ANGELO CODEVILLA’S FULL COLUMN ON TED CRUZ ****

Simultaneously, as if signals from a council of sachems had summoned them to the warpath, the Republican establishment’s warriors took after Ted Cruz. Pat Buchanan encapsulated this establishment: “… officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads [who] discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America.”
Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz

The establishmentarian drumbeat against Cruz has involved but a whiff of argument on policy, and a few twisted or out of context attributions. But it has consisted mostly of attacks on the man’s character. Fox News led the way with characterizations ranging from flip-flopper to “servile.”

Britt Hume, heretofore its resident adult, said that Cruz had “difficulty shaking hands with the truth.” The point in print, in the blogosphere, as well as on TV is: he’s not one of us, not of our kind, and hence unsuited for responsible office. This very vehemence ensures the attacks’ success. For sure, Cruz ain’t no part of the establishment. Whether that convinces voters to vote against Cruz or for him is another matter. What follows here is an overview of the written attacks, which reveal more about the attackers than they do about the target thereof.

The Wall Street Journal is the Republican establishment’s intellectual apex. This is what flows down from that hill.

“Establishment tribes beat drums against Ted Cruz” — the great Angelo Codevilla By David Goldman

Angelo Codevilla is the dean of conservative strategists, a senior member of the Reagan team during the 1980s, and the author of the best recent book on American security strategy. Like Ted Cruz, Prof. Codevilla rejects the false dichotomy of isolationism vs. neo-conservative interventionism: America is not out to remake the world in its own image, but to secure itself from foreign enemies. Sometimes that means using power abroad, and using a lot of it–but the criteria must be America’s self-interest.

In a new essay for Asia Times, Codevilla make short work of the Establishment counter-attack against Sen. Cruz, taking on the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, the Weekly Standard’s Lee Smith, the American Enterprise Institute’s Gary Schmitt, and other luminaries. It’s a must read. Some choice excerpts:

Simultaneously, as if signals from a council of sachems had summoned them to the warpath, the Republican establishment’s warriors took after Ted Cruz. Pat Buchanan encapsulated this establishment: “… officeholders past and present, donors, lobbyists, think-tankers angling for jobs, party hacks and talking heads [who] discuss how to frustrate the rising rebellion against what they have done to America.”

The establishmentarian drumbeat against Cruz has involved but a whiff of argument on policy, and a few twisted or out of context attributions. But it has consisted mostly of attacks on the man’s character. Fox News led the way with characterizations ranging from flip-flopper to “servile.”

State Pollution-Control Employee Busted for Advocating Against Pipeline By Walter Hudson

It’s not often that Minnesota governor Mark Dayton does something that deserves widespread praise. But the Democrat deserves kudos for his handling of a state pollution-control employee who has been caught abusing that position to advocate against a proposed pipeline project.

Scott Lucas works for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. A local paper exposed emails sent by Lucas regarding the pending Sandpiper crude oil pipeline. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

In one e-mail, Lucas sent a message including a link to an environmental report regarding another pipeline, saying it “could be a very useful tool for us to use when making our case against Sandpiper in this area of the state.” The e-mails were first reported by the Pioneer Press.

“Somebody in that position who’s playing an advocacy role with advocate organizations has really crossed the line of what their professional responsibilities are,” Dayton said Wednesday. “If they’re going to get into political advocacy, they should resign their position and run for the Legislature or go to work for one of the organizations that oppose the pipeline.”

Obama: Gun Proponents’ Suspicions, ‘Conspiracy’ Theories Just Part of American DNA By Bridget Johnson

President Obama scoffed at CNN host Anderson Cooper for questioning whether it was “fair” for him to brand pro-gun opponents as conspiracy theorists for fearing firearm registration or confiscation.

Obama was surrounded by people on both sides of the gun-control issue at a CNN townhall held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Mark Kelly, husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, asked the president “to explain, with 350 million guns in 65 million places, households from Key West to Alaska — 350 million objects in 65 million places — if the federal government wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that?”

