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Elected leaders who weaponize religion are playing a dangerous game By Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii- District 2)

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/religious-rights/424362-elected-leaders-who-weaponize-religion-are-playing-a

For too long in our country, politicians have weaponized religion for their own selfish gain, fomenting bigotry, fears and suspicions based on the faith, religion or spiritual practices of their political opponents.

Whether we think of ourselves as Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikh, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, agnostics, or anything else, it is imperative that we stand united in our commitment to protect religious freedom and the right to worship or not worship, safely and without the fear of retribution.

We must stand together, and with one voice condemn those who seek to incite bigotry based on religion. We cannot allow those who are anxious to exploit our differences to drive a wedge between us. We cannot and will not tolerate prejudicial treatment of those with whom we disagree, any more than we would tolerate such treatment of those with whom we agree.

Standing up for freedom of religion for all people is as critical now as it’s ever been–hatred and bigotry are casting a dark shadow over our political system and threatening the very fabric of our country. The heartbreaking atrocity in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were murdered while worshiping at their synagogue, is but the latest reminder of the horrible potential consequence of prejudice and bigotry. The shooting at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, the shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., the shooting at the mosque in New York and too many others to list serve as devastating and atrocious reminders of what this kind of hatred and this kind of bigotry can lead to.

While I oppose the nomination of Brian Buescher to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, I stand strongly against those who are fomenting religious bigotry, citing as disqualifiers Buescher’s Catholicism and his affiliation with the Knights of Columbus. If Buescher is “unqualified” because of his Catholicism and affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, then President John F. Kennedy, and the ‘liberal lion of the Senate’ Ted Kennedy would have been “unqualified” for the same reasons.
Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that there “shall be no religious test” for any seeking to serve in public office.

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yes, Trump has authority to declare national emergency for border wall By Jonathan Turley,

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/424314-yes-trump-has-authority-to-declare-national-emergency-for-border-wall

Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story once marveled, “How easily men satisfy themselves that the Constitution is exactly what they wish it to be.” If Story returned to life today, he would find these to be familiar times, as politicians and pundits have decided that the Constitution bars an action by President Trump, even when they reached the diametrically opposite conclusion on similar actions taken by President Obama during his term.

In the latest “constitutional crisis” declared on Capitol Hill, Democrats are adamant that they will not fund the signature pledge of Trump to build a border wall. In response, Trump has threatened to start construction unilaterally under his emergency powers if Congress refuses to yield to his demand for more than $5 billion. Critics turned to the Constitution and found clear authority against Trump. Representative Adam Schiff, Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman, and many others denounced such a move as flagrantly unconstitutional.The concern is well founded even if the conclusion is not. Congress has refused the funds needed for the wall, so Trump is openly claiming the right to unilaterally order construction by declaring a national emergency. On its face, that order would undermine the core role of Congress in our system of checks and balances. I happen to agree that an emergency declaration to build the wall is unwise and unnecessary. However, the declaration is not unconstitutional. Schiff, now chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, insists that Trump “does not have the power to execute” this order because “if Harry Truman could not nationalize the steel industry during wartime, this president does not have the power to declare an emergency and build a multibillion dollar wall on the border.”

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MY SAY: WAITING ON STAGE LEFT AGAIN BY RUTH KING

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/waiting_on_stage_left_again.html

While Warren, Harris, Booker, and Biden are bruited as potential Democratic candidates in 2020, there may be a surprise candidate being groomed right now. Barack Obama’s trajectory from the Illinois state Senate to the Oval Office in four years is instructive.

In March of 2000, Obama was a state senator in Illinois, a post he had since 1996 with virtually no political recognition. What he did have is a sterling résumé: an eight-year scholarship to Occidental College, a transfer into Columbia University, a post-college job as a “community organizer,” acceptance into Harvard Law School, and editorship of its law review. The actual academic records remain secret. There is no essay from college and no single article from the law review where he was editor.

