ORAN, Algeria — AFTER Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn’t mean modernity.

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.

Sex is a complex taboo, arising, in places like Algeria, Tunisia, Syria or Yemen, out of the ambient conservatism’s patriarchal culture, the Islamists’ new, rigorist codes and the discreet puritanism of the region’s various socialisms. That makes a good combination for obstructing desire or guilt-tripping and marginalizing those who feel any. And it’s a far cry from the delicious licentiousness of the writings of the Muslim golden age, like Sheikh Nafzawi’s “The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight,” which tackled eroticism and the Kama Sutra without any hang-ups.
Today sex is a great paradox in many countries of the Arab world: One acts as though it doesn’t exist, and yet it determines everything that’s unspoken. Denied, it weighs on the mind by its very concealment. Although women are veiled, they are at the center of our connections, exchanges and concerns.
Women are a recurrent theme in daily discourse, because the stakes they personify — for manliness, honor, family values — are great. In some countries, they are allowed access to the public sphere only if they renounce their bodies: To let them go uncovered would be to uncover the desire that the Islamist, the conservative and the idle youth feel and want to deny. Women are seen as a source of destabilization — short skirts trigger earthquakes, some say — and are respected only when defined by a property relationship, as the wife of X or the daughter of Y.
In some of Allah’s lands, the war on women and on couples has the air of an inquisition. During the summer in Algeria, brigades of Salafists and local youths worked up by the speeches of radical imams and Islamist TV preachers go out to monitor female bodies, especially those of women bathers at the beach. The police hound couples, even married ones, in public spaces. Gardens are off-limits to strolling lovers. Benches are sawed in half to prevent people from sitting close together.

One result is that people fantasize about the trappings of another world: either the West, with its display of immodesty and lust, or the Muslim paradise and its virgins.

It’s a choice perfectly illustrated by the offerings of the Arab media. Theologians are all the rage on television and so are the Lebanese singers and dancers of “Silicone Valley,” who peddle the promise of their unattainable bodies and impossible sex. Clothing is also given to extremes: At one end is the burqa, the orthodox full-body covering; at the other is the hijab moutabaraj (“the veil that reveals”), which combines a head scarf with slim-fit jeans or tight pants. On the beach, the burqini confronts the bikini.

Sex therapists are few in the Muslim world, and their advice is rarely heeded. So Islamists have a de facto monopoly on talk about the body, sex and love. With the Internet and religious TV shows, some of their speeches have taken monstrous forms, devolving into a kind of porno-Islamism. Religious authorities have issued grotesque fatwas: Making love naked is prohibited; women may not touch bananas; a man can be alone with a female colleague only if she is his milk-mother, and she has nursed him.
Sex is everywhere.

Especially after death.

Orgasms are acceptable only after marriage — and subject to religious diktats that extinguish desire — or after death. Paradise and its virgins are a pet topic of preachers, who present these otherworldly delights as rewards to those who dwell in the lands of sexual misery. Dreaming about such prospects, suicide bombers surrender to a terrifying, surrealistic logic: The path to orgasm runs through death, not love.
The West has long found comfort in exoticism, which exonerates differences. Orientalism has a way of normalizing cultural variations and of excusing any abuses: Scheherazade, the harem and belly dancing exempted some Westerners from considering the plight of Muslim women. But today, with the latest influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship that some Arab countries have with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe.
What long seemed like the foreign spectacles of faraway places now feels like a clash of cultures playing out on the West’s very soil. Differences once defused by distance and a sense of superiority have become an imminent threat. People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.
Kamel Daoud, a columnist for Quotidien d’Oran, is the author of the novel “The Meursault Investigation” and a contributing opinion writer. This essay was translated by John Cullen from the French.
=============================================
2)

Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked to explain how Hillary lost NH primary by 22% but came away with same number of delegates


The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has had her thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton, like the rest of the party establishment.  When Hillary thought she was a shoo-in, they limited the number of debates and scheduled them in time slots where no one was watching.  Now that Sanders is giving her a hard run, miraculously, new debates have been scheduled for prime time.
Then there is the Democratic Party’s use of superdelegates, party office holders, and insiders, designed specifically to keep top-down control of the nomination process, so that even a 22-point landslide in New Hampshire for Sanders yielded the same number of delegates as Hillary got. 

