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Aussie Supreme Court Judge: We’re Under Attack by Muslim Men Who Want to Impose Sharia Law Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 18th, 2018

The thing that must never be mentioned is being mentioned. Again.

Australia has been “under attack” from a group of Muslim men wanting “to kill as many unbelievers as they can” for about 15 years, a Supreme Court judge has said.

Justice Desmond Fagan made the comments while sentencing Tamim Khaja, 20, who pleaded guilty in October to planning and preparing a terrorist attack two years ago.

The then 18-year-old was arrested while preparing for a lone wolf massacre, either at the US embassy in Sydney, an Army barracks in western Sydney, or at a court complex at Parramatta.

Counsel for the defendant, Ian Temby QC, tendered to the court a list of recent sentences handed down to other men who had been convicted of terror offences.

In response, Justice Fagan told the court that Australia had “been under attack for 15 years by about 40 Muslim men, to kill as many unbelievers as they can and impose Sharia law.”

Sitting at Sydney West Trial Courts at Parramatta, Justice Fagan referred to verses in the Koran which he said described the duty of “a Muslim to wage Jihad”.

All true. And absolutely embargoed.

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Review: John Marshall, a Man ‘Without Precedent’ A lifelong Federalist, the Supreme Court chief justice served besides presidents who saw him as an enemy of their values. Fergus M. Bordewich reviews ‘Without Precedent’ by Joel Richard Paul.

Posted By on February 18th, 2018

No man did more to shape the judicial landscape of America than John Marshall, who led the Supreme Court for more than three decades and hand-crafted scores of decisions that affect us still today. When he was appointed chief justice in 1801, the court was an orphan branch of government with little authority, holding its sessions in spare committee rooms and boarding houses. Marshall’s tenure would transform it.

In “Without Precedent,” Joel Richard Paul, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings Law School in San Francisco, has crafted a scholarly but highly readable and often entertaining chronicle that embeds Marshall among the leading lights of the nation’s founding generation, humanizing him along the way.

Marshall’s modest origins hardly hinted at the illustrious career that was in store. Born in 1755, the future chief justice grew up on what was then the Virginia frontier, the eldest of 15 children who lived packed into a two-room log cabin. His father worked as a farmer and surveyor. In contrast to the tutored sons of Virginia’s elite, young John was largely self-taught. He received only a single year of formal education and later six weeks of training in the law under the eminent legal teacher George Wythe.

As a rifleman during the Revolutionary War, Marshall endured the horrific winter at Valley Forge, where he came to know George Washington. Washington sensed Marshall’s natural intellect and appointed him a military judge advocate. After the war, Marshall established a law practice in Richmond and was elected to the Virginia legislature, where he soon became the star of its Federalist minority.

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Atmospheric science 50 years later By Anthony J. Sadar

Posted By on February 18th, 2018

The climate of the atmospheric science field has changed dramatically over the past few decades. The “weather,” once considered a safe topic of conversation in polite company, has morphed into the subject of heated socio-political debate. Besides scientists, there are celebrities, politicians, pundits, and pontiffs all contributing to the meteorological mayhem.

Fifty years ago, when the climate was not so controversial, I recorded my first weather observation. On February 18, 1968, I noted winds from my homemade instrument perched in a tree outside my bedroom window. I recorded weather conditions several times each day almost without fail from that time on when I was in eighth grade until I went off to college, getting my undergraduate degree in meteorology from Penn State in 1976.

From my first assignment in the profession as a weather observer at a remote site in Alaska, 160 miles above the Arctic Circle, to work as an air pollution meteorologist in private consulting and government service, a lot has changed since 1968.

Increasing computer power and computational rapidity, innovative satellite and radar technology, refinement and deployment of weather sensors, and the like tremendously expanded meteorological capabilities. Understanding and concomitant forecasting of atmospheric conditions reached new heights to where confidence in our ability to accurately predict the future has quickly grown, perhaps too hastily.

Throughout the decades, experiencing the downs and ups of global temperatures and its enthusiastic publicists, I learned several important lessons.

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Mueller indictments still miss the mark on Trump-Russia collusion By Jonathan Turley,

Posted By on February 18th, 2018

Lewis Carroll once wrote in praise of adjectives, saying that “adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs.” That is certainly true with the latest indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller of 13 Russians for interfering with the 2016 presidential election. For the White House, the entire report comes down to a single adjective. Let’s see if you can spot it: The Russian defendants “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

Despite a 37-page indictment with a long narrative on a coordinated Russian campaign of interference, the most newsworthy fact comes from the carefully placed adjective “unwitting.” It confirms that the special counsel has found no knowing coordination or collusion between these hackers and Trump officials. The indictment names 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities in alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. It describes a coordinated effort by Russians, including the shadowy Internet Research Agency, to wage “information warfare” against the United States.
The charges themselves are not particularly novel or exotic. They involve identity fraud, wire fraud and other conventional charges. However, the context is anything but conventional. This is the largest indictment of a foreign effort to interfere with our elections, and the clear import is that the hand of the Russian government was behind this effort. Moreover, it is clear that the Russians were acting to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

While the indictment is historic, it is hardly a surprise. Few people were questioning the Russian interference with and hacking of the election. Both Democratic and Republican leaders were in agreement on this fact, as were all of the administration’s top intelligence figures. The one hold-out seemed to be the president himself. He routinely referred to the “fake news” of the Russian investigation.

