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April 2019

POLITICS Comments turned off

“We’re Gonna Punch Trump in the Face!” Says 2020 Dem Losing to Everyone Daniel Greenfield

By on April 18th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273518/were-gonna-punch-trump-face-says-2020-dem-losing-daniel-greenfield

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is brave. Or at least that’s her campaign branding.

I guess it takes bravery to humiliatingly lose to everyone except Andrew Yang and Julian Castro after raising millions of dollars. It takes bravery to debut your kickoff speech next to the Trump hotel only to have no one show up. And it takes bravery to continue humiliating yourself around the country. And then getting desperate and saying things like, “We’re gonna punch Trump in the face!”

That would be “dangerous incitement” if a Republican had said it. But it’s “awesome” when a Democrat does.

“We’re gonna punch Trump in the face!” she tells me, smiling broadly, literally jumping up and down. “It’s the New York way!”

Gillibrand isn’t New York City prole. She’s wealthy upstate. The New York way couldn’t be any more alien to her if she were from Iowa.

The routine, like all her routines, is wincingly unconvincing.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pelosi, Schumer call on Mueller to Testify…. By Yaron Steinbuch

By on April 18th, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/04/18/pelosi-schumer-call-on-mueller-to-testify/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer are calling for Robert Mueller to testify before Congress as soon as possible after what they described as Attorney General William Barr’s “partisan” handling of the special counsel report.

The top Democratic congressional leaders released a joint statement hours before a redacted version of the nearly 400-page report will be released and after The New York Times reported that White House lawyers and Justice officials have already discussed the report’s findings, according to The Hill.

“Attorney General Barr’s regrettably partisan handling of the Mueller report, including his slanted March 24th summary letter, his irresponsible testimony before Congress last week, and his indefensible plan to spin the report in a press conference later this morning — hours before he allows the public or Congress to see it — have resulted in a crisis of confidence in his independence and impartiality,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

President Trump and the Crisis of Separated Powers

By on April 18th, 2019

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/trump-and-the-crisis-of-separated-powers/90653/

The denouement of the Special Counsel investigation — unfolding on the Imax of the Internet — illuminates nothing so much as the fact that our republic is in a crisis of separated powers. It shows that a special counsel can come close to destroying a presidency even in cases where, as now seems clear in respect of President Trump, there was neither collusion with a foreign power nor obstruction of justice.

This is what happens when our press, politicians, and prosecutors ignore the constitutional principle of separated powers and press for or set up either an independent or special prosecutor. Such a blunder destroyed Richard Nixon’s presidency, damaged President Reagan’s, nearly kneecapped President George H.W. Bush’s, and almost destroyed Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Yet rarely has the crisis of separated powers been thrown into such sharp relief as in the case of Mr. Trump. Feature the press conference at which Attorney General Barr presented Robert Mueller’s report. The moment came as Mr. Barr was being questioned in respect of Mr. Mueller’s decision neither to prosecute nor to exonerate the President in respect of obstruction of justice. Mr. Mueller left it to Mr. Barr.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Darwin, Einstein and Ridd- The Quest for Truth – Inspiring-Read it all

By on April 18th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/

When Judge Salvatore Vasta  ruled on Peter Ridd’s case against James Cook University, he introduced his 76-page decision with a few thoughts on the key element in any “quest for truth”:

… Intellectual freedom is also known as academic freedom. It is a concept that underpins universities and institutions devoted to higher learning. Obviously such institutions must have administrators that care for the governance and proper direction of the institution. However, the mission of these institutions must undoubtedly be the search for knowledge which leads to a quest for truth. In reality, intellectual freedom is the cornerstone of this core mission of all institutions of higher learning.

