he will be just as ‎guilty of the terrorism that is sure to ensue as those who perpetrated it.‎

To give greater weight to his argument, Beinart first presented the positions of those who ‎favor Israeli settlement construction and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy, and then ‎refuted their logic. ‎

One such position was that “Israel should never be cowed by the prospect of Palestinian ‎violence.”‎

‎”To do so,” he said, “would be to imply that Israel deserves some of the blame for that ‎violence, which is like blaming a woman who is raped for wearing a short skirt.”‎

Indeed. ‎

But here is where Beinart returned his own volley with a mighty whack. Unlike rape, he ‎wrote, which “is purely a product of male pathology, Palestinian violence … is a ‎pathological response to a genuine grievance.” Aha.‎

In other words, Israel really is at fault for getting raped — whether it wears dresses or ‎pants; curtsies or bows; begs or pleads; or fights back. It is to blame for the plight of the ‎Palestinians. In fact, if not for the “violence” of Jewish oppression, they would be ‎teaching their children to sing “Kumbaya” and plant flowers, instead of raising them to ‎become martyrs for Allah.‎

Yes, according to Beinart, “Snuffing out their hopes of ever tasting the basic freedoms ‎that David Friedman and Jared Kushner take for granted is violence.” Kudos for so ‎deftly killing two Jews — the incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Trump’s son-in-‎law/adviser — with one stone.‎

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Richard Baehr: A peace process like any other

By on January 28th, 2017

There is a broad sense of relief among pro-Israel Americans and most Israelis that ‎the Obama years are over, and at least as far as U.S.-Israeli relations are concerned, things will be ‎on the mend with the new Trump administration. ‎

Barack Obama’s first call as president in 2009 was to Palestinian leader ‎Mahmoud Abbas, and one of his final meaningful actions as president was the ‎decision to abstain on the vote on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, ‎thereby allowing the broad condemnation of Israeli settlements beyond the 1949 ‎armistice line to be approved by the Security Council. The Obama’s team’s ‎machinations on the recent Security Council vote went beyond the abstention on the ‎actual vote. They included conversations with and visits (no doubt lobbying) with ‎nonpermanent members of the council, and discussions with the Palestinian ‎Authority to include some boilerplate on violence and incitement in the language ‎that would enable the administration to defend the resolution as “balanced” ‎enough not to require an American veto. ‎

Two years ago, Obama joked about his bucket list of things he wanted ‎to get done in his last years in office. He noted then that the list might be more ‎of something that rhymes with “bucket.” ‎

In the same spirit as singer Madonna’s comments at the Women’s ‎March in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, the president may well have been acting out ‎his bucket list rhyme with regard to Israel.‎

Obama’s belligerence toward Israel seemed obsessively focused on Israeli ‎settlements. From the start of his time in office, administration members regularly ‎and publicly condemned every Israeli decision at any step of an approval process ‎to build new apartments or homes anywhere beyond the Green Line, even within ‎the boundaries of settlements that President George W. Bush and many of the ‎peace processors in the Clinton, Bush and even some in the Obama administration, ‎have accepted would likely remain part of Israel if there were ever a final ‎resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump argument bolstered: Clinton could have received 800,000 votes from noncitizens By Rowan Scarborough –

By on January 28th, 2017

Hillary Clinton garnered more than 800,000 votes from noncitizens on Nov. 8, an approximation far short of President Trump’s estimate of up to 5 million illegal voters but supportive of his charges of fraud.

Political scientist Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has worked with colleagues to produce groundbreaking research on noncitizen voting, and this week he posted a blog in response to Mr. Trump’s assertion.

Based on national polling by a consortium of universities, a report by Mr. Richman said 6.4 percent of the estimated 20 million adult noncitizens in the U.S. voted in November. He extrapolated that that percentage would have added 834,381 net votes for Mrs. Clinton, who received about 2.8 million more votes than Mr. Trump.

Mr. Richman calculated that Mrs. Clinton would have collected 81 percent of noncitizen votes.

“Is it plausible that non-citizen votes added to Clinton’s margin? Yes,” Mr. Richman wrote. “Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire nation-wide popular vote margin held by Clinton? Not at all.”

Still, the finding is significant because it means noncitizens may have helped Mrs. Clinton carry a state or finish better than she otherwise would have.

Mr. Trump’s unverified accusation to congressional leaders this week, as reported by The Washington Post, has sent the issue skyward.

