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Ruth King

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Trump, ‘Lies’ and Honest Journalism Why editors should be careful about making selective moral judgments about false statements.By Gerard Baker

By on January 5th, 2017

“When a politician tells you something in confidence, always ask yourself: ‘Why is this lying bastard lying to me?’ ” As a statement of fierce journalistic independence, this advice from Louis Heren, a veteran correspondent of the Times of London, reflects an admirable if slightly jaundiced view of the reporter’s job. As an operating principle of objective, civil and fair-minded journalism it leaves a little to be desired.

But after a remarkable presidential election campaign, and as we stand on the cusp of the Donald Trump presidency, it captures the posture of many journalists toward the president-elect. Mr. Trump certainly has a penchant for saying things whose truthfulness is, shall we say for now, challengeable. Much of the traditional media have spent the past year grappling with how to treat Mr. Trump’s utterances. It’s an important question and one that has received a fresh burst of energy in recent days, partly, well, because of me.

In a New Year’s Day broadcast on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” moderator Chuck Todd asked whether I, as the editor in chief of the Journal, would be comfortable characterizing in our journalism something Mr. Trump says as a “lie.”

Here’s what I said: “I’d be careful about using the word ‘lie.’ ‘Lie’ implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead.”

Immediately, my remarks were followed by another fit of Trump-induced pearl-clutching among the journalistic elite. Dan Rather, a former television newsman of some renown, weighed in to call the remarks “deeply disturbing.” I will confess to feeling a little burst of pride at being instructed in reporting ethics by Mr. Rather. It feels a little like being lectured on the virtues of abstinence by Keith Richards.

But these are serious allegations. I—and The Wall Street Journal—stand accused of imperiling the republic by adopting a craven deference to presidential mendacity. So let me elucidate. A couple of points ought to be obvious but might be worth pointing out at the start.

Note that I said I’d be “careful” in using the word “lie.” I didn’t ban the word from the Journal’s lexicon. Evidently, this carefulness is widely shared in the newsrooms of America. While some of the fresher news organizations have routinely called out Mr. Trump as a liar in their reporting, as far as I can tell, traditional newsrooms—print, digital, television—have used the term sparingly. Given the number of times Mr. Trump seems to have uttered falsehoods, that looks like prima facie evidence of a widespread reluctance to label him a liar.

Why the reluctance? For my part, it’s not because I don’t believe that Mr. Trump has said things that are untrue. Nor is it because I believe that when he says things that are untrue we should refrain from pointing it out. This is exactly what the Journal has done.

Mr. Trump has a record of saying things that are, as far as the available evidence tells us, untruthful: thousands of Muslims celebrating 9/11 on the rooftops of New Jersey, millions of votes cast illegally in the presidential election, President Obama’s supposed foreign birth. We can also point out that the circumstances are such that it’s reasonable to infer that Mr. Trump should know that these statements are untrue. CONTINUE AT SITE

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California Taps Eric Holder as Legal Counsel in Battles Against Trump By Debra Heine

By on January 5th, 2017

Lawmakers in the Golden State are so worried about the future actions of President-elect Donald Trump that they have recruited a former U.S. attorney general to help deal with them. Incredibly, the California Legislature has chosen former Attorney Gen. Eric Holder “to serve as outside counsel to advise the state’s legal strategy against the incoming administration.”

Via the L.A. Times:

The unusual arrangement will give Holder, leading a team of attorneys from the firm Covington & Burling, a broad portfolio covering potential conflicts between California and the federal government.

“He will be our lead litigator, and he will have a legal team of expert lawyers on the issues of climate change, women and civil rights, the environment, immigration, voting rights — to name just a few,” Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) said in an interview.

It’s not clear why California’s new attorney general, Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra, has not been deemed fit for the job, as it would normally fall under his purview. Becerra is replacing former Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, who now serves in the U.S. Senate.

It’s also not clear why the California legislature thinks they’re going to get any sound legal advice from a guy whose record with the Supreme Court was historically abysmal.

As Obama’s attorney general, Holder racked up twenty humiliating 9-0 losses in the Supreme Court, and even more if you include cases in which the administration filed an amicus brief.

