NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How the media ignores pattern of Democratic attacks on the courts By Jonathan Turley

Posted By on March 8th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/486424-how-the-media-ignores-pattern-of-democratic-attacks-on-the-courts

“I am from Brooklyn.” That statement made by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer was meant to excuse threats he has made against two conservative justices the day before on the steps of the Supreme Court. His “apology” seemed to be a mix of claiming a license for all New Yorkers to use “strong language” and claiming justification because some justices are “working hand in glove” with Republicans. This was like a bizarre road rage defense from a Brooklyn driver who apologizes for the situation but explains that it was all due to the lousy driving of the other guy.

The problem is that this the latest in a pattern of Democratic leaders attacking and threatening jurists if they rule the “wrong” way in certain cases. Although Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin advised the public “not to dwell” on the comments by Schumer, there is much more to dwell on than just this incident. Indeed, Democratic senators, including Durbin, have made threats against the Supreme Court and the judiciary.

It is certainly true that the media has not dwelled on these attacks, at least not from Democrats. Another New Yorker has used “strong language” to attack jurists, and many of us have criticized President Trump for those comments. Not surprisingly, Schumer has not cited a New York license for Trump to do as he did, perhaps since Trump was born in Queens. Indeed, Schumer recently denounced Trump for criticizing the judge in the trial of Roger Stone. Schumer called on Chief Justice John Roberts to “defend the independence” of the judiciary from such unwarranted attacks.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Finger of Trump on a New Plague by Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 8th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/07/the-finger-of-trump-on-a-new-plague/

EXCERPT

A week ago, I wrote about the president’s masterly press conference about the coronavirus. As Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) observed, the president’s decision to suspend flights between the United States and China early on in the epidemic was “the single most consequential and valuable thing” done to slow the course of the malady. 

That’s not how his political opponents spun it, of course. The president was denounced as “racist,” “xenophobic,” etc. by the Left, but that talk dried up as panic began to take over. In that earlier column, I mentioned Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He was writing about Tulipomania in 17th-century Holland—when a single tulip bulb might go for more than the price of your house—financial bubbles, and the like. But we seem to be seeing a medical version of that now. 

As I have noted, we do not know how rapidly or how widely the virus will spread, nor do we know how deadly it will be. People over 65 seem to suffer more serious illnesses than younger people, especially if they have underlying health problems. As is the case with other maladies, the older and frailer you are, the more likely it is that you will die from the coronavirus.

That said, it is worth maintaining some perspective on the disease. In early February, the CDC estimated that at least 12,000 people had died from the flu from October 1, 2019 through February 1. That number might be as high as 30,000. So far, CDC estimates, some 31 million Americans have caught the flu this season. Somewhere between 200,000 and 370,000 of those have been hospitalized because of the virus. 

As for deaths, the CDC estimates that it will probably equal or surpass the 2018-2019 season when there were 34,000 flu-related deaths in America. (The 2017-2018 season saw 61,000 deaths.) Writ large, the World Health Organization estimates that the flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 annually.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Socialism Extinguishes the American and Biblical Ideal The call for socialism, even so-called “democratic socialism,” is an attack on America itself. Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Posted By on March 8th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/07/socialism-extinguishes-the-american-and-biblical-ideal/

Those today pitching democratic socialism as a safe and benign form of socialism are hiding the truth about it. By nature, socialism disregards any aspect of democratic will when it is in conflict with its fixed social agenda and goal of economic leveling. Thus, democratic socialism is an oxymoron, a seductive syntax and play on words.

Socialist candidates running for office do not do so to offer greater liberty, income, opportunity, or greater speech rights, but to institute heavy social engineering aimed toward conformity and sameness. History shows how in the name of “fairness” socialist rulers and bureaucrats disregarded democracy, as well as citizens who do not accept the deprivations needed to bring about the “ideal state.”

Too many among our young assume that socialism will provide the same level of prosperity and easy consumption they currently enjoy, with an added feel-good patina. They see no downside. But current and past real examples prove that prosperity, abundance, and ease of purchase and opportunity, including free speech, dramatically decline with the advent of any form of socialism. Political and religious freedom is inexorably tied to economic freedom. There is no “right” type of socialism or a right time for it or even a right person to oversee it.

Today’s fashionable cultural Marxism puts in jeopardy even more freedoms than that of the economic Marxism of years ago. It attacks and severely diminishes freedom of speech, assembly, and religious freedoms. The intent of indicting “America as racist from top to bottom,” as do many on the Left, is to provide political license to tear down and rebuild America according to socialism’s leveling and confiscatory blueprint.

The Lie of American Socialists

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Who’s Attacking Palestinian Christians? by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on March 8th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15690/attacking-palestinian-christians

The plight of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is one that is often ignored by the international community and foreign journalists based in the Middle East.

