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Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

State Department Warns John Kerry Not to ‘Compromise’ Iran Strategy By Mairead McArdle

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-department-warns-john-kerry-against-talks-with-iran/

The State Department on Thursday warned former Secretary of State John Kerry against holding diplomatic talks with Iran behind the current administration’s back, possibly compromising the government’s Iran strategy.

“It’s unfortunate if people from a past administration would try to compromise the progress we’re trying to make in this administration,” the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I don’t have personal knowledge of those meetings, but if that is happening, again, I would find it very inappropriate,” the senior State Department official said.

Kerry has admitted to meeting “three or four times” with his counterpart Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after leaving his position as secretary of state. The two were key players in negotiating former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration scrapped in May.

“Every secretary of state, former secretary of state, continues to meet with foreign leaders,” Kerry told Fox News on Wednesday. “We don’t negotiate. We’re not involved in interfering with policy, but we certainly have reasonable discussions about nuclear weapons, the world, China, different policies, obviously.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

New York Voters Sentence Cynthia Nixon to Lifetime of Minor Roles on Sitcoms Daniel Greenfield

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271325/new-york-voters-sentence-cynthia-nixon-lifetime-daniel-greenfield

New York voters cast their ballots yesterday and the wisdom of the crowd determined that the best lifetime role for Cynthia Nixon involved not the governor’s mansion, but a few decades of minor roles on sitcoms lightly referencing her Sex and the City years.

Despite Nixon’s promise to fix the subways (without knowing how) or immediately implement socialist medicine while figuring out how to pay for it later, New York voters wisely determined that the socialist candidate’s talents should be best used for minor indie movie roles and voiceovers.

While Nixon had promised to make New York the contact point for UFOs and to round up all the Zionists while curing all known diseases with healing crystals, New York voters thought that she should focus on doing funny voices for cartoons and other things that has been actresses with plenty of contacts in the industry can continue to do.

Despite Nixon’s contention that as the 22nd incarnation of the Dalai Lama, only she was qualified to reform New York’s budget by putting all the illegal aliens on the state payroll, New York voters thought that her talents should be best utilized surprising tourists who spot her crossing the street on the Upper West Side, and then wonder if she’s that woman from Suddenly Susan who tried to behead Trump.

But either way, New Yorkers won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

CAIR in the Classroom A Hamas-linked group partners with public schools. Cinnamon Stillwell

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271311/cair-classroom-cinnamon-stillwell

Reprinted from Algemeiner.com.

In 1993, Ibrahim Hooper, director of strategic communications for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.” Twenty-five years later, CAIR could be making headway on that goal, through its relationships with US public school districts in at least three states.

CAIR — an Islamist group and United Arab Emirates-designated terrorist organizationthat bills itself as a defender of civil rights — has achieved special concessions for Muslim students and launched the inappropriate insertion of religion into publicly-funded education. Meanwhile, pushback from parents and outside organizations is building.

Seattle Public Schools’ partnership with CAIR’s Washington chapter is the latest incident to cause controversy, but the relationship dates back to at least 2011, when CAIR-WA sent the district a letter proposing accommodations for Muslim students and classroom lessons on Islam. Then as now, CAIR-WA claimed to be fighting “anti-Muslim bullying.” To that end, in 2012 and 2013 the organization contacted the school district to complain about “Islamophobia” among teachers.

That approach eventually paid off. In a Ramadan crowd-funding campaign in May of this year, the CAIR-WA chapter outlined its plan “to provide educational training for teachers and staff on things like Ramadan, Eid, and how educators can support Muslim students in the classroom.” Accordingly, that same month, CAIR-WA ran a “professional development session” in a Seattle high school that “addressed providing identity-safe spaces in schools for Muslim families” and “how to support students during Ramadan.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Trump Administration Reopens Rutgers Anti-Semitism Case Campus hate groups have just been put on notice. Joseph Klein

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271321/trump-administration-reopens-rutgers-anti-semitism-joseph-klein

The Trump administration has decided to reopen a case brought by a Zionist group against Rutgers University, previously closed by the Obama administration in 2014, alleging that the university had allowed Jewish students to be subjected to a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. The issue, ignored by the Obama administration, was whether the students were discriminated against based on their actual or perceived Jewish ancestry or ethnicity. Kenneth L. Marcus, the new assistant secretary of education for civil rights, decided that the case deserved another look. As the New York Times reported, Mr. Marcus’s decision “put the weight of the federal government behind a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly defines Judaism as not only a religion but also an ethnic origin.” The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be examining not only the past case it has reopened. It will also examine whether a hostile environment for Jewish students continues to exist at Rutgers.

