BOOKS Comments turned off

Becoming Michelle Obama By Jeannie DeAngelis

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

In time for Thanksgiving 2018, Michelle Obama’s memoir is due for release. The book, which should be entitled Enjoying a Bigger Piece of Your Pie, will instead be titled Becoming.

According to the former FLOTUS, the “highly anticipated” tome details what Michelle O calls a “deeply personal experience.” And well it should, because she and her world-renowned author husband reached a hefty $65-million two-book deal with Penguin Random House – a formidable amount of wealth that neither Shelly nor Barry is likely to be spreading around anytime soon.

Due to be published in 24 languages, rumor has it that Michelle’s book will have global appeal, which most certainly puts Becoming in the literature category of contenders for the next Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking of Nobel Peace Prizes, husband Barack, whose half of the book deal is due out in 2019, will take Becoming on an international book tour, where he’ll use his wife’s book as an excuse to promote himself as the ultimate source of all wisdom and truth.

Just for the record, this is not Mrs. Obama’s first crack at authorship. When the former first lady took up organic gardening on 1,500 square feet of White House lawn, that agricultural exploit resulted in a book titled American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen and Gardens Across America.

In a statement from the CEO of Penguin Random House, Markus Dohle, this new book “will stretch the confines of a traditional former first-lady memoir the same way Obama’s official portrait for the Smithsonian did.” About the anticipated bestseller, Dohle elaborated, “‘Becoming’ is an unusually intimate reckoning from a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations – and whose story inspires us to do the same.”

Recently, it was Mrs. Obama who observed that in the movie Black Panther, “young people … finally [got to] see superheroes that look like them on the big screen.” Therefore, if all goes according to plan, the cover jacket portrait of Becoming will accomplish a similar end.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Transgender doctrine: Absurd premise, deadly results By Robert Arvay

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

An axiom is a truth nobody can prove. For example, everyone knows that one equals one, but there is no formal proof. However, when one tries to do arithmetic by ignoring that axiom and, say, letting one equal two, then very quickly the math descends into chaos and absurdity. There is no getting around an axiom, even though one cannot prove it.

A similar principle applies to the social sciences. It was an accepted axiom of society that men are men and women are women. No longer. That axiom has been rejected by some elements of society, and the absurd consequences are becoming more apparent all the time.

The late Betty Friedan, a so-called pioneer of the radical feminist movement, once said the only difference between men and women is biological “packaging” – that is to say superficial appearance. It would follow that by changing one’s external appearance, one can change his sex. Liberals accept this as an axiom.

Science clearly refutes this, but radical leftists, and even some conservatives on the more libertarian side, manage to ignore the science, despite growing evidence that the transgender doctrine is harmful to individuals and to society in general.

The science says maleness and femaleness are the two necessary and complementary halves of the human species. They have different functions that serve each other. Morally speaking, the sexes are equal but not equivalent, and that seems to be a point of major confusion to liberals.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Schiff Obstruction By Roger Kimball

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

Readers of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit will recall the philosopher’s withering comments about “the dogmatism of mere assertion” which yields naught but an empty and deceptive feeling: self-certitude.

I thought about Hegel’s comments this morning when looking through the Democrats’ attempted rebuttal of the memo released earlier this month by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.

It is interesting to compare the two memos, both as rhetorical artifacts and as substantive contributions to the debate over possible “Russian collusion” in the 2016 presidential election. Even a comparison of their physical appearance is revealing. Let’s start there.

The Republicans’ memo, overseen by Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is a four-and-a-half-page précis of findings from an ongoing oversight investigation into the behavior of the FBI and Department of Justice during the 2016 election cycle. It is prefaced by a brief letter from presidential counsel Donald McGahn to Congressman Nunes laying out the rationale for declassifying the memo and releasing it to the public. Each page of the memo is marked “UNCLASSIFIED” and the legend “TOP SECRET NOFORN” (for “no foreign nationals”) on each page is struck through with a heavy black stroke. Otherwise it is clean.