It is worth noting that that the Christian population in the Bethlehem area has dropped from 86% in 1950 to less than 12% today. Across the West Bank, Christians now account for less than 2% of the population….

In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the situation of Christians is even worse.

Instead of raising their voices against the persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, these Christian leaders are busy trying to blame Israel. They want the world to believe that Christians are fleeing Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip because of Israeli security measures against terrorists, and not because of the brutalities perpetrated by the Palestinian authorities and Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If their claim were true, why aren’t Muslims also fleeing as a result of the purported Israeli measures?

While Christian leaders are busy condemning Israel and spreading blood libels against it, Christians in Bethlehem are again being targeted by hoodlums and punks.

The latest victim of this anti-Christian violence is Dr. Salameh Qumsiyeh, a gynecologist from Bethlehem who was brutally attacked by unidentified thugs as he was driving his car in the center of the city on February 18.

Four masked assailants intercepted Qumsiyeh’s car, eyewitnesses said, and beat him with clubs and sharp tools before fleeing the scene. Qumsiyeh was rushed to hospital, where medics said that the wounds he had suffered were serious.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: The Train Hits Something Hard by Amir Taheri

Posted By on March 8th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15689/iran-train-hits

After weeks of debate, the outgoing Majlis had rejected the budget with a clear majority. The “Supreme Guide”, however, needed the budget to release funds for the various military and security organizations on which the regime is built not to mention stipends for Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, the Houthis, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraqi militias and kindred groups across the globe.

In other words, Trump’s policy has forced the Islamic Republic to assume its true identity as a typical “Third World” regime based on the military-security apparatus with a pseudo-theocratic façade.

The daily Kayhan, believed to reflect Khamenei’s views, claimed last Tuesday that, in a letter transmitted through the Swiss ambassador, Tehran had “indicated agreement” to return to a de facto recognition of “The Zionist regime”, disarming of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah and end of support for Hamas

No longer enjoying access to massive amounts of easy money from oil exports, the Khomeinist leadership is growing daily more desperate to loosen the lasso thrown by the Trump administration. Always anxious not to lose face, it has modified aspects of its behavior, confirming the view that the Khomeinist train, which according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had no reverse gear, would stop only if it hits something hard.

One of the arguments advanced by Democrat critics of US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy towards Iran is that, far from persuading Tehran to change its behavior, it has helped marginalize the so-called “moderate faction” and propelled the “radicals” into an even more aggressive posture.

At first glance, the criticism may appear justified. In last month’s parliamentary election, the “moderate” faction, always the Cinderella of the system, was reduced to the status of a mouse in the Khomeinist kitchen.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Italy is locking down much of the north, its economic engine.

Posted By on March 8th, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/world/coronavirus-news.html?emc=edit_na_20200307&ref=cta&nl=breaking-news&campaign_id=60&instance_id=0&segment_id=21987&user_id=2dfc89bd6c52e6103e5ac62f916a8f0d&regi_id=2636639

Italy’s government is taking the extraordinary step of locking down entire sections of the country’s north to fight the virus.

Italy’s government is taking the extraordinary step of locking down entire sections of the country’s north, restricting movement for a quarter of the population in a sweeping effort to fight the coronavirus not seen outside of China.

“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in announcing the government decree in a news conference after 2 a.m.

The move is tantamount to sacrificing the Italian economy in the short term to save it from the ravages of the virus in the long term. The measures will turn stretches of Italy’s wealthy north — including the economic and cultural capital of Milan and landmark tourist destinations such as Venice — into quarantined red zones until at least April 3. They will prevent the free movement of roughly 16 million people.

Funerals and cultural events are all banned under the measures. The decree required distance of one meter, including in sporting events, bars and supermarkets.

The Italian outbreak, already the worst in Europe and the worst outside of Asia, has inflicted serious damage on one of the Continent’s most fragile economies and triggered the closing of Italy’s schools.

Italy’s cases more than doubled this week from about 2,500 infections on Wednesday to more than 5,800 on Saturday, according to Italian authorities and the World Health Organization. Deaths rose by 36 to 233.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Danish prisons turn overwhelmingly Islamic; non-Muslim inmates abused and forced to participate in Islamic prayer By Arthur Lyons

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://voiceofeurope.com/2020/03/danish-prisons-turn-overwhelmingly-islamic-non-muslim-inmates-abused-and-forced-to-participate-in-islamic-prayer/

It’s not exactly breaking news that immigrants, particularly third world immigrants, are vastly over represented in Western Europe crime statistics. What hasn’t been seen, up until lately is that prisons that are filled primarily with Muslim inmates. 

The Danish Prison Federation has now raised the alarm about such conditions plaguing Danish prisons.