According to the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which filed the original complaint on July 20, 2011, the allegations included claims of physical threats and anti-Semitic comments posted on Facebook against at least one Jewish student, and discrimination against Jewish and pro-Israel students. The discrimination charge involved an anti-Israel event entitled “Never Again for Anyone,” sponsored by an anti-Israel student group called “Belief Awareness Knowledge and Action (BAKA),” where an admission fee was allegedly imposed and selectively enforced against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

In reopening the case, Assistant Secretary Marcus focused on the anti-Israel event held on January 29, 2011. He concluded that the Obama administration had erred in dismissing the case because it disregarded evidence that the admission fee allegedly imposed on Jewish students seeking to attend the event was discriminatory, based on ethnicity. The Obama administration also disregarded evidence that Rutgers had failed to respond appropriately to student complaints regarding the pricing policy. The evidence of discrimination, as reported by Algemeiner, included an e-mail purportedly from a BAKA student volunteer at the anti-Israel event stating that there was a need to start charging an admission fee because “150 Zionists just showed up,” although “if someone looks like a supporter, they can get in for free.” Assistant Secretary Marcus noted that singling out “150 Zionists” for an admission fee “could have been based at least partially on a visual assessment, as opposed to individually polling all 150 such unexpected arrivals as to their views on the policies of the state of Israel.” The selection of whom to charge, he said, “could have been rooted in a perception of Jewish ancestry or ethnic characteristics common to the group.” He added that it is “important to determine whether the conduct related to Israel was motivated by anti-Semitism” and to “determine whether terms such as ‘Zionist’ are actually code for ‘Jewish.’”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

GOP Gives Up On Repealing Obamacare They claim to have more important things to do. Matthew Vadum

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271322/gop-gives-repealing-obamacare-matthew-vadum

Republican lawmakers have made it clear they have no intention of repealing Obamacare in the current Congress.

Republicans in the nation’s top lawmaking body have never really wanted to get rid of Obamacare. They would prefer to present the program, which David Horowitz correctly describes as “the greatest assault on individual freedom and individual choice in our lifetimes,” as a villain and whip up sentiment against it and run against it every election. They view Obamacare as good for the business of politics. They may chip away at it from time to time or tinker with it at the margins, but make no mistake: these creatures of Washington want to keep it in place. This is the Republicans’ dirty secret.

Republicans have been promising to rip Obamacare out root and branch ever since it was enacted. They ramped up their rhetoric after the allegedly conservative-dominated Supreme Court declared the blatantly unconstitutional Obamacare law constitutional in the incoherent NFIB v. Sebelius ruling of 2012. Americans responded to this government takeover of a huge chunk of the economy by electing GOP-controlled congresses in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, and by electing Donald Trump as president.

Unintimidated by the Left and sneering hack journalists, Trump began the push to bury the misnamed Affordable Care Act and as a result the individual mandate will die at the end of this year. But the bulk of the statute and related rules such as the economically suicidal pre-existing medical conditions mandate remain in place, complete with federal insurance-purchasing subsidies for people who don’t need the help, as well as the sclerotic administrative apparatus, and the odious rule that prevents health insurers from competing across state lines.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why President Trump Is Keeping Those Classified DOJ Docs In His Back Pocket Here, based on the interviews, is perspective on how and why President Trump is playing things cool for now—and could well burn hot later. Lee Smith

By on September 13th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/13/president-trump-keeping-classified-doj-docs-back-pocket/

President Trump’s allies in Congress and the media have long wondered why he doesn’t declassify documents withheld by the Department of Justice that could vindicate him in the Russia probe. What’s stopping him from exercising his constitutional authority, they ask? Doesn’t he recognize the growing danger of inaction with the midterm elections at hand, which could spell his impeachment if he loses his Republican congressional majority?

