NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Mueller Investigation Was Always an Impeachment Probe By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/robert-mueller-investigation-was-always-impeachment-probe/

The special counsel abdicated on obstruction to avoid a confrontation with the Justice Department and get his evidence to Congress.

Why mention the OLC guidance at all?

That is the question for Bob Mueller, left hanging by the statement his office jointly issued with Justice Department flacks on Wednesday, clarifying (as it were) remarks he had made hours earlier at his parting-shot press conference.

At issue is Mueller’s decision to punt on the question of whether President Trump should be indicted for obstruction of justice. In his startling remarks, Mueller sought to justify himself by citing instruction from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The longstanding OLC opinion, an outgrowth of Nixon- and Clinton-era scandals, holds that a sitting president may not be indicted. The two press offices were struggling to reconcile (a) Mueller’s pointed reliance on this OLC guidance at the presser with (b) his prior disclaimers of such reliance.

According to Attorney General Bill Barr, in a meeting over two weeks before Mueller submitted his final report, the special counsel emphatically denied that his refusal to render a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction hinged on the OLC guidance. Naturally, in their continuing quest to frame Barr as the most diabolical villain since Lex Luthor, the media-Democrat complex insisted that the AG must be lying.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barr Unloads On Collusion Conspiracy Theory: ‘This Whole Idea That Trump Was In Cahoots With The Russians Is Bogus’ By Madeline Osburn

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

In an hour-long interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford released on Friday, Attorney General William Barr reflected on the Russia investigation, the Robert Mueller report, the personal attacks against him, and his career at the Department of Justice.

Barr laid into the abuses of power happening among top officials at the FBI, the lack of evidence found by Mueller’s investigation, and the media hypocrisy exposed by coverage of stories like the “appalling” texts between FBI agent lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

“Mueller has spent two and half years and the fact is there is no evidence of a conspiracy,” Barr said. “So it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.”

Barr has been critiqued for seeking to declassify documents concerning the Russia investigation. He argued that reviewing standards and procedures at the highest levels are an “important way of making sure that government power is being conscientiously and properly applied.”

When Crawford asked if he was concerned with bias among FBI investigators, Barr said the Strzok-Page texts were “very damning” and argued that there would be an outrage if the same stunts had been pulled against the Obama campaign.

“If those kinds of discussions were held, you know, when Obama first ran for office, people talking about Obama in those tones and suggesting that ‘Oh that he might be a Manchurian candidate for Islam or something like that.’ You know some wild accusations like that, and you had that kind of discussion back and forth, you don’t think we would be hearing a lot more about it?” he asked.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

With Free Speech Zones and Safe Spaces for All… By Lathan Watts

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/with_free_speech_zones_and_safe_spaces_for_all.html
“It’s frightening to think students walking out of or protesting at commencement ceremonies are the decision-makers of tomorrow.”

Each year during graduation season we are treated to what amounts to the closing ceremony of the Olympics of virtue signaling on college campuses across the nation. The competitors — students who have spent four years in training — huddling in safe spaces to avoid speakers with whom they disagree, using the free speech zone to learn what they’re supposed to be offended by, and demanding ridiculous measures be adopted by university administrators to remedy every perceived ill in human history. The gold medalists in this farce are the “walk-outs” — the students who draw as much attention to themselves as possible by walking out of the commencement ceremony in protest of the commencement speaker. This year is no different; ask Vice President Mike Pence.

Beyond the risk of causing most Americans to suffer repetitive stress injury from excessive eye rolling, this trend presents a real threat that must not be taken lightly. These students are being taught a perverse version of freedom. Namely that freedom is the right to never be made uncomfortable. Once these putative tyrants of “tolerance” graduate, they will inevitably be confronted with people and ideas very different from their own and they will react in the manner for which they were applauded in college — they will seek to silence opposition. My firm, First Liberty Institute, deals with the repercussions on a daily basis.

Consider Ken Hauge, a retired minister, who was threatened with eviction from his senior living complex in Fredericksburg, Virginia for leading a Bible study in a private apartment. His home is no longer a safe space for the free exercise of religion. Rabbi David Ribiat, one of our orthodox Jewish clients in the Village of Airmont, New York, has spent years and over $40,000.00 trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain a permit from the local government to simply host fellow Jews in his home to worship.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Barr: “Resisting A Democratically Elected President” Is Destroying Our Norms And Institutions, Not Trump Posted By Tim Hains

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/31/attorney_general_william_barr_i_dont_care_about_my_reputation_i_took_this_job_to_protect_our_institutions.html

In an interview aired Friday on “CBS This Morning,” Attorney General William Barr explains why he opened an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. He doesn’t say what the evidence is, but Barr tells CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford that there is evidence that makes him believe senior government officials may have acted improperly to authorize surveillance of President Trump’s 2016 campaign. He says that led to “spying” on the campaign.

