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December 2017

With Flynn’s guilty plea, is it Trump impeachment time yet?Cass R. Sunstein See note please

The oh so reasonable professor is married to corrupt Obama UN Ambassador Samantha Power who has yet to credibly explain her record unmasking of Trump campaign officials. She set a record as a hack for the Obama administration….rsk
The Founders would be concerned if Trump won with help from a foreign nation on unfriendly terms with the U.S. But we don’t have the facts yet.

Talk of impeaching President Trump surged after Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser and transition aide, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. But what is the real meaning of the Constitution’s mysterious provision authorizing removal of the president and other federal officials for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”? Is the growing interest in impeachment simply wishful thinking by Trump’s political opponents?

Before we get to current events, let’s insist on a principle of political neutrality.

Under the Constitution, presidents have four-year terms. It’s not legitimate to call for impeachment simply because you abhor the president or think that he is making terrible blunders.

If you are inclined to think that he has committed an impeachable act, you should immediately ask yourself: Would I also think that if I voted for him and thought he was doing a terrific job?

The 2017 Tel Aviv Jazz Festival celebrates 100 years of Ella, Monk, Billie and more

While the Red Sea Jazz Festival gives August a jazzy rep, Tel Aviv & Jerusalem haven taken the cake in making December the unofficial month of jazz. Just as the Jerusalem Jazz Festival draws to a close, Tel Aviv Cinematheque (in conjunction with Zappa Tel Aviv & Zappa Herzliya) has packed an impressive schedule of 20 performers from Israel and abroad, including: Ester Rada, Daniel Jobim, Dee Alexander, and the famed Ravi Coltrane.

With original productions, live shows, free performances (every evening outside the Cinematheque), and tributes to the greats, the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival is the best way to ring in the winter.

ABC News Suspends Brian Ross After Disastrous Flynn Report By Debra Heine

In the wake of his botched exclusive about Michael Flynn, Brian Ross has been suspended without pay for four weeks, effective immediately, ABC News announced Saturday.

The network said in a statement that Ross’ report “had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process.”

The statement added: “It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience. These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.”

.@ABC News statement on Michael Flynn report: https://t.co/sd9TeFiiLQ pic.twitter.com/UtHFHeuwcM
— ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017

Ross, ABC’s chief investigative correspondent, reported on Friday that Flynn would testify that then-candidate Trump had directed him to contact the Russians about foreign policy during the campaign — causing a media firestorm and stock markets to plummet.

The implication that the president had done something improper or possibly illegal during the campaign led to wild speculation throughout the day Friday that the president was about to be impeached.

ABC first “clarified,” then corrected Ross’s report, saying Flynn would testify that Trump’s directive had actually come after the election (when contact with foreign governments by a new administration is standard procedure).

Several hours after the initial report, Ross himself appeared on “World News Tonight” to offer a “clarification.”

“David, a clarification tonight on something one of Flynn’s confidants told us and we reported earlier today,” Ross said at the end of his “World News Tonight” story. “He said the president had asked Flynn to contact Russia during the campaign. He’s now clarifying that, saying, according to Flynn, candidate Trump asked him during the campaign to find ways to repair relations with Russia and other hotspots. And then after the election, the president-elect asked him–told him–to contact Russia on issues including working together to fight ISIS.” CONTINUE AT SITE

‘The View’s’ Joy Behar Wigs Out After Announcing Flynn Plea By Rick Moran

Introspection is not one of the left’s strong suits so I wouldn’t expect people who are oblivious to their own faults and foibles to consider the reaction of “The View’s” Joy Behar to what turned out to be the false news that General Michael Flynn would testify that he was asked to contact the Russians by Donald Trump during the campaign. (The report was based on false information broadcast by ABC’s Brian Ross. Flynn was told to contact the Russians after Trump was elected.)

Behar totally lost it, as did her audience and her co-hosts. The implication was clear: Trump was guilty of colluding with the Russians and would be impeached.

BuzzFeed:

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and it’s beginning to look a lot like collusion,” said cohost Ana Navarro.