In the last survey on the populations of Danish prisons in November 2018, 50.5 percent of the inmates were foreigners or immigrants of the first of the second generation. In Copenhagen prisons, this number was 66.3 percent, Rights Norway reports.

Without a doubt, this has affected daily life in prisons.

Muslim prisoners are using their numbers to take control of the food other inmates are allowed to eat, and they are forcing them to participate in Islamic prayer. Reports have also surfaced about Muslim inmates pouring boiling oil with sugar on Danish prisoners.

The Prison Federation leader, Bo Yde Sørensen, says to newspaper Berlingske that the development is alarming.

Since being elected leader of the Prison Federation in 2007, he has sounded the alarm. However, the problems, he says, are only getting worse.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Michel Gurfinkiel: Islamists Stand a “Very Good Chance” of Conquering France by Marilyn Stern

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.meforum.org/60539/islamists-very-good-chance-of-conquering-france

Michel Gurfinkiel, founder of the Paris-based Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute and a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum, spoke to Middle East Forum Radio host Gregg Roman on February 12 about the consequences of massive Muslim immigration into France.

Domestically, the past fifty years of steady immigration from Islamic countries into France is “transforming the fabric of French society” from within. Demographic and sociological surveys indicate that 10-15% of the French population is now of Muslim origin, including 20-30% of French citizens or residents under the age of 25. Some integrate successfully, but many align with the most radical and militant expression of the religion. Their rejection of France’s secular constitution is matched by resentment of the French military’s fight against global jihadism in Africa and the Middle East, seen as a “deliberate assault … on Islam.”

Whereas religious zeal is steadily increasing among French Muslims, Gurfinkiel said that “the classic national religion of France, Catholicism,” is declining, citing research found in The French Archipelago (L’archipel français) by French pollster, demographer and sociologist Jérôme Fourquet. Traditional family and marriage are “unraveling among the native French,” while birthrates drop.

Islamic groups observing this change respond in two ways: those who support jihad to take control of France and those who see the inevitable ascent of Islam through non-violent “dawah” (proselytism) as the answer to a society “ripe for change.” One way or another, according to Gurfinkiel, “Islam stands a very good chance to simply conquer … this country.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

FISA Reform and National Security By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/fisa-reform-and-national-security/Repealing vital national-security powers is not the right way to hold government officials responsible for abuse of power.

National security has become an afterthought in the latest national-security debate. The debate centers, instead, on what is called “FISA reform,” the imperative of which appears to be making foreign intelligence surveillance powers harder to use.

I’ve long been worried that this was the way the wind was blowing. That would be apparent to anyone who read Ball of Collusion, my book about the absurd political narrative that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Democrats through cyber-espionage operations (mainly hacking), after which the new president was to become the Kremlin’s agent in the White House.

This narrative fueled a wide-ranging government investigation, launched by the Obama administration. Under the rubric of highly classified foreign counterintelligence operations, the investigation prominently featured FBI spying on the Trump campaign. (As I noted yesterday, the New York Times is back to describing the FBI’s covert monitoring as “spying,” so I’m assuming the era of garment rending at utterance of the dread s-word is over.)

In the course of that investigation, as catalogued by the Justice Department’s inspector general and highlighted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FBI serially abused its authority: providing misleading information to the FISC, falsifying a key document, running confidential informants at Trump campaign surrogates in the absence of a sound investigative predicate, making public statements that suggested the president was a criminal suspect (while privately telling him he was not), making private statements (dozens of them) that have convinced reasonable people that bureau decisions were influenced by political bias, and so on.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Anyone Notice That Trump’s Economy Keeps Beating Expectations? John Merline

Posted By on March 7th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/07/anyone-notice-that-trumps-economy-keeps-beating-expectations/

February’s jobs report “smashed expectations.” That’s how one news site described the latest monthly employment numbers out of the Commerce Department, which showed the economy created 273,000 jobs last month. Smashing expectations has become a regular feature of the Trump economy. Anyone care to guess why?

Based on the consensus forecast of economists, the first two months of this year should have seen a total of 335,000 jobs created. The actual number was 63% higher: 546,000.

For the past four months, job growth has averaged 248,000, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised several previous months’ gains sharply upward. In the best year under President Barack Obama, job growth averaged 250,000 a month.

The current job growth is even more impressive given that it’s coming more than 10 years after the last recession ended, and long after the experts told us we were already at full employment.

There’s more. To get a full picture of how much better than expected the Trump economy is performing, take a look at the forecast put out by the Congressional Budget Office just as Trump was taking office in January 2017.

According to the CBO, which based its forecast on the assumption that the economic policies of the Obama administration remained in place, the economy should have created only 2 million new jobs by this point.

The actual number: 6.9 million.