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August 2018

Goodbye, Clean Power Plan By The Editors

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/clean-power-plan-repeal/

The Clean Power Plan is headed for the crematorium. Good riddance.

CPP was the textbook example of the Obama administration’s attempt to supplant Congress by interpreting the administrative state’s regulatory scope as effectively unlimited. Prior to CPP, the Environmental Protection Agency had regulated the emissions of electricity-generating plants individually to ensure that they did not exceed pollution limits. The Obama administration ran wild with its regulatory ambitions, using CPP to impose renewable-energy quotas on the states and adopting through administrative fiat limits on carbon dioxide emissions that Congress has repeatedly declined to impose. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant as traditionally understood — it is what human beings exhale — but it is a greenhouse gas, and global warming is an obsession of contemporary progressives.

The Supreme Court, understanding the radical expansion of executive power embodied in CPP, took the unusual step of delaying its implementation so legal issues could be worked out (a process that Trump’s intervention of course will end). Donald Trump ran for president promising to lighten the regulatory load on the coal industry, and once he was elected, his administration set about doing so. President Barack Obama was fond of justifying his expansive interpretation of presidential powers with two words: “I won.” Well, guess who else won.

JULIE KELLY ON MOTHERHOOD AND THE WORKING MOTHER

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/22/as-long
‘As Long as I’m Living, My Baby You’ll Be’
By Julie Kelly

Eighteen years ago, I was decorating the world’s most perfect nursery. We knew our first baby would be a girl, so the room was awash in pink. Each item—from the cribside lamp to the diaper caddy—was an agonizing decision. I spent months stitching a homemade quilt with matching bumper pads. (Who was that person!?)

Over her crib, I stenciled this phrase from a famous children’s book:

I’ll love you forever,I’ll like you for alwaysAs long as I’m living,My baby you’ll be.

I can’t count how many times I read that book to my daughter before bed. There were nights she would ask me to read it and I would cringe—particularly after a long day—hoping she would choose something shorter and less repetitive. Then one evening I read it to her for the last time and I didn’t even know it. That’s the fleeting, cruel thing about parenthood: You focus so much on the firsts that the lasts quietly slip past you and you don’t realize those precious moments will never return.

Eighteen years after I painted those words on her wall, I sat in her very teenaged room in a different house watching her pack for college. We blasted old Hannah Montana tunes (her childhood idol) and argued about how there was no way in hell she would fit 16 pairs of shoes in her dorm closet. As we taped up each box, the reality of her leaving began to sink in. And the hole in my heart started to burn.

There is nothing unique or special about my preparing to send off my firstborn to college. Thousands of moms are doing it right now and feeling the same emotions that I am. But for stay-at-home moms like me, who gave up careers instead to raise children in a culture that devalued and demeaned that choice, it is an opportunity for reflection. Did I make the right choice? Would she have turned out any differently had I worked full-time? Did my choice teach her to subjugate her own future dreams and independence for her husband and children? Where would I be now professionally and financially had I continued working?

Press mocks the murder of Mollie Tibbetts soon as it turns into an illegal alien story By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/press_mocks_the_murder_of_mollie_tibbetts_once_it_became_an_illegal_alien_story.html

See also: MSNBC panelist labels Mollie Tibbetts a ‘girl in Iowa’ ‘Fox News is talking about’

After whipping up such a brouhaha about illegal immigrants being separated from their children as a result of their lawbreaking, the press was confronted with new story about illegals to report and comment upon, and it didn’t quite tug on the heartstrings the way the crying toddlers narrative did.

According to the New York Times:

A body believed to be that of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old student at the University of Iowa who vanished a month ago after going for a jog, was found on Tuesday morning, investigators announced. A 24-year-old undocumented immigrant has been charged with first-degree murder in the killing.

The body was found in a field southeast of Brooklyn, Iowa. Ms. Tibbetts was last seen nearby on July 18, Rick Rahn, a special agent of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said at a news conference.

“The identity has not been confirmed, however, we believe it to be the body of Mollie Tibbetts,” Mr. Rahn said. The authorities did not say what the specific cause of death was; an autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday.