Conservative cohost Meghan McCain wasn’t so thrilled by the news, conceding it was a “good moment for Democrats,” but saying she doesn’t want the country “to become more polarized.”

“Not to be the Debbie Downer, but if this somehow leads to indictment, the country’s going to rip itself apart and it’s not good for America,” said McCain.

“It should lead to resignation,” Behar responded, to thunderous applause. “I remember Richard Nixon, and Richard Nixon stepped down, and so should Donald Trump.”

Behar said that reading about Flynn’s plea was “the antithesis of election night.” She was so, so, very sad when Donald Trump was elected but now, with the prospect of overturning that election and tearing the country apart, she is so very, very happy.

It makes you wonder if Behar would celebrate the destruction of an American city by a nuclear bomb — as long as it was the “right” city. Dallas, yes. Boston, no.

Left-wing icon Dahlia Lithwick writing in Slate wonders, “Is it too late for Robert Mueller to Save Us”? CONTINUE AT SITE

Congressman: Is U.S. ‘Serious’ About Going After Iranian Airline Shuttling Weapons, Terrorists? By Karl Herchenroeder

WASHINGTON – A gap in sanctions policy against Mahan Air, which Iran has used to traffic weapons and terrorists, has put Americans and the world in danger as the airline is freely operating in major European airports, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) told Treasury Department officials Thursday.

Mahan Air has been designated as a terrorist organization, given its support to the Assad regime in Syria. The airline, which is regarded as the Quds Force’s aviation arm, enjoys significant traffic through airports in Milan and Munich, allowing Iran to connect foreign flights to the United States.

“Why are we allowing European air carriers to start their flight at Mahan-infested airports and come to the United States?” Sherman asked during a Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade hearing. “Why are we not going after the airports, or are we serious about Mahan Air?”

While questioning Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea and Director for the Office of Foreign Assets Control John E. Smith, Sherman asked why American companies are still doing business with airports that accommodate Mahan and why American airlines are still purchasing fuel from the same companies that deal to Mahan.

Billingslea responded that in a departure from the Obama administration, the Trump administration has been “incredibly” aggressive in trying to alter European relations with Iran. Smith noted that the Treasury Department has implemented some designations against European airlines in the past few months, most notably Ukraine International Airlines, which has discontinued some of the troublesome flights routes.

To Billingslea’s point that this administration has altered the previous approach, Sherman said that the Treasury Department is “setting a very low bar.”

“At least we cleared the bar, right?” Billingslea asked. “But I think you make a good point, and it would be very prudent for any company that transacts with Mahan Air to be exceptionally cautious going forward.”

“I don’t think they should be cautious,” Sherman said. “I think you should nail them.” CONTINUE AT SITE

What Will It Take to Get Serious About Missile Defense? By Angelo Codevilla

North Korea’s possession of mobile-launched missiles that can deliver nukes anywhere in the United States shows that, nowadays, anybody can make lots of pinpoint-accurate missiles of any range. Since America’s ICBMs, submarines, and bombers are fewer, concentrated in fewer places than ever, even North Korea can carry out the kind of disarming attack that Americans feared the Soviet Union might have mounted in the 1980s. Kim Jong-un is showing the world that the missile defense programs into which the U.S. government has poured some $80 billion in recent years are no barrier to destroying most U.S. strategic forces and holding the American people hostage.

The officials who crafted these programs, ideologically focused as they have been on not hindering Russia’s or China’s capacity to devastate America, built token defenses to suffice against unsophisticated, unserious opponents. But North Koreans, semi-starved and serious, grasped better than highly credentialed Americans how this focus makes U.S. defenses inherently vulnerable. Yet, because U.S. policy continues to be one of not having missile defense—the public’s support for it notwithstanding—the government’s response to its programs’ failure is to pour more money into them.

The Technology is Not Lacking
Since the 1960s, the government and elite opinion have obfuscated that policy by pretending that technology is lacking. Hence, support for missile defense has meant spending endlessly on expensive tokens and endless “research.” Yet, as ballistic missiles have evolved since the 1950s, America has never lacked the technical means of defending seriously against them. As Professor Joseph Constance’s magisterial work showed, Republicans and Democrats have avoided responsibility for critical choices on these matters by framing them in pseudo-technical terms, none too subtly telling the public that they are beyond ordinary people’s understanding. Nonsense.

