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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Passover and the Mutually-Beneficial US-Israel Bond Yoram Ettinger

Passover recap

1. According to Heinrich Heine, the 19th century German poet, “Since the Exodus, freedom has always spoken with a Hebrew accent.”  

2. Prof. Yehudah Elitzur, one of Israel’s pioneers of Biblical research, maintained that the Exodus occurred in the second half of the 15th century BCE, during the reign of Egypt’s Amenhotep II.  Joshua reestablished the Jewish Commonwealth in the Land of Israel when Egypt’s rulers, Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, were preoccupied domestically. Moreover, the Tel el Amarna tablets, which were discovered in Egypt’s ancient capital city, documented a 14th century BCE military offensive launched by the “Habirus” (Hebrews and other Semitic tribes), corresponding to Joshua’s battles.

3. Passover is a Jewish national liberation holiday, highlighting faith, humility and solidarity. It emphasizes patriotism, optimism, defiance of the odds, liberty, gratitude and education; the historic legacy which is the foundation for an enhanced future, and the ancient Jewish roots in the Land of Israel. Passover is one of the three historic Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem, in addition to Shavou’ot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). 

4. Passover spotlights the centrality of women. Yocheved, Moses’ mother, hid Moses and then breastfed him at the palace of Pharaoh, posing as a nursemaid.  Miriam was Moses’ older sister and advisor.  Batyah, the daughter of Pharaoh, saved and adopted Moses (Numbers 2:1-10).  Shifrah and Pou’ah, two Jewish midwives, risked their lives, sparing the lives of Jewish male babies, in violation of Pharaoh’s command (Numbers 1:15-19).  Tziporah, a daughter of Jethro and Moses’ wife, saved Moses’ life and set him back on the Jewish course (Numbers, 4:24-27).

Da’ye’noo Passover hymn and the US-Israel bond

Da’ye’noo (“it would suffice” in Hebrew) is a Passover hymn, which expresses appreciation for 15 benefits bestowed by God upon the Jewish people – though one benefit would have sufficed – such as the Exodus, the Parting of the Sea, the historical events at Mount Sinai, and the return to the Land of Israel.

The US-Israel bond may be assessed in a similar manner:

*If the US Founding Fathers had considered the United States as “the modern day Promised Land” and the Biblical Jubilee as a role model of liberty; but had not been inspired by the legacy of Moses in the formulation of the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and US civic culture; it would suffice (Da’ye’noo).

The Biden presidency — already transformative for the worse by Hugo Gurdon,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-biden-presidency-already-transformative-for-the-worse

President Biden is using his entire administration to impose “woke” precepts about race, class, and gender on a public that recognizes them as mostly pseudo-intellectual rubbish masking intolerance.

He’s made it clear that implementation will not be left to a single department or czar. It will, rather, be the core goal of his whole presidency, and every agency will be dragooned into service to achieve it.

No matter where you look, officials who once focused on housing, immigration, energy, or other discrete and dust-dry policies, have been transformed into woke legionaries, framing their responsibilities to fit a faddish crusade against fictional bigotries.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats naturally support this. The House of Representatives passed the Equality Act on Feb. 25, and if the Senate follows suit, the law will add “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” as protected categories covered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This would demolish the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So, for example, schools that teach Christian doctrine that marriage is a sacramental union of one man and one woman could be obliged to hire staff who are in gay marriages and thus live lives that repudiate and undermine their employer’s mission. Institutions will lose a shield given to them 32 years ago to protect people’s right to transmit and live by reasonable principles that have been handed down through millennia from generation to generation.

Should New York Times v. Sullivan Be Overruled because of The New York Times? by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17206/new-york-times-v-sullivan

The result of this decision has been open season on public figures. The media, and their lawyers, are aware of how difficult it is to prove malice. So in order to sell their product, many are prepared to print obvious falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies about political opponents and others.

People at the top of CNN made a deliberate decision to doctor the recording so as to eliminate my carefully chosen words “unlawful” and “illegal.” Then they had their paid commentators go on prime-time TV and falsely proclaim that I had said that a president could not be removed even if he did things that were unlawful or illegal. In other words, they doctored the recording to make me say the exact opposite of what I said.

