Displaying posts published in

June 2016

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: JEAN CLAUDE JUNCKER

By on June 24th, 2016

I think that the British exit from the European Union is wonderful, and the EU Commission head Jean Claude Juncker’s response was petulant…urging Britain to hurry up and get out.

On the other hand I feel some gratitude to Juncker…. At a commemoration of the Holocaust he lamented rampant and growing anti-Semitism in Europe in the strongest terms.

“I never imagined a Rabbi in Marseille would have to tell his Community it might be better to hide the kippa,” he said, referring to controversial comments made after a machete attack against a Jewish teacher. “I never imagined that Jewish schools and Synagogues would have to be guarded, I never imagined a Europe where Jews feel so insecure that immigration to Israel reaches an all-time high. 71 years after the liberation of Auschwitz this is intolerable.Europe cannot and will not accept this,” he continued. “Attacks on Jews are attacks on all of us – against our way of living, against tolerance and against our identity.”
“Our entire society has a duty to prevent Anti-Semitism and we must fight it on every corner – whether on the extreme right or the extreme left or when it is instigated by extreme Islamists,” he declared.
“We are determined: Never again. Because a Europe of hate is one that we refuse. Because a Europe without Jews would be no longer Europe.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Britain Was Right to Leave By David Pryce-Jones

By on June 24th, 2016

The British have risen to the occasion, and voted to leave the European Union. They were offered the choice to remain the people they always had been, or to throw in their lot irrevocably with other people. Prime Minister David Cameron and many Conservatives, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and almost the whole parliamentary opposition, the trades unions, the BBC (and how!), the banks and corporations, President Obama and a myriad of other opinion-makers, all applied pressure to stay in the EU, and took every possible measure, underhand or not, to fix the vote in their favor. To leave the EU, they hammered, would mean disaster on the scale of the biblical plagues God inflicted on Egypt.

And it hasn’t worked, it couldn’t work. The EU was a good idea in 1945, but it has long outlived its initial purpose of reconciling Germany and France. What stands out is that heads of state and politicians in Europe have been surreptitiously building a much wider political entity. Voters are not asked for their consent. Absence of legitimacy is the EU’s main feature. Since there is no procedure for the democratic right to throw out the [expletive deleted], the EU has developed into something never seen before in the world, an oligarchy with soft totalitarian symptoms. Conflicting national interests and global economic factors lead inexorably to the hardening of these totalitarian symptoms.

Germans are a most remarkable people and they have remade themselves since the Second World War, but successive chancellors have evidently been afraid that they might go ape again – in a phrase of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s — and they have made themselves responsible for steering the EU through its travails. It is not deficiency of character but just an accident of history that Germany is in the driving seat, turning weaker EU states into protectorates, profiting from the euro while others suffer from it, imposing movements of population that will have demographic consequences, confining free speech, and much besides that is unpopular, not to say alarming. There is only one way out of this predicament, and that is to amalgamate all the nation-states of the EU into a genuine federation, with political and fiscal unity that is even more unpopular and alarming.

The British perceive that this empire must end in full-blown totalitarianism or catastrophic failure, and their vote shows that they want no part of either. Another accident of history underlies the British preference for independence and democracy, never mind if these come at a cost. However, about half a dozen EU countries already look likely to follow the British lead, and if they did so, then the whole mistaken experiment of the EU could fall apart. As long ago as 1805 William Pitt the Younger faced a similar crisis with famous words, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”

Yes, yes, and yes again.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Brexit Vote Was Just the Beginning Now comes the actual work of leaving the EU. By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on June 24th, 2016

London, England — So, what now?

The immediate answer is: Nothing. As the prime minister made clear in his resignation speech this morning, it will be months before the government triggers Article 50 and initiates withdrawal proceedings, and, even after it has done that, progress is likely to be sedulous and slow. In time, there will be fireworks. But for now there are markets to calm and voters to unite, and there is at least one leadership election to stage. Triumphant as the Leave campaign may be feeling this morning, last night was less akin to Agincourt and more akin to the second meeting of the Great Council. Yes, the United Kingdom has declared its independence; but the fighting has only just begun.

I have seen it suggested — or, perhaps, hoped — that the powers-that-be will simply “ignore” the vote to leave. This is not going to happen. In a strictly legal sense, Parliament is sovereign and can do as it wishes. In consequence, this referendum was technically not binding. Culturally, though, any indication that the government was trying to defy the voters would trigger a catastrophic constitutional crisis. Speaking in front of Downing Street this morning, David Cameron set the tone: “The British people,” he confirmed, “have voted to leave the EU and their will must be respected.” “The will of the British people,” Cameron added, “is an instruction that must be delivered.” Sadly for him, the task of making that delivery will fall to his successor.

