Media Ignores Disturbing Alliance Between ‘Progressives’ and Anti-Semites

What good is a free press if they’re just as agenda-driven as the politicians they’re supposed to keep honest and accountable?

By Paul Miller •

Convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh stands with Representative Janice Schakowsky at an anti-travel ban rally in Chicago last month. Paul Miller

Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner were inseparable friends studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But that all changed on a fateful February day in 1969, when members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine bombed a SuperSol supermarket, ending the lives of both young men. So, you’ll understand my anger and revulsion when I saw the convicted mastermind of the terror attack, Rasmea Odeh, standing with Representative Jan Schakowsky as she addressed an anti-travel ban rally in Chicago last month.

Odeh served 10 years in an Israeli prison before being released in a large-scale prisoner swap. She was also convicted of attempting to blow up the British consulate. Her trial was deemed fair by the International Red Cross, but today she is regarded as a victim of Zionist aggression—a darling of the Progressive movement and a jewel in their crown of contempt for the Jewish state.

Marc Lamont Hill, Professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College and another up-and-coming Progressive leader, proudly voices his solidarity with Odeh and his allegiance to Dream Defenders, the Black Lives Matter offshoot that “embraces anti-Semitism and engages with terrorists.” During a 2016 trip to the Palestinian territories, the group was led around East Jerusalem by convicted terrorist and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Mahmoud Jedda. Jedda served 17 years in Israeli prison for planting bombs.

The Odeh lovefest continues next month, when anti-Israel Progressive advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace will feature the convicted killer at their National Member Meeting. Odeh first made U.S. headlines in October 2014 after failing to mention her terror ties when she applied for naturalization and obtained U.S. citizenship. She was found guilty the following month and, since that time, has enjoyed the benefits of the U.S. judicial system appeals process that granted her a new trial this past December.

Both Odeh and Jedda have blood on their hands—Jewish blood, to be precise. This is what makes these more recent developments so troubling. Full disclosure: I served as a senior adviser for a political campaign against Rep. Schakowsky in 2010. At that time, we raised the issue of Schakowsky’s featuring UPI journalist Helen Thomas at a fundraiser. The late standard bearer of the White House press corps was notorious for her disdain for the Jewish state. But I could never have imagined that the congresswoman, who represents one of the largest Jewish constituencies in the country, would be willing to share the stage with a killer.

If a GOP official shared the stage with a convicted terrorist or notorious anti-Semite, The New York Times would feature the story on the front page for at least a week. But when Democrats consort with hate, it’s swept under the rug.

For over a decade, a growing number of college campuses have become fertile ground for anti-Semitism, courtesy of the intersectionality of the Progressive movement.

United against Israel, activists for LGBTQ rights, gender equality and anti-war efforts, joined by Black Lives Matter, have been hijacked by anti-Israel student groups who not only attack the Jewish state, but do so under the guise of their new code word for demonizing Jews—Zionists.

Anti-Semitism watchdog groups such as AMCHA Initiative have documented that the likelihood of anti-Semitic incidents occurring on campuses with anti-Israel activity is nearly 100 percent. Anti-Israel activism doesn’t necessarily equate with anti-Semitism—in theory. But don’t hold your breath while you try to discern the difference.

Since about lunchtime on January 20, the mainstream media has decided to take an interest in anti-Semitism. But you won’t see them reporting the Progressive/anti-Semitism alliance. Rather, they are focused solely on President Trump and the anti-Semitic activity being spewed in his name by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

These bigots have been promoting hate long before Trump was president. Granted, I wish the president would be more vocal about condemning their rhetoric. But in contrast to this president, whose daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren are observant Jews, I’m far more concerned with a media that ignores genuine hate promulgated by leftist professors and student groups on college campuses, as well as intersectionality that turns nearly every leftist rally into an anti-Zionist hate fest.

With President Trump at odds with the media, to put it mildly, we find ourselves inundated with reminders of how important a free press is to our democracy. I share this reverence for the First Amendment. But what good is a free press if they’re just as agenda-driven as the politicians and community leaders they’re supposed to be keeping honest and accountable?

Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on twitter @pauliespoint.

http://observer.com/2017/02/jan-schakowsky-alliance-progressives-anti-semites-rasmea-odeh/

Straightforward From Here To The Left’s Fascist, Maybe Violent, Endgame

Kurt Schlichter

The Democrat Party, its Media serfs, and Social Justice Incorporated are all outraged because we uppity normals are again presuming to rule ourselves, and their agony is delightful. Less delightful is how, in the process of trying to claw their way back into power, they are incinerating the norms and rules that preserve our political order. That stuff Hillary babbled about honoring the legitimacy of elections? Yeah, no. There’s an invisible asterisk only liberals can see that explains that the norms and rules are void when liberals lose.

So, where does this crisis end?

