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November 2017

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We Don’t Need a Special Counsel to Investigate the Clinton Foundation What we need is a credible prosecutor. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on November 15th, 2017

Republicans, whether in the White House or on Capitol Hill, do not seem to appreciate how much they may be undermining what they say they want — a serious investigation of the Clinton Foundation and such related matters as the Uranium One transaction, the interplay between the foundation and the operation of the State Department during Secretary Clinton’s tenure, and the question of whether that interplay explains the use of the improper private email system and the destruction of tens of thousands of emails.

The president has been railing about his own Justice Department’s apparent inaction (after signaling, post-election, that he did not want to see the Clintons further investigated and prosecuted). A group of House Republicans has taken up this cause and is pushing for the appointment of a special counsel. In essence, it is a tit-for-tat maneuver: There is a special-counsel probing Trump ties to Russia, they reason, so why not a special-counsel to probe Clinton ties to Russia?

This suggests a basic misunderstanding about what triggers a special-counsel investigation: There must be potential offenses that warrant investigation as to which the Justice Department has a conflict of interest that would make its conducting the investigation inappropriate.

Preliminarily, we should note that there is no such thing as an independent counsel. In our constitutional system, prosecution is an executive power, so even special counsels ultimately report to the Justice Department’s leadership. That being the case, we should never have a special counsel unless one is absolutely necessary. It is pernicious to have a prosecutor who is assigned to make a case on a single target (or set of targets). These prosecutors are insulated from the pressures of an ordinary prosecutor’s office, where cases have to compete for resources and only the meritorious ones are pursued. Thus, the sorry history of the special counsel (and its predecessors — the “special prosecutor” and “independent counsel”) is empire-building, investigations that go on for years, and cases involving trivial charges often far removed from the suspected offense that was the original rationale for appointing the special counsel.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN Makes Compelling Case Why It Shouldn’t Exist Daniel Greenfield

By on November 15th, 2017

CNN has had some really dumb stories about President Trump. There was CNN’s claim that he was afraid of stairs.And that he had two scoops of ice cream.But CNN has really outdone itself.

CNN, like the rest of the media, spends a lot of time complaining about being under attack by the White House. And then making lots of noises about the First Amendment. No one doubts that CNN has a First Amendment right to run “Trump’s face found in a dog’s ear “.

But maybe at this point shutting down CNN would be doing it a favor. Not in a punitive sort of way, but just as an intervention.

CNN, like the rest of the media, can’t quit Trump. Its Trump Derangement Syndrome just leads it to humiliate itself with utterly insane broadcasts like this.

Trump doesn’t have to convince anyone that CNN is fake news. CNN does that all on its own.

Forget the fake part. I’m not too sure CNN can even convince anyone it does any kind of news.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary To Get Her Own Special Prosecutor? The Mueller probe expands to cover Clinton’s relationship with Russia. Matthew Vadum

By on November 15th, 2017

Senior federal prosecutors are investigating Hillary Clinton, the sale of Uranium One, and the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a move that may lead to the appointment of another independent prosecutor, Fox News reports.

Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice ordered prosecutors to examine “certain issues” raised by congressional Republicans, according to a letter Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd sent to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and other committee members, who have been demanding a special counsel be assigned to probe Clinton.

Former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III was appointed in May as a special counsel to investigate the Russia-Trump campaign electoral collusion conspiracy theory peddled by the Left to undermine the Trump administration. Since then former Trump campaign aides Paul J. Manafort Jr. and Richard W. Gates III have been indicted by Mueller’s fishing expedition for wrongdoings like tax evasion that are unrelated to the campaign.

Mueller has also been investigating Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group for their Russian entanglements. Podesta is the brother of Clinton campaign chairman and Center for American Progress founder John Podesta. “The Podesta Group, a longtime K Street fixture … will reportedly shut down by year’s end as the firm’s involvement in a lobbying campaign on behalf of pro-Russia forces in the Ukrainian government has fallen under scrutiny from both the press and Robert Mueller,” the Washington Examiner reports.

