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April 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Judge Napolitano, the mendacious magistrate By Russ Vaughn

By on April 29th, 2019

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

“What is even more mystifying is this: whatever made Napolitano think he, an on-air legal “analyst” for Fox News Network, was of sufficient juristic eminence to be appointed to the highest court in the land?”

I’m not a daytime watcher of Fox News, but as an always-on television is within earshot, I do tend to be a bit of a detached daytime listener. As such, I have been mystified by the one-eighty-degree turn of Fox legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano from being an ardent Trump-supporter to a constant critic of the president. It was one of those mysteries we must sometimes wait years for to get an explanation of what led to such a sudden, inexplicable political reversal. But thanks to that titan of tweeting, our nation’s chief executive (Dems would prefer that to be Titanic), we now know what inspired this sudden onset of anti-Trump hostility from Judge Nap.

Following his hugely successful Wisconsin rally Saturday night, Donald Trump tweeted this:

….Ever since Andrew came to my office to ask that I appoint him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I said NO, he has been very hostile! Also asked for pardon for his friend. A good “pal” of low ratings Shepard Smith.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Segregation by Design on Campus How racial separatism become the norm at elite universities like Yale, Brown and Wesleyan. By Peter W. Wood and Dion J. Pierre

By on April 29th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/segregation-by-design-on-campus-11556564318

Mr. Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars. Mr. Pierre is a research associate at the association and primary author of its new report, “Separate But Equal, Again: Neo-Segregation in Higher Education.”

In his inaugural address in January 1963, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama thundered: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” About “tomorrow,” Wallace was right. More than half a century later, racial segregation comes as easy as breathing to many American colleges and universities.

Wallace had in mind the exclusion of blacks from white-only institutions. Today’s racial segregation, by contrast, consists of ethnic groups walling themselves off within institutions. In the past two years the National Association of Scholars surveyed 173 colleges and universities, public and private, in all 50 states. We found 46% of schools segregate student orientation programs, 43% segregate residential arrangements, and 72% segregate graduation ceremonies. Though these arrangements are ostensibly voluntary, students can’t easily opt out. The social pressure to conform is overwhelming.

This kind of racial separatism on campus isn’t new. We pursued case studies of Yale, Wesleyan and Brown universities, where we found that black students began to organize exclusive groups with separatist agendas as early as the 1960s.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

A new low, even for The New York Times: Roger Franklin

By on April 29th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/

If readers would indulge a reminiscence, let me relate an incident from decades back, when I was working for Fairfax in New York and happened to be taking a late-night drink at a now-vanished watering hole on West 43rd Street, Gough’s Chophouse. A dark and smoky armpit of a joint, it was directly across the road from what was then the New York Times HQ and frequented, as on that Saturday evening, by “Timesmen” in their preppy weekend uniform of khaki trousers and Lacoste shirts (Timeswomen mostly had the good sense to steer clear).

Fresh from putting the Sunday edition to bed, four of them were in an expansive mood and making a fair fist of four-part harmonies. Then a fifth Timesman arrived and added his voice to the barroom choirThe singing stopped on a dime. One of the quartet’s vocalists directed a withering glance at the latest tenor and said in that peculiar nasal honk which speaks of an Ivy League education, “We are Timesmen and we do things properly. If you can’t sing in tune, don’t sing at all.” His critique dripped with an arrogance verging on contempt. The Times must be a very peculiar place, I concluded.

The Times, these days singing from a different songbook, is still doing things “properly” — if the definition of proper is an astonishing eagerness to embrace and advance anti-Semitism. That’s Exhibit A above, published in the past few days by the paper that bills itself as the source of “all the news that’s fit to print”.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Matt Fridy’s Alabama Campus Free-Speech Act By Stanley Kurtz

By on April 29th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/matt-fridys-alabama-campus-free-speech-act/

