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December 2015

ISIS NOT Contained: Foreign Fighters Have Doubled in Syria, Iraq This Year By Michael van der Galien

Although President Obama claimed last week that ISIS has been “contained,” the inconvenient truth is this:

The number of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria has more than doubled since last year to at least 27,000, a report by an intelligence consultancy said on Dec. 8, highlighting the global dimension of the conflict. The figures, compiled by the Soufan Group, indicate that efforts by countries around the world to stem the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria and blunt the appeal of violent organizations such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) appear to have made little impact.

In its report, the New York-based security consultancy says:

The foreign fighter phenomenon in Iraq and Syria is truly global. The Islamic State has seen success beyond the dreams of other terrorist groups that now appear conventional and even old-fashioned, such as Al-Qaeda. It has energized tens of thousands of people to join it, and inspired many more to support it.

Spoiled Crybullies Claim a Scalp at Yale By Michael Walsh

Remember the lecturer at Yale — formerly, a distinguished institution of higher learning and now a playpen for demented children — who warned students not to take Halloween costumes too seriously? Right. She’s gone:

A Yale lecturer who came under attack for challenging students to stand up for their right to decide what Halloween costumes to wear, even to the point of being offensive, has resigned from teaching at the college, the university said Monday.

The lecturer, Erika Christakis, an expert in early childhood education, wrote an email in October suggesting that there could be negative consequences to students ceding “implied control” over Halloween costumes to institutional forces. “I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious,” she wrote, “a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”

Forget Trump — What Really Should Be Done about Muslim Immigration By Roger L Simon

As half the world knows by now, Donald Trump has gone “Full Monty” on Muslim immigration, calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

That’s our Donald — never a master of understatement! (But he certainly knows how to make monkeys out of the media — kudos for that.)

Like most commentators, however, I don’t agree with him — I support the Constitution and its freedoms — but to deny we have a gigantic Muslim problem in this country and in the world is to be a troglodyte of epic proportions. Something has to be done, domestically and internationally, even if it’s not Donald’s “Full Monty.”

But since this is about immigration, let’s deal with the domestic side for a moment.

The source of the conundrum is not just Syrian refugees; it’s the entire Middle East. Almost all people visiting or immigrating from the area are potential jihadists, not to mention other Muslims across the world from Western Europe to Indonesia. This isn’t racial profiling — it’s reality. The husband and wife fanatics who wreaked havoc in San Bernardino did time in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both of which masquerade as allies. Despite what might seem like red flags in their backgrounds, the couple passed blithely into this country without incident.

Diversity: The Invention of a Concept Hardcover – by Peter Wood

Diversity: The Invention of a Concept February 25, 2003
by Peter Wood (Author)
Peter Wood traces the birth and evolution of diversity, illuminating how it came to sprawl across politics, law, education, business, entertainment, personal aspiration, religion and the arts as an encompassing claim about human identity.

The issue of affirmative action is now being revisited by the Supreme Court after evaluating the pros and cons of renewing it after 25 years. Read this book to see how it was conceived, legislated and implemented and what happened to some of the prominent challenges such as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, case decided in 1978 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court held in a closely divided decision that race could be one of the factors considered in choosing a diverse student body in university admissions decisions. The Court also held, however, that the use of quotas in such affirmative action programs was not permissible; thus the Univ. of California, Davis, medical school had, by maintaining a 16% minority quota, discriminated against Allan Bakke, 1940–, a white applicant. The legal implications of the decision were clouded by the Court’s division. Bakke had twice been rejected by the medical school, even though he had a higher grade point average than a number of minority candidates who were admitted. As a result of the decision, Bakke was admitted to the medical school and graduated in 1982.

Jason L. Riley: The Supreme Court’s Opportunity on Racial Preferences As they hear arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the justices can help explode harmful myths about race-based college admissions.

“It seems that almost every year since the middle 1970s,” wrote Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer, “we have awaited with hope or anxiety the determination of some major case by the Supreme Court, which would tell us that affirmative action transgressed the ‘equal protection of the laws’ guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment . . . or, on the contrary, determine that this was a legitimate approach to overcoming the heritage of discrimination and segregation and raising the position of American blacks.”

Mr. Glazer wrote that in 1987 and couldn’t possibly have imagined it would hold true some 26 years later. Yet on Wednesday the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in this year’s major affirmative-action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. It will be the high court’s second go-round with the case, which concerns a plaintiff named Abigail Fisher who says the university discriminated against her as a white woman in rejecting her application.