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Gorka Offers ‘Tip’ to Mueller: If You Want To Actually Put People in Prison, Start With Hillary by Joseph A. Wulfsohn

Posted By on February 18th, 2018

On Friday night, Dr. Sebastian Gorka gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller some unsolicited advice regarding his ongoing investigation.The former deputy assistant to President Trump and now Fox News contributor insisted that “nothing’s going to happen” as a result of the recent indictments of 13 Russian nationals because they’re already in Russia and “we can’t extradite them.”

Well, Gorka came up with an alternative for the special counsel.

“I’ve got a tip for Robert Mueller,” Gorka said. “Some other people messed with our elections, and they’re right here in America. It’s Hillary Clinton. There’s the DNC. There’s Fusion GPS. And there’s Hillary’s lawyer. They messed with the election. They stole the candidacy from Bernie Sanders and then they gave false information to a FISA court. So Mr. Mueller, if you want to actually put some people in prison, start with the Americans that perverted our election here in America.”

“Well said,” Sean Hannity reacted.

Fox News contributor Sara Carter piled on with the politicization of the Justice Department, citing FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as well as former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, accusing them of “having an agenda.”

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Nonie Darwish: Is that it?

Posted By on February 18th, 2018

Thirteen people living in Russia were indicted today by the Department of Justice for conspiring to impact our elections, apparently over the Internet. No link to any American citizen and no impact on elections were found. Is that it?

When the real scandal was still being uncovered by the Nunes Memo, James Comey said “That’s it?” Now it is we the people who are saying “Is that it?” regarding the Russia collusion scandal.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions must have been happy today, having recused himself from the Russia investigation, when he left the job of reporting to the American people on “the greatest collusion scandal in American history” to his Deputy Rod Rosenstein.

Is that all that has been found in the “Russia collusion investigation,” which put our country, our President and political system in non-stop daily political turmoil for close to two years? If that is all, thirteen Russians on the Internet, the American people should be really more than disappointed. Is that a good reason for our federal law enforcement to put our whole system on hold, keep our administration hostage under a cloud of suspicion while the media was having daily field-day assault and hate speech against our “treasonous” President? This did not just hurt Trump, but it hurt our country, our priorities, our ability to fix what is necessary and our reputation in the eyes of the world.

If that’s all they have on this supposed scandal, the American people should feel scammed and cheated with the fake news, not only from the media, but worse, promoted by US law enforcement, which leaked information (by Comey) to get this investigation started by a special counsel.

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Is There an Obstruction Case against President Trump? The justice department’s office of legal counsel should answer the question. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on February 17th, 2018

It has become more urgent to ask: Why is there a special counsel in the Russia investigation? At this point, that question should be put to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — in the federal government, it’s the lawyers’ lawyer. To get down to brass tacks: May the president of the United States be charged with obstruction based on non-criminal discretionary acts that are unquestionably within his constitutional authority as chief executive?

Readers of these columns may recall that I opposed the appointment of a special counsel and have argued that the appointment was illegitimate. This has nothing to do with Robert Mueller, who has had a distinguished law-enforcement career for which he is justly admired. It has to do with first principles and clear regulations. As a matter of principle, the law-enforcement arm of government must operate on a presumption of innocence. Therefore, in this country, a prosecutor should be assigned only if there is strong evidence that a crime has been committed; in the absence of such evidence, a prosecutor should never be assigned to investigate whether an American may have committed some unknown crime.

This, as we’ve repeatedly observed, is reflected in the regulations that control when the Justice Department may appoint a special counsel. The question should never come up unless there is some “criminal investigation or prosecution” that creates a conflict of interest for Justice Department leadership. A special counsel may be appointed only for purposes of this “criminal investigation or prosecution.” In the absence of strong evidence of a crime, there is no basis for a criminal investigation or prosecution.

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History Lessons from Years Under Islamism by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on February 17th, 2018

My father’s generation in Iran lived in an environment in which the Islamist party of the country’s clergy cunningly depicted themselves as intending no harm, supportive of the people, and not interested in power. So, before the revolution, many Iranians did not think that Khomeini’s party would be committing the atrocities that they are committing now or that they would have such an unrelenting hunger for power. Instead, during this time, the country thought it was on a smooth path towards democracy, with no expectation of ever returning to a barbaric era. Even the then-US President Jimmy Carter viewed Khomeini as a good religious holy man.

