http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369338/cuomo-still-prince-darkness-andrew-stiles New York’s governor has a long history of nasty behavior toward opponents. New York governor Andrew Cuomo recently berated conservatives — including pro-lifers, Second Amendment supporters, and gay-marriage opponents — as people who “have no place in the state of New York.” But Cuomo has a long history of behaving like a schoolyard bully. Just […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/369312/print Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers, and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance. Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369309/satan-state-house-jonah-goldberg The Constitution is powerless against Satan. Earlier this month, the state of Oklahoma received a proposal from New York–based Satanists to build near the state capitol a seven-foot-high statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed pagan idol. The Satanists’ letter boasted that “the statue will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/nuclear-deterrence-second-to-one?f=puball On November 8th, 2013, at Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia, Professor Mathew Kroenig of Georgetown University, explained that “there is no reason to believe that the U.S. nuclear arsenal somehow causes proliferation in other countries.” This is a startling statement because the assumption in much of the nuclear deterrent commentary is that US […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/democrats-failure-factories
Teachers unions supply the Democratic Party with money and foot soldiers. But if Democrats intend to make income inequality their issue in 2014 and 2016, they will have to give up their slavish devotion to these unions, which deny inner-city kids a shot at a quality education and an escape route from poverty.
A few Democrats, such as former Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have challenged union power, but not New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Anyone eyeing Cuomo as the backup candidate for president in 2016, in the event Hillary Clinton doesn’t run, needs to take a look at his failed record on school reform.
New Yorkers are fleeing the upstate region’s moribund economy and moving to states with more jobs, fewer taxes and job-killing regulations. But inner-city school kids in Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo aren’t going anywhere. Despite the phrase “no child left behind,” that’s exactly what they are: kids left behind. They are victims of Cuomo’s indifference to school failure and the greed of teachers unions.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hollywoods-muslim-lies/ In real life, terrorists are almost always Muslim. In the movie theater, they are anything but. America’s fictional secret agents, covert operatives and rogue cops who play by their own rules have spent more time battling Serbian terrorists than Muslim terrorists. Before September 11, 24′s Jack Bauer was fighting the international menace of Serbian […]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/obamas-middle-east-fantasies/
“With respect to Israel,” President Obama said in his interview this week to the New Yorker,
the interests of Israel in stability and security are actually very closely aligned with the interests of the Sunni states…. What’s preventing them from entering into even an informal alliance with at least normalized diplomatic relations is not that their interests are profoundly in conflict but the Palestinian issue, as well as a long history of anti-Semitism that’s developed over the course of decades there, and anti-Arab sentiment that’s increased inside of Israel based on seeing buses being blown up.
Obama meant, of course, an alliance against Shiite Iran. Indeed, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has referred several times to behind-the-scenes cooperation between Israel and Sunni Arab states against the Iranian threat. The catch is “behind the scenes”; Israel is still too much the regional pariah to bring these interactions out in the open.
Obama adduces the Palestinian issue and Arab anti-Semitism going back “decades” as the factors preventing an “informal alliance” and “diplomatic relations.” The implication is that these problems—along with Israeli “anti-Arab sentiment”—can be overcome. The administration, spearheaded by Secretary of State Kerry, has indeed thrown itself headlong into another round of the “Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”
The problems with Obama’s take on the matter, however, begin with the word “decades.”
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/01/19/pray-on-your-own-time-and-in-your-own-space/
I learned recently that Carleton University in the nation’s capital, Ottawa, following in the footsteps of other Canadian universities, has set aside a designated and enlarged prayer space, intended mainly for Muslim students who, as the Ottawa Citizen reports, “pray five times a day and for years have suggested that they need more room.” Otherwise, as president of the Muslim Student Association Mohamed Abdalla informs us, students end up praying in stairwells or libraries. That would clog up the works p.d.q., especially when convened five times a day.
Such accommodation, however, has no place in the public mandate of the academy’s parietal affairs, and Muslim students who proceed to foreground their faith in this disruptive manner should perhaps consider attending a Muslim university, or no university at all. The easing of the prayer crunch by constructing or expanding a designated venue, accepted by the author of the Citizen puff job as a prudent expedient, should not disguise the fact that public prayer (and in particular numerous prayer sessions punctuating the scholarly habitat) has no place in the Western university whatsoever.
I do not believe that Muslim students need more room. I believe that they need less mollycoddling and fewer concessions made in the name of their religious convictions. The university is a secular institution operating under an implicit code of academic conduct, which stipulates, inter alia, that classes be attended, that academic work proceed under rules of normative and respectable behavior, that examinations be held and properly invigilated, that modes of dress not be offensive, and that religious observances not interfere with a course of study. Allowing students to march five times a day to a prayer room in the midst of pursuing a concentrated program of academic activity, whether in the middle of a class or in the middle of a test or in the middle of a joint research project, does not seem an optimum means of following a university curriculum.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4647/saudi_columnist_says_number_of_ariel_sharon_s_victims_tiny_compared_with_victims_of_arab_rulers_and_terrorists
Saudi columnist says number of Ariel Sharon’s “victims” tiny compared with victims of Arab rulers and terrorists
To write this in the Saudi government daily is pretty remarkable and may surprise many readers that it was even allowed. His recognition of Israeli democracy is possibly more acute than in much Western media:
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is reporting that the Saudi government daily Okaz has published a remarkable piece of writing by a liberal Saudi columnist in which he tears in to the tyranny and terrorism of the Arab world, even going so far as to praise Israeli democracy.
The article was written pegging off the death of Ariel Sharon and contains the usual extreme attacks on him. However, it is the lengths to which he is prepared to go to condemn the Arab world that will be surprising to many people. The excerpts quoted below are from MEMRI’s translation from the original Arabic.
“…as we ponder the news of the death of the [former] Israeli prime minister [Ariel Sharon], we find that, despite the horrific acts of massacre he carried out against the Palestinians, the number of his Arab victims is nowhere near that of the number of Arabs who have been murdered by tyrannical Arab [rulers] or killed in suicide bombings carried out by Arab terrorist groups. This is the truth, whose shame will haunt us throughout history.”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304632204579339122175043430?mod=New_York_newsreel_7
Federal Prosecutors Demand Christie Re-Election Campaign, Republican Committee Documents
Federal prosecutors have demanded documents from Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election campaign and the New Jersey Republican State Committee, an attorney representing both entities said on Thursday.
The subpoenas were issued by Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey who is investigating the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge last September that have mushroomed into a political scandal for Mr. Christie and his administration.
The subpoenas for documents come after a previous round of subpoenas was issued to the campaign and many of the governor’s staff and associates by a legislative committee that is investigating the lane closures.
Mark Sheridan, an attorney at Patton Boggs LLP, which is representing the campaign and the Republican committee in connection with the legislative and federal investigations, confirmed the federal subpoenas, which are in addition to a subpoena that the campaign received from the legislative committee.
