http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/north-korean-mythologies/?print=1 Much of what is written about the North Korean crisis seems to me little more than fantasy. Let us examine the mythologies. 1) China is a responsible partner in checking North Korea and, of course, does not want war. It may well be true that China’s communist apparat wishes to avoid a war, or […]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/04/14/rubio-explains-why-immigration-deal-is-not-amnesty/?print=1
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) set the stage for this week’s anticipated rollout of the Group of Eight’s immigration reform deal with a busy Sunday on the morning shows.
On Fox News Sunday, Rubio said the plan’s expected pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants is “not amnesty.”
“Amnesty is the forgiveness of something. Amnesty is anything that says, ‘Do it illegally. It’s going to be cheaper and easier.’ Here’s what people need to understand. Under the existing law today, if you are illegally in the United States, you are not prohibited from getting a green card and ultimately getting citizenship. The only thing is you have to go back to your home country, you have to wait 10 years and then you can apply for it. And all we’re saying is we’re going to create an alternative to that,” Rubio said.
“That will still be in place, but we’re going to create an alternative that says, ‘OK, you want to stay here? You’ll have to wait more than 10 years, you’ll have to pay this fine, you’ll have to pay this registration fee, you’ll have to be gainfully employed, you won’t qualify for any federal benefits and, then after all that, you don’t get into apply for anything until the enforcement mechanisms are in place. And I would argue to you that it will be cheaper, faster and easier for people to go back home and wait 10 years than it will be to go through this process I’ve outlined. That’s why it’s not amnesty,” he continued. “And bottom line is we don’t award anything. You have to qualify and apply for it, and that’s the key distinction. If somehow being in this country is cheaper, easier and quicker than doing it the right way, I wouldn’t support that.”
On CNN’s State of the Union, Rubio argued that the bill won’t result in a replay of the 1980s immigration reform that resulted in a new flood of illegal immigration.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/exiled/?print=1
“It is impossible for those outside of literature departments to understand how weird such departments have become. You can see the evidence from without, but only within can you drink deep of our Stalinism Lite.” – Prof. Scott Herring, in Exiled.
Investigations of academia by David Horowitz [1], Bruce Bawer [2], and the California Association of Scholars [3] have all pinpointed the massive shift to the left — and the corresponding decline in scholarly rigor and balance — that has occurred in the professoriate at North American universities. More such studies are needed, for the takeover of higher education has in many cases been almost entirely unimpeded and even unnoticed or denied — or made to seem natural and unintentional. Liberal academics, priding themselves on their tolerance, routinely downplay conservative concerns about bias, claiming that the leftist influence is exaggerated or has already passed its peak. Where leftist dominance is admitted, it is claimed to be the innocent result of career self-selection: liberals are, according to the common wisdom, more intellectually curious and creative than conservatives, and therefore naturally drawn to the academic life, just as conservatives — rule-bound and money-obsessed — are naturally drawn to business, police work, or engineering. If leftists do dominate, so the story goes, their presence is benign.
A new book edited by Mary Grabar paints a much darker picture of academic life, showcasing the overt and covert ways that conservative intellectuals are marginalized or excluded. In a series of witty and engrossing narrative essays with the deliciously cheeky title Exiled: Stories from Conservative and Moderate Professors Who Have Been Ridiculed, Ostracized, Marginalized, Demonized, and Frozen Out [4], the collection provides first-hand accounts of what happens to those who flout the protocols of correct belief or pursue research outside the parameters of approved scholarship. They are indeed “exiled,” if not from academia itself — though some are — then at least from the company of the blessed in their departments and research communities. The pains of such exile range from personal shunning to insurmountable career roadblocks, but worst of all, perhaps, to the recognition that propaganda is being disguised as knowledge in thousands of university classrooms.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/how_barack_obama_is_using_health_care_to_balkanize_america.html Last week, adjunct faculty at a local college were asked to sign a petition to the White House to “explore options to prevent colleges/universities from cutting adjunct and contingent faculty hours to circumvent [the] PPACA,” better known as ObamaCare. This is in response to the massive assault on the livelihood of adjunct faculty who […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/the-cultural-intifada-and-temple-denial-on-the-glazov-gang/
This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Lela Gilbert, author of Saturday People, Sunday People, actor Dwight Schultz (DwightSchultzFansite.tv) and Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv.
