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May 2017

Iranians Re-Elect a Fake Reformer in a Fake Election Rouhani was the lesser of two evils, but Westerners vastly overestimate what an Iranian president can do. by Eli Lake

n the days before President Hassan Rouhani’s re-election victory in Iran this weekend, a video of one of his old speeches circulated on social media. Speaking at Iran’s parliament, Rouhani says dissidents against the new regime should be publicly hanged during Friday prayers as a message.

Rouhani was a younger man in this speech, in his early 40s. The revolution was also young. And many Iranian leaders of that era have taken the journey from revolution to reform. The reason Rouhani’s speech though is so relevant to Iran today is because, in public at least, the president of Iran has changed his tune.

During his campaign, he told voters that he would be a “lawyer” defending their rights. He criticized his main rival, Ebrahim Raisi, for his role in ordering the executions of political dissidents. He promised gender equality and a freer press.

All of that sounds pretty good. And for those in the west looking for an Iranian version of Mikhail Gorbachev, it makes a nice talking point. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe Rouhani will deliver, or even try to deliver, on any of these promises.

There are a few reasons for this. To start, Rouhani delivered the same line back in 2013 when he first won the presidency. We now know that human rights in Iran have further eroded during his tenure. A lot of this has been documented by the Center for Human Rights in Iran. The organization noted in October that Rouhani supported a law that would essentially place all Iranian media under government control. The center also documented a wave of arrests of journalists in November 2015, following Iran’s agreement to the nuclear bargain with the U.S and five other world powers. In the run-up to Friday’s vote, 29 members of the European Parliament wrote an open letter urging Iran to end its arrests, intimidation and harassment of journalists in the election season.

Sadegh Zibakalam, an activist and professor of political science at Tehran University, summed this up well in November: “Rouhani did not have the power to free political prisoners or end the house arrests, but he didn’t even pretend that he wanted to do something.”

Victor Davis Hanson: Whole Trump-Russia-Collusion Story Is A “Big Lie”

Citing a term coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, Hoover Institution scholar Victor Davis Hanson explains that the allegations that President Trump worked with the Russians in any way are a “big lie” created by the Democrats with no evidence.

TUCKER CARLSON: Professor, you’re saying that this whole thing is basically nonsense, is that what you’re saying?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Yeah. I think you have to go to the origins, causes, methodologies, and objectives. So, this thing started during the nomination process when a group of ‘Never Trump’ people commissioned a dossier from a retired British agent — the so-called Fusion/Christopher Steele dossier, that was pretty much ridiculous.

It was passed on, after Trump got the nomination, to the Clinton campaign.

And pretty much forgotten about. And then suddenly, when she did what no one thought she would do, and lost, Robby Mook’s analytics and data didn’t prove to be successful, and she didn’t go to the blue wall states, then all of a sudden a new narrative came. The Russians must have done it by the Wikileak trove process, and then this dossier somehow got in the hands of the FBI director, whether he paid for it of not, I think Sen. Grassley is investigazting that, and now we have this idea that Trump colluded, and this dossier was leaked to media sources, and it was pretty obscene, pretty outrageous, had things in it that could not have been true, and where are we now?

We’ve had the director of national intelligence James Clapper say it didn’t exist, Senators Dianne Feinsein and Chuck Grassley say this, FBI director Comey said there was not an ongoing investigation.

And then it was very unlikely, because Donald Trump, he didn’t dismantle Eastern European missile defense, he didn’t go to Geneva and press a plastic red button, he didn’t make fun of Romney for saying Russia was an existential enemy, he didn’t have a hot mic exchange with the Russian president saying he would be ‘more flexible’ after the election.

The entire ‘Reset’ appeasement of Russia came from the Clinton-Obama team, not Donald Trump. And now we’re here.

And it is very unlikely generally, because he actually ran as a Jacksonian, who was going to beef up U.S. defenses, and get tough with our enemies, our adversaries, our rivals abroad, so it wouldnt be necessarily logical for Putin to want him to be president, yet here we are.