RealClearInvestigations sought insight into the president’s thinking from current and past senior U.S. officials, most of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. The picture of Trump that emerges plays against type.

On declassification, the president is not the impulsive hothead major media portray, as epitomized by his “witch hunt” bluster on Twitter. Rather, the sources characterized him as a deliberative, strategic executive inclined to keep his powder dry now for possible detonation later. (Because his supporters—some of whom have seen the documents—are pushing for declassification and his opponents are not, the assumption is that the documents would help the president.)

Trump told Fox News last week that while he didn’t want to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, he may have no choice but to declassify. “At the right time, I think I’m going to have to do the documents,” the president said.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, for one, would be pleased with that step. Nunes told Fox recently that false “media narratives” are burying the real story of anti-Trump machinations within the government. “That’s why the sooner the president declassifies the better,” he said, with an eye toward the November midterm elections that—if Democrats win—would likely place Trump nemesis Rep. Adam Schiff as chairman of the committee.

Nunes and others note that Trump benefitted enormously when he did declassify documents withheld by the Department of Justice (DOJ): the memo written by House Intelligence Committee Republican staff showed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application used to spy on campaign adviser Carter Page relied on unverified opposition research funded by the Democrats.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

7 Wild Claims Democratic Socialist Candidate Julia Salazar Has Made About Herself Reports say Salazar, a democratic socialist candidate for New York State Senate, has lied about her college degree, family heritage, religious background, and more. By Bre Payton and Madeline Orr

By on September 13th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/13/7-wild-claims-democratic-socialist-candidate-julia-salazar-made/

Democratic socialist and feminist Julia Salazar is running for the New York state Senate’s 18th District, in North Brooklyn, where she’s challenging an incumbent Democrat in today’s primary election. She’s a former registered Republican who ran a pro-life group in college but is now a pro-choice candidate.

Salazar has been telling people she was raised Jewish in a “working class” home, when she’s actually a trust-fund recipient who was raised in a middle-class Catholic family. She was arrested in 2011 for allegedly impersonating the wife of a player for the New York Mets, with whom she was accused of having an affair.

She has publicly accused a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, David Keyes, of sexual assault, then claimed that she was “outed” as a sexual assault survivor when a news organization reported on it.

But none of that matters to Teen Vogue, which published a fluffy interview with Salazar today devoid of a single question about the conflicting statements she’s made about her background and identity. Here are seven wild stories that have been reported about the 27-year-old democratic socialist from Brooklyn.
1. She Claims She Was ‘Outed’ As A Sexual Assault Survivor

Earlier this week, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that, in a since-deleted Facebook post, Salazar accused Keyes of sexually assaulting her in his New York apartment. When the DCNF asked Salazar’s campaign for a comment, her spokesman confirmed the allegation and did not ask for the remark to be off-the-record nor for anonymity.

“Julia was a survivor of sexual assault by David Keyes, and she is aware of other women who have also been victimized by him,” the spokesman said, according to the DCNF. “There’s a reason women don’t often come forward after a traumatic experience-—because of the harmful responses and retaliation that can follow.”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Trump Admin. Settles Lawsuits, Will Reconsider Asylum Claims of 1,000+ Immigrant Parents & Children By Mairead McArdle

By on September 13th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-administration-settles-lawsuits-reconsider-asylum-claims-of-1000-immigrant-parents-children/

The Trump administration reached a settlement agreement late Wednesday in three lawsuits levied by the American Civil Liberties Union and Muslim Advocates over the Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” immigration-enforcement policy, which resulted in the separation of nearly 3,000 children from the adults who brought them across the border illegally.

Over 1,000 parents and children who crossed the border illegally and claimed asylum on the grounds of a “credible fear of persecution or torture” in their homeland will get a second chance to file their claims if the settlement is approved by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw. The ACLU said in a statement that under the settlement, there is also a possibility that some parents deported without their children may be allowed to reenter the U.S.

