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Argentina Reversing Progress on Probe Of Big Terror Bombings

Posted By on February 27th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/argentina-reversing-progress-on-probe-of-big/91029/

Justice? Not as far Argentina’s new government is concerned. Buenos Aires is eager to walk back any progress made in investigations into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires — the worst terror act in the country’s history — or the suspicious death of the man who was set to break the case open.

Previous probes yielded ample evidence that Iran was behind the attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, which killed 85 people, as well as an earlier terrorist act, the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, when 29 civilians perished. The new Argentinian government would rather ignore it all.

And no wonder. Since December, Kristina Kirchner is Argentina’s vice president, a demotion for the woman who was president between 2007 and 2015. At that time, after the Interpol already issued red notices for the arrests of Iranian officials and Hezbollah operatives, Mrs. Kirchner was set to form a joint investigative commission with Tehran.

Before he died, Kirchner’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, who sealed struck in 2013 a Memorandum of Understanding with Tehran, scoffed once when I told him the proposed joint investigation sounded as credible as O.J. Simpson’s vow to find the “real killers.” Meanwhile the Interpol’s red notices were put on ice while Argentina sought to widen its trade with Iran.

In 2015 an investigator, Alberto Nisman, accused Mrs. Kirchner of scheming with the Iranians to allow the Hezbollah and Iranian operatives to escape justice for their alleged role in the AMIA bombing. The night before Nisman was scheduled to present detailed evidence of his findings to Argentina’s congress, he was found dead in his apartment’s bathroom with a single gunshot to the head.

Mrs. Kirchner and her supporters in the press quickly spread the notion that Nisman committed suicide — a strange act for a man about to make public a case marking the culmination of his life’s work. Consequent investigations completely demolished the suicide theory.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: DAN LIPINSKY (D- ILLINOIS DISTRICT 3)MUST BE RE-ELECTED

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

ILLINOIS PRIMARY IS ON MARCH 17TH, 2020

HIS PRIMARY RIVAL IS MARIE NEWMAN….TO HELP DAN LIPINSKI PLEASE VISIT

https://lipinskiforcongress.com/

ILLINOIS PRIMARY IS ON MARCH 17TH, 2020

HIS PRIMARY RIVAL IS MARIE NEWMAN….TO HELP DAN LIPINSKI PLEASE VISIT

Dan Lipinski for Congress – 3rd Congressional District of Illinois
https://lipinskiforcongress.com/

JNS.org – A previously unseen 2018 campaign advertisement for an Illinois Democrat currently running for the US House of Representatives features attacks on her opponent for his support of AIPAC and his stance against the BDS movement.

Marie Newman, who is running in a primary against incumbent Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, which leans Democratic, narrowly lost to Lipinski by less than 3 percentage points in the 2018 Democratic primary.

Also in the ad, Shadin Maali, a mother, community advocate and small-business owner, stated that Newman “doesn’t pander to special interest groups like AIPAC.” (Maali also happens to be Newman’s campaign chair.)

JNS.org – A previously unseen 2018 campaign advertisement for an Illinois Democrat currently running for the US House of Representatives features attacks on her opponent for his support of AIPAC and his stance against the BDS movement.

Marie Newman, who is running in a primary against incumbent Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, which leans Democratic, narrowly lost to Lipinski by less than 3 percentage points in the 2018 Democratic primary.

Also in the ad, Shadin Maali, a mother, community advocate and small-business owner, stated that Newman “doesn’t pander to special interest groups like AIPAC.” (Maali also happens to be Newman’s campaign chair.)

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Death by a Thousand Progressives Leftists are destroying our great country one attack at a time, and we have to stop them. Willie Richardson

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68823-death-by-a-thousand-progressives-2020-02-26

Pete Buttigieg is encouraging a nine-year-old boy to “come out the closet” on the stage of a presidential campaign. Hip Hop rapper YG targeted a conservative young man and threw him out of his concert because he would not say, “F— Donald Trump!” Two young Trump supporters were run off the road by a car because of their Trump flags on their bikes. To top it off liberal style, there are rumors that the tarnished Hillary Clinton is being courted as a VP candidate for Bloomberg. Sigh.

If America is to be destroyed it will not explode from outside, but implode from the inside. Hence the phrase “death by a thousand progressives.” America as we know it is being threatened by communism, socialism, and Marxism during this election year. Over a century ago, President Abraham Lincoln had this to say about the potential downfall of America:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

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Court Rules Trump Admin Can Withhold Federal Grants to NYC, Seven States over Sanctuary Policies By Zachary Evans

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/court-rules-trump-admin-can-withhold-federal-grants-to-nyc-seven-states-over-sanctuary-policies/

A federal court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration could withhold grants to New York City, as well as seven states, due to their refusal to cooperate with the federal immigration enforcement efforts.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that the federal government could withhold funds from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia and Rhode Island, over the states’ “sanctuary” laws. The states currently contain a number of cities, including New York City, with laws preventing local authorities from notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an illegal immigrant is about to be released from jail.