In his first foray for national office, he attempted to unseat popular Illinois representative Bobby Rush (Illinois-District 2) in the 2000 Democratic primary. He lost. But he gained the interest of David Axelrod, a cunning political strategist.

In 2002, he tested the political waters with a carefully scripted speech opposing the Iraq war, calling it “a dumb war … a rash war … [a] cynical attempt to shove ideological agendas down our throats.”

He was careful to avoid the pratfalls of radical pacifism: “I don’t oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don’t oppose all wars.” He often revisited that speech in his campaigns. [Editor’s note: Obama repeatedly botched the location of the camp his grandfather – or was it a great uncle? – allegedly helped liberate. It was the Soviets who “first entered” Auschwitz.] CONTINUE AT SITE PLEASE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine By Janet Levy

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/exposing_the_risks_of_americas_dependence_on_china_for_medicine.html

Concern over China’s territorial, military, and economic aggressiveness has been building over the past decade as the country is increasingly perceived as a threat to the United States, U.S. Asian allies, and the West. In China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine (Prometheus Books, 2018), authors Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh explore yet another peril: China as the largest global supplier of ingredients for many prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, and vitamins.

In their alarming book, the authors report how China has become the largest supplier of the active ingredient in aspirin and acetaminophen, present in more than 600 over-the-counter and prescription medicines. China is also the dominant global supplier for the essential ingredients to make penicillin and for vitamin C, used in vitamin supplements, cereals, soda, and hamburger buns. It is also the largest exporter of medical devices, with close to 20,000 products for sale.

They argue that because of this, China represents a grave threat to the U.S. and its strategic position in the world. American jobs, businesses, and national security and the general health and welfare of its citizens are compromised as the U.S. increasingly loses control of the supply of critical medicines, drug ingredients, and even medical devices. The loss of manufacturing capability and U.S. dependence on a single source could result in manipulative shortages as critical drugs are withheld for a political or economic quid pro quo. American consumers could become the victims of price manipulations and compromises in product efficacy and quality.

Gibson and Singh begin their book explaining that drug manufacturing has changed dramatically in the past two to three decades, with China achieving primary global supplier status. Part of that rise, according to the authors, occurred after Chinese companies dumped penicillin ingredients on the global market in 2004, forcing Western countries, who couldn’t compete on price, out of business. Eventually, China instituted a major price increase on these vital ingredients

In 2005, Chinese firms allegedly created an artificial shortage of vitamin C in the U.S. by restricting production and exports. A class action suit, with overwhelming evidence of collusion presented at trial, resulted in an eight-year battle that found Chinese companies guilty of conspiring to fix prices. China was ordered to pay $162 million in damages to U.S. firms. The Chinese government, which has investigated U.S.-based companies for antitrust violations in the sale of drugs in China, appealed the decision under the pretext that the U.S. was interfering with China’s sovereignty and its laws that set minimum export prices and production targets.

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How Palestinian Schoolbooks Indoctrinate Students Against Israel Peace with the Jews is not an option. David Bedein

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272465/how-palestinian-schoolbooks-indoctrinate-students-david-bedein

The think tank that I run, the Center for Near East Policy Research, has completed a four-year research activity in which all 364 schoolbooks for grades 1-12 that were published by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the years 2013-2018 were examined. The chief researcher whom we hired to examine the texts used by the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools was Dr. Arnon Groiss, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies. The goal of this research project was to check the Palestinian attitude toward the Israeli-Jewish “other” and to the possibility of solving the war with the “other” in a peaceful manner, in the spirit of the peace agreements known as “the Oslo Accords” that were signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993-1995. The project yielded three studies which demonstrate that Palestinian students are learning that a peaceful resolution of the war with Israel is not an option. Instead, the theme that runs through the PA curriculum is that “Palestine” must be liberated from “Zionist occupation” by way of an armed struggle titled “Revolution [Thawrah],” which involves terrorist actions styled as “self-sacrificing operations [‘amaliyyat Fidaiyyah].”