Obama noted “this notion of a conspiracy out there, and it gets wrapped up in concerns about the federal government.”

“Now, there’s a long history of that. That’s in our DNA. The United States was born suspicious of some distant authority,” he said.

Cooper jumped in, “Is it fair to call it a conspiracy? I mean, there’s a lot of people who really believe this deeply — that they just don’t trust you.”

Trump, Muslim Immigration, and Terrorism By Raymond L. Richman

Candidate Donald Trump has called for the United States to bar all Muslims from entering the country until the nation’s leaders can “figure out what is going on”. Saying that “hatred” among many Muslims for Americans is “beyond comprehension,” Mr. Trump said in a statement that the United States needed to confront “where this hatred comes from and why…” “Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” Mr. Trump said.

According to the New York Times, “Repudiation of Mr. Trump’s remarks was swift and severe among religious groups and politicians from both parties. Mr. Trump is “unhinged,” said one Republican rival, former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, while another, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, called the ban “offensive and outlandish.” Hillary Clinton said the idea was “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive.” Organizations representing Jews, Christians, and those of other faiths quickly joined Muslims in denouncing Mr. Trump’s proposal. Even Pres. Obama joined in.

All seem to have forgotten that Muslims from many Mideast countries have participated in terrorist attacks in the U.S., attacks on U.S. passenger airplanes, and attacks in friendly countries like the Philippines and France. The Muslim terrorists involved in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Pakistan, Chechenia, and others with Muslim populations. America’s leaders ought to have figured out what’s been going on two decades ago.

NYPD to Settle Muslim Surveillance Lawsuits Under agreement, the agency must strengthen oversight of its surveillance practices, including adding a civilian attorney as a monitor By Pervaiz Shallwani

The New York Police Department must strengthen oversight of its surveillance practices as part of a settlement of two civil-rights lawsuits accusing the force of unfairly monitoring Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Under the settlement, filed in federal court Thursday, the police department agreed to changes that include reinstating an independent attorney to monitor surveillance by the NYPD’s intelligence unit—a role that was eliminated after 9/11.

The NYPD also agreed to several other changes in the surveillance rules, known as the Handschu guidelines, a set of policies initially put in place more than 30 years ago to make sure First Amendment rights aren’t violated during criminal probes.

The new guidelines include setting time limits for active investigations and putting in writing an existing NYPD policy that it is illegal to profile anyone solely on the basis of race or religion. The agreement also requires the NYPD to remove a controversial report on radicalization that has been on its website since 2007.
The long-running controversy illustrates the tension between law-enforcement agencies that say they must take steps to remain vigilant in an age of global terrorism, and civil-rights and other groups that say civil liberties shouldn’t be violated in the name of security.

Both the police department and plaintiffs lauded the settlement for protecting the religious and political rights of people in the city without hampering the ability of authorities to conduct terrorism investigations.

“We hope the NYPD’s reforms help make clear that effective policing can and must be achieved without unconstitutional religious profiling of Muslims or any other communities,” said Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Terrorism-Related Arrests Made in California and Texas Two refugees from Iraq charged with lying about terror affiliations By Devlin Barrett and Miriam Jordan

Two refugees from Iraq were arrested Thursday on separate charges that they lied to U.S. authorities about their alleged affiliations and activities with terror suspects.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, of Sacramento, Calif., was charged with making a false statement involving terrorism. He is due in court Friday, officials said.

“While he represented a potential safety threat, there is no indication that he planned any acts of terrorism in this country,’’ said Benjamin Wagner, the U.S. Attorney in Sacramento.

According to court filings, Mr. Al-Jayab is a Palestinian born in Iraq who came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee in 2012. Between October 2012 and November 2013, while living in Arizona and Wisconsin, he allegedly told others in online discussions that he planned to travel to Syria to fight for terror groups.

Then, in November 2013, he allegedly traveled to Syria and, according to his social media posts, said he was fighting in that country alongside terror organizations, including Ansar al-Islam. Authorities say he returned to the U.S. in early 2014 and has been living in Sacramento.

