NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Meet the Travel Act By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/meet-the-travel-act/

Joining President Trump in Kenosha yesterday was Attorney General Barr, who did not mince words about mounting an aggressive federal response to the violence roiling the country. The AG asserted that “radicals” are crossing state lines and “carrying out, planning a coordinated attack on law enforcement, on public property, and on private property. And that can’t be tolerated.”

It is thus worth making a few observations about the Travel Act.

The Travel Act is codified as a crime in the anti-racketeering chapter of the federal criminal code, specifically, in Section 1952. It has been a staple of organized crime cases since the 1980s. As a prosecutor, I charged it more times than I could hope to remember.

In essence, the Travel Act makes it a crime to travel across state lines, or otherwise to use facilities in interstate commerce (e.g., the U.S. mail and electronic communications devices), to commit acts of violence, or otherwise to promote “unlawful activity” (which Section 1952 broadly defines — a definition that explicitly includes arson and extortion). There is a broad range of penalties. If the offense involves carrying out violent activity, there is a potential 20-year prison sentence; if death results, a defendant can be sentenced to “any term of years or for life.”

The Travel Act is very attractive to federal prosecutors for three reasons.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, MEDIA Comments turned off

‘You’re nothing but a stooge’: C-SPAN callers go all in on Brian Stelter and trash CNN as ‘the enemy of the truth’ Spencer Neale

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/youre-nothing-but-a-stooge-c-span-callers-go-all-in-on-brian-stelter-and-trash-cnn-as-the-enemy-of-the-truth

One of CNN’s top political commentators sat through a string of frustrated C-SPAN callers during a Tuesday morning segment on the network.

Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, two separate callers criticized Brian Stelter, decrying his anti-Trump obsession and accusing his home network of obfuscating the news cycle. One caller from Minnesota said Stelter’s new book, Hoax, is propaganda that would be used to divide the nation during unprecedented levels of tension across the political aisle.

“I don’t know if there’s any journalists left at CNN, but I know that if I were to estimate about 300 different distortions or misinformation that we get out of CNN … if you added all that up to 46 months, it comes out to be 300,000-plus distortions of truth,” the caller said. “This is how low you’ll go is that you went out, and you made lies, and you defamed a child, and then, you had to settle out of court to pay this child for distorting information about this young individual.”

Video HERE.  

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Biden Has Become a Tragic Prisoner of His Own Paradoxes . By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/02/biden_has_become_a_tragic_prisoner_of_his_own_paradoxes_144120.html

Joe Biden and his handlers know that he should be out and about, weighing in daily on the issues of the campaign.

In impromptu interviews, Biden should be offering alternative plans for dealing with the virus, the lockdown, the economic recovery, the violence and the looting, and racial tensions.

Yet Biden’s handlers seem to assume that if he were to leave his basement and fully enter the fray, he could be capable of losing the election in moments of gaffes, lapses or prolonged silences.

So wisely, Team Biden relied on the fact that the commander in chief is always blamed for bad news — and there has been plenty of bad news worldwide this year.

That reality was reflected in the spring and early summer polls that showed growing discontent with the incumbent Trump, as if he were solely responsible for one of the most depressing years in U.S. history.

But news cycles, like polls, are not always static.

What was true in July is not necessarily so in September and especially in November. Volatile years produce volatile voters. Now, many voters think they see a waning of the virus, a need to get their kids back in school, and a glimmer of hope that the economy is recovering.

A large segment of the public is becoming irate at the nightly looting, destruction and arson that no longer seem to have much to do with the May death of George Floyd while in police custody. Where are the police, the mayors and the governors to protect the vulnerable, the law-abiding and the small-business owners?

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

From riots to the filibuster, liberal America won’t accept political opposition Scott Jennings

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/02/democrats-liberal-intimidate-silence-trump-conservatives-column/5683248002/

This is a frightful, dangerous moment for America, where free speech and robust debate are under assault by one half of America’s political spectrum.

America’s left-wing has taken a dark and dangerous turn, now openly expressing a desire for its political opposition to be delegitimized, criminalized, intimidated and ultimately banished.

This attitude has been boiling since Donald Trump became president. He’s too dangerous to be allowed to speak, they said, as the likes of Sen. Kamala Harris called on Twitter to suspend his account.

But that seems quaint compared to the left’s rhetoric of the last few days. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi labeled Republicans “domestic enemies” and “enemies of the state” in an unhinged rant rivaling any of Trump’s crazier tweets. And that was after Rep. Ayanna Pressley called for GOP officials to be harassed with “unrest in the streets.”