Obama Was Accused of Offering Hush Money to Jeremiah Wright… and No One Cared By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-was-accused-of-offering-hush-money-and-no-one-cared/

Yesterday’s news that President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court and accused Trump of committing a federal crime by directing him to pay hush money to two women “for the principal purpose of influencing the election” was definitely shocking. According to Cohen and his attorney, Trump violated campaign finance laws by allegedly directing Cohen to make these hush money payments. This point had me confused.

For the moment, let’s put aside the obvious problems with Cohen’s credibility and assume he’s telling the truth. According to a Reuters article about the Cohen pleas:

Under U.S. election law, campaign contributions, defined as things of value given to a campaign to influence an election, must be disclosed. A payment intended to silence allegations of an affair just before an election could constitute a campaign contribution, which is limited to $2,700 per person per election, some experts said.

So, let’s review… A payment to silence someone from making potentially damaging statements “could constitute” a campaign contribution according to “some” experts? There’s clearly a significant amount of subjectivity here. But, here’s the thing: if everything went down as Cohen says it did, then why wasn’t Obama held to the same standard?

That’s right, Barack Obama also offered an individual hush money “for the principal purpose of influencing the election,” but you probably never heard about it. It wasn’t to silence a mistress though, it was to silence his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s inflammatory, anti-American rhetoric caused Obama significant headaches during his first presidential campaign, and he tried to contain the damage to protect his chances of winning the White House.

Edward Klein broke the story in the New York Post on May 13, 2012—the same year Obama was reelected—that Obama’s team tried to buy Wright’s silence during the 2008 campaign. According to Wright, he was offered $150,000 through an Obama intermediary (one of Obama’s closest friends), and Obama himself tried to persuade him to keep quiet.

“Did Obama himself ever make an effort to see you?”

“Yes,” Wright said. “Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere.

“And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.’ CONTINUE AT SITE

Andrew McCarthy : On Trump, Manafort and Cohen

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/what-to-make-of-the-cohen-plea-and-manafort-convictionsAnalyzing the guilty plea of Trump’s onetime personal lawyer and the conviction of his former campaign chairman

Who would have thought that the conviction of his former campaign manager would be the good news for President Trump yesterday?
Cohen Plea

From a political standpoint, the guilty plea of the president’s lawyer Michael Cohen is the more damaging news. Cohen pled guilty to eight felonies. While the five counts of failure to pay taxes on over $4 million in income are the most consequential to him, most significant to the country are two counts of illegal “in kind” campaign contributions. These, of course, involve $280,000 in hush-money payments made prior to the 2016 election to two women who claim to have had sexual liaisons with Donald Trump, many years before. In entering his guilty plea in Manhattan federal court (the Southern District of New York), Cohen acknowledged that he was directed to make the payments by Donald Trump — referred to as “the candidate.”

Let’s split some legal hairs. The media narrative suggests that these payments violate federal law because they were made to influence the outcome of the election. That is not quite accurate. It was not illegal to pay hush money to the two women — Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. “Stormy Daniels”). It was illegal for Michael Cohen to make in-kind contributions (which is what these pay-offs were) in excess of the legal limit.

Specifically, it was illegal for Michael Cohen to make contributions exceeding $2,700 per election to a presidential candidate (including contributions coordinated with the candidate); and illegal for the candidate to accept contributions in excess of that amount. It was also illegal for corporations to contribute to candidates (including expenditures coordinated with the candidate), and for the candidate to accept such contributions. The latter illegality is relevant because Cohen formed corporations to transfer the hush money.

The law does not impose a dollar limit on the candidate himself. Donald Trump could lawfully have made contributions and expenditures in excess of $2,700 per election. Because of that, and because — unlike Cohen — Trump is a non-lawyer who may not have fully appreciated the campaign-finance implications, it would be tough to prove that the president had criminal intent. Nevertheless, that may not get the president off the hook. As noted above, it is illegal for a candidate to accept excessive contributions. It is also illegal to fail to report contributions and expenditures, and to conspire in or aid and abet another person’s excessive contributions. Moreover, we are talking here about hush-money expenditures, so drawing a distinction between the payment and the failure to report is pointless since the intention not to report is implicit in this kind of payment.

