Friday, March 18, 2016

Today's important political news and opinion

Dane County sheriff has change of wardrobe, if not change of heart. By M.D. Kittle
Excerpt: Score one for citizen activism. Dane County resident and former Marine Robert Hall seems to have done what the Dane County Ethics Board would not do: make the sheriff follow the law. Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney once again is schilling for another left-of-center state Supreme Court candidate – this time for ultra-liberal appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg is running against conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley.  But this time, Mahoney appears in a campaign ad sans his sheriff’s uniform, gun, badge and county squad car. This time, Mahoney wears a suit and tie – and a small badge pin, for good measure.


We went to the Brocach Irish Pub in Madison for St. Pat's, and heard a local group Currach. We shared a Scotch Egg, Bonnie had corned Beef and I had Shepherd's Pie. She had a shandy and I had a Guinness for my one drink of the day. I knew one of the pipers so he played the Marine's Hymn for us. Couple at the next table said they won a Brocach Gift Card at a Bernie Sander's event. I said since they had one and I didn't, in the spirit of Bernie they should split it with me. They didn't get it. ~Bob

The Fight for the GOP Nomination

Worth Reading: I Have Signed No Oath of Loyalty to Donald Trump or the GOP. By Erick Erickson 
Excerpt: I have signed no oath of loyalty to Donald Trump or the GOP. The fact is very simple — Trump needs my vote. I do not need Trump, nor will I give Donald Trump my vote. I am a conservative. I believe in limited governments, free markets, and free people. Donald Trump does not. His values do not line up with my values. It is not an issues issue. I fundamentally disagreed with Mitt Romney and John McCain on issues, but I did not think either man a moral cretin. I find Donald Trump to be a man of low moral character and low integrity. Essentially, Donald Trump is gold plated sleaze and I have no use for him at all ever. If that means Hillary Clinton becomes President of the United States, Donald Trump’s supporters can carry that burden. Everyone saw it coming except for them. If they wish to transform the Republican Party into something it is not nor ever has been, then I will part ways with the GOP. (I will not vote for a life-long liberal with an aversion to transparency, a contempt for the truth and a past record of shady dealings. Not Hillary and Not Trump. Not ever. I'm a lifelong Republican. I was a volunteer for Nixon at 14, and for Goldwater at 18 before joining the Marines in August, 1964 and headed to Vietnam. In 1968, I was a college student and supported Nixon. In 1972, I graduated from College in June and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in November, defeating a Democrat incumbent by nine votes out of 60,000 in a 4-1 Democrat district, last won by a Republican in 1938. I was reelected four times, even being nominated by both parties in 1976. In 1982, I was the Republican whip when I decided to retire undefeated. I have campaigned for many Republicans since. I have never voted for a Democrat for President. I will not vote for a life-long liberal this year, not Hillary, not Bernie, not Bloomberg (if he runs) and certainly not Trump. It looks like Trump may get the nomination, which I think guarantees President Hillary. I hope some conservative runs third party so that those of us with conservative principles will have someone to vote for. Otherwise I will write someone in. ~Bob)

Interesting: The Rise of Trump. By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt
Excerpt: From about 2009 to early 2015, to be praised in conservative media, you had to be indisputably conservative. Even a longtime record of voting conservatively didn’t protect you if you were seen as flinching in a tough fight. Mike Castle? Unacceptable! Mitch McConnell? Sellout! John Boehner? Worthless! Thad Cochran? Everything that’s wrong with the Senate! Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan? Useless squishes! Then in mid-2015, along comes Trump, with his long history of donating to the Democrats, support for Planned Parenthood, affirmative action, gun control, and a national health-care system, even friendship with Al Sharpton . . . and some of the biggest names on television and radio are perfectly fine with him.

Trump Appears To Have Heavily Plagiarized Op-Ed From Carson
Excerpt: An op-ed penned this month by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and published online appears to be blatantly plagiarized from an article written days earlier under former rival Ben Carson’s name, The Daily Caller has determined. The similar op-eds were written on the topic of America’s territories and commonwealths.  Both pieces appear under the by-lines of the candidates.