In 2013 the justices voted 7-1 to send the case back to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals without ruling directly on the constitutionality of Texas’ affirmative-action program. Instead, the appeals court was instructed to re-evaluate whether a race-based admissions policy was really essential to the university meeting its diversity goals. The Fifth Circuit issued a second ruling last year, once again siding with the university, and now the case is back before the Supreme Court.

Notable & Quotable The ambassador from Tripoli tells John Adams and Thomas Jefferson that the Barbary States have a religious duty to wage war on non-Muslim nations.

From a March 28, 1786, letter written by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were American diplomats at the time, to U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay reporting on their conversation in London with the ambassador from Tripoli regarding piracy by the Barbary States:

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet; that it was written in their Koran; that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Mussulman [Muslim] who was slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

House Votes to Restrict Travel by Foreigners Who Visited Iraq, Syria- Measure passed 407-19; expected to be wrapped into spending bill and become law By Siobhan Hughes

WASHINGTON—The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday to limit certain travel privileges granted to citizens of 38 friendly foreign countries, the first step in what lawmakers expect will be a larger response to an evolving terrorist threat.

The terror attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris have prompted a new emphasis on security but left lawmakers struggling to determine the appropriate response. The strikes reach into so many different policy areas—travel, guns, technology, mental health, immigration and intelligence—that coming up with a comprehensive plan has been challenging.

Instead, a piece-by-piece approach appears to be emerging. The initial step was legislation to put some restrictions on the visa-waiver program, which allows travelers from the 38 mostly European and Asian nations to enter the U.S. without obtaining a visa. The measure would ban people from those nations who had traveled to places including Iraq or Syria since March 2011 without first getting a visa.

Bernie’s Climate Honesty The Senator’s energy plan shows where Democrats want to go.

Bernie Sanders has no chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but the breathtaking details of the climate-change plan he released this week are still worth noting. They show where the Democratic Party is headed.

The Vermont Senator calls climate change “the single greatest threat facing our planet,” and he seems to mean it. He is proposing a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and an 80% reduction by 2050, which is significantly more than the up-to 28% cut by 2025 that President Obama has pledged at the Paris climate confab.

To reach this developing world level of CO2 emissions, Mr. Sanders would: impose an unspecified carbon tax; ban all offshore drilling and fossil-fuel leases on federal lands; stop “dirty pipeline” projects; ban natural gas and oil exports; force states to ban fracking; ban mountaintop coal mining; impose a new fuel-efficiency standard of 65 miles per gallon by 2025; spend “massive” federal dollars on subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, home-efficiency programs and energy storage; federally underwrite electric-car charging stations, high-speed passenger and cargo rail, a smart grid, and clean-energy job training; shut down the nuclear industry; and provide “clean energy funding” to the rest of the world.

Feds shelling out billions to public relations firms:Getty Images By Megan R. Wilson

The federal government has spent more than $4 billion on public relations services since 2007, according to a watchdog group, with more than half of the money going to the world’s largest firms.

A review conducted by Open the Books found that there are now 3,092 public affairs professionals working in the government, an increase of 15 percent — or about 400 people — over the past seven years.

During that time, 139 federal agencies inked $2.02 billion in outside contracts with firms that perform public relations, polling, research and marketing consulting.
“We always applaud agencies who make information available,” Open the Books said in its report. “But … agencies are not charged with making that information interesting or newsworthy. Agencies certainly aren’t charged with using taxpayer funds to engage in thinly-veiled propaganda campaigns that are primarily designed to protect their budgets and hype outcomes.”

The $2 billion tally calculated by the watchdog group includes millions of dollars on international polling for the State Department and $57.7 million in marketing and advertising contracts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to promote the National Flood Insurance Program.

OPEN YOUR EYES AND OPEN THE BOOKS ON FEDERAL SPENDING

Federal agencies spend billions on self-promotion By Kellan Howell

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/7/federal-government-agencies-spend-billions-on-self/

The federal government for years has been using Americans’ tax dollars to pay for its own PR through carefully coordinated marketing campaigns, to the tune of billions of dollars.

Over the past seven years, federal agencies have spent more than $4.3 billion on self-promotion and marketing, according to government contract data compiled from USASpending.gov in an oversight report by spending watchdog OpentheBooks.com.
Federal agencies spent $2.35 billion in salary and bonus payments to federal employees with the job title of “public affairs officer” and more than $2 billion on outside contractors for additional public relations projects, according to the report.

In fact, the U.S. government employs so many public affairs officers that it ranks as the second-largest public relations firm in the world in terms of the number of employees.

Although it is certainly important and necessary for federal agencies to engage in public relations in order to make information available to taxpayers and to understand the markets they serve, the report highlights cases in which the government’s marketing budget appears to border on propaganda and pandering.