ELECTIONS Comments turned off

House Passes John Lewis Voting Rights Act By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-passes-john-lewis-voting-rights-act/

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in a party-line vote, 219-212.

Democrats claim the bill, known as H.R. 4, would strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Proponents argue the measure is needed as it would make it more difficult for states to restrict future voting access.

However, Republicans have argued that the legislation is an example of federal overreach into states’ authority over elections. Representative Rodney Davis (R., Ill.) called the bill a “partisan power grab which circumvents the people to ensure one-party rule.”

The measure faces a tough road ahead in the evenly divided Senate.

President Biden on Tuesday urged the Senate to pass the bill, as well as the “For the People Act.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Supreme Court Orders Reinstatement of ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy in Blow to Biden Admin By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/supreme-court-orders-reinstatement-of-remain-in-mexico-policy-in-blow-to-biden-admin/

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to block a lower-court ruling that will require the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers at the U.S. border.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying they would have granted the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s order.

The administration had sought to end the policy, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces migrants to await their U.S. immigration court dates in Mexico. The program was first suspended when Biden took office and was later formally terminated.

However, Texas and Missouri sued to challenge the Biden administration’s decision to end the program.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled earlier this month that the administration had violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it moved to end the program.

The lower court ruled that the administration must make a “good faith effort” to reimplement the program.

Last week, the Biden administration argued in a petition it filed with the Supreme Court that reinstating the program would result in “irreparable harm.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Teach Respect, Not Critical Race Theory Discussions of race and prejudice should begin at home.By John Beatty

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/critical-race-theory-loudoun-culture-wars-systemic-racism-education-teachers-union-11629837816?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Leesburg, Va.

Shouting matches, tears and overwhelming frustration dominated the Loudoun County School Board’s meeting on June 22. Sitting on the dais, I had a front-line view of the fundamental challenges facing our nation’s education system.

Before I was elected to the school board, Loudoun County Public Schools in early 2019 spent $400,000 on an “equity consultant” to analyze graduation rates and other data to determine how racist the school district was.

After breaking down the data by race, the consultant found tiny differences in the graduation rates of black high-school students and white ones. These gaps, often only 1 percentage point, weren’t statistically significant.

Yet the LCPS superintendent deemed them sufficient evidence to bring in other outside groups, which declared that Loudoun County was systemically racist, and that the administration needed to embrace critical race theory’s concept of equity.

Critical race theory’s proponents claim America’s entire social structure and fabric—you and me, our laws and rules—are irredeemably racist and must be dismantled. LCPS and school systems like it support CRT by recommending books and teaching resources.

According to one strongly recommended book, “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo, “a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.”

This is a glimpse of what roughly 15,000 teachers are reading and using in their lesson plans for the estimated 85,000 students of Loudoun County.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Rush to the Afghan Exits The Taliban says get out by Aug. 31. The U.S. President agrees.

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-rush-to-the-afghan-exits-taliban-kabul-august-31-11629842701?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Some readers were upset by our editorial last week: “Biden to Afghanistan: Drop Dead.” But that headline looks more sadly accurate than ever after President Biden’s decision Tuesday to stick to his arbitrary Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Unless you’re Nancy Pelosi or a media partisan, there’s no sugarcoating what this means. Mr. Biden is bowing to Taliban demands, reiterated on Tuesday, not to extend the deadline. He is rejecting the advice of such G-7 leaders as Britain’s Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron of France to stay longer to get more people out of the country safely. And he is abandoning thousands of Afghans who fought with the U.S. and NATO to the Taliban’s brand of retribution.

***

There was an alternative. Mr. Biden could have sent in enough military force to provide safe zones and retrieve stranded Americans and Afghan allies. He could have done so with a NATO coalition of the willing. The U.S. Army has 31 active duty combat brigades of several thousand soldiers each.

He could have told the Taliban that the U.S. is not negotiating over the deadline and that U.S. forces will remain for as long as it takes to complete the mission of rescuing our people. This would have salvaged some honor and credibility from the botched withdrawal.