Trump: The disunity candidate. By Jennifer Rubin 

Trump Voters Begin Arguing Against Their Data. By Erick Erickson
Excerpt: Those of us who were skeptical of Trump could not comprehend that voters were so angry they would align with a man who actually has profited from the system the voters hate. But many of Trump’s voters are perfectly fine with Trump as a flawed vessel so long as he burns Washington to the ground, which they are convinced he will do. Ask a dozen Trump voters why they support Trump and you will get a dozen different answers. But each will end with a rebuke to Washington. The problem now, as Trump appears more and more likely to be the Republican nominee, is again the data. This time it is not Trump skeptics arguing about the data. It is Trump supporters doing so. They find themselves in the ironic position of arguing that the very same data set that showed Trump’s rise also shows he cannot beat Hillary Clinton. They want the first half of the data to be true, while hoping the other half of the very same data is false. The data does not work that way. The polls that showed Trump winning the Republican nomination also show that he cannot beat Clinton. In nineteen of the twenty past polls, Trump consistently trailed Clinton by around eight points.

Statement From Conservatives Against Trump. By Erick Erickson 
Excerpt: We are a group of grassroots conservative activists from all over the country and from various backgrounds, including supporters of many of the other campaigns. We are committed to ensuring a real conservative candidate is elected. We believe that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump, a Hillary Clinton donor, is that person. We believe that the issue of Donald Trump is greater than an issue of party. It is an issue of morals and character that all Americans, not just those of us in the conservative movement, must confront. We call for a unity ticket that unites the Republican Party.  If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the party’s nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots.

Worth Reading: WaPo Fact Checker: Trump’s trade rhetoric, stuck in a time warp
Excerpt: Trump’s claims on trade, currency manipulation and manufacturing are either wrong or no longer valid. If he became president, he (and his supporters) would have a rude shock that the problems he complains about are overstated or no longer exist — and solutions such as raising tariffs might backfire. Taken together, his vision is a whopper.
Four Pinocchios

Agree: I Will Never Vote for Trump, and if He Loses to Hillary it Will be His Fault, not Mine. By Leon H. Wolf  
Excerpt: I don’t think I’m breaking any sort of suspenseful silence here when I say, here and now, that I will never vote for Donald Trump. I will not vote for him in the general election against Hillary, and I would not vote for him in a race for dogcatcher. Heck, I would not even vote for him on a reality television show. It’s not the complete lack of ideological compass that does it for me. I’ve happily voted for candidates who showed virtually infinite malleability on the issues – Mitt Romney comes to mind – because I believed they’d stay relatively bought once they got into office. I am a pragmatist with my vote even if I have strong ideological beliefs and high expectations. It isn’t the fact that the guy was an activist liberal Democrat (and repeat donor to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton) until about five minutes ago when he decided to run for President. Definitely, that plays a large part in it, but if I believed his conversion was sincere, I could get over it and pull the lever in the end – if, again, I believed that he would remain reasonably true to conservative principles once he was in office.

Worth reading: Trump Has No Right to Change the Rules. By John Fund
Excerpt: Donald Trump and his backers want to redefine mathematics, and have the GOP nomination handed to him with a plurality of delegates, rather than a majority, being sufficient.  This Wednesday, Trump infamously told CNN: “I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but if we didn’t and we’re 20 votes short, or we’re, you know, a hundred short, and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, ’cause we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say we don’t get it automatically. I think you’d have riots.” Trump added that “if you disenfranchise those people . . . I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before.” Nor is Trump alone. Scottie Nell Hughes, a surrogate for the campaign, had this to say to Wolf Blitzer of CNN: “The majority, the plurality, the people, the majority of the population have voted for Mr. Trump. . . . So you know, riots aren’t necessarily a bad thing if it means we’re fighting the fact that our establishment Republican party has gone corrupt and decided to ignore the voice of the people and ignore the process.” The message to GOP delegates: Do as Trump says or it would be a shame if something happened to this nice party of yours. No self-respecting party can cave into such demands. (I can't decide if BLM is protesting because they want Trump nominated because the polls show him losing badly, or if they are just raising hell because they are stupid and that's what they do. ~Bob)

So far, Trump has won 37% of the GOP Primary Votes.

Excerpt: Can Donald Trump be stopped from winning the Republican nomination? The answer is yes. Despite his big win over Marco Rubio in Florida and his narrow wins over Ted Cruz in Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina, he has not won a majority of delegates yet awarded — 661 at this writing, with several more to be added when Missouri and Illinois congressional-district totals are tabulated. Any candidate needs to get a 1,237-delegate majority to be nominated. To get there, Trump needs to get a majority of delegates in the contests ahead. The March 15 results show how that could happen. For Republican voters who fear that Trump’s nomination would damage the party, the nation, or both, the question is what to do about it.