He apparently was referring to all types of fraud, such as the “dead” voting or multiple votes from the same person. But the thrust of his estimate appears to be that illegal immigrants and noncitizens carried the popular vote.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Immigration Priorities: Translators, and Victims of Genocide :Shoshana Bryen

By on January 28th, 2017

If you want security clearances in the United States, the government “vets” you quite thoroughly. They begin by asking you questions and then ask for a list of people to interview — family, friends, employers, etc. They take your list and ask those people for more people who will talk about you, then take that list and ask those people for more people who will talk about you — and so on until the lists have the right number and combination of names that overlap. If you have a vindictive ex-wife, watch out. They do a credit check, a criminal background check, a motor vehicle records check, and a medical records check. Psychiatrist? That too.

When discussing visas for people coming to the U.S. from countries with terrorism issues, it is useful to know what it means to “vet” and why there is no possibility of vetting (or “extreme vetting,” whatever that means) refugees and potential immigrants who have no links to their former lives. Vetting — whether for security clearances or visas — is all about your life to this point.

President Trump’s executive order halting immigration from seven countries for 30 days — for a start — is a reasonable response to the increasing understanding that people from certain countries can pose more of a security risk than people from other countries, even when all the countries are Muslim-majority. The seven are Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia; the U.S. government, under previous presidents, had cited all for terror links. Countries such as Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Oman and Tunisia and other Muslim-majority countries are not affected.

A “Muslim ban” would be racist, wrong, and a violation of deeply held American principles; but the claim by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that visa restrictions are tantamount to slavery and denying women the right to vote is slanderous, exaggerated, inaccurate and anti-American. Restrictions — and post-fact checks — on people who enter the United States from countries with clear links to terrorism, and to which we cannot turn for record-checks and interviews, are simply something the United States does.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli Arabs – integration rather than deprivation Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on January 28th, 2017

1. Israeli Arabs strongly oppose Defense Minister Liberman’s land – not population – swap proposal, which stipulates the transfer of Arab-majority land in Israel to the Palestinian Authority, while Jewish majority land in Judea & Samaria (the West Bank) would be transferred to Israel. They are determined to remain Israeli citizens, rather than become subjects of the Palestinian Authority.

2. 70,000 Jerusalem Arabs, holding Israeli ID cards, who relocated from tiny apartments in eastern Jerusalem to spacious homes in neighboring Arab villages and towns in Judea & Samaria (the West Bank), returned to Jerusalem once Israel built a security wall and fence around the city. They were concerned that the wall and fence reflected Israel’s intention to withdraw from the neighboring Arab towns and villages, fearing that it would deny them Israel’s civil liberties as well as educational, employment and welfare benefits.

3. Judea & Samaria (West Bank) Arabs enjoyed the highest-ever population growth – 89% – during Israel’s full-control of the area from 1967 (560,000) through Oslo 1993 (1,050,000), following a population growth stagnation during Jordan’s rule from 1950 to 1967, which was characterized by outrageous infant mortality rates, short life expectancy and extremely high emigration. The unprecedented development of health, medical, employment and educational infrastructures, by Israel, dramatically reduced Arab infant mortality, increased Arab life expectancy and reduced Arab emigration.

4. All 1.6 million Israeli Arab citizens are eligible to vote upon reaching the age of 18. The United Arab Party holds 13 – out of 120 – seats in Israel’s legislature, the Knesset, while identifying with Israel’s arch enemies, opposing Jewish historical, religious and national roots and rights in the Land of Israel, as well as the Jewish ingathering to Israel, which the United Arab Party considers divinely-ordained to Muslims, not the “infidel” Jews. Five additional Arab Members of Knesset represent five non-Arab parties, such as Likud and Labor. Hebrew and Arabic are the only two official languages in Israel. Israel’s education system in the Arab sector is conducted in Arabic.

5. Many Israeli Arabs do not consider the United Arab Party their most authentic representative, as evidenced by the turnout during the national election – 64% – which is far below the 87% for local elections. Ali Salam, the Arab mayor of Nazareth, swept the March 2014 special mayoral election in Nazareth – defeating a 19-year incumbent anti-Israel mayor, Ramiz Jaraisey – by stating that “Nazareth is more important than Ramallah in the Palestinian Authority.” Ali Salam has defied the United Arab Party, criticizing its focus on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Authority, rather than on the social, educational and economic concerns of Israeli Arabs.

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