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Kaine Breaks With Virginia Dems on Abortion: ‘I Don’t Think the Existing Law Needs to Be Changed’ BY: Nic Rowan

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/politics/kaine-breaks-with-virginia-dems-on-abortion-i-dont-think-the-existing-law-needs-to-be-changed/

Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) defied Virginia Democrats when commenting Thursday on a state bill that would expand the ability of women to seek abortions up to the moments before birth.

“Delegate Tran has a bill to change the existing Virginia law. I support the existing Virginia law, which has been in place since the mid-70s,” Kaine said during an interview with Daily Caller reporter Kerry Picket. “And it puts conditions on a third trimester abortion. I support the existing law, not the Tran bill. I don’t think the existing law needs to be changed.”

Democratic Del. Kathy Tran introduced a bill in the Virginia House of Delegates earlier this week aimed at scaling back restrictions on abortion in Virginia.

When asked if he would comment on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s (D.) controversial comments about how after a child was born, the mother and the physician could have a “discussion” about whether the infant lives or dies, Kaine replied he would not “comment on comments.”

“I’ll just tell you the existing Virginia law, I think is the right law,” Kaine said. “And it’s consistent with Roe v. Wade, where the state is able to impose meaningful regulations on a third trimester pregnancy.”

Picket asked if he thought Tran’s proposal was radical, prompting Kaine to repeat that he supported the existing law.

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The Democrats Lose Their Minds And prove Howard Schultz right BY: Matthew Continetti

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-democrats-lose-their-minds/

I’m not a Democrat—in case you haven’t noticed—but Howard Schultz is. And Schultz isn’t one of those Blue Dog, Southern or Midwestern, conservative Democrats either. He’s from Seattle, holds liberal positions on, as far as I can tell, every issue, and has donated gobs of money to the Democratic Party and to the last two Democratic presidents. But Schultz is also a democratic capitalist who attributes his phenomenal success—his fortune from Starbucks is around $3 billion—at least in part to America’s culture of entrepreneurial risk-taking, minimal government interference in commerce, individual responsibility, and rule of law. He worries that the Democratic Party, radicalized by the presidency of Donald Trump, is in the process of abandoning support for the very aspects of American life that made his life possible. “Both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged, every single day, in revenge politics,” Schultz told 60 Minutes last Sunday. The Democrats then began proving his point for him.

On Monday, in a townhall organized by CNN, Kamala Harris endorsed a Medicare-for-All plan that would “eliminate”—her word—private insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, employer-provided health insurance covers “approximately 152 million nonelderly people in total.” A poll last year by America’s Health Insurance Plan (AHIP) found that 71 percent of Americans were satisfied with their employer’s plan. Most Americans have health insurance, and most Americans are pretty happy with their insurance. Too bad: Kamala Harris says it’s time to “move on.”

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“Voice of ISIS” Abu Ridwan Al-Kanadi Captured Will Canada stand on guard for Islamic State fighter and propagandist?Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272731/voice-isis-abu-ridwan-al-kanadi-captured-lloyd-billingsley

On January 13, US-backed Kurdish forces captured an Islamic State jihadi who identified himself as Mohammad Abdullah Mohammad, a Canadian from Toronto and reportedly the English-language narrator of Islamic State propaganda. The ISIS fighter had been sought for some time, but in Canada the focus of the story became the Islamic State’s displeasure over the jihadi’s capture.

“ISIL supporters upset about capture of prominent Canadian jihadi, say it’s demoralizing,” headlined a January 28 National Post story by Adrian Humphries. ISIS-friendly Al-Muhajreen identified the fighter as Abu Ridwan Al-Kanadi and described his capture as “sad news for all mujahideen of the Islamic State.”

When news of Ridwan’s capture began to circulate, Humphries wrote, “the apparent joy from the enemies of ISIL, also known as ISIS, upset jihadi supporters.” They said it all served the interest of the “Crusaders and the enemies of the Islamic State.”

In the penultimate paragraph readers learn that Ridwan is “believed to be the same man as the masked narrator of a notorious ISIL propaganda video that features the mass execution of captured Syrian government soldiers. The narrator appears to take part in the firing squad. The same man is believed to be behind several recorded claims of responsibility by ISIL for deadly terror attacks on the West as well as reading news reports on ISIL radio networks.” So only in the walk-off do readers get key details about Ridwan, now 35 years old.

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Unrest in France: No End in Sight by Guy Millière

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13660/france-unrest

The third group is extremely large: it is the rest of the population. The upper class treat them as regrettable dead weight and expect nothing from them except silence and submission. Its members often have a hard time making ends meet. They pay taxes but can see that a growing portion is being used to subsidize the very people who drove them out of their suburban homes.

For the moment, Macron does not seem to want to recognize that these people even exist.

When Macron lowered the taxes of the wealthiest but increased the taxes of these “peripherals” by means of a fuel tax, it was seen as the last straw — in addition to his arrogant condescension.

