The GOP on Economics The good, the bad, and the ugly at the fourth presidential debate.

Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate wasn’t the most entertaining, but it was by far the most educational. The two-hour session gave the candidates a chance to critique the Obama record, as well as tease out some policy differences in illuminating ways.

Start with trade, which showcased Donald Trump. “I love trade. I’m a free trader, 100%,” said the businessman, after declaring that he opposed the only free-trade deal currently on offer, the U.S. agreement with 11 other Pacific nations.

Mr. Trump called it a “terrible deal,” though it wasn’t obvious that he has any idea what’s in it. His one specific criticism was its failure to deal with Chinese currency manipulation. But it took Rand Paul to point out that China isn’t part of the deal and would be happy if the agreement collapsed so the U.S. would have less economic influence in Asia.

Mr. Trump said on these pages Tuesday that he would label China a currency manipulator on his first day as President, triggering tariffs on thousands of Chinese goods. The businessman thinks economic mercantilism is a political winner, but we doubt that starting a trade war that raises prices for Americans would turn out to be popular. Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters care more about his take-charge attitude than his policies, but GOP voters are going to have to decide if they want to nominate their most protectionist nominee since Hoover.

The Separation of Obama’s Power An appeals court blocks his unilateral immigration diktat.

Maybe the separation of powers isn’t a dead letter after all. The U.S. Constitution’s core protection against tyranny got a reprieve late Monday when an appeals court upheld a federal judge’s injunction against President Obama’s unilateral immigration order.

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2 to 1 that a legal challenge by 26 states has a high probability of success and thus the regulation should not be enforced until the case is decided on the merits. On Tuesday the Administration said it will appeal to the Supreme Court, which means this could be a landmark ruling before Mr. Obama leaves office.

The careful, 70-page opinion by Judge Jerry Smith eviscerates the Administration’s unprecedented claims of executive authority. The Homeland Security Department says it has executive discretion to decide whom to deport, but its detailed marching orders to immigration agents provide for almost no discretion in handling individual cases.

Keystone Is a Fake Green Victory If abundant fossil fuels is what affords such victories, well, you see the paradox.

By all means, read Bill McKibben’s victory proclamation on Keystone XL posted by the New Yorker, first for its infantile analysis.

• He sees Keystone as a harbinger, which it surely is: President Obama waited seven years to kill the pipeline, then did so when he no longer had to face voters and when gasoline prices are near an all-time low in real terms. If abundant fossil fuels is what it takes to afford Mr. McKibben such victories, well, you can see the paradox.

• He celebrates the divestment movement as if it means anything. But buyers will always materialize for profitable businesses. Anyway, 80% of the world’s fossil-fuel reserves are not held by publicly traded businesses, but by state-run companies—run by states that have never shown interest in anything but revenue maximization.
• He thinks solar is somehow changing the energy picture, but for every additional unit of solar the world consumed in 2014, it consumed 325 additional units of fossil energy.

• He is fooled by warnings from the BlackRock investment house and Mark Carney of the Bank of England about fossil-fuel reserves becoming “stranded assets,” as if energy shares are priced in the expectation that 100% of hydrocarbon reserves will be produced.

Bonfire of the Academy As liberal adults abdicate, the kids take charge on campus.

By bonfire of the academy we mean a conflict of values about the idea of a university that now threatens to undermine or destroy universities as a place of learning. Exhibit A is the ruin called the University of Missouri.

In the 1960s—at Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley and elsewhere—the self-described Student Left occupied buildings with what they often called “non-negotiable” demands. In the decades since, the academy—its leaders and faculties—by and large has accommodated many of those demands regarding appropriate academic subjects, admissions policies and what has become the aggressive and non-tolerant politics of identity and grievance.

This political trajectory arrived at its logical end this week at Missouri with the abrupt resignation of the school’s president, quickly followed by its number two official. The kids deposed them, as their liberal elders applauded either out of solidarity or cowardice.

Racial Hysteria Triumphs on Campus : Heather MacDonald

Missouri, Yale, and America’s Cultural Revolution

The pathological narcissism of American college students has found a potentially devastating new source of power in the sports-industrial complex. University of Missouri president Timothy Wolfe resigned Monday morning in the face of a threatened boycott by black football players of an upcoming game. Wolfe’s alleged sin was an insufficient appreciation for the “systematic oppression” experienced by students of color at the university. Campus agitators also alleged that racial slurs had been directed at black students and feces had been smeared in the shape of a swastika in a dormitory.

The university’s board of overseers had convened in emergency session to discuss the football boycott;Wolfe resigned before meeting with them, issuing the standard mea culpa: “I take full responsibility for this frustration, and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred.” According to the New York Times, the university could have lost more than $1 million had it forfeited its football game with Brigham Young University on Saturday. A group called “Concerned Faculty” had walked off the job in solidarity with the student activists and was calling on other faculty to join them.