As I argued when news of these pay-offs first emerged, the best arguments President Trump has here involve mitigation, not innocence.

The Justice Department has a history of treating serious campaign-finance transgressions as administrative violations, not felonies. A prominent example: The 2008 Obama campaign accepted nearly $2 million in illegal campaign contributions, but was permitted to settle the matter with a $375,000 fine. Of course, the force of that argument is undermined considerably by the fact that Cohen’s infraction has been treated as a felony (as was Dinesh D’Souza’s comparatively tiny one, also prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York).

Still, as we’ve repeatedly pointed out, Justice Department guidance does not permit the indictment of a sitting president. (A president may be prosecuted once he leaves office.) The issue for President Trump is not whether he has committed a crime but whether he has committed a high crime and misdemeanor. On that score, I will repeat what I said about mitigation in the aforementioned column, drawing on the lessons of the Clinton impeachment misadventure in the late Nineties:

The further removed misconduct is from the core responsibilities of the presidency, the less political support there will be for the president’s removal from office. This is critical because impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one. The way the Framers designed the process — which requires just a simple House majority to file articles of impeachment, but a two-thirds Senate super-majority for removal — no president will ever be removed from office absent misconduct egregious enough to spur a consensus for removal that cuts across partisan lines. Such misconduct would surely have to involve either (a) an abuse of power involving core presidential powers; or (b) an extremely serious crime (if unrelated, or only tangentially related, to presidential power).

The conduct here is not of the egregious nature that rises to high crimes and misdemeanors — it is an infraction committed by many political candidates and often not even prosecuted. More to the point, it is remote from the core responsibilities of the presidency, implicating pre-election actions to conceal alleged indiscretions that occurred a decade earlier. And while the president has denied the indiscretions, it is not like the allegations come as any surprise to the public, who, while well aware of his flaws, elected Donald Trump nonetheless.

Of course, the Constitution vests judicially unreviewable power in the House of Representatives to determine what conduct amounts to high crimes and misdemeanors. We can hope that lawmakers honor the Framers’ guidance, but they cannot be forced to do so. If the Democrats take the House in November by a wide enough margin, expect that the Clinton rally cry — it’s just lies about sex — will no longer be in vogue.
Manafort Conviction

There is lots of spin out there to the effect that the jury’s partial verdict in Paul Manafort’s Virginia federal trial indicates that Special Counsel Mueller is playing a weaker hand than advertised. Don’t believe it. However untidy the verdict may look, and however embattled they may have appeared before a cantankerous judge, prosecutors got a sweep on the tax- and bank-fraud charges that the jury decided.

If the point of the case was to ratchet up the pressure on Manafort to cooperate with investigators, then: Mission accomplished. The 69-year-old defendant now faces a statutory maximum of upwards of 70 years’ imprisonment. And that doesn’t factor in that (a) he is looking at a money-laundering trial next month in Washington, a much friendlier venue for Mueller, and (b) there were no acquittals, so Mueller could also retry Manafort on the ten counts on which the jury hung.

We noted that the jury would not like accomplice witness Rick Gates and would be put off by the sweetheart plea deal he got, which did not include bank-fraud-conspiracy charges. Sure enough, it seems the jury convicted on counts as to which the documentary evidence of Manafort’s unreported income and fraud on financial institutions was overwhelming, but had trouble with charges as to which Gates’s testimony seemed more material. No matter. For Mueller, a win is a win, and this was a win.

The Trump camp continues to stress that Manafort’s case had nothing to do with the original rationale for Mueller’s investigation, “collusion with Russia.” But as we’ve pointed out any number of times, Mueller took over a counterintelligence investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Possible Trump-campaign collusion with Russia was just one thread in the larger probe.

At this point, it does not appear that Mueller has a collusion case against Trump associates. His indictments involving Russian hacking and troll farms do not suggest complicity by the Trump campaign. I also find it hard to believe Mueller sees Manafort as the key to making a case on Trump when Mueller has had Gates — Manafort’s partner — as a cooperator for six months. You have to figure Gates knows whatever Manafort knows about collusion. Yet, since Gates began cooperating with the special counsel, Mueller has filed the charges against Russians that do not implicate Trump, and has transferred those cases to other Justice Department components.