The seven states and New York City sued the Trump administration in 2017 after federal immigration authorities demanded access to jails and the creation of a system to notify agents of the impending release of an illegal immigrant. The 2nd Circuit court’s decision reverses lower court rulings in favor of the states.

“So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes,” then-attorney general Jeff Sessions said in 2017 when the suit was filed.

 

Earlier this month current Attorney General William Barr announced the Justice Department would initiate a series of lawsuits against localities with “sanctuary” laws.

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In Iran, an Electoral Flop By Ilan Berman

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/iran-election-low-turnout-shows-regimes-weakening-state/

The regime’s continued rogue behavior has left the country increasingly isolated.

What if you held a national election and no one turned out? That’s the situation currently confronting Iranian officials, who are grappling with the aftermath of a truly disastrous outcome in last week’s parliamentary elections.

According to the official Fars News Agency, just 42 percent of Iranians voted in the country’s latest parliamentary elections, which took place on Friday. That’s the lowest percentage ever recorded in the 41-year history of the Islamic Republic. (By way of comparison: The turnout for Iran’s last parliamentary elections, in 2016, was approximately 60 percent.) Yet there’s good reason to believe that even those official numbers are inflated, and perhaps significantly so. Outside reports, relying on internal Iranian media sources, indicate that actual voting tallies fell far below the official 42 percent figure, forcing the regime to keep polling stations open longer than planned to scrape together even a minimum number of legitimate votes.

If you’ve been paying attention to events in Iran, that lackluster showing shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Over the past two years, persistent protests in practically every major Iranian city — and at virtually every stratum of Iranian society — have showcased a population that has become profoundly disaffected with the country’s clerical regime. These protests have flared anew in recent weeks, following the Iranian government’s accidental January 8 downing of a Ukrainian airliner amid heightened tensions with the United States. That event helped to convince many Iranians that their government is dangerously incompetent, and a real hazard to their own safety.

The regime in Tehran responded in predictable fashion: by trying to tighten its hold on political power. Ahead of Friday’s parliamentary vote, Iran’s government disqualified more than 7,000 applicants from running. That in and of itself is hardly new; Iran’s religious institutions have long been used to weed out politicians deemed insufficiently loyal to the country’s governing religious ideology. But this time, the ranks of those disqualified included dozens of parliamentarians who had previously passed clerical muster and were now standing for reelection. Apparently, Iran’s ayatollahs are now unable to tolerate even a semblance of pluralism within the country’s secular institutions.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The United Nations Releases An Anti-Israel Blacklist By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/26/the-united-nations-releases-an-anti-israel-blacklist/

At bottom, this blacklist was created to harm Israel, not to help the Palestinians. Its publication benefits the Palestinians neither diplomatically nor economically.

If there’s one group you can count on, it’s the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Their members are not terribly concerned about human rights, particularly within their own borders, but they sure are consumed by hatred for Israel.

In March 2016, UNHRC decided the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights should release a blacklist of companies “conducting activities in or related to Israel’s settlements,” a move cheered on by supporters of the movement to boycott Israel. However, there were various delays, and that database did not materialize until this month.

In what certainly looks like a clap-back at the Trump administration’s Peace to Prosperity plan for Israelis and Palestinians timing-wise, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a list of 112 companies that operate beyond Israel’s Green Line. Not so coincidentally, 94 of the named companies are based in Israel. Six are American companies, including Airbnb and General Mills.

As with the Arab Boycott, this is about stigmatizing Israel and raising the cost of doing business with Israeli Jews. Eugene Kontorovich, director of the Center for International Law in the Middle East at George Mason University Scalia Law School, emailed, “Many of the American firms being targeted have no presence there, but simply do business with companies that do business there. They are simply being blacklisted for refusing to discriminate against Israeli Jews in the provision of their goods and services.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Politics What I Saw When I Attended A Donald Trump Rally In Colorado Springs By J.C. Bourque

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/26/what-i-saw-when-i-attended-a-donald-trump-rally-in-colorado-springs/

It was inspiring to spend the day with my fellow citizens from all walks of life, united behind one idea: We are Americans first, before anything else. And we want our country back.

Following GPS directions, our Lyft driver turned into the parking lot at the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs, where we ran smack into a Secret Service blockade. A friendly, heavily armed agent greeted us. It turns out the taxi stand was cordoned off because President Donald Trump would be entering the stadium at that location.

After shuffling through the bus staging area, we were dropped off at public parking. Police and Secret Service agents were everywhere. It was 8:45 a.m., 9 degrees, 84 percent humidity, and winds at 3 mph. “Feels like” 1 degree, according to the weather app.

The staging area was roped off to form a long, snaking chute for people lining up for the Trump rally. These 30 rows or so, each the length of a city block, were considerably longer than the TSA line at Denver International Airport. Temple Grandin was obviously not consulted.

Waiting in Line

We got in line and were immediately introduced to our queue companions, with whom we would be spending the next five and a half hours. There were whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos, young, old, straight, and gay people, decked out unapologetically in stars and stripes, celebrating freedom of expression they wouldn’t dare at the supermarket. There was no squabbling, line-cutting, or littering, just thousands of people happily standing in the cold, knowing they could be themselves without Antifa punching them in the face — also knowing they might not get in.