And I think the real message we’re missing is, that there was evidence that some people in the Obama administration had surveilled people either Trump himself, or around Trump, and that that information had either been reverse targeted diliberately… or incidentally, it didn’t matter because the neames were unmasked and leaked to reporters.

So for the last six months, between this dossier, and this surveillance, we’ve had these illegal leaks, so if special investigator Mueller looks at the totality of this so-called “Russian collusion-surveillance” story, I think he will come to conclusions we don’t expect…

The U.S., Churchill and the Middle East by Pierre Rehov

President Donald Trump has apparently decided that on his visit to Israel this week, he will not announce the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem — a move that will only make him look less strong to Arab leaders. They may not like all promises that are kept, but they do deeply respect and trust those who keep them. If promises are not kept to a friend, the thinking goes, why would they be kept to us?

As Plato, Churchill and even Osama bin Laden understood, people respect only a strong horse, especially when one’s adversaries can only survive by creating conflicts to distract their citizens from unaccountable governance.

By recognizing the rights of Jerusalem’s historical occupants of 3,000 years — despite the lies of UNESCO and other UN organizations engulfed by the Arabs’ automatic majority — Trump could well demonstrate a new force that would elevate him to the same stature as Churchill.

In France, everything has been written about the new U.S president, as long as it could relay the most negative image possible. In a country sometimes bathed in an anti-Americanism inherited from Gaullism and communism, major political religions of the post-war era, exacerbated by the Bush years — it experienced a noticeable lull at the arrival of former President Barack Obama. The election of Donald Trump has the effect of an avalanche.

For many, America had foundered, would never recover and the archetypal image of the uneducated, violent cowboy, fed on hamburgers, would now finally stick to this uncouth country — too powerful, too capitalist and actually distressed by injustice and inequality.

But beyond the systematic and cleverly orchestrated detestation that the new American president engenders, it is clear that after eight years of the soft and partisan management of Obama (one will remember his hallucinatory Cairo speech, his bow of allegiance to the King of Saudi Arabia, and especially his passivity to the atrocities committed by Iran, Syria and their proxies) powerful America is back at the front of the stage.

The U.S. is no longer simply the paralyzed observer of a rise in violence, as in those terrifying scenes in movies where zombies multiply without anyone knowing how to contain, counter or stop them. Since the sheriff is back in town fighting the zombies, the zombies are fighting back.

As soon as President Trump arrived in the White House, in fact, he rolled up his sleeves to try to find solutions to the increasing threats to world peace, based on a sound principle appreciated by great leaders such as Churchill: Si vis pacem para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.

To no one’s surprise, and possibly for many reasons, the Nobelized pacifist, Obama, asked to have a bust of Winston Churchill removed from the White House on day one; Trump asked for it back on day one.

In 1938, while Chamberlain and Daladier, with their pallid complexions and sad smiles, congratulated themselves on having abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s hands in exchange for a promise of peace that rapidly turned out to be just the prelude to the deadliest war in history, Churchill summed up the situation with the scathing phrase: “They had to choose between dishonor and war. They have chosen dishonor and they will have war.”

One can only wonder how Churchill would have judged Obama.

Iran was on the brink of capitulating. It had already been listed by the U.S. Department of State as the world’s leading promoter of terrorism, and one with nuclear, hegemonic and genocidal ambitions. History will undoubtedly remember that it was Obama (of the Iraqi debacle; of the cowardly abandonment of his ambassador, tortured to death in Benghazi; of threats never followed up when Assad crossed the U.S. president’s own “red line” and gassed his own people, and of lying repeatedly to his own people about matters from healthcare choices to videos supposedly having caused the Benghazi attack, to name a few) that allowed the Ayatollahs to consolidate their imperialist aggression against a backdrop of terrorism and the denial of human rights.