When it comes to the president, I believe the special counsel’s focus is obstruction, not collusion. When it comes to Manafort, I believe the special counsel’s focus is Russia — specifically, Manafort’s longtime connections to Kremlin-connected operatives. Mueller may well be interested in what Manafort can add to his inquiry into the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting (arranged by Donald Trump Jr. in futile hopes of obtaining campaign dirt from Russia on Hillary Clinton). That, however, is not the more serious “collusion” allegation that triggered the Trump thread of the investigation — cyberespionage conspiracy (i.e., Russian hacking of Democratic party emails). At this late stage, I’m betting Mueller is most interested in whatever information Manafort might provide regarding potential Russian threats to American interests.

I don’t think the special counsel’s report will accuse the president of collusion. I do think Mueller will try to illustrate that it was reckless for candidate Trump to bring a person of Manafort’s baggage into a high-level campaign post.

US Iranian Spies Targeted Synagogue for Terror Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271106/us-iranian-spies-targeted-jewish-synagogue-terror-daniel-greenfield

Iran is an Islamic terror state. And its espionage looks a lot more like terrorism.

Two Iranian men were indicted on Monday for allegedly spying for Tehran in the United States, including conducting surveillance at a Jewish facility and gathering information on backers of the Iranian opposition group known as Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, the Justice Department said.

Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, 38, a dual US-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, 59, an Iranian citizen and resident of California, were charged in the indictment with acting on behalf of Iran by conducting the surveillance, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The surveillance had some interesting targets.

Doostdar and Ghorbani are alleged to have acted on behalf of Iran, including by conducting surveillance of political opponents and engaging in other activities that could put Americans at risk,” said Assistant Attorney-General for National Security John Demers. “With their arrest and these charges, we are seeking to hold the defendants accountable.”

Ghorbani attended an MEK rally in New York on September 20, 2017, to protest the current Iranian government, taking photographs of the participants, which he later passed on to Doostdar, who paid him about $2,000.

The Justice Department said Doostdar conducted surveillance in July 2017 of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish facility in Chicago, the Rohr Chabad House, including photographing its security features.

Illegal Immigrant Charged in Murder of 20-Year-Old Iowa Student By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/illegal-immigrant-charged-in-mollie-tibbetts-murder/

An illegal immigrant has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, officials announced on Tuesday.

The body of Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared after going for a jog on July 18, was located in a cornfield on Tuesday, according to Rick Rahn, special agent in charge at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

“Our hearts go out to the Tibbetts family and to the Brooklyn community. It is a loss for all of us,” Poweshiek County Sheriff Tom Kriegel said in a news release.

Authorities believe the suspect, 24-year-old Cristhian Bahena Rivera, has lived in the area for four to seven years and immigrated from Mexico. Based on surveillance-camera footage, police determined he followed Tibbetts during her jog before abducting her.

It remains unclear exactly how Rivera killed Tibbetts, but an autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday and should provide more detailed information.

‘White Rage,’ Black Lives Matter: How one professor teaches U.S. history STONE WASHINGTON

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12880/israel-nation-state-law

A basic U.S. history course at Clemson University focused on the post-Civil War era to modern times teaches the subject of America’s past largely from a far-left perspective, including subjects such as “White Rage” and Black Lives Matter, according to the required readings for the course.

History 1020, or History of the U.S., focuses on the “political, economic and social development of the American people from the end of Reconstruction to the present,” according to its online description.

This fall, one professor teaching the class is Assistant Professor Maribel Morey, whose required readings include the books “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide,” “How Race is Made in America,” “Making of Black Lives Matter,” “Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights,” and “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.”

Each of the books portray an apparent liberal bias against various political issues. Professor Morey adds more details about the course on her personal website.

On Israel’s Nation-State Law by Denis MacEoin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12880/israel-nation-state-law

Israel is being wrongly condemned for something that not one Muslim state has ever been condemned for: identifying its nationality with its religion — and in the case of those Muslim states, this is done frequently in a manner that excludes or restricts the rights, or even the very existence, of minorities.

