For the love of God, why can't Democrats leave the Little Sisters of the Poor alone?

by Nicole Russell 

The Little Sisters of the Poor are heading back to court to defend themselves against the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services mandate to provide contraception, yet again. In an unusual political move, Pennsylvania and California sued the Little Sisters, demanding the same group who won at the Supreme Court inZubik v. Burwell provide contraceptives in their state.

In early October, HHS issued a new rule that protects religious non-profits like the Little Sisters of the Poor from providing anything like contraception that would violate their religious beliefs. In a press release, Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket and lead attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor, said: “Sadly Josh Shapiro and Xavier Becerra [attorneys general in Pennsylvania and California, respectively] think attacking nuns is a way to score political points. These men may think their campaign donors want them to sue nuns, but our guess is most taxpayers disagree. No one needs nuns in order to get contraceptives, and no one needs these guys reigniting the last administration’s divisive and unnecessary culture war.”

In a phone call to media, Rienzi took the time to further explain the situation, saying that once Little Sisters won their right to be excepted from the mandate in Burwell, “That should have been the end of a long and unnecessary and divisive culture war. We have a lot of problems, but figuring out how to deliver contraceptives without nuns should not be one of them. ... Even the federal government, under the Obama administration, openly admitted they had many other ways to deliver contraceptives without nuns, and they didn’t need every employer to do it.”

On the call, I asked how the states were even able to sue the organization, given the Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter. Rienzi said it was merely “political grandstanding.” In a follow-up email, Rienzi explained “This is a pretty unusual situation. It’s similar to a collateral attack — filing a second lawsuit to challenge what has already been decided elsewhere. The protection is, and should be, to let the people from the old lawsuit intervene and defend their rights in the new one.”

Al Franken should skip the ethics probe and resign over sexual misconduct

Watch Full Screen

Let’s hope for the Little Sisters' sake, these frivolous lawsuits end swiftly and decisively so they can continue their good work.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator's Young Journalist Award.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/for-the-love-of-god-why-cant-democrats-leave-the-little-sisters-of-the-poor-alone/article/2641591

Race Relations in Today’s America

By Joe Ragonese

Race relations in America today are worse today than in nearly five decades. But, they are only a symptom of a much deeper problem.  In a conversation with an African-American that I know, I learned just how bad, and deep, the problem is.  This man, whom we will call ‘Pete’ for this article, is an ex-police officer, a college educated man, who is not a racist, nor a bigot.  Although, he often votes Democrat, he has voted for Republicans, and intends to do so in the next Governor’s race in Illinois.

He believes in right and wrong, does not think Obama was good for the African-American community; in fact, he believes that Obama’s policies hurt Blacks.  He understands that economic progress is the only way to aid the lower black community, and hopes that President Trump’s policies will cause an easing of their hardships.  Although not a Trump fan, he wishes that the President can bring back the economy.  He is not a hard leftist who only hopes the worst for Trump.

Understanding Pete’s open mindedness on most issues, this writer was shocked, and saddened, at the outcome of a conversation about Black Lives Matter and police and other shootings dealing with black men.

After a lengthy conversation dealing with a multitude of issues, the issue of Black Lives Matter arose.  He believes that everyone supporting BLM are merely kind people who see a problem with the unwarranted killing of innocent, unarmed, black men.  I could not let his statements go unanswered.

I called BLM a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen police officers across the country, and the ambush shootings of dozens of others.  As proof, I told him that the founders of the organization, three lesbian females, espouse communist beliefs and support for the New Black Panther Party, who wants blacks to kill whites, especially police officers of any color, and demand a complete separation of the races.

Pete was flabbergasted at my assessment of BLM, stating that everyone he knows who supports the organization does not feel that way.  He said that he never read or heard anything about BLM supporting chants like “Kill the police, kill whites,” or “pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon.”  Of course he went on to cite CNN news and NBC news as his sources.

The wonder of the modern age is that a smartphone is also a mini computer.  I pulled up BLM’s charter, with the statements above written in their ‘her-story.’  As the founders are also feminist, they cannot phantom the thought of correctly spelling history.  Pete glanced at thedocument and quickly changed the subject.

He brought up the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida.  Pete vehemently felt that Martin should not have been killed by a vigilante (whom he called George Zimmerman, who was a neighbor watchman, not a vigilante) for simply wearing a hoodie.  Again, I could not allow false facts to go unanswered.

I pointed out that Martin was not walking on the street or near it, rather on private property, next to the houses, in the shadows, while wearing that hoodie to mask his features.  Pete had never heard what I said before.  I quoted one of his news sources, NBC, who excused Martin’s behavior stating that it was raining and Martin was merely trying to use the eaves on the roofs to keep the rain off of him.

