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January 2015

Posted by New Neo on January 16, 2015 17 Comments
In his latest editorial, Leslie Gelb seems both frightened and clueless about Obama. Gelb is a liberal whose foreign policy credentials are impressive if you like this sort of thing. At the age of 77, his resume includes "former correspondent for The New York Times and ...currently President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations," assistant to Jacob Javits, Carter's Assistant Secretary of State, and plenty more that would warm the cockles of most Democrats' hearts. But Gelb writes as though he were Rip Van Winkle just waking up from a long and very deep sleep, one that lasted from January of 2009 till now and encompassed Obama's entire presidency thusfar. How else can you explain this sort of thing?
The failure of Obama or Biden to show up in Paris made clear that most of the president’s team can’t be trusted to conduct U.S national security policy and must be replaced—at once.
Republicans have been thinking that for a long long time---welcome to our world, Gelb. But we're not delusional enough to think it could ever happen. The people Obama has placed there are exactly the people he wants. They do his bidding, and he has no sense that he's failed. More from Gelb:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 16, 2015 8 Comments
This day in 1919 was irrefutably one of the darkest days in American history -- the day the 18th amendment to the Constitution was ratified, making Prohibition the law of the land. Forever the hallmark of nanny-statism run amok, Prohibition was a progressive dream come true -- an amendment to the Constitution that limited freedoms rather than securing them. Interestingly enough, the 16th amendment paved the way for the 18th amendment. With the income tax in place, the federal government was no longer reliant upon taxes from alcohol producers. In his documentary Prohibition (which I highly recommend), Ken Burns explains:

Posted by Amy Miller on January 16, 2015 14 Comments
Yesterday, outgoing Texas Governor Rick Perry delivered his farewell address before the Texas legislature. Perry, who is the longest-serving governor in Texas history, used his time at the podium not only to highlight his accomplishments as Governor, but to lay out a rough outline of how his governing style would take shape on the national stage. From KPRC Houston:
"I have come here to reflect on what we have done together, and to say farewell. But most of all, to tell you it has been the highest of honors to serve as your governor for the last 14 years. I believe in public service, that it is among the most honorable of callings," said Perry in the nearly half-hour speech. He said, "Texas is a state where the impossible is possible, where the sons and daughters of migrant workers can aspire to own the farm, where the children of factory workers can build new age manufacturing facilities, where the son of tenant farmers can become governor of the greatest state in the union. In Texas, it’s not where you come from that matters, it’s where you are going. Texas doesn’t recognize the artificial barriers of race, class or creed. The most vivid dreams take flight from the most humble beginnings. And so it was for me."
That isn't what a farewell address sounds like---that's what a campaign kickoff speech sounds like. Watch:

Posted by Amy Miller on January 15, 2015 40 Comments
The Oscar nominations have been revealed, and everyone is talking about this year's nods, snubs, and most importantly---the racial and gender makeup of the Academy and its nominees. Of course. Here we go again. We're barely over this weekend's total freakout over the various combinations of skin color and genitalia that won top rights at the Golden Globes; you'd think we'd be given at least a week to recuperate. But no: That's right, ladies and gentlemen. The internet spent an entire day lobbing hate at a group of talented entertainers whose only crime is the relative paleness of their skin:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 15, 2015 32 Comments
Two days ago, Duke made headlines when it was revealed that the Muslim call to prayer would be played from the campus chapel bell tower on a weekly basis. Fox News reported: Amidst mounting pressure Duke has decided not proceed with playing the call to prayer on campus.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2015 10 Comments
The University of Illinois Board of Trustees has just issued a statement that it will not reconsider its decision not to hire controversial anti-Israel activist Steven Salatia. Salaita had a contingent offer of employment, requiring Board approval for the tenured position. That approval was denied in early September, after Salaita's tweets raised questions as to his fitness. An official faculty committee report suggested reconsideration, subject to a fitness evaluation. A second non-official report by five prominent professors rejected reconsideration. The American Association of University Professors is expected to issue a report demanding Salaita's hiring and threatening censure. The Trustees decision effectively preempts the AAUP's expected report. The Board just announced its decision on reconsideration, via Via AP:
University of Illinois trustees say they will not reconsider a September decision to rescind a job offer to a professor over his profane, anti-Israel Twitter messages. The trustees issued a statement Thursday that said the decision was final. A committee of university faculty had recommended that the school reconsider hiring Steven Salaita. Salaita was offered a job teaching Native American Studies at the Urbana-Champaign campus starting last August but the offer was rescinded after he wrote the Twitter messages. Some university donors complained they were anti-Semitic.
http://uofi.uillinois.edu/emailer/newsletter/65730.html The Urbana News-Gazette further reports:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 15, 2015 6 Comments
As Congress struggles to fight Obama's executive immigration overreach, Speaker Boehner compiled a list of 22 times Obama said he couldn't create his own immigration law. March 31, 2008: “I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to … not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President...” May 19, 2008: “I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2015 8 Comments
We have been warning about for years about Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdogan systematically has set out to dismantl civil society and the secular military and foamed at the mouth about Israel, often through then Foreign Minister, now Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu: The Islamist terror attacks in Paris have not changed Erdoğan's theatrics and paranoia:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday blasted Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu for "daring" to attend an anti-terror solidarity march in Paris, accusing him of leading "state terrorism" against the Palestinians. The comments, at a press conference in Ankara with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, were the latest verbal assault against Netanyahu by Erdogan under whose rule Turkey's relations with Israel have steadily deteriorated.
Is Erdoğan crazy? He sure has crazy theories that cover up for the Turkish intrigue in allowing the flow of Islamist fighters into Syria and Iraq:

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 15, 2015 22 Comments
The Democratic Party has been unable to sway public opinion on the issue of gun control, but that hasn't stopped the Obama administration from using the Department of Justice to harass legal gun dealers under a program called Operation Choke Point. Guidelines designed to discourage banks from doing business with illegal and heinous operations involving things like human trafficking and child pornography are now being applied to legal and legitimate businesses which are deemed "high risk." Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller filed this report yesterday:
Audio Tapes Reveal How Federal Regulators Shut Down Gun Store Owner’s Bank Accounts Conversations recorded by a Wisconsin gun store owner provide perhaps the clearest glimpse yet into how the federal government uses regulators to target legal firearm and ammunition sellers. “Our hands are tied by it,” a regional manager with Heritage Credit Union told Hawkins Guns owner Mike Shuetz of federal regulations which forced the institution to close Shuetz’s bank accounts in November. Recordings of Shuetz’s conversations with the manager and a bank teller, which were published online by the U.S. Consumer Coalition, make it clear that the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) examined the credit union’s books and forced it to close Shuetz’s account — a move he blames on a Department of Justice initiative called Operation Choke Point. Schuetz’s saga began on Nov. 13, when he says Heritage Credit Union informed him that it would have to close his bank accounts.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 15, 2015 18 Comments
Last year 17 states took a stand against President Obama and his plans to use an executive order to remove nearly 5 million illegal immigrants from the bounds of existing immigration law. The coalition, now made up of 25 states and led by Texas' new Governor Greg Abbott, will present oral arguments today advocating both to suspend implementation of Obama's immigration plan, and for the life of the lawsuit crafted to stop it. This type of lawsuit is unprecedented in scope. We know that the President holds certain powers of prosecutorial discretion; but do those powers extend so far as to allow a blanket amnesty without any sort of Congressional approval or legislatively-based change to existing law? And if it does, how should the law account for disparate financial impact to the various states? All novel questions that the court will have to consider. Via the San Antonio Express-News:
Legal scholars say the issues of deferred action and executive discretion on matters of immigration have been upheld in court many times before, and yet predicting the outcome of this lawsuit is difficult because of its unprecedented scale. “Under current case law, there is no basis to find this action illegal,” Chishti said. “But there has never been a case of 5 million, and therefore one might argue that prior cases don’t apply.” Abbott has said Texas shouldered the financial brunt of Obama's 2012 executive action on deferred action, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for an increased police presence on the border, along with health care and education costs.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2015 13 Comments
The Obama administration has engaged in absurd linguistic gymnastics to pretend that the terrorists who shot up Charlie Hebdo and the HyperCasher supermarket merely were individuals who happened to adopt radical Islamic extremism almost by chance.  Could have been any extremism, we're told. Generic "extremism" is the problem, as if it lived out of body. By playing these word games, the administration does no favor to those in the Muslim world who recognize the reality and want it to stop.  To the contrary, the administration's word games constitute an abandonment. The President of Egypt is one of those voices, calling for a revolution within the Muslim world against the extremism. Another voice is Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya In late September 2014, I wrote about an article by Melhem, The Barbarians Within Our Gates. Melhem made points as a Muslim examining the Muslim world that would get him labeled "Islamophobic" and "racist" by groups like CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism—the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition—than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed.... And let’s face the grim truth: There is no evidence whatever that Islam in its various political forms is compatible with modern democracy. From Afghanistan under the Taliban to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and from Iran to Sudan, there is no Islamist entity that can be said to be democratic, just or a practitioner of good governance. The short rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt under the presidency of Mohamed Morsi was no exception. The Brotherhood tried to monopolize power, hound and intimidate the opposition and was driving the country toward a dangerous impasse before a violent military coup ended the brief experimentation with Islamist rule....

