https://www.reuters.com/article/us-notredame-fire/fire-devastates-notre-dame-cathedral-in-paris-idUSKCN1RR1UO
PARIS (Reuters) – A fast-moving fire consumed Notre-Dame Cathedral on Monday in a massive, roaring blaze that devastated the Parisian landmark, a searing loss for the city and for France.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/15/bill_barr_dirty_cops_and_the_oj_simpson_trial_140053.html
When Attorney General Bill Barr testified last week that, yes, “spying did occur” in the government’s Trump-Russia investigation and that spying on a political campaign is a “big deal,” the Democrats were apoplectic. How could he dare say such a thing? The saintly James Comey went even further. He told an audience that he didn’t even know what spying meant. No, siree, he had no idea.
Barr’s candor is what Michael Kinsley famously called a “Washington gaffe,” where the naked truth somehow slips out. Naturally, it set off a firestorm.
Democrats demanded an immediate retraction but got only an anodyne rewording. Use a synonym and call it “surveillance.” The real question, Barr explained, was not whether there was spying—there obviously was—but whether it was legally justified. That is precisely what he intends to find out, he told Congress. He will also find out if the spymasters lied to Congress, about which he has now received criminal referrals.
The Democrats’ ferocious pushback confirms the gravity of the issue. Their fears are well-founded. The Obama administration politicized the Department of Justice, FBI, and intelligence agencies, and a serious investigation is very likely to find criminal wrong-doing. The response of top Democrats is to smear Barr as a partisan hack.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/democrats-freaked-barr-said-trump-campaign-spied/
There are two reasons the political media establishment is growing increasingly hostile towards Attorney General William Barr: First, he serves under President Donald Trump. Second, he is not only the messenger of the demise of the Russiagate conspiracy theory that the Deep State and its aiders, abettors, and enablers in the political media establishment worked so hard to perpetuate, but he could also be the source of the demise of the establishment itself, if he ends up exposing their whole sordid affair.
Should Barr conduct a thorough investigation of the Russiagate investigators, and the associated leakers and colluders, and dispense justice to the fullest extent of the law, it would drive a stake through the heart of the establishment writ large by demolishing the unjust system of double standards from which it has benefited, while punishing its foes.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14065/germany-european-army-allegory
Since taking office in 2013, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has done little to alleviate the problems in the military. The best-known projects during her tenure were kindergartens for the soldiers’ families; the procurement of flat screen television sets and mini-fridges for the barracks; the announcement of efforts to make the German army “more attractive for gay, lesbian and transgender people”; buying uniforms for pregnant soldiers, and making battle tanks suitable for pregnant soldiers. As worthwhile as these efforts may be, they do little to address the core problems.
“Apparently the readiness of the Bundeswehr is so bad that the public should not be allowed to know about it.” — Tobias Lindner, a Greens Party member, serving on the budget and defense committees.
“We are committed to the emergence of a European army”, German chancellor Angela Merkel pledged in January, backing a plan first launched by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Merkel thus confirmed a position she had voiced in November 2018, when, speaking to the European parliament in Strasbourg, she said: “We have to look at the vision of one day creating a real, true European army.”
Members of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the German federal parliament (Bundestag) wanted to know what was meant by the term “European army” and submitted this question to the government.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14027/eu-appeasing-iran
Despite Iran’s destructive behavior, such as support for terror and militia groups across the region, the European Union has chosen to help the ruling mullahs of Iran, ostensibly to maintain the flimsy, illegal, never-signed, unratified “nuclear deal” — but possibly even more as an embarrassingly transparent attempt, if the EU could be embarrassed, to navigate around US economic and political pressure and continue doing business with the regime.
If the EU does not change its position and continues its support of Iranian leaders and the nuclear deal, Tehran’s aggressive policies in the Middle East will persist, and Tehran will keep on pursuing its subversive agenda of attacking Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States via Yemen, Israel through Syria and Lebanon, and the US via Venezuela.
While President Donald Trump may have his critics, his hard-line sanctions are the only kind of political message the Iranian leaders can understand.
The European Union, in an unfathomable move, has been taking the side of the Iranian government, and turning its back on its old transatlantic partner, the United States, which recently announced plans to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), reportedly to take effect this week.
The Trump administration has taken a tougher stance towards Iran’s dark and hegemonic ambitions. Meanwhile, despite Iran’s destructive behavior, such as support for terror and militia groups across the region, the European Union has chosen to help the ruling mullahs of Iran, ostensibly to maintain the flimsy, illegal, never-signed, unratified “nuclear deal” — but possibly even more as an embarrassingly transparent attempt, if the EU could be embarrassed, to navigate around US economic and political pressure and continue doing business with Iran’s regime.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273455/beto-vs-bibi-ari-lieberman
The crowded field of Democratic Party hopefuls contains more than its fair share of odd characters. Corey Booker actually referred to himself as Spartacus while John Hickenlooper bragged about watching a porn flick with his mom. Kamala Harris claimed she smoked her fair share of weed during her college years while listening to Tupac and Snoop Dog, years before these rappers put out their first labels. But the candidate who takes top prize for the most truly bizarre is Robert Francis O’Rourke, aka “Beto.”
O’Rourke admitted to eating dirt after his failed bid to take Ted Cruz’s Texas senate seat. He also allegedly tried tricking his wife into eating baby excrement, telling her that it was an avocado. Rounding out O’Rourke’s insanity was his obligatory apology for his “white privilege” and a host of other irredeemable transgressions including his alleged misogyny, insensitivity to his wife and a past desire to run over kids with a car (yeah, you read that last bit correctly).