Prior to the Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee last night, CNN’s Jake Tapper had the audacity to ask the DNC chair about this.  The expression on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s face is priceless when Tapper asks her to explain to “voters new to the process” who might feel “this is all rigged” because of the superdelegates.
http://admin.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2016-02/196076_5_.png

Tre Goins-Phillips of TheBlaze summarizes the evasive yet unintentionally revealing answer:
The DNC chairwoman explained to Tapper that the unpledged delegates, or the superdelegates, are a completely separate category from the pledged delegates, which Clinton and Sanders were competing for in the Granite State.
So far, so good.  But then:
“Unpledged delegates exist, really, to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists,” Wasserman Shultz said, adding that the Democratic Party “highlights inclusiveness and diversity at our convention” and wants to give activists “every opportunity” to participate, which she says it what the superdelegates are for.
Wait a minute!  If grassroots activists turn out for a candidate the way they did for Sanders, the superdelegates nullify the resulting margin of victory.  I guess by saying they “don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists,” DWS means they don’t even have to go to the voters to get their way.
Thanks for explaining.  This is what happens in a battle of wits with an unarmed party.
The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has had her thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton, like the rest of the party establishment.  When Hillary thought she was a shoo-in, they limited the number of debates and scheduled them in time slots where no one was watching.  Now that Sanders is giving her a hard run, miraculously, new debates have been scheduled for prime time.
Then there is the Democratic Party’s use of superdelegates, party office holders, and insiders, designed specifically to keep top-down control of the nomination process, so that even a 22-point landslide in New Hampshire for Sanders yielded the same number of delegates as Hillary got. 
Prior to the Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee last night, CNN’s Jake Tapper had the audacity to ask the DNC chair about this.  The expression on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s face is priceless when Tapper asks her to explain to “voters new to the process” who might feel “this is all rigged” because of the superdelegates.


Tre Goins-Phillips of TheBlaze summarizes the evasive yet unintentionally revealing answer:
The DNC chairwoman explained to Tapper that the unpledged delegates, or the superdelegates, are a completely separate category from the pledged delegates, which Clinton and Sanders were competing for in the Granite State.
So far, so good.  But then:
“Unpledged delegates exist, really, to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists,” Wasserman Shultz said, adding that the Democratic Party “highlights inclusiveness and diversity at our convention” and wants to give activists “every opportunity” to participate, which she says it what the superdelegates are for.
Wait a minute!  If grassroots activists turn out for a candidate the way they did for Sanders, the superdelegates nullify the resulting margin of victory.  I guess by saying they “don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists,” DWS means they don’t even have to go to the voters to get their way.
Thanks for explaining.  This is what happens in a battle of wits with an unarmed party.
==============================================================================
3)

Obama’s Foreign Policy Rebuked – by His Own Intel Chiefs


Barack Obama’s foreign policy – and by extension Hillary Clinton’s – received a stinging rebuke this week…from Obama’s own intelligence chiefs.  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, gave Congress an assessment of threats around the globe that amounted to a direct indictment of Obama’s failed foreign policies.
Clapper called the dangers currently facing the United States “a litany of doom.”  He told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “In my fifty-plus years in the intelligence business, I cannot recall a more diverse array of challenges and crises that we confront as we do today.”

Where have Obama’s policies failed?  You might as well put on a blindfold and throw a dart at a map of the world.

On the nuclear accord with Iran, which Obama seems to think is his crowning foreign policy accomplishment, Clapper said that Iran could begin construction of a nuclear weapons program at any time.  “Iran probably views the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a means to remove sanctions while preserving some of its nuclear capabilities, as well as the option to eventually expand its nuclear infrastructure.”
And Clapper cast significant doubt on whether the mullahs will try to honor their part of the bargain.  “Iran’s perception of how the JCPOA helps it achieve its overall strategic goals will dictate the level of its adherence to the agreement over time.”

