EDUCATION Comments turned off

Israel-hating faculty and students persecute Dr. Jason Hill.

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/freedom-center-shillman-fellow-sues-censorship-joseph-klein/

Dr. Jason Hill, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, filed a lawsuit on April 20, 2020 against DePaul University for its outrageous attempt to silence him with defamatory accusations, demonization and intimidation. The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court in Cook County, Illinois, arises from a Faculty Council resolution passed last year condemning Professor Hill for his writing of a strong pro-Israel op-ed published in The Federalist. Dr. Hill’s op-ed article is entitled “The Moral Case For Israel Annexing The West Bank—And Beyond.” The lawsuit also names interim provost Salma Ghanem and Scott Paeth, a professor of religious studies who led the campaign for the passage of the resolution when he was serving as the president of the DePaul Faculty Council.

Dr. Hill, a tenured professor, was not fired – this time. But his persecutors denied him due process, trashed his reputation, harassed him, and attempted to chill his future expression of opinion on topics considered too controversial for the snowflakes on the DePaul University campus. Dr. Hill’s complaint seeks an award of damages to vindicate his contractual and due process rights, clear his name, and compensate him for the pain, humiliation, and mental distress that the defendants inflicted upon him with their censure resolution and other actions.

Dr. Hill’s complaint alleges that the defendants “have subjected Dr. Hill to unlawful racial discrimination in that as an African-American they expect him to adhere to the opinion that African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves must view the Palestinians as an enslaved race and the Israeli government as a slave regime.” He was singled out, the complaint says, as “the only member of DePaul’s faculty ever to have been subject of a Faculty Council resolution for publicly expressing opinions of any sort, much less regarding actions of the Israeli government concerning Palestinian residents of the territories in the West Bank and Gaza.” According to the complaint, Dr. Hill suffered a loss in the number  of classes he was assigned to teach and in the number of students enrolled as “the intended result of the unfair campaign of harassment against him.” He also received “anonymous threats of physical violence that DePaul has refused to punish or meaningfully investigate.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama’s General Flynn Problem When the real message of ‘Dreams from My Father’ becomes clear. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/precedential-election-news-lloyd-billingsley/

“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”

That was former president Barack Obama last week after the DOJ dropped the case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had not been “charged with perjury,” or anything else. The FBI set up Flynn in a perjury trap, with threats against his family, and that violated both institutional norms and the rule of law. The 44th president set up the whole thing in a January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting with FBI boss James Comey, vice president Joe Biden, CIA boss John Brennan, and other administration officials. This revelation created a stir, but it’s really old news.

“POTUS wants to know everything we are doing,” Lisa Page texted to Peter Strzok, the FBI factotum in the campaign against candidate and President Trump. To keep that operation going once Trump took office, POTUS needed to take down Flynn. The January 5 meeting was key but in May of 2017 a bigger bombshell would explode.

‘Dreams from My Father’ was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction. It featured many true-to-life figures and a bevy of accurately described events that indeed had occurred, but it employed the techniques and literary license of a novel, and its most important composite character was the narrator himself.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

More Covid-19 Patient Data, Please New York finds some surprising results about those who test positive.

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-covid-19-patient-data-please-11589148282?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

EXCERPT

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has directed hospitals to begin asking new coronavirus patients for their occupation, usual transportation mode and neighborhood. Although New York has been shut down for seven weeks, several thousand people are still testing positive and hundreds are being hospitalized each day.

Last week Mr. Cuomo disclosed some preliminary findings: Twenty-two percent of those who entered the hospital came from a nursing home or assisted living facility. Ninety-six percent had an underlying health condition. Yet only 17% were employed, and only 4% in New York City had been taking public transportation.

“We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work—that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. That’s not the case,” he said. “They’re not working, they’re not traveling, they’re predominantly downstate, predominantly minority, predominantly older.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

More Trouble Looms for Hong Kong China denounces the protest movement as a ‘political virus.’

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-trouble-looms-for-hong-kong-11589148219?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Hong Kong’s political health took a turn for the worse last week, even as the city celebrated progress in its containment of coronavirus. Beijing knows that the rest of the world is distracted with the pandemic, and it is exploiting the opportunity to exert more control in Hong Kong.

