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January 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Sinking of the FBI By William F. Marshall

By on January 24th, 2018

J. Edgar Hoover must be turning in his grave at what is happening to his venerable FBI. Then again, given Hoover’s own proclivities to abuse his powers as the director of that agency, perhaps the predicament in which the bureau finds itself is a natural stage of evolution on an arc of governmental hubris.

It’s increasingly clear that the FBI is taking on water at an accelerating rate as new revelations come, fast and furious, in the political scandals engulfing Washington. This week, for example, we see two adolescent-minded senior FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, involved in virtually all aspects of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation and the Donald Trump “Russian collusion” (or is it “obstruction of justice” now?) investigation, acting like hormone-fueled high school lovers, discussing a “secret society” of Trump-haters one day after President Trump’s remarkable election. We learned of this only because two patriotic congressmen, representatives Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe, former federal prosecutors both, revealed this stunning exchange to Fox News. Was the “secret society” a tongue-in-cheek reference? Given the mind-boggling behavior of the top echelons at the FBI and DOJ these days, one can’t be too sure.

The keel of the USS Federal Bureau of Investigation is starting to rise out of the water, like the RMS Titanic about 30 minutes after striking the iceberg. One can almost hear the bodies of top law enforcement bureaucrats crashing against each other, like so much china on a dying vessel sinking under the waves, as the embattled organization faces exposure after exposure of truly outrageous and un-American, if not illegal, conduct.

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IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Italian Leader Warns Muslim Migration Might Erase ‘Centuries of History’ By Tyler O’Neil

By on January 24th, 2018

A political leader in Italy warned that the influx of migrants into the country might wipe away the country’s iconic and historic culture and society. Immigration has become a central issue in the national elections on March 4.

“We are under attack. Our culture, society, traditions, and way of life are at risk,” Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, an ally of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, declared in a statement last week.

Salvini defended the gist of controversial comments from Attilio Fontana, the League’s candidate to become the head of the Lombary region. “We have to decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society continues to exist or if our society will be rubbed out,” Fontana told Radio Padania, Reuters reported.

After the comments unleashed a storm of controversy, Fontana admitted they had been a “lapse.” Salvini defended the gist of the comments, while down-playing the potentially racist angle.

“The color of one’s skin has nothing to do with it, but the risk is very real,” Salvini said. “Centuries of history risk disappearing if Islamization, which up until now has been underestimated, gains the upper hand.”

More than 600,000 migrants have come to Italy from across the Mediterranean Sea over the past four years. Last November, the Pew Research Center estimated that Muslims made up 4.8 percent of the population in 2016 — compared to 3.7 percent in 2010.

Pew presented three separate scenarios involving various levels of immigration. Even if Muslim migration levels dropped to zero, Italy’s Muslim population would still rise to 8.3 percent by 2050. Under a “medium migration” scenario, the number would rise to 12.4 percent. Even if the country experienced “high migration,” Muslims would still only make up 14.1 percent of the population in 2050, Pew reported.

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ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

Pew Poll Makes It Official: Democrats Abandon Israel By Tyler O’Neil

By on January 24th, 2018

President Donald Trump has proven himself a staunch defender of the State of Israel, officially recognizing Jerusalem as the state’s capital. Republicans are on board, but Democrats have distanced themselves from Israel in the past two years, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Since 1978, more Americans have sympathized with Israel than with the Palestinians. In recent years, Republicans have backed Israel and Democrats have pulled away.

According to the Pew survey, 46 percent of Americans favor Israel, while 16 percent sympathize more with the Palestinians. A full 38 percent said they either sympathize with both (5 percent), neither (14 percent) or that they don’t know (19 percent). In 1978, 45 percent said they sympathized with Israel, 14 percent favored the Palestinians, and 42 percent could not decide.

A vast majority of Republicans (79 percent) said they sympathized more with Israel than with the Palestinians, an increase of 29 percentage points from 2001 (when 50 percent of Republicans preferred Israel).

Democrats shifted decisively away from Israel even more dramatically, however. In April 2016 — less than two years ago — 43 percent of Democrats said they sympathized more with Israel. This year, only 27 percent said so.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, liberal Democrats drove this change. In 2016, 33 percent of liberal Democrats sympathized with Israel, while 19 percent did so this year. Nearly twice as many liberal Democrats say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than Israel (35 percent to 19 percent).

Moderate and conservative Democrats still sympathize more with Israel (35 percent) than with the Palestinians (17 percent). Even so, fewer conservative and moderate Democrats sympathize with Israel today (35 percent) than in 2016 (53 percent).

Democrats didn’t reject Israel for the Palestinians, however. In fact, more Democrats sympathized with Palestine in 2016 (29 percent) than this year (25 percent). In 2016, only 16 percent of Democrats said they sympathized with both the Israelis and the Palestinians or neither of them.