But surely Obama’s Iran deal will improve relations with Tehran, right?  Not according to his own intelligence director.  “Iran’s Supreme Leader continues to view the United States as a major threat. We assess that his views will not change.”
Clapper warned that Iran is still “the foremost state sponsor of terrorism” and added, “Iran and Hezbollah remain a continuing terrorist threat to US interests and partners worldwide.”
On the subject of terrorism, Obama has bragged that al-Qaeda has been decimated during his watch, but according to Clapper, “al-Qa’ida affiliates are positioned to make gains in 2016.”
Obama shrugged off ISIS (or ISIL) as a “jayvee team.”  Hardly, says Clapper.
“ISIL, including its eight established and several more emerging branches, has become the preeminent global terrorist threat. They’ve attempted or conducted scores of attacks outside of Syria and Iraq in the past 15 months. ISIL’s estimated strength worldwide exceeds that of al- Qa’ida. ISIL’s leaders are determined to strike the US homeland – beyond inspiring homegrown violent extremist attacks.”
If that’s the jayvee team, let’s call off the varsity game.

Regarding the threat posed by North Korea, even Obama’s current secretary of state, John Kerry, has admitted that Obama’s – and Clinton’s – approach hasn’t worked.  And Clapper testified this week, “It [North Korea] is also committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States, although the system has not been flight-tested.”  The testimony came mere days after North Korea successfully launched a satellite into orbit.
Nor has Obama’s – and Hillary Clinton’s – policy of “leading from behind” worked so well in the Middle East, according to Clapper.

“In Libya, despite the December agreement to form a new ‘Government of National Accord,’ establishing authority and security across the country will be difficult to put it mildly, with hundreds of militia groups operating throughout the country. ISIL has established one of its most developed branch outside of Syria and Iraq in Libya.”

Obama’s policies haven’t improved things in Afghanistan, either.  “Afghanistan is at serious risk of a political breakdown during 2016, occasioned by mounting political, economic, and security challenges. Waning political cohesion, increasingly assertive local powerbrokers, financial shortfalls, and sustained countrywide Taliban attacks are eroding stability.”
And then there’s Syria.

Obama infamously drew a red line against the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons.  (Assad has them, but Saddam didn’t?)  But, as the Washington Post’s David Ignatius told PBS’s Frontlinedocumentary series, “at the last minute, the president blinked.”  As a result, the documentary concluded, “extremist groups, including what would eventually become ISIS, exploited the decision not to attack, gaining a foothold by promising Syrian locals what the U.S. had not: protection from the Assad regime.”

Clapper testified this week that Assad has continued to use his chemical weapons, even after supposedly agreeing to give them up.  “Chemical weapons continue to pose a threat in Syria and Iraq. Damascus has used chemicals against the opposition on multiple occasions since Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention” (in October 2013, after Obama drew his red line, and after Syria supposedly handed over its chemical weapons).

The intel chiefs also contradicted Obama’s prediction that Russia’s intervention in Syria is doomed to fail, with General Stewart declaring, “The Russian reinforcement has changed the calculus completely.”
Arkansas senator Tom Cotton asked the two intel chiefs a telling question regarding what seems to be the central tenet of Obama’s foreign policy: “Is the Middle East a place that prizes concessions and negotiations or strength and toughness?”

The two intel chiefs looked at each other for a moment before Stewart replied, “I would argue that in almost all these cases, strength is preferred over signs of weakness.”
Stewart, perhaps less vulnerable to political winds, later added:
I think that over the last several years there have been some concerns among our partners about our commitment to the region. Our willingness to employ the force where our interests, both national and strategic interest, lies. And I think that has caused just a little bit of concern among our partners about our commitment to the region.
In other words, the Russians have backed up their words with action.  Obama has backed up his words with…well, words.  And more words.

Obama derided Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign for calling Russia a geopolitical foe, even as he pleaded for Vladimir Putin to allow him “flexibility.”  Obama ridiculed Romney’s more hard-line stance.  “[T]he 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Yet, after seven years of Obama’s “flexibility” with Putin, Obama’s intelligence chiefs are warning that the Cold War could be a very 21st-century thing.