On Wednesday China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office denounced the protest movement as “a political virus in Hong Kong” and warned that Beijing would not “sit idly by with these recklessly demented forces.” The office’s new director, Xia Baolong, is known for making good on Beijing’s threats. Before taking Hong Kong, he oversaw the arrest of Christians, the demolition of churches and the toppling of crosses in Zhejiang Province.

On Friday pro-democracy and pro-Beijing lawmakers got into a physical altercation at the Legislative Council building. The tussle broke out over who will lead the powerful House Committee, but the underlying issue is whether pro-democracy lawmakers will be able to block legislation that would suppress speech by criminalizing disrespect of the national anthem. The scuffle ended with pro-democracy lawmaker Andrew Wan carried off on a stretcher by paramedics and with security forcibly ejecting other pro-democracy lawmakers.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Barack Obama on Michael Flynn The lawyer President misstates the crime and the real threat to justice.

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/barack-obama-on-michael-flynn-11589148648?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Barack Obama is a lawyer, so it was stunning to read that he ventured into the Michael Flynn case in a way that misstated the supposed crime and ignored the history of his own Administration in targeting Mr. Flynn. Since the former President chose to offer his legal views when he didn’t need to, we wonder what he’s really worried about.

“There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free,” Mr. Obama said in the Friday call to about 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association. The comments were leaked to Yahoo News and confirmed by Mr. Obama’s spokeswoman to the Washington Post and other outlets. Mr. Obama added: “That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic—not just institutional norms—but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

Even discounting for Mr. Obama’s partisan audience, this gets the case willfully wrong. Mr. Flynn was never charged with perjury, which is lying under oath in a legal proceeding. Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI in a meeting at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017 that he was led to believe was a friendly chat among colleagues.

As for “scot-free,” that better applies to former President Bill Clinton who lied under oath in a civil case and was impeached for perjury but was acquitted by the Senate. We understand why Mr. Obama wouldn’t bring that up.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘Social Distancing’ is Snake Oil, Not Science By William Sullivan

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York says that it’s “shocking” to discover that 66 percent of new hospitalizations appear to have been among people “largely sheltering at home.” 

“We thought maybe they were taking public transportation,” he said, “but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”

“Much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself,” he continues.  “Everything closed down, government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could.”

It’s your fault, he says to the hospitalized New Yorkers who loyally complied with his government directive.  But here’s an interesting alternative theory as to why, mostly, old people who are staying at home are being hospitalized.  What if the government directive to close everything down and mandate “social distancing” actually made the problem worse?

Dr. David Katz predicted precisely this outcome on March 20, in an article that is proving every bit as correct in its predictions and sober policy recommendations as Dr. Anthony Fauci has been proven incorrect — which is another way of saying that the article has proven flawless, so far. 

POLITICS Comments turned off

Gavin Newsom for President? By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/gavin_newsom_for_president.html

If, as Rush Limbaugh has opined, there is no way the Democrat Party will hoist Joe Biden over the finish line, then what do the Democrats have up their sleeve to stay in power?  After all, “[t]he Democrats have no enthusiasm.  There’s no fire in their bellies.  They’re grumbling even as they’re defending Biden. …[T]hey really couldn’t give a damn about Joe Biden.”

Enter Gavin Newsom. 

The California governor certainly has the credentials.  From the beginning of his term, he blatantly ignored constitutional and immigration law.  He has proven that he is a radical illegal immigration advocate, thus adhering to the first rule of the Democrat Party: bring in as many people who will vote Democrat as you can, and you will own the country forever.  In the midst of the coronavirus, Newsom has stated that California “will give cash payments to immigrants [sic] living in the country illegally.”  He has announced, that “using a mix of taxpayer money and charitable contributions  [California will] give 150,000 adults $500 each.”

In fact, “California has an estimated 2 million immigrants [sic] living in the country illegally.  They are not eligible for the $2.2 trillion stimulus package approved by Congress last month, which gives cash payments to most Americans plus boosts unemployment benefits by $600 per week,” but Newsom asserts that he feels “a deep sense of gratitude for people that are in fear of deportations that are still addressing essential needs of tens of millions of Californians[.]”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats Are Out To Destroy the Presidency They Covet

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/democrats-are-out-to-destroy-the-presidency-they/91125/

Sometimes we wonder whether the Democrats intend to run for the presidency on a campaign to bring back the New Jersey Plan. Not the plan to disrupt traffic on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. Rather, the famed plan presented to the real George Washington at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It would have granted the executive power of the United States not to a single individual but to members of an executive committee.

