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January 2016

MY SAY: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME FROM RAEL ISAAC

A Modest Proposal to Buttress the Constitution, Restore Confidence in Government and Promote Domestic Tranquility By Rael Jean Isaac

Nothing is more melancholy than to see the level of contempt directed at one of the three key institutions of government established by our Constitution. A Rasmussen poll in December 2015 found only 9% of likely voters thought Congress was doing a good or excellent job-down from 56% in 2001. Strikingly, Republicans and Democrats are in agreement on these miserable approval ratings. Contrast this with the public’s approval level of the President and the Supreme Court: 46% rate Obama’s job performance favorably and 36% think the Supreme Court is doing a good or excellent job (both also according to 2015 Rasmussen polls). To be sure, these approval ratings are nothing to boast about, but even the Supreme Court is four times as well-regarded as Congress.

There is only one surefire step that can buttress the Constitution and restore public confidence in our institutions. Abolish Congress. Admittedly it is counter-intuitive to argue that we strengthen our Constitution by abolishing one of its crucial provisions. But hear me out. It is undisputed that, to quote Dr. Joseph Postell, writing for the Heritage Foundation, “over the past 100 years our government has been transformed from a limited, constitutional, federal republic to a centralized administrative state that for the most part exists outside the structure of the Constitution and wields nearly unlimited power.” This bureaucratic web of agencies and departments is frequently referred to as a “fourth branch” of government. By eliminating Congress we will in fact be returning to the vision of the founders, restoring a three part system of governance.

Fact-Checking Rubio’s Attacks on Cruz By Jim Geraghty

In the closing minutes of Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, Marco Rubio unleashed a torrent of accusations against Ted Cruz after Cruz slammed his participation in the “Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill.”

“[You] had no fewer than eleven attacks there,” Cruz said, pleading for response time. “I appreciate you dumping your opposition research folder on the debate stage.”

“No, it’s your record,” Rubio shot back.

“At least half of the things Marco said are flat-out false,” Cruz snapped.

Not quite. Most of Rubio’s statements about Cruz’s past positions check out, with a few wild exaggerations tossed into the mix. To the tape . . .

1. “Ted Cruz, you used to say you supported doubling the number of green cards. Now you say that you’re against it.”

In May 2013, Cruz introduced an amendment to double “the overall worldwide green card caps from 675,000 visas per year to 1.35 million per year (not including refugees and asylum-seekers).” Cruz’s current immigration plan only mentions “green cards” in the context of punishing companies that misuse the H-1B visa program.

2. “You used to support a 500 percent increase in the number of guest workers. Now you say that you’re against it.”

Indeed, another amendment Cruz offered in May 2013 would have “immediately increase[d] the H-1B cap by 500 percent from 65,000 to 325,000.” But as a presidential candidate, he has called for suspending “the issuance of all H-1B visas for 180 days to complete a comprehensive investigation and audit of pervasive allegations of abuse of the program” and greatly limiting the circumstances in which companies can hire H-1B visa immigrants.

H-1B visas are for “high-skilled temporary workers,” so Rubio could have been a little more precise in characterizing the “guest workers” in question.

3. “You used to support legalizing people that were here illegally. Now you say you’re against it.”

This point is hotly disputed by Cruz and his campaign. Cruz did introduce an amendment that would establish a path to legalization for those here illegally, but he insists he never actually supported the amendment’s substance, and it was meant as a poison pill. But Cruz spent spring 2013 touting the measure, which would have preserved the larger bill’s path to legal status, but not its path to citizenship.

David Singer: “Obama Got it Wrong from the Start & Nothing was Going to Save Him from Failure in the End”

President Obama enters his final year as President having given up on trying to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict – following in the footsteps of so many other American Presidents whose similarly-shared lofty and noble aspirations ended in abject failure.

In Obama’s case his inability to fully comprehend Jewish history and the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel was the catalyst for his inevitable failure – as tellingly illustrated in his landmark speech in Cairo on 4 June 2009:

“Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.”