“A lot of these aggressive things that the Russians are doing for a number of reasons, Great Power status, to create the image of being co-equal with the United States, etc. – I think could possibly go on,” Clapper told the Senate committee this week, “and we could be in another Cold War-like spiral here.”

That phone you hear ringing, Mister Obama?  It’s the American people calling.  We want our 1980s president back.
=================================================================================
4)

2016 is Now About Replacing Scalia



By JONATHAN S. TOBIN

This weekend the nation is mourning Supreme Court Justice Antonin 
 influential legal thinkers and brilliant writers and personalities ever to 
serve on the Supreme Court. More than any other jurist, he was the one
 that did more to promote the idea of originalism — the notion that judges
 should interpret the Constitution as the Founders intended — and 
textualism – the idea that the words of the Constitution mean what they 
say. He was the intellectual leader and the backbone of the conservative 
majority that has prevailed on many cases in the last decades as well as 
the author of scathing and insightful dissents that may be remembered 
as long as his majority opinions. At the same time, he will also be justly 
celebrated as a man who was able to be friends with liberal colleagues 
even as he engaged in spirited arguments with them. That is an example 
that more Americans should follow in a time of increased polarization.
But even as we honor Justice Scalia’s memory, his passing puts the 
2016 presidential race in perspective. While there’s no doubt that 
President Obama will nominate a successor, the Republican-controlled 
Senate will never confirm anyone put forward now.Scalia’s replacement 
will determine the ideological balance on the Supreme Court making the
 stakes in this battle as high as those in the presidential election. The 
person that takes his place will likely be in a position of power long after 
even the next president leaves office.
There is no modern precedent for a struggle over a nomination that 
resulted in a vacancy lasting as long as a year. But we all know that had
 one of the court’s liberals died in 2008, the Democratic majority in the 
Senate would never have confirmed anyone nominated by George W. 
Bush. That is the consequence of divided government in a presidential 
election year. The Democrats will try to paint the GOP Senators as 
obstructionists but Republicans will be unmoved and even the most 
fair-minded independents and Democrats will understand that were the 
positions reversed, the Democrats would have done the same thing.
Nor, thanks to recent SCOTUS rulings about presidents making recess 
appointments, will President Obama be able to sneak a liberal onto the 
court via that procedural trick as he attempted to do with the National 
Labor Relations Board. That means that one way or the other the Senate 
will now remain in session until the next president takes the oath of office 
in January 2017.
But what this also means is that Supreme Court appointments will now
 take center stage in the presidential contest. Of course, every four years
 the two parties always try to mobilize their bases by warning that letting
 the other side prevail will alter the balance of the court. It’s an important
 argument but one that rarely riles up may voters. But they ought to listen
 this time.
There’s no doubt that all of the Republican presidential candidates still in
 the race will promise to nominate justices like Scalia if they are elected. 
And perhaps they all might. But conservatives know all too well how hard
 it is for GOP presidents to find and nominate conservatives that won’t
 “evolve” and wind up voting with the liberals. Scalia’s death means that
 those who vote in Republican primaries this year should prioritize the question of the court and take two key points into consideration when making their choice.
The first is whether they are actually voting for a conservative.
We all know that in this election cycle anger about both parties’ political 
establishments has produced a populist wave that seems to have 
overridden every other consideration. But as difficult as it has proved to
 be for a conservative president to find a reliable conservative jurist, the
 notion that Republican voters can trust someone who isn’t a conservative to nominate someone that will take up the banner from the fallen Scalia is absurd. A lot of them clearly think Donald Trump is just the man
 to overturn the Washington apple cart to their satisfaction. His simplistic
 pronouncements, outrageous conduct and vulgarity are excused as an 
expression of politically incorrect impudence in the face of the 
establishment. But replacing a Supreme Court justice requires a degree
 of sober reflection and ideological steadfastness that no one has ever 
accused Trump of possessing. The fact that he said this week in an 
 to,” is a warning that anyone relying on him sticking to conservative 
principles that he has never previously supported is not being serious.
The other question is electability. Of course, all the candidates will claim 
they can win and in the unlikely event that the Democrats nominate 
Bernie Sanders, they might all be proven right. But this is not a purely 
theoretical query. A lot of those on the right have taken the position in 
recent decades that they see no real difference between the party 
establishments. There is some truth to this accusation when it comes to
 business as usual on Capitol Hill. But Scalia’s death gives the lie to the
 widely-accepted line on the right that electing a GOP Congress was 
meaningless because it was unable to overturn Obama’s liberal agenda 
on issues like ObamaCare, illegal immigration or even the funding of 
Planned Parenthood.
If conservatives hadn’t turned out around the country in 2014 to elect 
conservative Senate candidates to win control of the upper body, right 
now Democrats would be licking their lips anticipating the swift approval 
of any liberal that Obama would nominate. Moreover, they should also 
remember that the GOP victory was only made possible because in 2014
 the party establishment went to great efforts to vet the party’s Senate 
nominees in order to avoid primary victories by right-wing outliers like 
Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Akin that cost the Republicans a chance to win the Senate in 2010.
Conservative may not love some establishment choices (or 
conservatives whose stands on issues like immigration causes some to falsely brand them as RINOs). But insisting on total ideological purity will not create majorities in the Senate or the Electoral College.
All conservatives will join in remembering Scalia this week. But unless 
they are doing what they can to nominate and then elect a Republican 
that can be relied upon to choose a genuine conservative jurist to replace him, their praise for the late justice will be meaningless.