This soft and non-interventionist philosophy, also adopted by former President Jimmy Carter, had already enabled Muslim extremists to overthrow the Shah of Iran. President Bill Clinton was fooled by North Korea in 1994 into negotiating economic aid in exchange for a promise to respect the non-proliferation treaty signed in 1985; the North Koreans simply took the money and used it to finance the nuclear program it had been given them to stop.

This political blindness, deliberate or not, also allowed President Obama to celebrate his diplomatic “victory” of ostensibly bringing in Iran from the cold, when it was clear all along that all Iran wanted to get was colder. Iran continues its imperialist expansion, its financing of terrorists, and its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and, of course its long-range missile development program.

President Trump, however, in just four months, seems to have learned the lesson of Churchill. Take, for example, three of the new president’s actions.

First there was the massive bombing of the Al-Sha’ayrate air base, after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had ordered the Syrian army to massacre part of the population of Khan Sheikhoun with sarin gas.

Unlike Obama, Trump had promised — probably foolishly: the promise seems to have been interpreted as a green light to murder — not to intervene in Syria. If the new U.S. president changed his mind, it is all to his honor, for this reversal was born of a vision of horror: children and babies suffocating, gassed.

The second action was born at the same time, when 59 Tomahawk missiles sent a clear message to the rest of the world through the destruction of the air base from which the gas-carrying planes had taken off, President Trump dined in Mar-a-Lago with his Chinese counterpart. “By the way,” he announced to Xi Jinping while dessert was served, “we have just bombed Syria.” With the arrival of the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake,” years of failed diplomacy were undone.

Finally, President Trump should be recognized for inducing China even symbolically to loosen its ties to its North Korean ally by slowdowns of “tourist” flights between Beijing and Pyongyang, and by blocking shipments of coal, and other mild promises, at least until the U.S. looks the other way.

In addition, NATO countries, protected by the American umbrella, recently seem to have felt inspired to pay America their 2%, thus honoring their agreements, and have also begun to develop a section for fighting terrorism — a program evidently long forbidden.

In addition, a new strand of American foreign policy is now opening up. Recently, Israel celebrated the 69th anniversary of its independence, and this week Israel will mark 50 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, liberated in 1967 from its illegal capture by Jordan in 1948, followed by Jordan’s ethnic cleaning of Jews and the illegal confiscation of their property. The White House announced the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, provided that it ceases to finance and incite terrorism by making its child-killers national heroes and wage-earners funded by the West

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will no longer be able to continue to pretend to prepare his people for peace while at the same time calling for murder. About 10% of the Palestinian budget is spent on the salaries of terrorists imprisoned in Israel, and the prisoners’ families.

Abbas evidently omitted this “detail” in his statements to the press during his recent visit to the White House.

Trump has apparently decided that on his visit to Israel this week, he will not announce the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem — a move that will only make him look less strong to Arab leaders. They may not like all promises that are kept, but they do deeply respect and trust those who keep them. If promises are not kept to a friend, the thinking goes, why would they be kept to us? They will therefore be less happy with any promises to counter Shiite threats — considerably more important to them than the location of an embassy. As Plato, Churchill and even Osama bin Laden understood, people respect only a strong horse, especially when one’s adversaries can only survive by creating conflicts to distract their citizens from unaccountable governance. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu observed:

“Israel has clearly stated its position to the US and to the world multiple times. Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem won’t harm the peace process. The opposite is true. It will correct a historic injustice by advancing the [peace process] and shattering a Palestinian fantasy that Jerusalem isn’t Israel’s capital.”

By recognizing the rights of Jerusalem’s historical occupants of 3,000 years — despite the lies of UNESCO and other UN organizations engulfed by the Arabs’ automatic majority — Trump could well demonstrate a new force that would elevate him to the same stature as Churchill, who said he regarded Islamism as the “greatest retrograde force of all time.” No wonder Obama did not want his bust.