To which, Pete than said that that young man shouldn’t have died for simply walking through a gated community.  I pointed out that he knew no one in this gated community, and stated that he was going to his mother’s house in another housing development, not far away.  Pete completely ignored the facts that the behavior on Martin’s part were not normal (after all, Pete was at one time a police officer and would have questioned Martin himself if he had seen like behavior), and as a neighborhood watchman, Zimmerman rightfully questioned Martin on what he was doing and where he was going.  Zimmerman then called the police, who advised him to back off and await patrol officers; which he did.

But Martin, by the way, not that cute skinny kid in his eighth grade graduation picture that was the only one shown by the media, but the over six foot, muscled thug that he was, chose not to let the slight against him go unanswered.  (Martin was on the phone with a girl at this time and the start of his attack, and the fact that he wasn’t going to let it go was used as a part of the defense evidence to exonerate Zimmerman.)

He attacked Zimmerman, gained an immediate advantage, took him to the ground, and kept smashing his head onto the macadam roadway.  The aggressiveness, the thug like behavior, and the pummeling that Zimmerman was undertaking, led him to legitimately fear for his life; and he pulled his legally carried concealed weapon, and shot Martin once.  Martin died of that wound.

Based on these facts, a jury found that Zimmerman acted reasonably and lawfully, and even the full weight of the Obama DOJ could not find any evidence to contradict the evidence and testimony.  Martin’s actions caused Zimmerman’s reaction and Trayvon suffered the consequences of his bad behavior and decisions.  Martin did not deserve to die, but it was his own actions that cost him his life.

Pete’s reaction was shocking, he demanded to know where I heard any of that, and when I told him that it is a matter of record, he said that everyone knows that people change their testimony to save themselves.  When I pointed out that each point was corroborated by independent witnesses and other evidence, he said that he didn’t want to hear anymore.  As I used my phone to bring up the testimony, Pete turned and walked away, saying that he didn’t want to see it.

And therein lies the cusp of the problem, people are not willing to listen to facts, they only want to believe what fits their own narrative.  Whether it’s race relations, or man-made global warming, or even a person’s sex, there are those who will not be swayed by facts.

Race relations in America today were heightened by Obama’s anti-white hatred and bigotry, to the point that otherwise reasonable people cannot openly discuss race without causing friction.  It is a symptom of the divide within this nation, one so deep that unless compromise and reasonableness once again become the standard of civilized behavior, we are doomed to repeat the conflicts that resulted in our two civil wars, the battle for independence and the battle to abolish slavery.

In each case compromise and reason were shunned for taking a stand on the issues that each person believed to be important to them.  It led to armed conflict and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.  The conversation between Pete and this writer symbolizes that exact stand today.  Neither of us was willing to simply allow the other to speak their minds, we both felt compelled to tell our side of the story; no matter who was right or who was wrong.

The state of race relations in America today are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the deep problems facing all of us.  Our civilization is at stake.  After each of our two civil wars, this nation was irrevocably changed; it will be again if the state of our nation does not make a dramatic change soon.  What America will look like after the next civil war is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be what it is like today, and certainly not what it was like in the tranquil 1950’s.

http://usdefensewatch.com/2017/11/race-relations-in-todays-america/

HOW DEMOCRATS TURNED ON CHARLES MCCULLOUGH

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, CLINTON EMAILS, DEMOCRATS, INTELLIGENCE

In January 2016, in response to an inquiry, Charles McCullough III, the Intelligence Community inspector general, informed the Republican leadership on the Senate intelligence and foreign affairs committees that emails beyond the “Top Secret” level passed through Hillary Clinton’s unsecured personal server. Democrats immediately responded by trying to intimidate McCullough.

Scott documented this effort in a January 25, 2016 post that highlighted threatening comments by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. The contemptible Schiff told Chris Wallace:

I think the inspector general does risk his reputation. And once you lose that as inspector general, you’re not much good to anyone. So I think the inspector general has to be very careful here.

McCullough is no longer in government. Thus, he is free to talk about the campaign Democrats launched against him.

McCullough tells Fox News’ Catherine Herridge that he, his family, and his staffers faced an intense backlash from Clinton allies, and that the campaign put out word that it planned to fire him if the Democratic presidential nominee won the 2016 election.

McCullough’s January 2016 statement was a bombshell. In August 2015, the Clinton campaign had said:

Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. When information is reviewed for public release, it is common for information previously unclassified to be upgraded to classified.

The classification review, which was only beginning when Team Clinton pooh-poohed the matter, did not bear out its statement. As McCullough now says, “there was an effort. . .certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here.”