4a)Top 9 Quotes From Justice Scalia’s 
Scathing Dissent in King v. Burwell
By Tiffany Bates

Tiffany Bates writes about the Supreme Court and constitutional law as a legal research associate in The
 Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Elizabeth Slattery writes about the rule of law, the proper role of the courts, civil rights and equal protection, and the scope
 of constitutional provisions such as the Commerce Clause and the Recess Appointments Clause as a legal fellow in the 
Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Justice Antonin Scalia is known for his sharp wit and even sharper pen. He pulled no punches in his dissent from
 the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell, allowing Obamacare subsidies to flow through the federal
 exchange.

Here are nine highlights:

1. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare … [T]his Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be
 remembered through the years … And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme
 Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and
 assist its favorites.”

2. “This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the
 Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be
 a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.”

3. “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’”

4. “Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules
 of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act
 must be saved.”

5. “The Court interprets §36B to award tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges. It accepts that the ‘most
 natural sense’ of the phrase ‘Exchange established by the State’ is an Exchange established by a State. 
(Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!) Yet the opinion continues, with no
 semblance of shame, that ‘it is also possible that the phrase refers to all Exchanges—both State and Federal. 
(Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!)’”

6. “Perhaps sensing the dismal failure of its efforts to show that ‘established by the State’ means ‘established by
 the State or the Federal Government,’ the Court tries to palm off the pertinent statutory phrase as “inartful 
drafting.’ This Court, however, has no free-floating power ‘to rescue Congress from its drafting errors.’”

7. “The Court’s decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it 
takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American 
people’s decision to give Congress ‘[a]ll legislative Powers’ enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, 
not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them.”

8. “More importantly, the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are 
governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers. ‘If Congress enacted into law 
something different from what it intended, then it should amend the statute to conform to its intent.’ In the 
meantime, this Court ‘has no roving license … to disregard clear language simply on the view that … Congress
 ‘must have intended’ something broader.”

9. “Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress
 to decide what to do about the Act’s limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.”


4b)Republicans, Obama Already Clashing 
Over Scalia’s Replacement

President Barack Obama speaks about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia during a statement
 delivered in Rancho Mirage, Calif. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Newscom)

The fight over who should fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court broke out quickly after the justice’s
 death Saturday. Both parties wasted little time marking the battle lines for a clash that could continue until President Barack Obama leaves office.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made his position clear just hours after the news broke. The Kentucky
 Republican wants Scalia’s seat to remain open until after the 2016 election.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice,” McConnell wrote
 in a statement. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., fired back a counterstatement: “Failing to fill this vacancy would be
 a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential constitutional responsibilities.”