This is so because it allows ideas to conflict with each other; to battle and test each other. It is within this “battle” that the strengths and weaknesses of ideas are found out. In this process, there comes “learning”. And with learning comes discovery.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on the Notre Dame Cathedral fire…brilliantly By Peter Barry Chowka

By on April 18th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/victor_davis_hanson_weighs_in_on_the_notre_dame_cathedral_fire_brilliantly.html

Victor Davis Hanson is a well known conservative historian, academic, and author. He contributes commentaries prolifically on the current political scene to a variety of publications. He is a frequent guest commentator on the Fox News Channel. When Dr. Hanson speaks, I listen.

On Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday, April 16, Hanson appeared live from his home in California for a three-minute Q and A on the burning of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. When a transcript of the program appeared online on Wednesday, I read his comments, which were as impressive as when I first heard them.

His comments totaled 362 words. I can’t think of anyone who can fit more substance and meaning into so few words.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Hundreds marched through the streets of Paris today to ask for the intercession of Notre Dame, Our Lady. The cathedral named in her honor was heavily damaged by fire yesterday, but it is structurally sound. French President Macron vows it will be rebuilt as donations pour in from around the world. And amid the tragedy at Notre Dame, there is a lesson to be learned.

Joining me now is Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Victor, you say there’s an irony in the history here in the aftermath of this architectural tragedy, tragedy in terms of what we’ve lost in church history. What is the irony?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION: After 800 years, we were the steward of this iconic representation of western civilization, Catholicism, Christendom. And of all the years, 2019, at the height of our sophistication and technology, I’m not blaming the French or anybody, but we were found wanting and we didn’t protect this icon. And we don’t build them anymore.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Soho Forum Global Warming Debate, And The Impact Of Scientific Arguments Francis Menton

By on April 18th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-4-16-the-soho-forum-global-warming-debate-and-the-impact-of-scientific-arguments

As you may have noticed from the announcement that appeared for the past week or so on my sidebar, the Soho Forum held a debate Monday night on the issue of Global Warming. The official resolution for the debate was Resolved: There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet. The debaters were Craig Idso for the affirmative, and Jeffrey Bennett for the negative.

For those who haven’t heard of it, the Soho Forum sponsors debates, roughly monthly, on current policy issues. The venue is usually the Subculture Theater, at 45 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. The Forum’s Director is long-time Barron’s senior editor Gene Epstein; and the Chief Operating Officer is my daughter Jane. Other recent Soho Forum debate topics have included things like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the causes of the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Holding a debate on the issue of global warming or “climate change” — and particularly one focused on the scientific question of whether empirical evidence supports or refutes the hypothesis of potential dangerous warming — is often difficult. Contrary to what you might think, the problem is not that it is hard to find scientifically-literate advocates for the skeptic position. Actually, there are plenty of those. Rather, the problem generally is that adherents to the alarmist cause refuse to debate anyone who disagrees with their position, often denigrating their adversaries as “climate deniers.” So Gene Epstein deserves credit for locating Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Bennett also deserves credit for being willing to put his position to the test.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

A College President Stands Up for Academic Freedom written by Claire Lehmann

By on April 18th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/04/16/a-college-president-makes-a-stand-for-academic-freedom/

At Quillette we hope David Yager’s moral leadership becomes a turning point in the defence of free thought. We raise our glasses to him and to Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.

What happens when university students call on authority figures to censor students or staff at institutions of higher education? At Yale such students have been awarded prizes, at the University of Missouri they’ve been successful in forcing administrators to resign, at Claremont they were able to force their president to implement a long list of demands, and at Evergreen State College a throng of students were allowed to take control of the campus while harassed faculty sought refuge off-campus. At other colleges around America, and even on campuses in the U.K., Canada and Australia, university administrators have met illiberal student mobs with a parade of mealy-mouthed platitudes and prostrations. This pattern of weakness has been dismaying for all people who value academic freedom and open inquiry. This week, however, a line has been drawn by David Yager, President of Philadelphia’s University of Arts (UArts). In response to students calling for the censorship of Camille Paglia—one of the most admired humanities scholars in the world—he articulated a full-throated defence of intellectual freedom, showing administrators of supposedly superior universities what real leadership looks like.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics? written by Alessandro Strumia

