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January 2020

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeachment Questions That Need Answering By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 29th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/impeachment-questions-that-need-answering/

Trump’s accusers and defenders need to think some things through.

We have at last reached the impeachment trial phase in which senators are given the opportunity to address questions to each side. Questions by the Republicans and Democrats are to be submitted and vetted by their respective leadership to avoid duplication and irrelevancy. They will then be submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts, who will pose them alternately to the House impeachment managers and President Trump’s defense team.

Each side presumptively has five minutes to answer, with the caveat that, on rare occasions when a question truly demands it, the party’s time to respond may be expanded slightly. This process will go on for no more than 16 hours – eight hours over the next two days.

Everyone who has been observing the Ukraine kerfuffle through the House impeachment inquiry and the Senate trial probably has some questions. I doubt close watchers will have very many, though.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump’s Peace Plan Is A Rejection Of Obama’s Anti-Israel Pivot Unsurprisingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has already said ‘a thousand nos’ to Trump’s plan, and Palestinian-Arabs have begun the usual playbook of rioting in the streets. Erielle Davidson

By on January 29th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/29/trumps-peace-plan-is-a-rejection-of-obamas-anti-israel-pivot/

Yesterday, President Trump announced his administration’s much-anticipated “Peace to Prosperity” plan, referring to the policy proposal as a “realistic two state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Accompanying the announcement came a 180-page document, detailing the political aspects of a plan that the administration had remained largely mum on since first announcing its existence last summer.

Despite the hysterics to which we will inevitably be subjected, this plan is an astute return to normalcy after the heretical anti-Israel pivot that had defined the Obama administration’s foreign policy approach in the Middle East. In fact, many of Team Obama’s policy choices involved an abandonment of our traditional allies in the region, combined with an empowerment of our historical adversaries, in an attempt to “rebalance” the Middle East (whatever that nebulous term means).

A statement released from Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) office captured this sentiment well, noting, “Today’s plan marks another important step by the Trump administration to undo the sad legacy of the Obama administration, specifically by rendering United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 null and void, and in doing so, advances the cause of peace in the Middle East.” UNSC Resolution 2334 declared Israeli settlements — or more simply, the presence of Jews — in Judea and Samaria, as well as in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, to be a “flagrant” violation of international law.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

New York Times Downplays Crucial Arab Support Of Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan The foreign policy media crowd minimizes the fact that Trump’s plan for peace in the Mideast is supported by many Arab countries. Erielle Davidson

By on January 29th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/29/new-york-times-downplays-crucial-arab-support-of-trumps-mideast-peace-plan/

In a totally predictable ploy aimed at salvaging the remnants of the Obama foreign policy legacy, the New York Times published a report on Tuesday titled “A Muted Arab Response to Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan.” The caption read, “The U.S. is banking on Arab leaders to help make its plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict work. It is not clear how realistic that is.”

The feigned skepticism is a masterful stroke the media often employs in order to project disaster upon a given foreign policy maneuver with little to no evidence. It’s what the national security media did vis-à-vis Iran, the Embassy move to Jerusalem, and now, Trump’s peace plan meant to bring to an end the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. They are never right, and we should stop listening to them. But just how wrong are they? The Jerusalem Post offered a handy list of those who have echoed support of the new plan.

Let’s start with the Saudis. “In light of the announcement, the Kingdom reiterates its support for all efforts aimed at reaching a just and comprehensive resolution to the Palestinian cause,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wrote on Twitter. As the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad Bin Salman told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, “The establishment of a just and comprehensive peace must be worked for.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump Offers Blueprint for Eventual Conceivable Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict By P. David Hornik J

By on January 29th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-offers-blueprint-for-eventual-conceivable-solution-to-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/

Today, January 28, 2020, President Trump made history by formally announcing a plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace that breaks decisively with the previous, dogmatically upheld paradigm whereby Israel cedes virtually all West Bank land to Palestinian sovereignty, turns its capital Jerusalem into a divided, unmanageable, strife-ridden city, and reduces itself to a nonviable, indefensible entity devoid of strategic depth that is nine miles wide in its heavily populated coastal strip.