Worth Reading: Trump’s and Sanders’s dangerous revolt against free trade
Excerpt: Of the many dangerous trends in the 2016 election, the revolt against free trade that has captured both parties could do the most long-term damage. That’s because protectionism would undermine future growth of the U.S. economy and subvert the nation’s role as global leader. Globalization has undeniably hurt some American workers and cost some manufacturing jobs. But there’s strong evidence that trade has benefited the U.S. economy and created whole new industries in which the United States is dominant. That’s the essence of the “creative destruction” that makes a market economy so potent: It relentlessly pushes innovation and change.

"Hang Em High...And Let God Sort It Out"
Excerpt: That lynch mob today would be called "Trumpers"..angry beyond reason, unwilling to listen, or even think...just hang the first people you see and let God sort it out later. I feel sorry for America. The perfect storm of time and events has come along to insure Hillary Clinton's election, more liberal Democrats in the House and a Democratic take-over of the Senate. The Trumpers can then stand at the bar, gaze at their own reflection in the mirror, and stand and watch liberal judges appointed to the courts, a revocation of the 2nd Amendment, amnesty for 30 million illegal Mexicans, eight more years of appeasing radical Muslims, urban Black thug ass-kissing like you've never seen before, higher taxes and Hillary's grand sell out of our military....an institution she hates beyond reason.

General Political News

Worth reading: The buck never stops here. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: In a cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine, President Obama offers astonishing scapegoating for his own foreign policy disasters. According to Obama, the deterioration of the ISIS wasteland that is now Libya was not due to improvident administration bombing followed by a hasty departure, but was largely the fault of others. European allies, the president complained, did not do any follow-up nation-building despite the proximity of Libya. Obama depicts French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a showboater who tried to claim credit for the air campaign in Libya after the U.S. had done the heavy lifting.

Worth Reading: There’s an air of menace about this campaign. By Charles Krauthammer
Excerpt: The immediate conventional wisdom was to blame the disturbance on the “toxic environment” created by Trump. Nonsense. This was an act of deliberate sabotage created by a totalitarian left that specializes in the intimidation and silencing of political opponents. Its pedigree goes back to early-20th-century fascism and communism. It's more recent incarnation has been developed on college campuses, where for years leftists have been taunting, disrupting and ultimately shutting down and shutting out conservative speakers of every stripe — long before Donald Trump. ... This must be distinguished from what happened in Chicago, where Trump was the victim and for which he is not responsible. But he is responsible for saying of a protester at his rally in Las Vegas that “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that . . . ? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.” He told another rally that if they see any protesters preparing to throw a tomato, to “knock the crap out of them . . . I promise you I will pay for the legal fees.” Referring in an interview to yet another protester, Trump said “maybe he should have been roughed up.”

On Guns: LEAKED AUDIO OF HILLARY CLINTON…SPREAD THIS EVERYWHERE!

Disgusted With Government 
Excerpt: Ever wonder why citizens are disgusted with government? The simple answer is that government can no longer accomplish anything! Furthermore, it has diminished the private sector’s ability to produce what is necessary to sustain the standard of living this country has grown accustomed to. If you are disgusted with government it is likely because you feel you are getting less for what it demands from you and paying more for it. The debt piled up represents obligations beyond those paid for. The output from the ruling class has never been less and never cost more.

Obama's Gun Control: Fast & Furious guns tracked to police killings, 'El Chapo' hideout, ATF confirms
Excerpt: The weapons from a botched U.S. firearms investigation are cropping up in anti-cartel operations in Mexico, a Justice Department summary issued Tuesday confirmed.  According to a report compiled for two Republican congressional committee chairmen, a WASR-10 rifle purchased six years before in the U.S. as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Operation Fast and Furious was one of three rifles used in a July 27 attack in the town of Valle de Zaragoza that left three Mexican police officers dead.  Another weapon tied to the operation was uncovered in the hideout where Sinaloa Cartel drug leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, was arrested in January. (Interesting that Fast and Furious gun update on Fox Latino versus regular Fox News.....Like the mainstream US doesn't need to know...?  Do you think Obama can wipe some more onion/mentholatum under his eye and cry a bit more? --Barb)

First-Grade Teachers In Durham Enroll Kids In Black Lives Matter March
Excerpt: Central Park School for Children in DurhamNorth Carolina has enrolled grade-school students in a “Black Lives March and Rally” scheduled for March 17, 2016. The teachers can opt-in or opt-out their classes, but parents have not been given a choice...Ms. Bernal-Martinez describes herself as a “Radical Queer Progressive Educator” and “white-passing Xicana.” (Since when is St. Patrick's Day a day for BLM demonstrators? --Barb)

