NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Senate: Confirm Neomi Rao for D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Roger Klein

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2019/02/05/senate_confirm_neomi_rao_for_dc_circuit_court_of_appeals_111028.html

Among the many victories President Trump has given conservatives, his success in reforming the federal judiciary through judicial appointments will be among the most meaningful and lasting elements of his legacy. One of the President’s top judicial picks, former law professor Neomi Rao, is now awaiting confirmation to replace Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. She should be quickly confirmed.

Ms. Rao was born in Detroit, a child of Indian immigrants. She completed her undergraduate education at Yale, graduating cum laude. After a brief stint as a reporter with the Weekly Standard, Ms. Rao attended University of Chicago Law School, where she was an Editor of the Law Review and graduated in 1999 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif, a legal honor society.

Following law school, Ms. Rao was awarded prestigious clerkships at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit with prominent Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III and at the United States Supreme Court with Justice Clarence Thomas. She later served as Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and from 2005 to 2006 as Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush.

In 2006 Ms. Rao joined the faculty at the George Mason University Law School, where she distinguished herself as a legal scholar with a focus on administrative law. She founded and was the first director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State and was a driving force behind George Mason’s 2016 decision to name its law school after the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Administration Threads the Needle in Venezuela By Charles Lipson

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/05/trump_administration_threads_the_needle_in_venezuela_139363.html

The Trump administration has clear goals in Venezuela and is determined to achieve them with limited means. Those goals are straightforward:

–Out with the fraudulently elected regime of Nicolás Maduro, its Chávez-style socialism, and its strong ties to Cuba, Russia, Iran, and China;

–In with the duly elected moderate Juan Guaidó.

To do that without sending U.S. troops means squeezing Maduro with harsh economic pressure, recognizing Guaidó as the legitimate leader, and naming an experienced point man, Elliott Abrams. It also entails, and this would be a departure for President Trump, building a supportive coalition of Latin American nations and major economic powers.

The coalition helps in two ways. First, it blunts Maduro’s knee-jerk claim that any effort to replace him is simply Yankee imperialism. His claim sounds ludicrous when there are massive protests inside Venezuela itself and after nearly every country in South America (Bolivia and Uruguay are the exceptions) recognized Guaidó as the country’s legitimate leader.

Within the region, Maduro’s support comes mainly from Cuba, an ideological fellow traveler with few resources to help. Outside the region, his support comes from Russia, Iran, and China, the triumvirate that now challenges the U.S. around the globe. They would hate to lose their foothold in Latin America.

Of the two coalitions, America’s is obviously much larger and richer, much more capable of exerting economic leverage. Sanctions are key. The heaviest blow was Washington’s decision to place Venezuela’s oil revenues in escrow. With a stroke of the pen, the U.S. Department of the Treasury cut off Maduro’s primary source of foreign exchange, his only way to pay the army. When he desperately tried to move his country’s gold reserves out of Britain, the Bank of England refused. The European Union is likely to impose additional sanctions this week.

These restrictions won’t add much more pain for Venezuela’s ordinary citizens, who already face grim conditions. The economy is in free fall, food is scarce, and inflation tops 1 million percent, according to Reuters. When currency becomes worthless, as Venezuela’s has, the economy is reduced to barter. What will the sanctions do, then? They will make it very hard—nearly impossible—for Maduro to buy food and essential supplies for his soldiers. If they defect, the regime dies.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Howard and Ralph A pair of leftist white guys find themselves victims of the political By Scott McKay culture they helped create.

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://spectator.org/howard

Last week was a delicious one for observers of the Ragnarok that the politics of the Left has become, particularly as it signaled the difficulties confronting some of the purveyors of the “smart set” PC culture as they attempt to cash in on their contributions to our national status quo.

Starting with Howard Schultz, the billionaire former Starbucks CEO who, having positioned his company as a leftist cultural icon by such actions as publicly backing gay marriage and imploring customers not to carry firearms in Starbucks stores (though stopping short of banning them), announced on 60 Minutes a week ago that he’ll run for president as a centrist independent.

Why an independent? After all, Schultz was a thoroughly reliable Democrat moneybag throughout his professional life. The answer, as he somewhat furtively explained, was that he knows he could never win his party’s nomination.

“It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the left,” he lamented. “If I ran as a Democrat, I would have to say things in my heart I do not believe.”

Schultz went even further in a CNBC Squawk Box interview back in June of 2018 when he was first beginning to think of himself as a potential presidential hopeful, sounding far saner than the typical candidate within the chaotic Democrat field.

“It concerns me that so many voices within the Democratic Party are going so far to the left. I say to myself, ‘How are we going to pay for these things,’ in terms of things like single payer (and) people espousing the fact that the government is going to give everyone a job.”

“I don’t think that’s realistic,” he said. Then he added: “I think we got to get away from these falsehoods and start talking about the truth and not false promises.”