The Podesta Group lobbied for Uranium One, the Canadian-based energy company. In 2010, the Obama administration allowed Uranium One to be acquired by Russia’s Rosatom, which gave the company control over one-fifth of U.S. uranium-mining capacity to Russia, despite an ongoing FBI probe into a Rosatom subsidiary allegedly involved in racketeering. The Uranium One deal was approved by Hillary Clinton’s Department of State acting as one of nine institutional members of an inter-agency review board called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The approval came around the time her husband received the suspiciously large sum of $500,000 for a single speech from Russian sources. Donations from Russians and others hoping to cash in on a prospective Hillary Clinton presidency reportedly flooded the coffers of the corrupt, now-embattled Clinton Foundation.

Boyd wrote in the letter that “[t]hese senior prosecutors will report directly to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General [Rod Rosenstein], as appropriate, and will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

PINING FOR FIG LEAVES Obama partisans fret as Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US confront reality on Iran. Caroline Glick

By on November 15th, 2017

Friday, long-time US diplomats and Middle East experts Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky published an article in Foreign Policy expressing “buyers’ remorse” over Saudi Arabia’s newfound willingness to take the lead in regional affairs.

Titled, “Donald Trump has unleashed the Saudi Arabia we always wanted – and feared,” Miller and Sokolsky note that for generations, US policymakers wanted the Saudis to take a lead in determining the future of the region.
In their words, “During decades of service at the State Department, we longed for the day when riskaverse Saudi leaders would take greater ownership in solving their domestic and regional security problems and reduce their dependence on the United States.”

But now, they argue, under the leadership of King Salman and his son, 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis are going too far.

Domestically, Miller and Sokolsky accuse Salman and Mohammed of upsetting the traditional power sharing arrangements among the various princes in order to concentrate unprecedented power in Mohammed’s hands. This, they insist, harms the status of human rights in the kingdom, although they acknowledge that Mohammed has taken steps to liberalize the practice of Islam in the kingdom to the benefit of women and others.

While upset at the purge of princes, ministers and businessmen, Miller and Sokolsky are much more concerned about the foreign policy initiatives Mohammed and Salman have undertaken with everything related to countering Iran’s rise as a regional hegemon.

In their words, “Abroad, the Saudis are engaged in a cold war with an opportunistic Iran that’s exploiting their missteps in Yemen and Qatar.”

Miller and Sokolsky note that Mohammed’s campaign to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthi regime in Yemen has been bogged down. His effort – backed by US President Donald Trump – to force Qatar to abandon its policy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran has similarly come up short.

They continue, “The latest Saudi gambit – pressuring the Sunni Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign in an effort to expose an Iranian- and Hezbollah- dominated Lebanon – is perhaps too clever by half. What are the Saudis going to do, given their Shiite adversaries’ advantages in Syria and Lebanon, when the Lebanese find themselves plunged into domestic crisis or a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah?” The veteran diplomats conclude their missive by urging Trump to implement his predecessor Barack Obama’s Saudi policy. In their words, Trump needs to place heavy pressure “on the king and his son to de-escalate this conflict and restore equilibrium to America’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

“Because make no mistake,” they warn, “Saudi independence is illusory. Riyadh desperately wants us to back them – and bail them out when they get in over their heads with Iran. If Washington is not careful, the Saudis will sandbag America into standing up to Tehran while the Saudis hide behind its skirt.”

As if synchronized, Robert Malley, Obama’s former Middle East adviser, makes a similar argument in an article in The Atlantic. Malley took a lead role in expanding the US’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah during the Obama years.

There are several problems with these policymakers’ claims. The first is that in criticizing the Saudis they deliberately ignore the Obama administration’s central role in engendering the current situation in which the Saudi regime feels compelled to take the actions it is taking.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France: Muslims In, Jews Out by Giulio Meotti

By on November 15th, 2017

Suburbs have become transformed into one of the most visible signs of the Islamization of France. Anti-Semitism is devouring the French Republic.

While Jewish symbols disappear from France, Islamic symbols proliferate, from burkinis on the beaches to veils in the workplace. Jews who have not fled France are trying to become “invisible”.

France’s suburbs are rapidly becoming apartheid societies. Hatred of Jews has become the gateway to “la France soumise” — the submission of France.

Suburbs (“banlieues”) — distant from the affluent boulevards and bistros of Paris — form the “other France”. They are the “peripheral France”, (“La France Périphérique”) as the geographer Christophe Guilluy calls them in an important book. They are where “living together” between communities has really been tested.