What follows summarizes how current programs are irremediably inadequate to defend against any serious missile attack from anywhere, and what a missile defense worthy of the name requires.

The current “National Missile Defense” (NMD) system consists of a single radar/fire control system plus a maximum of 44 interceptors based mostly in Alaska that purports, or rather pretends, to defend U.S territory. This arrangement so increases the distance that the interceptors must travel and so shortens the time in which the interceptors must do it that the interceptors have to be huge. Moreover, because the system’s designers chose to require that the interceptors collide with the incoming warhead directly—without the aid of any warhead—the guidance system must be exquisite and fragile. Such requirements make these interceptors hugely expensive and doubtful of success. Current “employment doctrine” calls for devoting two interceptors to each incoming warhead. In short, this system is un-expandable.

Sarah Sanders is Above the Shame Game By Julie Kelly

Mika is mad.https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/02/sarah-sanders-is-above-the-shame-game/

Mika Brzezinski, otherwise known as the future Mrs. Joe Scarborough, went ballistic Tuesday on her MSNBC morning show over comments by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had responded to reporters’ questions about President Trump’s “Pocahontas” jibe the day before.

“What’s wrong with her? How can she do that job?” an exasperated Mika rhetorically asked the head-shaking panel. “How can she look in the mirror every day and say, ‘I am doing the right thing for the American people’ because you are not.”

Mika’s voice shook with anger. “Unbelievable. This is the president and that is the spokesperson for the president of the United States, sitting there, defending his racism. His bigoted language. His stupidity. This is where we are.”

Her sphincter-faced betrothed sat next to her, amused. But that wasn’t all. The woman who divorced her husband last year to hook up with her twice-divorced co-host amid years of cheating rumors continued to slam Sanders’ integrity:

It’s sick. The whole relationship [between Trump and Sanders] is sick. You have taken the oath. You are raising three children. Stop.

Set aside for a moment the audacity of one professional mother (Brzezinski) using the children of another professional mother (Sanders) as a way to shame her. But since Brzezinski is a liberal and Sanders is a conservative, no one bothered to call her out on it. Also set aside for a moment the fact that Mika’s tirade occurred a few days after she and her co-hosts were busted for pre-taping their Black Friday morning broadcast and passing it off as live television. This included “Truth Goddess” Mika informing viewers of how she cooked the turkey with the guts in it and how “it was still a little frozen.”

So, what got Mika mad? It was Sanders’ answer to a question from ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, who had asked about Trump’s “offensive” taunt, directed at Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren:

I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.

Boom.

Trump’s Russia problems are all Jeff Session’s fault: Michael Goodwin

Not many years ago, an ad for a newspaper warned that, “If you miss a day, you miss a lot.”

Now you don’t need a day to miss a lot. Mere seconds of ­inattention can get you behind the curve. What, you didn’t hear about the latest predator to fall on his sword?

The gusher of startling events puts us neck deep in the curse of interesting times. We are in the midst of cultural reckoning over sex, could be on the brink of nuclear war with North Korea and may experience an economic boom as Congress moves closer to historic tax reform.

Then there’s the White House, where the dynamics of upheaval are entering a crucial phase. Although many deplorables believe they finally have a government looking out for them, much of Washington and the American left are preparing to dance on the grave of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Their celebration got an early start Friday with the guilty plea of Gen. Michael Flynn and his pledge to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller. The news persuaded James Comey, the insufferably self-righteous former FBI boss, and the Democratic media that the clock is ticking on Trump’s time in the Oval Office.

That is one way to look at Flynn — if you assume he has beans to spill. He was close to Trump but it’s worth noting that Flynn pled guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI, including about a phone conversation he had with a Russian official last Dec. 29 — seven weeks after the election.

That’s the same call that got Flynn fired after less than a month as Trump’s national security adviser because he lied to the vice president about whether the conversation covered sanctions.