Worth Reading: Let’s Resurrect The Federalist Party. We need a new political party that restrains the federal government in favor of more local solutions. Call it the Federalist Party. By Paul David Miller
Excerpt: There is a blame game afoot about whose fault Donald Trump is. Some blame Trump on the inner demons of the Right—Robert Kagan calls him the Republican Party’s Frankenstein monster. Republicans voted for him, and conservative media enabled him, the natural result of years of obstructionism, conspiracy theories, and ideological fervor. Others blame the Left for provoking a backlash against their extremist agenda—against political correctnessidentity politicssoftness on terrorism, and more (in December I weighed in to explain “How the Left Created Donald Trump”). Of course, both sides are right, which is a perfect illustration of why it is time for a new political movement. It is time to resurrect the Federalist Party.

Love the Quote: Homeowner Shoots, Kills Teen Burglary Suspect
Excerpt: Relatives said they don’t believe Johnson stole anything from the home but detectives would not confirm that. “You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood,” said Harris. “You have to understand… how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.” Police said the homeowner is cooperating with detectives and was taken to a police station for questioning.

Sen. Ron Johnson: Smear job on Rebecca Bradley part of ‘nasty, vicious’ time in politics. By M.D. Kittle 
Excerpt: A 2013 Gallup Poll found 64 percent of Americans would not like their child to make politics a career. Is it any wonder when they see the sleaze peddled by liberal state Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg and her left-wing friends in her scorched earth campaign to beat conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley? “If you ever ask yourself the question, how come we don’t have more good people running for public office, go no further than to take a look at what has been happening to Rebecca Bradley,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, said.

The Senate Should Suggest This Supreme Court Nominee Instead. The Senate should take its advise and consent duties seriously. That means suggesting a far better Supreme Court nominee than Merrick Garland.
Excerpt: Republicans should stop being reactive in the face of the progressive Democratic Party for a change and instead take a page out of Mike Tyson’s playbook and punch the Left in the mouth first. Politics and ideology dictate that the time is ripe for the GOP to turn the table on the Democrats and use their advisory prerogative under Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution to do something bold, even if only symbolic: Push for the appointment of Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the Supreme Court. While the president is singularly responsible for appointing Supreme Court justices, nothing precludes the Senate from using its advisory power to suggest its own favored nominees.

Melissa Click: What would our world be like if no one ever took a chance?
So you think you should be absolved of your actions because you were confused and you "took a chance" to stand against the free speech rights of others and call for force to remove that person and step on their rights? Are some people's rights more important than others? Who are you to decide who has free speech rights, and who has to be denied them? Worse, as a "Media Studies scholar" you should already know that the right to free speech is protected for everyone not just those whom you agree with. Your actions spoke eloquently about your point of view when you called for "muscle" to deny someone else their rights. Much more eloquently than you could possibly write here. You're a fraud Melissa, and you deserve all the scorn you receive for your actions. --George

‘Making A Murderer’ Displays Prejudice, Alright, But Not The One You’ve Heard. Making a Murderer’ indeed uncovers social prejudice, not of Avery’s neighbors against his poverty, but rather prejudice against rural communities and the white working class. By Christopher Jackson
Excerpt: “Steven Avery went to jail because his neighbors are racists.” So some would have us believe. This accusation is absurd (Avery is white, as are almost all of his neighbors), but it exemplifies the social prejudice uncovered by the Netflix docuseries “Making a Murderer.” "Making a Murderer” tells the story of Steven Avery of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. In 1985 Avery was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault, only to be exonerated in 2003 by improved DNA testing and through the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Two years later Avery was behind bars, this time for the murder of Teresa Halbach, for which he was found guilty in 2007. (How about "The Making of Liberal Icons." We could do Ira Einhorne, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski.
I think I've just discovered LIBERAL PRIVILEGE! --Tom H.)

