How Long Do Our Presidents Coddle Enemies and Allow Cancer To Spread? Federal Judges Re-Appointed? Ben Bradlee - Where Are You? Keeping A Promise?

How many more behinds must our presidents kiss of corrupt leaders?  We have been sucking up to the Palestinians for eons, same for N Korea and Iran. What ever happened to doing what is right and letting the corrupt learn they will no longer be coddled?  

Probably not diplomatic enough for the sycophants in our State Department and the Politically Correct who are intent on destroying our world or allowing others to do so.

I understand the reluctance to acknowledge and respond to a diagnosis of  "colon cancer"  but waiting and allowing it to spread is not a rational option.(See 1 below.)
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A novel idea for jurists who are overly political, seek political and/or outcomes that do not square with the Constitution: " Theodore D. Galanides: U.S. Federal judges are appointed for life however that fact alone does not entitle them to make stupid decisions. A case in point is President Trump's foreign travel ban which a federal judge ruled unconstitutional and was just overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Federal judges that have been overturned three times on issues that have a political bias should have to be reconfirmed by the U.S. Senate, a three strikes and you are out policy. They should also be required to read the U. S. Constitution. It would stop the waste and abuse caused by these ridiculous decisions."
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How can Mueller have a credibility problem when he is a saint in search of hanging Trump? (See 2 below.)

Last night I watched the HBO Documentary on Ben Bradlee, legendary editor of The Washington Post.  Wonder, were he alive today and still editor of that paper, what would he be doing about Clinton, Comey, Mueller, Trump.

Now that the paper is owned by Bezos it has gone off the "truth tracks."
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Finally, a unique president who seeks to keep campaign promises might be among us. 

Now, what next?  Stay tuned.(See 3 below.)
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Islam choking France? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Commentary Magazine:

North Korea’s demonstration of a ballistic missile capable of reaching most of the United States prompted gloomy commentary in Israel about the failure to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear program and, by analogy, the seeming impossibility of stopping Iran’s nuclear program. As Haaretz commentator Anshel Pfeffer put it, Kim Jong-un “proved that a dictator who wants a nuclear weapon badly enough,” and is ruthless and determined enough, “will ultimately achieve it.” Yet the North Korean example proves no such thing because it says nothing about the efficacy of the one tactic America never tried: military action, or at least the credible threat thereof.

North Korea has proven, if anyone had still any doubts, that sanctions and negotiations alone can’t stop a determined dictator from acquiring nukes. In contrast, the jury’s still out on military action. It has only been tried twice, both times by Israel, in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. And it’s still too soon to say conclusively that it worked. But at least so far, neither country has nuclear weapons.

Moreover, many of the arguments against military action are fatuous. Take, for instance, the claim that military action is pointless once a country has the know-how to build a bomb, because “You can’t bomb a people’s knowledge out of existence,” as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen said of Iran. That’s true, but it’s completely irrelevant. Knowledge is only one of many components needed to build a bomb. Get rid of the others–like Iran’s heavy-water reactor, its stockpile of enriched uranium, and its centrifuges for enriching more–and no amount of knowledge will suffice to produce nuclear weapons.

Then there’s the argument that military action does nothing but buy time. That’s far from self-evident. Some countries might conclude that the effort of rebuilding their nuclear program only to be bombed again isn’t worth it. But even assuming that’s true, buying time has also been proven to be the most sanctions and negotiations can achieve (except in the rare cases where countries actually agree to give up their nuclear programs.

Thus the relevant question is which course of action buys more time, because the more time you buy, the better the chances of an unexpected development—say, regime change in Iran—that could lead to permanent success. Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, for instance, bought just enough time for Iraq to make a critical mistake nobody could have foreseen: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which led to the Gulf War and America’s subsequent imposition of an intrusive and effective nuclear inspection regime.