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: DIVERSITY

“When our student societies decide they want to put on events, they ask ‘do you think there is any particular risk, or do you think that there is any reason to think that any student would feel threatened or unsafe at inviting a particular speaker’?” Those Orwellian words were spoken by the president of Students Union at Leeds University in England to David Aaronovitch of the London Times. They could, however, have been spoken by campus leaders, administrators or professors at any U.S. university or college.

We should all subscribe to the concept of diversity. Typically, we think of it in terms of race, religion, place of national origin, sexual preference, socio-economic backgrounds and/or the physically and mentally challenged. We ignore, however, diversity of opinion. The word implies tolerance for those different from ourselves. There is no question that diversity strengthens us as individuals and as a nation. Arthur Brooks wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Scholarly studies have piled up showing that race and gender diversity in the workplace can increase creative thinking and improve performance.”

Persecuted Pakistani Christian Visits Washington, DC :Anrew Harrod

This was an interesting presentation of often stark views.

“We witness our Christian faith and proclaim the word of God in the land where Islamic fundamentalists and extremists are in power,” stated recently a Pakistani Christian to a Washington, DC, area Christian gathering. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals back home, “Thomas” expressed with somewhat rudimentary English stark views about Islam during a church reception for about 30 and subsequent interview.

“You are very much free and blessed people,” Thomas noted for his American audience who “do not need guards while you worship.” By contrast, reception displays on Pakistani Christians included a photo of an adolescent pastor’s son standing guard with an assault rifle before a church. This “son is protecting the worshippers by putting his life in danger and father is preaching the gospel to save the life of the worshippers,” he stated.

An interviewed Thomas noted how guards averted massive casualties during a March 2015 attack on Lahore, Pakistan’s Catholic Church by preventing suicide bombers from entering, yet he distrusted Muslims in Pakistani security forces. While he perceived a lax official response to attacks upon Christian institutions or mosques of Pakistan’s Shiite minority, the army responded vigorously to a 2014 terrorist massacre at a Peshawar army children’s school. Christians often insist upon having private Christian guards for whom “their brothers and sisters are inside” church.

RUTHIE BLUM: NARROW ESCAPES

Right before Monday’s meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, the two leaders gave perfunctory opening statements to the press.Due to their famously strained relations, which hit rock bottom when Netanyahu addressed Congress in March, the much-touted tete-a-tete has been leading the news in Israel for reasons beyond the aid package and Palestinians.

To sweeten the pot for Netanyahu detractors gleefully awaiting another Obama hissy fit, a pre-trip scandal erupted over the appointment of Ran Baratz as public diplomacy czar. Netanyahu’s selection of Baratz to fill this role caused an international stir when it emerged that the person about to make Israel’s case to the world had spent years posting very undiplomatic diatribes on Facebook against both U.S. and Israeli officials.

So, when Obama and Netanyahu exchanged pleasantries and spoke a few scripted lines prior to meeting privately, everyone — myself included — was hanging on their every nuance for clues. And leave it to Obama to provide a whopper of a glimpse into the workings of his mind.

Arguments from Ignorance: Edward Cline

The Bible Believers benefited from living in nation governed by the rule of law. Under Sharia law, they would be condemned to death.

Daniel Greenfield ran an interesting story on November 9th, “The Atlantic: Freedom of Speech Victimizes Muslims,” about the Bible Believers case, in which an en banc court reversed the group’s responsibility for basically “disturbing the peace” of an Arab American festival in 2012.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday found that Wayne County violated the constitutional rights of a group of religious proselytizers who were kicked out of an Arab-American cultural festival in 2012.

In a rare reversal of a previous decision from three-judge appeals court panel, an en banc review by 15 judges yielded a majority ruling that Wayne County is civilly liable to the group of evangelical Christians who sued after being ordered to leave the festival by sheriff’s deputies.

Why I Am Visiting Israel—and Why You Should Visit, Too By Dennis Prager

Jerusalem – I want to explain why I am in Israel.

I am here with 450 American (and a German and a Canadian) listeners to my radio show. About 400 are non-Jews.

We are here on a “Stand with Israel” tour organized by the syndicator of my radio show, the Salem Radio Network. I am accompanied by my wife, my producer Allen Estrin and his wife, and my radio colleague Mike Gallagher.

#ad#​People frustrated with the direction of America and the direction of the world regularly ask: “What can I do to make any difference?”

Here is one of the best answers I know: visit Israel. And do so especially when there are terror attacks.

If every time there were a spate of attacks on Israel, few people canceled their trips to Israel in response or — if I may imagine a much better world than the one we live in — tourism to Israel actually increased, three huge things would be achieved.