As during the General Election of 2015, Pauline Kaelism was on full display throughout the proceedings. Announcing the result last night, most of the TV anchors and pundits looked genuinely shocked. How, they seemed to ask, could the polls have been so wrong once again? After all, nobody in a position of national influence seemed to know anybody who was voting Leave.

As in 2015, the simple answer was that the public lies to pollsters. And who can blame it? I have spent quite a lot of time in the U.K. over the last month, and I have been startled by the condescension, the disdain, and the downright bullying that I have seen from advocates within the Remain camp. That this morning I am seeing precisely the same attitudes on display has left me wondering whether the British chattering classes are capable of learning new tricks. More than 17 million voters opted for Leave yesterday, and yet to take their opponents at face value would be to conclude that this vast and diverse coalition of citizens was little more than a revanchist, hate-filled, antediluvian rump. It is certainly the case that the center-right opted overwhelmingly for exit. But it is notable that the election was won not on the playing fields of Eton or in the leafy gardens of England’s Home Counties, but in the industrial Northeast and the blue-collar Midlands. Indeed, as the Mirror and others have observed, Leave’s margin was provided not by a surfeit of conservatives, but by working-class social democrats who traditionally vote Labour but whose concerns are increasingly out of sync with the rest of their party. (This, incidentally, is another reason that Parliament could not get away with ignoring the result of the referendum: Because UKIP is nipping at Labour’s heels throughout the country — and because there is strong anti-EU sentiment among at least a third of Labour voters — the Labour party’s leadership knows that to sign onto any coup would be to sign its own electoral death warrant.)

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Socialist Les Miserables in Venezuela The Left reduces a wealthy country to starvation. Daniel Greenfield

By on June 24th, 2016

A mob of starving people advanced on the presidential palace chanting, “We want food”. They were met by soldiers and police dispatched by the tyrant from his lavish palace decorated opulently with a golden sun, giant rock crystal mirrors, sparkling chandeliers and towering oil portraits.

The scene wasn’t 19th century France, but 21st century Venezuela.

And if you are wondering why you haven’t seen it on the news, it’s because Venezuela is a Socialist disaster area that was once being used as a model by the left. Now it’s a place where the vast majority of people can’t afford basic food staples and a third are down to two or fewer meals a day.

Obama laughed and joked with deceased monster Hugo Chavez, who handed him a copy of the anti-American tract, “Open Veins of Latin America” that had even been disavowed by its own author. Obama called the book a “nice gesture”, but Eduardo Galeano, its author, had told an audience that the left “commits grave errors” when in power.

Venezuela, once a wealthy oil state, where the doctors offering “universal health care” have no medicine and starving people loot government stores looking for food, is yet another example. 50 people are dead in the latest food riots. Their graves are yet another “grave error” of the left.

Obama has not appeared too concerned at the meltdown in Venezuela. Unlike Syria, there are no threats of intervention to remove Maduro, Chavez’s successor, and the rest of the leftist regime illegally clinging to power while slaughtering Venezuelans, smuggling drugs and aiding terrorists.

When Hugo Chavez was killed by the wonders of Cuban medicine, a remedy that American leftists recommend to others while they obtain the best private health care for their own ailments, Obama offered a vague statement of support calling Chavez’s passing, “challenging”.

It was certainly that.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

Obama’s Money and Israel’s Sovereignty A generous military aid package — with unacceptable strings attached. Caroline Glick

By on June 24th, 2016

The problem is that in exchange for the expanded military aid, Obama is demanding that Israel surrender its diplomatic and military independence to the White House.

This week, MK Michael Oren stood up to his boss in the Kulanu party, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, to the political Left, including hundreds of retired security brass, and to the IDF General Staff. The former ambassador to Washington urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to sign the multi-year security assistance deal that US President Barack Obama demands Israel accept.

The problem isn’t the money. By all accounts, Obama’s multi-year military assistance package is generous.

The problem is that in exchange for the expanded military aid, Obama is demanding that Israel surrender its diplomatic and military independence to the White House.

For more than 40 years, every US administration – including the Obama administration – that has sought to harm Israel in any way has hit up against an unmovable obstacle. Whether the White House wanted to enable the UN Security Council to pass an anti-Israel resolution, place an embargo on military exports or bureaucratically slow them down to force Israel to stand down during wartime; whether the White House wanted block expanded trade deals, crowd out Israel’s military industries, or sell game changing weapons systems to Israel’s enemies, the US Congress has always stopped it in its tracks.

Israel-haters in the US speak endlessly about the supposedly all powerful and malign “Israel lobby,” which controls US foreign affairs. But the simple truth is that it wouldn’t matter all that much if AIPAC were to shut down tomorrow. Even without AIPAC, Israel would enjoy the support of Congress.

It would continue to enjoy that support because the vast majority of Americans support Israel and expect their representatives in Congress to support Israel.

