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December 2016

Repealing Obamacare: Let’s Get This Done A repeal bill must address all of Obamacare’s shortcomings and replace them with market-based solutions. By Mike Lee & Mark Walker

Since 2010 everyone in the Republican party has agreed that Obamacare must be repealed. Most Republican members of Congress — ourselves included — were elected, and reelected, on the promise that we would take any opportunity possible to end this partisan, ham-handed, and unconstitutional law.

When Republicans attained control of both the House and Senate in 2015, we saw an opportunity to lay the foundation for full repeal under a possible future Republican president. To that end, we penned an article in National Review calling for Congress to send President Obama a bill repealing Obamacare. “It is more important than ever for Republicans in Congress to honor the promises we have made to the American people,” we wrote. “We can do this, before the end of the year, through a procedure known as ‘budget reconciliation.’”

House and Senate Republicans followed through on this promise. We sent a bill to President Obama’s desk that would have repealed much of the law, and was promptly — and unsurprisingly — vetoed. But this exercise was not, by any measure, a fruitless effort.

That bill, H.R. 3762, established the minimum standards against which any future Obamacare repeal bills would be measured. It zeroed out Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates, scrapped the taxes, revived health savings accounts, and rolled back the Medicaid expansion and subsidies. Majorities in the House and Senate are on record voting for all of these items. We can do it again.

But there is no denying that any new reconciliation repeal bill in the next Congress will have a different outcome. This time, when the House and Senate send such a bill to the White House, the incoming president has said he will sign it. That is why it is so important that we get this repeal bill right.

And the bare minimum simply is not enough this time.

A minimum effort could end up hurting many Americans. Specifically, the law’s many insurance mandates drive up health costs and force individuals to violate their deeply held religious convictions. When government bureaucrats and politicians decide that every insurance policy must cover free doctor visits and abortifacients and keep their children on their health-insurance plan through the age 26, Americans who don’t need those options end up paying more for products they don’t want. That’s great for the insurance companies, but not for taxpayers or consumers.

Merkel Backtracks Amidst Refugee Crisis A too little, too late response to the consequences of a reckless open door immigration policy. Joseph Klein

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other like-minded Western European leaders have allowed an unprecedented number of “refugees” into their countries from the most terrorist-prone countries in the world, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. To save their own necks, these reckless leaders are finally beginning to listen, at least half-heartedly, to their own citizens, who are recoiling from the disastrous consequences of the prevalent European Union open door “refugee” policy. The leaders have only themselves to blame for the crisis they have created for their people.

Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, in that order, are at the top of the list of origins of people applying for asylum in the European Union. All three of these countries are also among the top 5 on the 2015 Global Terrorism Index prepared by the Institute of Economics and Peace. It should not have been a surprise that, over the last two years, as the number of asylum-seekers originally from terrorist-prone Muslim-majority countries has risen dramatically, acts of terrorism committed by jihadists in Western Europe have risen dramatically as well. Yet Chancellor Merkel and her European Union pals either could not connect the dots or willfully turned a blind eye.

Crimes against females have also risen in Western Europe as carriers of Islamic cultural norms denigrating women and girls have entered Western Europe in large numbers. Afghanistan is at the top of the list of the most dangerous countries to be a woman.

Germany has been the most welcoming of Western European countries to asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and other terrorist-prone, Muslim-majority countries. Afghanistan, which was second on both the refugee origin and terrorist country lists, was the country of origin of an Afghan teenage “refugee” last July who carried out an attack in Germany that resulted in several serious injuries. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. Afghanistan was also the origin country of the so-called “unaccompanied underage refugee” who allegedly raped and murdered the daughter of a high level European Union official in October. The victim was a 19 year old medical student, whom had also worked as a volunteer in one of the local refugee shelters. The 17 year old alleged murderer, who entered Germany illegally in 2015, had applied for asylum as an unaccompanied minor and was living with a German family.

The Coming Sanctuary Cities Crackdown Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel begs President-elect Trump for leniency. Matthew Vadum

Chicago is one of the best places to live in America if you’re one of the millions of illegal aliens present in the country — and free-spending, lawbreaking Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying his best to keep it that way.

Emanuel (D), who used to be a congressman and then President Obama’s chief of staff, dropped by Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday to urge President-elect Donald Trump to abandon his campaign promise to crack down on sanctuary cities.

