FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trial Lawyers vs. Arab-Israeli Peace Schumer and Menendez block a deal to bring Sudan closer to the West

Posted By on December 7th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trial-lawyers-vs-arab-israeli-peace-11607294549?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

When the White House announced in October that Sudan planned to normalize relations with Israel, it showed that the peace movement could extend beyond the Persian Gulf. The northeast African country is changing for the better, but a pair of self-interested Senators could derail this progress.

Sudan had been a geopolitical nightmare for most of dictator Omar al-Bashir’s 30 years in power. He fell last year, and Abdalla Hamdok, an economist and reformer, became Prime Minister. A quarter-century after the country hosted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, the transitional government is opening up civil society and promising democratic elections in 2022.

Washington and Khartoum have negotiated a broad deal to improve ties. On top of the agreement with Jerusalem, Sudan has put $335 million in an escrow account to pay victims of al Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. In exchange the U.S. would lift its state sponsor of terrorism designation and restore Sudan’s sovereign immunity. The deal would open the country to foreign investment, which its shrinking economy desperately needs. But Congress needs to approve.

Mr. Hamdok leads a fragile government and has survived an assassination attempt. Many Islamists are unhappy with his turn to the West, and some problematic officials from the Bashir era remain influential. It could be tough for the reformer to keep pushing change—or even remain in office—if the agreement falls through and his legitimacy becomes questionable. Israeli-Sudanese normalization would be off the table, and Sudan’s currently poor ties with Iran would likely warm up.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia County Can’t Find Chain of Custody Records for Absentee Ballots

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-county-cant-find-chain-of-custody-records-f

BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV:Georgia’s Dekalb County does not know if it is in possession of the ballot transfer forms used to record the chain of custody for absentee ballots dropped into some 300 drop boxes around the state.

Dekalb County responded to an open records request for the transfer forms from The Georgia Star News by writing that “it has not yet been determined if responsive records to your request exist.”

“DeKalb County and [the DeKalb County Department of Voting, Registration and Election] VRE are currently operating within its COVID-19 Emergency Response Plan. These remote operations and VRE’s current workload greatly impact how soon responsive records can be provided,” the response from the department stated.

“VRE is expected to make this determination within thirty business days.”

The Georgia Star News requested the ballot transfer forms from several counties. Cobb County and Cook County have complied with the request, each providing copies of the forms.

A spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Breitbart News last week that the ballot transfer forms are in the possession of individual counties.

Georgia election rules require ballots from drop boxes to be picked up by teams of at least two people who must complete a transfer form upon doing so.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Team Begins Forensic Examination of Dominion Machines in Michigan By Jack Phillips

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-lawyer-jenna-ellis-judge-granted-access-to-22-dominion-machines-in-michigan_3606613.html

President Donald Trump’s legal team began a forensic analysis of Dominion voting machines in Michigan after a judge on Friday permitted the examination.

“Our team is going to be able to go in this morning at about 8:30 [a.m.] and will be there for about eight hours to conduct that forensic examination and we’ll have the results in about 48 hours, and that’ll tell us a lot about these machines,” attorney Jenna Ellis told Fox News on Sunday.

“A judge actually granted our team access … to conduct a forensic audit,” Ellis added.

Ellis was referring to a ruling from a judge in Antrim County, Michigan, who authorized the audit of 22 Dominion Voting Systems machines, said Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. It’s not clear which of the several election lawsuits the order originated from.

Later, Antrim County spokesperson Jeremy Scott told the Detroit Free Press that forensic images will be taken from voting machines used during the Nov. 3 election. Judge Kevin Elsenheimer issued the order regarding a challenge from voter William Bailey, who filed a lawsuit alleging that ballots were damaged in a recounting of ballots in a marijuana proposal that narrowly passed, reported Fox News. Elsenheimer’s order doesn’t mention the presidential race, and it’s not yet clear if the order allows Trump’s team to examine the machines.

The Michigan GOP last month noted that voting machines in Antrim County incorrectly switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Joe Biden. The Secretary of State’s office said it was due to a technical error and non-updated software, adding that the issue was later corrected.

Ellis, in the Fox News interview on Sunday, cast doubt on the Secretary of State’s claims, saying that it was “an unexplained and so-called ‘glitch.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Justice Alito Moves up Supreme Court Deadline in Key Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballot Case By Jack Phillips

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/justice-alito-moves-up-supreme-court-deadline-in-key-pennsylvania-mail-in-ballot-case_3606769.html

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asked officials in Pennsylvania to file briefs by Tuesday at 9 a.m. in response to a lawsuit filed by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) in a bid to overturn the state’s election results.

Tuesday, notably, is the “safe harbor” deadline that requires controversies surrounding elections to be ended so states can choose their electors before the Dec. 14 meeting of the Electoral College. Alito initially called for response arguments by 4 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9, before it was changed.