We know where the leftists want it to end, with us silenced and subservient forever, toiling to pay taxes for them to redistribute to their clients as they pick at, poke at and torment us. You look at the things Trump stands for and all of them are about lifting the yoke off of us – cutting taxes, slashing regulations, guaranteeing the Second Amendment, protecting our religious liberty, and safeguarding us from terrorists and illegals. But everything liberals want, everything Hillary ran on, is about clamping the yoke ever tighter around our necks – raising taxes, issuing more regulations, disarming us, limiting our religious freedom, and putting us at risk from terrorists and alien criminals. The whole leftist platform is about putting us down and keeping us down.

Think what they will do if they take power again.

They are certainly not going to risk us ever being able to repeat November’s rejection. California’s decline lays out their tyrannical road map. When the Democrats took power here, they “reformed” the election laws to lock-in their party, co-opted the “nonpartisan” redistricting process, and changed the ballot initiative system to make sure we will never see another unapproved proposition. They ensured there is no way to stop illegal aliens from voting because they want illegal aliens voting.


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But even that’s not enough. The state government chose to allow its unofficial catspaws to intimidate and beat dissenters at UC Berkeley. California’s governing class wanted the thugs to prevail; it was a lesson to its opponents. I thought my novel People’s Republic, about post-freedom California, was an action thriller, not the first draft of a future history.

I was wrong.

Do you think Hillary Clinton or whatever aspiring Hugo Chavez they offer up next is going to protect us from violent leftist thugs, or encourage them? Remember how Obama weaponized agencies like the IRS against conservatives? Multiply that by a thousand. Think about the “hate speech” rules used to silence conservatives on campus; imagine them as federal law. That’s coming, just like in Europe – it’s now a crime in France to speak out against abortion. Do you imagine leftists don’t dream of doing that? No, once back in power they will ensure we will never be able to challenge their rule. One man (or woman or other), one vote, one more time, then never again.


How will they do it?

This massive resistance campaign against everything Donald Trump has done and a lot he hasn’t done is one way. The media’s liberal advocacy and tsunami of fake news is another; the press is now just one more partisan political player campaigning to restore the establishment to power. These same liars who fantasize about Trump silencing critics will cheer as the next Democrat commandante does it for real. Remember how they said nothing when Democrats voted to repeal the First Amendment so Congress could control speech during elections?

And they think they’re winning.

Sally Kohn, a CNN commentator perfectly personifies the left’s combination of utter cluelessness and utter certainty in its own moral superiority. Drawing from her bottomless well of stupidity, she recently became infamous for wishcasting about what happens “[s]traight forward from here.” Her scenario starts with Step 1 (“Impeach Trump & Pence”) and ends with Step 6 (“President Hillary”), thanks to a Constitutional process she created herself by blending ignorance, fascism, and wanting.


Sally, however, overlooked Step 2.5, where several dozen million Americans defend the Constitution by taking out their black rifles and saying, “Oh, hell no.” I assume the patriots determined to protect the Union would be confronted, for a short and awkward time, by a pro-coup hipster army locked and loaded with vinyl LPs, participation trophies and unearned self-regard.

There’s no reason not to believe that for these seditious Democrats, the second time will be the charm.

But this amusing idiocy highlights a much more frightening possibility. Dennis Prager has written that America is locked in a Second Civil War already, albeit a cold one. And in light of the absolute rejection by the left of any legitimacy of the grievances, the interests, or the right to participate in governing this country of the tens of millions of red Americans, it’s reasonable to wonder how this can end peacefully. You see read it on social media, you hear it whispered. Are the wounds to our body politic so deep they can’t be healed?


I recently polled people on Twitter about what they thought of the chances of serious violence in the coming four years, and the results from 6,159 people are alarming. “Stop being a nut” got 10%; I was hoping it would get about 95%. “We’ll wise up” and find a way out of this crisis, got 13%. But “50/50 leftists may try violence” got a stunning 41%, while “It’s coming. Gear up” got a terrifying 36%.

So, 77% of the respondents fear serious violence during Trump’s first term. That’s scary, especially since political warfare is not unprecedented in history. Forget Bleeding Kansas. Just reflect on the low-grade insurgency the American left undertook in the 1970s, with more bloodshed than most people remember, and consider how today the left has significantly more cultural, institutional and media support. The reality is that there is the potential for this to get out of control, way out of control, especially considering the likelihood that leftist violence would be met in kind. That 77% indicates that the red side is, as the left loves to say, “woke” to the threat. And the red people have the guns and training, should things degenerate into serious chaos.

Basically, this country is a powder keg, and leftist fools who do not understand the danger are figuratively standing around it, firing up their bongs.

Now, understand that leftist liars will meet this column with the slander that I (and by extension, you) hope for violence. Skim down the comments and check out the idiots no doubt infesting my Twitter feed – you’ll see plenty of such lies. Actually, this is yet another of my several pleas for sanity and peace (including in my book’s preface). But the left’s favorite tactic is to deny substantive truth in favor of narrative; what I (and you) actually believe is irrelevant. This infuriating tactic makes reasoned discussion and argument impossible anymore, which itself makes violence more likely since it forecloses the primary method of peacefully resolving disagreements. If you can’t argue, if you can’t even speak, there’s only one way to be heard.