Instead Mr. Biden has negotiated with the Taliban from a position of weakness. He has sent too few troops to protect the Kabul airport and retrieve our allies. He sent his CIA director to negotiate with the Taliban, who adopted Mr. Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline as their own and rejected William Burns’s entreaties.

On Tuesday the Taliban escalated by barring Afghans from even going to the airport. “We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. Yet in his remarks Tuesday at the White House, Mr. Biden raised no objection to this command that could strand thousands of Afghan allies.

The White House and Pentagon say they don’t even know how many Americans are still in Afghanistan. As for the Afghans, James Miervaldis of the nonprofit No One Left Behind tells us via email that “we’ve got a list of 1,200 families (approx 6,000 people) who have their visas in hand. Really curious how the President is going to get them inside the airport and fly out before 8/31.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Afghanistan’s Falling Man: The 17-Year-Old Soccer Star Who Plunged From a U.S. Military Jet Zaki Anwari saw no future as the Taliban streamed into Kabul. Viral images of his death horrified the world.

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistans-falling-man-the-17-year-old-soccer-star-who-plunged-from-a-u-s-military-jet-11629834591?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Hundreds of Afghans swarmed the runway of Hamid Karzai International Airport attempting to climb onto a taxiing 140-ton U.S. Air Force transport plane. Two Apache helicopters buzzed low to disperse them.

Powering through the scrum in a green tunic, 17-year-old Zaki Anwari made his way to the front and clambered onto the plane’s landing gear. As it accelerated past 120 miles an hour, he held tight.

Hours earlier, as the Taliban began its first morning in charge of Kabul, Mr. Anwari, a high-school senior and attacking midfielder for the national youth soccer team, phoned his brother to tell him that if he didn’t flee Afghanistan he would never play again.

“Do not go, go back, you are smart, don’t go,” his elder brother Zakir said.

“I have to try,” Mr. Anwari replied.

Millions of people saw footage of what happened next: a defining image from America’s chaotic exit from a 20-year war that had an unsettling resonance with the 9/11 attacks that ignited it. As the C-17 Globemaster III arched skyward over Kabul, Mr. Anwari fell.

Inside the cockpit, the crew had made a snap decision to take off to escape the surrounding crowd. Mr. Anwari, nicknamed “Shield” for his ability to keep the ball, couldn’t hold on.

“They are falling over there,” a bystander said in one video shot from the runway, as a crowd ran toward the silhouettes falling to the ground. “Oh, my God,” he said.

At least two other young men died that day, according to aid agencies. Another fell from the plane around the same time as Mr. Anwari and a third was crushed by the retracting landing gear. Several other young men gripping onto the C-17 would have shared their fate if they hadn’t leapt seconds before the wheels left the runway.

All were members of a generation of Afghans who haven’t known rule by the Taliban and were terrified enough to grab hold of an accelerating military jet if it meant a ticket out.

“It was not just the fall of Kabul. It was the fall of a whole new generation who believed and worked for progressive Afghanistan,” Shafiqa Khpalwak, a Kabul-based poet, wrote on Twitter. “Trusted the world. And hoped for a brighter future.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Americans Await Evacuation As Biden Takes A Knee To Taliban

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/25/americans-await-evacuation-as-biden-takes-a-knee-to-taliban/

When President Joe Biden met with this year’s WNBA champions Seattle Storm in the White House on Monday, he took a symbolic knee, apparently to show he’s Woke. No surprise. He just took a knee before the Taliban, too, after the terrorist group’s humiliating rejection of his request for an “extension” on his Aug. 31 deadline for evacuating Afghanistan.

Biden’s plans, if you can call them that, to get Americans out of Afghanistan have been an epic disaster. It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the incompetence and duplicity of Biden and his administration.