For two reasons, military action probably buys the most time. First, sanctions and negotiations leave much of a country’s nuclear infrastructure in place, whereas military action destroys it. Rebuilding from scratch always takes longer than expanding or improving existing infrastructure, especially if military action is combined with sanctions to impede the rebuilding process. Second, unlike military action, negotiations always require concessions, which can actually facilitate nuclear progress by allowing countries to do openly what they would otherwise have to do secretly. The Iran deal, for instance, allows Tehran to replace its old, slow centrifuges with fast new ones, so that when the deal ends—or earlier, if it follows the North Korean model and cheats—it will be able to enrich the uranium needed for a bomb 20 times faster than it could when the deal began.

There is, of course, one serious reason for avoiding military action: fear of painful retaliation. That certainly played a role in America’s reluctance to bomb North Korea; the latter’s conventional forces are quite sufficient to launch devastating reprisals against both South Korea’s civilian population and the tens of thousands of American troops stationed there. Various estimates put the potential casualties in South Korea at tens or even hundreds of thousands.

Low-cost military action was eminently feasible when Iran’s illicit nuclear program was discovered 15 years ago. Unfortunately, that’s no longer true (which is a damning indictment of three successive Israeli governments). Eleven years ago, when Israel fought a month-long war with Tehran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah fired around 4,000 rockets and killed 163 Israelis. Today, Hezbollah has upward of 150,000 rockets, including many with longer ranges, heavier warheads, and greater accuracy. Moreover, back then, Syria had no interest in joining the war, whereas today, it might have little choice. Significant portions of what are euphemistically called “Syrian government forces” are actually militias (both Syrian and foreign) that answer directly to Tehran.

Thus, preparing a military option on Iran starts with taking steps to make this option less dangerous, and therefore more feasible. Those preparations must start with making serious efforts to push Iran out of Syria, curb Iran’s conventional missile program, and persuade Europe to finally outlaw Hezbollah (rather than only its “military wing,” as if this were somehow distinct from its political wing).

All of the above are things America should do anyway to roll back Iranian influence in the Middle East and thereby restore some measure of regional stability. But the nuclear issue gives these steps added urgency.

Most likely, any military action will end up being Israeli rather than American. America has never taken military action to stop any country’s nuclear program, and decision-makers have often gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid doing so. Even though the sanctions/negotiations track has failed repeatedly, Washington is unlikely to scrap this decades-old, bipartisan policy in Iran’s case. A nuclear Iran simply isn’t the existential threat to America that it is to Israel.

But America must begin working now to make Israeli military action feasible at a reasonable cost. For as the North Korean failure shows, only military action is likely to stop Tehran from following in Pyongyang’s footsteps.

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2)

Mueller’s Credibility Problem

The special counsel is stonewalling Congress and protecting the FBI.

The Editorial Board

Donald Trump is his own worst enemy, as his many ill-advised tweets on the weekend about Michael Flynn, the FBI and Robert Mueller’s Russia probe demonstrate. But that doesn’t mean that Mr. Mueller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation deserve a pass about their motives and methods, as new information raises troubling questions.

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported Saturday that a lead FBI investigator on the Mueller probe, Peter Strzok, was demoted this summer after it was discovered he’d sent anti- Trump texts to a mistress. As troubling, Mr. Mueller and the Justice Department kept this information from House investigators, despite Intelligence Committee subpoenas that would have exposed those texts. They also refused to answer questions about Mr. Strzok’s dismissal and refused to make him available for an interview.

The news about Mr. Strzok leaked only when the Justice Department concluded it couldn’t hold out any longer, and the stories were full of spin that praised Mr. Mueller for acting “swiftly” to remove the agent. Only after these stories ran did Justice agree on Saturday to make Mr. Strzok available to the House.

This is all the more notable because Mr. Strzok was a chief lieutenant to former FBI Director James Comey and played a lead role investigating alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. Mr. Mueller then gave him a top role in his special-counsel probe. And before all this Mr. Strzok led the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and sat in on the interview she gave to the FBI shortly before Mr. Comey publicly exonerated her in violation of Justice Department practice.