The Tuesday, Dec. 8 deadline could be a signal that the Supreme Court takes up Kelly’s case, which was shot down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last weekend. Kelly has argued that the 2019 Pennsylvania law, Act 77, violates Pennsylvania’s state Constitution and the U.S. Constitution with its “no-excuse mail-in” voting provision. Kelly’s lawsuit was joined by GOP congressional candidate Sean Parnell and others.

Their lawsuit argued that the only way to increase mail-in voting was via a constitutional amendment, saying the Pennsylvania Legislature’s passage of the bill was illegal. They are seeking to have hundreds of thousands of ballots disqualified as a result, which would be more than enough to flip the result of the election in the state.

“Pennsylvania’s General Assembly exceeded its powers by unconstitutionally allowing no-excuse absentee voting, including for federal offices, in the Election,” Kelly’s attorney wrote to Justice Alito, according to Law & Crime. “The opinion below forecloses any means of remedying Petitioners’ injuries.”

“With respect to elections for federal office, both state legislatures and the Congress have specified roles inscribed in the Constitution as fail-safes for state failures in conducting elections,” their petition also said.

BOOKS Comments turned off

What We Neglect in Tocqueville By Harvey C. Mansfield

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/12/17/what-we-neglect-in-tocqueville/

Democracy in America is about a lot more than democracy .

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was a French aristocrat and one of America’s very best friends, the special, rare kind that tells you the truth. His Democracy in America is quoted often for support, but less often sought for advice. Here are a few points in his great book, often neglected, from which we can learn. (An anniversary is a time to celebrate, but any time is a good time to learn.) 

The meaning of democracy. Many readers today wonder how Tocqueville could speak of “democracy” in 1835, when women had no vote and blacks were enslaved. Tocqueville specifies “equality of conditions” to define democracy, a state in which each individual thinks he has sufficient intelligence to rule himself, resulting in the rule of the majority of such individuals. It’s not that individuals are equal, but that they think they are. Others are held to be “similar” to oneself, neither inferior nor superior. Democracy is not a self-evident truth taken from nature’s God but a plausible convention held to be true. Democracy can become more equal — give women the vote and abolish slavery — when the majority rules it to happen, but the majority can also accept imperfections and inequalities if it wishes and still remain democratic. Such inequalities, for example offices filled by elections, often make democracy work better. Even in its normal functioning, even when officials have powers unequal to those of citizens, democracy has hidden aristocratic aspects necessary to its good functioning.

Democracy and aristocracy. Tocqueville — an aristocrat himself, living just after the French Revolution — knew the contrast between the Old Regime and the democratic future that he found in America in a way we cannot today. For us there is only one way to live justly and reasonably — in democracy. Even the hateful regimes we know, such as communism and Nazism, are perversions of democracy. Tocqueville refers to the “providential fact” that democracy in our time is inescapable, but he explains democracy to itself in constant contrast with its rival, aristocracy.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Folly of Renewable Energy The West needs to go nuclear By Matt Ridley

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/12/17/the-folly-of-renewable-energy/

If you judge by the images used to illustrate reports about energy, the world now runs mainly on wind and solar power. It comes as a shock to look up the numbers. In 2019 wind and solar between them supplied just 1.5 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Hydro supplied 2.6 percent, nuclear 1.7 percent, and all the rest — 94 percent — came from burning things: coal, oil, gas, wood, and biofuels.

As Mark Twain might say, reports of an energy transition away from combustion as a source of energy are greatly exaggerated. True, carbon-dioxide emissions are rising more slowly than energy consumption, but that is mainly because gas is displacing coal. The rise of renewables has so far not even compensated for the recent decline of nuclear — a decline renewables have contributed to causing because intermittent renewable energy hits the profitability of nuclear power hardest. Nuclear cannot be easily switched on and off.

So the thermodynamic explanation of the world economy remains the same as it has since the industrial revolution liberated us from reliance mainly on the (renewable) muscles of people, horses, and oxen or the vagaries of (renewable) trade winds. We use the heat of flames to do useful things, such as move stuff around, light and heat our homes, manufacture goods, grow crops with tractors, power the Internet.

The main change in recent years has been that energy is increasingly centrally planned. Instead of a market deciding between fuels, the government picks favorites to subsidize, and then subsidizes the old ones, too, when it finds it has poisoned the market against them. Throughout the Western world energy markets are coerced. The development pipeline, corporate rhetoric, and fuel-market shares are all determined by policy.