“I also spoke out strongly about what it means to be a sanctuary city who will support and secure the people who are here, like my grandfather who came to the city of Chicago as a 13-year old 100 years ago,” said Emanuel who actually has no real bargaining power in the equation because he’s on the wrong side of the law.

“Chicago was a sanctuary city for my grandfather. His grandson today is the mayor of this city, which is a testament to the strength of the values and ideals of America.”

Emanuel, of course, is leaving out the values that make Americans inclined to support the rule of law and therefore oppose illegal entry and visa-overstaying by foreigners.

Emanuel is a strident, in-your-face supporter of the sanctuary city movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans. Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities hinder immigration enforcement and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy. They ignore immigration detainer forms which ask them to retain illegals in their custody after they would otherwise release them so Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can take custody of them.

These sanctuary cities really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States. Cities are creatures of the states in which they reside and under the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution the U.S. government is required to make sure that states maintain a “Republican Form of Government.” (The same clause also requires the U.S. to “protect each of them [i.e. the states] against Invasion[.]” Perhaps Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions could have his staff look into invoking the “Invasion” portion of the clause.)

These sanctuary cities may as well be flying the Confederate battle flag at city hall in their modern-day campaign of massive resistance against federal immigration law.

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Confederates who resisted federal authority and declared war on the United States 155 years ago, or the neo-Confederates in Southern states who resisted federal authority during the civil rights era, Democratic lawmakers and left-wing activists have been working together for decades to create large pockets of immigration anarchy in the United States where the law cannot easily be enforced.

The three criteria for a republican form of government as described in the Guarantee Clause are popular rule, absence of a monarch, and the rule of law. Immigration is a federal responsibility and sanctuary city policies undermine legitimate federal authority and are contrary to the rule of law.

Moreover, actively interfering with immigration enforcement could constitute obstruction of justice and could violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act which contains provisions making it unlawful to “harbor” an illegal alien.

Hate Spaces A new film reveals a toxic bigotry on American campuses. Richard L. Cravatts

On a November night in 2004, almost four hundred students at Columbia University sat crowded into the theater of the University’s Lerner Hall to watch a troubling 25-minute film that was finally being released to the public, “Columbia Unbecoming,” produced by Dr. Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser. The film, which exposed instances of student intimidation at the hands of some professors in Columbia’s department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Culture (MEALAC), was shocking, and revealed what many had already suspected about Columbia’s program—and other Middle East studies programs elsewhere: that under the veneer of purported scholarship and high-minded academic goals, there had developed a hothouse of intellectual rot, an entire area of academic study guided by what Middle East scholar Martin Kramer has called “tenured incompetents.”

In the twelve years since the release of the Columbia-focused film, of course, the situation on campuses across the country has worsened significantly concerning the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and not only as a result of distorted and pseudo-academic scholarship by anti-Israel, anti-Western faculty. Now, as part of the toxic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, student activism is driving the cognitive war against Israel, with the major portion of that activity orchestrated and imposed on campuses by the virulent student group, Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Witnessing the increasing ferocity and incidence of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic radicalism on U.S. campuses, Jacobs and Goldwasser, from Americans For Peace and Tolerance, have now produced another film, “Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus,” in which they reveal not only the motives and dark mission of SJP, but also provide a shocking view of the tactical assaults on pro-Israel students and faculty, and an unrelenting enmity by campus radicals against Zionism, Israel, the so-called “Israel Lobby,” Jewish control of the media, and American complicity in the occupation and oppression of the perennially-victimized Palestinians.

As “Hate Spaces” chronicles, SJP has a long history, since its founding in 1993, of bringing vitriolic anti-Israel speakers to their respective campuses (now numbering over 200 with chapters), and for sponsoring the pernicious Israeli Apartheid Weeks, building “apartheid walls,” and sending mock eviction notices to Jewish students in their dorms to help them demonize Israel and empathize with the Palestinian cause. And SJP members apparently wish to live in a world where only their predetermined virtues and worldview prevail, and feel quite strongly that, in the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, at least, the answers are black and white, there is a moral side and an immoral side, and that anyone who does not, or cannot, see things as clearly and unambiguously as these enlightened students do is a racist, an oppressor, or a supporter of an illegal, apartheid regime trampling the human rights of the blameless, hapless Palestinians.