In the last 20 years, these French suburbs have not only become “concentrations of poverty and social isolation”, but have gone from being some of France’s most densely-populated Jewish areas to “lost territories of the Republic”, according to the great historian Georges Bensoussan, in his book, Les territoires perdus de la République.

These suburbs have become transformed into one of the most visible signs of the Islamization of France.

Anti-Semitism has returned as one of Europe’s worst diseases. France hosts Europe’s largest Jewish community, and Jews have been fleeing the suburbs to either emigrate or move to gentrified districts of the cities, where they feel more protected. What happens to the Jews will have a seismic impact on the entire continent.

In the Parisian suburb of Bagneux, someone recently vandalized the memorial plaque for Ilan Halimi, a young Jew who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a “barbarian gang” in 2006, just for being a Jew. At the time, it was France’s first case of murderous anti-Semitism in many years. After it, Islamists murdered Jews at a school in Toulouse and a kosher supermarket in Paris.

As Le Monde reported in a chilling new inquiry, anti-Semitism now knocks daily at the doors of the French Jews. It has been creating a serious migratory trend: French Jews have become “internal refugees”.

French Jews are now not only threatened in their synagogues and schools, but in their homes. A Jewish family was recently held hostage, beaten and robbed in their home in the suburb of Seine Saint-Denis. Before that, a retired Jewish doctor and schoolteacher, Sarah Halimi, was beaten and thrown to her death from her balcony, in the Belleville district of Paris. The man who murdered her, while yelling “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is Greater”), was a Muslim neighbor. Two Jewish brothers were recently attacked on a Paris street by men wielding a hacksaw and shouting “You dirty Jews! You are going to die”.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Collusion in Palestinian Illegal Land Grab by Ruthie Blum

By on November 15th, 2017

It takes particular gall for European Union representatives to express “humanitarian” outrage at Israel for razing illegal structures in the West Bank — while the EU is in league with Palestinian criminals who have been brazenly stealing Arab-owned land.

There has been massive “behind-the-scenes” Palestinian construction, the goal of which is “to create irreversible facts on the ground,” and completely encircle Jerusalem. Once the buildings – which “do not meet even the most minimum standards required by engineers, architects and housing planners” – are erected, the apartments are sold cheaply ($25,000-$50,000), to guarantee they are purchased and populated quickly.

If there is any debt to pay here, it is not Israel’s to Europe, but the other way around. Belgium and the rest of the EU should be embracing its natural ally, the democratic Jewish state, against all forces that support and perpetrate violence, while rejecting peace.

In what is being called an “unprecedented move,” eight European countries — members of an initiative called the West Bank Protection Consortium — recently announced that they had drafted a formal letter to the Israeli government, demanding the reimbursement of €30,000. According to Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark, this was the sum spent by the Consortium on materials provided for two structures (modular classrooms equipped with solar panels) erected for Palestinians and Bedouin in the West Bank, and dismantled by Israel at the end of August.

What these EU countries failed to mention, however, is that the structures were illegal, and therefore should not have been built in the first place. Instead, in its letter, the Consortium accused Israel of causing “suffering to Palestinian civilians,” through its “practice of coercive measures such as demolitions and confiscations of humanitarian supplies as well as infrastructure for schools,” and of “contradict[ing] Israel’s engagement according to the international point of view…”

This is worse than disingenuous. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, in the presence of US President Bill Clinton, Area C of the West Bank is under Israeli military and civil jurisdiction, and only Israel has the authority to build or approve building there.

Oslo II, which created the Palestinian Authority (PA), divides the West Bank into three geographical sections – Area A, Area B and Area C — and specifies which government controls each. Area C is under the military and civil jurisdiction of Israel alone.

This is something that the EU acknowledged, as recently as last year, in a statement on its official website:

“Israel retains almost exclusive control over law enforcement, planning and construction in Area C.

“In line with the recommendations of the EU Foreign Affairs Council Conclusions, the European Union works in Area C on two fronts: humanitarian assistance and development.