What invites the question — however hypothetical — is the reaction of the Democrats to the decision of the United States to move to drop the criminal case against President Trump’s first National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn. This has driven the New York Times to paroxysms of self-righteousness in an editorial headlined “William Barr’s Perversion of Justice.” It amounts to a geshrai over the constitutional concept of the unitary executive.

This is the idea that the Constitution grants the president all the executive power of the government. This drives the left crazy whenever there is a Republican in the White House. Yet it comports with the plain language of the Constitution. It is sketched in the first sentence of Article 2, which says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The Article commands the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Remember when Gov. Kemp was excoriated for re-opening Georgia? Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 10th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/remember_when_gov_kemp_was_excoriated_for_reopening_georgia_are_you_wondering_how_that_has_worked_out.html

It was just over 2 weeks ago that Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp was a monster with blood about to be on his hands for greatly loosening the restrictions on residents of the Peach State? Even President Trump joined in, criticizing this move as risky.

Since then, we haven’t seen much about the disaster that was supposed to automatically result from ignoring the gospel of Dr.Fauci.

Which tells you what has happened in this era of corrupt and dishonest propaganda media.

Amanda Prestigiacomo of the Daily Wire fills in the details that any reasonable person would infer from the media blackout:

 Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia celebrated the state’s lowest number of hospitalized novel coronavirus patients and the fewest number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators on Saturday, 15 days since the Republican loosened lockdown restrictions in the face of persistent attacks from the mainstream media and the public disapproval of President Donald Trump.

Respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 “typically appear an average of 5-6 days after exposure, but may appear in as few as 2 days or as long as 14 days after exposure,” per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UC San Diego Health notes.

“Today marks the lowest number of COVID-19 positive patients currently hospitalized statewide (1,203) since hospitals began reporting this data on April 8th,” Kemp posted to Twitter on Saturday. “Today also marks the lowest total of ventilators in use (897 with 1,945 available). We will win this fight together!”

HISTORY Comments turned off

Blitzkrieg Lessons for 2020 By Taylor Dinerman

Posted By on May 10th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-blitzkrieg-lessons-for-2020/

The problem is greater than just a few moments of panic.

  E ighty years ago, on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill took over as Britain’s prime minister and Hitler launched his attack on Holland, Belgium, and France. The Blitzkrieg, as it became known, was a spectacular military success: In less than six weeks Nazi Germany defeated the Allied armies and occupied the Low Countries and a big part of France while at the same time kicking the British off the Continent.

How the Germans did it has been the subject of numerous books. But one thing that emerges is that, both at the time and later, the Allies, and the then-neutral Americans, failed to understand what really happened. A set of myths developed, many of which were believed and propagated by various military experts and intelligence services.

Most historians put the critical turning point on the morning of May 15, when in a moment of panic the French prime minister Paul Reynaud told Churchill, “We have been defeated.” The panic was based on mostly distorted and inaccurate information from the French army’s high command and from the intelligence services. The offensive was expected, but the location was not, with the attack coming about a hundred miles south of where the allies thought the main thrust would take place. The army’s command structure was unable to adapt quickly enough to the new situation, and this in turn created panic at the highest levels of government.

Today, with the Wuhan coronavirus presenting a completely unexpected challenge to governments all over the world, panic, or something like it, seems to be gripping leaders at all levels. In Michigan and Maine the governors have obviously tried to hide their panic behind masks of authoritarian bluster. In New York, Andrew Cuomo had a very public ventilator-shortage breakdown, though he recovered. The media naturally stuck the tape of his panic down the memory hole.

The problem is greater than just a few moments of panic. It involves the sad fact that some people who’ve been credentialed as experts are incompetent time-servers, men and women who fit the requirements of leading big organizations but lack the imagination and daring to deal with the unexpected. In war it is all too often the case that peacetime generals are just not up to the job. In the current time of plague, few of the public-health experts who are attached to what one might call “top-down” solutions have covered themselves in glory. Political leaders should have learned to be skeptical.