Iranians did not just submit to these new laws; they rose up in protest. This uprising was met with torture, rape, and death. With the regime eager to wipe any who dared to resist, the people had no choice but to surrender. Everyone’s daily activities were now under the scrutiny of the Islamists.

Many will still think it is impossible for something like this to happen in their country. What they fail to understand is that Iran is an example of exactly how successful this meticulous grab for power can be. Islamists in other countries including the West are pursuing the same techniques on the path to seizing power. It is a quiet, and subtle process, until the moment you wake up with no rights, a culture of fear, and no promise that you will live in freedom or even to see the next day.

In Iran, my generation, the first after Islamism came to power, is called the Burnt Generation (Persian: Nasl-e Sukhteh). Our generation earned this name for having to endure the brutality of the Islamist and theocratic regime from the time we were born, to adulthood. This brutality included the regime’s merciless efforts, such as mass executions, to establish its power, impose its barbaric and restrictive rules, and brainwash children and indoctrinate the younger generation with its extremist ideology through various methods including elementary schools, universities, state-controlled media outlets, imams and local mosques, and promoting chants such as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.

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What Can’t Be Debated on Campus Pilloried for her politically incorrect views, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax asks if it’s still possible to have substantive arguments about divisive issues.

Posted By on February 17th, 2018

There is a lot of abstract talk these days on American college campuses about free speech and the values of free inquiry, with lip service paid to expansive notions of free expression and the marketplace of ideas. What I’ve learned through my recent experience of writing a controversial op-ed is that most of this talk is not worth much. It is only when people are confronted with speech they don’t like that we see whether these abstractions are real to them.

The op-ed, which I co-authored with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego Law School, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Aug. 9 under the headline, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture.” It began by listing some of the ills afflicting American society:

Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.

We then discussed the “cultural script”—a list of behavioral norms—that was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s:

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

These norms defined a concept of adult responsibility that was, we wrote, “a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains and social coherence of that period.” The fact that the “bourgeois culture” these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s, we argued, largely explains today’s social pathologies—and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies.

In what became the most controversial passage, we pointed out that some cultures are less suited to preparing people to be productive citizens in a modern technological society, and we gave examples:

The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.

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Review: Alone at the Summit Raised on an Idaho mountain by survivalists who kept her out of school, the author went on to earn a Ph.D. at Cambridge. Susan Wise Bauer reviews ‘Educated: A Memoir’ by Tara Westover. By Susan Wise Bauer

Posted By on February 17th, 2018

“Perhaps I’m simply hoping to find an answer that doesn’t exist—why some learners latch onto knowledge thirstily while others don’t; why a child with every opportunity for learning turns away in boredom, while another with nothing but an encyclopedia and the Book of Mormon catapults into the Ivy League. Without ever meaning to, “Educated” suggests something startling: Our children’s intellectual achievement may have almost nothing to do with the opportunities we provide them, and everything to do with some inborn drive that we can neither influence nor create. ”

After growing up with a bipolar survivalist father, a damaged and treacherous mother, and an unstable, abusive older brother, Tara Westover finally developed the inner resources to walk away and adopt a new life.

Raised with absolutely no schooling until age 17, Tara Westover earned a scholarship to Cambridge University and a Ph.D in intellectual history and political thought.

These two stories are interwoven throughout “Educated,” Ms. Westover’s new memoir.

The author grows up on an Idaho mountain, one of seven children given no vaccinations or schooling (four of them don’t even have birth certificates). Her father claims to be a prophet, but sinks slowly into out-and-out mental illness—stockpiling ammunition, hoarding food and awaiting imminent apocalypse. Her mother suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and never returns to normal functioning: Sometimes she protects young Tara from her violent older brother Shawn; sometimes she ignores Shawn’s attacks.

An occasional voice whispers to the author that this world is not normal—one of her grandmothers; a boy she meets in the nearby small town; her brother Tyler, who leaves home when she is 10. And so she makes her first effort to step outside of her parental realm, by telling her father that she wants to go to school. His rejection of this request is simple: “In this family, we obey the commandments of the Lord. You remember Jacob and Esau?”
Educated: A Memoir

By Tara Westover

Random House, 334 pages, $28

But Tara, like Tyler and another of her brothers (Richard, who hides behind the sofa to read the encyclopedia through from beginning to end), is irresistibly drawn toward learning. Dodging her father’s rages, alternately encouraged and slapped down by her mother, she teaches herself enough math and grammar by age 18 to enroll at Brigham Young University. Championed by one of her BYU professors, she is eventually admitted to a study-abroad program at Cambridge. The professor who directs her reading there is so impressed by her abilities (“pure gold,” he calls her) that he helps her apply to graduate school after she finishes BYU; Cambridge accepts her to read for a doctorate.

Meanwhile, her family life grows more erratic and terrifying. A visit home to Idaho ends with Shawn threatening to kill Tara with a knife, and Tara fleeing in a borrowed car, leaving her belongings behind. But both parents insist, afterward, that the horrific scene never happened: CONTINUE AT SITE