Even in the past year, more Democrats said they sympathized with both or neither — and more said they just don’t know. In 2017, 19 percent chose both or neither, while this year 23 percent did so. Last year, 17 percent said they did not know which side they sympathized with, while 25 percent said so this year.

More Americans said President Trump is “striking the right balance” in the Middle East (42 percent) than those who said he favors Israel too much (30 percent). A quarter (25 percent) did not offer an opinion, while 3 percent said Trump favors the Palestinians too much (What are they smoking?).

At a similar point in Barack Obama’s presidency — April 2010 — 47 percent of Americans said he struck the proper balance, while 21 percent said he sided too much with the Palestinians, and 7 percent said Obama favored Israel too much. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The FBI’s Missing Texts More reasons to question the bureau’s 2016 election actions.

By on January 24th, 2018

The Justice Department has dropped a second tranche of text exchanges between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page —conveniently delivering them to the Senate at the start of last Friday night’s government shutdown. Investigators are still plowing through the 384 pages, but preliminary findings raise new questions about FBI political maneuvering during the 2016 election.

Among the biggest news is what wasn’t in the Friday delivery: The FBI claims to have “failed” to capture text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. This period coincides with the height of the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion, on which Mr. Strzok was a lead investigator. The FBI is blaming this five-month missing link on “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades.”

These are the folks tasked with investigating Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson on Saturday wrote to FBI director Christopher Wray asking how many other FBI records were lost. Imagine how Mr. Wray’s agents would treat a private individual’s failure to turn over comparable records.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Pence Visits Israel’s Capital Multitudes of gentiles are also Zionists. That has no precedent in the Jews’ millennia-long history. By Meir Soloveichik

By on January 24th, 2018

As I walked out of the Knesset following Vice President Mike Pence’s Monday afternoon address, an Israeli cameraman turned to me with a jovial expression. Speaking in Hebrew, he asked me about the man whose speech he had just heard: “Was that the messiah, or the vice president of the United States?” He was, perhaps, referring to the rapturous reception Mr. Pence had received from the Knesset members and the hundreds of spectators in the gallery. Yet the cameraman was also probably struck by how religious, and biblically based, the speech was. Mr. Pence threaded his remarks with references to Scripture, a rhetorical technique Knesset audiences have rarely heard from a political leader since Menachem Begin resigned as prime minister in 1983.

Mr. Pence’s address was one of the most Zionist speeches ever given by a non-Jew in the Knesset. The vice president is a devout evangelical Christian, and he said that in the birth of the modern state of Israel, we see nothing less than a fulfillment of the biblical promises of God. The speech was a milestone in American-Israeli relations, and a window into the heart of many American Christians who, like Mr. Pence, observe Israel’s emergence with wonder and reverence.

Drawing on the Book of Deuteronomy, Mr. Pence described how through “conquests and expulsions, inquisitions and pogroms,” and a Holocaust “that transformed the small faces of children into smoke under a silent sky,” the Jewish people nevertheless “held fast to a promise through all the ages, written so long ago, that ‘even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens,’ from there He would gather and bring you back to the land which your fathers possessed.”

Citing Isaiah, Mr. Pence suggested that in Israel’s 1948 founding “the Jewish people answered that ancient question: Can a country be born in a day, can a nation be born in a moment?” For Mr. Pence, the birth of modern Israel also reaffirmed the Jews’ covenantal bond to both the Holy Land and Jerusalem, where “Abraham offered his son Isaac, and was credited with righteousness for his faith in God,” and where “King David consecrated the capital of the Kingdom of Israel.” In the emergence of the modern Jewish state, Mr. Pence concluded, we see the hand of God: “The miracle of Israel is an inspiration to the world.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Unrest Returns to Tunisia, Birthplace of the Arab Spring New protests reflect frustration over economic woes; ‘People’s hope is hitting a wall’ By Jared Malsin and Hassan Morajea

By on January 24th, 2018

SAKIET SIDI YOUSSEF, Tunisia—More than seven years ago, a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire and set in motion a wave of revolution that ousted authoritarian leaders across the Arab world and helped trigger three civil wars.

Now increasing numbers of young Tunisians are again taking to the streets, protesting rising prices and a new government budget that increased taxes on basic goods. The protests reflect deep public frustration over the country’s economic woes, and activists say at least some people were compelled to take part after hearing about the suicide of an unemployed repairman.

The 2011 uprising sparked the Arab Spring and resulted in broader freedom of expression and democratic elections in Tunisia. But the revolution hasn’t produced prosperity or dismantled the police state set up under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in the rebellion.