“Today, most of those who protest do not attack the police. But instead of acting to bring down the violence, the police are receiving orders pushing them to be very violent. I do not blame the police. I blame those who give them orders”. — Xavier Lemoine, the mayor of Montfermeil, a city in the Eastern suburbs of Paris where the 2005 riots were extremely destructive.

Saturday, January 26th 2019. “Yellow vests” protests were being organized in the main cities of France. Mobilization was not weakening. Support from the population had decreased slightly but was still huge (60%-70%, according to polls). The main slogan has remained the same since November 17, 2018: “Macron must resign”. In December, another slogan was added: “Citizens’ initiative referendum”.

The government and French President Emmanuel Macron have been doing everything they can to crush the movement. They have tried insults, defamation and have said the demonstrators were both “seditious people” wishing to overthrow the institutions and fascist “brown shirts”. On December 31, Macron described them, as “hateful crowds”. The presence of some anti-Semites led a government spokesman (incorrectly) to describe the entire movement as “anti-Semitic”.

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America’s Real Enemy in the Middle East – Iran….Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://www.jewishpolicycenter

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress and the presidents alike have had no sustained policy review to establish militarily achievable objectives, coherent political goals, or even a workable definition of “the enemy” to guide lawmakers and military leaders.

Republicans and Democrats both removed governments with no plan for succession or the societal stresses and open warfare that would ensue. Without an updated Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), we “plinked terrorists” in various countries with drones or airplanes, assassinating at least four American citizens, and killing others as “collateral damage.”

American soldiers have been killed fighting in various countries, including several in Africa. We are spending billions “training” various militaries and militias and hoping they will fight who and how we want them to. Iran’s backing of rebels in Yemen is called the “Saudi war” to avoid dealing with the implications. The “Israel-Palestinian conflict” is to be resolved by creating an extra Arab state while the Palestinians definitively and publicly want to resolve it by eliminating the Jewish one.

President Trump ran against American military involvement in Syria and Afghanistan, and for a hard line on Iran. There is still no complete policy — and sometimes not even a particularly well-articulated policy — but it does appear that America’s focus has changed from retail to wholesale. From executing individual terrorists and recapturing pieces of territory to operating against the malign influence that funds and organizes large-scale Shiite — and Sunni — terror. From terror groups to a terror country.

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Fever Dream: Mueller’s Collusion-Free Collusion Indictment of Roger Stone There was no crime until the investigations started.By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/roger-stone-indictment-proves-no-evidence-of-collusion/

S pecial Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Roger Stone may be the most peculiar document to emerge from the Trump–Russia “collusion” saga. It is an instant classic in the Mueller genre: lots of heavy breathing, then sputtering anti-climax.

After a 20-page narrative about Russian cyber-ops, WikiLeaks’ role as a witting anti-American accomplice, and Trump supporters enthralled by thousands of hacked Democratic emails and visions of the Clinton campaign’s implosion, Stone, a comically inept hanger-on, ends up charged with seven process crimes. No espionage, no conspiracy, no commission of any crime until the investigations started.

This is not to say that obstruction of congressional investigations is trifling. Nor is it to say the accused has a good chance of beating the case. Some of Stone’s alleged lies were mind-bogglingly stupid. Why deny written communications with people you’ve texted a zillion times? Why deny conversations with interlocutors (such as Trump-campaign CEO Steve Bannon) who have no reason to risk a perjury charge to protect you? And don’t even get me started on the witness-tampering count, which, if I were Mueller, I’d have hesitated to include for fear of suggesting an insanity defense. (Do it for Nixon? Pull a “Frank Pentangeli”?)

That said, the case is overcharged. The tampering count carries a 20-year penalty. Adding an obstruction or false-statements count (five years each) would have given Stone (who is 66 years old) prison exposure of up to 25 years. The most central “colluder” in the Mueller firmament to be bagged so far, George Papadopoulos, was sentenced to a grand total of two weeks’ imprisonment. Surely a quarter-century of “potential” incarceration would have sufficed to give prosecutors the “this is serious stuff” headline they crave while allowing for the more representative sentence Stone will eventually receive — who knows, maybe three weeks? But true to form, Mueller instead included six of these five-year counts — so the press can report that Stone faces up to 50 years in the slammer.

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China Caves to President Trump in U.S. Trade War By Chriss Street

Posted By on February 2nd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/china_caves_to_president_trump_in_us_trade_war.html

China caved to President Trump’s Trade War demands as state-media published plans that foreign investors will no longer be subject to compulsory technology transfers.

As China’s Vice Premier Liu He was holding a televised meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office to announce big increases for U.S. agricultural exports to China, its Xinhua News Agency announced that China’s President Xi Jinping hopes to meet with Trump just before a March 5 vote by China’s National People’s Congress to ratify elimination of rules for foreign investment mandatory foreign technology transfers.

With the clock running down on Trump’s threat to increase a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese exports to a 25 percent tariff on March 1, China is agreeing to meaningful structural trade reforms that the U.S. has been demanding for over a decade.

