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November 2019

Trump and Netanyahu: Both Being Investigated for Made-Up Crimes by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15217/trump-netanyahu-impeachment-indictment

The most striking similarity is that both are being investigated for actions that their legislatures have not explicitly made criminal.

Politicians always seek good coverage and many vote with that in mind. Some even negotiate good coverage in advance of voting. That is why they have press secretaries and media consultants.

Nor could a reasonable statute be drafted that covered Netanyahu’s alleged conduct, but not that of other Knesset members who bartered their votes for good coverage. That is why no legislature in a country governed by the rule of law has ever made positive media coverage the “quid” or “quo” necessary for a bribery conviction, and that is why the bribery indictment of Netanyahu should not be upheld by the courts.

[I]t is simply not a crime for a President to use his power over foreign policy for political, partisan or even personal advantage. Imagine Congress trying to pass a law defining what would constitute a criminal abuse of the foreign policy power, as distinguished from a political or moral abuse…. Presidents have even engaged in military actions for political gain.

The central aspect of the rule of law is that no one may be investigated, prosecuted or impeached unless his conduct violates pre-existing and unambiguous prohibitions. Neither Congress nor prosecutors can make it up as they go along, because they, too, are not above the law.

There are striking similarities, as well as important differences, between the investigations being conducted against American President Donald J. Trump by the US Congress, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was just indicted.

The most striking similarity is that both are being investigated for actions that their legislatures have not explicitly made criminal. Moreover, no legislature in any country governed by the rule of law would ever enact a general statute criminalizing such conduct. The investigations of these two controversial leaders are based on using general laws that have never previously been deemed to apply to the conduct at issue and stretching them to target specific political figures.

The rise of the organized Muslim vote in Canada Anthony Furey

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-the-rise-of-the-organized-muslim-vote-in-canada

A number of puzzled columnists and policy experts are currently trying to figure out why it was that Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has broken with its tradition of voting down United Nations resolutions that denounce Israel and – as happened last week – joining the pile-on to condemn the only Jewish state in the world.

So far the working conclusion they’ve arrived at is that it was done because Trudeau covets a two-year seat at the Security Council and this is one way to win over votes at the notoriously anti-Israel body. That’s no doubt part of it.

There could be something else at play though: Maybe this is just what Canadian voters want. Or at least what one highly motivated and increasingly influential segment of the electorate wants.

In the months leading up to the election, a group called The Canadian Muslim-Vote (TCMV) was unapologetic in predicting the power the organized Muslim vote could yield over the 2019 federal election results.

“The Canadian Muslim community has the numbers to decide the winners and losers this election, which directly impacts the composition of the government we will have,” TCMV executive director Ali Manek wrote in a press release that went out on October 17 – just days before the election. “Muslim voters have turned out to the Advance Polls over Muslim Vote Weekend and we will be there on election day because we understand that we speak the loudest when we vote.”

Sanctuary Cities Continue To Obstruct ICE Protecting criminal aliens while endangering innocent victims. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/sanctuary-cities-continue-obstruct-ice-michael-cutler/

On November 22, 2019 Immigration and Customs posted a news release, ICE announces Montgomery County, Prince George’s County criminal offenders shielded by current non-cooperation policies.

Once again local supposed “law enforcement” officials of Prince George’s County and Montgomery County decided to ignore detainers lodged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

This is not the first time that these officials and other such officials have ignored detainers so that ICE could take these illegal aliens into custody to seek their deportation (removal) from the United States.

Clearly these officials refuse to learn the lessons even when their wrong-headed sanctuary policies result in the preventable death of a child!

In June of this year, FrontPage Magazine published my article, Politicians Must Face Consequences For Crimes They Enable. 

That article included a link to a May 21, 2019 ICE press release, ICE seeks custody of teen murder suspects for a second time- Local jurisdiction failed to honor previous detainers which began with this excerpt:

BALTIMORE – Following the recent arrest of two unlawfully present teens suspected in the violent murder of a young girl in Maryland, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Baltimore are again seeking to take custody of the illegal aliens through the ICE detainer process following the Prince George’s County Detention Center’s (PGCDC) failure to cooperate.

Josue Rafael Fuentes-Ponce and Joel Ernesto Escobar, both Salvadoran nationals, were previously arrested on May 11, 2018 when they were arrested by Prince George’s County Police Department (PGCPD) for attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, participation in gang activity, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted robbery, and other related charges. ICE officers lodged a detainer with PGCDC, however both were released on an unknown date and time without notification to ICE.

On May 16, 2019, PGCPD arrested the same individuals and charged them with first-degree murder.

Spies Like Omar Troubling revelations in Florida trial of Qatari emir Sheik Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/spies-omar-lloyd-billingsley/

Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar “was recruited by a foreign government, received funding from a foreign government, and passed sensitive information through intermediaries to Iran,” Donna Rachel Edmunds reports in the Jerusalem Post today. According to the report, the information on Omar came during testimony from Alan Bender, a Canadian businessman born in Kuwait, in the Florida trial of Sheik Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani, a Qatari emir accused of ordering his bodyguard to murder two people and holding hostage an American citizen.