“The EU provides humanitarian assistance to communities in need in Area C in accordance with the humanitarian imperative. At the same time, the EU works with the Palestinian Authority to develop Area C and support Palestinian presence there…”

Yet, for years, there has been non-stop building in Area C, on land between Israel and Jordan as far south as Gush Etzion, in a transparent effort to populate Area C with Arabs by building “irreversible facts on the ground.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Free speech professor fired from UCLA warns: No one is safe Mark Mcgreal

By on November 15th, 2017

A former UCLA communications professor known for his staunch defense of free speech who was recently fired by the university offered a sobering message to a room full of conservative- and libertarian-leaning students enrolled there.

“If they can get rid of a professor like me for speaking his mind, what is stopping them from doing the same thing to all of you,” Keith Fink asked the Bruin Republicans.

“We are in the middle of another Red Scare,” said Fink, an attorney and longtime lecturer who was terminated by the university earlier this year despite his popularity among students. His classes, which focused on free speech rights, often garnered waiting lists with 200-plus students.

He made the comments during his speech Wednesday for the GOP campus club. During his talk, called “UCLA’s Dirty Tricks Against Conservatives,” Fink said of UCLA’s leadership: “They twist the rules, they distort the rules, they ignore the rules.”

As for his performance review, Fink said he was told to submit two lists to the administration for peer evaluations: one list with names of individuals he felt were biased against him and another set of individuals he felt could accurately critique his class. Ultimately, no one from Fink’s list of accurate critiquers was chosen, he said.

Greg Bryant, the communication department’s vice department chair, was asked to critique the class. Fink said he did not believe that Bryant was qualified to evaluate his class because he “is not a litigator. He teaches a class about communicating with dolphins!”

Bryant wrote a two-page evaluation of the class that attacked Fink and his teaching style, calling Fink’s class “unwelcoming.” However, Thomas Miller, a UCLA communications professor, was also sitting in the class and wrote a five-page report applauding the class, Fink told the students.

Fink also wrote a 48-page response to Bryant’s evaluation, a response he said “tore Bryant’s paper to shreds.” Bryant’s evaluation was later thrown out and not mentioned by the administration after Fink’s response, he said

Fink was fired over the summer after he did not pass a performance review, one he said was biased against him. He told students the current communications department chair, Kerri Johnson, “despised” him and wanted him gone.

He called Johnson “very far to the left,” putting her in direct contrast with Fink, who said he doesn’t believe in “safe spaces or microaggressions.”

Fink acknowledged to students that his classes did get intense from time to time. He said that the socratic dialogue was inherently confrontational, and, as someone who mocks safe spaces, being politically correct was never a goal of Fink’s. Fink said that if students didn’t want to be challenged then they should “go take the dolphin class.”

Asked if he would ever come back to UCLA, he said: “I could teach many, many places. I want to teach here.”

After Johnson took over as department chair, Fink said his classes were targeted. First, she capped enrollment into his popular classes, leaving dozens of empty seats and frustrating many students, he said.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Newly obtained documents show anti-Israel professors ‘covertly’ took over major academic group: lawsuit Matthew Stein

By on November 15th, 2017

Including the infamous Steven Salaita and Jasbir Puarhttps://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38942/

After four professors beat back the American Studies Association’s attempt to get their lawsuit dismissed this spring, they discovered a trove of evidence that confirmed their fears about the power and reach of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Nearly 17,000 documents belatedly turned over by current and former ASA leaders show that BDS supporters waged a campaign to “covertly” take control of the ASA and use it to support the BDS movement, according to a revised version of the lawsuit submitted Thursday.

The plaintiffs – current and former ASA members – told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia they have new claims for breach of contract and “acts in violation of specific [ASA] bylaws,” and have added “discrete counts and detailed factual allegations” in response to the court’s March ruling.

They also added four new defendants who serve on the “Organizing Committee and/or Advisory Committee” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, known as USACBI.

Two have national reputations: Steven Salaita (inset), who was ousted by the University of Illinois before he was formally hired owing to his “venomous” anti-Israel tweets, including one that “liked” an offhand death threat to a Jewish journalist; and Jasbir Puar, a Rutgers University “queer theory” professor who has accused Israel of conducting scientific experiments on Palestinians and harvesting their organs.

“This case is about the illegal, hostile takeover of a non-profit, academic association by leaders of an anti-Israel group,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Jennifer Gross of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law, whose mission is to fight antisemitism on college campuses.