Despite having been the target of deliberate media defamation, I am not in favor of a total overruling of New York Times v. Sullivan. In order for the First Amendment to thrive, the media must have the right to make honest mistakes: that is the right to be wrong.

“All the news that’s fit to print” has become “only the news that fits our biased narrative.”

I would propose a sliding scale, whereby the more serious and hurtful the defamation, the greater the media’s obligation to engage in due diligence to determine whether or not it is truthful or false. If they fail to exercise due diligence, they can be held liable for defamation.

In a striking dissenting opinion, the highly respected Court of Appeals judge, Laurence Silberman, urged the Supreme Court to reconsider and perhaps overrule the leading case of New York Times v. Sullivan.

Who’s Actually Running This Thing? We have achieved what Buckley greatly feared: Not government by the first 2000 names in the Boston phonebook, but government by the faculty of Harvard. This is what an oligarchy looks like. By Dan Gelernter

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/23/whos-actually-running-this-thing/

We’ve seen the headlines: Biden holding migrant children in cages. Biden crafts plan to raise taxes. Biden does this, Biden does that. But who is actually doing it? 

No one believes that Biden is actually president. Forget for a moment the questions about the election itself, and focus on the man: Biden can’t speak coherently, can’t remember the names of his cabinet members, can’t be trusted to give a live press conference. He says he’s willing to take questions and they turn his feed off. So he’s not in charge. He’s not running the show. He’s not president. Who is?

The American press corps would like to think that it is they; which is why they’re willing to go along with the cover-up. They think they’re the ones running the country. And what exactly would be the difference between the current situation and an official government of the mainstream media? This administration promises to enact, as if by media direction, every single woke prescription and pipe dream. They couldn’t possibly do better if the New York Times editorial board were living in the White House. 

Hollywood thinks the same of our situation. As do the universities. This is great for all of them—it’s as though they are finally, collectively president of the United States. We have achieved what Buckley greatly feared: Not government by the first 2000 names in the Boston phonebook, but government by the faculty of Harvard. This is what an oligarchy looks like.

An oligarchy is an anti-liberal concept, when you use “liberal” in its classical sense as a philosophy of civil and economic liberty. But oligarchy is also the fondest dream of the modern Left—the social justice, cancel-culture, woke-crusading, anti-liberal Left. These people have never been pleased with the idea of individuals running their own lives. They don’t believe an average person has, frankly, the intelligence to choose his own doctor or take care of his neighbors or pick a school for his children or decide how to spend his own money. They certainly don’t believe the average person is intelligent enough to run the government. And by extension they don’t believe the average person is qualified to choose a national leader.

Before the Shooting Who is Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa? By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/before-the-shooting-11616538752?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

There’s a contemporary political compulsion to immediately inject a horrific shooting into ongoing debates about types of weapons and the terms for acquiring them. But before legislating a response, lawmakers should spend some time trying to figure out why Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa allegedly murdered 10 people on Monday at a Boulder, Colo. supermarket.

CNN’s Ray Sanchez, Blake Ellis and Amir Vera report:

Alissa, whose family emigrated from Syria, may have been suffering from mental illness, according to his 34-year-old brother, Ali Aliwi Alissa.
The brother told CNN on Tuesday that in high school bullies made fun of Alissa’s name and for being Muslim and that may have contributed to him becoming “anti-social.”
Alissa had become increasingly “paranoid” around 2014, believing he was being followed and chased, according to his brother. At one point, the young man covered the camera on his computer with duct tape so he could not be seen, said the brother, who lives with Alissa…
“We kept a close eye on him when he was in high school. He would say, ‘Someone is chasing me, someone is investigating me.’ And we’re like, ‘Come on man. There’s nothing.’ … He was just closing into himself,” the brother added.

Garland-Wray Axis Exploits January 6 to Criminalize Dissent “We are facing a far more dangerous period than we did in Oklahoma City.” Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/far-more-dangerous-period-lloyd-billingsley/

“Under Joe Biden, by contrast, the FBI mounts massive raids against people not charged with any violent crime. The president’s lawyer Merrick Garland gives full support. This partisan sophist vows to protect the DOJ, not the constitutional rights of the people. If anybody thought Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray are out to criminalize dissent it would be hard to blame them. As Garland says, we are facing a more dangerous period now.”