Europe: Muslim Atrocities against Women? So What! by Uzay Bulut

These examples are merely a sampling of what is becoming commonplace across Europe. In the name of human rights, inclusion, diversity and equality, “enlightened” activists and judicial authorities are apologizing for and excusing Muslim criminals for behavior that would not be tolerated from anyone else — and should not be tolerated.

Do these judges work for Islamic sharia courts or for secular European courts?

These court rulings are an open call to Muslim men in Europe to rape women, children, anyone they like. Those cultures in which women and children as are viewed as property deserve no respect, and certainly not preferential treatment.

It happened again last week. Two Turkish nationals in Schwerin, Germany were arrested for raping a 13-year-old girl after forcing themselves into her home.

Schwerin, Germany (Image source: Getty Images)

Recently, a judge in Germany acquitted a Turkish drug dealer of raping one of his customers last August. He had forced himself on her for four hours and left her incapacitated for weeks. He told the judge that in the culture from where he came, what she “had experienced as rape” might be considered merely “wild sex”.

What “culture” is this?

According to the Turkish women’s rights organization “We Will Stop the Murders of Women,” which publishes monthly reports, in March of this year alone, 35 women were killed; 14 others were exposed to sexual violence, and 63 children were molested. Many children, the report said, had been sexually abused for years, and often attempted suicide.

The report also stated that the murder of women in Turkey — 63% percent of which is committed by husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers or sons — is spurred more than half the time by women; it is supposedly their fault: they actually wanted to make decisions about their lives, such as getting a divorce, before they were murdered.

Worse, nearly a third of those are classified by authorities as “suspicious murders,” perpetrated by “unknown assailants.”

Torturing women to death is also increasingly widespread, as well as killing young children along with their mothers. One case involved a man who slit the throats of his ex-wife and their five-year-old daughter.

Susan Rice Spreads Fake News About Trump and a “Genocidaire” : Daniel Greenfield

Let’s start with the obvious.

This woman was the Ambassador to the UN. Obama wanted her to be Secretary of State. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her family was wealthy and influential. Her father was a Federal Reserve governor and she went to a posh private school. She graduated from Stanford and Oxford. And was a Rhodes scholar.

And she’s illiterate.

“This is outrageous. The US President sitting down with a genocidaire!!! Have we totally lost our values? Crazy even by today’s standards. https://twitter.com/julianborger/status”

This is what a racial privilege affirmative action baby looks like.

Susan Rice thinks that “genocidaire” is a word. The word she’s going for is probably genocider. But that’s also grammatically incorrect. And the whole thing is laughable.

Rice got ahead on racial privilege despite coming from a wealthy and powerful family. She never had to work for anything. And this is the result. It’s a sad result too.

Back to her fake news, President Trump isn’t sitting down with Omar Al-Bashir. That’s fake news. But Rice’s Obama Regime did go easy on Sudan. And Obama made it clear he would not even intervene in the Muslim genocide there.

So yes, clearly we have no values.

Meanwhile Obama’s former UN Ambassador is focused on Mean Girls twitter trolling about the guy she was spying on.

ISIS urges jihadis to imitate Times Square car ramming incident By Lisa Daftari

Opportunistic jihadis have posted messages urging supporters to carry out vehicular attacks similar to Thursday’s Times Square car crash even as law enforcement officials confirmed that the incident had no connection to terrorism. http://www.foreigndesknews.com/world/middle-east/isis-urges-jihadis-imitate-times-square-car-ramming-incident/

Pro-Islamic State jihadis shared images and messages such as, “Soon, the vehicle attacks will be witnessed on your streets, by Allah’s permission,” in an attempt to lure so-called ‘lone wolf’ attackers to carry out same-style attacks but in the name of the Islamic State.

Richard Rojas,26, from Bronx, NY, was arraigned Friday on charges of second-degree murder, 20 counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide following Thursday’s car crash, which killed an 18-year-old woman.