Oh, and the woman with whom he supposedly exchanged anti-Trump texts, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, worked for both Mr. Mueller and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who was accused of a conflict of interest in the Clinton probe when it came out that Clinton allies had donated to the political campaign of Mr. McCabe’s wife. The texts haven’t been publicly released, but it’s fair to assume their anti-Trump bias must be clear for Mr. Mueller to reassign such a senior agent.

There is no justification for withholding all of this from Congress, which is also investigating Russian influence and has constitutional oversight authority. Justice and the FBI have continued to defy legal subpoenas for documents pertaining to both surveillance warrants and the infamous Steele dossier that was financed by the Clinton campaign and relied on anonymous Russian sources.

While there is no evidence so far of Trump-Russia collusion, House investigators have turned up enough material to suggest that anti-Trump motives may have driven Mr. Comey’s FBI investigation. The public has a right to know whether the Steele dossier inspired the Comey probe, and whether it led to intrusive government eavesdropping on campaign satellites such as Carter Page.

All of this reinforces our doubts about Mr. Mueller’s ability to conduct a fair and credible probe of the FBI’s considerable part in the Russia-Trump drama. Mr. Mueller ran the bureau for 12 years and is fast friends with Mr. Comey, whose firing by Mr. Trump triggered his appointment as special counsel. The reluctance to cooperate with a congressional inquiry compounds doubts related to this clear conflict of interest.

Mr. Mueller’s media protectorate argues that anyone critical of the special counsel is trying to cover for Mr. Trump. But the alleged Trump-Russia ties are the subject of numerous probes—Mr. Mueller’s, and those of various committees in the House and Senate. If there is any evidence of collusion, Democrats and Mr. Mueller’s agents will make sure it is spread far and wide.

Yet none of this means the public shouldn’t also know if, and how, America’s most powerful law-enforcement agency was influenced by Russia or partisan U.S. actors. All the more so given Mr. Comey’s extraordinary intervention in the 2016 campaign, which Mrs. Clinton keeps saying turned the election against her. The history of the FBI is hardly without taint.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mr. Mueller, is also playing an increasingly questionable role in resisting congressional oversight. Justice has floated multiple reasons for ignoring House subpoenas, none of them persuasive.

First it claimed cooperation would hurt the Mueller probe, but his prosecutions are proceeding apace. Then Justice claimed that providing House investigators with classified material could hurt security or sources. But House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has as broad a security clearance as nearly anyone in government. Recently Justice said it can’t interfere with a probe by the Justice Department Inspector General—as if an IG trumps congressional oversight.

Mr. Nunes is understandably furious at the Strzok news, on top of the other stonewalling. He asked Justice to meet the rest of his committee’s demands by close of business Monday, and if it refuses Congress needs to pursue contempt citations against Mr. Rosenstein and new FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The latest news supports our view that Mr. Mueller is too conflicted to investigate the FBI and should step down in favor of someone more credible. The investigation would surely continue, though perhaps with someone who doesn’t think his job includes protecting the FBI and Mr. Comey from answering questions about their role in the 2016 election.

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3)

Trump Declines to Sign Waiver Delaying Embassy Move to Jerusalem

by Joel B. Pollak

On Tuesday, Dec. 5, at 12:00 a.m., the deadline expired for President Donald Trump to sign another six-month waiver deferring the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem — and the waiver had not been signed.

It is still unclear whether Trump will decide to move the embassy from the coastal financial center of Tel Aviv to the actual seat of the Israeli government, and the historic and religious capital of the Jewish people. White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley confirmed earlier in the evening, “No action though will be taken on the waiver today and we will declare a decision on the waiver in the coming days,” according to the Times of Israel.

Legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich explained in the Washington Post earlier in the year — prior to the last six-month deadline — what not signing the waiver by the deadline would mean:

Absent a new waiver by President Trump, the provisions of the law [the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995] will go into full effect.

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[B]y not signing a waiver, Trump would not actually be requiring the embassy to move to Jerusalem, moving the embassy or recognizing Jerusalem. That could give him significant diplomatic flexibility or deniability if June 1 goes by with mere silence from the White House.

