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If You Can’t Impeach Him, Embarrass Him Those calling for President Trump’s tax returns probably won’t find much. Seth Barron

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/trumps-tax-returns
Disappointed by Robert Mueller’s failure to demonstrate President Trump’s perfidy, Democrats are focusing anew on the president’s tax returns. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is refusing to order the release of Trump’s federal returns to the House, saying that there is no legislative purpose for doing so, but a new effort to expose Trump’s tax history runs through Albany, where Democrats in 2018 gained solid control of the state senate for the first time in decades. Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised to sign a bill making its way through the legislature that would submit any New Yorker’s state tax returns to Congress, on request from the chairs of any of three revenue-related committees.

The excitement among Democrats is palpable. “We are facing a constitutional showdown,” says State Senator Brad Hoylman, the legislation’s sponsor. “New York, as the home of the president’s state taxes, has a special responsibility to step into the breach.” Assemblywoman Pat Fahy concurs, saying that “we can help hold the president accountable and we will set future precedents for all elected officials, that neither you as a president nor your business interests are above the law.”

National politicians and media are equally enthusiastic. “We will press on, because if we don’t, Trump will escape scrutiny and we won’t be able to hold future presidents accountable for abuse of power, malfeasance or corruption,” says House Investigations Committee chair Adam Schiff. New York writer and Trump critic Jonathan Chait asks: “Do Republicans believe Trump’s financial secrets contain no signs of serious corruption or vulnerability to leverage by a hostile power?”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Mayoral Mismatch Chief executives of cities don’t usually make good presidential candidates. Joel Kotkin

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/mayors-presidential-candidates

Mayors have had little success in becoming president, with only one big-city chief executive, Grover Cleveland of Buffalo, later governor of New York, actually making it to the White House. Yet this year’s running of the donkeys includes several: a minor-city chief executive, Pete Buttigieg of South Bend; a former big-city mayor, Cory Booker of Newark; former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro; and John Hickenlooper, formerly chief executive of Denver before becoming Colorado’s governor. They may yet be joined by New York’s Bill de Blasio. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti considered a run but thought better of it, perhaps realizing that his city’s burgeoning homeless population and rampant inequality would dog him on the campaign trail. The other mayors’ records are not much better than Garcetti’s, but they didn’t hesitate to jump in.

Buttigieg’s record is nothing remarkable. South Bend remains plagued by racial tension and a high murder rate. Buttigieg’s big challenge, according to Slate’s woke take, is whether being gay will make up for the unfortunate reality that he is also white and male, especially given his failure to embrace “the idea of gayness as a cultural framework, formative identity, or anything more than a category of sexual and romantic behavior.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What are the odds that the Durham investigation is for real and will bring the bad actors to justice?By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/what_are_the_odds_that_the_durham_investigation_is_for_real_and_will_bring_the_bad_actors_to_justice.html

Following the disclosure that U.S. attorney John Durham has been tasked with investigating and prosecuting potential crimes in the origin of the Russia Hoax, we learned some very encouraging facts that suggest that the Russia Hoax will be fully aired and miscreants brought to justice. Like Howie Carr, who had a front-row seat when John Durham went after corruption in the FBI Boston office, I am “cautiously optimistic” (Howie’s term) that Durham and his boss A.G. Barr want to get to the bottom of the hoax and put those who may have committed crimes in prison.

In Boston, Durham faced a gigantic scandal that was very damaging to the FBI and did not blink. He got John Connelly, Whitey Bulger’s protector, sentenced to 40 years in prison. This does not sound like a prosecutor who can be persuaded to lay off getting to the truth in order to protect the reputations of important people and institutions.

But we must concede that there are plenty of reasons to worry that that the biggest political scandal in American history — the political weaponization of both the federal intelligence and law enforcement communities to spy on political opponents of the sitting president and remove a duly elected president from office — will be swept under the rug. Even a sober-minded man of integrity like William Barr might be persuaded that the harm to public trust in our system would be too profound and that our allies and foes overseas might see us as so weakened that they would take actions inimical to our interests.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Vermont Replaces Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/vermont-replaces-columbus-day-with-indigenous-peoples-day/

Vermont on Friday became the sixth state to eliminate Columbus Day, replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day.

Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, signed a bill designating the second Monday in October a day honoring Native Americans rather than the 15th-century Italian explorer.

“Vermont was founded and built upon lands whose original inhabitants were Abenaki people and honors them and their ancestors,” the state’s new law reads.

“I know it’s controversial from many standpoints, from many people, but you know, it’s just a day, and we’ll get through it,” Scott said last month after the state legislature passed the measure.

Vermont’s move comes on the heels of similar bills in Maine and New Mexico, whose Democratic governors signed the holiday change into law last month. Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota had already chosen to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day.

Some modern Native American tribes object to the celebration of Christopher Columbus, who led several expeditions to Central and South America and spearheaded the European colonization of the New World.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Nazis and Communists: A Talk with Vladimir Bukovsky, Part III By Jay Nordlinger

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/vladimir-bukovsky-conversation-nazis-communists/

Editor’s Note: Jay Nordlinger recently interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky, the legendary Soviet-era dissident, at Bukovsky’s home in Cambridge, England. For the first two parts of this series, go here and here.

Talking with Bukovsky, I ask him to give me a comment or two on Yeltsin — Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russia. He does.

“He was a tragic figure. He was kind of half born — I don’t know how to put it. He was part and parcel of the Communist regime, and he suddenly realized that the whole thing was wrong — and then he was on both sides at the same time. That was the trouble with Yeltsin. That’s what made him a tragic figure. He couldn’t decide what to do with his life. He couldn’t go all the way against the Communists. He went against them, but did not finish it. Yes, he was a tragic figure.”

• Bukovsky’s book Judgment in Moscow: Did he mean it to be a Nuremberg? A partial Nuremberg? A mini-Nuremberg? “Theoretically, that’s what I tried to achieve, but there is nothing like an actual trial, a real trial. We all know the difference: One is moral, the other actual.”

Along with many others, Bukovsky would have liked to see an actual trial, in any form. “Someone asked me — a member of Yeltsin’s entourage — ‘Well, who’s going to be the judges?’ A very tricky question. I said, ‘Look, I don’t care. Choose twelve people off the street, and that would be okay with me.’”

I think of the old phrase, about juries: “twelve good men and true.”

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Actor Stephen Fry Accused of White Supremacy for Making OK Gesture By Jim Treacher

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/actor-stephen-fry-accused-of-white-supremacy-for-making-ok-gesture/

Last week the Chicago Cubs banned a fan for playing the Circle Game, claiming he was actually being a white supremacist. They fell for the hoax that the OK gesture is actually something bad. And NBC News even blurred out the guy’s hand so the infection wouldn’t spread, or maybe so the audience couldn’t see that it was just an OK sign.

“Chicago Cubs fan, who appeared to flash a hand gesture that has become associated with white supremacy behind a black sports reporter while he was on air, has been banned from Wrigley Field. https://nbcnews.to/2HcgNeJ ”

Emma Kelly, Metro (UK):…While Stephen was just trying to raise awareness and drum up support by sharing the universally recognisable OK symbol, others piped up to claim it was a sign of the alt-right.One person wrote: ‘Stephen and friends – You might want to be super careful using this symbol if you don’t want to be confused with white supremacist creeps. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that even the kindest of intentions can be taken out of context.’ Another replied: ‘Are you aware that this hand symbol can be misinterpreted as support for white supremacy?’, while one reply said:‘Didn’t have you down as part of the alt-right.’

MEDIA Comments turned off

NYU Journalism Teacher: The GOP Is ‘A Terrorist Organization’ By Stephen Green

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/nyu-journalism-teacher-the-gop-is-a-terrorist-organization/

She seems nice.

No stranger to controversy, the 28-year-old Fordham grad and author of How to Start a Revolution tweeted last year on the death of evangelist Billy Graham, “The big news today is that Billy Graham was still alive this whole time. Anyway, have fun in hell, bi*ch.”

Controversy, vindictiveness masquerading as commentary, potato, poTAHto.