Alan Bender told the Florida District Court that “he met with Qatar’s Secretary to the Emir for Security Affairs and two other senior Qatari officials.” According to Edmunds, those officials “recruited Ilhan Omar from even way before she thought about becoming a government official,” and she became their “jewel in the crown.”

Bender testified that Qatari officials told him “the best thing money can buy is American officials, because they are the cheapest of the cheapest-costing officials in the world.” Without their money, the officials said, “Omar would be just another black Somali refugee in America collecting welfare and serving tables on weekends.”

The information Omar passed to Qatar, Bender testified, was handed to Iran and deployed in the recruitment of  other American politicians. Bender confirmed that the Jerusalem Post report about Ilhan Omar and Qatar is “accurate 100 percent.” The office of the Minnesota Democrat spoke to the Jerusalem Post and denied the allegations. The allegation that Ilhan Omar is a Qatari asset is hardly the only difficulty the Minnesota Democrat is facing.

Quo Vadis, Democrati? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/trump-impeachment-inquiry-where-are-democrats-going/

Absent new, damning evidence, the impeachment script may not play out as Democrats wish.W here are the Democrats going next?

Prior to this past week, for days Adam Schiff had concocted a pretty effective fix. He conducted secret impeachment inquiries in the House basement. Schiff kept quiet about his rigged rules. He orchestrated selective media leaks from the opening statements of favorable witnesses and then more or less threatened with ethical violations any Republican member who copied his tactics and leaked their own often effective cross-examinations.

The result was that the public heard only from Schiff about Schiff’s damning slam-dunk hearings. A drip-by-drip melting of both Trump’s polls and resistance to impeachment followed.

Schiff emerged for brief soundbites, bit his lip, and for a minute or two regretted the tragedy of having to hear damaging testimony about his own president.

But then I suppose Schiff’s Hubris finally lured in Nemesis.

Schiff’s overweening ambition and ego drove him into a full-fledged, prime-daytime soap opera. Previously washed and rinsed witnesses returned for televised cross-examinations with Schiff in the star inquisitor role. He apparently thought he could outperform his own Republican colleagues on camera — people he had blatantly misrepresented for weeks.

But television allowed the country to conclude that seeing and hearing Schiff all day long was a different experience from catching minute- or two-minute glimpses of him. The TV version was entirely toxic.

Education Department Orders University of North Carolina to Tighten Policies after Anti-Semitism Complaint By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/education-department-orders-university-of-north-carolina-to-tighten-policies-after-anti-semitism-complaint/

The Education Department has directed the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to tighten its discrimination policies after an anti-Semitism complaint stemming from a rapper’s March performance.

The school has pledged to enhance its anti-bias training and specifically bar anti-Semitic language, committing to making the campus “free from anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination” in accordance with an agreement with the Education Department.

“I reaffirm the university’s commitment to creating a place where every member of our community feels safe and respected and can thrive in an environment free from anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination and harassment,” Interim Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a campus-wide letter Monday that exhorted students and teachers to report discrimination issues.

The agreement ends an Education Department civil rights investigation into potential illegal discrimination on the part of the university without an admission of guilt or official finding by the department. For the next two years, the university is required to hold at least one meeting to address any concerns about anti-Semitism on campus.

Brexit Ho! By John O’Sullivan

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/brexit-ho/

The Tories have run a solid campaign so far, while Labour has stumbled.

After two weeks of Britain’s election campaign, which now has less than three weeks to run, the lack of excitement over its result is palpable. The national polls have been more or less steady since the starting gun was fired, with the Tories hovering around 40 percent support, Labour rising slightly to 30 percent, the Liberal Democrats stuck around 16 percent, and the Brexit party falling to single figures. The weekend saw a slight strengthening of all these trends, with the Tory percentage settling down in the mid-40s, for a lead over Labour of well into double figures. If repeated on Election Day, that would produce a solid Tory majority of about between 40 and 60 seats. As the pundits say, however, these figures could all change very rapidly under the influence of events.

The problem for all the opposition parties is that there haven’t been many events — at least not the kind that change political fortunes. Iain Martin, who edits the Reaction website, makes the original point that Britain’s parliamentary politics have been fizzing with such neurotic energy in the last two years that the conventional exercises of the election campaign — manifestos, leadership debates, extremists slipping through the net into candidacies, etc. — seem fairly dull by comparison. A truly big story was needed to provide a shock to the system and to disturb its slow, inevitable progress rightwards. Unfortunately for Labour, the biggest news story, and not just in the U.K., has been the scandal of Prince Andrew’s relationship with the late, disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein (and allegedly with at least one of the underaged women in Epstein’s entourage), which the prince’s BBC interview succeeded in the near-impossible task of making worse. It’s a scandal with legs that looks like running longer than the West End hit No Sex Please, We’re British. The strictly political effect of this scandal, however, has been to distract attention from the election altogether and so, in all likelihood, to freeze the Tory lead.

