The moment you say, ‘no, I don’t agree that the Democratic party is the salvation of mankind and Hillary is our redeemer,’ suddenly you’ve become a monster

Christian Toto interviews Sarah A. Hoyt (via Instapundit).

Hoyt is that rare, outspoken conservative in the literary realm. It’s a confession she didn’t make right away. Keeping her views to herself took its toll.

“You’re constantly lying and watching every word you speak,” says Hoyt, who contributes to the conservative web site Instapundit. “It’s what I used to feel like at [fantasy] conventions.”

Life is easier now that she’s more open about her political philosophies. Revealing her ideology did have a downside.

“It’s very odd to see people who you’ve been friends with for 15 years say you’re a fascist,” she says of some publishing peers. “It means they didn’t even bother to read what you wrote. They’re desperately trying to stay with the ‘in crowd.’”

Groupthink isn’t relegated to Hollywood cocktail parties.

“The moment you say, ‘no, I don’t agree that the Democratic party is the salvation of mankind and Hillary is our redeemer,’ suddenly you’ve become a monster. You’re not a person,” says Hoyt, who calls her new book “Through Fire (Darkship)” a “fictionalized French revolution.”

She says she initially kept her views private in order to break into the publishing industry.

“I recognized the power structure. I came from Europe. I’ve seen It before,” she says. “I wanted to be published. There’s no great heroism in not being able to reach the public.”

"Never in the last 60 years has the length of joblessness been this long"

Never in the last 60 years has the length of joblessness been this long

reported Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes for CBS News in 2012 in its section on "Americans Trapped in Unemployment" and that, for "more than a year" (via Sarah Hoyt's link to JC Carlton's When You Are Looking For Help The Last Thing You Need Is Hostility).

Congratulations, America: you have voted for a party, and a man, who wanted to "fundamentally transform the United States" and make it into Europe.

Into Europe, where governments dictate health care rules and where the ensuing rules help ensure that new employees are not hired into companies who no longer feel they can afford the price.


Into Europe, where poor and jobless citizens consequently need to turn to the state for aid, and for whose politicians who promise the intervention of "helpful" bureaucrats into their lives the said citizens subsequently vote…

Congratulations!
 

Punting to the People: Persons who abuse power can be stopped only by other persons who have the authority and responsibility to defend our liberties and our way of life

 … there is nothing magical or inherently virtuous about the “will of the people”

writes David French in an outstanding National Review column.

The people are just as capable of error, just as capable of becoming tyrants, as any tin-pot dictator. 

Thus, the Founders gave us a republic, if — as Ben Franklin is alleged to have admonished — we can keep it. Every branch of government checks the other. The people check the government. The Constitution is supreme over all, protecting our core civil liberties from the will of the majority and from the abuse of the rulers. At its heart, the entire system depends on the understanding that no person is above the law. 

But no government — no matter how wisely constructed — can long survive in the absence of at least some degree of human courage and conviction. People who abuse power can be stopped only by other people who have the authority and responsibility to defend our liberties and our way of life. And, yes, sometimes that means standing in front of democracy to preserve the principles of the republic.

n 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts had the opportunity to do just that. He faced an extraordinary federal power-grab — with the national government for the first time in American history requiring individuals to purchase a consumer product. The stakes were undeniably high. The most consequential social program since the Great Society was hanging in the balance, and if Roberts helped strike it down, he’d not only affect tens of millions of citizens, it was possible that he could turn a presidential election. 

He punted to the people. He was unwilling to undo the work of their elected representatives. 

 In 2016, FBI director James Comey faced a different choice, but one with similarly high stakes. Evaluating the actions of the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States, he could have applied the plain language of the governing statute to her reckless treatment of classified information. But if he had, in all likelihood, he would have upended the Democratic primary, and he might also have turned the presidential election itself. 

He punted to the people, laying out the case for accountability without holding Clinton herself accountable.

I thought of these actions — or failures to act — as the Republican delegates faced their own fateful decision at the GOP convention. Would they hand the Party of Lincoln to a man who makes a mockery of the party’s founding principles as well as the character of its founder? Would they fulfill their intended roles as actual leaders of one of America’s two great political parties — as guardians not only of its electoral prospects but also of its values and ideals? 

They punted to a plurality of the people.

Not everyone, of course. There was some brave dissent, and to the extent the party survives as a viable (and valuable) American political force, it will rebuild around those dissidents. Yet as I watched men and women chanting for Donald Trump, I thought of the second part of that John Adams quote, in which he diagnoses what happens when democracies start to fail, when the people start to reject the world they made. They turn to a savior: 

They soon cry, “This will not do; we have gone too far! We are all in the wrong! We are none of us safe! We must unite in some clever fellow, who can protect us all, — Caesar, Bonaparte, who you will! Though we distrust, hate, and abhor them all; yet we must submit to one or another of them, stand by him, cry him up to the skies, and swear that he is the greatest, best, and finest man that ever lived!” 

 In other words, when the guardrails crumble, the call for the strong man echoes the loudest. Make America Safe Again. Make America Work Again. Make America Great Again. Get on the Trump Train, citizens. Daddy’s home.

Isn’t there something inconsistent about condemning the Republican Denny Hastert while simultaneously naming a Navy ship after the Democrat Harvey Milk?

The “queering” of the armed forces took a giant leap forward last week

writes Benny Huang (a tip o' the hat to Maggie's Farm's Bird Dog),

with the announcement of a new ship being named in honor of Harvey Milk, a Navy veteran and the first openly homosexual elected official in California. The Village People are reportedly thrilled.