The left’s combination of evil and stupidity is the driver straightforward from here. With the grim understanding that they hate us, we need to accept that there may be no easy return to peaceful coexistence. Our goal in electing Donald Trump was to remove the left’s hand from our throat, not to put our hand around blue peoples’ collective windpipe. We don’t care how they live their lives, but leftists care very much how we live ours. Their goal is to lock both hands around our throat and squeeze until we submit to leftist tyranny or die.

It’s hard to see how we compromise. Do we just somewhat submit, or only die a little?

This crisis has to culminate somehow. It could end peacefully, with a return to the old norms and reasoned competition between ideas. But it seems no one is interested in that; instead, one side has to win decisively, and one side has to lose decisively. If so, I say we win and they lose, since I’m not ready to submit or to die.

How about you?

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/02/23/draft-n2289256

Don's Tuesday Column

               THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   2/28/2017

              Swedish Muslims and American press

A little over a week ago, President Donald Trump (he’s the only president with my first name) elicited howls from the usual “main stream news media (MSN)” partisans, even a Swedish leader, over a clumsily phrased assertion about problems Sweden is experiencing from refugees and immigrants. Non-MSN observers and analysts (and Trump in a tweet) correctly pointed to a segment on Tucker Carlson’s Friday night Fox News show, not a terrorist attack.

I found Mr. Trump’s grasp of several issues to be under whelming during the presidential campaign. I winced—even disapproved—when, for instance, he lambasted a judge for his Mexican descent; and when he recently disparaged, as “so-called,” a judge in Washington state that ruled against his immigration executive orders. The Hispanic judge may indeed have had an anti-Trump prejudice in the lawsuit before him; and the judicial opinions from the Washington and 9^th Circuit Court judges were horrible rulings that ignored the plain text of the Constitution and established immigration law. Those were inappropriate statements by Trump.

It must also be acknowledged that Trump’s spokesman accurately stated that the judiciary is “a coequal,” not a superior, branch of government. Judges have a long history of getting major issues completely wrong (i.e. Dred Scott decision denying blacks the right, as citizens, to sue in federal courts). I think that Trump is on a learning curve and getting better by the day.

Trump’s statement, the outcry and subsequent analysis have, to the chagrin of his supporters (including this writer), shown that taking Trump “seriously, not literally” has once again shown him to be spot on. The MSN and Democrats (a redundancy given the 80 to 90 percent of news media people that support, vote for and contribute to the Dems) engaged in another “ready, fire, aim” knee-jerk pile on.

Look up: “Trump Was Right; Migrants Riot, Loot, Fight with Police and Set Cars On Fire in Sweden—While the media was dismissing Trump, riots were breaking out in the immigrant suburb of Rinkeby in Stockholm” (by Chris Menahan); “Looks Like Donald Trump Was Right About Sweden After All” (by Emily Zanotti); and “The Silly Sweden Flap” and “More Evidence That Trump Was Right About Sweden” (by John Hinderaker).

It is now incontrovertible that Sweden has joined Germany, France and other countries in trying the risky “open borders” experiment with their own citizen population. They have no inoculation against the violence, sexual depredations, idleness and reliance on government benefits that followed Syrians and other Muslim refugees into Europe.

A chart showing official Swedish sex crime data, “Reported Sex Offences,” showed the dramatic increase in annual criminal sex acts over the last 10 years—from about 12,000 to nearly 20,000. Liberal/progressive European blinders cannot hide the irreconcilable cultural and religious divide, some might say subversion, that follows such refugees and immigrants—not all, to be sure, but a sizable, unapologetic core.

Despite the wishes and fantasies of native Europeans, Muslim enclaves form, which can devolve into shariah-adhering, Islamic fundamentalism-enforcing, “no go” zones for police and other emergency services. The riots mentioned above sprang up without outside organization in response to an attempt to arrest one immigrant drug offender. That produced spontaneous violence directed at, not just those simply enforcing the law, but also against the fire fighting personnel arriving to put out the burning cars and other fires set by the violent crowds.

“The Swedish government’s response to the increased crime attendant upon mass Islamic immigration is along the lines of, ‘Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?’ The bottom line is that when it comes to Sweden and immigration, Trump was right (J. Hinderaker, 2/20).” Most Americans agree with President Trump when he says, “Here’s the bottom line. We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening. We’ve got to keep our country safe…(Sweden) took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.” Liberals put their collective heads in ideological sand; don’t trust them to keep us safe.

Another ill-stated opinion from Trump, arguably true in some respects, was his naming CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and major newspapers, calling them “enemies of the American people.” While over-generalized and excessively pointed, it could be compared to similar sentiments that we’ve heard from Barack Obama and numerous Democrats and leftists over the last 15+ years.

Liberals and progressives would be hypocritical to condemn Trump unless they had spoken out against, for instance, Obama’s repeated disparagement and ad hominem attacks against Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party movement, etc. Isn’t it rich with irony that the same liberals that mocked, insulted and hurled foul “tea bag” epithets at Tea Party adherents, now praise, support and cheer Trump resisters as “the left’s Tea Party”? They’re all hypocrites.