There’s No Safe Space for Ideas on Campus ‘Animal Farms’ Zealous student activists find ways to punish those who make them think uncomfortable thoughts. By Daniel Payne

https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-no-safe-space-for-ideas-on-campus-animal-farms-11574726733?mod=opinion_major_pos5

Most Americans know that higher education has for several decades been in the grip of a deeply intolerant, fanatical and uncompromising strain of progressive activism. Students and sometimes even faculty members regularly chase heterodox speakers off campus, demand complete fealty from terrified campus bureaucracies, and denounce and destroy each other over the slightest and most inconsequential ideological deviations. The environment isn’t unlike George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” a place where “no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”

Yet an even more intolerant brand of campus activism is taking shape. This rising political philosophy isn’t merely allergic to dissenting ideas but is opposed even to ideas about dissenting ideas. It’s a bit like the concept of metacognition in reverse: These activists, gripped by zealotry and inflexible dogmatism, are taking pains to avoid even thinking about thoughts with which they disagree.

Consider a recent controversy at Washington College in Maryland. Students there successfully lobbied to shut down a campus production of a play just one day before it was set to open.

The aggrieved students were upset that the play, Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner,” depicts the evil antics of the Ku Klux Klan. But the play doesn’t show Klan members in a sympathetic light—on the contrary, they’re the villains of the piece, and they get their comeuppance in the end. Yet students were deeply upset by the Klan costumes the actors would wear, so the play had to go. (The theater department was “unable to find a satisfactory compromise” with the student activists, a campus official dryly noted.)

Anti-Semitism Soars in Eastern Europe The old canard of ‘dual loyalty’ also has currency in Western European countries like Spain and Belgium. By William A. Galston

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-semitism-soars-in-eastern-europe-11574812176?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

During the past decade, as internal struggles have preoccupied the U.S., the rest of the world hasn’t been standing still. China has risen, as has populist nationalism—and so too, it turns out, has anti-Semitism.

The latest global survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League finds that anti-Semitic attitudes have increased significantly since 2015 in Central and Eastern Europe, which before the Holocaust was home to most of European Jewry. According to the ADL’s 11-question index, in use for more than 50 years, the share of the adult population expressing a high level of anti-Semitic views rose from 37% to 48% in Poland, 32% to 46% in Ukraine and 23% to 31% in Russia. Hungary showed a more modest increase of 2 points, but from a high base of 40% in 2015.

In these four countries, classic stereotypes prevailed. Asked whether “Jews have too much power in the business world,” 72% of Ukrainians agreed, as did 71% of Hungarians, 56% of Poles and 50% of Russians. Sixty-eight percent of Ukrainians, 67% of Hungarians, 56% of Poles and 40% of Russians agreed that “Jews have too much power in international financial markets.” Fifty-six percent of Ukrainians, 51% of Hungarians and 40% of Poles believe that “Jews have too much control over global affairs.” (Russians trailed at 29%, perhaps because they believe—correctly—that Vladimir Putin is more powerful than a mythical Jewish conspiracy.)

Citizens of these four countries also resent being reminded of the Holocaust. Asked whether “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them” in the genocide, 74% of Poles answered in the affirmative, as did 59% of Hungarians, 50% of Russians and 44% of Ukrainians.

This view is widespread in Western Europe as well. Fifty-two percent of Austrians regard the discussion of the Holocaust as excessive, as do 42% of Germans, 40% of Belgians, 38% of Italians and 37% of Spaniards. CONTINUE AT SITE

Down With the Western Canon? Not So Fast Students can find a lot to learn from great books by ‘dead white men.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/down-with-the-western-canon-not-so-fast-11574812136?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Editor’s note: This Future View is about teaching the “dead white males” of the Western canon. Next week, in light of the protest at the Harvard-Yale football game, we’ll ask, “Is it good for university endowments to become politicized?” Students should click here to submit opinions of fewer than 250 words before Dec. 10. The best responses will be published that night.

Who’s Afraid of the Western Canon?

If you wish to understand your world, you must read the books written by the men who shaped it. History is path-dependent. The ideas and decisions of the influential thinkers of the Western tradition directly influence the breadth of possibilities available to everyone born in the West today. Our government, culture, religion and philosophy all either arose from or in response to the ideas they put forward.

The same concept applies to literature. It isn’t independent of culture; rather, it reflects the culture of its period and builds on it. We are only the most recent link in a complex but unbroken chain.

The West is a product of a cultural conversation among the Greek philosophers, Church Fathers, Shakespeare, Enlightenment thinkers and Dostoevsky, to name only a few. To deny their importance betrays little understanding of history, and to deny it because they were white (leaving aside the anachronism, in some cases) assumes that race, or some conception of “social virtue,” is more important than truth. But even to argue the subjectivity of truth, or to subordinate it to some other value, one must engage with Plato, Aquinas and Dostoevsky—all dead, all white, all males.