Posted by Amy Miller on January 14, 2015 9 Comments
Republicans may have just executed a historical midterm coup, but the American people are still skeptical about the new Congress' ability to rebuild trust with the American people. The 113th Congress was famously divided---and famously unpopular. It ended 2014 with its approval rating bottomed out at 16%. A new poll conducted by Gallup at the very start of the 114th Congress shows that not much has changed: only 16% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, and a sky-high 76% of Americans disapprove of a body that has been at work for less than a month. This, of course, says less about faith in individual members, and more about how Americans feel in general about the way Washington has played politics over the past few years. The average American finds no enjoyment or catharsis in ugly floor fights and media battles, and the poll numbers reflect this disconnect between the glass-walled terrarium that is Washington politics, and the rest of the country. Still, data from previous sessions shows that this Congress still has an opportunity to redeem itself with its skeptical electorate. Gallup explains:

Posted by Amy Miller on January 14, 2015 16 Comments
Since 2013, we have been investigating charges that the IRS deliberately targeted and discriminated against conservative organizations that applied for tax-exempt status. Now, watchdog group Judicial Watch has uncovered even more evidence that the Washington office had something to hide during the initial Congressional investigations. Today's document release by Judicial Watch includes evidence that then-IRS official Lois Lerner strongly objected to and attempted to prevent a visit by Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) Division Deputy Director Joseph H. Grant to the embattled Cincinnati office, which spent time “smack dab in the middle” of Congressional investigations into the IRS targeting of conservatives. From Judicial Watch:
The newly released documents include an intense chain of emails in which Lerner pleads with Grant, who was a supervisor to her, to “put this [Grant’s planned visit to Cincinnati] off please” at the very time during which both the internal IRS watchdog and Congress were investigating whether the IRS had been inappropriately targeting conservative groups in the months leading up to the 2012 elections. The chain begins with an email from Lerner to Grant, apparently written in response to her learning of the Deputy Director’s planned visit to the Cincinnati office: • April 4, 2012 – 4:41 PM – Lois Lerner to Joseph Grant: We just gor an very extensive information request from Imraan [Imraan Khakoo, TE/GE official] –sure looks like op review material. I’m especially concerned that information about pipeline is being asked about … Add to that the fact tha cincinnati is smack dab in the middle of the c4 Congressional inqueries and is about to get a request from TIGTA on all of that, this is NOT a good time to be asking them for anything or to be talking to them about issue in their work. Everyone is stressed to the max and at their wits end, so can we put this off please? [Typos in originals] • April 4, 2012 – 5:17 PM – Joseph Grant to Lois Lerner: It is a visit, not an OP review … I am also interested in the questions Imraan sent to them. Some answers should be readily at hand. Others certainly won’t be … The questions just serve as a framework for a broader conversation about how things are going and what is on our respective minds. • April 4, 2012 – 5:26 PM – Lois Lerner to Joseph Grant: I get that–but timing would be bad if we have to go to Cincy now. So, I will assume we can go over this here as I get the information I’ve already asked for? Thanks.
Breathe, Lois, breathe!

Posted by New Neo on January 14, 2015 9 Comments
This seems to be a disturbing development in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings:
France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and those glorifying terrorism... Authorities said 54 people had been arrested for hate speech and defending terrorism since terror attacks killed 20 people in Paris last week, including three gunmen... Like many European countries, France has strong laws against hate speech, especially anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust. The Justice Ministry sent a letter to all French prosecutors and judges urging more aggressive tactics against racist or anti-Semitic speech or acts.
"Speech or acts"---there's a big, big difference between the two. It is easier to justify criminalizing acts rather than speech---although of course it depends on what the speech is. To be legally actionable, the speech had better be the rough equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded auditorium.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2015 23 Comments
John Boehner gave a speech today that I could have written for him about Obama's lawless immigration actions. The speech hit all the right notes in connection with passage of a House funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security which blocks using funds for Obama's executive immigration plan. That plan, devised by the White House, unilaterally creates a new class of people effectively exempt from being penalized for immigration violations by inventing a process to obtain legal status found nowhere in the immigration laws. It is not executive or prosecutorial discretion as to better implementing current law---it is a rejection of current law.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 14, 2015 3 Comments
Yemen's al-Qaida branch has officially claimed responsibility for last week's terror attacks against satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. In two separate videos, one taken the day of the attack and another, longer message from the top al-Qaida commander in the Arabian Peninsula, the group takes responsibility for the attacks and warns of more "tragedy and terror." Fox explains what was revealed in the videos:
An eyewitness heard the gunmen say in French, "We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad!" as they fled the newspaper office, while another witness claimed the gunmen addressed him before fleeing, saying, "Tell them this was Al Qaeda in Yemen." In the video, al-Ansi describes the Kouachi brothers as "heroes" and congratulates them for "this revenge that has soothed our pain.” “Congratulations to you for these brave men who blew off the dust of disgrace and lit the torch of glory in the darkness of defeat and agony,” an-Ansi added. In the video, al-Ansi made no claim to the subsequent Paris attack on a kosher grocery store, during which a friend of Kouachis, Amedy Coulibaly, killed a French policewoman Thursday and four hostages on Friday.
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