The repairman, Radwan Abbasi, lived in a tiny concrete home with his mother in this town near the Algerian border. He had searched for work for years, and came home angry on Jan. 5 after visiting a local employment office, his mother said. The next morning, he rose at dawn, bought bread and made coffee, and was later found hung from a tree at an intersection near his home, his mother and neighbors said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Oxford University is giving students extra time to finish exams because women are ‘adversely affected by time pressure’ Bobbie Edsor

By on January 24th, 2018

The University of Oxford has added extra time to maths and computer science exams because female students aren’t performing as well as their male counterparts.

Students sitting maths and computer science exams last summer were given an extra 15 minutes to complete their papers because “female candidates might be more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure,” according to a decision seen by The Daily Telegraph.

The number of male students achieving first-class degrees was double that of women before the change was made, the Telegraph reported. As a result, the department changed the goal posts in an attempt to help female students achieve better grades.

But while the change was implemented in order to help more women achieve first-class degrees, the added time simply helped more female students achieve 2:1 grades overall, with fewer women securing a lower class 2:2, according to the Telegraph.

Antonia Sir, an undergraduate representative of Oxford Women in Computer Science, told the Telegraph: “I am uneasy about schemes to favour one gender over another.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Washington Establishment Panics Jeffrey Lord

By on January 24th, 2018

Ya can’t make it up.

Here’s the headline in the Washington Post from the Post’s Erik Wemple.

Staffers at The Hill press management about the work of John Solomon

The story reads, in part:

A group of newsroom staffers at The Hill have complained to management about stories written by John Solomon, the publication’s executive vice president of digital video. The complaints were launched in December when Solomon and reporter Alison Spann broke a story under this headline: “Exclusive: Prominent lawyer sought donor cash for two Trump accusers.”

The gist of Solomon and Spann’s story: Prominent California lawyer Lisa Bloom worked to secure payments for women who “made or considered making sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential race.” The story cited “documents and interviews,” plus the on-the-record explanations by Bloom herself.

The story impressed the conservative media world. Fox News host Sean Hannity called it a “bombshell report,” while conservative websites aggregated away.”

And then there was this, also from the Post’s Wemple on Solomon. The headline:

Sources: The Hill’s John Solomon offered money to Bill Clinton for an interview series

In which the Post’s Wemple attacks Solomon for pitching David Frost-Nixon style interviews with the former President in which Clinton, like Nixon before him, would get paid for his historical reflections.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of DACA: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 20 by Linda Goudsmit

By on January 24th, 2018

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) advocacy as altruistic when in fact it was designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democrat Party with its ongoing Resistance movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy the capitalist infrastructure of American democracy through deceitful immigration reforms. This is how it works.

DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was the 2012 product of Obama’s illegal executive overreach. The lesser known DAPA Deferred Action for Parents of Americans was Obama’s 2014 expansion program that legalized illegal alien parents whose children became legal American citizens through birthright citizenship.

Amnesty programs for illegal immigrants guaranteed Democrat votes but Obama had a problem selling the idea to Congress even though Democrats had control of both Houses. Illegal aliens needed a new image. No problem for Obama – his Leftist image-makers went to work.

Soon illegal aliens became undocumented aliens, then undocumented workers, then unauthorized immigrants, then undocumented immigrants, and finally the loftiest brand of them all – Dreamers. Obama’s rebranded illegal aliens were transformed into Dreamers and protecting them was merchandised as the humanitarian imperative for America. Millennials signed on in droves but here is the problem.

Rebranding is a marketing tool used by advertisers to sell products that don’t sell. Rebranding changes the name but it does not change the product. Dreamers are still illegal aliens. So why would Obama resort to executive overreach to sell rebranded illegal immigration?? Because Obama needed the positive image of Dreamers to sell DACA and DAPA as altruistic programs when they were actually deceitful Democrat power-grabs designed to tip red states blue. It was always about the votes.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

LAWRENCE HAAS: FREEDOM ON THE WANE

By on January 24th, 2018

When Great Britain told the United States in February of 1947 that it could no longer protect Greece and Turkey, President Harry Truman and his top aides realized that America would have to step up to protect freedom or cede the Mediterranean and maybe Europe and other regions to the Soviets.

The result was the Truman Doctrine to help “free peoples” resist “attempted subjugation,” the Marshall Plan to revive an economically prostrate Europe, and NATO to protect Europe from a Soviet move.

But what Truman instinctively understood is what today’s Americans desperately must re-learn: that global power abhors a vacuum, that only America can protect freedom abroad, and that a U.S. retreat will prove harmful to America itself, as Freedom House’s new report on global freedom makes clear.

“Democracy is in crisis,” Freedom House President Michael J. Abramowitz writes in “Freedom in the World, 2018,” cataloguing the 12th straight year of democratic setbacks that out-numbered gains and that “extended a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom.”

That democratic setbacks, autocratic gains and a U.S. withdrawal occurred simultaneously is no coincidence. While America’s retreat is hardly the sole reason for democracy’s global crisis, it is a key driving force behind it. And it’s a crisis that we will allow to continue festering at our own peril.

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