“Typically, the Justice Department does very well before the Supreme Court. Holder has made that a losing record,” John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky wrote in The New Yorker in July of 2014 after Holder had reached that dubious milestone.

That’s because, as legal scholar Ilya Shapiro says, the administration has “relied on outlandish legal theories that pushed a constitutional interpretation of extreme federal power.”

Holder and Obama have argued that we as Americans don’t have the right to free speech, the right to privacy, the right to due process or the freedom of religion.

Apparently, this failed record of government overreach is exactly what California Democrats are looking for.

Here’s a Washington Free Beacon “Supercut” of Holder’s finest moments as Obama’s attorney general:

Here’s a Washington Free Beacon “Supercut” of Holder’s finest moments as Obama’s attorney general:

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Six-Week University Program Will ‘Help’ Men Not Act Like Men By Tom Knighton

By on January 5th, 2017

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is starting its six-week “Men’s Project,” a program designed to brainwash young men to not act like men because men are awful:

“The program operates on a transformative model of social justice allyship,” explains a news release from UW-Madison. “First, facilitators ask students to consider how the students’ opinions about masculinity affect their own perceptions every day. Second, they consider how those opinions affect the people around them.”

One goal of the project, said Sam Johnson, a violence prevention specialist at the University Health Services, is to “prevent future violence” by analyzing “unhealthy interactions” caused by traditional perceptions of masculinity and their role in gender-based violence, alcohol, and relationships.

The Men’s Project, which is in its second year of operation, begins with a weekend retreat and then continues with six weekly meetings lasting two hours each.

According to past participants of the program, the Project helped them become more vulnerable and make masculinity a “choice” rather than the default option.

Wait — if being masculine is simply making a bad “choice,” then won’t women who make the choice to put motherhood ahead of career also get blasted for not stepping in line with modern feminist thought?
Sponsored

Yup.

In reality, virtually all men — because of their masculinity — are both disgusted by the abuse of women and feel duty-bound to put themselves in physical risk to stop it when they see it.

Both of these nasty ideas about how men and women must behave spawn from modern feminism, which seems to want no less than total control over how other people live their lives. Imagine the outrage if a university men’s movement tried to shame women for being “too feminine.”

To make life more confusing for the men who have gone down the vulnerability path this program recommends, they later find themselves being “shamed” by the women in their life for having done so. A number of women actually want strong, masculine men, not the whiny beta males the University of Wisconsin-Madison seems determined to crank out. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Population of Britain Will Outstrip France by 2050 Because of… Migrants By Michael van der Galien

By on January 5th, 2017

If those migrants were all adjusting well to living in Great Britain and embracing British culture, this would not be a problem:

Britain is set to become the most populous European country by 2050 because of migrant numbers, official figures have revealed. Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office, predicted the British population to increase by at least 13million – from 64.6 million in 2015 to 77.1 million in 2050.

Those numbers collapse completely if migrants aren’t included, which would cause another set of problems. For instance, the welfare state would become unaffordable. Having said that, it’s not necessarily true that high numbers of migrants and their children will prevent that; that’s only true if they put more into the system than they receive. As anybody who has ever walked around in a large European city can tell you, that’s certainly not always the case.

Additionally, as think tank head Alp Mehmet points out, having such high numbers of immigrants (and their children) in any society can cause very serious problems:

This research spells out the very serious consequences for our society if net migration continues at its present scale, with membership of the single market resulting in a relentless increase in our population. In increase of anything like 12 million in just 25 years is, quite simply, unacceptable to the British public and certainly not what they voted for in the referendum.