His bid, which apparently includes having hired former Obama political guru Bill Burton and former John McCain consultant Steve Schmidt, fell flat immediately. So much so that by the middle of the week Michael Moore, the supersized Leni Riefenstahl of today’s Democrat Party, was calling for a boycott of Starbucks until Schultz demurred from running.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

RUTHIE BLUM: PRIMARY CONCERNS

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/primary-concerns/

(February 5, 2019 / JNS) It’s not a hot news flash that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the nemesis of the local left-wing media. Nor is it novel that the feeling is mutual. But ahead of Tuesday’s primaries in Likud, the party Netanyahu chairs, an amusing twist was added to the mix.

Unlike the vast majority of Israeli parties, Likud determines its Knesset list democratically through internal elections in which all dues-paying members are eligible to vote. This means that Netanyahu needs to campaign for the candidates of his choice, rather than simply appointing them at will, the way other party leaders do. Naturally, he has loyalists and rivals within his party. Obviously, he favors the former.

No scandal there. Unless, of course, you’re an Israeli journalist who needs to create one as part of your proverbial putsch attempt.

Whatever else can be said of Netanyahu, he is no dummy, as even his enemies acknowledge. To circumvent the incessant negative coverage aimed at ousting him through ludicrous criminal charges—ironically involving moves on his part to be given a fair shake by the press—Netanyahu launched an Internet channel, Likud TV, for the purpose of broadcasting his message and garnering public support ahead of the April 9 elections. To mock the endeavor, the Israeli media called it a “copycat” version of U.S. President Donald Trump’s weekly “Real News Update.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU: Going Full Orwell by Judith Bergman

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13532/eu-full-orwell

The problem is that this professedly noble initiative comes from an organization that has already for several years been censoring free speech in Europe.

The handbook guidelines state that journalists should “Take care not to further stigmatize terms such as ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ by associating them with particular acts… Don’t allow extremists’ claims about acting ‘in the name of Islam’ to stand unchallenged. Highlight… the diversity of Muslim communities… where it is necessary and newsworthy to report hateful comments against Muslims, mediate the information.” In other words, the guidelines ask journalists to disinform the public.

This is the same European Commission that most recently expressed its disapproval of the withdrawal of Austria from the UN’s “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.” The Compact stipulates that media outlets that do not support the UN’s migration agenda will not be eligible for public funding. How is that for “fully respecting Europe’s fundamental principles of freedom of expression, a free press and pluralism”?

The EU has launched a comprehensive Action Plan against Disinformation. Its purpose, according to a recent press release from the European Commission, is apparently to “protect its democratic systems and public debates and in view of the 2019 European elections as well as a number of national and local elections that will be held in Member States by 2020”.

In June 2018, leaders of EU member states had met in the European Council and invited the European Commission “to present… an action plan by December 2018 with specific proposals for a coordinated EU response to the challenge of disinformation…” It is this action plan that the Commission presented to the public on December 5.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Liberals Don’t Call Out Democrat Hate By Karin McQuillan

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/04/why

Last month’s attack on the Covington Catholic High School boys should be one of those electrifying moments of correction, as when Senator Joseph McCarthy was asked, “have you no shame?”

Instead, it is electrifying only in its illumination: the Democrats have no shame.

Liberals watch their politicians, celebrities, and media leaders attack individuals, even children, and our precious civil liberties. Instead of recoiling, they immediately parrot the vicious talking point of the day. The few exceptions of public protest, the exemplary Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, and last week, Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), makes the ominous acquiescence of other Democrats all the more noticeable.

The mobbing of the Covington boys, and the feeble excuse-apologies—and continued attacks—that followed, join what is now a long series of hate-filled words and acts by leftists that cause regular Democrats no shame, no dark night of the soul, no revulsion towards what they are becoming as people and as a party.

Everything America has ever stood for must go. Being colorblind is attacked as racist. Equality before the law is attacked as sexist. The list of Democrat doublespeak becomes a tedious rant, and what’s the point? Democrats are not listening and if forced to listen, plug their ears and scream at the top of the lungs that it is Trump, Trump, Trump who is ruining everything.

Meanwhile, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms, freedom to organize politically (for conservatives), the right to life for a baby about to be born—have all been redefined as violence against blacks, women or gays. A religious teenager standing still in a MAGA hat is an attempt to “erase” minorities that justifies violence to wipe the smile off his face.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Worst Mayors in America are Running for President David Greenfield

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Newark is the most dangerous city in New Jersey, Tallahassee is the most dangerous city in Florida, and South Bend is the most dangerous city in Indiana. But instead of fixing their failed cities, the current mayor of South Bend, and the former mayors of Newark and Tallahassee want to run for president. Mayor Peter Buttigieg has announced that he’s forming an exploratory committee for a 2020 run. Media reports have focused on the possibility that he might become America’s first gay millennial president, instead of on the fact that he’s headed a city since 2011 which has double the national and statewide violent crime rates. And a city where Hispanic poverty rates are 10% higher than the national average, African-American households have double the poverty rate, and Asian-American incomes are halved.

South Bend was recently rated one of the “worst cities” to live in. The unemployment rates are higher than average, the property values are lower, and even the water quality is below average.

Gushing media reports about the gay millennial mayor, a Harvard grad and a Rhodes scholar, overlook South Bend’s poverty rate of 24.7% and that 45% of households are living near the poverty level.