Worth Reading: Why The Left Is On A Never-Ending Witch Hunt. Leftism always identifies some group as the source of all problems in society, some class that makes all mankind choke. By George Fields
Excerpt: I say newest, because “white people” are surely not the first. Rather, it is innate to leftism to always identify some group as the source of all problems in society, some class that makes all mankind choke. For, you see, leftism is nothing but one unending witch hunt. (The masters of the super-state must always have an enemy to mobilize the masses to its support. for Hitler it was the Jews. For Stalin, the "rich" Kulak peasants. And so it goes. ~Bob)

Interesting: When Liberals Hate Almonds. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: By the beginning of 2016, there were over 1 million acres in California planted with almonds—now the largest crop in the state. To get an idea of how much acreage that is, imagine a single swath of orchard, running north to south from San Francisco to San Jose, and east to west from the 101 freeway to the Pacific Ocean. Currently, Californians are witnessing the most radical shift in croplands in their entire agricultural history, a change fraught with misunderstanding, controversy, and cultural and economic consequences. What caused the frantic rush to convert irrigated farmland to almond orchards?

Worth Reading: Blocking Garland Means Danger for Conservatives. By Jack Goldsmith
Excerpt: Republicans may be right to fear a Left-leaning justice, but they're wrong to leave Scalia's legacy to Trumpian chance One unmistakable sign of the stellar reputation of Merrick Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, is the praise he received from the President’s most conservative critics. ... And yet as Brookings Senior Fellow Benjamin Wittes noted, Republicans should ask themselves whether it will “play well … to block one of America’s finest jurists in order to hold the seat open for Donald Trump to fill.” Even with the Trump wild card—who knows whom a President Trump would nominate?—Republicans think it will play better than any alternative in the short term. But they are overlooking longer-term dangers. A Republican presidential victory at this point seems unlikely. If Trump is the nominee, he will become the face of Scalia’s jurisprudence and its main though ill-informed defender in an election where Republicans invited a judgment from the American people on Scalia’s work. By turning an election they will probably lose into a referendum on Scalia’s jurisprudence, and by allowing that jurisprudence to be linked to Trumpism (as Hillary Clinton will surely do), Republicans threaten to tarnish Scalia’s legacy and undermine the legitimacy of conservative jurisprudence for a generation or longer.

Hillary: ‘I Think We’ve Done A Really Good Job Securing The Border’
Excerpt: Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the U.S border with Mexico is secure and those who think otherwise “aren’t paying attention.” “I think we’ve done a really good job securing the border,” said the former secretary of state in an interview with Phoenix’s KTAR.... In the lead-up to Arizona’s Tuesday primary, Hillary has been airing Spanish language ads attacking Donald Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Not a citizen?  No problem.  Have benefits and vote Democratic. --Barb)

Reid Silent On Baffling Decision To Block Bipartisan IG-Empowering Bill
Excerpt: Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid refuses to say why for months he has blocked a bipartisan bill designed to ensure inspectors general access all of the official documents they need to fight waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. (Show me your shocked face. --Barb)

Primary Turnout Means Nothing For The General Election. By Harry Enten
Excerpt: But Democrats shouldn’t worry. Republicans shouldn’t celebrate. As others have pointed out, voter turnout is an indication of the competitiveness of a primary contest, not of what will happen in the general election. The GOP presidential primary is more competitive than the Democratic race. Indeed, history suggests that there is no relationship between primary turnout and the general election outcome.

Lucky Bill Clinton made a deal to keep them from getting nukes: North Korea Fires 2 Ballistic Missiles Off Its East Coast

Long but interesting: The 30% solution — when war without end ends: Spengler. By David P. Goldman

Religion of Peace News

Worth Reading: Iran's War Against America. By Bruce Thornton
Excerpt: President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have celebrated the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran and the release of five American prisoners held by its government as a triumph of “smart diplomacy.” According to Kerry, it was the nuclear deal that paved the way for the U.S. to settle peacefully the conflict with the Iranians over the jailed Americans, as well as secure the release of ten American sailors detained in the Persian Gulf. “Were it not for that process, I do not believe this could’ve happened, nor do they,” he commented after the prisoners were released. Critics have a different take. The exchange of Americans unlawfully detained on specious pretexts, for seven Iranians duly indicted or already convicted for violating American law by stealing military related technology, appeared to be less a prisoner exchange than a payment of ransom for hostages. Indeed, $1.7 billion of Iranian funds impounded in 1979 was wired to Iran just as three of the American prisoners departed from Iran in a Swiss Air Force jet––on top of the $100-150 billion promised to Iran as part of the deal. Nothing was done about the $45 billion in civil judgments awarded to Americans for damages suffered from Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