So it’s clear that Flynn is a serial liar, but decidedly unclear whether he knows anything that would put Trump in jeopardy. It’s important that the content of his conversations with Russians are not the ­basis of his admitted crime and do not appear to be illegal.

The miracle of Israel lives on 70 years later By Michael Goodwin

“As I prepare for an upcoming trip to Israel and the West Bank, my third visit to the region, I expect to find an even more dynamic Jewish state, where even the constant threat of catastrophe does not interfere with a zest for life.Then again, that’s Israel. A miracle among nations.”
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab. Most Zionists accepted the deal, while Arabs almost universally rejected it and declared war.

One Muslim delegate, referring to Jews living in Arab nations, warned that “The blood will flow like rivers in the Middle East.” Iraq’s prime minister threatened that the Jewish state would not survive, saying “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in” while Syria’s leader claimed “We shall eradicate Zionism.”

Seventy years later, a lust for Jewish blood is a staple of Islamic State, Hezbollah and Hamas, whose charter calls for the elimination of Israel. Iran’s leaders call Israel “Little Satan” and vow to wipe it off the map.

In important ways, then, not much has changed. Jew hatred remains mainstream enough to flourish in the sunshine as well as the shadows, including at major American university campuses and European parliaments. Year in, year out, Jews are the victims of most of the religious hate crimes in the United States.

Some UN bodies exist to demonize Israel while ignoring wholesale slaughter and oppression in other lands. Indeed, if that partition proposal were submitted to a much-larger General Assembly today, it probably would not get majority support, let alone the two-thirds approval it got in 1947.

Yet in other ways, everything has changed. Israel, which declared independence in 1948, is a mighty regional power militarily and its economy and technical innovations are world-renowned. This is exceptionalism, Israeli-style.

Politically, it’s made progress, too. Peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt have proved remarkably durable and other Arab states have established quiet working relationships with the nation they tried repeatedly to destroy.

Paradoxically, the rise of Islamic terrorism has created common ground with some former enemies. Even Barack Obama’s flawed nuclear deal with Iran, vehemently opposed by both Israel and Saudi Arabia, is bringing the two nations closer because they share a vision of Iran as an existential threat.

A recent article in the Jerusalem Post described growing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia as “perhaps the most significant shift in the region” and called a secret visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Israel in September evidence that official diplomatic relations are possible.

Preparing for Terrorist Attacks in Greece by Maria Polizoidou

These illegal immigrants “come to Europe looking for ‘opportunities,’ but do not accept any of the responsibilities of an open democracy. They usually engage in all kinds of smuggling: Drugs, trafficking, and even ‘jihad.’ We cannot allow that.” — Former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

“Jihadists are ideologues… They see the world as a battle between believers and unbelievers.” Therefore no one is “immune” to their agenda. — François Heisbourg, IISS Council Chair at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Appeasing radical Muslims through open-border policies — and by surrendering national identity to multiculturalism — has the opposite of the intended effect. Allowing unfettered entry, rather than causing the immigrants to integrate and liberalize, and leading to friendly ties with Muslim-majority countries, has instead led to their further radicalization.

At a recent conference in Rome, held by the think tank European Ideas Network (EIN), former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, a member of the Hellenic Parliament, declared:

“European democracies in the Mediterranean are in danger of being swept away by a tsunami of uncontrolled immigration. We cannot allow this. Our societies cannot stand it. The European Union itself cannot stand it… [More than] one million ‘foreigners’ passed then [2015] through Greece and ended up in various countries of the European Union, mainly in Northern and Central Europe. Some of them were real refugees, from Syria and Iraq. But most of them were illegal immigrants from other countries of the world. Today it is estimated that the true refugees that are still coming are 20% of the total or fewer. The rest are illegal immigrants.”

These illegal immigrants, he said, “come to Europe looking for ‘opportunities,’ but do not accept any of the responsibilities of an open democracy.”

“They usually engage in all kinds of smuggling: Drugs, trafficking, and even ‘jihad.’ We cannot allow that. Freedom and the openness of our societies also entail responsibilities. And full respect to our laws, of course. ‘Moochers’ of our democratic system can destroy it.”