But while O’Rourke’s talents qualify him to play an extra on “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” they’re not necessarily portable to the presidential realm. O’Rourke learned that the hard way when just days before Israel’s general election, he called Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “racist” and noted that Netanyahu does not represent “the true will of the Israeli people.” O’Rourke also leveled criticism at the Palestinian Authority’s unelected chieftain Mahmoud Abbas, but it was more subdued and couched in terms of policy rather than base ad hominem attacks.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273487/jamie-glazov-takes-rep-omar-over-911-daniel-greenfield
Some people did something on 9/11. And some people are fighting back.
On this week’s Glazov Moment on the eponymous Glazov Gang, Jamie Glazov, the author of Jihadist Psychopath: How He Is Charming, Seducing, and Devouring Us, takes on Rep. Ilhan Omar over her denial and dismissal of the worst Islamist terror atrocity inflicted on the United States.
Jamie delves into the intersection of CAIR, 9/11, Omar and the Islamist agenda. Be sure to watch.
https://quillette.com/2019/04/14/the-problems-with-americas-best-teacher
A question central to Plato’s Republic is “What should we teach our children?” Judging from the parents I’ve talked to, this question is not getting the consideration it deserves. Parroting a common conservative refrain regarding what some believe schools teach, a colleague referred to them as “liberal-producing factories.” Thankfully, that’s not quite the case. While the teaching profession as a whole leans left, most educators are aware of their bias and, with varying degrees of success, try to push against it. Unfortunately, this is not true of the programs that train the nation’s school staff.
I received a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the premier schools of education in the country, occasionally nudging out Columbia and Harvard for the top spot in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of education programs. In reality, it was a series of graduate courses that featured various arts and crafts projects.
To their credit, the faculty seek to ameliorate legitimate and pressing concerns that our schools face: racial disparities, stagnant scores that are falling behind other countries, defective spending structures, high teacher turnover, and a host of other problems. However, they promote a philosophy of education that is effective at exposing these problems but impotent to solve them. The root issue is that the three elements of a progressive worldview I discuss here—restorative justice, contemporary literary theory, and an antipathy to intellectual diversity—result in an education that questions all systems but fails to offer students a coherent alternative.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/13/u-need-a-shine/
In the 1940s, a wave of automation threatened an industry that employed large numbers of low-skilled workers. The rise of the electric shoe-shine machines turned the once ubiquitous street corner shoeshine boy and the higher-end hotel lobby shoe-shine stand into rarities.
At the bristly heart of the corporate takeover, the shinification of American footwear, was the Uneeda Shine Machine Company, of 552 West 53rd Street, in Manhattan.
The mechanics, of course, were simple: a few spinning brushes running off a motor. The genius was in the packaging. The standard Uneeda Shine Machine was the Shine-O-Mat, a sturdy gun-metal box that stood a little taller than a desk and offered amenities such a choice of black or brown brushes, a foot stand for applying polish, and handles in the event that the vroom of the brushes might send the patron careening across the room.
I speak from experience. About 15 years ago I salvaged a Shine-O-Mat from scrap metal oblivion. It is in perfect working order and has traveled with the various chapters of my curriculum vitae ever since. It travels with the same joy of movement that Mount Rushmore might have if it were forced to relocate to Hackensack. The thing was built to stay put—probably to deter thieves and former shoeshine-boys-turned-anarchist-luddites. Or perhaps to ensure that the momentum of the brushes didn’t drive it across the floor.
Silber Shines
I salvaged my Shine-O-Mat not out of an obsessive desire to see my reflection in a pair of Oxfords, nor out of nostalgia for a bygone era of auto-matting. Rather, I was seeking to preserve a relic of a great epoch in academic history. Herein hangs a tale.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/14/are-there-any-limits-to-illegal-immigration/
The U.S.-Mexican border is essentially wide open.
Why? Because there is a general expectation in Mexico and Latin America that American immigration law is unenforced. Or it is so bizarre that simple illegal entry almost always ensures temporary legal residence, pending an asylum hearing.
A scheduled asylum hearing, in turn, is seen by border crossers as a mere formality to be ignored. The popular perception on the border, then, is to stick one foot illegally onto U.S. soil, and, presto, win permanent residence for you and any family members who wish to follow.
In an age of 500 sanctuary city and county jurisdictions, few illegal aliens believe they will ever be deported permanently, even if they have been apprehended committing serious crimes. There is also a general perception among would-be illegal entrants that prominent Democrats and progressives welcome their massive influxes as useful and will do their best to ensure illegal immigration continues unabated.
There is also the assumption that the greater the chaos at the border, the less likely Congress will take bipartisan action to end it. After all, 2020 is an election year and progressives are in no mood to hand Trump the semblance of a legislative victory. This fact is also known to would-be border crossers.
Illegal alien families sense that they are vital to progressive agendas of fundamentally transforming the country by importing first-generation, loyal constituents—a sentiment that is slowly replacing the prior idea of mostly young men coming to work off the books. In an increasingly tribal America, they expect on arrival to be recalibrated instantly from Mexican nationals without any experience of America into “Latinos” and “Hispanics” with historical grievances against the majority population of United States, to be remedied by reparatory hiring and admission, and facilitated by ethnic operatives.
Some polls in the past have suggested that a third of Mexico’s population would immigrate to the United States if possible. The percentages of would-be immigrants from Central America are likely to be even higher. In theory, 50 million could cross the border in the next two decades, which poses the question: what are the theoretical limits on illegal immigration?
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