Worth Reading: America Entered Into A Raw Deal With Iran. By Angelo M. Codevilla
Excerpt: On January 16, 2016, governments in Europe and America ended the sanctions they had imposed on Iran (the U.S. since 1979, Europe since 2007 and increasingly since 2012) for reasons internal to themselves. Iran had not changed the behavior that had led to the imposition of sanctions—neither its nuclear program nor its leadership of the Shia side in the current round of the Sunni-Shia war. Americans and Europeans hoped that the end of sanctions would make the Islamic Republic’s international behavior more acceptable. But limits on Iran’s nuclear program consist of promises, qualified by reiteration that the program’s objective would not change, yet that no one need worry because it had never been military. Iran did not discuss its role in regional affairs. “Death to America” remained its officious position regards the United States. (Donald Trump on Iran nuclear deal: ‘We have a horrible contract, but we do have a contract’ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/4/donald-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-we-have-horrible-co/ Excerpt: " This is a perfect example of taking over a bad contract. I will find something in that contract that will be very, very well-scrutinized by us, and I think they will not be able to do it, whatever it may be. I know it would be very popular for me to do what a couple of ‘em said — ‘we’re gonna rip it up,’ ‘we’re gonna rip it up,’” he said. “Iran is going to be an absolute terror, and it’s horrible that we have to live with it. Nevertheless, we have a contract. We’ve lost the power of sanctions because all of these other folks, all of these other countries that were with us, are gone now.” [Does he know it's not in writing? ~Bob])

Genocide against Christians in the Middle East A report submitted to Secretary of State John Kerry by the Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians

Israel Disappears from US Visa Service List of Countries. Otherwise Palestinians would be offended.
Excerpt: Apparently the U.S. State Department prefers to pretend Israel doesn’t exist than offend the Arab world by asserting that it does. United With Israel reports that on the official U.S. Visa Service for foreign citizens website, both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem appear as not listed under any country. In fact, when one clicks through to either the Tel Aviv or Jerusalem links, both go to the same page – one that again does not refer to Israel.

Backed to the Wall: Kerry determines ISIS is committing genocide, officials say
Excerpt: Secretary of State John Kerry finds that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, officials say, and is expected to announce his findings later today.

Aleppo Bishop: Two Thirds of Syrian Christians Have Been Killed or Driven Away
Excerpt: The Chaldean bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, reported Wednesday that in only five years of conflict and persecution, the Christian population in Syria has been reduced by two thirds, from 1.5 million to only 500,000 today. Speaking at a press conference at the UN headquarters in Geneva, the bishop said that the situation in Aleppo is even worse than in the rest of Syria, with only a quarter of the Christian population remaining since the beginning of Syria’s civil war in 2011. Ravaged by the fighting and persecuted by Islamic extremists, the number of Christians in Aleppo has fallen from 160,000 to just 40,000.


Israeli Medical Help to the World
Seen any Muslim country doing this? ~Bob

How U.S. Foreign Policy Made 2015 the “Worst Year in Modern History for Christian Persecution”
Excerpt:     2015 was the "worst year in modern history for Christian persecution," according to Open Doors, a human rights organization that has been documenting the persecution of Christians since 1955. (And bho turns a blind eye in favor of his Muslim brethren. --JB).

Women guilty of female genital mutilation may avoid jail
Excerpt: A mother, a former nurse and an Islamic sect community leader have been sentenced to a minimum 11 months in jail after being convicted of female genital mutilation offences against two young sisters. But none of them may spend a day behind bars.

Key suspect in Paris attacks captured in Brussels raid; four others arrested
Excerpt: Belgian counterterrorism police raided an apartment block in Brussels on Friday and arrested Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in last year’s bloody terrorist attacks in Paris, after a shootout that left him wounded, European leaders said.

TSA failed to vet 73 employees with terror ties working at 40 U.S. airports

Florida: Pro-jihad hatemonger Ahmed Bedier addresses Catholic school kids

Tennessee state rep: Islamic State should be allowed to recruit at colleges

Canada: Muslim who stabbed soldiers had airport security clearance

Of interest

Researchers believe disease-fighting beer may be close
Excerpt: Beer lovers may soon have another reason to throw back a pint of their favorite brew, as researchers said they have taken one step closer to crafting a beer that can help fight disease....Waynant and his team are studying specific compounds found in hops called humulones, which are alpha acids that have anticancer and anti-inflammatory properties, and lupulones, which are beta acids that are not as well understood.  According to the release, researchers want to harness the healthful activities of the two to potentially improve consumer’s health. (That back aching or hip hurting?  Toss back a pint or two.  Yee-haw! --Barb)

A man’s discovery of bones under his pub could forever change what we know about the Irish


This is the first lady of the United States texting during the pledge of allegiance. This sums up this family's "commitment" to the United States.

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