Most proponents of Brexit aren’t calling for a complete ban on migration. There are very good reasons why some migration should be allowed — eg., Brits marrying foreigners, highly skilled foreigners who are of value to the British economy, real refugees who can’t be protected in their own region. But that is not the same as having an open-borders policy that allows everybody in who wants to get in. Having such an immigration policy is, quite simply, suicidal. CONTINUE AT SITE

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GOP Hijinks on Ethics Panel: Amateur Hour, Not Corruption By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 5th, 2017

Is it that there’s a new sheriff in town, here to save the GOP from its penchant for self-destruction – or at least to stop the bleeding earlier than usual? Is it an incoming Republican administration versed in the art of Clintonian triangulation against its own party in Congress? These questions will be answered in due course after January 20. For now, suffice it to say that President-elect Donald Trump induced House Republicans to reverse their politically inept decision to trim the sails of an independent ethics panel.

Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted out his displeasure at the GOP conference’s unilateral decision, on the eve of the new Congress, to rein in the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, an unelected in-house watchdog. Or as the New York Times hyperbolically put it, to “gut” the OCE. Though the tweeted rebuke was mild by Trump standards, it helped raise the volume of hysteria already pouring out of the Left, portraying the Republican move as a harbinger of unprecedented corruption. Following Trump’s tweet, House leaders scrambled to convene an emergency conference meeting, at which the ethics proposal was scrapped before the new session commenced.

Before the story dies a welcome swift death, it is worth pointing out that the GOP’s bad politics was actually good policy, and certainly not corruption.

To be sure, one can only shake one’s head at the GOP’s all too familiar ham-handedness. Republicans have an ambitious agenda now that they control both chambers of Congress and the White House. Yet, they allowed themselves to be portrayed as prioritizing – over the repeal of Obamacare, tax reform, and a host of significant initiatives – a watering down of ethics protocols ostentatiously adopted in 2008, when Democrats were making hay over Republican corruption scandals. Monday night’s OCE gambit – pushed over the objection of Speaker Paul Ryan by a bloc led by Judiciary Committee Chariman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) – was a unilateral GOP move, taken in the course of voting on rules for the new session. Naturally, the media-Democrat echo chamber pounced, accusing Republicans of meeting in secret to grease the wheels of graft.

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UNSETTLING IGNORANCE: 7 THINGS NPR DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL’S HISTORY

By on January 5th, 2017

An article posted on the National Public Radio website on December 29 by International Editor Greg Myre and Middle East Editor Larry Kaplow titled “7 Things To Know About Israeli Settlements,” began as follows: “When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory.”

The misleading nature of this one sentence is striking. The reason that no Jews – Israeli or otherwise – lived in the West Bank when Israel captured it in its defensive war against Jordan is that in 1947-48, Jordan killed or expelled all the Jews living there at the time.

The kibbutzim of the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem, for instance, came under attack in late 1947, and the women and children were evacuated. Later, in 1948, the men who stayed behind to defend their communities were either slaughtered or taken prisoner by Jordanian forces. As CAMERA has detailed before, Jordan also expelled all the Jewish residents when it illegally seized eastern Jerusalem. Yet, the authors of this piece – editors at NPR – saw fit to omit this essential information and thereby deceive readers.

The next few sentences of the piece are similarly deceptive, stating:

The following year, a small group of religious Jews rented rooms at the Park Hotel in Hebron for Passover, saying they wanted to be near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, one of the holiest sites in Judaism (as well as Islam and Christianity).

The Israeli government reluctantly allowed them to stay “temporarily.” From that beginning, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews now reside in the West Bank, citing religion, history and Israel’s security among their reasons for being there.

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Textbooks Used in UN West Bank Schools Erased Jewish History, Featured Maps Without Israel

By on January 5th, 2017

Textbooks used in United Nations-run schools in the West Bank did not include Israel in their maps or mention Jewish historical or cultural ties to the country, a recent study has found.

Professors Arnon Gross and Roni Shaked of the Harry Truman Research Institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found that books, which are written by the Palestinian Ministry of Educatin and used in West Bank schools run by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), display a single state of Palestine in the place of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority—effectively teaching students to recognize Israel as a nation. No Israeli city established after 1948 is listed on maps in the books.

In one of the textbooks, Zionism is described as a colonialist ideology devoted to moving European Jews to Israel and displacing Arabs. The textbooks also teach that Jewish holy places—including the Western Wall, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Rachel’s Tomb—are actually Muslim holy sites that Jews are appropriating. They claim that the 1929 riots, in which around 130 Jews were killed by Arab neighbors in Hebron, Jerusalem, and Safed, were part of the “al-Buraq revolt,” to prevent Jews from taking over religious sites in those areas.