Alabama state representative Matt Friday has just introduced HB498, the Alabama Campus Free Speech Act, into the Alabama State House. Fridy is a lawyer who specializes in constitutional law, and is a strong and effective conservative voice in the Alabama State Legislature. His bill draws on model campus free-speech legislation published by Arizona’s Goldwater Institute. (Along with Jim Manley and Jonathan Butcher, I co-authored that model.) This means that in addition to barring restrictive speech codes and so-called free-speech zones, Fridy’s bill also covers discipline for shout-downs and establishes an effective oversight system as well.
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Although it’s sometimes argued that the campus free speech crisis affects only deep-dyed blue states like California and Massachusetts, the problem is national. An Alabama university currently holds the dubious honor of being FIRE’s Speech Code of the Month award winner. And while it was not a full-on shout-down, the recent heckling of CIA director Gina Haspel at Auburn University is a reminder that more serious speaker disruptions could easily occur down the road. It’s only prudent to prepare for that eventuality. There have been other free speech problems at Alabama universities as well, so protection against such abuses is clearly called for.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The New York Times’ Inadequate ‘Apology’ for Its Anti-Semitic Cartoon By Wesley J. Smith

By on April 29th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-new-york-times-inadequate-apology-for-its-anti-semitic-cartoon/

The New York Times International published an obviously anti-Semitic cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — depicted as a dog wearing a Star of David tag — leading a blind Donald Trump, who is wearing a yarmulke.

The paper has issued a mild apology on its Opinion Twitter feed — where it was soon buried by other posts–saying it “included anti-Semitic tropes” (the whole cartoon was one big anti-Semitic trope) that were “offensive,” stating passively that it “was error of judgment to print it,” and that the New York Times News Service and Syndicate has “deleted it.”

But it was in the international edition of the paper. You can’t delete that! So there will be an “editor’s note” published in Monday’s paper.I am sorry, this (sort of) apology is utterly insufficient. If the Times management was as horrified by the international edition’s transgression as they should be, they would engage in the same deep repentance — meaning a sincere and articulated apology combined with a commitment to change — that the paper would demand of other publications (particularly conservative) that committed similar wrongdoing.
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For example, the paper should explain in detail how the cartoon came to be published. It should explain what — if any — disciplinary actions were taken against those that made the decision to print it, and what steps the paper is taking to ensure there are no repeat performances. And they need to promise to be on heightened guard against yielding to the anti-Semitic impulse.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Madame Secretary, “At this point it makes a very big difference.” by Linda Goudsmit

By on April 29th, 2019

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22617/madame-secretary-at-this-point-it-makes-a-very

During a January 23, 2013, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Hillary Clinton was questioned about the September 11, 2012 bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The Benghazi anniversary attack occurred while Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State during the final months of Romney’s presidential bid to unseat Obama and just two months before the November presidential elections.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was conducting a review of the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans including U.S. Ambassador J. Chris Stevens. During questioning by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), Hillary Clinton famously said, “At this point what difference does it make?” Let’s find out.

The transcript of the hearing recorded on C-SPAN shows Sen. Johnson repeatedly asking Clinton about the story coming out of Obama’s White House that the Benghazi attack was a response to protests outside the Consulate and an anti-Islam video posted on YouTube.

Johnson: No, again, we were misled (5:02 on C-SPAN) that there were supposedly protests and that something sprang out of that — an assault sprang out of that — and that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact, and the American people could have known that within days and they didn’t know that.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Unrelenting Nature of Antisemitism by Alex Grobman, PhD

By on April 29th, 2019

https://thejewishvoiceandopinion.com/the-unrelenting-nature-of-antisemitism/

Antisemitism, sometimes called the world’s oldest hatred, has existed in one form or another throughout much of human history. The current increase in antisemitism throughout the world is a warning of the threats ahead if a vigorous response is not mounted.

If reasonable people are to act against the current surge of antisemitism not only on the streets in the United States and Western Europe but also in the halls of Congress and other government institutions, it may be helpful to examine some historical examples of this particular strain of hatred and review the pernicious libels used to incite hatred and violence against the Jewish people.

Some illustrations are well known. In the Biblical Book of Esther, the villainous Haman tells the King of Persia: “There are a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people’s, and they do not observe the king’s laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them.”