In Saudi Arabia and the Maldives, only Muslims are allowed to be citizens. In both those countries, the open practice of any religion other than Islam is forbidden — even Christianity and Judaism, which are supposedly accepted by Islam. In Israel, members of all religions and ethnic groups are full citizens.

On July 19, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, voted into law the Nation-State Bill. As Israel has never had a constitution, the bill became the latest iteration of the country’s Basic Laws, in the form of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. To many, this seemed like stating the obvious. Had not Israel been created in the first place for that very purpose? The only question was, “Why had it taken 70 years to turn the obvious into law?” Well, perhaps not the only question. The next one was “Why did 55 Knesset members vote against it, with two abstentions, with a narrow majority of 62 in favour?”

Once word got out to the outside world that the Israeli parliament had dared to enact such a definition of their state, it was, for many, as if the end of the world had taken place. As if they had never known that, since the time of the Bible, the land now called Israel was home to the Jews.

Just about everybody went out to condemn the bill as racist, discriminatory, anti-democratic, and opposed to Jewish principles of egalitarianism with non-Jewish citizens. NBC News ran a headline stating: “Israel ‘nation-state’ law prompts criticism around the world, including from U.S. Jewish groups”. On the very day the bill was passed, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, claimed that:

“We’ve been very clear when it comes to the two-state solution, we believe it is the only way forward and any step that would further complicate or prevent this solution of becoming a reality should be avoided.”

She did not say why Israel’s being a Jewish state with equal rights for non-Jews would interfere with a future two-state solution. Rejection of such a solution has always come from the Arab and Palestinian side, never the mainstream Jewish side. Instead, Mogherini planned a meeting for September 4 with Israeli Arab lawmakers — these being another group vociferously opposed to the new law. She does not appear to have invited any Jewish lawmakers to an equivalent meeting.

The European Union, a supra-national conglomeration that has done much good in advancing the rights of individual nation-states that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union as a means to preserving peace on the continent of Europe, has for many years taken an anti-Israel position that serves only to encourage Palestinians who launch wars and terrorist attacks precisely to prevent a two-state solution, all the while demanding the right to abolish Israel and create an exclusive Palestinian state “from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea”, a call for massive ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Opposition to the nation-state law was also strongly expressed by Israeli Arabs, Israeli Druze, and many Israeli and American Jews, including the Jewish Federations of North America and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews — in clear defiance of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, even though, for example, the United Kingdom officially exists as an Anglican state, without mistreating, at least officially, any of its minorities.

In Israel, artists, authors and purported intellectuals called for the cancellation of the law. Sometimes, the language used to describe the law passed the bounds of common decency. British Jewish socialist David Rosenberg, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, spoke in vile terms about three Jewish UK Labour Party MPs before slurring Israel’s new law:

“If [Margaret] Hodge and her sisters in struggle, [Ruth] Smeeth and [Juliana] Berger, were not craven opportunists and selective anti-racists and defenders of human rights, they might have been speaking out more, or even at all, about the disgusting and openly racist nation state bill that the Israeli government has just approved…”

One Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, Zouheir Bahloul, resigned, predicting that other Arab MKs would follow suit. He claimed falsely that the law discriminated against non-Jewish minorities. On August 4, many Israelis, organized by Druze leaders, gathered in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to protest the law. It later emerged, however, that the rally was paid for and directed by the left-wing Anu group, a grantee of the New Israel Fund. According to Breitbart Jerusalem:

Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, issued a divisive statement calling the legislation “tribalism at its worst,” a “slap in the face to Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel,” and a “danger to Israel’s future.”

In other words, anti-Zionists tried to weaponize the new law to promote their existing agendas.

By contrast, in Saudi Arabia and the Maldives, only Muslims are allowed to be citizens. In both those countries, the open practice of any religion other than Islam is forbidden — even Christianity and Judaism, which are supposedly accepted by Islam. In Israel, members of all religions and ethnic groups are full citizens.