Words have consequences. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, were put in danger as they walked out of Trump’s GOP acceptance speech in Washington on Thursday night.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Our current maelstrom Dave Rubin and I discuss the state of the western world Melanie Phillips

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/our-current-maelstrom?token=

I was pleased to join the American commentator, Dave Rubin, on his show The Rubin Report. After acknowledging some of the milestones on my own political journey over the years, we talked about the great movements of thought that have precipitated our current cultural maelstrom on both sides of the Atlantic.

For me, the immediate cause of this turmoil lies in the terminal weakness of liberalism: its embrace of cultural relativism, the doctrine that all cultures and lifestyles have equal value. This prevents liberals from acknowledging that their core values, such as respect for all human life, freedom of conscience or equality for women, make the west superior to cultures which deny freedom and equality and treat human life as expendable.

The tragic paradox of liberalism is therefore this: that its core value of equality means it can’t uphold and defend its values, institutions and historic traditions in order to ensure its own survival. That’s why the west is in such trouble.

I also talked about how conservatism, which no longer understands what it needs to conserve, has lost the cultural plot. Oh – and how the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as US president signalled a fight-back by millions who are not prepared to stand by passively as their civilisation disintegrates.

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Academe’s Poisoned Groves: Lee Oser Reviews “The Breakdown of Higher Education” by John Ellis*****

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/academes-poisoned-groves/

The irony of the year 2020 is that our culture is blind. By forsaking the light of history, our universities appear worthy of a new Dunciad, where “universal darkness buries all.” We come late in a long history, and we are (or used to be) sensitive to the philosophical and political problems that defy simple narratives. But the story of how the modern world came about is our story. To “cancel” those who would tell this complex story accurately is to bury ourselves in darkness.

John M. Ellis’s urgent and indispensable book The Breakdown of Higher Education reaches us at a time when the cancel culture shows no sign of abating. Fortunately, Ellis possesses an acute consciousness of history. Knowing history, he puts the anarchy-inducing accusations of systemic racism and ubiquitous sexism in perspective. He shows where in our culture these familiar charges and their attendant moral commitments originated. It is brazenly ignorant to condemn the past according to present-day moral standards that are the product of that past.

Historical sensitivity is increasingly rare. The professoriate, with little exception, can no longer think historically. It is too wedded to political radicalism, which wants to destroy Western civilization and replace it with a society so righteous that people will have no use for history at all. In fact, Ellis cites research indicating that our college graduates know next to nothing about history. Most of them wouldn’t know the U.S. Constitution from a hole in the wall. Ellis reminds us that the Constitution was written and vetted by scholarly men who’d mastered one key lesson: don’t give tyranny an opening. Sadly, that kind of learning-opportunity is now forbidden, because the West is contaminated by racism and sexism. Ironically, then, the great if imperfect good of the U.S. Constitution, which laid the groundwork for the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, must be jettisoned because James Madison and his colleagues were no better than inspired geniuses working within their timeframe. They were not transcendent beings. They were not woke.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity Rejecting peace for an entire century. Joseph Puder

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/palestinians-never-miss-opportunity-miss-joseph-puder/

Israel’s legendary Foreign Minister Abba Eban had famously quipped that “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” It is the most fitting attribute for the Palestinians. Historically, they have said no to the British Peel Commission of 1937, which promised them a state on 75% of mandatory Palestine. The Yishuv, Palestine’s Jews, who were originally called Palestinians during the British Mandate (1920-1948) said yes, despite of being offered a small piece of the second partition of Palestine. In the first partition of Mandatory Palestine, in 1922, Winston Churchill, then British Colonial Secretary, sliced off 34,495 miles originally slated to be part of the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish homeland, to create the Emirate of Trans Jordan. Of the remaining 10,309 miles, Jewish Palestine would be allocated a measly 2,577 miles.  

Instead of accepting self-determination for his people, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Arab-Palestinian leader also titled Mufti of Jerusalem, and Hitler’s ally, ordered the Arab Revolt (1936-1939). Arab-Palestinian violence was repaid by British appeasement in the form of the White Paper, which shut the doors of Palestine to European Jews in the face of the looming Holocaust. In 1947, the Palestinian Arabs said no once again when offered an independent state by the United Nations General Assembly. Instead, they launched a war of annihilation against the newly born Jewish state of Israel, which accepted partition, and declared statehood on May 14, 1948.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Moral Equivalence is Camouflage for Moral Cowardice One party stands for life, freedom, and unalienable rights. The other stands for raw power. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/moral-equivalence-camouflage-moral-cowardice-bruce-thornton/

NRO’s Jim Geraghty in his daily column indulged one of the NeverTrump favorite rhetorical devices: That the president is just as bad for the Republic as the radical Democrats, and neither side “wants to solve real problems.” Apart from the common mistaken notion that the Founders created our political order “to solve problems” rather than protect the liberty of states, towns, civic society, families, and individuals, this tic often obscures an unwillingness to identify clearly those guilty of creating conflict and disorder by equally apportioning guilt to both sides.

