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Posted by Mike LaChance on May 17, 2015 5 Comments
President George W. Bush gave the commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. His speech was humorous at times but drew a major amount of applause when Bush touched on the subject of religious liberty. David McCabe of The Hill:
George W. Bush defends religious liberty Former President George W. Bush offered a defense of religious liberty and faith more broadly while speaking at Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) commencement ceremony Saturday. He spent some of his speech talking about why graduates should be hopeful as they move on from their college years. Towards the end, he offered one more. “And finally, you can be hopeful because there is a loving god,” he said. “Whether you agree with that statement is your choice, it is not your government’s choice.” “It is essential to this nation’s future that we remember that the freedom to worship who we want, and how we want — or not to worship at all — is a core belief of our founding.”
This video has that segment of the speech:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 17, 2015 28 Comments
We have covered the case of Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who vowed to carry her mattress around campus in protest of her alleged rapist who remained on campus. That alleged rapist was cleared by the University, and now is suing to clear his name. I don't know if Sulkowicz was lying or telling the truth. But the sharp dispute hardly makes the case comparable to what Afghan women have to go through. Beatings. Burkas. Lack of education. Executions.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 17, 2015 14 Comments
California Democrat Loretta Sanchez has come under fire for using a stereotypical and cartoonish gesture to describe Native Americans. From the Los Angeles Daily News:
Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez apologizes for Indian whooping-cry caricature U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez has apologized after a videotape surfaced showing her making a whooping cry in reference to Native Americans during an apparent joke. Speaking to delegates at a state Democratic convention Sunday, the 10-term congresswoman said she said something offensive “and for that I sincerely apologize.” The video, which was shared on social media, shows Sanchez tapping her hand over her open mouth and making a whooping sound while speaking to a group of delegates Saturday. Her chief rival in the Senate race, Attorney General Kamala Harris, called the gesture shocking. Sanchez said everyone makes mistakes and defended her record on civil rights, human rights and Native American rights. Sanchez said American Indians have “a great presence in our country and many of them are supporting our election.” Harris, whose mother was an immigrant from India, said, “There is no place for that in our public discourse.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 17, 2015 19 Comments
I recently reported that some Vatican officials were unhappy with scientists who directly challenged the questionable data and erroneous assertions being used as the basis for Pope Francis' upcoming eco-encyclical. Now, in a drama worthy of a Dan Brown novel, there is a dispute about the status of that much-anticipated publication. A widely-cited report has been released by an Italian journalist who covers the Catholic Church and the Vatican indicating that these papal plans may be delayed. Hot from Italy's "L'espresso": E questo sarebbe il teologo di fiducia del papa? (Translated by my SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition colleague, Anthony Porrello)
According to Vaticanist Sandro Magister, Pope Francis has decided to postpone the publication of his long-awaited encyclical on the environment. The reason, according to Magister, is that the Pope realized that the document in its current state had no chance of receiving the approval of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Gerhard Müller. If it seems somewhat improper for a Cardinal to be telling a Pope what he can and can't write, don't fret, gentle reader: the text wasn't written by Pope Francis at all.

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Posted by New Neo on May 17, 2015 12 Comments
On the first weekend in May I attended a conference held in Boston entitled "GenerationCaliphate: Apocalyptic Hopes, Millennial Dreams and Global Jihad." The conference was organized by Richard Landes, millennial scholar, inventor of the term "Pallywood," blogger at The Augean Stables, exposer of the suspect nature of the claims about al Durah's death, author of the book Heaven on Earth, brilliant and original thinker, and a person I'm glad to call my friend. One of the strongest impressions I got from the conference is how many people there are who have dedicated their lives to studying the history of Islam and Islamic thought and how much information they have gleaned about how that thought informs the motives and expectations of modern terrorists. Many non-experts tend to think of terrorists as more grounded in the present than they apparently are, to minimize what seem to be their wild fantasies about the end of the world, and to fail to appreciate how very much those apocalyptic dreams are informed by Islam and its history. Something else that struck me about the conference was how it illustrated that although many of us tend to think everyone fighting terrorism is on the right, there are some people on the left who are very concerned about terrorism and take it very seriously, but that there are some rather large rifts between those of the right and left who share this common cause and common interest in combating terrorism. There were too many erudite and engrossing speakers at the conference to describe each one, but some highlights (in addition to the aforementioned Richard Landes) were, in no particular order:

Posted by Mirabelle Ward on May 17, 2015 20 Comments
In November of 2012, the UN voted 138 to 9, with 41 abstentions, to recognize a state of “Palestine” in the West Bank and Gaza.  There was no requirement that such "state" cease terrorism, its violence and hostilities towards its neighbor Israel, even recognize Israel for what it is and what it was always intended to be, a Jewish state. What shocked me at the time was not the outcome of the vote, but that fact that, except for the Czech Republic, every single member of the EU either voted in favor or abstained. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech preceding the vote, referring to Israeli “aggression” rather than defense in Gaza, and claiming to want peace despite having rejected a far-reaching peace proposal only four years prior, was mendacious from the first sentence to the very last applause line. How was it, I wondered, that the European nations were unable to see through his charade?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 17, 2015 11 Comments
I appeared on Saturday, May 16, 2015, on The Craig Silverman Show on 710 KNUS in Aurora, Colorado. The conversation covered my background, what it means to be a conservative on campus, the anti-Israel boycott movement, the Pope on a Palestinian "state," the Pew Poll on Christians, and the fate of Christians in the Middle East. On Ted Cruz at Harvard Law School:
"When you're going to be political at a place like Harvard Law School, you have to be better than everybody else if you're a conservative. You have to be smarter, you have to be more well-read, you have to be better-prepared, because it's you against a lot of people. And certainly he wouldn't have been the only conservative at Harvard Law School, but he would have been in a severe minority. And when you're in that situation, you have to be better. And that's what I see with a lot of politically active conservative students on campus... [Cruz] had to sharpen his skills because he's basically arguing with everybody or almost everybody. Whereas if you're in a liberal position at a school most people agree with you, you don't need to sharpen your skills and you don't get tested the way you do if you're a conservative."
On the anti-Israel boycott movement:
"We're dealing with people who really are just outright liars. And I say that all the time because that's what they are. And they just make stuff up, they twist facts, they ignore facts."
On Israeli-Palestinian negotiations:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 16, 2015 14 Comments
The number of lawsuits by men wrongly accused of sexual assault on campus is increasing almost by the day. Most remain silent, preferring to go the "John Doe" route to avoid further reputational damage. Slowly, however, some men are going public, often where there names were already published anyway in high profile cases. One example is the suit against Columbia University by Jean-Paul Nungesser after Emma Sulkowicz drew attention to the allegations by carrying a mattress around campus. Here is one story playing out at San Diego State University, in which the charges were plastered all over campus and the news, only to be dropped once police investigated. Where does someone wrongly accused go to get his reputation back? It started with the arrest of Francisco Paiva Sousa, SDSU sex assault suspect out on bail:
A day after being arrested on suspicion of a sexual assault near campus, an SDSU student is out on bail. CBS News 8 cameras were there when 20-year-old Francisco Paiva Sousa was released from jail Wednesday. He was taken into custody Tuesday in connection with the alleged assault Sunday. Sousa said nothing as our cameras caught up with him after he made bail. The SDSU sophomore is accused of forcing a female student to perform oral sex while at a party off campus, according to campus police. Detectives say it happened at a duplex on College Avenue sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning....

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 16, 2015 24 Comments
The Clinton Foundation is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad couple of months.  There were the pay to play accusations from Haiti, the numerous other pay to play "coincidences," the rather cozy relationship with "journalist" donor (and former employee) George Stephanopoulos, reports of $30 million from books and speeches in 16 months, and even the email controversy is being linked to the Foundation as part of "one big, hairy deal." It doesn't end there.  Jonathan Allen at Vox reports that in a Friday afternoon Clinton financial disclosure "news dump" is evidence that Hillary "personally took money from companies that sought to influence her":
During Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, Corning lobbied the department on a variety of trade issues, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The company has donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to her family's foundation. And, last July, when it was clear that Clinton would again seek the presidency in 2016, Corning coughed up a $225,500 honorarium for Clinton to speak.