McConnell’s Democratic counterpart also urged the president to “send the Senate a nominee right away” and
 said that leaving the seat open “would be unprecedented in recent history.”

Obama laid the groundwork for the fight to fill Scalia’s seat Saturday night. In a press conference from California,
 he said there was plenty of time for him to nominate a justice and for the Senate to consider his nominee.
“I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time,” Obama said. “There will
 be plenty of time for me to do so and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote.” He added:

These are responsibilities that I take seriously as should everyone. They’re bigger than any one party. They’re
 about our democracy. They’re about the institution that Scalia dedicated his professional life.

The eventual nominee will be the third Supreme Court justice advanced by Obama. Justices Sonia Sotomayor
 and Elena Kagan won confirmation when Democrats held a majority in the Senate.

Following Scalia’s death, lawmakers from both parties were quick to close ranks around their leaders.
The ensuing fight could dominate the chamber’s agenda in the coming months.

Sen. Chuck Grassley will do much to turn the tide of that coming conflict while serving as chairman of the
 Judiciary Committee. And the Iowa Republican has already signaled he won’t move any nominees out of committee.

“It’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential
 election year,” Grassley wrote in a statement. He continued:

Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this president, above all others, has made no bones about
 his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that
 we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court justice.
The traditional but unofficial Thurmond-Leahy rule dictates that the Senate halt all judicial confirmations in the
 last six months of a president’s time in office.

With Grassley in opposition, it will be difficult, but not completely impossible, for Democrats to advance a
 nominee out of committee and to a Senate floor vote. Reid could file a written motion to discharge a nominee
 out of the Judiciary Committee and move the motion directly to the Senate calendar for consideration. The
 motion to discharge would have to lie over one legislative day under Senate Rule XIV before Reid could move
 to proceed to it, according to a Senate source with knowledge of the process.

With 268 days left in office, Obama hasn’t run up against that cutoff date yet. However, pressure was already
 mounting on Senate Republicans to close the tap on the nominee pipeline before Scalia’s death.
So far in 2016, the Senate has confirmed five Obama-nominated judges, including two this past week. There
 are 11 others who have been approved by the Judiciary Committee and await a floor vote.
Outside groups on both sides of the spectrum were quick to stake out their position.

The conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom noted that “it is unlikely that a new justice will be
 installed prior to the election of our next president.”

The liberal group MoveOn.org attacked McConnell, calling on the majority leader to “retract his shameful,
 partisan suggestion that the Senate abdicate its responsibility.”

This story was updated to include new details about the Senate confirmation process.

====================================================
5)

Stop Calling Millennials Narcissists

Abby W. SchachterBy Abby W. Schachter
vector flat illustration of society members with a large group of men and women. population. modern society concept
Millennials are the most narcissistic generation in, well, a generation – or so we’re often told. But before the millennials there were the so-called slackers of Generation X –portrayed as navel-gazing, unambitious, lay-about good-for-nothings – at least in films such 
as Clerks, Reality Bites, and Slacker. Before Gen X we had the uber-self-centered 
generation, the Baby Boomers (see The Big Chill if you doubt me). And while research
 shows that the ‘me’-gene is strong with those born between the early 1980s and the early
 2000s, millennials at least have the virtue of not liking the designation, according to 
new research by Joshua Grubbs, a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University
 in Ohio. “People don’t like that,” Grubbs told Live Science.
The funny part is that this narrative of a generation who only cares about themselves isn’t 
new. “We’re not talking about two generations ago, people were just completely selfless, 
and in this generation we’re trying to kill each other to watch the next season of something
 on Netflix,” Grubbs said. He’s right. In fact, the drift towards a more individualistic, 
inward-looking population has been going on for nearly 100 years. “There is a very 
consistent and reliable trend where all indicators of individualism [have] been on the rise 
over the course of the last 100 years,” University of Waterloo psychologist Igor Grossman
 explained at the same meeting where Grubbs presented his research. Grossman argues 
that every generation is more self-involved than the one that came before.
In books such as Bowling Alone and Our Kids, sociologist Robert Putnam shows how, since
 the 1950s, we’ve seen a rapid decline in community participation and social capital. Should
 we be surprised that fifty years after a precipitous decline in participation in bowling leagues, synagogues, churches, rotary, elks clubs, and other community groups, that we’ve arrived at a time when a generation of young people tend to think of themselves first? What
 model do they have for anything else?
There is another aspect to this trend as well, one that doesn’t get enough attention in the 
news media. Reporting on the supposed narcissism of millennials, Psychology Today’s
 Caroline Beaton, who is a kind of Millennial Whisperer when it comes to interpreting data, 
notes that some of the traits that make her generation seem self-centered can also be 
viewed in a positive light, but that psychological assessments fail to distinguish the good 
from the bad. Beaton explains:
Because such evaluations fail to differentiate narcissistic traits from