You can see this in the context in a PA schoolbook reference in one of the books to the “1972 Munich operation” in which 11 members of the Israeli team at the Olympic Games were massacred (History Studies, Grade 11). Those who carry out such actions are called “self-sacrificing ones [Fidais]” and those among the liberation struggle are called on to liberate the Muslim holy place of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and removing it from the Jews’ sway.

Palestinian pupils are taught that “struggle for liberation” is not limited to the areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but rather the whole country from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, as Zionist occupation is said to have started in 1948 in what is termed “the Catastrophe [Nakbah]”, and not in 1967. Israel’s pre-1967 territory is termed “the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1948” (Management and Economics, Grade 11). Pre-1967 Israel is never presented as a legitimate sovereign state nor does it appear on the map where it is replaced in its entirety by “Palestine.”

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Trump Rallies Nation For Border Wall The only option to halt the illegal alien invasion.Matthew Vadum

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272497/trump-rallies-nation-border-wall-matthew-vadum

President Trump took rhetorical aim at his enemies as he delivered his first-ever prime time address from the Oval Office last night in a bold attempt to rally the country in favor of building a wall on the porous U.S.-Mexico border, his signature campaign promise.

In a live address Trump made a succinct case for a border wall on national security, economic, law and order, and humanitarian grounds.

The wall is needed “because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border,” Trump said at the beginning of his oration.

“Every day, Customs and Border Patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country. We are out of space to hold them, and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country.”

“In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records – including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings,” the president said.

“Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don’t act right now.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) immediately hailed the speech and attacked wall opponents.

“This is the most presidential I’ve seen President Trump,” Graham said on Fox News Channel. “It was compelling and everything he said was true.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians: While Abbas and Hamas were Hurling Insults at Each Other… by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13519/abbas-hamas-palestinians-syria

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria says that according to its research, there are at least 1,711 Palestinians being held in Syrian prisons.

The plight of the Palestinians in Syria is not difficult to fathom. What is difficult to fathom is: Where are the international media when those Palestinians are being brutalized?

One can make up excuses for the apathy of the international community toward the atrocities the Palestinians are facing in Syria. However, the indifference of Palestinian leaders to the suffering of their own people is harder to justify.

As the reports about the Palestinian victims were emerging, Abbas was in Cairo socializing with famous Egyptian actors and actresses.

It has been another tragic year for Palestinians living in Syria, but the international community, including pro-Palestinian advocacy groups and mainstream media in the West, seem to have missed the misery.

The latest reports from Syria reveal that 82 Palestinians have died as a result of brutal torture in prisons run by the Syrian government in 2018. The report states that a total of 556 Palestinians have been tortured to death while being held in various Syrian prisons the past few years.

According to the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS), a human rights watchdog organization that was established to monitor the situation of Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria, the real number of the Palestinians tortured to death could be higher: those are just the ones they know about; the Syrian authorities do not provide any details about detainees. In addition, AGPS pointed out, the families of the victims are afraid to announce the deaths of their sons and daughters for fear of being targeted by the Syrian authorities.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Scolds Europe by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13518/turkey-scolds-europe

“It is… futile… to discuss Islam using geographical or cultural adjectives, such as European Islam, French Islam, moderate Islam, etc.” — Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet.

The Diyanet does not even recognize Judaism and Christianity as authentic faiths — as is immediately apparent on its official website. In the Diyanet’s interpretation of the verse [Quran, Al-Baqarah 140], the religious figures whom Jews believe to be their prophets, and the religion of Jesus, all originated with Islam: “Ibrahim was neither Jewish nor Christian. He was a Hanafi Muslim… It is the religion of Tawhid [oneness of Allah] that Allah sent to humanity from the very beginning [of time] and that is the most suitable for human nature. So it is completely contrary to facts to claim that [the prophets] were Jewish or Christian…”

How ironic that this is the same Erbaş who claimed at the conference in Cologne that the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… threaten European multiculturalism,” while the Diyanet is responsible for decrees that do not allow for the slightest bit of multiculturalism in Turkey. In fact, all religious and ethnic minorities in Turkey are persecuted with the blessing of the Diyanet.