I am convinced that much of the left-leaning MSN secretly, if not openly, consider President Donald Trump to be an “enemy of the American people.” In tweets, on Facebook and other social media, some reporters, editors and supposedly “objective” journalists—who revel in the First Amendment’s freedom of the press—have made no secret of their hatred for Trump, his family, his supporters, conservatives and Republicans in general.

Their tweets are often deleted, but such vituperation exists; it energizes, colors and slants their coverage of everything he says, proposes and enacts. Are they “Enemies of the American people”?  No, they’re just bitter, implacable foes who despise all supporters of President Trump.

The left’s own politics by shorthand is now being turned against it.

The left’s own politics by shorthand is now being turned against it.

Once asked by an aide to respond to a letter to the editor from one of his critics, Vladimir Lenin refused, saying: “Why should we bother to reply to Kautsky? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There’s no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautsky is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything.”

That has been the modus operandi of the left for decades. It doesn’t respond to arguments with arguments but with stigmatizing names designed to end debate. As the communications arm of the left, the media conforms perfectly to Lenin’s method. Instead of rebutting the arguments of conservatives, it has found it easier to brand them as “enemies” of science, women, minorities, the poor, and so on.

Whenever editors say that they refuse to acknowledge “two sides” on such matters as “marriage equality” or Darwinism or climate change, they are paying homage to Lenin’s devious politics by shorthand. They pay homage to it whenever they substitute their opinions of the news for actual reporting of the news. Even the squabbling among journalists recently over whether or not to suspend “conventional reporting” in Trump’s case, or whether front-page stories should declare his misstatements “lies,” is a tacit acknowledgment of that politics. With Lenin, the Christiane Amanpours have no use for the peskiness of precise responses. Just call Trump a “liar,” their attitude goes, and “everyone will understand everything.”

But that demagogic shorthand only works as long as Republican politicians defer to it. For years journalists opined self-servingly under the guise of objectivity and got away it because Republicans were too afraid to shatter that illusion of objectivity. They permitted the media to serve as the arbiter of what qualifies as “mainstream,” “extremist,” “racist,” and so forth, and made sure to stay within the media-determined parameters of any discussion.

Donald Trump has blown up that absurd arrangement and is beating the media at its own game. He labels reporters in the same way that they label him. He upends their dishonest framing of debates by treating them as what they are, liberal partisans. His exchange last week with April Ryan, a correspondent for the American Urban Radio Network, captured that perfectly. She asked him a loaded question not as a neutral reporter but as a water-carrier for the Congressional Black Caucus. So he treated her that way. “I’ll tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting?” the president said to her, after she asked if he would meet with the CBC. “Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?” Of course, they are friends of hers and she was trying to score a partisan point for them. Had Trump not deconstructed that for the audience, her question might have done him damage. Instead, it fell flat and looked unserious.

Reporters are thrown by a president who questions them as aggressively as they question him. And they resent that he refuses to accept as “facts” what is nothing more than their biased interpretation of the facts.

Everything they accuse Trump of is on display in their own coverage. One can only laugh at the eruptions of prissy sanctimony over Trump’s tweet calling reporters an “enemy of the people,” given the invective in which they have indulged over the last year. Having called him a despot and worse, who are they to scold anyone on intemperate language?

From ill-mannered reporters come lectures on manners. From partisans come demands for non-partisanship. Almost all of the complaints of the press can be boiled down to one demand: that its conservative targets unilaterally disarm. We fight, you surrender — that is the media’s idea of civility.

So expect the squeals of the media to grow in proportion to Trump’s exposure of its fraudulence. Bret Stephens and company can pompously say that Trump is an opponent of “objectivity itself.” But all that means is that he rejects their phony claims of objectivity and impedes their partisan wishes. In the end, it just means he is not a chump who is going to let them control politics by passing off liberal propaganda as “news” before which all must genuflect.

Contrary to the whining of Jake Tapper at CNN, last week’s press conference was not a distraction from his governance but an essential component of it. He recognizes that his agenda can only move forward if the people tune out the media’s distortions of it. Were Trump to take the media’s advice, he couldn’t govern. The more he neutralizes the media, the more successful he will be.

If he treats it as an opposition party, that’s because it is one. The fury of the media is the fury of exposed partisans, for whom ruling had once come so easy and now is too hard.

https://spectator.org/trump-is-beating-the-media-at-its-own-game/

IMMIGRATION LAW ENFORCEMENT BEGINS

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IMMIGRATION, MEDIA BIAS

John Kelly, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has issued two memoranda, directed to the relevant federal agencies, that implement the executive orders on immigration that President Trump signed in the first days of his administration. The orders are reproduced below, so you can study them for yourself.

The main thrust of the memoranda is to tell ICE and the other agencies that the nation’s immigration laws are now going to be enforced. It will take time, and it will take more resources; one of the orders directs the hiring of 10,000 new ICE officers and agents. So it will take some time to see how the new enforcement regime plays out. But the intent to resume enforcement of the immigration laws is clear.

The memorandum titled “Enforcemen of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest” explicitly invokes the president’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed:

Congress has defined the Department’s role and responsibilities regarding the enforcement of the immigration laws of the United States. Effective immediately, and consistent with Article II, Section 3 ofthe United States Constitution and Section 3331 of Title 5, United States Code, Department personnel shall faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States against all removable aliens.

