Inauguration Violence Erupts… From Antifa By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/21/inauguration-violence-erupts-from-antifa/

As Washington, D.C., and federal officials around the country geared up for what many wrongly predicted would be an insurrection by Trump supporters on Inauguration Day, Antifa members rioted and denounced Joe Biden’s presidency in cities across the nation.

In Portland, hundreds of violent Antifa rioters took to the streets to protest Biden’s inauguration, with some vandalizing the Oregon Democratic Party headquarters, smashing windows, graffitiing the walls, and lighting dumpsters on fire.

Another group marched to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the city, chanting, “F-ck Joe Biden.” Shortly after they arrived, federal law enforcement declared an unlawful assembly as the crowd lobbed objects at the officers and the building.

Police eventually arrested and charged multiple people in connection to the destruction, but during other rowdy gatherings in the area, some demonstrators called for “revenge” against “police murders, imperialist wars, and fascist massacres,” carrying a banner painted with “We don’t want Biden.”

What happened to all the pro-Trump violence that was supposed to mar Inauguration Day? By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/what_happened_to_all_the_protrump_violence_that_was_supposed_to_mar_inauguration_day.html

Joe Biden was sworn in  with a supporting cast of about 24,000 National Guard troops deployed from all over the country to Washington, D.C., at enormous, wasted cost in money and disruption to the lives of the troops.  But the media and other Democrats got what they wanted: great visuals portraying an atmosphere of fear, an expectation of dread that violent, white supremacist, scary people bent on insurrection were a threat to the Republic.

That fear is a precious commodity to those who want to silence their political opponents — because an argument on the merits of political policy does not favor the left.  Demonization of conservatives, Trump-supporters, and Caucasian males (and those females and other races who fail to toe the identity politics/socialist line) is a conscious, perverse strategy that has the almost total support of the mainstream media and most of the education industry.

The idea that 74 million Trump voters are bent on overthrow of the U.S. government was always a crock, but thanks to the violent incursion on the U.S. Capitol (not the first such event) on January 6, there was a seed of violence that could be, and was, exploited.  Don’t forget that election integrity was and is the aim of those who question the result that led to Biden’s inauguration, not an insistence that a revolutionary vanguard would be justified in acting to seize power.  Every single Trump-supporter I know was horrified at the incursion, and many suspect, with some evidence, that agents provocateurs led the way, and mob hysteria led others to follow, dupes.

The inauguration visuals of armed troops were insurrection theatre, with a cast of thousands (literally).

Jaw-dropping contempt for Trump and his voters from National Review star columnist Kevin Williamson By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/jawdropping_contempt_for_trump_and_his_voters_from_national_review_star_columnist_kevin_williamson.html

It is sad, but perhaps inevitable that contemptuous, raw class-hatred for Trump voters would be featured so prominently in the National Review almost immediately after the swearing-in of Joe Biden yesterday.  National Review, after all, produced the infamous “Against Trump” issue in January 2016, assembling conservatives from many publications in an effort to derail the nomination of the man who became our 45th president.

The chief complaints about Trump centered on style…and class.  But graciousness in victory apparently is not an element of civility that appeals to Kevin Williamson, a talented wordsmith and star at what was once the flagship publication of the conservative movement.  You may recall that  roughly half a year before the February 15, 2016  “Against Trump” issue appeared, Williamson descended to vitriol with a June 16, 2015 column on Trump’s announcement of his candidacy in the Trump Tower lobby titled, “Witless Ape Rides Escalator,” explicitly dehumanizing him.

Yesterday, he bookended his Trump coverage by returning to an insult that, if he had applied it to Trump’s predecessor, would have gotten him deplatformed and condemned to ignominy (ask Roseanne Barr).  In “Witless Ape Rides Helicopter,” Williamson broadened his contempt for Trump into an attack on the voters who dared to reject Williamson’s views and voted Trump into office, and then added millions to their ranks and voted for his re-election.  They are all morons, you see, toothless, rural semi-humans whom Williamson calls “Cletus,” no doubt after a character on The Simpsons, described by Fandom as “a stereotypical redneck[.]”

Words of Division Cloaked in an appeal to unity, President Biden’s inaugural speech hit all the expected themes of racial resentment and blame. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/bidens-inaugural-speech-words-of-division

It’s an odd way to seek national unity: call a significant portion of the American public white supremacists, racists, and nativists. Welcome to the Biden presidency.

Joe Biden’s inaugural speech as 46th president is predictably being hailed for its “unifying” message. And just as predictably, his invocations of the divisive bromides of the identitarian Left are being swept under the rug.

According to Biden, we are a “great nation” and a “good people.” But we also oppress minorities with an ever-rising fervor. “Growing inequity” is among the greatest challenges facing the country, according to Biden, along with the “sting of systemic racism” and encroaching “white supremacy.” Only now are we confronting “a cry for racial justice, some four hundred years in the making.”

One might have thought that more than 50 years of civil rights legislation; the banishing of Jim Crow segregation; the ubiquity of racial preferences throughout corporate America, higher education, and government; trillions of dollars of tax dollars attempting to close the academic achievement gap; and the election of black politicians by white voting districts would have reduced inequity, not increased it. But to Biden’s speechwriters, steeped in academic victimology, racial inequity is always with us, requiring constant remediation from government.

Biden rattled off a litany of white America’s sins: the “harsh, ugly reality” of “racism, nativism, fear, [and] demonization”; “anger, resentment, hatred, [and] extremism.” He did not name white Americans as such, but he did not need to. That qualifier is inherent in the language he chose to adopt.

Trump Trial Puts Fundamental Question to Chief Justice Roberts By John Yoo & Robert Delahunty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/trump-trial-puts-fundamental-question-to-chief-justice-roberts/

It’s a murky situation that could see none other than Vice President Harris preside.