Milk, who was a city supervisor in San Francisco until his 1978 murder, is perhaps best known for his fight against the Briggs Initiative, a statewide ballot question that would have banned openly homosexual teachers from public schools. Governor Ronald Reagan, to his discredit, opposed the measure and it failed by a wide margin. Milk, who had himself been a schoolteacher on Long Island before moving to San Francisco, took the issue very personally and for good reason—it targeted homosexual propagandists and homosexual pederasts like him.

Yes, Harvey Milk liked ’em young. The public first learned of his taste for teenage boys with the publication of his biography, “The Mayor of Castro Street” by Randy Shilts. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s first openly homosexual reporter Shilts covered the “gay beat” and was of course supportive of the movement. Shilts was also a friend of Milk’s and his biography reflects a friendly admiration. But Shilts was also honest—a rare trait in the homosexual movement—and he refused to obscure Milk’s track record with boys half his age.

According to Shilts’s (laudatory) biography, Milk took in a teen runaway named Jack McKinley as his lover. “[S]ixteen-year-old old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure. Within a few weeks, McKinley moved into Harvey Milk’s Upper West Side apartment and settled into a middle class domestic marriage. At thirty-three, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him.”

 … Aren’t homosexuals revolted by Milk’s underage relationships? Not really. Their movement has ensured that Milk’s face appears on a postage stamp rather than on a sex offender registry list where it belongs. In San Francisco there are a plaza, a high school, and an airport terminal named in his honor. His birthday is a state holiday in California. If there are any homosexuals who dissent from all the Harvey Milk idol worship they are awfully quiet. But aren’t they always?

Of course it would be inaccurate to say that all homosexuals are child molesters but their community has a predator problem that they are unwilling to even acknowledge. Homosexuals don’t seem disturbed by grown men bedding young boys—not unless those grown men happen to be Catholic priests, Boys Scout leaders, or Republican politicians. In that case homosexuals become righteously indignant—though not because kiddy-diddling bothers them.

The real reason they hate child-molesting priests, child-molesting scoutmasters and child-molesting Republican politicians is because they oppose, or once opposed, the homosexual agenda. It’s the hypocrisy of it all that draws homosexuals’ ire. Yet they cannot see their own hypocrisy. Isn’t there something inconsistent about condemning the sex criminal and former Republican politician Denny Hastert while simultaneously naming a ship after the sex criminal and former Democrat politician Harvey Milk?

The “gay” “rights” movement has always been about sexual liberation and not necessarily among “consenting adults.” The “consenting adults” part was really a development of the 1980’s when the movement learned that the public could be persuaded to soften its stance on sex between men much more easily than its stance on sex between men and boys. In a begrudging concession, activists told the child molesters to get lost—or at least to simmer down.
 
Chad Sevearence is a good example. Sevearence is the former president of Charlotte’s LGBT chamber of commerce and a tireless advocate for that city’s “bathroom bill” that would have forced private businesses to allow men into the ladies’ room if state legislation hadn’t cut it off at the pass. Edge Media Network, a homosexual propaganda outlet, named him “person of the year” in 2015. Sevearence is a registered sex offender, having been convicted in 2000 of fondling a sleeping 15-year old member of his church while he served as a youth minister. The local newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, omitted this fact in its coverage of the bill which it openly supported on its editorial page. Sevearence stepped down as president of the LGBT chamber only after the right-wing (bless their hearts) made a stink about his criminal record. This is a pattern within the homosexual community—it takes public embarrassment to prod them to condemn pedophilia or pederasty because there is no private embarrassment to speak of. If no one had made a spectacle of Sevearence’s rape of a 15-year old he would still be leading the Charlotte LGBT chamber of commerce.

Former congressman Barney Frank is another pedo-enabler. You’ve probably heard of his 1980’s misadventures with Stephen Gobie (aka “Hot Bottom”), the boyfriend he met through the Washington Blade’s thinly veiled male prostitution ads. Yes, it’s true that Gobie ran a male brothel out of Frank’s apartment—but that’s not all. Gobie was also a child pornographer. In 1982, he was convicted of four felonies, among which was “production of obscene items involving a juvenile.” The congressman wrote a series of letters on his official letterhead to Virginia probation officials attesting to Gobie’s “good character.” Apparently Frank believes that a guy can make pornography starring children and still be a fundamentally good person. He’s not judgmental, you see.

Massachusetts’s other “out” former congressman, Gerry Studds, was more than just a pedo-enabler—he was an honest to goodness kiddy diddler. In 1983, the House of Representatives voted to censure him for his myriad sexual liaisons with teenage congressional pages.

 … Ordinarily, censure means certain political death but Gerry Studds was no ordinary congressman. The district he represented happened to be one of the “gayest” in the nation, containing the rainbow wonderland of Provincetown and the slightly less “gay” Hyannis. He was reelected six more times after the page scandal because his constituents just didn’t care. Boffing the pages was really no big deal; it’s not like he voted against funding for AIDS research or something.

Then there’s the godfather of the homosexual mafia, the Oregon real estate magnate and Human Rights Campaign (HRC) cofounder Terrence Bean. In 2014, Bean’s ex-boyfriend Kiah Lawson claimed that the two of them had together seduced a 15-year old boy in a hotel room. Bean was arrested. Unfortunately, the case fell apart at trial because the alleged victim refused to testify, giving the judge no choice but to toss out the charges. I’m sure that the alleged victim’s reluctance had nothing to do with the fact that Bean paid him $200,000 in hush money. Nor did it have anything to do with the fact that Bean is one of the most politically connected men in the state if not the whole country.