The Democrats’ memo, overseen by ranking minority member Adam Schiff, spills on to a tenth page. It is probably only about a half again as long as the Republicans’ memo, however, because—in addition to bearing the “Unclassified” stamps and strike-throughs of the “top secret” advisories—its text is littered with redactions: many passages of the text are blotted out. Were those redactions required by the FBI? By the executive branch? It was not said. Nor was it said why the Democrats did not take the redactions on board and present a clean text. I do not know the answer. My suspicion is that they wanted the blocks of black to stand as mute, non-specific but nonetheless graphically incriminating witnesses to their allegations.

For example, much of the memo deals with Carter Page, the American businessman who briefly served as a volunteer foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign. In a section of the memo headed “Page’s Connections to Russian Government and Intelligence Officials” we encounter the following: “As DOJ described in detail to the Court, Page had an extensive record as”—as what? We don’t know. The juicy news is submerged beneath a minatory stroke of black.

Similarly, after informing us that a “Russian intelligence officer targeted Page for recruitment”—eyebrow raising, what?—we read that “Page showed”—another black stroke, starving knowledge but inflaming the imagination. What did Page show? Interest? Did he promise to smuggle the nuclear launch codes into Moscow? We don’t know. But we can think the worst.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Salaries of a quarter-million federal workers kept secret: By Julia Limitone VIDEO

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

Open the Books CEO Andrew Andrzejewski on the push for more transparency on federal government workers’ pay.

The government is keeping the salary information of more than 250,000 employees secret, according to Andrew Andrzejewski, the CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, a website that tracks government spending.

Over the past 11 years, OpenTheBooks has compiled the salaries and bonuses of 2 million federal government workers and posted them online by zip code.

But this year the government concealed the salaries of 255,000 employees, Andrzejewski said.

“It’s one in five federal bureaucrats,” Andrzejewski told Stuart Varney on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” “Their salaries are now redacted, and we estimate that the total payroll funded by the American taxpayer now hidden in the swamp is $20 billion.”

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Victimhood Culture Only Getting Worse, Professor Warns By Toni Airaksinen

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

Two sociology professors have published a new book on how victimhood culture — as evidenced by safe spaces, speech restrictions, and “microaggression” hype — is causing problems for students, faculty, and staff alike.

Historically, students learned to “hold their head up high” in response to insult, the book argues. But now, students learn to interpret everything from insults to compliments through the lens of microaggression theory. Protests, conflict, and safe spaces ensue. The Rise of Victimhood Culture — authored by Bradley Campbell, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and Jason Manning, who teaches at West Virginia University — presents the harrowing details of what happened, and what’s next.

In an interview with PJ Media, Manning warns that victimhood culture “will get worse before it gets better.” He says that elite campus culture moves upstream into the workplace, yet it also moves downstream towards youth, and everyone should be concerned. While professors often get blamed for teaching students victimhood culture, this isn’t always the case, argues Manning. In fact, many freshmen arrive with a fully developed understanding of “social justice,” due in part to its creep into TV and internet culture.

“It’s also being taught to younger and younger children in high schools and elementary schools,” Manning pointed out, citing how a high-school recently cancelled its production of the Hunchback of Notre Dame because a white student landed the lead role.

This isn’t without consequence, warns Manning. As students increasingly fight wrongthink with protests and petitions, “more professors will be demonized for being insufficiently woke.”

“In some of the big cases we’ve seen — at Yale, at Evergreen — the administration seemed to throw the faculty under the bus and side with the shrieking activists. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that administrators elsewhere will have better judgment,” he added.

Case in point: just last week, PJ Media reported the case of Eric Triffin, who since 1986 has taught public health at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). Despite successfully teaching for 30-plus years without complaint, Triffin was suspended after he accidently said the n-word in class while singing a song a student was playing for the class.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Your Tax Dollars Are Helping to Pay for a Clown College in Nancy Pelosi’s District By John Ellis see note please

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

As you file your taxes, try not to think too hard about the revelation that your hard-earned money is helping someone achieve their dream of becoming a clown. Because, apparently becoming a clown requires going to college, and going to college requires taxpayers footing the bill. Next time you’re at the circus, demand a “thank you” from a clown.