Moral equivalence becomes the camouflage for moral cowardice, a fear to assign responsibility where it is due.

During his discussion of the Democrats’ dilemma over how to spin the ongoing riots, Geraghty can’t help sniping at Trump:

But we all know that Donald Trump’s view on how to deal with an angry and potentially destructive mob is dramatically different from that of Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, or New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Trump’s administration sent U.S. Park Police into Lafayette Park, using “smoke canisters, irritants, explosive devices, batons and horses.” Quite a few observers contended the tactics used more force than necessary or that was justified by the situation. But we know Trump’s instincts are to overreact to the threat of mob violence, not underreact.

The Dem blue-state mayors underreact, but Trump overreacts because of his “instincts” rather than a sober and judicious analysis of the crisis. The two responses are morally equivalent. Hence in Lafayette Park, near the storied church “peaceful protestors” had set on fire, and swarming with violent thugs know for using bricks, rocks, commercial fireworks, frozen water bottles, skateboards, and other weapons against the police, Trump overreacted by using “smoke canisters, irritants, explosive devices, batons and horses.” In other words, standard non-lethal methods for dispersing a violent mob set on injuring others.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charts compare COVID deaths in countries that used hydroxychloroquine early and those that didn’t By James Stansbury

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/charts_compare_covid_deaths_in_countries_that_used_hydroxychloroquine_early_and_those_that_didnt.html

Monday, the Family Foundation of Virginia reported that the State health commissioner, Dr. Norman Oliver, intends to use his emergency powers to force every Virginian to receive a COVID-19 vaccine when one becomes available. 

Virginia’s Gov. Northam (survivor of his infamous blackface scandal) has taken no official policy position so far.  However, the Democrat-controlled Legislature has killed at least three Republican bills that would have offered a way for someone with a sincere religious objection to be exempt from any COVID-19 vaccine mandate.  The most recent casualty, H.B. 5082, “would’ve ensured that Virginia didn’t mandate a COVID-19 vaccine if it is derived from human fetal tissue, changes the RNA or DNA of a person, or was not first tested on laboratory animals before being tested on humans.”  These actions triggered a “March against Mandates” in Richmond on September 2 by Virginia Freedom Keepers.

But wait — there’s more politics brewing.  Yesterday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch published a letter from a former FDA medical officer.  He agrees that using convalescent blood plasma from patients who developed antibodies works, and he cited its many successes dating back to the 1918 flu pandemic.  However, he claims that the number of people tested this time was “far out of proportion to the number needed for safety analyses.”   He also objects that authorities in the FDA and Donald Trump made overly optimistic claims that it could result in a 35% reduction in mortality and said this type of politics undermines the FDA’s credibility. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hong Kong’s Boat People The Chinese Coast Guard intercepts a dozen fleeing to Taiwan.

Posted By on September 2nd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kongs-boat-people-11599001124?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Hong Kong once was a refuge for Vietnamese and mainland Chinese who fled their homeland on boats in pursuit of freedom. Now Hong Kongers are fleeing their own city in the same way, and not all of them make it to safety.

The Chinese Coast Guard last week intercepted a boat carrying a dozen Hong Kongers, who ranged in age from 16 to 33, trying to sail to Taiwan. Some of the boat people faced serious charges related to pro-democracy activism or their role in last year’s protests.

At least one, democracy supporter Andy Li, was arrested in August under the new national-security law and faces up to life in prison if convicted. Hong Kong has long prided itself on an independent judiciary, but the accused understandably fear that the Communist Party will dictate from now on what happens in the Hong Kong courts as it does in China.

The Chinese Coast Guard arrested the 12 for unlawfully crossing the border. Little is known about their fate, except that they are detained in the mainland. On Monday the state-run China Daily wrote in an English-language editorial that “Hong Kong lawbreakers should give up the illusion of evading justice by seeking shelter on the island [of Taiwan] or elsewhere.” Beijing may want to make a chilling example of these unlucky fugitives.