It probably should not be a surprise that many Arab and European leaders used the passage of the law as an excuse to further their anti-Zionist agenda, but the opposition of Israel’s Druze community, always the most loyal to the state, with a long and admirable role in the Israeli armed forces, as well as the anger of so many Jews both in Israel and abroad, came as something of a shock.

There is no doubt, however, that this simple law does not change anything for anyone.

On August 8, during a special Knesset debate on the law, Zionist Union party activists, led by a former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, attacked the government, called for fresh elections, and “said the opposition would pass the Declaration of Independence as a basic law in lieu of the nation-state law.” Whatever the problems abroad, there is little doubt that the decision to make Jewish identity a core part of Israeli law has intensified political divisions at a time when unity of purpose is essential for a country that still faces existential threats on several fronts.

Readers should consult the full text of the law in order to reach their own conclusions. But it may help to consider one or two key clauses from it as a starting point for our understanding of it. In reality, the only contentious clauses are those in Article 1:

A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.

B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.

C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

Surely we knew all this already. The passage of the law was done simply to give a firm legal basis for the creation of Israel in 1948 following the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Its preamble states clearly that:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. [Author’s emphasis.]

As for “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, does not Israel’s Declaration of Independence (May 14, 1948) clearly state that the State of Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions”, and has not Israel done exactly that, as the Druze, Muslims, Christians, Baha’is and other minorities, can attest?

Why, then, do so many around the world claim that reinforcing the fact that Israel is a Jewish state will harm the lives of its non-Jewish inhabitants? In Iran, for instance, the large Baha’i minority suffers massive persecution, including imprisonment, execution, and much more,[1] while in Israel, they have their international governing body and their holiest shrines, and bring in pilgrims from round the world.

Accusations levelled against the new law often include outright falsehoods. Daniel Pomerantz of Honest Reporting has identified a series of, shall we diplomatically call, “myths” about the law published by the New York Times, including that “Israel is a country where Jews enjoy rights that others don’t have” and “a state in which Judaism is the only national expression permissible by law will, by definition, reject any minority member who wishes to be part of it”. Of course, Judaism is not “the only national expression permissible by law” and more than in England the Anglican religion is. Additionally, go tell that to any of the religious and ethnic minorities who live unmolested in Israel, who serve in parliament, in the judicial system, in universities and across all sectors.

Those false accusations against Israel, however, draw attention to something else that has been grievously neglected in this debate: Israel is being wrongly condemned for something that not one Muslim state has ever been condemned for: identifying its nationality with its religion — and in the case of those Muslim states, this is done frequently in a manner that excludes or restricts the rights, or even the very existence, of minorities.

There are currently four countries that officially identify as Islamic Republics: Iran, Pakistan, Mauritania, and Afghanistan. There have been four others, some very short-lived, in the past: the Comoros (1978-2000), the East Turkestan (1933), the Gambia (2015-2017), and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (1996-2000). All four of the current Islamic republics are dangerous places for non-Muslims to live, with laws against apostasy, against blasphemy (freedom of expression), and, in the case of Mauritania, prevalent slavery, all of which contradict international human rights standards. In those republics, as well as in monarchies with Islam as the official religion (such as Saudi Arabia), the persecution of heretical Muslims, Christians and Baha’is and others, is — in direct contrast to Israel — commonplace. The use of shari’a law to enforce human rights abuses banned under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, clamps down heavily on the lives of women, freethinkers, secularists, and all non-Muslims. Where capital punishments are carried out for non-criminal offences such as heresy, blasphemy and “sorcery”, or floggings and stonings-to-death are imposed for moral infringements such as alleged sex outside marriage, including having been raped, there is a huge imbalance between Western democracies and many Muslim states.[2]

In Saudi Arabia and the Maldives, only Muslims are allowed to be citizens. In both, the open practice of any other religion, even those (Christianity and Judaism) that are accepted by Islam, is forbidden. In Israel, members of all other religions and ethnic groups are full citizens, who may vote, serve as lawmakers and judges, and more, worship in protected holy places.