 Moreover, the law says nothing about “moving” the embassy. Rather, the requirement is to “officially open” an embassy, which can be done with a mere declaration upgrading the status of one of the existing consular facilities in the city. It does not require the physical relocation of the facility in Tel Aviv.

[T]he moment [the deadline] comes without a waiver, the State Department will become Trump’s biggest ally in finding a way to “establish” an embassy as fast as possible, to avoid the severe cuts to its budget. At the same time, Trump can insist to the world that his non-waiver does not signify any kind of diplomatic policy, but merely a determination that the waiver is no longer “necessary” to protect national security.

The actual text of the Jerusalem Embassy Act specifies that the embassy “should” be established in Jerusalem, meaning that the president may have some flexibility.

Indeed, the administration has hinted that the president will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but may not quite declare the embassy to be in Jerusalem just yet.

Still, given that the president has now removed the last legal barrier to moving the embassy, and that doing so was a major campaign promise in 2016, it would appear that he must do so.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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4) France: Islamism in the Heart of the State

by Yves Mamou

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11423/france-state-islamism

• On all questions dedicated to immigration and Islam, France's Council of State has become an Islamo-leftist body, dedicated to encouraging Muslim immigration and protecting the expansion of Islam and Islamism in France.
• The government wanted to expel foreign workers immediately after the cancellation of their work permit. Due to the Council of State, deportation was delayed by 24 hours, enough time to allow them to escape and become permanent illegal immigrants.
• Maybe the elites are looking for "redemption" after France colonized parts of Africa. They are forgetting, however, that it was Muslims who colonized the Middle East, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa, Greece, much of Eastern Europe and Asia, Northern Cyprus and Spain.

On October 25, 2017, the highest French administrative court, the Council of State (Conseil d'État), ordered the removal of a Roman Catholic cross from the top of a monument dedicated to Pope John Paul II in a public square in Ploërmel, Britanny. According to the France's highest administrative court, this cross was said to violate the secular nature of the State. Not the statue of the ex-pope John Paul II by itself; just the cross above it.

Social media, in France and abroad -- especially in Poland where John Paul II was born -- flew into an immediate uproar: How could the government of a country considered the "eldest daughter of the Catholic church" ask for the removal of a Catholic cross in a tiny village that nobody even knew about before this incident?

The Council of State is an independent legal body that has jurisdiction over disputes concerning civil liberties, administrative police, taxes, public contracts, the civil service, public health, competition rules, environmental law and secularism, to name just a few of its missions. The Council of State is also -- as its name implies -- the main advisor of every branch of government. Each time a minister or a prime minister has a difficult political decision to make, he sends the case to the Council of State. Generally, the Council of State's advice becomes the law.

The immense respect due to the Council of State seems to have caused even the keenest observers to miss the fact that, on all questions dedicated to immigration and Islam, the Council of State has become an Islamo-leftist body dedicated to encouraging Muslim immigration and protecting the expansion of Islam and Islamism in France.

A few examples include:

• 1978. The right to migrate and work in France without an employment contract. The Council of State cancelled the government's decision to require an employment contract for a foreigner to migrate and work in France.
• 1978. The right to family reunification. Against the will of the government, which wanted to adapt migratory movements to a slower growth of the economy, the Council of State ruled that non-French immigrants have the "right to a family life", meaning that the wives and children of migrants workers are authorized to come, live and work in France as if they were French citizens. From that date, "family reunification" became an open door to migrants from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
• 1980. The right to polygamy. A foreign citizen is allowed to migrate in France with as many wives as he is married to in his country of origin. In 1993, a previous law had prevented second wives from obtaining visas.
• 1985. The right to illegal immigration. The government wanted to expel foreign workers immediately after the cancellation of their work permit. Due to the Council of State, deportation was delayed by 24 hours, enough time to escape and become a permanent illegal immigrant.
• 1989. Islamic veil in school is not "incompatible" with secularism. Since 18th century, state public schools were a tool of the state to build an education system away from the influence of the Catholic church. In 1989, with the authorization for schoolgirls to wear the Islamic veil, the Council of State introduced the right for a religion to influence a secularist education system. After 15 years of heated controversy, a 2004 law reversed that ruling and again prohibited the Islamic veil in the public secondary-school system, but not at universities.
• 2004. Authorization of Al Manar, Hezbollah's virulently anti-Semitic television channel, to broadcast in France. After strong protests by leaders of the Jewish community, however, the government passed a law that made it obligatory for the Council of State to prohibit the Islamist channel.
• 2010. The Council of State strongly opposed the government's decision legally to ban the burqa in the public space. A law banning the burqa was eventually passed.
• 2011. Public money is allowed for building mosques after the Council of State bypassed the secularist law from 1905.
• 2013. The Council of State gives the right to veiled mothers to be part of public school trips. Before that, school trips were considered an extension of the school. Consequently, the 2004 law prohibiting Islamic veil at school was applied against veiled mothers. In 2012, however, that law was reversed; now, veiled mothers are allowed to accompany pupils on school trips.
• 2013. The Council of State opposed the dismissal of a veiled employee in a daycare nursery, Baby Loup. The Baby Loup veil controversy, which lasted five years, mobilized national and international media, politicians, and a large part of the judicial system. The question was: Does a female employee have the right to wear an Islamic headscarf, even if company rules prohibit it? Eventually, the employee was dismissed and Baby Loup, which was located in a Muslim suburb, moved elsewhere.
• 2016. The Council of State allowed burkinis, the full-covering swimsuit for women. The ruling affects seaside resorts such as Nice, and places where the burkini does not create public disorder. In August 2016, burkinis started appearing on French beaches. In Nice, the capital of the Côte d'Azur, a few weeks after an Islamist terrorist murdered 82 people on July 14, four policemen delivered a warning to a burkini-clad woman lying on a beach. Pictures in the Daily Mail of policemen surrounding "poor and isolated Muslim woman," were published throughout the world. The Council of State ruled that any municipal prohibition of the burkini was prohibited -- unless the burkini was creating public disorder.
• 2016. More money for "refugees". The Council of State ruled that the State had to give more money to help tens of thousands of "refugees" to find a place to sleep while their files were being examined by immigration officials, contrary to other applicants.
• 2017. A government-funded mega-mosque in Paris. The Council of State helped the mayor of Paris legally build a giant mosque and donate it as a gift to an Islamic association.
• 2017. Islamic veil in nursing schools. The Council of State authorized the Islamic veil in nurses' training institutions even if internal rules prohibited exhibiting conspicuous religious signs.
• 2017. Public showers and toilets for migrants. The Council of State ruled that the government has an obligation to provide illegal immigrants with public showers and public toilets in Calais, where thousands of young men from Africa and the Middle East try every day illegally to cross the Channel to England. Notably, this ruling is based on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which says this obligation is only for prisoners of war. Does the Council of State consider the French State as a jailer of migrants? There is no mention whatsoever in the ruling of considerations of public health.

Although the list above is not exhaustive, the rulings of the Council of State in favor of Islam, Islamism and unlimited, unvetted Muslim migration is systematic.

The question is: Why? Many French elites seem to be followers of a globalist ideology of no borders, no rules -- only the "human rights" of migrants from other nations vs. the rights of the citizens of France.

Perhaps many elites feel guilty after French State actively collaborated with Nazis, especially against Jews, during World War II, so that now they are trying, instead, to help Muslims -- whose culture and goals could hardly be farther from that of the Jews. Nevertheless, many seem to think of Muslims as "the Jews" of 21st century.

Perhaps many among the elites secretly do not like their country.

Or perhaps many elites are looking for "redemption" after France colonized parts of Africa and Northern Africa. They are forgetting, however, that it was Muslims who colonized the Middle East, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa, Greece, much of Eastern Europe and Asia, Northern Cyprus and Spain.

Maybe it is a mix of all these guilts. What is certain is that after the collaboration of the French State with the Nazis, the judges of the Council of State are collaborating with yet another totalitarian ideology: political Islam.

Yves Mamou, author and journalist, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde. He is finishing a book about "Collaborators and Useful Idiots of Islamism in France," to be published in 2018.

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