Me, I’m with Twitter user “VillainsMatter” who replied, “You know this whole acting like a complete asylum inmate bit, people look at it and vote trump 2020 because of it.”

This summer, Duca will teach a class at NYU called “The Feminist Journalist.” According to Wikipedia, the class will “focus on intersections of feminist ideology and the practice of journalism.” If Duca’s work is any indication, feminism and journalism — at least as journalism was once practiced — make up a Venn Diagram of two circles with zero overlap. That NYU finds someone so viciously partisan worthy of training tomorrow’s journalists tells you everything you need to know about the actual worth of an NYU journalism degree.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

No, Rashida Tlaib, Palestinians Aren’t Israel’s Victims By P. David Hornik ****

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/no-rashida-tlaib-palestinians-arent-israels-victims/

The Palestinian rage and victimhood machine has been running in high gear this week. First, there were Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s semi-coherent, counterfactual words basically crediting Palestinians for saving Jews from the Holocaust while portraying Palestinians as its ultimate victims. And on Wednesday, on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, there was another Nakba—or “Catastrophe”—Day, an annual negative commemoration of Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the failure of Palestinian forces and five Arab armies to strangle it at its birth.

“In Gaza,” The Times of Israel reported,

[A]t least 10,000 people flocked to the border between Israel and the coastal enclave…. “The rioters are setting tires on fire and hurling rocks,” the army said. “A number of explosive devices have been hurled within the Gaza Strip, as well, and a number of attempts have been made to damage the security fence. IDF troops are responding with riot dispersal means.”

…Several balloon-borne incendiary devices landed in southern Israel, where they sparked at least nine blazes, according to area firefighters.

…In a speech at the border area, senior Hamas official Fathi Hamad…warned Israel that “The day of your slaughter, extermination and demise is approaching.”

As for the West Bank: “In Ramallah…, hundreds of people marched from the grave of the late Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat to a rally downtown, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to lands that are now a part of Israel.”

But was Israel’s creation really a nakba, a catastrophe, for the Palestinian Arabs?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Suspect arrested in stabbing of Jewish woman in Sweden Danish police nab Muslim man suspected of stabbing Jewish northwest of Malmo in Sweden. Authorities not treating incident as hate crime.

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263184

Police in Denmark have arrested a man suspected in the stabbing attack on a Jewish woman in Sweden.

Swedish authorities had released a warrant for the man’s arrest Tuesday, after a Jewish woman was stabbed nine times in the city of Helsingborg, roughly 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) northwest of Malmo.

The victim, a woman in her 60s who is the wife of the leader of the local Jewish community, was on her way to work Tuesday morning when she was attacked.

The assailant stabbed the woman nine times, then fled the scene, eventually escaping to Denmark.

Authorities identified the suspect as a Muslim man known to local police.

On Wednesday, Danish police announced that the suspect had been taken into custody. He is expected to be extradited to Sweden for prosecution.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Secretary Of State Michel Pompeo Denounces Leaders ‘Eager To Delight Davos’-

Posted By on May 15th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/13/pompeo-america-first-foreign-policy-is-inspired-by-the-founders/

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave the following remarks at the Claremont Institute’s 40th Anniversary Gala on May 11.

‘President Trump believes it is right – indeed more than right – for America to unashamedly advance policy that serves our interests and reflects American ideals.’

There is literally, as I travel the world, there is nothing more distinctive about the United States than our politics, and wonderfully so. We are the truly greatest experiment in human freedom that the world has ever seen, and I, as America’s senior diplomat, benefit from that every day.

I want to do a little bit of the history, because the foreign policy of the early republic reflected the attitude of a free nation which has thrown off an imperial power, which, frankly, I just left. And look, I think there’s three words that characterize that. They would be realism, restraint, and respect, and I’ll talk about each of them just for a moment.

First, realism. The Founders were keen students of human nature and history. They saw that conflict is the normative experience for nations. Hamilton put this Federalist 34. He said, “To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and [beneficial] sentiments of peace.”

I’ll simplify: The Founders knew peace wasn’t the norm. And in response to this reality, the Founders knew the first duty of the federal government was to provide for the safety of its citizens. Madison said, “[Security] is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.” You all know that.