CNS News provides more information about the bad news regarding the gross misuse of our taxes: “The federal government is funding a clown school located in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based congressional district that has classes and workshops on ‘Precision Idiocy’ and how to act like a ‘Buffoon,'” CNS wrote. “The school, which is called the ‘Clown Conservatory’ and is part of the nonprofit Circus Center, received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that runs from June 2017 through May 2018.” Clown Conservatory claims to be “the United States’ only professional training program for clowns and physical comedians.”

The Clown Conservatory is split into two sessions over 24 weeks. Tuition is $6,000. While much cheaper than many colleges, I’m not sure if the return on investment is quite the same.

Although, I may not be treating the Clown Conservatory fairly. As my editor pointed out, I may just be jealous. It’s true that I have taken mime classes and had to pay for them out of my pocket; I received no federal financial aid to help pay for my mime classes. So, in the issue of full disclosure, I may simply be bitter that I’m now having to pay for other people’s mime classes via my tax dollars. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

OH NO CANADA! : DAVID SOLWAY

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

After Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent diplomatic visit to India, a farcical event in which Trudeau earned the unstinted mockery of the international press, we are left rubbing our eyes in disbelief — or, for those who know the man, total belief. This is our political version of Mr. Dressup, a man who imagines that trade talks and inter-governmental relations can be conducted with fancy dress and hip-thrusting dance. Who invites a convicted terrorist, Jaspal Atwal, a Sikh extremist who once tried to assassinate an Indian diplomat on a visit to Canada, to sit at the high table with his Indian counterparts — before blaming someone else for the blunder. A man who brings his own Indo-Canadian chef to the culinary ceremony, a snub to his hosts — before blaming some else for the gaffe. It’s no surprise that intelligent people have wondered what could ever have provoked a nation to favor such a person with a majority government.

Anyone with a modicum of common sense and a hint of political acumen knows that Justin Trudeau is an empty sherwani. Nonetheless, he enjoys considerable support among Canadians. Some are bedazzled by his dynastic star quality as the son of Canada’s most eccentric and charismatic Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (whose socialist, fiscal and immigration agenda set Canada on the downward spiral gathering momentum today). Others ignore Justin’s disastrous economic policies, which are plunging the country into generational debt, imposing a needless carbon tax, and raising taxes on farmers, doctors and small businesses — Trudeau claims that a “large percentage of small businesses are actually ways for wealthier Canadians to save on their taxes.” As they say, go figure. This is a man who desires to further restrict the speech of ordinary Canadians, whether by criminalizing “discriminatory” speech against transgenderism or by introducing anti-Islamophobia legislation, pandering to the least democratic elements in our country. It is no accident that he wanted to regulate Facebook conversations unfavorable to his party. His approval of the Chinese Communist regime, his push for gender equalization in his cabinet regardless of merit and his pro-Islamic sympathies have endeared him to “social justice” advocates, as has his egregious comment that Canada has no core identity, though he is doing all he can to empty Canada of whatever identity it can still be said to possess. As my wife Janice Fiamengo states in the Act!forCanada newsletter, “When you elect as national leader a photogenic substitute drama teacher with a soft voice and penchant for progressive slogans, this is what you get.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

New winds of tension between China and India by Francesco Sisci

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

As also reported by the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, in the past month there has been a significant increase in Chinese and Indian military deployments around the Doklam area, on the border between China and Bhutan, where last summer there was a two-month confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops. In that case, the Indians intervened because the Chinese were building a road in a disputed area between China and Bhutan, a country that has no diplomatic relations with Beijing but has a defense agreement with New Delhi.

At the same time as the article, the news appeared that the head of Indian diplomacy, Shri Vijay Gokhale, former ambassador to Beijing and fluent in Chinese, arrived in Beijing. The purpose of the mission, according to a dispatch from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, was «to build on the convergences between India and China and address differences on the basis of mutual respect and sensitivity to each other’s concerns, interests and aspirations».

On the one hand, the visit indicates a positive step forward in the midst of tensions. On the other hand, this meeting demonstrates that the level of tensions has risen to the point that there are frictions over «concerns, interests, and aspirations» of both countries.