The Diyanet’s president’s recent rant against Europe — from a podium in Cologne, no less — was disingenuous, false and a perfect example of projection. It is European liberalism that is under assault, not the other way around.

At a recent conference in Cologne on the future of Europe’s Muslims, Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, railed against what he called the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… [that] threaten European multiculturalism.”

In his keynote address to the conference, hosted by Turkey’s main Islamic body in Germany, DITIB — based in the Cologne Central Mosque, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated during a visit to Germany in September — Erbaş declared:

“… racism, social exclusion… xenophobia, attacks against mosques… [and] discriminatory discourse and actions disregard human life and honor… restrict [Muslims’] rights, make social and cultural institutions dysfunctional and harm the common morality and conscience of humanity.”

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A Century of Disorder Srdja Trifkovic

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2019/January/44/1/magazine/article/10845926/

The Paris Peace Conference opened at the Palace of Versailles 100 years ago (January 18, 1919). It was the most ambitious gathering of its kind in history: Leaders and diplomats of 27 nations convened to shape the future, a mere ten weeks after the Armistice. Far from reestablishing order in Europe and the world after over four years of unprecedented carnage and destruction, however, it produced a flawed treaty that contained the seeds of another, even more destructive war a generation later.

A major weakness of the Versailles system was that two great European powers were not present. Germany and her allies were excluded until after the details of all the peace treaties had been agreed upon by the Big Four—France, Britain, the United States, and Italy—and presented as faits accomplis to each of them separately. Russia was not invited because the Bolsheviks had signed their separate peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.

Brest-Litovsk was an important precursor of Versailles. Ludendorff’s generals had formulated extremely harsh terms that were seen as excessive even by the German civilian negotiators. This convinced the Entente powers that no reasonable agreement could be reached with Germany, and that they had to fight for an outright victory. By imposing a Carthaginian peace on Russia, the Germans ensured that they could not count on anyone’s lenience when things went wrong for them. When they later complained that Versailles was too harsh, the Allies could point out that it was in fact far less brutal than the terms imposed on Russia.

When the German army finally gave up in 1918 (the stab-in-the-back myth notwithstanding), what with the Kaiser abdicating and the Armistice signed, many Germans hoped that they would be treated as Bourbon France was treated in Vienna in 1815, where Talleyrand was a key player. This was not to be. Germany’s egregious behavior before and during the war, including the execution of thousands of French and Belgian civilians, the introduction of poison gas, unrestricted submarine warfare, and the comprehensive destruction of occupied areas in the east and west alike, made a peace of reconciliation politically impossible.

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On ‘Stupid’ Emergency Laws By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on January 9th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-stupid-emergency-laws/

I’m getting to be a bit of an old dog to learn many new tricks, but maybe some day I’ll learn not to be flip when the situation calls for something more thoughtful.

This morning, I was interviewed by Fox News’s Bill Hemmer about what to expect from President Trump’s speech tonight and, in particular, whether the president could legitimately declare a national emergency in order to rationalize the reallocation of Defense Department funds for the construction on the southern border of a “wall” — or, at least, some kind of physical barrier (the semantics of which are of more interest to the Beltway’s posturing antagonists than they are to me — if I may be flip about it).

I don’t think the president should do this because it is bad policy (I’ll come to why); and I hope he won’t do it because it would be smarter to try to convince more of the public that he has a good case, which would put pressure on Congress to address the problem. But that said, I do not doubt that federal law empowers the president to declare a national emergency and reprogram funds to construct civil-defense projects the president deems essential to national defense. (See, e.g., Section 2293 of Title 33, U.S. Code.)

Speaking with one of the producers as commonly happens before these interviews, I glibly opined described as “stupid” this and other laws strewn through the federal code that authorize executive action on the president’s unilateral determination that action is required.