An IRS Retreat on Charity The agency pulls its proposal to sweep up small-donor records.

It’s not every day we can celebrate a less intrusive Internal Revenue Service. But charities and the people who support them will be happy to learn that the IRS has withdrawn its proposal to collect more donor information, including Social Security numbers.

In September the IRS and Treasury Department proposed to give charities the “option” of filing detailed reports on everyone who contributes more than $250 to a charity. The IRS was calling it “voluntary,” which in government means the agency hasn’t gotten around to requiring it yet. We reported on the legitimate fear that new reporting would be required of every nonprofit—including the conservative organizations that the IRS helped muzzle in the 2012 presidential election.

Amazingly enough, in this case the IRS appears to have listened to concerns from the taxpayers who pay their salaries. On Thursday the IRS said it is withdrawing its proposal after receiving “a substantial number of public comments.” Many of the comments “questioned the need for donee reporting, and many comments expressed significant concerns about donee organizations collecting and maintaining taxpayer identification numbers for purposes of the specific-use information return,” said the IRS. The legitimate anger of average citizens was amplified by stalwart IRS watchdogs like Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) on Capitol Hill.

Crayons Down, Kids. It’s Hillary Story Time Two new picture books depict Mrs. Clinton with a hagiographic glow that even kindergartners might find hard to swallow. By Meghan Cox Gurdon

Nuclear threats aside, North Korean political propaganda seems pretty silly to wised-up, postmodern American sophisticates. Who do these guys think they’re fooling, with their cheesy posters of happy children flocking around the knees of a benevolent Great, or Dear, or Current Leader? And surely only the brainwashed or the very young could ever swallow the regime’s steady supply of tales extolling the miraculous achievements of the Kim dynasts.

Yet perhaps we Americans are not entirely immune to this sort of thing, especially in an election year. Two new picture books put such a gloss on the life and career of the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president that book editors in Pyongyang could take a few tips from them. In the doctrine of these tales for children 4 to 8, not only has the mark of greatness been upon Hillary Clinton since her birth, but she has also been the liberator of her people—that is, of women.

Michelle Markel’s “ Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead” (HarperCollins) begins with an alarming account of the darkness that enfolded this land as recently as the 1950s, when, horrible to relate, “it was a man’s world. Only boys could grow up to have powerful jobs. Only boys had no ceilings on their dreams. Girls weren’t supposed to act smart, tough, or ambitious.”

The ‘Evangelical Revolution’ is an engine of support for Israel ByDr. Jürgen Bühler

Most Jews and Israelis see Evangelical support for Israel as an American phenomenon • Dr. Jürgen Bühler, CEO of International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, explains that it is now a worldwide affair • From Africa to South America to Asia, Israel can now count on Evangelical communities all over the globe for sympathy and support.

As we enter 2016, there is good news for Israel. True, the country is facing a wave of terror at home, growing criticism from Europe, and attempts to expand the boycott and de-legitimization of Israel on American campuses. But at the same time there also is growing support for Zionism in non-aligned countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In countries like China, El Salvador, Brazil, the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria and many other nations a real revolution is taking place, which not many Israelis are aware of it: an “Evangelical Revolution.”

The world has, according to estimates, more than half a billion evangelical Christians. In the past, this current has been linked mainly to the United States, but in the last two decades, the number of Evangelicals in the Southern Hemisphere has jumped dramatically.

For example, the Pew Institute’s research estimates that a fifth of evangelical Christians worldwide live in Asia – approximately 150 million people. This is a fact that the Israeli public ignores. For Israelis, evangelism is an American story, but the reality is completely different. One by one, residents of Asia, including millions in such hostile Islamic countries as Malaysia and Indonesia, adopt the evangelical Christian faith. Not only Asians are embracing evangelical Christianity: 14 percent of the residents of Africa – over 180 million people – and nearly 100 million people in Latin America are evangelical Christians. This revolution is sweeping the entire southern hemisphere.