There really are two justice systems in this country—one for rich jerkwads like Terry Bean and one for the rest of us.

Bean played the victim role well, saying “I look forward to being able to tell the story of this conspiracy of lies, deceit, blackmail, malicious prosecution and homophobia now that this case has ended.” Yes, he actually accused his boyfriend, who implicated himself in the accusation, of being part of a homophobic “conspiracy” against him.

If there’s a campaign within the homosexual community to expose child predators like Terrence Bean, I’m not aware of it. Outrage is reserved for those whom they already despise for other reasons, namely for their “hypocrisy.” A movement that exalts the likes of Harvey Milk can’t really have any moral qualms about child rape.

Related: Homo Scandals? Reporters are quick to self-censor when they have reservations about the damage their stories might do to beloved causes

Plus: What If Someone Told You That "Homosexuals" Do Not Exist? And What If They Were Right?

Insane Immigration Policies: No, stemming the flow of people who want to kill you is not a surrender to your baser instincts

What [leftists fail] to grasp is that when openness and tolerance encounter militant Islam in a dark alley, openness and tolerance get their butts kicked

writes Benny Huang on Freedom Daily in a post entitled Europe Suffers The Predictable Effects Of Its Insane Immigration Policy (that was reposted by Fox News' Megan Kelly).

Angela Merkel owes her countrymen an apology—and her resignation. In the wake of four terrorist attacks in the space of a week, all of which were perpetrated by Muslims and three of which were committed by refugees, she should have the courage to admit that she was wrong and that her error has gotten people killed. But that won’t happen.

For those who missed Germany’s week of unspeakable carnage, let’s take a moment to recap. On July 18th, a 17-year old Afghan refugee went on a hacking spree using an ax and a knife onboard a train near Wurzburg. Three people were seriously injured. He was reported to have screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he slashed through human flesh. On July 22^nd, a man possessing Iranian and German citizenships went on a shooting spree in Munich, killing nine and wounding 35. When a memorial was held a few days later to honor the victims, Islamists crashed the scene to shout “Allahu Akbar.” On July 24^th, a Syrian asylum seeker hacked a pregnant woman to death with a machete and wounded two others in Reutlingen. That same day, a Syrian man killed himself in a suicide bombing in Ansbach, wounding 15 people. In a video recorded before the bombing he pledged his allegiance to ISIS and called it “an act of revenge against Germans, because they obstruct Islam.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Last December 30th, Chancellor Merkel delivered a New Year’s address in which she discussed the arrival of over a million refugees to Germany in 2015. She spouted the Pollyannaish nonsense that refugees represent an “opportunity for tomorrow”—whatever that means. Exactly which opportunities Germans will miss out on if they don’t accept millions of third world savages who hate them is unclear. The chance to be hacked to death, perhaps?

The very next day, a misogynist mob struck Cologne and other cities, taking advantage of the New Year’s Eve revelry to prey upon vulnerable women. Creepy men speaking foreign tongues tore at their clothes, stole their valuables, and in a few cases, forcibly raped them. That same night, two train stations in Munich were evacuated when intelligence reports warned of an imminent suicide attack.
 
Hate to say I told you so, Frau Merkel, but I told you so. A lot of other people told you so too, including Horst Seehofer, Minister President of Bavaria, the federal state most impacted by the refugee crisis. “All our predictions have been proven right,” said Seehofer. “Islamist terrorism has arrived in Germany.”

Indeed, it turns out that in the EU's effort to combat racism, Islamist crimes are regularly covered up, from Germany itself, of course, to Scandinavia and Great Britain (not least in Rotherham)…

The tragedy of all this violence is its predictability. Everyone knows that the third world is a dangerous and violent place but some people are unwilling to admit that it’s the people who make it that way. It is literally impossible to import masses of people from a place like Syria and not import their problematic culture along with them.

Supporters of the asylum policy have long labored under the flawed assumption that people fleeing ISIS must necessarily loathe the organization and everything it stands for. Not necessarily. A November 2015 study from the Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies found that ISIS has at least a few admirers among the Syrian refugee population. Four percent of Syrian refugee expressed a positive view of ISIS and an additional 9% said that their view was “positive to some extent.” Six percent were undecided or refused to answer.

‘That’s just a few bad apples,’ they would argue. ‘The vast majority are peaceful.’ It should be noted here that respondents weren’t asked what they think of Sharia law, or whether they believe unbelievers should be forced to lives as dhimmis—second class citizens. They weren’t asked whether women who wear “revealing” clothing—by Middle Eastern standards, that is—should be taught some modesty with a little sexual assault. They weren’t [asked] if they can tolerate other people’s enjoyment of pork or alcohol. In other words, an ISIS sympathy test isn’t an effective filter to remove the bad elements.

But even if we assume for a moment that the 87% of respondents who did not express admiration for ISIS are all good westernized liberals, the remaining “bad apples” are still an enormous bloc in real numbers. Approximately 1.1 million refugees arrived in Germany in 2015, and 220,000 thus far in 2016. If “only” 13% of those refugees support ISIS, that’s still about 170,000 people. Those are on top of the radical Muslims who already lived in Germany before 2015 of which there many.