The terror group has even been using relevant hashtags such as #NewYork #Times_Square and #USA in their propaganda posts.

Jihadis posted an image of a large truck with “We will continue to terrorize you and ruin your lives,” on the Telegram messaging app, urging ‘believers’ to give up this ‘temporary life’ and earn everlasting reward in paradise.

“O Muwahhid (believer), Indeed it is a single soul and a single paradise, so sell it to Allah and purchase Jannah (afterlife). Sell what is temporary for what is lasting, for how blessed a transaction is that transaction! Blessed would be the seller and blessed be the buyer!”

After finding challenges in asking would-be jihadis to travel from around the world, particularly the West, to the Caliphate, the Islamic State began a campaign of encouraging Western sympathizers to launch local attacks in their hometowns by using everyday objects as weapons, such as kitchen knives, axes and cars, to ram into large crowds.

ISIS has claimed car ramming attacks in Nice, Berlin, London and Ohio State University, when Somali student Abdul Razak Ali Artan drove his car into a group of pedestrians on a sidewalk and subsequently exited his car and started stabbing those nearby with a knife.

Earlier this week, ISIS released a video featuring an American jihadi calling for ‘lone-wolf’ attacks in the U.S.

“Liberate yourself from hellfire by killing a kafir (non-believer),” a jihadi identified by his pseudonym, Abu Hamza al-Amriki, said.

The group has also published several articles and infographics in recent months urging supporters to carry out vehicular attacks, advising them to target places with heavy pedestrian traffic such as New York, to maximize the impact of attacks.

The Special Counsel Who Just Might Save Trump’s Presidency Trump won’t like Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia ties. By Eli Lake

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein just did Donald Trump a favor.

It may not look like that from the perspective of the president. His Twitter feed is filled with eruptions about the fraudulence of the Russia investigation. But by appointing the former FBI director Robert Mueller to investigate the matter, Rosenstein has quieted a crisis that was consuming Trump’s presidency.

The storm has been gathering for more than a week. It started when Trump impetuously fired the FBI director, James Comey, claiming at first that he did so on the advice of Rosenstein. Then the president changed his story and told NBC News that he was going to fire Comey anyway and that part of this was because the bureau’s Russia investigation was dragging on.

The Comey camp soon struck back. First his allies leaked that Trump had asked Comey for his loyalty back in January over dinner. Then in a more damaging story, the New York Times reported on a memo Comey had written to record a conversation in which Trump asked him to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, the national security adviser Trump fired after three weeks on the job.

To state the obvious, all of this made Trump look like he had something to hide. And it did not take long for Democrats to seize on this theme, mounting a campaign for a special counsel as a condition to approve the next FBI director.

Republicans also began to slide away from the leader of their party. Senator John McCain said the Russia scandal was beginning to resemble Watergate. Senator Bob Corker said the White House was in a downward spiral. A Republican committee chairman asked the FBI to hand over Comey’s notes of meetings with Trump. The Russia probe was consuming Trump’s presidency.

Now Rosenstein has offered the president a reset. Trump has a chance to try to focus on foreign and domestic policy. And in this respect the timing is fortunate.

Trump will travel to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy and Belgium on his first foreign trip as president, starting Friday. He plans to press Arab allies to form a new alliance against Iran. He hopes to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He has a chance to lock down greater spending commitments from NATO allies.

On the domestic front, Trump can now focus on getting his health-care legislation and tax cuts through the Senate.

This is not to say there are not risks. A special counsel has the authority to pursue all kinds of leads, even if they are not about collusion with Russia during the election. As anyone who remembers the 1990s can attest, these investigations can begin by looking into shady land deals in Arkansas and end up documenting a president’s sexual dalliances with a White House intern.

COLLEGE SNITCHES: EDWARD CLINE

The National Review ran a short piece, which, at first, I thought was a satirical piece by Katherine Timpf in the spirit of the Harvard Crimson, “U-Arizona is hiring-students-to tattle on others for ‘bias-incidents.’”