Of course, this vituperative activism has not gone unnoticed by pro-Israel groups and individuals on campus, even resulting in SJP chapters being suspended for their errant behavior, as happened in 2014 at Northeastern University, as one example, after “a series of violations, which included vandalizing university property, disrupting another group’s event, failure to write a civility statement, and distributing flyers without permission.”

In general, however, SJP has been unimpeded in spreading its calumnies against Israel, fending off any criticism of their invective as attacks on the rights of free expression and academic freedom. The problem for SJP, unfortunately, is that while they are perfectly content to propel a mendacious campaign of anti-Israel libels, and base their analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict on falsehoods, distortions, and a false reading of history and fact, so certain are they of their moral authority that they will never countenance any views—even facts as opposed to opinions—which contradict their hateful political agenda.

Israel’s first project with Trump An Iranian proxy war is brewing. Caroline Glick

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

Israeli officials are thrilled with the national security team that US President-elect Donald Trump is assembling. And they are right to be.

The question now is how Israel should respond to the opportunity it presents us with.The one issue that brings together all of the top officials Trump has named so far to his national security team is Iran.

Gen. (ret.) John Kelly, whom Trump appointed Wednesday to serve as his secretary of homeland security, warned about Iran’s infiltration of the US from Mexico and about Iran’s growing presence in Central and South America when he served as commander of the US’s Southern Command.

Gen. (ret.) James Mattis, Trump’s pick to serve as defense secretary, and Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn, whom he has tapped to serve as his national security adviser, were both fired by outgoing President Barack Obama for their opposition to his nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

During his video address before the Saban Forum last weekend, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that he looks forward to discussing Obama’s nuclear Iran nuclear deal with Trump after his inauguration next month. Given that Netanyahu views the Iranian regime’s nuclear program – which the nuclear deal guaranteed would be operational in 14 years at most – as the most serious strategic threat facing Israel, it makes sense that he wishes to discuss the issue first.

But Netanyahu may be better advised to first address the conventional threat Iran poses to Israel, the US and the rest of the region in the aftermath of the nuclear deal.

There are two reasons to start with Iran’s conventional threat, rather than its nuclear program.

First, Trump’s generals are reportedly more concerned about the strategic threat posed by Iran’s regional rise than by its nuclear program – at least in the immediate term.

Israel has a critical interest in aligning its priorities with those of the incoming Trump administration.

The new administration presents Israel with the first chance it has had in 50 years to reshape its alliance with the US on firmer footing than it has stood on to date. The more Israel is able to develop joint strategies with the US for dealing with common threats, the firmer its alliance with the US and the stronger its regional posture will become.

The Fact-Challenged Women of ‘The View’ Brag About Their High Fact-Checking Standards By Debra Heine

On “The View” Wednesday, the notoriously fact-challenged women on the panel proudly touted their show’s reputation for being a trusted news source during a discussion about “fake news.”

The women compared their high fact-checking standards to what they say are the low standards of the conservative media website Breitbart.

Newsbusters noticed that Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Whoopi Goldberg were very impressed with their own credibility.

JOY BEHAR: We give opinions but when we give facts it’s checked with ABC News

Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin agreed, to audience applause:

SUNNY HOSTIN: Absolutely. [claps] Absolutely.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Or — you know, we don’t just go to one place. We don’t just go to one place. We actually have — we are held to a different standard. We have to look at many different places before we can say that’s what’s happening.

HOSTIN: Everything is sourced. Everything is sourced.

I don’t watch what PJ Media’s Christian Toto calls “the dumbest show on television,” but I did recently catch Whoopi and Co. on YouTube talking smack about Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick, three women (out of many) who claim to have been sexually harassed and/or assaulted by former President Clinton.

I’m interested to know how many layers of fact-checking they went through in order to be able to confidently proclaim on their show last October that these women (who had never willingly slept with Bill Clinton) were “tramps” who had slept with Bill Clinton.

TAIWAN-THE OTHER ISRAEL: BRUCE WALKER

Israel, through no fault of its own, is a pariah nation almost completely surrounded by larger nations that do not even recognize the existence of the State of Israel. Iran routinely refers to Israel as the “Little Satan,” and European nations typically take overtly anti-Israeli policies to curry favor with Islam. Yet Israel is not alone in being disparaged for no reason other than that it is small and its enemies are large.

Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a free land that has political and civil values precisely like what we ought to want the rest of the world to have. Freedom House has only two nations in Asia stretching from Sinai to Sakhalin listed as “Free,” Japan and Taiwan, which has a freer press than even Israel or South Korea. The contrast between Taiwan and most nations in Asia is as stark as the contrast between Israel and the nations surrounding it in west Asia and north Africa.

Freedom House gives Taiwan the “1” rating (the highest rating) for political rights and “2” for civil rights, exactly the same rating as Israel. China, by contrast, is listed as “unfree,” the worst category, and it has a “7” rating (the lowest rating) for political rights and a “6” (the second lowest rating) for civil rights.

Taiwan is a prosperous land, despite the absence of natural resources. The island’s per capita GDP is $47,000 per year – higher than Germany or France or Canada – and just as Taiwan is as free and democratic as Israel, Taiwan is as prosperous as Israel, despite, like Israel, having no real wealth except the diligence and intelligence of its people.

The per capita income in China is that is 30% of the per capita income in Taiwan. The per capita income of Jordan and Egypt, to pick two peaceful nations as close to Israel as China is to Taiwan, is 30% of the per capita income of Israel. Indeed, Taiwan has a high per capita income than any nation in Asia – including Japan and South Korea – except Singapore.

Taiwan has no fewer than five political parties with seats in its national legislature and ten parties with seats in municipal or county government. Tsai Ing-wen, elected like Trump earlier this year, was the first woman to be elected president of the Taiwan, and real feminists (there aren’t any, of course) would be thrilled that Trump talked to her when Obama and Hillary did not.

Our attitude toward Taiwan reeks of the same sort of sick double standard we are used to seeing in how nations that ought to know better deal with Israel. Both states represent the answer to virtually all our national security and diplomatic problems. Indeed, Taiwan and Israel are, in a practical sense, our two best allies in the world.

Is the Selection of General Mattis a Signal for Us to Expect a Continuation of COIN Philosophy? John Bernard

Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home: Is the Selection of General Mattis a Signal for Us to Expect a Continuation of COIN Philosophy?

History can be either a Schoolmaster or a Mistress. It depends on the intent of the reader. It also depends on what the reader considers sacrosanct. We all tend to hold certain things as so inviolable as to make objective questioning that might breach that privately held trust, unacceptable.

This is all fine when the only thing that might be defiled is our personal conscience or even the feelings of another.

But when the thing or person questioned, has power and the ability to send men and women, who have selflessly granted those certain powers unfettered access unto death, those things and people thought to be untouchable, must be questioned. When President Elect Trump announced, he was selecting General Mattis as his Secretary of Defense I was simultaneously elated and troubled.

I will not apologize for applauding the selection of a Marine Corps General to the highest influential position for the Military especially given Mattis’s demonstrated love for Marines, and the Corps. At the same time, I reserve the right to criticize what I believe to be the single most destructive decision made in the past 15 years of war; the decision to shift from a Hunt and Kill strategy to the historically failed, Counter Insurgency Operation (COIN).

This move from the violent – and effective, hunt and kill strategy to COIN really made national headlines following the second Battle of Fallujah. The Media and certain Political types were quick to credit General Petraeus’s institution of COIN strictures in the years that followed, for pacifying Al Anbar Province but the truth is, it was most certainly the surge of US uniforms that forced the Insurgents to displace.

It is astonishing that Military Leaders, including Mattis and Petraeus would so willingly adopt a strategy that history teaches us, has not been successful in its 76 years as a formal battlefield doctrine. It has failed to produce the intended result in every single application while simultaneously producing a grotesque and vaulted pile of body bags filled with the lifeless bodies of America’s Best, who were tricked into believing that America’s civilian government and her upper echelon military staff actually cared about a successful, and victorious conclusion to the wars that ended their lives.

It is a damnable truth, that Marines and all American War Fighters win every battle we enjoin, and that the political and upper military strategists manage to lose the wars. This, is the legacy of COIN warfare.

All the major conflicts we have witnessed since the publication of the Small Wars Manual in 1940 and with the notable exclusion of World War II which was not governed by this insanity, have failed to produce a Victor or a repentant enemy.

Following World War II, there were several major shifts in the geo-political landscape, the first being the establishment of the United Nations. The Charter literally placed a perverted choice before each member Nation; accept the Charter, or retain complete National autonomy.