Yet Angela Merkel is prepared to plow ahead with this insane refugee policy, dooming future generations of Germans to minority group status in their own country. She doesn’t care, she’s childless.

To understand the mindset of the pro-asylum crowd you have to see this issue through their eyes. They understand that Europe, particularly Germany, was infected in the relatively recent past with virulent racism and violence. Since the end of World War II, Europeans have managed to behave themselves reasonably well—the Balkan wars notwithstanding. They’ve put down their rifles and their flags and decided to be really, really nice. Asylum supporters fear that slamming the door shut to immigration would signal the collapse of Europe’s post-war ethos of tolerance and openness. That threatening possibility is, in their estimation, a far greater danger than a flood of refugees.

In the wake of these attacks, Chancellor Angela Merkel argued that the assailants “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need. We firmly reject this.” Let me translate that for you: If we don’t let more of these people in, the terrorists win! Yeah, barf. There’s no indication that the attackers intended to goad Europeans into stemming the immigrant flow. There’s plenty of evidence that at least two of them considered themselves to be soldiers of Allah; why wouldn’t they want reinforcements?

Yet the attitude persists that any attempt to change course is a capitulation to our worst instincts. … Outrageous! As if Muslims will be forced to clean the streets with toothbrushes if Austria decides not to be a dumping ground for the world’s most dysfunctional populations. She paints a picture of Austria—and presumably the rest of Europe—at a crossroads. Will Europeans choose openness and tolerance, or will they be seduced by the dark forces of hate? She fears it will be the latter.

[The New York Times’ central Europe correspondent Alison Smale, author of an abominable piece entitled “Rise of Austrian Right Lengthens Shadow of Nazi Era”,] is quite right that Europe is standing at a crossroads. If it doesn’t do something about immigration it will undergo profound and irreversible societal changes. Indeed, this process is already underway, with many European nations jettisoning hallowed values such as free speech in an attempt to assuage angry Muslims. What Smale fails to grasp is that when openness and tolerance encounter militant Islam in a dark alley, openness and tolerance get their butts kicked.

Europe must choose its path, for sure, because it cannot be Islamified and still be nice. Though it’s difficult to imagine modern Austrians forcing Jews to clean the streets of Vienna with toothbrushes, I can certainly imagine Muslim immigrants doing exactly that.

The pro-asylum faction’s stubborn attitude that they are the defenders of decency has proven difficult to counter. In their own minds they’re Mother Theresa and we’re Hitler. They build bridges, we build walls. They leave the welcome mat on the front step for their neighbors, we’re the cranky old guys shouting “Get off my lawn!”

What remains to be seen is if they are capable of learning their lesson. When a once peaceful country like Germany suffers a mass shooting, a suicide bombing, and two hacking attacks in the space of a week, it stands to reason that European ideals are deteriorating.

Yes, we’re seeing the reemergence of an ugly Europe, embroiled in hate in violence—but the blame can’t be laid at the feet of those of us who oppose Islamification. We were the ones screaming from the rooftops, warning others to do something to avoid this very outcome.

A Tempête in a Teapot? Frenchmen Bitterly Cling to Their Accents—to All of Their Accents

For Keith Houston (writing in the New York Times),

learning French a quarter-century ago at high school in Scotland, the circumflex that perched atop certain vowels (ê) was an enigma. It lacked the flamboyance of the accent aigu (é) or accent grave (è), modifying pronunciation so subtly I could barely discern it. Nor did it possess the utility of the tréma, which divided vowel sounds in two (aï). When I finally found out that the circumflex stood in for a discarded letter S, everything clicked into place: Opaque words like bête, coût and huître now morphed into their English equivalents before my eyes, resolving themselves into “beast,” “cost” and “oyster.”

“Aha,” I thought. “That’s handy.”

As I stumbled onward through my French textbook, on the other side of the English Channel the venerable Académie Française was in the throes of a rather more significant exercise. Guardian of the French language since 1635, the academy in recent times has gained a reputation as being out of touch — and so, when it approved recommendations in 1990 for the “rectification” of about 2,400 words, they did not stick. Week-end should become weekend, said the academy to anyone who would listen. Oignon (onion) would be better off as ognon. Paraître (to appear) had no need for its silent circumflex. But no one was listening, and all of this was quickly forgotten.

Now, though, the reform has surged back to life. In November, the French government belatedly decided to revive the 1990 proposals, prompting educational publishers to announce new editions of their standard works; from there, the story snowballed into the biggest French language controversy since the advent of “freedom fries.” And though the tone-deaf spelling changes and hyphen cull have raised hackles, what has become most apparent is that the French really, really love the circumflex.

 … It was the Académie Française that popularized the use of the mark in 1740 when it removed the so-called pre-consonantal S from a host of Old Latin words and added the circumflex to create hôpital, hôtel, château and more. The circumflex is also used in a handful of cases to distinguish homophones: du (of) is pronounced the same as dû (due), but the circumflex delivers readers from confusion. Either way, for many French writers the circumflex is as much a badge of honor as it is a diacritical mark.

All of which brings us back to the recent uproar over the circumflex’s rough treatment. Arrêtez! went the cry when the news broke, and a protest hashtag was coined immediately: #JeSuisCirconflexe.

The Paris Plages event has been identified as the next potential target for a terrorist attack

They are known as the “Paris Plages,”

writes the Washington Post's James McAuley —

three summertime beaches installed on the banks of the Seine and along a city canal, complete with imported sand, potted palm trees and ice cream stands. Children build sandcastles that won’t be swept away by tides; their parents sunbathe in swimsuits that will never get wet.