He said the hyper-politicized nature of politics today is a danger to longstanding institutions and he took the job of attorney general because he is at the end of his career.”Nowadays, people don’t care about the merits or the substance. They only care about who it helps, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits. Everything is gauged by politics, and I say that is antithetical to the way the Department [of Justice] runs, and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital,” Barr said. “And that’s one of the reasons I decided I should take [the job] on. At my stage in my life, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“I’m at the end of my career,” he said. “Everyone dies. I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that immortality comes by having odes sung about you over the centuries.”

“In many ways, I’d rather be back at my old life, but I love the Department of Justice, I love the FBI, I think it is important that in this period of intense partisan feelings we do not destroy our institutions.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Right from Wrong: Electing to defend Israel from Iran As the ayatollahs were repeating their vow to wipe the Jewish state off the map, a group of Israelis obtained top-secret Iranian files. This feat deserves the highest praise. By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Electing-to-defend-Israel-from-Iran-591197

The last-ditch efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to form a coalition, culminating Wednesday night in the dispersal of the newly instated 21st Knesset, overshadowed crucial events that help to explain why the ruling Likud Party has been and should remain at the helm.

A committee headed by Netanyahu – who has been serving as defense minister since Avigdor Liberman resigned the post in November and spurred the election that he just caused to go down the drain – announced its decision to award the 2019 Israel Defense Prize to the Mossad agents who bravely broke into a warehouse in Tehran and retrieved thousands of documents related to Iran’s nuclear program.
The massive amount of material, proving beyond a doubt that Iran has been working to build nuclear weapons, was presented by Netanyahu to the Israeli public a year ago in April. In a televised appearance, Netanyahu walked back and forth between shelves full of folders and a wall covered in compact discs, to illustrate the extent of the find – the contents of which are thought to have contributed to US President Donald Trump’s final decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the “Iran nuclear deal.”
As in the past, the Israeli prime minister was ridiculed in this case for his tendency to use “props” to make his point. Guffaws can still be heard from the peanut gallery of Bibi-detractors over the primitive graphic of a bomb, with a red line drawn just below its detonator, which he held up during an address to the UN General Assembly in 2012.
Mockery may be the only method that Netanyahu’s rivals can come up with to distract and detract from the actual message that he has been conveying throughout his career. But the joke is on them.
Whatever the voting public feels about his penchant for melodramatic devices, it knows he’s right about the threats that Israel faces, and trusts him more than anyone else to stave off, if not eradicate, them.
No amount of Bibi-bating, however, was able to counteract the general sense in Israel that the Mossad guys who seized such a consequential trove from deep in enemy territory, and whisked it back to Israel without a snag, were heroic. Not since Operation Thunderbolt – the 1976 Entebbe raid during which Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, was killed rescuing hostages in Uganda – has the country experienced such a surge of national pride.
The Mossad maneuver was a reminder that the Jewish state still possesses the will, and often unparalleled ability, to pull off something so brazenly jaw-dropping.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The College Bureaucracy That Never Shrinks Like most other prestigious universities, Georgetown is forever expanding its costly and corrosive diversity initiatives. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/diversity-bureauracies-georgetown-univ

A billionaire tech investor made headlines last week with his pledge to pay off the student loans held by Morehouse College’s graduating Class of 2019. Unfortunately, Robert Smith’s multimillion-dollar gift, however admirable philanthropically, is as irrelevant to the problem of student debt as the recent policy proposals from the Democratic presidential field. Whether it’s Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to use taxpayer dollars to cancel most outstanding student loans for the majority of borrowers, or Senator Bernie Sanders’s promise of “free” (i.e., fully taxpayer-subsidized) tuition for public universities, all such proposals treat ballooning college costs as a naturally occurring phenomenon, outside the reach of human action. The discourse around student debt—which now stands at $1.5 trillion—holds colleges harmless in causing that debt. The sole focus of discussion is instead how best to underwrite rising tuitions with public or private money.

But college tuition is not an act of God, beyond human control. It is a result of decisions taken by colleges themselves—above all, decisions to bulk up their bureaucracies. Bureaucratic outlays rose at nearly twice the rate as teaching outlays from 1993 to 2007, according to the Goldwater Institute. From 1997 to 2012, colleges hired new administrators at twice the rate of any student-body increase, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found. Colleges inevitably claim that government mandates force this administrative bloat upon them. But the vast majority of administrative hires are voluntary: for every dollar in mandated bureaucratic spending from 1987 to 2011, public universities added an additional $2 in discretionary bureaucracy, and private universities added $3, according to economists Robert Martin and Carter Hill. Fiefdoms focused on diversity and student services grew at the fastest clip, in the name of fighting the campus oppression to which minority and female students are allegedly subjected.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Do Progressives Hate Progress So Much?John Merline

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/30/why-do-

Earlier this month, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to order every store in the city to accept cash. It seems that some innovative companies were experimenting with cashless stores as a way to cut costs, improve efficiency and keep prices down. 

But in progressive San Francisco, that kind of progress cannot be tolerated.  

Democrat-controlled Philadelphia imposed a similar ban on cashless stores in March. That same month, New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law banning cashless stores throughout the Garden State. Deep-blue Massachusetts has had a ban on the books for 40 years. New York City and Washington, D.C. — two more deep blue enclaves — might be next.