Israel’s current Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dore Gold, has now revealed how Israel’s then leadership viewed Obama’s above remarks in this frank exchange published in Frontline on 6 January:

The War on Western Women (video) Here’s one guy who won’t be intimidated by the thought police of the Left in saying what needs to be said.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-war-on-western-women-video.html  

Palestinian Acts of “Peace” by Guy Millière

Because terrorist acts against Israelis are almost never described as terrorist acts, Israel is the only country that is found guilty of defending itself against terrorism. Israel is the only country living next to a terrorist entity, and asked not to treat it as a terrorist entity.

The illusion of the Oslo Accords was that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) could become a respectable, law-abiding government, renounce violence, and abide by an agreement. The lies of the Oslo Accords were that the PLO, representing the “Palestinian people,” was ready to exchange “land for peace” and actually desired to create a state living in peace side by side with Israel.

Many Europeans are falling for Joseph Goebbels’s formula, that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Israel is now — solely from propaganda and the falsification of history — possibly the most unjustly demonized nation in history.

Israel is the only country that is always supposed to make “more concessions” to enemies who do not even hide their destructive intentions.

The Greek Parliament, on December 22, 2015, voted unanimously on a motion calling on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to recognize the “State of Palestine.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who was on an official visit to Athens, took the opportunity to say that the PA would no longer accept being called by any other name, and that passports with “State of Palestine” would be issued with this name.

Europe Looks the Other Way on Mass Sexual Assault The chickens are coming home to roost on Europe’s unwillingness to offend. By Emily Dyer —

The beginning of 2016 in Europe saw the collision of two problems that have long been left to run their course undisturbed. Making allowances for human-rights abusers in order to avoid causing offense is, after all, nothing new here in Europe. Neither is our often well-meaning refusal to question the potential impact of welcoming record levels of migrants to our societies.

On New Year’s Eve, more than 500 women out celebrating in Germany felt the impact of this collision: They were raped, sexually assaulted, and robbed by gangs of largely migrant men and then blamed for it by the authorities. Mayor Henriette Reker, of Cologne, released a “code of conduct” for women’s behavior in public, which included keeping strangers “an arm’s length away” and staying away from groups of people. Her words could have easily been mistaken for that of the U.K.’s Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a pressure group with a long history of defending convicted terrorists that published “precautionary advice” to prevent Muslims from “becoming targets of harassment,” stating that women “have to take personal precautions when they go outside.”

Does Anyone Believe Trump Seriously Cares about Whether Ted Cruz Is a Natural-Born Citizen? By Jonah Goldberg

Dear Reader (including those of you born in Canada),

I guess we should start there. I find this birther stuff to be a lot like women’s prison movies: compelling, entertaining, and totally ridiculous.

Other than the presidency, there’s no place in American life where the distinction between “naturalized” and “natural-born” citizenship matters.

But imagine if it did? Imagine that your American-born mother just happened to give birth to you in Canada or Belize while on vacation. Your American-born mom and dad bring you home days later and raise you exactly as they would have had they been in Cleveland the whole time. Now imagine there are also all sorts of jobs you are barred from having. Not only can you not be president, but you can’t be, say, a chiropodist or an embalmer. Pick your restrictions: You can’t go to certain colleges or you can’t get the best ESPN bundle. Americans born abroad can’t buy basset hounds. Unless you were born here, you can’t get cheese on your hamburger. Whatever. It really doesn’t matter.

If that were the case the Constitution would be amended — either properly or through interpretation — to get rid of this distinction instantly (which means this would have happened centuries before the invention of ESPN, but you get the point).

My point is simple: This issue remains unsettled because it matters so little.

THE GLAZOV GANG DANIEL GREENFIELD MOMENT: ISLAM’S AMERICAN IDENTITY CRISIS

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/01/16/daniel-greenfield-moment-islams-american-identity-crisis/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed Islam’s American Identity Crisis, explaining the pathological process of confusing your way to theocracy.