In other words, the “Israel lobby” is none other than the American people.

As Oren warned, Obama’s military assistance package would disenfranchise the American public when it comes to US policy toward Israel. The agreement bars Israel from asking that Congress augment the assistance that Obama has offered and bars Congress from acting. So if a future administration chooses to breach the agreement, or to suspend it, or if conditions change and Israel requires other assistance, Congress would be barred from stepping into the breach.

Then there is the assistance agreement’s assault on Israel’s military independence.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

The Paris Conference and the Lobotomized Left How long can the Left keep up its Jihad-Denial? Sarah N. Stern

By on June 24th, 2016

Apparently truth is not a valued commodity in Washington. By now, most people have read the profile of Ben Rhodes in the New York Times by David Samuels in which Mr. Rhodes, who is described as Obama’s “foreign policy guru” created an echo chamber—a fictitious reality of under-educated, newly minted journalists — to make the Islamic Republic of Iran appear much more benign than it actually is in order to sell the Iranian nuclear agreement to a skeptical American Congress and public.

I had expected heads to roll over this. Yet, not a single person has been fired. In fact, those who are most culpable have only been promoted up the ladder in the Obama administration where total fictions are peddled as truths, and where empty bromides are offered about how they would like ISIS and other radical Islamist terrorists to be treated.

For example, yesterday, while visiting grieving families of the 49 loved ones who were murdered by Omar Mateen in Pulse, a gay bar in Orlando, Attorney General Loretta Lynch prescribed how we should respond to this tragedy. “Our most effective weapon is compassion, unity and love … We need to find our common humanity,” remarked the Attorney General.

Love? Tell that to someone whose son’s head has been savagely cut off by ISIS or whose daughter has been kidnapped and raped and then sold into slavery.

There is currently a rigid dogma among some inside the beltway now, not to acknowledge that ISIS hates Yazidis, Christians, Shiites-or any Muslim who does not practice their precise brand of Islam, Hindus, Buddhists, Rastafarians and (of course) Jews, as well as gays.

Recently, members of my staff were in a Democratic congressional office, and the staffer refused to acknowledge that simple fact. He insisted that this was simply an LGBT issue. (Period. End of story.)

This administration has substituted wishful thinking for realistic sound policy, and it has become contagious. And one of the cornerstones of this wishful thinking is that Islam, in all its many varieties, is a religion of peace.

And when the facts do not fit their paradigm, then just edit out the facts. This is what occurred last Sunday, June 19th on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd when the Attorney General had announced that they were to “release the partial transcripts of the killer’s calls with law enforcement” that night when Omar Mateen killed 49 people on Saturday, June 11th.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democrats’ Mob Rule in the House of Representatives Using Saul Alinskly tactics to “occupy” the House for their gun control agenda. Joseph Klein

By on June 24th, 2016

House Democrats made complete fools of themselves with their sit-in temper tantrum this week. Shouting their demands for an immediate vote on gun control legislation – apparently their only “serious” answer to global Islamic jihad – the Democratic disrupters caused pandemonium on the House floor on Wednesday. They sought to paralyze House proceedings with shouts of “No bill, No break!” Representative Maxine Waters of California proclaimed, “I’m prepared to stand here until hell freezes over.” Civil rights hero Representative John Lewis of Georgia declared, “we have to occupy the floor of the House until there’s action.”

The anarchist spirits of Occupy Wall Street and student campus occupations are alive and well in the House Democratic caucus. They shed their responsibilities by flagrantly violating the rules of the institution to which they were elected, intent on creating a media spectacle. They went so far as to use social media video tools to broadcast their sit-in, after the chamber’s official cameras had been turned off.

Even when the House Republican leadership called it a day and adjourned the House until after the 4th of July weekend, the Democrats pressed on with their occupation. Before that, as the real adult leader in the room, Speaker Paul Ryan had managed, despite the mayhem, to push through a major appropriations bill that included funding for combating the Zika virus. At least one of the House leaders was thinking of the welfare of the American people. It certainly was not the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who even refused to leave the House floor temporarily when politely asked to do so by an officer so that the daily security sweep could be conducted.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeachment and the IRS Scandal: Should John Koskinen Face the Music? By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on June 24th, 2016

Note: Yesterday, I testified before the House Judiciary Committee in Part II of a hearing on “Examining the Allegations of Misconduct Against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.”

The hearing, at which three other lawyers also testified, explored impeachment principles. Below is the written testimony I submitted prior to the hearing.

—————————–

Chairman Goodlatte, Congressman Nadler, members of the committee, my name is Andrew C. McCarthy. For over eighteen years, I was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, retiring from the Justice Department in 2003 as the chief assistant United States attorney in charge of the Southern District’s satellite office (which oversees federal law enforcement in six counties north of the Bronx).