Indeed, when it comes to actual progress, achieved through private sector innovation, progressives tend to be the most reactionary of anyone.

Of course, there’s always some well-meaning justification. In the case of mandating cash, it’s supposed to help the poor and those without bank accounts. San Francisco Supervisor Vallie Brown, who introduced the cashless ban legislation, said that  it “will go far in ensuring all San Franciscans have equitable access to the city’s economy.”

Philadelphia Councilman Bill Greenlee says banning cashless businesses is “about being fair to people and giving everyone an equal chance to buy a basic product.”

New Jersey assemblyman Paul Moriarty justified the statewide ban because “this idea of ‘we don’t want to accept cash’ just marginalizes the poor, young people who haven’t established credit yet, people who prefer to pay in cash.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu Should Talk to European Nationalists by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14312/netanyahu-european-nationalists

The nationalist leaders of central and eastern Europe are a mixed picture when it comes to Israel. They strongly support Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and the nation state of the Jewish people. But their attitude toward Jews and the Holocaust is often highly questionable.

The prime minister of Israel must put the interests of his country before ideological purity or attitude toward Jews in general. In a world in which so few nations support Israel and in which so many vote routinely to condemn it at the United Nations, Israel must not easily give up support from right-wing nationalists.

So let us condemn European nationalists when their actions warrant condemnation, but let us welcome their support for Israel at a time when such support is becoming more and more essential.

Critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argue that he should never speak to European nationalists because European nationalism often goes hand in hand with anti-Semitism.

Ironically (or perhaps hypocritically) many of these same critics urged Israeli prime ministers to speak to Yasser Arafat and other terrorist leaders who have advocated and practiced the murder of Jews. What is the difference? In both cases elected leaders have to hold their collective noses to speak to other leaders of whose ideologies and actions they strongly disapprove. But when you are the leader of a country, pragmatic realpolitik must often prevail over pure ideology.

Recall the grimace on the face of Yitzhak Rabin when President Clinton urged him to shake the hand of Yasser Arafat, a man who was personally responsible for ordering the murder of Israeli children, women and men. When I subsequently discussed this with Rabin, he said that his hand was shielded by the velvet glove of diplomacy. The left praised Rabin, as well they should have. But many of the same people now condemn Netanyahu for extending the same velvet glove of diplomacy to extreme European nationalists.

POLITICS Comments turned off

WHO IS VIRGINIA STATE DELEGATE IBRAHEEM SAMIRAH? ANOTHER BIGOT

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/30/calling-out-anti-semitism-isnt-islamophobic/

Calling Out Anti-Semitism Isn’t ‘Islamophobic’ By Kyle Shideler

Virginia State Delegate Ibraheem Samirah is the poster child for a new crop of Democratic politicians. He’s young, charismatic, and very progressive, with a history of activism that began in his student days on the campuses of Boston University and American University. Samirah has spent his brief time as a Virginia delegate hawking a “Green New Deal” for Virginia in the Washington Post.

But Samirah also has a history of shockingly antisemitic and virulently anti-Israel statements and troubling associations, and he doesn’t take kindly to those who point it out.

A story by Mikhael Smits in the Washington Free Beacon detailed Samirah’s long-running association with the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions group formed out of the Hamas-linked Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). Samirah’s ties are both historic—including his father’s time as Chairman of the IAP and role as a Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman—and ongoing. He received funds from AMP donors in his delegate campaign this year, and spoke at AMP’s 2018 national convention.

Smits’ piece builds upon reporting during the February 2019 special election that highlighted Samirah’s anti-Semitic Facebook posts, which were condemned by both Republicans and Democrats but didn’t prevent him from winning the race by a comfortable margin.

Samirah responded to the new wave of criticism by tweeting an unsourced list of “statistics” claiming large numbers of Republicans, and a significant minority of Americans generally, hate or fear Muslims involved in politics.

Samirah also labeled his critics “Far-Right,” even though the “Far-Right” of Samirah’s imagination would seem to encapsulate the entire Virginia Republican Party, which responded to the Free Beacon report by labeling Samirah’s behavior “rabid anti-Semitism.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Washington is wrong about China’s economy The US economy is weaker, and China’s stronger, than analysts believe by David Goldman

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/washington-is-wrong-about-chinas-economy/

Americans want to believe that their economy is doing well and that China’s economy is doing badly, as President Trump keeps saying. One shouldn’t blame Trump for this – underestimating competitors is America’s national pastime.

A recent embarrassing example was a report by Wells Fargo analyst Roger Read featured on CNBC, claiming that a fall in the growth rate in China’s diesel consumption “is most likely tied to economic factors and the effects of the tariff ‘war’ with the US.”

As physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said, this isn’t even wrong. The fellow from Wells Fargo failed to observe that China’s rail traffic is growing 10%, year-on-year, which is also the rate of expansion of China’s rail network. The more China ships by rail, the less dependent it is on diesel trucks.

The relationship is robust statistically (I’ll spare you the econometrics, which show that lagged values for changes in diesel demand predict changes in rail traffic). The analyst also failed to observe that heavy truck sales reached an all-time record in March 2019, driven by vehicles powered by natural gas.