Don’t miss it!

The Problem with Islam Is Aggressive Scripture, Not Aggressive ‘Traditionalism’ By Andrew C. McCarthy

On the Corner this week, the eminent Jim Talent touted (with some reservations) an essay about “moderate Islam” by Cheryl Bernard. A Rand Institute researcher, she is also a novelist, a defender of war-ravaged cultures, and the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to post-Taliban (or is it pre-Taliban?) Afghanistan. With due respect to Dr. Bernard, who does much heroic work, I believe the essay highlights what is wrong with Western academic analysis of Islam.

The problem comes into focus in the very title of Senator Talent’s post, “Aggressive Traditionalism.” That is the attribute of Islamic societies that Dr. Bernard blames for the frustration of her high hopes for “moderate Islam.” In truth, however, the challenge Islam poses for moderation is not its tradition; it is Islamic doctrine — the scriptural support for traditional sharia and Islamic supremacist ideology.

I give Bernard credit. She is the unusual strategist who is willing to admit failure — in this instance, of the strategy of promoting “moderate Islam” as the antidote to “radical Islam.” But even this concession goes off the rails: She maintains that the strategy was somehow “basically sensible” despite being “off track in two critical ways.” The real problem, though, is not the two errors she identifies but the fatal flaw she fails to address: The happenstance that there are many moderate Muslims in the world does not imply the existence of a coherent “moderate Islam.” Try as she might, Bernard cannot surmount this doctrinal hurdle by blithely ignoring the centrality of doctrine to a belief system — without it, there is nothing to believe.

But let’s start with the two critical problems she does cite. The first is the matter of defining what a “moderate” is. Bernard concedes that she and other thinkers adopted a definition that was “too simplistic” — meaning, too broad. It made “violence and terrorism” the litmus test for “moderation.” This enabled what she labels “aggressive traditionalists” to masquerade as moderates.

Trump Fans vs. Trump Supporters: Which Group Are Polls Really Counting? By Roger Kimball

Psephology is a branch of political science which deals with the study and scientific analysis of elections. rsk
“Our expert psephologists tell us that Trump is way ahead in many polls. But as I say, I suspect they are measuring fans, not supporters. The difference is between cheering on a successful mud wrestler and appointing a general to lead the army.Donald Trump is an amusing entertainer whose antics have shone a light on some dark corners that needed illumination. He is a sort of Liberace of Liberalism: a recent supporter of Chuck Schumer, of Nancy Pelosi, of Hillary Clinton, who also (until about ten minutes ago) was as pro-abortion as it is possible to be.”

The consensus seems to be that Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio were the only three candidates who emerged standing from the debate last night. Christie got off some good lines as usual, while Ben Carson once again left me wondering what pharmaceutical cocktail he had ingested before mounting the stage, and John Kasich once again made me feel sorry that he had to cope with that species of motor-neuron disease with which he is afflicted.

I also felt a little sorry for Jeb Bush.

He is clearly a competent man whose record as governor of Florida should inspire admiration. Sure, you might disagree with him about this or that — Common Core, for example, or the details of his ideas about immigration — but he is a thoughtful, steady person of good will. He exudes maturity, and it tells us a lot about the texture of our current political situation, I think, that Donald Trump should have been able to score one of his first rhetorical victories of the primary season by charging that Jeb Bush was “low energy.”

The charge stuck, but it was unfair. Jeb is not low energy. He is simply deliberate — a good thing in a statesman.

I say this not because I am a Bush supporter. I’m not, for many reasons. But I think it is worth pausing to acknowledge that he acts with dignity, like an adult. Last night, Chris Christie described Barack Obama as a “petulant child.” That was apt. Obama is notoriously thin-skinned, as are many narcissists, and that combined with his breathtaking incompetence has been a recipe for petulance.