This has some perverse consequences. Lobbied by firms such as General Electric, Sylvania, and Philips, governments all over the world forced consumers to give up incandescent light bulbs in favor of expensive compact fluorescent bulbs, ostensibly to save energy. All this achieved was a delay in the voluntary replacement of both by a much more efficient, safe, and reliable form of lighting: LEDs.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Dershowitz explains how Supreme Court could get involved in Georgia election challenge Dershowitz says high court may be asked to weigh in on who can choose state’s electors: Ronn Blitzer

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dershowitz-supreme-court-georgia-election-challenge

Attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr appeared on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” to discuss recently revealed evidence of possible voter fraud in Georgia, and explained the possible processes for how the Trump campaign could use it in their effort to reverse the result of the presidential election in that state.

Starr, who rose to fame as the independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton, pointed to information presented to Georgia state senators last week, including video that purportedly showed ballots being counted without supervision. While Georgia officials have insisted that the video simply shows “normal” ballot counting procedure, Starr said Georgia legislators “seemed to be really troubled” by the video and other evidence presented to them.

“There certainly is probable cause for investigating and looking further,” Dershowitz said. “Giuliani has made very serious accusations. The question is which institution is designed constitutionally to look into it. Is it the state legislature? Is it the courts? Is the clock running in such a way that there won’t be time to look into this?”

Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor emeritus, said he has proposed for the future the creation of a neutral panel consisting of former judges and justices that would field election-related complaints.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Ossoff, Warnock Campaign with Democrat Congressman Who Called Jews ‘Termites’

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/05/ossoff-warnock-campaign-with-democrat-congressman-who-called-jews-termites/

Georgia Senate Democrat candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will campaign Saturday with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), who in 2016 compared Israeli settlers to “termites.”

Warnock and Ossoff will attend a “Drive-in Rally” hosted by the Rockdale and Newton County Democrats with Johnson.

Johnson’s rally with Ossoff and Warnock raises questions about Johnson’s controversial remarks, including his own commentary on Israeli settlers.

At an event in 2016 sponsored by the Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation — which supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), Johnson said:

There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming.

…

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

2020 meltdown leaves Iowa Democrats on edge After the botched caucuses and the party’s Election Day wipeout, the state’s first-in-the-nation status is more precarious than ever.

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

http://2020 meltdown leaves Iowa Democrats on edge After the botched caucuses and the party’s Election Day wipeout, the state’s first-in-the-nation status is more precarious than ever.

Aside from ousting Donald Trump from the White House, the story of the 2020 election has an unhappy ending for Democrats. They failed to win back the Senate, nearly lost the House and fell short in statehouses all across the country.

But from the botched caucuses in February to the party’s wipeout on Election Day, nowhere was more miserable this year for Democrats than in Iowa. Long a focal point of the party’s political universe, Democrats there are now on the brink — their losses up and down the ballot in November have made the state’s first-in-the-nation caucus status more precarious than ever.

“There’s a lot of soul searching going on in Iowa right now,” said Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats. “It looks pretty dire for the next couple of years.”

The hits started early, with the caucuses, and are still coming a month after the election. Earlier this week, state officials certified Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ six-vote victory over Democrat Rita Hart in the state’s open 2nd Congressional District — making it one of two House seats that flipped to GOP control this year. If that excruciatingly narrow result withstands a challenge from Hart, it will leave Democrats with just one of Iowa’s four House seats.

That’s on top of Trump trouncing Joe Biden in the state, Democrats failing to dislodge GOP Sen. Joni Ernst and Republicans expanding their majority in the legislature. This month, the party is expected to release an audit of the caucus fiasco, just as Democrats begin to look ahead to the midterms and the presidential nominating calendar for 2024.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Moshe Phillips: Trump should let the Quartet die with James Wolfensohn see note please

Posted By on December 6th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/trump-should-let-the-quartet-die-with-james-wolfensohn/

James Wofensohn was also one of the philanthropists that had the hair brained idea of buying the productive and state of the art Jewish farms and agricultural machines and systems in Gaza, in order to persuade Israel to leave Gaza. As soon as the Israelis left, local Arabs trashed and burned every single appurtenance and every home, barn, greenhouse and all the produce…..rsk

A review of the Quartet’s website is instructive in examining just what’s wrong with the body. Its failures—and they are plentiful—stem from its entire approach to Israel.

James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank Group, passed away on Nov. 15, and in the conclusion of his obituary, The New York Times quoted his “mission impossible” quip about his envoy experience with the Quartet on the Middle East.

“The Middle East turned out to be my mission impossible,” claimed Wolfensohn. He was tasked with working on Israel’s so-called disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would succeed Wolfensohn in leading the Quartet and be the last leader of the Quartet to have any gravitas on the world stage.

The Quartet has outlived both the involvement of Wolfensohn and Blair, who ended his own involvement with his 2015 resignation and now has outlived Wolfensohn himself. But it has also quite literally outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any at all.