In another instance, an image of a Mandatory-era stamp, which had writing in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, was reproduced with the Hebrew erased.

Palestinian textbooks have long been under scrutiny for their denial of Jewish history, incitement of violence, and failure to promote peaceful coexistence to Palestinian children. A similar report was issued in last June by the watchdog group IMPACT-SE, which found that the word “peace” did not appear at all in its survey of 78 Palestinian Authority textbooks for grades 1 through 12.

In The Palestinian Textbook Fiasco, which was published in the June 2013 issue of The Tower Magazine, Adi Schwartz dissected a State Department-sponsored study that whitewashed the extremism present in Palestinian textbooks.

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Ingrid Carlqvist Video: How Sweden Became Absurdistan.

By on January 5th, 2017

http://jamieglazov.com/2017/01/04/ingrid-carlqvist-moment-how-sweden-became-absurdistan/
This special edition of the Glazov Gang presents the Ingrid Carlqvist Moment hosted by Ingrid Carlqvist, journalist and author.

Ingrid discussed How Sweden Became Absurdistan, sharing her fear that her country could become the first Sharia state in Europe.

Don’t miss it!

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The Doctrine of Resistance by David Isaac

By on January 4th, 2017

The Obama administration is receiving a well-deserved hammering for orchestrating the UN’s fresh assault on Israel. Most refreshing is a good deal of that hammering is being delivered by an infuriated Israel, whose representatives haven’t flinched in slamming the U.S. for its betrayal. They are learning for the first time, or perhaps re-learning for the umpteenth time, a doctrine taught by Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky: the principle of resistance.

The Likud Party which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads purports to draw inspiration from Jabotinsky and to faithfully follow his teachings. Banners depicting Jabotinsky fly at every Likud event. Yet, in his many years in office, Netanyahu has seemed less a devotee of Jabotinsky than a disciple of Dale Carnegie, who famously said, “You can’t win an argument.” Netanyahu and his government haven’t won any arguments when it comes to Jewish rights in Israel’s heartland. Indeed, they haven’t tried. Instead, they’ve chosen to manage the problem. We see the fruits of that strategy: Resolution 2334.

Ironically, it was the Prime Minister’s father, Prof. Ben-Zion Netanyahu, who offered one of the best analyses of Jabotinsky’s thinking in a 1981 essay that was reprinted in his last book, The Founding Fathers of Zionism. Ben-Zion points out that Jabotinsky’s greatest contribution to Jewish thinking was this: “He taught the doctrine of resistance to a people who had not known what resistance meant for hundreds of years.”

What did this mean in political terms? “Vigorous resistance to any concession of any rightwhatsoever.” Ben-Zion Netanyahu writes: “After all, if you have a right, and concede that right, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, even if out of supposedly ‘pragmatic calculations,’ then what is taken away from you is, simply, theft. Hence, you have fundamentally surrendered to robbery, even if you pretend to having been magnanimous.”

Think of the prime minister’s approach in light of the above. When facing election, he speaks out against a two-state solution as he did in 2008 and in 2015. Afterwards, he hastily backs down under U.S. and international pressure, reaffirming his support for two states. Instead of vigorous resistance, Netanyahu chooses the path of least resistance.

Although describing himself as a disciple of Jabotinsky, Netanyahu acts more like Jabotinsky’s nemesis, Chaim Weizmann. The strategy of Weizmann and the Laborites was “a dunam and a cow, and then another dunam and another cow”––a dunam being an area of land (4 equaling 1 acre). The idea was to avoid tipping off the Arabs while creating facts on the ground that would make a Jewish state inevitable. Weizmann even denied he wanted a Jewish state. The strategy was disingenuous, fooled no one and cost the Jews dearly politically, as the British, who favored the Arabs from the start, gradually stripped away Jewish rights.