South Bend has a little over 100,000 residents, but there were over 100 criminal shootings in 2017 in the failed city which hosts murderous gangs such as the Latin Kings and Gangster Disciples.

In January 2019, just as Buttigieg was prepping his presidential run, three shootings in one week killed two teens and left a woman paralyzed from the waist down. In one summer week, the casualties included a 12 and a 13-year-old. In March, 6 people were hurt in one shooting spree.

“It is a season for boldness and it is time to focus on the future,” Mayor Buttigieg declared in his presidential debut video. “Are you ready to walk away from the politics of the past?”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Double Standard for Historical Revisionism by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13684/henry-ford-historical-revisionism

Henry Ford devoted his life to two passions: making cars and demonizing Jews. When Hitler said, “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” he wasn’t referring to his car manufacturing. He was referring to Ford’s anti-Semitic ideology that eventuated in the genocide of six million Jews.

Henry Ford does not deserve to be honored. The question the good people of Dearborn should ask themselves is: What would you do if the Performance Center were named after Jefferson Davis? If the answer is that you would remove Davis’s name, then you should remove Ford’s.

There cannot be differences between how anti-Black, anti-gay, anti-women and anti-Jewish practitioners of bigotry are treated. There must be a single standard for historical revisionism.

Imagine if an American city continued to celebrate a prominent businessman who had published newspapers and books advocating overt racism and racial discrimination against Black people. Imagine if the Grand Wizard of the KKK had a picture of this man in his office and credited him with inspiring him to kill African Americans. Imagine statues and photographs commemorating the life of such a bigot. Imagine if a preforming arts center was named after him and African American performers who wanted to appear in the city had to walk into a building bearing the name of this racist. The reaction would be immediate and uncompromising: all glorification of this racist must stop; statues and pictures must be removed; history must treat him as a pariah despite his positive accomplishments as a businessman.

Well, the city Dearborn, Michigan is celebrating such a racist bigot today. But no one is demanding that his images must be removed or his despicable history and ideology publicized. His name is Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel releases report on links between BDS and terrorists

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/02/04/israel-releases-

Several dozen current or former members of Hamas and the PFLP are involved in BDS activity through Palestinian and international NGOs, Strategic Affairs Ministry report says • “What we discovered surprised even us,” says Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan.

The government released a report Sunday claiming to reveal close links between the Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel and terrorist groups.

The Strategic Affairs Ministry, which leads Israel’s efforts against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, said it uncovered extensive connections between pro-boycott groups and activists affiliated with Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The BDS movement dismissed the report as “wildly fabricated.”

The 80-page report claims several dozen current or former members of the Palestinian groups, both designated terrorist organizations by the U.S., European Union and Israel, are involved in BDS activity through Palestinian and international nongovernmental organizations.

“We have always seen indications of connections between BDS groups and designated terrorist organizations,” Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said. “What we discovered surprised even us.”

Most of the cases were based on accusations of affiliation or expressions of sympathy for terrorist groups, in some instances connected to acts that took place years ago. At least two people on the list have received international recognition for human rights work.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Philippines: Christians Slaughtered, Churches Bombed by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on February 5th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13658/philippines-christians-slaughtered

The new terrorism in the Philippines is not merely inspired by political or territorial grievances, real or imagined, but rather is imbued with intrinsic hate for the “other” — for the “infidel.”

In May 2017, in the city of Marawi, a civilian bus was stopped by jihadis; when 9 passengers were discovered to be Christian — apparently because they were not able to quote the Koran — they were tied together and shot dead, execution style. The jihadis who took over Marawi during the uprising forced women into sex-slavery and ordered Christian men embrace Islam or be used as human shields against the Philippine Army.

January’s deadly church-bombing, which claimed 20 lives and wounded more than 100, is the latest reminder that, as with other nations that have a sizeable Muslim minority, the Philippines is embroiled in the jihad. While the ostensible reason behind it may be political or territorial, the sadistic hate that accompanies attacks on Christians and their churches suggests that ideology is the ultimate cause.

On Sunday, January 27, extremist Muslims bombed a Catholic cathedral during Mass in the Philippines. At least 20 people were killed and 111 wounded.

At 8:45 am, two explosives were detonated about a minute apart in or near the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo. According to the Associated Press:

“The initial explosion scattered the wooden pews inside the main hall and blasted window glass panels, and the second bomb hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, witnesses said.”

Photographs on social media showed human bodies and remains strewn on the street just outside the cathedral. Last heard, the officiating priest, Fr. Ricky Bacolcol, “was still in shock and could not speak about what happened,” said a colleague.

After the first bomb detonated, army troops and police posted outside the cathedral rushed in, at which point the second bomb went off. Fifteen of the slain were civilians, five were military men; 90 of the wounded were civilians.

The cathedral, located in a Muslim-majority area, was heavily guarded; it had been hit before. In 1997, Catholic Bishop, Benjamin de Jesus, was gunned down just outside the cathedral; in 2010, grenades were hurled at it twice, damaging the building.