Biden rejected extending the deadline, citing the “increased risk” of terrorism as a reason for doing so. The fact is, he really had no choice, after the Taliban rejected the U.S. plea, calling the Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawal a “red line.” The U.S. president did what the Taliban told him to do.

That rejection, by the way, came after Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to Kabul for emergency talks with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar sent Burns packing with nothing for his efforts, another humiliation.

“If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time to continue evacuations, the answer is no,” said Taliban official Suhail Shaheen. “Or there would be consequences.”

Adding insult to injury, Biden told our allies that the U.S. “won’t be able to get everyone out of Afghanistan,” according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, twisting the knife, the Taliban demanded that the U.S. take only Americans, not Afghans, with them.

Late in the day, facing a barrage of criticism from all quarters, Biden appeared to abruptly change tack, calling for “contingency plans” for lengthening the withdrawal, whatever that means.

It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the incompetence and duplicity of the Biden administration, which in a brief two-week period has managed to alienate and weaken our major allies while emboldening and empowering our foes, in particular Russia, China, Iran and the myriad Islamist terrorist groups across the Mideast and South Asia.

And things are about to get even uglier in Afghanistan, if that’s possible.

The good news is that, as of Monday, the U.S. had already helped evacuate 37,000 people from Afghanistan, according to a leaked ambassadorial communication. The bad news: Only 4,000 Americans were among those evacuated.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Open letter to Prime Minister Bennett ahead of visit to USA Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

During your first official visit to Washington, DC, you’ll have to choose between two options:

*Blurring your deeply-rooted, assertive Israeli positions on the future of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), which would be welcome by the Biden Administration, yielding to short-term political convenience and popularity inside the beltway;

or

*Tenaciously advocating your deeply-rooted, principle-driven positions, which would underscore a profound disagreement with the Biden Administration and the “elite” US media, while granting you and Israel long-term strategic respect, as demonstrated by some of your predecessors.

For example, the late Prime Minister Shamir honed the second option, bluntly introduced his assertive Israeli positions on Judea and Samaria, rebuffed heavy US pressure – including a mudslinging campaign by President Bush and Secretary of State Baker – suffered a popularity setback, but produced unprecedented expansion of US-Israel strategic cooperation. When it comes to facing the intensified threats of rogue regimes and Islamic terrorism, the US prefers principle-driven, reliable, patriotic, pressure-defying partners, irrespective of disagreements on the Palestinian issue.

Assuming that you shall not budge on the historical and national security centrality of Judea and Samaria, it behooves you to highlight the following matters during your meetings with President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, National Security Advisor Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Austin and Congressional leaders (especially the members of the Appropriations Committees):

1. The 1,400-year-old track record of the stormy, unpredictable, violent and anti-“infidel” Middle East, which has yet to experience intra-Arab peaceful-coexistence, along with the 100-year-old Palestinian track record (including the systematic collaboration with anti-US entities, hate-education and anti-Arab and anti-Jewish terrorism) demonstrates that the proposed Palestinian state would be a Mini-Afghanistan or a Mega-Gaza on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

It would dominate 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructures in the 9-15-mile sliver between Judea and Samaria and the Mediterranean, which is shorter than the distance between RFK Stadium and the Kennedy Center.

Thus, a Palestinian state would pose a clear and present existential threat to Israel; and therefore, Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria is a prerequisite for its survival.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Michael Mandelbaum on Biden’s Middle East Policy Challenges by Marilyn Stern

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.meforum.org/62587/mandelbaum-bidens-middle-east-policy-challenges

Michael Mandelbaum, professor emeritus of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and author of The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, spoke to a July 26 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the Biden administration’s foreign policy challenges, specifically regarding the Middle East.

According to Mandelbaum, the Biden administration is handicapped by the fact that its foreign policy team is dominated by Obama administration personnel who formulated their worldviews during the “post-Cold War” era in which the U.S. “faced no serious threats.” We now live in what Mandelbaum calls the “post-post-Cold War world,” in which the U.S. faces three “major challengers”: China, Russia, and Iran. The Biden administration “has no experience dealing with what is the central issue in foreign policy when there are challengers, namely whether, when, and how to use and threaten force.”