When the city in 2002 proposed what would become an annual event, the idea was simply to offer a vacation to those who didn’t have the luxury of leaving town for one of their own. But in their 15th summer, the beaches have come to represent more than an urban escape: They offer a vision of the French capital as a shared public space, a testament to civic goodwill that offsets the image of a city encircled by troubled suburbs and torn by racial and economic segregation.

In theory, at least, everyone is welcome at the beaches.

[Scandal grows over lack of security on night of Nice terror attack]

This year, however, in the aftermath of the Nice attack and, on Tuesday, the murder of an 85-year-old priest in a Normandy church, that sense of community is under threat. The Paris Plages have already been identified as the next potential target for yet another attack, after two in the city in January and November. As she officially opened the attraction Wednesday, Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced that concrete blocks, fences and vehicles would be set up along the riverside promenade near the beaches to “prevent a vehicle entering in the style of the Nice attack.”

Her announcement came before the revelation that national police had not necessarily been stationed at the entrance to Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, where Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck into crowds gathered to celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, killing 84 and injuring more than 300.

Hidalgo has gone even further. Several other events associated with summer in Paris — a basketball tournament in the Bois de Vincennes, outdoor film screenings in city parks and the temporary transformation of the Champs-Élysées boulevard into a pedestrian zone — have all been canceled after the Nice attack. This year, it seems, there is just the beach.

And the beaches themselves are an eerie reminder of Nice. The sand and the palm trees evoke the general aesthetic of the French Riviera and the same sense of joie de vivre that was targeted there. The promenade at the Paris Plages, while smaller than the one at Nice, is a similar pedestrian thoroughfare packed with vulnerable passersby who can get away only as fast as their feet can carry them. Above all, there is the specter of Tunisia, the theme of this year’s six-week-long beach event and the home country of the Nice attacker.

According to the Paris prosecutor, three of the other suspects detained in connection with the Nice attack were also either Tunisian or Franco-Tunisian.

The theme, chosen long ago, is an obvious one in some ways. After France's brutal conquest of Tunisia in 1881, the two countries have been inextricably entwined, a tie that has persisted long beyond Tunisian independence in 1956.

 … Despite the French government’s decision to extend the state of emergency it imposed after the Nice attacks, ordinary Parisians have not avoided their city’s summer celebration. Quite the opposite.

“You have to live your life, because it can happen anywhere,” said Justine Roussillon, a 22-year-old student, referring to the type of terrorist attacks that shook the capital last year. She and Florent Scieir, 21, were reclining in two canvas chairs set in the sand. Scieir nodded his agreement.

“Living your life,” he echoed. “It’s better than staying at home.”

Even India's Poor Must Show an ID to Vote

Some Thoughts on the Ties of American Allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to Osama Bin Laden and 9-11

With friends like Saudi Arabia, who needs enemies?

asks Benny Huang.

Last week we learned that the Saudi government almost certainly played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attack and that our government kept that secret from the public for about fourteen years.

A brief history of the coverup is in order here. In 2002, a joint congressional committee investigated the intelligence failures that led to the attack. That committee found suspicious clues that pointed toward Saudi Arabia—an official “ally” of the United States known for exporting radical Wahhabi Islam across the world. In a 28-page summary, the committee detailed the connections between the 9/11 terrorists and agents of the Saudi government, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a friend of the Bush family. When the 9/11 Commission report was released in July 2004, the 28 pages were still classified and thus not included. Robert Mueller, then-FBI director, pushed hard for the findings to remain under wraps. For the next twelve years they sat in a secret vault in the basement of the US Capitol—until last week when they were finally released with some redactions.

The real hero in this sordid tale is former US Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida). Graham, who chaired the Senate side of the investigation, spent years advocating for the documents’ public release. Graham noted that as late as January 2016 the White House was dragging its heels. 

Until the documents were declassified Graham was not able to speak about their contents, though he did promise a “real smoking gun.” He was right. In one FBI memorandum dated July 2, 2002, agents claimed to have found “incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government.”

 … Saudi Arabia is clearly the worst ally we have.

But if Saudi Arabia is the worst, Pakistan must be a close second. After Navy SEALs raided Osama bin Laden’s hideout in May 2011, it became startlingly obvious that the Pakistanis had been his willing hosts for about nine years. For six of those years he was living in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about a thousand yards from Pakistan’s prestigious military academy. His home was essentially “drone proof” because it fell under the air defense umbrella surrounding the academy.

Further proof of Pakistani government complicity can be found in the fact that government census takers apparently skipped the bin Laden residence. Could census takers have been warned to leave that house alone?

The Pakistani regime’s actions after the raid are also incriminating. Just days after bin Laden’s death, Pakistan claimed that it had had the compound “under sharp focus” since its supposed construction in 2003. How sharp could their focus have been if bin Laden had continued to live there for years? It also claimed to have once searched the compound in hopes of finding an al Qaeda fugitive but came up empty-handed. It didn’t take long for that story to fall apart. According to satellite imagery the compound did not exist until 2005. It seems that someone in the government spun a hasty lie without realizing that the details could be verified.

Pakistan’s treatment of Dr. Shakil Afridi, a physician who assisted the CIA in confirming bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, has been unconscionable. Rather than giving him a medal, as he deserves, they gave him a trial at which he was deprived of legal counsel. After the cursory guilty verdict they tossed him in prison for what will probably be the remainder of his life. Top Pakistani officials called it “payback” for the bin Laden raid. Dr. Afridi was originally sentenced to 33 years in prison though that sentence was later overturned. He remains in prison on an unrelated murder charge that certainly seems contrived.