The move will open a wide swath of China’s internal markets that have been closed to U.S. service industry firms. The breadth of China’s “reform” regime supposedly includes elimination of non-tariff trade barriers such as eliminating state-sponsored cyber-intrusions and converting U.S. intellectual property rights, according to the Epoch Times.

With the draft legislation supposedly setting a goal of guaranteeing equal treatment of foreign companies already reviewed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in December, Xinhua stated: “Once adopted, the unified law will replace three existing laws on Chinese-foreign equity joint ventures, non-equity joint ventures (or contractual joint ventures) and wholly foreign-owned enterprises.”

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Who Do Our Intelligence Agencies Think They Work For? By Sebastian Gorka

Posted By on February 1st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/01/who

It was a mistake to disband the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1945, just months after we had won World War II.

Within just two years, President Truman realized he had to have a permanent intelligence capability and so in 1947 he signed the National Security Act, which, in addition to creating the National Security Council as the highest national security policymaking body in the U.S. government, created the Central Intelligence Agency out of the ashes of the OSS.

Since 1947, the U.S. Intelligence Community has grown and grown. Originally it was given the task of collecting intelligence on our Cold War adversaries. After the September 11 attacks, it was expanded and reorganized to include today’s 17 agencies.

But whether it was just the OSS during the war, or the 17 federal agencies we have today, the mission of the American intelligence was always the same: to provide its sole client with raw intelligence and analysis so that he can make his decisions on how best to secure America and her citizens. That end-user, of course, is the incumbent president.

This week’s “Fake News” swirling around the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) testimony before Congress on his annual “National Worldwide Threat Assessment” isn’t simply dishonest. It is dangerous.

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Virginia’s ‘Moderate’ Governor Why are some Democrats so eager to demonstrate pro-choice absolutism? By James Freeman

Posted By on February 1st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/virginias-moderate-governor-11549063724

This column is trying to understand the current fad among Democratic state officeholders for enabling abortions right up until the moment of birth. Since the abortion market generally has been in historic decline and the demand for such procedures at the end of a pregnancy is extremely small, it’s as if politicos like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are determined to demonstrate a sort of ideological zealotry. Perhaps somewhere there is a misguided Republican seeking to affirm his love for the 2nd Amendment by supporting the purchase of bazookas without a background check, but it would hardly represent a strategy for winning elections.

Perhaps most striking about this new Democratic fad among state officeholders is that it is not confined to people considered on the fringe of the party. Take Virginia’s Gov. Ralph Northam. When he ran for the Democratic nomination in 2017, he was presented as the bland alternative to the real “progressive” in the race, former Rep. Tom Perriello.

Columnist E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wrote that then-Lt. Gov. Northam’s “reputation is that of a temperate, well-liked public servant.”

After Dr. Northam, a pediatric neurologist, secured the Democratic nomination, former Al Gore campaign staffer Carter Eskew wrote in a Post op-ed that “Northam is cut from the same moderate Democratic cloth that Virginians have favored recently.”

Shortly before the November 2017 election, James Hohmann wrote in the Post about the concern on the left that Dr. Northam was “too low key and too moderate.”

Dr. Northam’s “moderation’ was on display this week when he was asked in a radio interview about possible legislation to lower the barriers to abortions conducted while the mother is already in labor. His response suggested that he’s open to the adults involved exercising choices even after delivery: CONTINUE AT SITE

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Bill de Blasio and the Return of Disorder Public spaces are the lifeblood of New York City, but they’re under assault. Craig Trainor

Posted By on February 1st, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/ny-public-disorder-growing-under-de-blasio

Gotham is in the throes of disorder. Law-abiding New Yorkers, no matter their race, ethnicity, sex, or socioeconomic strata, find themselves harassed by growing vagrancy, petty criminality, and social decay. Nowhere is this more evident than in New York City’s public and quasi-public spaces.

I wrote this from a Starbucks on the Upper West Side, where the average price for an apartment is $1.2 million. Just to your right as you enter is an area with five small tables, each with two accompanying seats. On the afternoon I came in, vagrants—not a Starbucks cup or pastry between them—had seized three of these tables. The most assertive of the lot had four paper and plastic bags filled with various items. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. A “crust punk” was harassing some of the paying customers, and was told to leave, apparently for the second time that day.

Starbucks is a private business, of course, and is free to serve as a tacit adjunct to New York’s and other cities’ shelter systems. (And it has set itself up to do so, after facing criticism last year for evicting some non-paying customers.) But in Bill de Blasio’s New York, the air of menace and disorder is palpable, whether one is in a café, on the streets, in a park, or riding the subways. Today’s New York is dramatically different from the New York of Michael Bloomberg or of Rudolph Giuliani’s second term. Under their leadership, public safety and public order were the top priorities. When citizens claimed police officers violated their rights, civil rights attorneys litigated these constitutional claims in federal and state courts. No responsible civil libertarian, though, would advocate surrendering public order wholesale because of individual instances of police misconduct.