In the second century CE, Tacitus writes in his Histories Book V: “Among themselves, they [the Jews] are inflexibly honest and ever ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Authorities To Arrest Canadian Father If He Refers To Trans Child As Her Real Sex Clark will be subject to arrest if any police officer has ‘reasonable’ grounds to believe that he’s referred to his daughter as female in public or private. By Jeremiah Keenan

By on April 29th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/29/authorities-arrest-canadian-father-refers-trans-child-real-sex/

Last Wednesday, The Federalist reported that the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada, declared a father guilty of family violence for his polite refusal to refer to his daughter as a boy in private, and his repeated choice to affirm in media interviews that she is a girl.

At about the same time that story was published, the Supreme Court issued an additional, more heavy-handed “protection order” from the same ruling. The three-page document declares that the father, Clark*, will henceforth be subject to arrest, immediately and “without warrant” if any police officer has “reasonable” grounds to believe that he has in any way referred to his daughter as a girl in public or in private.

The new order further stipulated not only that Clark must not discuss his daughter’s sex or gender identity in public, but also that he cannot share court documents describing his own gag order. On the one hand, this demand may seem ironic, since it covers a publicly available court ruling. On the other hand, the injunction is so broad that it naturally includes the very document upon which it is written and that document–with its threats of immediate arrest without warrant–has not, as of yet, been made available on the court’s website.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Hatred Of Israel Is The One Thing All Anti-Semites Have In Common The only Jew-hatred still acceptable in public discourse is the kind masquerading as “anti-Zionism.” By David Harsanyi

By on April 29th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/29/its-a-hatred-of-israel-that-unites-all-anti-semites/

“The past few days provide a useful case study,” the New York Times’ Bari Weiss wrote this weekend. “Thursday: an anti-Zionist cartoon is published in the Times. Saturday: a white nationalist guns down Jews in synagogue. Sunday: Javad Zarif appears on Fox. The three strands of modern anti-Semitism: far-left, far-right and Islamist.”

Though Weiss correctly identifies the three strands of contemporary Jew-hatred, none of them are truly modern. To various degrees, Islamic anti-Semitism has been prevalent for a long time. Left-wing anti-Semitism is old as Marx (and, really, even older.) And right-wing nationalist anti-Semitism has been with us since the concept was birthed in Europe.

The only truly modern component found in all three strands is Israel. Anti-Israel sentiment is already the predominant justification for violence, murder, and hatred against Jews in the Middle East and Europe. Now it’s coming here. Sometimes it’s merely a transparent excuse for animosity, other times it’s the spark for that hatred.

The Passover shooting at the Poway Chabad synagogue in suburban San Diego was perpetrated by a 19-year-old gunman who seems to have acted alone. The man hadn’t cooked up his ugly ideas reading “Mein Kampf” in a cabin in the deep wilderness of Red America, but rather in a comfortable home in Southern California using the internet. The shooter wasn’t raised under the shadow of a Robert E. Lee statue or a Confederate flag, but rather in a substantially diverse area in a deeply liberal state.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Smearing of Roger Scruton: Analysis of the Interview By Douglas Murray

By on April 29th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/smearing-of-roger-scruton-analysis-of-the-interview-recording/

Regular readers may know that I have spent a certain amount of time in recent weeks exercised by a British hack called George Eaton and the left-wing magazine that he is deputy editor at (the New Statesman). I have no personal animus against Mr. Eaton, who I believe I only met briefly once, some years ago, in a radio studio. His editor at the New Statesman, Jason Cowley, has always seemed to me a good person and a good editor in charge of a magazine with some fine writing in it.

But three weeks ago Eaton flagged up an interview he had conducted with Sir Roger Scruton with claims which seemed suspect from the start. Eaton claimed that Scruton had made a succession of “outrageous” remarks during their interview. In addition to anti-Chinese racism, he claimed, Scruton had said awful things about Muslims, Jews, and various other groups of people. All of this had an effect. Believing that what the New Statesman’s deputy editor said was true, Scruton was widely defamed across the British media. He was then swiftly and ignominiously fired (without even being personally informed) from his position heading a government quango. This latter decision was taken by the relevant minister, James Brokenshire MP, within five hours of Eaton’s original tweets.

The malicious intent which Eaton brought to the interview was evidenced not just by the manner in which he announced its alleged contents, but in his posting on Instagram of a photo of himself swigging champagne from a bottle and saying that this was how he was celebrating the sacking of “homophobe and racist” Roger Scruton.

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