Since the Doklam crisis, there have been significant developments in South Asia, around India. China has cemented relations with Nepal and expanded its ties with the Maldives so much as to push the archipelago, traditionally part of the Indian area of influence, to host bases for supplies for Chinese ships as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Finally, the Rohingya crisis in Burma is exacerbating social situation strains in Bangladesh, a burden also felt in neighboring India. Meanwhile, Bangladesh is increasingly attracted by the economic offers of Chinese investments.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FISA Abuses Are a Special Threat to Privacy and Due Process The standard for obtaining an intelligence surveillance warrant is lower than that in a criminal investigation. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

The House Democratic surveillance memo is out, and it should worry Americans who care about privacy and due process. The memo defends the conduct of the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation in obtaining a series of warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The Democrats argue that Christopher Steele, the British former spy who compiled the Trump “dossier” on which the government’s initial warrant application was grounded, was credible. They also claim the FISA court had the information it needed about the dossier’s provenance. And they do not dispute former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s acknowledgment that the FBI would not have sought a FISA order without the Steele dossier.

The most troubling issue is that the surveillance orders were obtained by withholding critical information about Mr. Steele from the FISA court. The court was not informed that Mr. Steele was personally opposed to Mr. Trump’s election, that his efforts were funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or that he was the source of media reports that the FBI said corroborated his dossier. These facts are essential to any judicial assessment of Mr. Steele’s veracity and the applications’ merits.

The FBI should have been especially wary of privately produced Russia-related dossiers. As the Washington Post and CNN reported in May 2017, Russian disinformation about Mrs. Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch evidently prompted former FBI Director James Comey to announce publicly the close of the investigation of the Clinton email server, for fear that the disinformation might be released and undermine the bureau’s credibility.

In addition, even assuming the dossier was accurate regarding Mr. Page, its allegations are thin. Mr. Page was said to have met in Moscow with Russian officials, who raised the potential for cooperation if Trump was elected; Mr. Page was noncommittal. The most significant claim—that those officials offered Mr. Page a bribe in the form of Russian business opportunities—suggests he was not a Russian agent. Existing operatives don’t need to be bribed.

There was no good reason to withhold from the FISA court any information regarding Mr. Steele, his anti-Trump biases, or the dossier’s origin as opposition research. The court operates in secret, so there was no danger of revealing intelligence sources and methods. The inescapable conclusion is that the information was withheld because the court would have been unlikely to issue the order if it knew the whole truth.

That’s a problem because following the rules and being absolutely candid with the court is even more essential in the FISA context than in ordinary criminal investigations. Congress enacted FISA in 1978 to create a judicial process through which counterintelligence surveillance could take place within the U.S., even when directed at American citizens, consistent with “this Nation’s commitment to privacy and individual rights.” CONTINUE AT SITE

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Supreme Court Deals Setback to Trump Immigration Policy on ‘Dreamers’ Justices won’t take up quick appeal of ruling that has blocked end of Obama program for young undocumented immigrantsBy Brent Kendall and Laura Meckler

Posted By on February 27th, 2018

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court dealt a setback to President Donald Trump’s immigration policy on Monday, declining to take up an administration appeal that sought a quick end to the Obama-era program protecting young, undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

The high court’s action, which effectively requires Mr. Trump to finish litigating in the lower courts first, means that hundreds of thousands of program recipients may continue to renew their protections while legal challenges continue, a process that could take another year or longer.

The court’s action also relieves pressure on Congress, which has struggled to find a legislative replacement for the program begun by former President Barack Obama.

In September, Mr. Trump announced that the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, would end on March 5. But two lower-court judges have issued injunctions blocking that plan for now and ordered administration officials to continue to process renewals, so Congress doesn’t face an imminent deadline.

The court’s action Monday was a rejection of an unusual request by the Justice Department, which had asked the justices to intervene now, even though appeals courts haven’t yet ruled on the cases.

The high court almost never grants such requests, but the department, citing time sensitivities, had argued the court should settle the issue without delay. That didn’t sway the justices, who turned down the request in a two-sentence order without recorded dissents.