Osama bin Laden’s sojourn in Abbottabad was likely not the first time that he benefitted from Pakistani protection. After the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States launched seventy cruise missiles, at a cost of about $1 million each, against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The strike amounted to a costly failure because most of the bad guys, including Osama bin Laden, split the scene. A cloud of suspicion has hung over Pakistan’s intelligence service—the ISI—ever since. A very plausible theory is that the US gave the Pakistanis a heads up to expect cruise missiles passing over en route to Afghanistan and then someone within the ISI tipped off bin Laden.

New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall, who spent twelve years covering Afghanistan and Pakistan, claims to have inside sources that confirm the plot to save bin Laden’s neck.

 … Those are our “friends”—the Pakistanis. They’re as crooked as a corkscrew, though perhaps not as crooked as the Saudis. We really have to learn how to choose better company. Our alliances with these two countries have done us great harm. Have we learned anything? 

Liberals love to tell the rest of us what to do, but politicians implicitly admit the unreasonableness of their own demands by exempting themselves from them

American liberals trumpet a “wage gap” between men and women, notwithstanding reams of social science data demonstrating that men’s higher average earnings reflect life choices, not discrimination. White House salaries are published, so analysts have shown that Barack Obama’s own staff manifests the same “pay gap” that Obama and Hillary Clinton decry in private industry. Democrats have no response; as usual, they count on voter ignorance.

It is entertaining to see the same drama play out in the United Kingdom: “Jeremy Corbyn accused of hypocrisy for refusing to publish gender pay gap of Labour staff.”

Thus writes Powerline's John Hinderaker (cheers to Austin Bay).

Politicians love to impose burdens, sometimes impossible burdens, on others, especially business people, but they are much more understanding when it comes to their own conduct. In 1994, Newt Gingrich and his colleagues drafted a Contract With America, a key provision of which was that Congress should live by the same laws it imposes on the rest of us. That proposal was wildly popular, given that Congress had made a regular practice of inserting an exception for itself in legislation.

The basic issue hasn’t changed: liberals love to tell the rest of us what to do, but politicians implicitly admit the unreasonableness of their own demands by exempting themselves from them. (If you haven’t read Peter Schweizer’s Do As I Say (Not As I Do), you should.) This whole phenomenon is an important reason for the rise of Donald Trump.

Echoes of 1984: What "Open-Mindedness" Means, Exactly, to Liberals

George Orwell, call your office.

The Washington examiner's Michael Barone (cheers to Ed Driscoll) links to an article featuring what is perhaps the epitome in Orwellian newspeak:

Prolific blogger Steve Sailer has spotted an Orwellian passage in a New York Times convention week story on the decision of Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to support and speak at the convention in behalf of Donald Trump. The central thrust of Silicon Valley-based reporter Farhad Manjoo's story is that Thiel's Trump endorsement is widely unpopular in Silicon Valley.

"People here pride themselves on a kind of militant open-mindedness," Manjoo writes. "It is the kind of place that will severely punish any deviations from accepted schools of thought."

Got that? Open-mindedness means you severely punish any deviations from accepted schools of thought.

Memo to the literary estate of George Orwell: you may have a cause of action for violation of copyright.

Related: How Harry Potter can make you hate Donald Trump:
Study finds J.K. Rowling books made people more tolerant
and lowered their rating of Republican nominee

Comments Ed Driscoll:

If you’re “more tolerant,” why would you “hate” a political figure you disagree with, instead of attempting a bit of empathy to understand both what makes him tick, and what his supporters admire about him?

Black Man Tells White Leftists a Few Hard Truths About American History

r_bq"> I did my bit today writes Antipodius on Ricochet after seeing this thing of beauty.

I sat with the OR resident leftists- a couple of hearts on their sleeves white folks who keep telling me how horrible Republicans are and why I should agree with them that religious people are the source of every problem in the world, and that American police love to kill black people.

Well, this black man let them have it. I walked them through the history of the Republican party, the speeches and writings of Frederick Douglas… and I was just getting started. I told them who founded the KKK, and which states in the South were for segregation and which party their governments belonged to. I kept going, indices of economy, family stability, education of black people in America and how that has declined since welfare.

Some idiot in the corner piped up about how blacks in WW2 were not educated and welfare and the 60’s had changed all that. Well, I happen to have a picture of a Tuskegee P51 Mustang as my laptop wallpaper…. I waded in with their glorious history. I spoke of the honour and character of the American “Negro” at the height of segregation and contrasted that with the black lives matter hooligans today. I quoted excerpts from Martin Luther King’s speeches and contrasted them with those of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

It was dead quiet. And then, I put on my Texas operating hat… and walked out, but not before saying..

“next time I’m in the tea room… we can really talk about the state of the American black.. and who exactly is to blame for his current state.”

Mic…. consider yourself dropped.

Ben Franklin and His Prophecy

Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore

¡NO PASARÁ EL COCA-COLA! In the Wake of Obama's Cuba Accord, Le Canard Enchaîné Shows the Castros' New-Found Love for "the Empire"

¡NO PASARÁ EL COCA-COLA!