Many will argue with this assessment but in truth, a Nation and its leadership cannot serve two masters; the National people it represents or its allegiance to an outside entity which does not share the concerns of that Nation. The UN was the Orwellian concept made manifest and placed all member nations on notice that the needs of the “world”, outweighed the needs of the individual nations. While that concept may play well on the big screen depicting non-existent alien beings and a fanciful future galactic societal construct, it is a pitiful and treacherous way for a Nation’s Leader to treat the people he has sworn to protect.

Amnesty International Attacks Democracies, Forgives Islamist Tyrannies by Giulio Meotti

“Morally bankrupt.” – Salman Rushdie, author with a $600,000 bounty from the Iranian regime on his head, speaking of Amnesty International.

Amnesty International sponsored a rally in Brussels, where Islamist speakers celebrated the 9/11 attacks, denied the Holocaust and demonized gays and Jews.

It seems that Amnesty turned its back on the battle of human rights in favor of a grotesque anti-Western bias. The Economist accused Amnesty of “reserving more pages to human rights abuses in Britain and the United States than in Belarus and Saudi Arabia.”

Amnesty’s secretary general compared Soviet forced-labor camps, where three million people died of hunger, cold and executions, to a US military base where no prisoner has died, and which has prevented countless innocent civilians from being blown up.

“Canada is obliged to arrest and prosecute Bush for his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture”, said Susan Lee, Amnesty International’s Americas programme director. Amnesty’s also charged Obama of “war crimes.” The Western “war on terror”? According to Amnesty, “it is sowing fear.” US drone strikes? A “war crime.”

Alan Dershowitz summarizes Amnesty International’s definition of Israel’s “war crimes”: “Whatever Israel does to defend its citizens.”

A report by NGO Monitor detailed “Amnesty’s repeated examples of ‘lawfare’; systematic flaws in the reporting of human rights abuses; limited understanding of armed conflict leading to erroneous claims and incorrect analysis; and violation of the universality of human rights, including a consistent institutionalized bias against Israel through double-standards.” There are even Amnesty’s officials who called the Jewish State “a scum state”.

There was a time when Amnesty International defended victims of ideological repression such as the wife of Soviet writer Boris Pasternak, Olga Ivinskaya, who spent years under arrest and persecuted for her husband’s refusal to bow down to the Kremlin. Now, the Times of London has documented links between Amnesty International’s officials and “networks of Islamists.”

According to Amnesty International, the centers that host migrants arriving in Italy, known as “hotspots,” are like concentration camps. This is what you learn from Amnesty International’s new report, which accuses Italy of nothing less than “torturing” migrants. The report features a sequence of testimonies, never proven, that describe methods worthy of a South American military junta.

Israel smart tracker aims to keep tabs on insulin shots Device snaps on to disposable insulin pens, helps patients monitor dosage times and quantities By Shoshanna Solomon

Israeli startup Insulog, which has created a device that helps diabetes patients keep track of their insulin doses, on Wednesday started a campaign to raise $50,000 via the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.

The funds, said CEO and founder of the Ramat Gan-based firm Menash Michael, will help the company get the necessary US Food and Drug Administration and European permits to market the product. Contributors to the campaign will be able to get the product for $119, delivery of which will take place in summer 2017 when the approvals are in place, he said.

Diabetes patients who use an insulin pen to inject the hormone must remember to take the right dose at the right time, to help maintain stable sugar levels in the blood and to avoid over- or under-dosing, which could lead to life-threatening situations.

Even the most conscientious of patients can have a tough time managing the condition: they need to remember what they ate along with when they took their last dose of insulin and how many units they injected.

Indeed, Michael, who has suffered from Type 1 diabetes for over 30 years, ended up in the emergency room after he accidentally over-injected himself with insulin. After that experience, he came up with the idea for the smart, connected insulin tracker, the Insulog, to help diabetic patients like himself keep track of their medication regimen.

Smart sensors

The device, which snaps on to most types of disposable insulin pens, is equipped with smart sensors follow the pen vibrations and that reset each time a new dose of insulin is administered. An algorithm analyzes the clicks of the insulin pen, record the amounts taken and sends the information to a smartphone app. The pairing with the app enables users to view their entire injection history and share the information with their physician.

When the Insulog device is turned on for reuse, it displays data from the user’s most recent dose, showing when the last injection was administered and the quantity taken.

After his overdose, “now, I am hyper-alert of my insulin intake, and Insulog helps me to never make that mistake again,” said Michael, who founded the company in 2014. “There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who could greatly benefit” from the device, he said.