The administration halted the family-separation policy in June and attempted to defuse the bipartisan backlash it had caused. A California federal judge ordered the reunification of separated families days afterward, but the reunification process has been slow, and several hundred children remain separated from their guardians.Many of the immigrants in question may not ultimately gain asylum, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions reuled earlier this year that fear of domestic or gang violence would no longer be considered valid grounds for a claim. While their cases are being heard, often over a period of years, asylum seekers are allowed to live and work in the U.S., and under the settlement, some parents and children who are at different stages of the process will be allowed to live together in the country.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Michelle Obama comes to the stadiums By Monica Showalter

By on September 13th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/michelle_obama_comes_to_the_stadiums_.html
Michelle’s book tour is little more than P.R., self-promotion, politics, and a healthy dose of “racially charged vengeance,” all rolled into one.

Former first lady Michelle Obama is coming to the stadiums. Lots of stadiums, the kind of stadiums leftist NFL football players could take a knee in. Supposedly, it’s to sell her new book, the product of her glitzy multi-million-dollar post-White House book deal, dreamily titled Becoming: An Intimate Conversation with Michelle Obama. Get a load of that glamorous photo with the one-shoulder look, carefully styled to show a white T-shirt sexily and insouciantly sliding off one of Michelle’s shoulders. Intimate, you know? And pure Hollywood.

According to the Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) – Michelle Obama will visit 10 cities to promote her memoir “Becoming,” a tour featuring arenas and other performing centers to accommodate crowds far too big for any bookstore.

The former first lady will begin at the United Center in her native Chicago on Nov. 13, the book’s release date. She will finish at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Dec. 17, Live Nation and the Crown Publishing Group announced Wednesday. In between, appearances will include Barclays Center in New York City, the Pepsi Center Arena in Denver and The Forum in Los Angeles.

So don’t look to see her sitting at a desk at some book shop, signing autographs and pretending to be pleasant to book-buyers, something that mere mortals, such as Hillary Clinton on her 2014 Hard Choices tour once did.

Nope, Michelle’s royalty, and she’s gonna do it like Beyoncé.

But like Hillary, Michelle’s actually on a mission to campaign for the midterms. She, after all, is one of the Democrats’ most seasoned and effective weapons, at least among Democrats.

This is why you see her making racially charged tweets such as this, noted by the Washington Times columnist Cheryl Chumley:

The former first lady tossed down both race and gender cards as a means of imploring her fellow lefties to get out and vote.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Moshe Phillips Has J Street lost its war for a Palestinian state?

By on September 13th, 2018

ttps://www.jns.org/opinion/has-j-street-lost-its-war-for-a-palestinian-state/

In a feverish 800-word email appeal for donations sent days before the Labor Day weekend, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, made some of the group’s wildest claims yet about both current events related to Israel, as well as the history of the conflict.

Has the leading pro-Palestinian state Jewish advocacy group in the United States completely lost its way? It seems that the combination of activities and statements by both Israel’s government and the Trump administration towards the Palestinians has done just that. In a feverish 800-word email appeal for donations sent days before the Labor Day weekend, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, made some of the group’s wildest claims yet about both current events related to Israel, as well as the history of the conflict.

The email shows just how out of step with reality J Street is. What’s worse, J Street misinterprets and misrepresents Israeli public opinion, the views of the Israeli government and U.S. history.

Space does not allow for a complete review of all of the fabrications in Ben-Ami’s letter, but here are three of the clearest examples of J Street’s extremism. J Street, if you don’t know, is the controversial Washington, D.C., based Jewish pressure group that was created specifically, and almost exclusively, to lobby for an independent Palestinian state.

Ben-Ami seems to have missed the fact that for many years, Israeli Jews have sobered up and abandoned the idea that the formation of an independent Palestinian nation would be in the best interest of Israel. The Times of Israel website reported that 43 percent of Jewish Israelis are in favor of the so-called “two-state solution.” The same poll found that 39 percent of Israeli Jews would now approve of a peace settlement based on what has been discussed in past negotiations. (See the full news article about the poll here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/support-for-two-state-solution-at-lowest-in-nearly-20-years-poll/.) When Ben-Ami writes that “the Trump administration has adopted the agenda of Israel’s far right,” is he claiming that 57 percent of Israelis are now “far right”? And just what does he mean by the label? If Likud is “far right,” then how do you define political parties to its right?

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