I made two key observations: 1) A Trump rally queue would be a good place to attempt a Guinness World Record for the most men with snow-white goatees ever assembled in one place, and 2) it would be an excellent place to compare clothing from Duluth Trading Company, especially if it’s 9 degrees outside.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Serves Up Comedy in Effort to Get Trump Roger Kimball

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/media-serves-up-comedy-in-effort-to-get-trump_3248010.html

I don’t believe that President Donald Trump has ever deployed the Twitteresque acronym “ROFLMAO” (rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off). But I know that he appreciates the sentiment because of something he said in February 2018.

At that time, at the apex of Robert Mueller’s Excellent Adventure, Trump observed that people were “laughing their asses off in Moscow” at the malevolent Keystone Cops antics of the Get Trump Brigade.

“If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption, and chaos within the U.S.,” the president observed, “then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.”

That was—and is—exactly right, as was his follow-on observation: “I never said Russia did not meddle in the election, I said ‘it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400-pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.’ The Russian ‘hoax’ was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia—it never did!”

Period. Full stop. End of story.

But not, of course, the end of the comedy.

POLITICS Comments turned off

How Can Bernie Sanders Happen in America? By David Harsanyi

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/how-can-bernie-sanders-happen-in-america/

There are many good reasons not to normalize socialism here.

A number of pundits have recently argued that younger voters, especially those under 30, are less inclined to be bothered when they hear the word “socialism,” since they have no firsthand memory of the Cold War.

To some extent, this must be true. Those who weren’t alive during socialism’s cruelest catastrophes — or even its many banal failures — will be less put off by the idea. Then again, if a presidential candidate were praising the excellent public transportation system of the Third Reich or going on about the some alleged benefit to American slavery, they would rightly be chased from the public square forever even though the vast majority of voters have no firsthand knowledge of the Holocaust or slavery. Anti-Semitism and racism haven’t disappeared, and neither has Marx, sadly.

For that matter, many Americans — including Bernie — lived through Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao and they still champion the idea of socialism. It’s completely unsurprising that Bernie once defended the Viet Cong. Because many of us over 40 immediately recognize who Bernie is. I grew up with people like him. In those days, though, adults generally didn’t take their crazy disheveled Commie uncles who taught economics at the local commuter college very seriously. Maybe that’s the problem.

It’s true that Bernie’s fans aren’t acquainted with socialism (and, incidentally, this is true only if we ignore the existence of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, China, etc.), but the fact is that most Bernie supporters don’t seem to have a rudimentary grasp of basic economics much less the “socialism” they think exists in Scandinavian nations. What they do have are lots of feelings. And, like millions of other saps over the past century-plus, they’ve been enticed by the collectivist “ethic” — its revolutionary appeal, its religiosity, and its quixotic promises.

“Fascism is remembered as a crime,” John Hayward correctly points out. “Communism is treated like a mistake.” I’d add that capitalism is judged by its few failures and socialism by its few successes. Sanders will never praise the “literary programs” of any non-tyranny. But if I’ve learned anything from Twitter — or perhaps, more accurately, if Twitter has solidified any of my existing suspicions — it’s that academia is teeming with hard-left apologists. There are plenty of fantastic historians out there, of course, but many of loudest academics, the ones media often relies on, are either apologists for socialism or socialists themselves.

POLITICS Comments turned off

After Sanders Snubs AIPAC, Bolton Asks if He’d Make Ilhan Omar His Secretary of State By Rick Moran

Posted By on February 26th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/after-snubbing-aipac-conference-bolton-asks-sanders-if-hed-make-ilhan-omar-secretary-of-state/

Bernie Sanders refused an invitation to the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, accusing the group of giving a platform for “bigotry.” This set off John Bolton, who schooled the pro-Palestinian socialist.

Fox News:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) late Sunday also called out  Sanders over his decision to skip its conference next month in Washington. Sanders cited his concern that the group provides a platform for leaders to “express bigotry” and oppose basic Palestinian rights.

Sanders, who is on the heels of a big win in the Nevada caucuses, took to Twitter on Sunday to voice his concern about the influential lobby. The Vermont senator vowed that if elected president he would work with both Israelis and Palestinians to bring peace and stability to the region.

AIPAC wasted little time to respond to the public rebuke and called his comments an ill-informed and “odious attack.” The pro-Israel lobby said Sanders never attended a conference, which is “evident in the outrageous comment.”

“Senator Sanders is insulting his very own colleagues and the millions of Americans who stand with Israel,” the statement read. “Truly shameful.” Somehow, I don’t think the Bern feels much shame at all.

Radical leftists have been after AIPAC for years.

Last year, liberal groups like MoveOn called on Democratic candidates to sidestep the annual conference.  The groups claimed that the lobby tried to thwart the Iran nuclear deal and backed Israel’s unfair settlement policies, according to reports.  A candidate’s decision to shun the conference could bolster his progressive support.