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President Trump’s Immigration Challenge To undo Obama’s catastrophic damage. Michael Cutler

By on January 4th, 2017

On January 20, 2017 President Trump can and likely will end all of Obama’s illegal immigration executive orders, but he needs to do more.

For decades the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws was hobbled by lack of resources in general and a particularly devastating failure to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

For decades the Border Patrol was perceived as the primary enforcement arm of America’s immigration laws and for the Border Patrol this worked out fine. They got the lion’s share of publicity and, far more importantly, the funding while INS special agents and the interior enforcement mission were all but ignored

When the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) was created in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, the former INS was dismantled and broken into several components of the DHS and mixed in with other agencies, principally the U.S. Customs Service.

Bad as it was for INS agents to operate in the shadow of the Border Patrol, the creation of the DHS was disastrous and caused many of the INS agents nostalgic for “the good old days.”

On May 5, 2005 the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims conducted a hearing on the topic, “New ‘Dual Mission’ Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.”

I was one of four witnesses who testified at that hearing. In point of fact, I testified at several hearings that sought to understand the challenges that the creation of the DHS created for the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

In my testimony I clearly articulated my concerns about the myriad issues created when the DHS was established and the former INS was dismantled.

Consider this excerpt from the testimony of then-Subcommittee Chairman John Hostettler in which he articulated the importance of immigration law enforcement and that was, however, hobbled by the creation of the DHS:

The first two Subcommittee hearings of the year examined in detail how the immigration enforcement agencies have inadequate resources and too few personnel to carry out their mission. The witnesses mentioned the lack of uniforms, badges, detention space, and the inevitable low morale of frontline agents who are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming illegal aliens. If this were not enough, these ”immigration enforcement” agencies also face internal confusion resulting from dual or multiple missions in which immigration has all too often taken a back seat. Sadly, contrary to Congress’ expectations, immigration enforcement has not been the primary focus of either of these agencies, and that is the subject of today’s hearing.

The Homeland Security Act, enacted in November 2002, split the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, into separate immigration service and enforcement agencies, both within the Department of Homeland Security. This split had been pursued by Chairman Sensenbrenner based on testimony and evidence that the dual missions of INS had resulted in poor performance.

There was a constant tug-of-war between providing good service to law-abiding aliens and enforcing the law against law-breakers. The plain language of the Homeland Security Act, Title D, creates a ”Bureau of Border Security,” and specifically transfers all immigration enforcement functions of INS into it. Yet when it came down to actually creating the two: new agencies, the Administration veered off course. Although the service functions of INS were transferred to USCIS, the enforcement side of INS was split in two, what is now Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to handle interior enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to guard our borders.

ICE was given all Customs agents, investigators, intelligence and analysis-from the Treasury Department, as well as the Federal Protective Service to guard Federal buildings, and the Federal Air Marshals to protect our airplanes, and finally the INS investigators.

CBP was given all Treasury Customs inspectors at the ports-of-entry, Agriculture Inspector from the Department Of Agriculture, and INS inspectors.

At no time during the reorganization planning was it anticipated by the Committee that an immigration enforcement agency would share its role with other enforcement functions, such as enforcement of our customs laws. This simply results in the creation of dual or multiple missions that the act sought to avoid in the first place.

Failure to adhere to the statutory framework established by HSA has produced immigration enforcement incoherence that undermines the immigration enforcement mission central to DHS, and undermines the security of our Nation’s borders and citizens.

It is not certain on what basis it was determined that customs and agriculture enforcement should become part of the immigration enforcement agency, except to require Federal agents at the border to have more expertise and more functions.

It is also unknown on what basis the Federal Air Marshals should become part of this agency, especially since it has been revealed that the policy is not to apprehend out-of-immigration status aliens when discovered on flights. If the mission of the Department of Homeland Security is to protect the homeland, it cannot effect its mission by compromising or neglecting immigration enforcement for customs enforcement.

The 9/11 terrorists all came to the United States without weapons or contraband—Added customs enforcement would not have stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda’s plan was additional immigration focus, vetting and enforcement. And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is a very important national security issue that cannot take a back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation’s security.

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