Hallelujah. It shouldn’t be news that we now have a president who takes his oath of office seriously, but in view of Barack Obama’s abdication of his constitutional responsibilities, it is news.

The same order abolishes the various categories of immunity that the Obama administration had established:

Except as specifically noted above, the Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement. In faithfully executing the immigration laws, Department personnel should take enforcement actions in accordance with applicable law. In order to achieve this goal, as noted below, I have directed ICE to hire 10,000 officers and agents expeditiously, subject to available resources, and to take enforcement actions consistent with available resources. However, in order to maximize the benefit to public safety, to stem unlawful migration and to prevent fraud and misrepresentation, Department personnel should prioritize for removal those aliens described by Congress in Sections 212(a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(6)(C), 235(b) and (c), and 237(a)(2) and (4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The second order, “Implementing the President’s Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements Policies,” directs that construction of the wall on the Southern border proceed:

Consistent with the President’s Executive Order, the will of Congress and the need to secure the border in the national interest, CBP, in consultation with the appropriate executive departments and agencies, and nongovernmental entities having relevant expertise–and using materials originating in the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law–shall immediately begin planning, design, construction and maintenance of a wall, including the attendant lighting, technology (including sensors), as well as patrol and access roads, along the land border with Mexico in accordance with existing law, in the most appropriate locations and utilizing appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve operational control of the border.

The liberal media have greeted these DHS memoranda much as you would expect. The New York Times headlines, “Trump Details Plans to Deport Millions of Immigrants.” That, I think, remains to be seen.

President Donald Trump has directed his administration to more aggressively enforce the nation’s immigration laws, unleashing the full force of the federal government to find, arrest and deport those in the country illegally, regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes.

That’s a rather melodramatic beginning, apart from the fact that many people believe that violating our immigration laws is a serious crime. The Times packs a lot of dishonesty into the following paragraph:

Documents released Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security revealed the broad scope of the president’s ambitions: to publicize crimes by immigrants;

I can’t find any directive in either memorandum to “publicize crimes by immigrants,” and, in any event, nothing in the orders relates to immigrants. The orders are directed at illegal immigrants. The Times deliberately conflates the two.

…enlist local police officers as enforcers; strip immigrants of privacy rights;

This is truly disgraceful. First, nothing in these memoranda relates to “immigrants.” Only illegal aliens are affected. The issue that one of the memoranda addresses with regard to privacy is the fact that under current policy, victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens may not be able to learn what disposition was made of their cases. This is what the memorandum says:

Criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents. Often, these victims are not provided adequate information about the offender, the offender’s immigration status, or any enforcement action taken by ICE against the offender. Efforts by ICE to engage these victims have been hampered by prior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy extending certain Privacy Act protections to persons other than U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, leaving victims feeling marginalized and without a voice.
***
The Department will no longer afford Privacy Act rights and protections to persons who are neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents. The DHS Privacy Office will rescind the DHS Privacy Policy Guidance memorandum, dated January 7, 2009, which implemented the OHS “mixed systems” policy of administratively treating all personal information contained in DHS record systems as being subject to the Privacy Act regardless of the subject’s immigration status.

The now-revoked Obama administration Policy Guidance directed that the same privacy protections be extended to illegal immigrants as to American citizens, even though the memorandum itself admitted that the governing statute is limited to “a citizen of the United States or a Legal Permanent Resident.” So the Obama administration unjustifiably extended certain privacy rights to illegal aliens, to the detriment of those who were injured by their crimes. The Trump administration has now corrected this injustice. This is what the Times shamefully describes as “strip[ping] immigrants of privacy rights.”

One could go on like this for a long time, but let’s take just one more paragraph of the Times’s cri de cœur:

The new enforcement policies put into practice the fearful speech that Trump offered on the campaign trail…

Trump’s “fearful speech”? What on earth does that mean? This is not just editorializing, but bizarre editorializing.

…vastly expanding the definition of “criminal aliens”…

It doesn’t expand the definition of criminal aliens, it merely reverses an Obama policy (which itself reversed prior policy) so that various portions of the immigration laws will once again be enforced.

…and warning that such people in the country illegally “routinely victimize Americans,” disregard the “rule of law and pose a threat” to people in communities across the U.S. Research shows lower levels of crime among immigrants than among native-born Americans.

Which, of course, tells us nothing about levels of crime among illegal immigrants. Are NY Times reporters so dumb that they think we can’t follow the pea when they confuse legal and illegal immigration?

Actually, there is overwhelming evidence that illegals commit far more than their share of serious crimes. But don’t wait to hear about it in the New York Times.