Biden is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where good American foreign policy should be.”

The administration is also handicapped by the fact that the Democratic Party has “moved sharply to the left.” As a result, the Biden administration is being “dragged pretty far … to the left of where the country is, and I would say to the left of where good American foreign policy should be,” said Mandelbaum. Although “every administration has to navigate when it comes to foreign policy between politics and policy, that task seems to me to be perhaps unusually complicated and difficult for this administration.”

While Mandelbaum observed that the Biden administration has “adapted to the new circumstances” with respect to China and Russia, at least rhetorically, “the necessary, or at least desirable, adjustments are not in evidence … [regarding] four relevant issues in American policy toward the Middle East, namely Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran.” He discussed each of these in turn.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

 Bennett can’t have it both ways with Biden Ruthie Blum

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bennett-cant-have-it-both-ways-with-biden/

(August 24, 2021 / JNS) It’s hard to figure out what Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meant when he told his Cabinet on Sunday that in his upcoming visit to the White House, he intends to present U.S. President Joe Biden with an “orderly plan that we have formulated in the past two months to curb the Iranians, both in the nuclear sphere and vis-à-vis regional aggression.”

After all, Israel has been leading the battle against the regime in Tehran for decades, ever since it was taken over by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. This fight hasn’t been merely rhetorical, though former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu devoted much of his career articulating, verbally and in print, the dangers that a nuclear Iran would pose to the Middle East and the rest of the world.

He understood, as Bennett surely does, that since the Jewish state is a key target of the mullahs’ genocidal aims against the “infidels,” Israel has had no choice but to try to persuade other countries to wake up to the threat—or go it alone.

Some American administrations have recognized this more than others; the same applies to different constellations of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

It hasn’t been a question of accepting Israel’s warnings about Iran. Rather, it’s been an issue of how best to keep the Islamic Republic’s race for the A-bomb in check.

Left-wing politicians and pundits from both the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Small Satan” (Israel), tend to believe that the only way to do this is through a deal. Those on the right think that negotiating with a state sponsor of global terrorism is as pointless as doing so with its proxies, which happily dispatch “martyrs” to undertake the up-close-and-personal dirty work. You know, the kind that enables them to watch the blood and gore that they extract from their victims.

When Biden’s immediate predecessor and former boss, President Barack Obama, entered the picture, Israel was in trouble. Fans of the “hope and change” candidate on either side of the ocean would come very quickly to attribute the soured relations between Washington and Jerusalem to Netanyahu.

They were wrong to do so.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Has Shown Us That His Promises Are Worthless By Charles C. W. Cooke

Posted By on August 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/biden-has-shown-us-that-his-promises-are-worthless/

Democrats who continue to hitch their wagon to the president going forward cannot say that they were not warned.

A few weeks from now, Joe Biden will stand before the American people and make his case for adding another $3.5 trillion in spending to the $1.9 trillion the federal government spent in March and the $550 billion more it hopes to spend by the end of the summer. As is now customary, the president’s presentation will be chock-full of performatively dropped g’s, of sigh-laden appeals to the “folks,” of labored, down-home clichés, of emphatically whispered entreaties, of absurd straw men, and — if he encounters even the slightest resistance — of brash assurances that none of the objections that have been raised could possibly come to fruition.

Those of us who have lived through the last two weeks should refuse to be fooled again.

Joe Biden ran for president promising, “I’ll always tell you the truth.” But the debacle in Afghanistan has put an end to all that. In July, Biden broke out his usual “Are you stupid?” mien to insist that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable”; he swore that there was “zero” chance that Americans would “see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan”; and he assured the nation that the Taliban was “not even close in terms of their capacity” to “the training and capacity of the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] and the training of the [Afghan] federal police.” Given what we now know, there are only two possible explanations for why Biden said all of this. The first is that he was lying. The second is that he’s a fool.