In the Wake of Obama's Cuba Accord, Le Canard Enchaîné
Posted a Kiro Cartoon Showing the Castros' Love for "the Empire"

More on Cuba on the No Pasarán blog…

Founded in 1916, the satirical weekly is fêting its 100th birthday this July…

Some Questions for the GOP's Cruz Despisers

Some questions are in order:

1) Isn't it true that most Republicans are not known for accusing their adversaries or their challengers (inside the party or outside, i.e., Democrats) — or one of their parents — of having been involved in the JFK assassination, or in the the Reagan assassination attempt, or in the Challenger explosion, etc…

(With Democrats, it's a different story, obviously, as they accused all conservatives in Dallas, in Texas, in the South, even in the entire nation of having somehow caused the death of Camelot's noble young president. Which, not entirely incidentally, is far from a bad reason to vote against the Democrats…)

Wouldn't Trump's immediate counter-attack on Heidi Cruz mean instead that if there is someone in the cry-baby department too thin-skinned for politics, it is him?

Related: If Somone Ought to "Get Over It", in Order to Unify the Party, and Forgive and Forget, Shouldn't That Person Be… Donald Trump?!

For your information, I read on a blog a couple of hours ago (I've searched for the link for 15-20 minutes, but I can't find it again) that at the 1976 convention, Ronald Reagan also gave a rousing speech while refraining from expressly supporting Gerald Ford…

2) Couldn't the assertion that Ted Cruz not being liked, by his fellow politicians in DC, be — very easily — construed as a good thing? Couldn't someone not willing to play by the rules of, being disrespectful of, the Washington establishment be construed as a good thing? Not wanting to raise taxes, not wanting to add ever more rules and red tape, not wanting to add ever more functionaries to the rolls of the federal bureaucrats, shouldn't we wish for that in all our politicians, rather than taking without a grain of salt those peoples' (self-serving) opinions about one of their number not being a player?

Do you want to hear me tell the truth? I would love to see a leader come in the Oval Office, who is not lauded, à la Obama, as a charismatic revolutionary, as a Che Guevara come to help the poor, to feed the sick, to lead the people towards a bright new future. A boring president? One who keeps speaking of little else than his faith and the Constitution and following the law? Yay-es! Bring it on!!

Related: If it's true that Ted Cruz as “dishonest,” or “unlikable,” how can we support him for President?

 … how can we hand the reins to that so-called “jerk,” Ted Cruz? Well, we happen to know him quite well. And we know that the vast majority of these characterizations are completely false; that Senator Cruz is an honest and decent man; that the negative portrayals of him are purposeful and a direct consequence of his willingness to fight for the American people against the massive power of the ruling class that our founding fathers predicted would occur; and that it would be an incredible disservice for you not to take a serious look at him as the only nominee who will lead this country away from its current path and toward the American promise of freedom, security and prosperity our children deserve.

3) As for Donald Trump, isn't it true that there is — unfortunately — a far wider problem regarding the man? Isn't it true that there are doubts, perhaps even serious doubts, regarding his conservative credentials? (For instance, his being pals with the… Clintons (!) and his having adopted conservative policies only a year or so ago, his having indeed lauded Democratic policies in the past and even endorsed Hillary for president.)

CERTAINLY, all the above is not a reason to vote for Hillary Clinton. Far from it.

HERE IS WHAT IT BOILS DOWN TO: there are many who are truly frightened at the prospect of a set-up, one in which the White House and the Democrats (and ostensibly through no fault of Trump's) have maneuvered and manipulated to get the only candidate in the GOP set up as a candidate who could possibly be beaten by an Obama successor after eight years of Obama in the White House. Not to mention creating a truly untenable reputation for the Republican Party while helping Democrats get elected to the House and perhaps take over the Senate. Examples? For instance, by the mainstream media bringing to a complete halt the (lucrative) Republican debates as soon as Donald Trump emerged on top — while giving said Trump 2 billion dollars in free advertising as part of their "news" operations.

Finally, let me direct you to Trump supporter (and Trump VP short-lister) Newt Gingrich (thanks to Austin Bay) who said that

I think you misunderstood one paragraph that Ted Cruz, who is a superb orator, said, and I just want to point it out to you, Ted Cruz said you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution. In this election, there is only one candidate who will uphold the Constitution. … So to paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the Constitution of United States, the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket.

Indeed, Sean Cash asks:

When he asked people to vote for a candidate who shares your values and would defend the constitution, why didnt you think he was talking about Trump?

Which brings us to The Federalist, in which Sean Davis points out that

Trump's campaign could've made lemonade out of Cruz's speech. Instead, it opened the wound Cruz caused and squirted lemon juice into it. … A savvy, disciplined campaign could have used the three words from Cruz that set off a political firestorm — “vote your conscience” — to the campaign’s advantage.

 … The only sensible Trump response to “vote your conscience” and “vote for freedom and candidates with principles” was to thank Cruz for the rousing speech and his commitment to conservative principles. Praise him for his defense of freedom, and then turn his call to “vote your conscience” into an endorsement of Trump’s agenda. After all, there’s only one candidate in the race who wants to put America first, there’s only one candidate who wants to keep America safe, there’s only one candidate who has what it takes to Make America Great Again.

If you believe in restoring American greatness, then your conscience can only tell you one thing: vote Trump. If you believe in restoring the values that made America the greatest in nation in history, then your conscience can only tell you one thing: vote Trump. If you believe that strong leadership and a commitment to the American people are what’s required to keep this country strong, then your conscience can only tell you one thing: vote Trump.

That’s all Trump’s team had to do.