Here are the memoranda:

17 0220 S1 Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest by John Hinderaker on Scribd

17 0220 S1 Implementing the Presidents Border Security Immigration Enforcement Improvement Policies by John Hinderaker on Scribd

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/02/immigration-law-enforcement-begins.php

The Real Force Chipping Away at Your Right to Speak Your Mind

The Real Force Chipping Away at Your Right to Speak Your Mind
by Jim Geraghty

David French makes a key point about the battle to guarantee Americans’ right to free speech:
I’ve spent a career defending free speech in court, and I’ve never defended a “conservative” like Milo. His isn’t the true face of the battle for American free-speech rights. That face belongs to Barronelle Stutzman, the florist in Washington whom the Left is trying to financially ruin because she refused to use her artistic talents to celebrate a gay marriage. It belongs to Kelvin Cochran, the Atlanta fire chief who was fired for publishing and sharing with a few colleagues a book he wrote that expressed orthodox Christian views of sex and marriage.
Stutzman and Cochran demonstrate that intolerance and censorship strike not just at people on the fringe – people like Milo – but rather at the best and most reasonable citizens of these United States. They’re proof that social-justice warriors seek not equality and inclusion but control and domination.
As odious as they are, campus speech codes and angry rioting leftists are not the biggest threat to most Americans’ free speech. No, the much more common and insidious threat to the average American is their employer’s human resources department freaking out about a social-media post done off the clock. Alexandria Brown suggested the actual threat to an American’s free speech rights is someone else reporting their off-the-clock private social media posts to the employer’s HR department. “The Lives of Others is not a how-to film,” she notes sardonically.
Thankfully, exceptionally few Americans will ever find themselves in the position of Milo Yiannopoulos, facing an angry, violent mob standing between them and a speaking engagement at Berkeley. But a lot of Americans can easily find themselves in the position of Red Sox great and former ESPN commentator Curt Schilling, who woke up one morning to find his employer had decided he was no longer employable as a baseball color analyst because of a Facebook post about transgender men using the women’s bathroom.
The era of social media allows us to communicate all kinds of ideas to audiences we never dreamed of reaching. Thousands of thoughts once expressed only to those within earshot of the barstool, the backyard barbecue, the office water cooler and other casual conversational hangouts can now instantly be transmitted to a global listenership. We haven’t gotten any more extreme, bigoted, controversial, weird, or twisted than generations past; we simply can express thoughts on Twitter or Facebook so all the world can see. Yes, the world would be a better place if people exercised more discretion. Yes, a lot of people have opinions that range from controversial to odious. But some employers, terrified of the social media outrage mobs, now have a wildly itchy trigger finger. Katie Nash, social-media coordinator for Frederick County Public Schools, was fired earlier this year when she corrected a student’s misspelling of “tomorrow.” The school board’s vice president said the tweet “was inappropriate and certainly created a lot of unpleasant responses in terms of other students piling on.”
We’re creeping closer to a society and an economy where holding a sufficiently controversial opinion or making a sufficiently controversial remark makes you unemployable or barely employable. This phenomenon of demanding people be fired for tasteless, dumb, or offensive social media posts inflicts an economic consequence a social “sin.” Yes, there should be consequence, but the consequence should occupy the same realm. Imagining the reverse, a social consequence for bad economic judgment, is absurd. We don’t get socially ostracized for frivolous purchases, overpaying, a tanking stock, or agreeing to attend that timeshare sales pitch. A social action should bring a social reaction – i.e., people responding, “your belief is nonsense.”
This fire-the-controversial impulse dramatically changes the yardsticks for hiring someone to do a job. Schilling’s opinion on transgender bathroom use didn’t really change whether he’s good at announcing a baseball game. But in this new world of social-media outrage mobs, the employer’s criteria stops being, “who can do this job best?” The criteria becomes, “who can do this job best without causing any heartburn, headaches, or potential public relations problems because of their thoughts and opinions expressed outside the workplace?” This is a golden economic era if you’re just barely good enough and thoroughly boring.
Our workplaces are not supposed to be our 24-7 masters. We are not representatives of our companies every waking moment of every day – or at least, this is a new and remarkably high standard to impose on American life. It allows almost no room for the normal human trait of doing sometimes something stupid, particularly when you’re angry or upset. It imposes a lasting consequence for bad judgment usually made in haste.
A key portion of the notion of liberty in the United States was the freedom to hold unorthodox ideas without significant economic consequence. You can and should be able to happily appreciate the services of a barista who believes that crystals have healing powers, but the same belief might trouble you in a neurosurgeon. Your auto mechanic might believe that everything in the world is run by the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergers, but the key question is whether he can figure out what’s making that groaning sound when you start the car. Chances are every great figure in American history had at least one extraordinarily oddball belief. Steve Jobs didn’t wear deodorant, bathe regularly, and would soak his bare feet in the company toilets. Television star Jackie Gleason was obsessed with the occult and parapsychology.
The National Labor Relations Board has issued rulings and guidelines protecting workers from discipline or dismissal for “discussion of wages or working conditions among employees” but not general social-media posts not related to work.
Overcoming this trend will require a couple of wrongful termination lawsuits and American companies willing to say to the outrage mobs, “What our employees think, say, and do on their own time is their own business, and we’re not about to start punishing our employees for their beliefs.”

http://link.nationalreview.com/view/547f91313b35d0210c8b4c075b9w7.actn/998d4190

SHHH: NO ONE TELL MICHELLE ABOUT THE SOCIALIST DIET PLAN

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN SOCIALISM

Obesity is said to be the pre-eminent public health problem in America right now, which is  probably one more reason liberals prefer socialism, and always want to enact legislation regulating our diets. (I predict the school version will be called the “No Child Left With a Big Behind Act.”)