She said in a Thursday press release that the USACBI activists violated ASA’s own rules to get and abuse “positions of trust” so they could “exploit the assets of the ASA to advance the agenda of the BDS movement.”

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Peter Smith Terror Incognito

By on November 15th, 2017

Marathon runners in Boston, Orlando revellers, strollers on the Promenade des Anglais, pop concert patrons in Manchester and, most recently, New York cyclists are victims of Islamic terror. They are also victims of politicians and media enablers who refuse to acknowledge the blindlingly obvious.

Evil has many faces. The recent mass shootings in Las Vegas and in the church in Sutherland Springs in Texas are stark reminders of that. The motives of Stephen Paddock and Devin Kelley remain unclear at this stage. Whether they will ever be brought to light in a conclusive way I don’t know.

The explanation of mental illness is often a first port of call in these kinds of cases. For the most part, that seems to me to be superficial. Anyone who callously murders men, women and children as though they are vermin is undoubtedly unbalanced. This is true whether or not they’ve ever been treated or incarcerated for mental illness. The question to be answered is what else is going on?

Sometimes, the ‘what else’ is clear. When the IRA planted bombs in public places no-one was in doubt about motive, even if those culpable were certifiable maniacs. Motive is central to closure as it is often to prevention.

Motive can come down to personal aggrievement. Disturbingly, that might have been the case for Paddock and Kelley. That remains to be unravelled. What did not require unravelling was the motive of IRA bombers. They openly stated their motive. Equally, those who massacre in the name of Allah are not shy about their motive. And here perspective is required to confound the news cycle.

Those who kill for idiosyncratic personal reasons are in a quite different and much less threatening category than those who systematically kill for a cause. Kelley’s church shooting on November 5, in which he killed 26 people and injured another 20, is horrific on any scale. However, it should not at all supplant in our minds Sayfullo Saipov mowing down cyclists in a rented truck in Lower Manhattan on October 31, killing eight and injuring eleven.

The reason is clear. Saipov’s crime is one of over 30,000 similarly motivated crimes since 9/11. All of these crimes are acts of Islamic terrorism. All form part of a global jihad committed to the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. This is international serial killing on steroids.

It requires no unravelling of motive. Simply read the Koran. What it requires is resolute combatting. But how? Our political leaders are quislings. Most of them anyway.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Fake News: 53 Pastors Didn’t Endorse Roy Moore After the Sexual Assault Allegations By Tyler O’Neil

By on November 15th, 2017

Contrary to numerous media reports, 53 pastors didn’t just endorse Roy Moore after the sexual assault allegations against him. Conservative Christians are very divided over whether or not to continue their support. That did not stop quite a few outlets from portraying Christian leaders as utter hypocrites, however.

“A group of 53 Alabama pastors signed onto a letter pledging their support for alleged child molester and Senate candidate Roy Moore,” Newsweek’s Carlos Ballesteros began his report. “The letter, first posted on Moore’s wife’s personal Facebook page, describes the embattled candidate as a friend to religious conservatives and a staunch opponent of the ‘Washington establishment.'”

The Newsmax report also said the letter came out Monday. “Fifty-three Alabama pastors on Monday released a letter of support for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct on his part,” that story read.

Even conservative outlets like The Washington Examiner and RedState reported this fake news. AL.com, HuffPost, and the The Daily Caller also originally reported this lie.

What actually happened? Moore’s wife Kayla reposted an old letter … from August 15! Here’s the letter she posted:

Pastor’s Letter

Dear friends and fellow Alabamians,

For decades, Roy Moore has been an immovable rock in the culture wars – a bold defender of the “little guy,” a just judge to those who came before his court, a warrior for the unborn child, defender of the sanctity of marriage, and a champion for religious liberty. Judge Moore has stood in the gap for us, taken the brunt of the attack, and has done so with a rare, unconquerable resolve.

As a consequence of his unwavering faith in God and his immovable convictions for Biblical principles, he was ousted as Chief Justice in 2003. As a result, he continued his life pursuit by starting the Foundation for Moral Law, which litigates religious liberty cases around our Nation. After being re-elected again to Chief Justice in 2012, by an overwhelming majority, he took another round of persecution for our faith as he stood up for the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman.

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