It is important to add that few Muslim states are democracies in the full sense. Several are outright monarchies or emirates: Morocco, Jordan, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait (an emirate where there is an elected parliament, but political parties are illegal), Qatar, Oman, and the 7-emirate United Arab Emirates. In the modern period, others have been or still are dictatorships: Syria, Iran (a theocracy, formerly a monarchy), Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan under Zia-ul Haq. It is only fair to state that the three most populous Muslim-majority nations (Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) are all democracies, and that some others are democracies, yet often threatened by coups d’état or growing Islamisation. Lebanon, which was a decent democracy, is now controlled by Hizbullah. Turkey, the first Muslim secular democracy, is run today by Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently acquired massive powers.

Furthermore, Islam is the official religion of many states: Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Nigeria, the Maldives, Brunei, and Malaysia. Article 4 of the 2003 Amended Basic Law of the Palestinian National Authority reads:

1. Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect for the sanctity of all other divine religions shall be maintained.

2. The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation.

3. Arabic shall be the official language.

It is worth noting a couple of things here. By “all other divine religions”, the law means only Judaism and Christianity, which are the only faiths recognized in the Qur’an as divinely-revealed (though corrupted) beliefs. Israel does not impose such limitations on other religions. The elevation of shari’a religious law to a “principal source of legislation” can rule out democratic laws that contradict Islamic punishments for offences such as homosexuality, adultery, or blasphemy.

Israel, though a Jewish state, does not have an official religion — not even Judaism. As such, it imposes no religious conformity on any of its citizens. There are secular Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Muslims who become agnostics or atheists, even those who openly leave Islam or convert to another religion, are far safer in Israel than in any Muslim country. Israeli laws — for all of its citizens — are made by members of the Knesset; there, the laws are debated openly and given force by an independent judiciary, just as laws are in other genuinely democratic countries such as the USA or the UK.

Finally, one crucial question remains. Several people, including many patriotic Israelis such as Tzipi Livni of the Zionist Union party, the current leader of the opposition in the Knesset, or the Likud’s MK Benny Begin, have expressed the view that the law should have included the phrases “full equality of rights for all its citizens” and “Jewish and democratic state”, which might have reassured the non-Jewish population. The government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, insists that it was not necessary to do this, given the presence of such affirmations in the Declaration of Independence and other Basic Laws. There are strong arguments for and against repeating it yet again, but for the moment, that debate and others related to it remain deeply divisive. Might it not be wise to consider another Basic Law in which the issue of full equality and democracy may be made even more explicit than they already are? That is for the Israeli people to decide.

Denis MacEoin holds a PhD in Persian Studies (Cambridge, 1979) and taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University in the UK. He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

[1] See Nazila Ghanea, Human Rights, the U.N. and the Baha’is in Iran, Oxford, 2003.

[2] For a detailed study of the clash between shari’a-based “human rights” legislation and universal values, see Ann Elizabeth Meyer, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, 5th. Ed., New York, Abingdon, 2013; see also, Anver Emon, Mark S. Ellis, and Benjamin Glahn, Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law, Oxford University Press, 2015.

What The Left’s Defense of Brennan Really Exposes Why the Deep State is fretting. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271097/what-lefts-defense-brennan-really-exposes-bruce-thornton

The progressives’ hysterical response to President Trump stripping the security clearance from ex-CIA boss John Brennan reveals the sandy foundations of progressive ideology and its technocratic rule. Trump, of course, was responding to Brennan’s blatant politicization of his office, both while working for Obama, and now as a paid talking head on MSNBC. Like all attacks on Trump, the defense of Brennan is so intense because any assault on the federal Leviathan threatens to expose the false assumptions justifying its concentrated and unaccountable power.

The rush to the barricades on the part of bipartisan anti-Trumpers and deep-state veterans was a harrumphing “how dare you sir” rhetorical misdirection away from the privilege and power enjoyed and abused by the deep state. The fundamental justification for that power is the technocratic expertise its functionaries presumably possess. From the start progressives have rationalized their dismantling of the Constitution’s separated powers, and their expansion of federal offices and agencies, by touting “the beneficent activities of expert social engineers who would bring to the service of social ideals all the technical resources which research could discover,” as progressive theorist Herbert Croly put it.