To wit, this news:

Venezuela: 75% of population lost 19 pounds amid crisis

Venezuela’s Living Conditions Survey found that nearly 75 percent of the population lost an average of at least 19 pounds in 2016 due to a lack of proper nutrition amid an economic crisis. . .

Venezuelans are not consuming the 2,000 recommended daily calories needed, the survey said. Venezuela’s extreme poor said they have lost more than 20 pounds. . .

Venezuela is facing a political and economic crisis in which basic goods such as food and medicine are in short supply, unavailable or unaffordable. The United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean predicts Venezuela’s gross domestic product will decrease 4 percent in 2017, while the International Monetary Fund estimates inflation will increase 1,600 percent. . .

The food crisis has also created an education crisis, as more than 1 million children no longer attend school, mostly due to hunger and a lack of public services.

About 30 percent of students who now stay home do not attend school because of water problems at home or on campus, 22 percent do not attend due to school strikes, the survey found.

You can see the appeal for the left. The Spectator says Britain’s Labour Party is inclined to see Venezuela as a model:

Britain under Corbyn? Just look at Venezuela

By Jason Mitchell

Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. Now it is one of the poorest. Venezualans are starving. The farms that President Hugo Chavez expropriated, boasting about the great increase in production that would follow, have failed. Inexperienced management and corruption under both Chavez and the current president, Nicolas Maduro, mean that there is less of each crop each year. Across the country, supermarkets are empty and most ordinary people queue for hours every day just for flour. Many of the animals in Caracas zoo have starved to death, but even those who survive aren’t safe — Venezuelans have taken to raiding the cages to butcher and eat whatever they can find: horses, sheep, pigs. In the wild, they hunt flamingos and anteaters for their meat. Inflation is expected to surpass a mind-blowing 2,200 per cent this year. Yet this is the country that, not so long ago, Jeremy Corbyn held up as a model of social justice.

When Chavez died of cancer on 5 March 2013, Corbyn proposed an early day motion in the House of Commons in which he offered his condolences to Venezuela and acknowledged ‘the huge contribution he made to conquering poverty in his country…. and the way he spoke for the poorest and most marginalised people in Latin America.’

The following day, Corbyn gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he said: ‘Chavez was a very important figure worldwide… because he was prepared to use his position to argue for a different world order.’ Corbyn attended a vigil in London at which he gave a stirring speech about the great man: ‘Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things,’ he said. ‘It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice and it’s something that Venezuela has made a big step towards.’

There’s much more in this piece, but this is enough to kill your appetite I imagine.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/02/shhh-no-one-tell-michelle-about-the-socialist-diet-plan.php

Obama’s Incompetence And Chaos Far Eclipsed What’s Coming From Team Trump

Obama’s Incompetence And Chaos Far Eclipsed What’s Coming From Team Trump

The claims of incompetence are rushing like a torrent from every direction and with such hysteria that you’d think the chaos of Armageddon was upon us.

Many in the media are warning that President Donald Trump is incompetent and doesn’t know what he’s doing. His ignorance, they say, will mean the downfall of the republic. The hysteria is unwarranted and merely part of a Democratic Party campaign to oust the president and derail his agenda.

This isn’t the first president to face claims of incompetence. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes not. Such charges were made against Barack Obama, and most were warranted, coming not only from Republicans but Democrats. In November 2010, Joe Scarborough reported that several Democratic senators had told him they thought Obama was out of his league.

“Democrats in Washington have been horrified by this president’s handling of things for a year and a half now,” Scarborough said. “The top Democrats in the United States Senate have all told me individually, ‘This guy has no idea what he’s doing.’”

Sound familiar?

We Also Saw an Employee Exodus

The Guardian also lamented during the same period that the exodus of employees from the Obama administration was a bad sign.

Political analysts attribute the attrition rate to exhaustion, but Republican opponents blame disarray inside the White House, with an insular team responsible for too many policy failures.

In a blog on the Politico website, Alvin Felzenberg, the presidential historian and author of The Leaders We Deserved, writes: ‘These departures are a reflection of Obama’s leadership style. Why he has such a difficult time earning and retaining the loyalties of people outside his circle of intimates is anyone’s guess.’

So Trump isn’t the only president with a trusted inner circle. The difference is, however, that Trump has stepped outside that circle, meeting with people from all stripes and political parties, industries, and interests. Obama didn’t do that. Yet Trump is the bungling idiot? I don’t think so.

In June 2010, Democrat Mort Zuckerman, who voted for Obama in 2008, wrote at U.S. News that the “world sees Obama as incompetent and amateur.”

The reviews of Obama’s performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America’s role in the world.