The University of Arizona is hiring students to be “social-justice activists,” [SJAs] and the job description demands that they “report any bias incidents or claims to appropriate Residence Life staff.”

In other words: These kids are being paid to tattle on other kids for anything they might consider to be a microaggression, and any students who gets these jobs should probably identify themselves so that other students will know to never invite them to their parties.

According to the university’s website, the official title of the position is “social-justice activist,” and it pays $10 per hour. They can expect to work about 15 hours per week, which, as the Daily Caller notes, means that they will be making roughly $600 per month to behave like self-righteous, meddling nightmares.

Before I blinked twice and realized Miss Timpf was reporting a fact, and wasn’t trying to be humorous, I wondered if the $600 a month stipend would go to reducing a student’s federal and/or state college loan, which will typically run in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars, depending on the campus.

But, no, Miss Timpf was dead serious.

The SJA would not act as an ombudsman to negotiate resolutions between triggered emotionally hurt students and steely-eyed truth tellers. Nor would he act as a blockwart, which was a Nazi rank below gauleiter. He would be, frankly, a paid, contemptible snitch. His job would be to turn in and stamp out individuals, not whole populations.

The University website, “Social Justice Advocates Recruitment Information,” informs us:

The Social Justice Advocates (SJA) Position is one that is grounded in the multicultural competency framework and allows student staff to gain the awareness, knowledge, and skills necessary to work effectively with students and residents across cultures and identities. The position calls for an understanding of social identity groups, experiences, histories, and practices as it relates to everyday life and life at the University of Arizona.

The position also aims to increase understanding of one’s own self through critical reflection of power and privilege, identity and intersectionality, systems of socialization, cultural competency and allyship as they pertain to the acknowledgement, understanding and acceptance of differences. Finally, this position intends to increase a student staff member’s ability to openly lead conversations, discuss differences and confront diversely insensitive behavior.

When Does All That Evidence of Collusion Arrive? By Jim Geraghty see note please

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/447780/print

This is from a #Never Trump member…..

From the last Morning Jolt of the week:

When Does All That Evidence of Collusion Arrive?

Thursday night, White House communications officials were eager to spotlight these comments from legislators, admitting or confirming, that they had, so far, seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Sam Stein, Huffington Post: “But just to be clear, there has been no actual evidence yet.”

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): “No, it has not been.”

Keep in mind, this is “Mad Maxine” Waters, who begins that interview by contending, “Lock her up, lock her up, all of that, I think that was developed strategically with people from the Kremlin, with Putin.” Right, right, there’s no way the Trump campaign could have possibly thought of that rallying cry on their own. That’s gotta be the work of Russian intelligence right there – you’ve cracked the case, Congresswoman!

Then there’s a Republican senator who hasn’t been a consistent Trump ally with the same assessment.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: “There is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians as of this date. I do not believe the president himself is a target or subject of any criminal investigation as of right now. So that’s what I know right now, and where this goes, I don’t know. Follow the facts where they lead.”

Perhaps the most significant comes from Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: “The last time we spoke, Senator, I asked you if you had actually seen evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and you said to me — and I’m quoting you now — you said, ‘not at this time.’ Has anything changed since we spoke last?”

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): “Well, not– no, it hasn’t.”

BLITZER: “But I just want to be precise, Senator. In all of the—you’ve had access from the intelligence committee, from the Judiciary committee, all of the access you’ve had to very sensitive information, so far you’ve not seen any evidence of collusion, is that right?”

SEN. FEINSTEIN: “Well, evidence that would establish that there’s collusion. There are all kinds of rumors around. There are newspaper stories, but that’s not necessarily evidence.”

Feinstein is the most intriguing, because think about how easily she could have fudged her answer: “I’ve seen things that trouble me, Wolf” or “I’ve seen things that raise serious questions” or some other word salad that avoid the word “no.”