healthy self-esteem, we’re left to our own devices to figure out which we

have. But, confusingly, we likely exhibit traits linked to both. One can

display self-centered behaviors as well as stable, authentic self-esteem.
The fact that, as Grubbs’ research shows, millennials don’t like the narcissist label is a good
 sign for the possible growth of self-awareness. The next step might be a tool that this 
generation intuitively understands because they were raised with it:  branding. Perhaps the
 road to changing the outlook of the young is to suggest a new name to go along with a new
 attitude. Instead of a millennial generation that can’t think of the greater good, how about
 calling them the rising generation – as some have started to do? A rising generation 
suggests that as it ages, it will come to understand that not only should they think about 
themselves, but they must be responsible for themselves and others, too. So Hollywood:  start working on the Millennial / Rising generations’ defining movie. There’s an entire generation waiting to see it, and a lot of misperceptions to correct.
==================================================================
6) WHAT I LEARNED FROM WATCHING THE DEMOCRAT’S DEBATE

*       Black Lives Matter, All Lives Don't Matter.

*       College should be free and all student loans cancelled.

*       All medical treatment should be free.

*       To become an American citizen you just need to show up here.

*       The economy sucks and after 7 years in office, it's not Obama's 
fault.

*       The Middle Class is shrinking rapidly and after 7 years in office, it's 
not Obama's fault.

*       Average family income is continuing to drop and after 7 years in 
office, it's not Obama's fault.

*       Black youths have over a 50% unemployment rate and after 7 
years in office it's not Obama's fault.

*       Hispanic youth unemployment is over 35% and after 7 years in 
office, it's not Obama's fault.

*       50% of the population is paying 100% of all the taxes and they are 
still not paying their “fair share.”   The other 50% are not receiving nearly 
enough free stuff and deserve more.

*       Everyone who votes Democrat will work less, make more money, 
get more time off, spend more time with family, pay less taxes, and get 
more government subsidies.

*       Government wants even more money to squander on old promises 
already broken.

*       Being a  "Progressive" is less cringe-worthy than saying you're a 
Liberal.  
*       When  America grows up, we want to be Norway,  Sweden or the  
Netherlands .

*       There's a quagmire in Iraq and Obama's complete retreat from 
there has nothing to do with the situation.

*       Republicans want dirty air, oil spills, trash in the streets, polluted 
oceans, no medical treatment, young people without any education 
being paid the lowest possible wages, starving children, were 
responsible for Jim Crow Laws and don't believe in equal 
rights.

*       Snowden and General Petraeus broke laws for releasing and not 
securing secret documents but Hillary Clinton shares no responsibility for 
doing WORSE.

*       If Hilary is elected, everything will be rainbows and Unicorns - just 
like with Obama.

*       Hillary Clinton does walk on water.

*       Cheaters do prosper.

*       People often cheer stupidity.

*       There is only one candidate given a voice in the Democrat Race.

*       Hillary and Bill Clinton were born poor Black Children.

*       All the qualifications needed to be President is to be a woman.

*       Evil looks like anything white, rich, successful and productive.

*       You will receive a participation trophy in life.

*       Agreements of any kind should be signed and committed to, even 
if the other agreeing party doesn't live up to its obligations.

*       Everyone else does it, so should we, regardless of any results in 
those other countries.

*       Everything is still Bush's fault.
======================================================



.




Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article60064956.html#storylink=cpy