If Somone Ought to "Get Over It", in Order to Unify the Party, and Forgive and Forget, Shouldn't That Person Be… Donald Trump?!

In response to his non-endorsement of Donald Trump during his speech at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ted Cruz is told, "why can't you get over it?", "this is politics", to "forgive and forget," to "unify" the party…

Those all sound like very good advice, and very sound recommendations, but the question becomes, why don't people give this advice to the appropriate person?

Why, to be specific, don't they give these recommendations to… Donald Trump?

As the Texas senator explained the next morning to the Texas Delegation:

That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I'm going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say "Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father." …/… neither he [Trump] nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my family.

Isn't it Donald Trump that it is up to to get over it, to say "this is politics", to forgive and forget, and to unify the party? 

In other words, isn't it up to the Donald to make amends?

Related: Some Questions for the the GOP's Cruz Haters

PS: In answer to the question,

What about the personal attacks against Melania that started this whole thing?

I replied as follows:
Was that attack (not those attacks), that meme, really, on Melania made by Ted or by his campaign? They certainly say it wasn't. Although a pro-Cruz Tea Party was behind it, they deny all involvement. You think that they are lying? Sure, that happens.

But the attacks on Heidi (also a meme) and on Ted's father (something far far worse) were certainly made by the Donald and by his campaign. Doesn't it seem that accusing another candidate's father of not only being involved in murder, but to be a conspirator in one of the 20th century's grandest tragedies, might — generously — be described as "beyond the pale" (not to mention, uh, ludicrous)?

What If… Hillary Has Been Planning All Along to Drop Out of the Presidential Race

You're right.

Call me crazy.

But what if — with the Democratic primary following the Republican one — Hillary Clinton — along with the top honchos of the Democrat Party — had been planning all along to drop out of the presidential race, once Donald Trump is nominated?

Drop out in favor of a far more electable Democrat?

And have that Democrat run along the problem-riddled New York billionaire? 

Joe Manchin? Evan Bayh? Andrew Cuomo? Terry McAuliffe? Amy Klobuchar?
Even Joe Biden or Al Gore?!

Yes, I know it sounds crazy. I know it doesn't sound like Hillary's — or Bill's — personality to bow out in favor of a fellow politician.

But after eight years of let's-bash-Americans policies, I am far less willing to dismiss crazy conspiracy theories out of hand…

This hasn't been on my mind incessantly, but for a month or so, maybe more, it has been bugging me on and off, and t'is what came up again upon reading Matthew Sheffield's Praxis article (thanks to Ed Driscoll) on a somewhat different subject.

Let us hope, let us pray, that I am indeed crazy…

How to Know Whether We Live in a Democracy or Whether We Are in the Throes of Populism

From Mumbai, Anand Pandya writes:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has put it best:

“When people vote the way of the intellectual-yet-idiot elite, it is ‘democracy’. Otherwise it is misguided, irrational, swayed by populism and a lack of education.” 

Or, as I like to put it:

When the left wins elections, it is the proof that democracy is at work.
When the right wins elections, it means we are in the throes of populism.

Disastrous Claims About Rising Sea Levels Run Into One (Un?)fortunate Fact

The worsening of tidal flooding in American coastal communities is largely a consequence of greenhouse gases from human activity,

writes Justin Gillis as he claims that the Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries,

and the problem will grow far worse in coming decades, scientists reported Monday.

Those emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are causing the ocean to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome, the scientists said. They added that in the absence of human emissions, the ocean surface would be rising less rapidly and might even be falling.

The increasingly routine tidal flooding is making life miserable in places like Miami Beach; Charleston, S.C.; and Norfolk, Va., even on sunny days.

Though these types of floods often produce only a foot or two of standing saltwater, they are straining life in many towns by killing lawns and trees, blocking neighborhood streets and clogging storm drains, polluting supplies of freshwater and sometimes stranding entire island communities for hours by overtopping the roads that tie them to the mainland.

Such events are just an early harbinger of the coming damage, the new research suggests.

 … scientists … also confirmed previous forecasts that if emissions were to continue at a high rate over the next few decades, the ocean could rise as much as three or four feet by 2100.

Experts say the situation would then grow far worse in the 22nd century and beyond, likely requiring the abandonment of many coastal cities.

As I wrote in a post at the time of the New York Times article five months ago:

think of New York City, of Miami, of Galveston, of San Francisco, of Tokyo, of Sydney, of Goa, of Alexandria, of Saint Tropez, of Copenhagen.

Correct me if I am wrong, but in the past 5 years, in the past 50 years, even offhand in the past 500 years (?), has the sea level in any of those places risen by even one inch, by even one centimeter?

To the Gray Lady's February article, of course, we must add John Raphael's recent Nature World News report on another study, one that finds that Antarctic Sea Ice Continues to Expand Despite Global Warming.

This is of course to everything the drama queens have been telling us for years, so the authors of the study in the journal Nature Geosciences must scramble to dig up an explanation. (how 'bout "natural climate fluctuation"? Alright; that'll do.)

Does part of the opening sentence contain the kicker?

 … the increase of sea ice in the Antarctic despite global warming caused by climate change

That must be the first time that I read the expressions global warming and climate change in the same sentence. I thought the second was supposed to replace the first.

But no, it turns out that the one (global warming) is caused by the other (climate change). You might be forgiven for thinking that the leftists' main object is to confuse us.

Mallard Fillmore Ought to Be Required Daily Reading

Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore and…
his take on the Fourth of July