Once McCullough exposed the Clinton campaign’s statement as false, his fate was sealed in any Clinton administration. He says the he was told “in no uncertain terms, by a source directly from the campaign, that we [he and one of his investigators] would be the first two to be fired — with [Clinton’s] administration.”

That’s the campaign. What about congressional Democrats? We’ve already discussed Adam Schiff’s thuggish response. McCullough also mentions a confrontation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Not surprisingly, there was also resistance from the State Department, especially from Patrick Kennedy, Hillary’s loyal servant. State Department management didn’t want us there,” McCullough told Fox News. “We knew we had had a security problem at this point. We had a possible compromise.”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is the reaction of James Clapper, then the Director of National Intelligence. Clapper, who had recommended McCullough for the inspector general job, was disturbed — as any rational official would be — by the findings as to what Clinton’s email server contained. He told McCullough: “This is extremely reckless.”

However, according to McCullough, Clapper also mentioned something about “the campaign [having] heartburn about that.” And McCullough says that after the meeting with Clapper, his team was marginalized.

Clapper, it seems, was more concerned about the Clinton campaign than someone in his position should have been. Perhaps he didn’t want to be the third person fired in a Clinton administration.

McCullough is one of the few people to have viewed the 22 Top Secret Clinton emails deemed too classified to release under any circumstances. He says, “There was a very good reason to withhold those emails … there would have been harm to national security.” Indeed, “sources and methods, lives and operations” could have been put at risk.

Asked what would have happened to him if he had done what Clinton did, McCullough responded: “I’d be sitting in Leavenworth right now.”

Finally, I want to emphasize, as I did back in January 2016, that McCullough is hardly an anti-Democrat partisan. He was nominated by President Obama in 2011 to be the first inspector general for the 16 intelligence agencies and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously confirmed him that October. The full Senate agreed by unanimous consent in November.

Democrats supported the nomination enthusiastically. Feinstein, who later turned on him, described McCullough as “well-qualified.” “He has long experience conducting investigations both as an inspector general and a FBI agent,” she said.

Other Democrats agreed. “We’ve heard good things about you and I’m looking forward to supporting you when Chair Feinstein moves ahead with the vote,” Sen. Ron Wyden declared. “You clearly have been able to operate in both the civilian and the military sectors which will, I think, prove to be a very valuable set of experiences, if you’re confirmed,” said Sen. Mark Udall.

These plaudits were merited, as is clear from his biographical blurb, a good portion of which was cited by the Obama administration when it nominated him.

But the Democrats turned on a dime the moment that McCullough, in the course of just doing his job, made statements that didn’t serve the interests of their pre-selected candidate for president.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/11/how-democrats-turned-on-charles-mccullough.php

A VISUAL LESSON IN ENERGY DENSITY

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN ENERGY POLICY

I normally try to stay away from posting complicated charts and graphs, for the simple reason that they are hard to decode. But the chart below, from Max Roser, the project director of the terrific “Our World in Data” site housed at Oxford University, is just too brilliant not to pass along. It shows in two panels how pathetic is the energy contribution of wind and solar power, and why more dense forms of electricity prevail in the real world. The neat thing about the chart is that it matches up electricity production with demand—specifically how many people the specific source can supply. If you take this in for a while, it is absolutely devastating to the green energy misfits.

You will probably want to click to enlarge this chart, but notice the salient fact that the right-hand side of the chart is blown up from the tiny lower-right hand corner of the left side of the chart—I’ve added a circle to highlight this:

Roser and co-author Hannah Ritchie offer a complete explanation here, but these two sections stand out:

The labeled horizontal lines on these charts aim to give a sense of perspective on electricity consumption levels across the world. For example, in the chart below a very large hydro or nuclear plant could produce enough electricity to meet the demands of 100 million people in Ghana; a large hydro, nuclear, or coal plant could provide for 10 million average global citizens, and average-sized plant would meet demands of ten million in Brazil.

The left-hand chart is dominated by hydropower, nuclear, coal and geothermal production. The output of onshore and offshore wind, and solar photovoltaic (PV) farms currently lie below 10,000 MWh per day, which you see at the bottom of the left-hand chart. The right-hand chart provides a magnification of the bottom section of this chart, extending only from zero to 10,000 MWh. Just as in the left-hand chart, the range of daily electricity outputs from wind and solar PV farms are shown by the arrows, with specific farms represented by stars. Again, we have provided a sense of perspective on how this relates to electricity consumption needs across a range of countries using the labeled horizontal lines.

 http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/11/a-visual-lesson-in-energy-density.php

The battle for the lands of the caliphate

The battle for the lands of the caliphate

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/the-battle-for-the-lands-of-the-caliphate/

Clifford D. May

Soon after taking office, President Trump ordered his national security advisers to provide “a complete strategic review of our policy toward the rogue regime in Iran.” Last month, based on that review, he announced a new strategy “to confront the Iranian regime’s hostile actions,” including its development of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, its support for terrorists, and its neo-imperialist aggressions. This month that strategy is facing its first serious test.