Posted by Amy Miller on May 16, 2015 20 Comments
Democrats want you to know that they believe Republicans are responsible for the tragic train crash this past week that killed 8 and started a conversation about safety in Amtrak's most heavily-traveled corridor. During a recent press conference with House Speaker John Boehner, IBT's senior political writer Ginger Gibson made the mistake of playing into that narrative---and got more than a little embarrassed. Watch: From MRC TV:

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 16, 2015 7 Comments
The Stephanopoulos story keeps getting worse, especially when compared to the experience of other journalists. Geraldo Rivera of FOX News claims he was fired by ABC News in 1985 for a paltry $200 donation to a friend who was running for mayor in New Bedford, MA. It's amazing what you can learn by following Instapundit's Twitter feed: Here's the related story from Jessica Chasmar of the Washington Times:
Geraldo on Stephanopoulos apology: ABC fired me over $200 donation Geraldo Rivera on Friday questioned why he was fired from ABC News 30 years ago for making a $200 political donation to a family friend, while the network appears to be standing firm behind George Stephanopoulos, who apologized Thursday for donating $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation. “In 1985, after fifteen great years, I was fired by ABC News,” Mr. Rivera wrote in a Facebook post, Mediaite reported. “The official reason for my firing was a non-disclosed $200 donation to a family friend running in a non-partisan mayoral campaign in New Bedford Massachusetts.”
Rivera discussed the issue on FOX and Friends this week:

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 16, 2015 1 Comment
There's an old saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity. That rule seems to be working for Tom Brady of the Patriots, whose merchandise is way up in sales since the announcement of his suspension over Deflategate. Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes:
Tom Brady Merchandise Sales Up 100% Since Suspension Announced Quarterback Tom Brady and the New England Patriots organization have come under fire since the 243-page “Deflategate” report was released last week by attorney Ted Wells, who was hired by the NFL to investigate claims the Patriots used underinflated footballs during the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. The report concluded that “it’s more probable than not” that Patriots personnel “participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee.”... Since the Wells Report was released on May 6, Brady was the NFL’s top-selling NFL player, outside of the two top draft picks Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota, according to Fanatics.com, the largest online retailer of officially licensed sports merchandise (Brady ranked sixth prior to the report). The Patriots are the second highest-selling NFL team behind the Cowboys, up from fourth before the report. Brady gear has spiked 100% since the suspension was announced Monday.
This might explain why Brady looked like the cat that swallowed the canary in interviews this week.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 16, 2015 16 Comments
Every once in a while, we see stories about public schools banning the American flag from its students' bicycles and automobiles.  Every time the community pushes back against this sort of unreasonable policy, the policy suddenly changes, and the schools' representatives make a statement declaring the flag sacred, the school patriotic, and the intent of the flag ban benign or even beneficent. A South Carolina high school recently had such an epiphany after banning one of its students from flying the American and POW/MIA flags on his truck:
Peyton Robinson, a senior at York Comprehensive High School in York, S.C., has been driving his truck around our end of York County with two large flags attached to the bed – an American flag and one that honors military servicemen and women who have been taken as POWs (prisoners of war) or are MIA (missing in action). On Wednesday, May 13, he was pulled from class and sent to meet an administrator in the parking lot, where he discovered his flags had been removed and placed in the bed of his truck.  He was told by school officials, “Do not return to school with these flags.”
According to Peyton's Instagram post, the school administrators told him that "people had complained," but when the school issued its statement, they said the ban was due to "safety concerns."  Apparently, the flag was a driving hazard that the public high school was uniquely qualified to address.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 16, 2015 12 Comments
This would be funny were it not for the fact that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is such a sad sack of haters. Activists from Ithaca Jewish Voice for Peace were behind the recent failed effort to get GreenStar Food Coop in Ithaca, NY (home of Cornell University) to boycott Israel. Those activists formed a group called Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine, later reconfigured as Ithaca Food Justice for Palestine. But two JVP activists, Ariel Gold and Beth Harris -- who (in)famously got themselves arrested at the AIPAC annual conference -- were behind it all. Details on that GreenStar boycott effort, including the hateful messages used as part of the campaign (See Featured Image for one example), are in my post, Huge BDS loss – GreenStar Food Coop rejects Israel boycott. Attempts were made to take the GreenStar boycott movement national, involving such "stars" as Angela Davis and Medea Benjamin, but that didn't help them much: Greenstar Boycott Angela Davis Medea Benjamin One aspect of the failed boycott effort involved China. China?
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