“I certainly agree that we are facing a more dangerous period than we did in Oklahoma City at that time,” said Biden Attorney General pick Merrick Garland in his Senate confirmation hearing. The reference was to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people.

Garland supervised the prosecution of the bomber, Timothy McVeigh. On the other hand, according to remarks Garland made before confirmation as U.S. Attorney General, that deadly bombing would not even qualify as an act of terrorism.

According to Garland, nationwide BLM-Antifa violence does not qualify as terrorism because it took place at night. So if Timothy McVeigh had detonated his bomb at midnight, he too would have escaped the domestic terrorist tag. So much for the great legal mind all attorneys general are supposed to display.

For Garland, job one will be prosecution of those involved in the “heinous attack” of January 6, in which no bombs were detonated and the only people with guns were the police. One cop gunned down Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, but Garland appears unconcerned about that police shooting.

Boulder Shooter is ISIS Sympathizer, Leftists Hardest Hit Another opportunity to shore up their sagging “white terror threat” narrative is lost. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/boulder-shooter-isis-sympathizer-leftists-hardest-robert-spencer/

A man murdered ten people in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket Monday. No details were immediately released about the shooter, but Leftist “journalists,” working from a photo of the shooter, seized upon the shooting to shore up their sagging narrative of “white supremacist terrorism.” There was just one problem: the massacre was actually, after a four-year hiatus, a new incidence of Islamic jihad on American soil.

Even after the shooter’s name was revealed as Ahmad Al Issa (which is how he himself wrote it on his Facebook and Twitter accounts), establishment media reports continued to give his name as  “Alissa,” which of course is a common first name for women in the U.S., and thus gives the impression that he is an American non-Muslim. Were “journalists” trying to obscure the fact that he is a Muslim migrant ISIS sympathizer? Of course they were.

And that was after they had already decided that he was one of those “right-wing extremists” who are, according to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the “most lethal and persistent” threat the U.S. faces today. Julie DiCaro, a senior writer and editor at Deadspin, tweeted: “Extremely tired of people’s lives depending on whether a white man with an AR-15 is having a good day or not.” As of this writing on Tuesday afternoon, DiCaro has not taken down the tweet, as some media hacks are still, like a captain going down with his sinking ship, insisting that Al Issa is white. Prominent race baiter Tariq Nasheed tweeted: “White supremacists are trying their hardest to deflect from the fact the Boulder suspect is WHITE. Syrians in America are legally, politically & socially WHITE. Their white status is well documented in court cases Terms like ‘muslim’, ‘Arab’, ‘islamic’ doesn’t change whiteness.”

Of course Al Issa really is white, as he is an Arab Muslim migrant from Syria, and Arabs have been considered “white” ever since they began arriving in this country. Nasheed’s tweet, however, still pointed up the Left’s inconsistency and hypocrisy: up until this shooting, Leftists considered Arab Muslims to be “brown,” after the fashion of Linda Sarsour, who memorably identified as white until she put on a hijab and miraculously became a “person of color.” If the Boulder shooter had been a white non-Muslim American and his victims had been white Arab Muslims, Tariq Nasheed would be railing against the persecution of “brown” people in the United States.

The Q Lie: The Power-Grab After January 6th Was the Real Insurrection. Thomas J. Farnan

https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/the-q-lie-the-power-grab-response-after-january-6th-was-the-real-insurrection/

“The Q Lie is an excuse for politicians to grab power from the people. It is, to borrow an expression, a form of insurrection.”

Despite parts of the fencing being removed this weekend, the nation’s capital is still protected by armed troops and razor wire because government officials claim to fear invasion by Trump-supporting QAnon followers.

Seriously.

The concern is they will drive to D.C., get hotel rooms, grab their free breakfast, then strike at dawn with fire extinguishers or anything that counts under the present hysteria as an armament; i.e., shoes, purses or bear spray.

The attack was expected on March 4 but never materialized. Federal law enforcement recalibrated, shifting the anticipated coup de main to March 20. That never happened either.

Notably, the federal government failed to similarly protect the capital in 1814, when the Brits burned down the White House, and in 1861, when the Army of Northern Virginia encamped at what is now a shopping mall in Manassas, Virginia.

C’mon, man!

Immediately after the events of January 6, The National Pulse called out The Insurrection Lie, specifically questioning the political narrative then being fabricated around Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick’s unfortunate death.