By on April 18th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/04/16/why-are-women-under-represented-in-physics/

Six months ago CERN hosted a workshop on “High Energy Theory and Gender.” Nearly all the contributors to this and previous workshops on the same topic endorsed the view that gender imbalances in physics, particularly in the higher echelons, are predominantly due to sexual discrimination. The following phrases appeared in the presentations: “men mobilize their masculinity supporting…men in ways that advance careers,” “evaluators tend to favor men,” “scientific quality is a gender social construction,” “practically all women share the same kind of sad and unfair experiences since the beginning of their scientific career,” and physics is an “oppressive ambient.” One attendee claimed that only the military has a higher rate of sexual harassment, although she didn’t say which country’s armed forces she was thinking of.

In an attempt to go beyond mere anecdotes and measure the amount of discrimination, I did a bibliometric analysis using a public database of publications, references, authors and hiring decisions in fundamental physics world-wide over the past 50 years. CERN maintains this database, but nobody had used it for this purpose before. Certainly, none of the hosts of the “High Energy Theory and Gender” workshop had used it to test their claims.

The results that came out of this study did not fit the discrimination narrative.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Keep Digging Dems! You’ll Find that Pony Somewhere in the Manure Pile Known as the Mueller Report By Rick Moran

By on April 18th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/keep-digging-dems-youll-find-that-pony-somewhere-in-the-manure-pile-known-as-the-mueller-report/

Somewhere buried deep in the Mueller report is incontrovertible evidence that the president of the United States is a Russian spy. I know it. I just know it. It has to be there.

And I just know that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice. How can he not be? He’s guilty of so much that the obstruction is, I’m sure, just the tip of the iceberg.

How do I know? Ask any Democrat.

I can’t decide whether it’s amusing or pathetic, this desperate desire by Democrats to will the Mueller report to say something it isn’t saying. An appropriate cultural reference might be that Democrats are searching for Captain Queeg’s missing strawberries even after they know the fruit has been eaten and the culprit found.

Classical? How about Democrat’s tearing the castle apart to find the emperor’s new clothes?

All of those “flipped” witnesses who Democrats believed would turn on their boss and dish the “real” dirt apparently had little to say. Kind of makes you wonder what Mueller got from these cooperating witnesses. Like Bullwinkle pulling a rabbit out of a hat: “Nothin’ up my sleeve…Presto!” (Wrong hat).

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Airbnb’s Anti-West Bank Policy Shows Why Laws Against BDS Matter In another year, finding 21 Democrats willing to support pro-Israel legislation should have been a cakewalk. However, 2019 is not any old year. By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

By on April 18th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/18/airbnbs-anti-west-bank-policy-shows-laws-bds-matter/

Want to fight The Man? If you’re too young to have fought for civil rights, you’ve got the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS).

BDSers wrap themselves in the cloak of justice, but their high-minded rhetoric quickly devolves into hate, because at bottom, stigmatizing democratic Israel isn’t hopeful. BDS is a high-stakes game of pressure that affects individual students, performing artists, and corporations, as the movement pursues a long game of destroying Israel. As Airbnb learned when they sided with the BDS bullies last year, it’s not necessarily a wise business decision.
Airbnb’s Politicized Decision about West Bank

Last November, Airbnb made headlines when they announced that, after consulting with various experts, they would de-list approximately 200 properties in Jewish communities within Israel’s Judea and Samaria regions, better known stateside as the West Bank. The company’s rationale was that these locations “are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.”

On its face, this was an odd move for a business. An American for-profit corporation that serves private, paying customers went out of its way to take sides in one of the world’s most sensitive and emotional political disputes. In response, lawsuits were filed on behalf of affected hosts, would-be hosts, and travelers.

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