The Gang members gathered to discuss Israel Through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner. The dialogue occurred in Part I and focused on Lela Gilbert’s book, Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner. Ms. Gilbert shared what brought her to Israel, the Israelis’ warm reception of her, and why, as Dr. Gabriel Barkay imparted to her, “Temple Denial is more dangerous and serious than Holocaust Denial.” The Gang therefore reflected on The Cultural Intifada and Temple Denial, a dialogue which dealt with Islamists’ gambit to de-Judaize the Jewish state.
Part II also mostly focused on Saturday People, Sunday People, shedding light on the dire lessons of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the trauma that Israeli citizens, including children, have suffered from Palestinian terror, Jimmy Carter’s Jew-Hate, and the world’s blind spot: the forgotten exodus of 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab and Muslim countries.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324100904578404580119306900.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
The White House Brain Initiative Hits a Tax Hurdle
While the president launches an exciting initiative to map the brain, a new tax hurts the very innovation it seeks.
Step into any operating room where neurosurgery is being performed, and there is a good chance that the surgeon is viewing the brain through a camera. Technology today is saving lives by enabling surgeons to see what the naked eye cannot. As archeologists use advanced radar technology to examine sensitive sites before excavating, neurosurgeons use advanced imaging technology to get a clear picture of the brain before operating. The data are then loaded into microscopes that guide surgery, providing a safer path through the brain’s intricate wiring, where one wrong cut risks paralyzing the patient.
Over the past two decades, these breakthroughs in scanning technology have led to dramatic improvements in the rates of survival and recovery from brain surgery. The next generation of imaging technology—being developed in labs from Massachusetts to California to the National Institutes of Health—promises to create an even more profound window into the human brain.
These efforts could be greatly accelerated by President Obama’s recent announcement of a new initiative to map the brain’s activity in unprecedented detail. Aiming to “do for the human brain what the Human Genome did for genetics,” the $3 billion “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative” gives hope to those suffering from conditions like Alzheimer’s, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injury.
But here’s the bad news: The brain initiative is already being undermined by a new Washington policy that went into effect on Jan. 1. Under regulations passed as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, the medical-technology industry is now subject to a $30 billion annual tax on medical devices.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324504704578413110123095782.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Luckily, the Constitution gives the Senate exclusive power to ratify, or block, the Arms Trade Treaty.
Even before his most ambitious gun-control proposals were falling by the wayside, President Obama was turning for help to the United Nations. On April 2, the United States led 154 nations to approve the Arms Trade Treaty in the U.N. General Assembly. While much of the treaty governs the international sale of conventional weapons, its regulation of small arms would provide American gun-control advocates with a new tool for restricting rights. Yet because the Constitution requires that two-thirds of the Senate give its advice and consent to any treaty, Second Amendment supporters still have a political route to stop the administration.
But the new treaty also demands domestic regulation of “small arms and light weapons.” The treaty’s Article 5 requires nations to “establish and maintain a national control system,” including a “national control list.” Article 10 requires signatories “to regulate brokering” of conventional arms. The treaty offers no guarantee for individual rights, but instead only declares it is “mindful” of the “legitimate trade and lawful ownership” of arms for”recreational, cultural, historical, and sporting activities.” Not a word about the right to possess guns for a broader individual right of self-defense.