And then there was this Reuters article, reporting that Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race,

The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far. But the disclosure could increase the pressure on Trump and his aides to provide the FBI and Congress with a full account of interactions with Russian officials and others with links to the Kremlin during and immediately after the 2016 election.

(The Reuters story cites “current and former U.S. officials” as sources. Every time we see the words “former U.S. officials” we should keep in mind there’s a good chance the source would be more accurately characterized as a “former Obama administration official.” This doesn’t mean that former official is automatically lying, just that they have a particular agenda for leaking this information, and one that is being effectively withheld from readers.)

Democrats are increasingly convinced that the seemingly endless storm of allegations around Trump will inevitably lead to his impeachment, and an impeachment that will come soon, not late in Trump’s first term. They’re convinced that evidence of Trump violating the law exists, and they’re convinced that the FBI or the investigating committees in Congress will find it.

Are any Democratic lawmakers starting to fear that they’re not going to find that evidence? The intelligence community is presumably always watching the Russian government as closely as they can. The FBI counterintelligence guys presumably track Russian agents on our soil as much as possible. You figure the NSA can track just about any electronic communication between Russians and figures in the Trump campaign.

If there was something sinister and illegal going on between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, the U.S. government as a whole had every incentive in the world to expose that as quickly as possible. They didn’t expose it before Election Day, they didn’t expose it before the Electoral College voted, they didn’t expose it before Inauguration Day… How many months have the best investigators in the United States been digging into this?

Tis The Season Of Anti-Semitism by Abraham H. Miller

Abraham H. Miller Emeritus Professor, University of Cincinnati

It’s been a good season for anti-Semites. Jewish students graduating CUNY will have as their last memory of the school some inspiring words from professional anti-Semite Linda Sarsour, who believes a Jewish homeland has no place in the community of nations, Sharia should be law, and Zionist women cannot be feminists.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has been involved in a long string of anti-Semitic controversies, finally did something even the British Labour Party could not ignore. He called Hitler a Zionist.

But Livingstone was merely suspended from party membership, not expelled. And why should he have been? After all, he was merely echoing sentiments that many in his party seem to hold.

In the Middle East, as the Palestine Authority seeks to loosen Hamas’ grip on Gaza by refusing to pay its electricity bills, the UN has stepped in to tell Israel that it is its obligation, as the occupying party, to intervene and supply its sworn existential enemy with power for free. Israel, of course, has not occupied Gaza since 2005.

In the Alice in Wonderland world of the UN, Israel is still occupying Gaza, but its presence in a united Jerusalem does not legally exist. Israel’s excavations in Jerusalem that underscore the Jewish presence there for millennia and contradict Islamic make-believe history are ordered to cease. Israel will not comply.

Whatever the anti-Semitic UN does in its pandering to Islamic nonsense, generated by the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people and has been so for over three thousand years. As one Israeli official put it, our history is embedded in every stone.

And if this were not enough to lacerate Jewish sensitivities in a single week, the more than 2,000,000 New York Jews were being treated to a political campaign that simultaneously weaponized and politicized anti-Semitism.

Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a candidate for New York City Council, was running a campaign steeped in anti-Semitic tropes of the exploitive, greedy Jew. Lopez-Pierre lashed out at his rival Mark Levine for being white and Jewish, undoubtedly a double-edged sin in the leftist world where all ethnicities are to be celebrated unless you are white and Jewish.

Lopez-Pierre, without so much as a scintilla of evidence, argued that greedy Jewish developers with Israeli money were responsible for 80% of the gentrification of Harlem that was displacing blacks and Latinos. And following the pattern of all racists, all members of a group are responsible for the bad deeds (real or imaginary) of any other members of the group. This, of course, was the deranged mentality of the Southern lynch mob!

Among anti-Semitic stereotypes, the Shylock trope resonates well, but apparently cooler heads convinced Lopez-Pierre, who never had a chance of winning, to fold his smutty tent and leave the electoral field to real candidates.