Even in Britain, for decades our closest ally, the talk in the press—supported by polls—is about the end of the ‘special relationship’ with America. French President Nicolas Sarkozy openly criticized Obama for months, including a direct attack on his policies at the United Nations. Sarkozy cited the need to recognize the real world, not the virtual world, a clear reference to Obama’s speech on nuclear weapons. When the French president is seen as tougher than the American president, you have to know that something is awry. Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama’s visions. Relations with the Chinese leadership got off to a bad start with the president’s poorly-organized visit to China, where his hosts treated him disdainfully and prevented him from speaking to a national television audience of the Chinese people. The Chinese behavior was unprecedented when compared to visits by other U.S. presidents.

Note how Zuckerman was bothered that Putin opposed Obama’s visions. Yet Democrats today (and too many Republicans) think Putin’s reported embrace of Trump’s vision is something to fear. So which is it, Democrats? Do you want to work with Russia or not?

Zuckerman saw Obama as a failure in other ways outside foreign policy. “He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader.”

The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty. . . .

Strategic decisions go well beyond being smart, which Obama certainly is. They must be based on experience that discerns what works, what doesn’t—and why. This requires experienced staffing, which Obama and his top appointees simply do not seem to have.

Even more scathing was liberal extraordinaire Gore Vidal with this evaluation of Obama that same year: “I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic. Everything we had been saying about racial integration was vindicated, but he’s incompetent. He will be defeated for re-election. It’s a pity because he’s the first intellectual president we’ve had in many years, but he can’t hack it. He’s not up to it. He’s overwhelmed. And who wouldn’t be? The United States is a madhouse.”Vidal called Obama a “kid” who has never “heard a gun fired in anger.” The president is “absolutely bowled over by generals, who tell him lies and he believes them,” Vidal continued. “He’s not ready for prime time and he’s getting a lot of prime time on his plate at once.” Hold your horses! Generalslied to Obama? But I thought that only happened to Trump.

‘Amateur Hour at the White House’

Even the Washington Post had to admit all was not well in Obama world when they reported that the White House wasn’t ready for conflicts over policy: “President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.”

Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics was “stunned” that Obama “would be caught off guard by this,” adding that his “lack of foresight” was “absolutely inexcusable.” “How could they not have anticipated this?” Cost asked. “How could they possibly have been surprised that the left and right flanks of the party would not see eye to eye?”

Seems like things haven’t changed that much, at least rhetorically. “But Trump is worse!” many might claim. Yet that isn’t true at all. What’s worse is the way it’s being reported and repeated. The claims of incompetence are rushing like a torrent from every direction and with such hysteria that you’d think the chaos of Armageddon was upon us.

Paul Krugman refers to the “staggering ignorance of Trump and says we have “an intellectual vacuum at the top” where “ignorance is strength.” Therefore, we must “be afraid, be very afraid.” Dana Milbankclaims that “competence questions arise daily,” plaguing the White House at every turn.

CNBC predicts, as if it has a crystal ball, that “White House tumult threatens to derail Trump’s broad agenda.” Never mind that these same people were constantly wrong about Trump throughout the campaign. But the “incompetence of Trump” fits nicely into their effort to undermine that agenda. As John Harwood writes, “Chaos within the Trump White House has placed a new hurdle in front of Republicans’ goals of enacting health care and tax reform this year.”

They only wish. This is the goal of the mainstream media today: derail Trump’s agenda and hopefully Trump himself either through impeachment or defeat in 2020. We shouldn’t be surprised by Democrats engaging in such propaganda, but what about Republicans? I hear too many of them echoing the Left.

It’s Trump Against the World Again

They might think they’re being principled and objective. They’re not. They’re useful idiots. Trump is not the first president to undergo difficulties in transition. As I’ve stated, Obama faced the same critiques. Trump, however, is getting it from all sides. He’s being undermined and attacked by the media, Hollywood, Congress, the administrative state, Democrats, intelligence officers, and even his own party.

We need to stand united against the leftist tyrannical aggression cloaking itself in the revolutionary garbs of resistance.

There are forces at work today that Obama never even imagined would raise a finger against him. The cultural and political Left want to delegitimize and defeat the Republican Party, conservatism, and all who are committed to the Constitution as originally written. They want to transform our nation into a collectivist nightmare that rejects our principles of liberty and equality before the law. They will lie, cheat, steal, and punch to achieve their goals.

Republicans throwing Trump under the bus because of pride, lust for power, hurt feelings, or irrational fear will do more to put our republic in jeopardy than any cabinet resignation or travel ban on foreign nationals from hostile regions ever could.

Any Republican, conservative, or American who really cares about freedom and preserving the Constitution needs to stop with the knee-jerk reactions and parroting of the Left. If they continue, they need to be called out and challenged. They need to stop the rhetoric and join the Right in its fight against the Left’s cultural and political Marxism.

We need to stand united against the leftist tyrannical aggression cloaking itself in the revolutionary garbs of resistance or even the preening dress of so-called principles. The Right needs to remember who the real enemy is, and it’s not the current president of the United States.

Denise C. McAllister is a journalist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter @McAllisterDen.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/20/obamas-incompetence-chaos-far-eclipsed-whats-coming-team-trump/