Gun-control advocates will use these provisions to argue that the U.S. must enact measures such as a national gun registry, licenses for guns and ammunition sales, universal background checks, and even a ban of certain weapons. The treaty thus provides the Obama administration with an end-run around Congress to reach these gun-control holy grails. As the Supreme Court’s Heller and McDonald cases recently declared, the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right “to keep and bear Arms” such as handguns and rifles. Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce remains broad, but the court’s decisions in other cases—even last year’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act—remind us that those powers are limited.
International treaties don’t suffer these limits. The Constitution establishes treaties in Article II (which sets out the president’s executive powers), rather than in Article I (which defines the legislature’s authority)—so treaties therefore aren’t textually subject to the limits on Congress’s power. Treaties still receive the force of law under the Supremacy Clause, which declares that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
http://commonsensecampaign.org/site/index.php/csc-concerns-choose-alabama-or-america/csc-concerns-in-america/410-list-of-46-senators-who-voted-to-repeal-the-2nd-amendment-via-the-un-small-arms-treaty.html Over the weekend, we came four votes away from the United States Senate giving our Constitutional rights over to the United Nations. In a 53-46 vote, the senate narrowly passed a measure that will stop the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Read below the 46 senators who voted […]
North Korea and Intelligence U.S. Officials Keep Underestimating the Nuclear Threat. See note please
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324240804578418904084666638.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
JOHN KERRY TO NORTH KOREA…’I’M WARNING YOU NOW…YOU ARE GOING TO GET THE MOTHER OF ALL WARNINGS…..” RSK
Secretary of State John Kerry visited Beijing on the weekend, with no discernible progress in persuading China to drop its support for its North Korean clients. That’s a familiar China bites U.S. story. The more important—and disquieting—news is the dispute over the North Korean threat among U.S. intelligence agencies.
The dispute broke into public view on Thursday when Congressman Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.) read an unclassified sentence from a new assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA has concluded with “moderate confidence” that North Korea may have a nuclear warhead small enough to be placed on a ballistic missile. This judgment arrives two months after North Korea tested a nuclear device—its third—and when another test missile launch is expected any day.
That news produced a scramble inside the Obama Administration, with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issuing a statement telling everyone not to worry. Mr. Clapper quoted a separate Pentagon statement that “it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully developed and tested the kinds of nuclear weapons referenced in the passage.” And in any case, Mr. Clapper added, “the statement read by the Member is not an Intelligence Community assessment” (his emphasis).
Neither of these not-to-worry statements is reassuring, especially given the U.S. intelligence track record on North Korea. Even if Pyongyang hasn’t so far “fully developed” a missile that can nuke Los Angeles, the point is that it is making major progress. It’s also important to understand that an “intelligence community assessment” is a lowest-common denominator bureaucratic consensus that is often wrong.
http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/174754/jewish-stars-of-bollywood/
They were towering stars of Bollywood, the century-old Mumbai-centered film industry that still cranks out 800 films a year, more than double the output of the U.S. And Danny Ben-Moshe, a research fellow at Deakin University in Australia, has spent six years piecing together their fascinating and largely forgotten stories for “Shalom Bollywood,” a documentary set for release later this year. The film “tells of the 2,000-year-old Indian Jewish community and its formative place in the Indian film industry,” according to its web site.
Peppering his presentation with rare film clips, Ben-Moshe will “tell the tale of how I stumbled on the story, how it unfolded, and the trials and tribulations of trying to make [the film].” He corresponded by email with The Arty Semite before boarding a plane for Toronto.
Michael Kaminer: How did you get into this subject, and what compelled you to make a movie about it?
Danny Ben-Moshe: An Indian student of mine gave me an obituary of Nadira, the last of the great Jewish Bollywood actors to pass away. I knew there were Indian Jews but had no idea there was such a prominent Jewish on screen star. I went to India to do some research to see if there was enough material to make a film about Nadira but I found out she was the tip of the iceberg.
The compelling factor was that it was such an intriguing different and eye-opening story. Given the subject matter, it offered the opportunity to make a vibrant, fun, slightly quirky film. How often do filmmakers get the opportunity to make all-singing, all-dancing documentaries?