B efore the Senate holds an impeachment trial, as many conservative and liberal writers advise, it should understand the serious constitutional issues at stake. Chief among them is whether the Senate can try a defendant who has left office. Another one, less noticed, is who would serve as the trial judge. Carefully read, the constitutional text may even allow the chief justice of the Supreme Court to scuttle the whole affair, or at the very least open up a political minefield that could cripple the new administration. The Senate would better serve the national interest simply by allowing Donald Trump to depart — which, after all, is the main objective of impeachment — rather than holding a long trial solely to disqualify him from future office.

We have written before about the constitutional challenges to impeaching Trump. He was involved in the odious attack on the Capitol during the January 6 counting of the Electoral College votes. But the current rush to impeach and try Trump may imperil multiple constitutional values.

First, the House carried out a hasty impeachment — two days — that charged Trump with the wrong crime. Convicting Donald Trump of “incitement” to insurrection will debase both the crime of incitement — which our courts have long read narrowly to protect vital free-speech values — and the meaning of insurrection. We would not give the criminals and miscreants who attacked the Capitol the higher status of insurrectionists who had ideological goals in mind.

Bipartisan Support of Israel – Quo Vadis? Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3bZ6j3E
Bipartisan support track record

According to the March 2020 annual Gallup poll of country favorability, Israel benefits from a 74% favorability (90% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats), compared to a 23% favorability of the Palestinian Authority (9% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats).

With the dawn of the Biden Administration, Israel enjoys bipartisan support among most US voters and, therefore, among members of the US House of Representatives and Senate.  However, one should not ignore the gradual – and recently accelerated – erosion of this support.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Israel’s national security policy – and especially its confrontational opposition to the 2015 Iran accord (JCPOA) – is responsible for the erosion of the bipartisan support.

However, US-Israel relations have experienced a number of raucous confrontations between US presidents and Israeli prime ministers – some of them harsher than the Obama-Netanyahu “Iran showdown” – but that did not fracture bipartisan support of Israel.

For example, in 1948-49, during and following Israel’s War of Independence against a military invasion by five Arab countries, Prime Minister Ben Gurion confronted a most brutal pressure by the White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA to refrain from the application of Israel’s law to “occupied” West Jerusalem and parts of the Galilee, the coastal plain and the Negev. The US Administration claimed that Israel’s “intransigence” would severely undermine US-Arab relations, threaten the supply of Arab oil, serve Soviet interests and further destabilize the Middle East (all of which were resoundingly repudiated by reality). 

Biden’s America: A cautionary tale for Israel: Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/bidens-america-a-cautionary-tale-for-israel-opinion-656280

With newly instated US President Joe Biden now firmly ensconced in the White House after a contentious ballot battle, Israel must turn its attention to March 23, the date set for the fourth Knesset election in two years. And though daily polls on how each of the parties is faring may fill airtime and satisfy viewers’ curiosity, they do not constitute the kind of focus that is sorely needed at this juncture.

In light of the extraordinary rise and ultimate hard fall of Donald Trump, a couple of lessons are in order for the Jewish state that was affected so greatly by his single term in office.

Because the coronavirus crisis is the most pressing issue at the moment, there is a natural tendency to blame the head of one’s country both for the morbidity/mortality rates and for the economic disaster wrought by government-imposed lockdowns. This was a key factor in Trump’s defeat.

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the US economy was booming. Unemployment, including among minorities, was at an all-time low; the stock market reached record heights. Middle-class Americans were beginning to breathe again. Had the virus not struck, Trump still would have been Trump.

He would have enraged his enemies. He would have grated on the nerves of supporters with genteel sensibilities. And he still occasionally would have embarrassed even a few ardent fans.

Thoughts on the 1776 Commission and Its Report By Victor Davis Hanson SEE NOTE PLEASE

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/2021/01/21/thoughts-on-the-1776-commission-and-its-report-n1398928
Biden to Rescind Trump Admin’s 1776 Report on “Patriotic Education” RSK

The newly formed President’s Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.)

The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal. The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective. It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials and past public servants.

Whether because the report was issued by a Donald Trump-appointed commission, or because the conclusions questioned the controversial and flawed New York Times-sponsored 1619 Project, there was almost immediate criticism from the left.

Yet at any other age than the divisive present, the report would not have been seen as controversial.

First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787. It emphasized how unusual for the age were the founders’ commitments to political freedom, personal liberty and the natural equality endowed by our creator — all the true beginning of the American experiment.

Now the Washington Post Admits Trump Did Not Incite the Capitol Riot By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/01/20/now-the-washington-post-admits-trump-did-not-incite-the-capitol-riot-n1398722

With the second bogus impeachment in the books, the Washington Post has finally seen fit to admit that President Trump did not incite the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 with his speech, acknowledging that it was, in fact, planned in advance.

The article, published Tuesday, the day before Biden’s inauguration, declares in its headline “Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say” and opens with the following paragraphs.

Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.

U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

Several paragraphs later, here’s what the authors of the article concede:

The arrests this weekend of several people with alleged ties to far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, suggest that the riot was not an entirely impulsive outburst of violence but an event instigated or exploited by organized groups. Hours of video posted on social media and pored over by investigators have focused on individuals in military-style gear moving together.

National Guard troops gave their response to Democrat insults By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/national_guard_troops_gave_their_response_to_democrat_insults.html

Democrats are ambivalent about the military, something clear from their approach to the inauguration. The Democrats summoned 26,000 National Guard troops to D.C., purportedly to protect Joe Biden from rioters. They then accused those same troops of being potentially dangerous White supremacists. Many of the troops responded, not by being dangerous, because they’re patriotic, constitutionally guided Americans, but by apparently turning their backs on Joe Biden.