During my tenure in the office, I investigated, tried and supervised the prosecution of numerous criminal cases, running the gamut from organized crime and narcotics trafficking through political corruption and terrorism. In addition, I held various executive staff positions in the office, including deputy chief of the appellate unit, in which I wrote and edited briefs submitted by the United States to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and prepared other prosecutors for oral argument (in addition to writing briefs and presenting oral argument in numerous of my own cases).

During my Justice Department service, I was twice awarded the Justice Department’s highest honors: the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in 1987 for the “Pizza Connection” organized crime and international narcotics trafficking case targeting the Sicilian mafia, and the Attorney General’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 1996 for the terrorism prosecution against the jihadist cell of Omar Abdel Rahman (a/k/a “the Blind Sheikh”) responsible for (among other atrocities) the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an unsuccessful plot to bomb New York City landmarks.

Since retiring from the Justice Department, I have been a writer, focusing on matters of law enforcement, national security, constitutional law, politics and culture. Concededly, I tend to come at policy matters from a conservative and constitutionalist perspective; nevertheless, I have always believed the application of legal principles and precedent should be a non-partisan endeavor, just as it was when I was a prosecutor. In my post-Justice Department career, I have written several books, including (in 2014), Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.

In a nutshell, Faithless Execution argues that the Framers saw impeachment as an “indispensable” tool (to quote James Madison) in the constitutional framework of divided authorities, which obliges Congress to police executive overreach. The principal purpose of the Constitution is to limit the power of government to intrude on the liberties and suppress the rights of the American people. Separation of powers is the primary way the Constitution guarantees these liberties and rights. Thus, the Framers were deeply worried that maladministration — including overreach, lawlessness, or incompetence — could inflate the constitutionally-limited executive into an authoritarian rogue who undermines our constitutional order.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

College Profs Investigated for Acknowledging Existence of Other Opinions By Tom Knighton

By on June 24th, 2016

Each generation looks back at the generation behind it and weeps. Surely these children will be the death of our society, they think. Well, people looking at the current crop of American college students — and the administrators who enable them — while thinking such things may very well be right.

On top of the myriad other nonsense on college campuses, it now seems that some professors are being investigated for admitting that the Official Line ™ isn’t the only opinion out there:

Two professors at the University of Northern Colorado were investigated after students complained that they were forced to hear opposing viewpoints.

The complaints were made to Northern Colorado’s “Bias Response Team,” an Orwellian office on campus that asks students to report their peers and professors for anything that upsets or offends them. When the news outlet Heat Street made an open records request for some of the complaints, it discovered that two students had become so upset about having to hear an opinion they disagreed with they filed reports with school administrators.

And rather than telling the students to buck up because they might hear those opinions outside of college or on the news or in the media, the schools told the professors to stop teaching that there’s an alternate viewpoint.

In at least one of the cases, a transgendered student was offended merely because the professor acknowledged the opinion that some believe transgender isn’t a real thing.

He’s not accused of arguing that position, even for the sake of argument. Nope. Just admitting that it exists was too offensive.

Whether transgender is a real thing, a psychological condition, or the result of a science fiction experiment brought to life by a howler monkey on meth is irrelevant. Honestly, the professor not having expressed his personal opinions on the matter is irrelevant. What is relevant is that American college students just can’t handle opinions different from their own.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

How dare Europe applaud a blood-libeler? Ruthie Blum

By on June 24th, 2016

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lies about Israel not only as a matter of course but as one of policy. It was no surprise, then, when he stood up at the European Parliament on Thursday and regurgitated a claim made this week that rabbinical figures in the Jewish state had urged the government to poison Palestinian wells.

Abbas knew that this classically anti-Semitic blood libel was as false as a similar one, spread last week, that claimed Israel forced Palestinians from a certain village to flee by drying up their water supply during Ramadan. In fact, a pipe had burst, and it was immediately repaired. But not — as media watchdog HonestReporting pointed out — before the “water apartheid” lie, first “reported” by Al Jazeera, was picked up by The Independent, the International Business Times, Radio New Zealand and The Times of London.

In keeping with the tradition of his predecessor, the late PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Abbas encourages the invention of all kinds of blood libels, which he then states as fact, both to his own people and to the international community. Each libel is more ludicrous than the previous one, and they would be funny if they weren’t reminiscent of Nazi propaganda and didn’t serve the same purpose: to foster the kind of Jew-loathing that enables genocide.

But annihilating Israel and the Jews is not the real reason that Abbas perpetuates utterly insane accusations against the only democracy in the Middle East. More immediate personal concerns preoccupy the PA leader, who knows his days are numbered, literally and figuratively, if he does not remain relevant at home and abroad.

Indeed, Abbas constantly faces the possibility of being ousted by members of his own faction, Fatah, and by Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza. He manages to survive by enlisting financial and political support from the United States, Europe and the United Nations.

Continue reading →