Ironically, it’s the success of Mr. Trump’s policy of expeditiously defeating the Islamic State that has brought matters to a head so soon. The territories being liberated from the Islamic State are coveted by the Islamic Republic of Iran. You don’t have to be Carl von Clausewitz to grasp the consequences should those territories be surrendered to that regime.

Iran’s rulers are global revolutionaries and jihadis — that’s how they describe themselves. Their immediate goal is to establish what Jordan’s King Abdullah II has called a “Shia Crescent” in the Middle East.

They intend to become so powerful — and so dangerous — that no Iraqi government will dare defy them. Bashar Assad, the mass-murdering dictator they’ve rescued, is to serve as their obedient Syrian satrap. Hezbollah, their terrorist foreign legion, has been tightening its grip on Lebanon. Yemen’s Houthi rebels depend on Tehran for funding, arms and, presumably, instruction.

What the theocrats in Tehran plan to do next is no mystery. They will increasingly threaten the pro-American nations of the region: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Israel among them.

And then there’s the question of nuclear weapons. Are Iranian scientists working on that capability now? We don’t know because Iran’s military facilities are not open to international inspectors — yet you don’t have to be Gen. George S. Patton to suspect that military facilities might be a convenient place to develop military weapons.

In any case, under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal concluded by President Obama without congressional approval, Iran also has a “patient pathway” to an industrial nuclear weapons capacity. The JCPOA’s restrictions on Iran begin to “sunset” in less than a decade.

At this moment, the most strategic territory in Syria is Deir Ezzor province, which contains large oil and gas reserves and is adjacent to the Iraqi border. If Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is allowed to seize Deir Ezzor, it will have effectively established a land bridge through the northern Middle East from Tehran all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Not for more than a thousand years has a Persian empire controlled those lands.

Preventing that outcome will require a continuing American commitment to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish and Arab warriors that has proven its mettle in battle against the Islamic State. The SDF will need funding, American air power and the assistance of U.S. Special Forces if it is to prevail over Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as Iranian-backed Shia militias (of many nationalities) and Hezbollah fighters.

Such a commitment carries risks. But so does hesitation and vacillation. My colleague, John Hannah, senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, reports that Iran’s rulers have been urging the SDF to “cut its own deal with the Assad regime and its backers now rather than wait to confront them alone after the United States abandons the battlefield — as, they insist, it inevitably will.”

Ahmad Khalid Majidyar, a fellow at the Middle East Institute, wrote last week that Iranian officials are now saying that “the next phase of the conflict in Syria is for the ‘resistance forces’ to confront the U.S. military and its local allies.”

It would be useful for President Trump to communicate that while he would prefer to settle conflicts peacefully and diplomatically, the days when Iran’s rulers and their proxies could threaten, intimidate and even slaughter Americans with impunity are over.

Mr. Trump’s many critics should at least acknowledge that coming from his lips such words might be credible. President Obama, by contrast, could repeat endlessly that “all options are on the table” and never be taken seriously.

Also true: The current occupant of the White House has assembled a first-rate team of national security advisers who harbor no illusions about America’s sworn enemies. They understand that when Iran’s rulers chant “Death to America!” they are not asking that their “legitimate grievances” be addressed.

They are, instead, articulating an intergenerational project, one intended to reclaim long-lost power for Islam and Iran. The United States, the “Great Satan,” and those smaller but no less satanic nations that look to the U.S. for leadership, represent the main obstacle. You don’t have to be Winston Churchill to recognize that Iran’s rulers cannot be appeased.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, often described in the media as a “moderate,” has stated: “We need to express ‘Death to America’ with action.” The action he has in mind right now: appropriating for Iran the fruits of the victories won by the U.S. and its allies in the fight against the Islamic State.

President Trump has laid out a sensible strategy to contain Iran. The question is whether he and those working for him can successfully implement that strategy before Iran’s rulers establish game-changing facts on the ground.

Confronting enemies is not an agreeable task. But you don’t have to be Sun Tzu to know that it’s preferable to do so when those enemies are weaker rather than stronger. This principle has been violated by Western leaders in the past. President Trump is different from those leaders in many ways. We shall soon learn whether this is one of them.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay. 

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/the-battle-for-the-lands-of-the-caliphate/