For his part, Prime Minister Netanyahu, a leader hailing from the pragmatic right, made history by formally accepting the plan as a basis for negotiations.

The plan does not, in principle, say no to the vaunted two-state solution; it modifies it in a way that could be compatible with Israeli security if the Palestinians were truly seeking accommodation (on which more later). Rather than being a sop to Israel, this plan, like previous ones, asks Israel to cede a lot—namely about 80 percent of the West Bank, the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria. But it does so with important caveats that could make that concession feasible for Israel.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Media’s NeverTrump Voices Drown Out Republican Perspective By Mark Hemingway

By on January 29th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/29/medias_nevertrump_voices_drown_out_republican_perspective.html

Over the weekend, Washington Post columnist Max Boot had a novel take on President Trump’s impeachment. According to Boot, what Trump said on the phone call with Ukraine’s president was in some ways worse than Andrew Jackson’s forced relocation of Native Americans or FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“Other presidents — from Andrew Jackson with the Trail of Tears during the 1830s, to Franklin D. Roosevelt with the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II — have trampled our values, but they always had a public purpose and usually had congressional support,” Boot wrote.

Either Boot or someone at the Post came to their senses, because the sentence was later amended (stealth-edited) to clarify that Native American genocide and racist imprisonment were “far worse things” than Donald Trump’s alleged misdeeds. But by then, Boot was already being roasted on social media.

There are many more examples of open mouth, insert Boot. Back in October, after the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump said the terrorist was “whimpering and crying” at the end of his life. Boot couldn’t let stand this defaming of the world’s most prominent practitioner of sex slavery and beheadings. He retorted in his column, “The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up.” (For what it’s worth, Baghdadi killed three children when he detonated his suicide vest, and once again, Boot’s column was edited ex Post facto.) Trump supporters scouring Boot’s Twitter feed will find a riches of embarrassment, e.g., his contentions that “The Steele Dossier is way more credible than the Nunes memo” and that Nixon was impeached.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

An Action Plan for a New Jewish Leadership by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser

By on January 29th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/29/an-action-plan-for-a-new-jewish-leadership/

The chickens have come home to roost. Years of neglect and misguided policies by mainstream Jewish leaders have helped enable a shocking surge of Jew-hatred in America. It is encouraging to see some concern and support from the public and media, and it is heartening to see the Jewish community come together. These are critical first steps. It is sad and frustrating that this required the hunting and murder of Jews.

There have been multiple analyses of the nature and extent of the failure of mainstream Jewish leaders. The community’s major donors need to recognize that they too have failed by their selection of academic, legal, social worker types or diplomats as leaders in a time of conflict. The times require “wartime” leaders who can develop a clear vision of the crisis and a plan of action for the future.

New leaders will have to jettison some of the fundamental premises of Jewish communal policies that have clearly failed. They will also need to pivot from their 100-year-old mission of gaining acceptance of Jews in American society to ensuring the safety of the community.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, POLITICS Comments turned off

Joe Biden says he’d want Michelle Obama to be his running mate By Emily Jacobs

By on January 29th, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/01/29/joe-biden-says-hed-want-michelle-obama-to-be-his-r

Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden this week reaffirmed his desire to have former first lady Michelle Obama be his running mate.

“I sure would like Michelle [Obama] to be the vice president,” Biden said Tuesday at a campaign stop in Muscatine, Iowa.

The comment came after the former vice president was asked if he would consider nominating former President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court.

“Yeah, I would, but I don’t think he’d do it. He’d be a great Supreme Court justice,” Biden responded.

The questioner followed up with the question, “Which Obama?”

Biden responded: “They’re both incredibly qualified people and they’re such decent, honorable people.”