Our reporting would eventually push the New York Times to back down from its fake news claim that Office Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by Trump supporters using a fire extinguisher.

It is now obvious that the continued military occupation of Washington D.C. under a phony, Q-pretext is a purposeful overreaction to silence objections over the use of mass mail-in ballots to swing the 2020 election.

In support of our election skepticism, we cite Time Magazine’s comprehensive report, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.

THE ELECT: THE THREAT TO A PROGRESSIVE AMERICA FROM ANTI-BLACK ANTIRACISTS Serial excerpt No. 5: Why it won’t do to admit this is a religion and “own” it – The Elect harbor a religion that harms black people in countless ways.John McWhorter

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/the-elect-the-threat-to-a-progressive-598

“To be Elect is to insist that unequal outcomes mean unequal opportunity, which is false.”

One response to a book like this might be to own that Electism is a religion. You might consider it a better one than, say, believing that God’s son died for our sins and was reborn, waiting to envelope you in his eternal grace if you believe in him. This new religion is about countering racism. Who could be against that?

But we must ask whether the Elect approach actually shows signs of making any difference in the lives of black people, other than making educated white people infantilize them. While purportedly “dismantling racist structures,” the Elect religion is actually harming the people living in those structures. It is a terrifyingly damaging business.

ELECT IDEOLOGY HURTS BLACK PEOPLE

The Bigotry Against Black Boys

Black boys get suspended and expelled from schools more than other kids. According to Elect ideology this must be because they are discriminated against.

Specifically, we are told to think that the reason these boys get disciplined more than other kids is because teachers hold biases against them. The white kid acting up is a scamp; the black kid acting up is a thug. There are scholar-activists who have founded whole careers on bringing this wisdom to America’s educators and beyond. In 2014, a “Dear Colleague” letter went out from the U.S. Department of Education concurring that black boys are disciplined disproportionately because of racism. In 2019, the United States Commission on Civil Rights released a briefing report making the same case titled “Beyond Suspensions: Examining School Discipline Policies and Connections to the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Students of Color with Disabilities.”

Noble notions from noble entities. But the simple fact is this. Black boys do commit more violent offenses in public schools than other kids. Period.

The hibernation of democracy A year of lockdown has had dire consequences for liberty and public life. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/23/the-hibernation-of-democracy/

“Democracy was forced into hibernation – an utterly unprecedented state of affairs. Our nation and our lives became the property not of an engaged, free public discussion, but of an expert class of scientists and public-health officials to whom every major decision was entrusted. Parliament temporarily suspended itself. Even when it returned it failed to subject the suspension of public life to any real, meaningful scrutiny. Every other issue other than Covid-19 was forced out of the public realm. Even discussing the economic and social consequences of lockdown was shamed into silence. ‘Do you care more for the economy than for your own grandmother?!’ And we the people were transformed from democratic citizens into recipients of instruction; from free public actors into potential spreaders of disease to be controlled and punished; from voters into mere observers of the spectacle of crisis, our role nothing more than to watch the depressing daily press conferences and heed their warning that leaving our houses would cause death and destruction.”

For a year we have been living through one of the most extraordinary events of modern times: the hibernation of democracy. The suspension of public life. The adjournment of politics itself. This has been the most dire consequence of lockdown. We have witnessed the outsourcing of decision-making to non-political actors, the withering away of political opposition and political debate, and the decommissioning of the public itself. Stay at home, watch the news for Covid updates, and don’t breathe on, far less talk to, another human soul. That has been the instruction to the demos for the past year. The impact of all of this on the spirit and practice of democracy is likely to be long-lasting.

Today is the first anniversary of the imposition of lockdown in the UK. It was a year ago today that Boris Johnson, having initially bristled at the idea of enforcing a China- or Italy-style shutdown of society, solemnly addressed the nation and said: ‘Stay at home.’ It would last three or four weeks, we were told. It was just about ‘flattening the curve’ and preventing the NHS from being overwhelmed. We’d be out of it soon and cracking on with life relatively normally. How naive we were to believe that. Today, on this unhappy birthday, we’re in lockdown again – our third – and public-health experts are telling us that some social restrictions could last for years. A three-week shutdown has become a neverending nightmare.