The pairing would be a first in American politics; there has never been a presidential ticket that included a former first lady in the VP slot.

This isn’t the first time Biden had mentioned the idea of the former first lady being his running mate or the former president being on the Supreme Court.

In September, Biden joked during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” that he had “only [asked Michelle] to be my vice president,” when asked if he had asked her for advice.

The former vice president said in December at another Iowa campaign stop that he’d nominate President Obama to the nation’s highest bench “if he’d take it.”

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Making sure foreign enemies fear the United States military by Clifford May

By on January 29th, 2020

http://www.cliffordmay.org/23766/foreign-enemies-fear-united-states

“There are two ways to fight the United States militarily: asymmetrically and stupid.”

Few would quarrel with this observation by retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, formerly President Trump’s national security adviser, currently chairman of the board of advisers to Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)’s Center on Military and Political Power.

But that raises a question: Why have we failed to develop a strategy to defeat enemies fighting us asymmetrically? In other words, why is there still a smart way to kill Americans?

In this space last week, I offered one reason: Many members of the commentariat on both the left and the right think in outdated, binary terms. In their minds, either we’re at peace or we’re at war. They naturally prefer the former and fret that forcefully responding to assaults by our enemies puts us “on the brink” of the latter. But any time our enemies hit us and get away with it, they win and are encouraged to keep going.

The seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, the bombing of the American embassies in Beirut and Kuwait in 1983, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 — we responded to these acts of war as though they were one-offs, committed by common criminals. Other attacks followed, for example in 1996, 1998, 2000 and, of course, 2001.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

THE TRUMP PEACE PLAN

By on January 29th, 2020

Trump: Time for Muslim World to Fix Mistake of 1948 By Recognizing Israel 
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2020/01/28/trump-time-for-muslim-world-to-fix-mistake-of-1948-by-recognizing-israel/
PLO Calls for Terror Campaign against Trump’s Deal: “Escalate the Resistance and the Struggle… in All its Forms”
 https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/144158/plo-calls-for-terror-campaign-against-trumps-deal-escalate-the-resistance-and-the-struggle-in-all-its-forms/?
Former Israeli Ambassador to US: Every time “Palestinians” are offered peace, they say “No” 
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/01/former-israeli-ambassador-to-us-every-time-palestinians-are-offered-peace-they-say-no?
Democratic candidates censure Trump peace plan, warn against annexation 
https://www.timesofisrael.com/democratic-candidates-censure-trump-peace-plan-warn-against-annexation/

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Forcing The U.S. To Accept Immigrants Who Will Become Public Charges Francis Menton

By on January 29th, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-1-28-forcing-the-us-to-accept-immigrants-who-will-become-public-charges-2

Who runs the federal government of the United States? Is it the elected President and members of Congress? Or is it a permanent bureaucracy committed to expansion of its own size and power, together with a critical mass (potentially well less than a majority) of sympathetic federal judges who can be called upon as necessary to strike down any disfavored policy initiative from the elected branches? Or, in an even more cynical formulation, is it that the elected officeholders can run policy when they are Democrats, but when Republicans are elected the bureaucrats get to rule with the assistance of select members of the judiciary?

To view the dynamics of this process at work, there is perhaps no more striking example than what has occurred on the question of the extent to which the U.S. can exclude immigrants on the ground that they are likely to become “public charges.” We last visited this subject back in October 2019, in a post titled “Maneuvering To Force The U.S. To Accept Immigrants Who Will Become Public Charges.” This post is a sequel to that one.

The relevant context is that the U.S. immigration law as passed by Congress, since the enactment of the first statute on the subject back in the 1880s, has explicitly sought to preclude the admission as immigrants of individuals likely to become “public charges.” Although the statutory language has changed somewhat over the years in immaterial ways, one provision of the current statute ( 8 U.S.C. Section 1182(a)(4)) contains the following language:

Aliens who are inadmissible under the following paragraphs are ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be admitted to the United States: . . . (4) Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.

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