Grandson, Kevin, comes in Thursday so focus on him not memos.
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We should eliminate the Electoral College only after we eliminate all states and simply become The United States. Since that will not happen any time soon Beto, Warren and the other stooges should learn to suck it up.
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Today's Democrat Party: https://www.washingtontimes.
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Suppose a map did not show Palestine. Would that be Islamophobic? (See 1 below.)
There were consequences. (See 1a below.)
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Don't lock her up but don't let her go un-accountable. (See 2 below.)
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If anyone can break up the log jam McConnell can. (See 3 below.)
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It seems Trump has a habit of expressing his inner thoughts first and then either calmer heads prevail or he cools down and comes to a more rational solution or course of action.
Watch what he does not what he says and as Zito suggested: "The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally." Consequently, the mass media misses Trump completely either because they are blinded by hatred or because they are young and incompetent and unable to comprehend what it takes to be subtle. Even the spelling of the word demands "subtlety."
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Netanyahu to visit with Putin partly to maintain co-ordination of Israel and Russia's military actions in Syria and partly to drive home his diplomatic effectiveness before the elections. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Is it Islamophobic to deny that ‘Palestine’ exists?
The comments of a New York City councilman about a country that doesn’t yet exist may lead to punishment for him that Rep. Ilhan Omar escaped for spreading anti-Semitism.
Despite repeated comments in which she repeated hateful anti-Semitic tropes, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) escaped even the mildest slap on the wrist from her congressional colleagues. But it turns out that Kalman Yeger won’t get off so easy.
Yeger, a member of the New York City Council who represents a heavily Jewish district, is in trouble for offending New York’s Arab and Palestinian community with remarks that some have interpreted as Islamophobic. But unlike Omar—around whom many Democrats circled the wagons in order to prevent offended Jews and pro-Israel members of Congress from forcing her off the House Foreign Relations Committee—it looks as if members of his own party are abandoning the Brooklyn Democrat.
What did Yeger do? He denied the existence of a country named “Palestine,” as well as earlier casting doubt on the authenticity of the Palestinians themselves.
That was enough to draw the opprobrium of fellow Democrats City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Mayor Bill De Blasio. The two asserted that if Yeger didn’t retract his comments, he should be booted off the New York legislative body’s Committee on Immigration. Yeger has refused to back down, with the kerfuffle leading to a noisy standoff outside his Brooklyn office, where demonstrators and counterdemonstrators exchanged insults.
Will this have an impact on the Middle East? No. But as Linda Sarsour—a notorious anti-Semitic Palestinian-American activist and leader of the “resistance” to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been drawn into this fight—observed, it may mark the first time an American politician will be made to suffer for having offended Palestinians and those opposed to Israel’s existence.
Yeger’s defense rests in both context and a geographic fact.
His initial comment came in a response on Twitter to the idea that Ahmed Tibi, one of the leaders of an Israeli-Arab political party, would become prime minister of an Israeli-Palestinian state that would theoretically replace Israel. He said it proved “the ultimate goal of the so-called Palestinians is the destruction of the Jewish state and its people.”
He then responded to criticisms of that tweet with another that escalated the argument: “Palestine does not exist. There, I said it again. Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too.”
Is this analogous to Omar’s talk of Jews hypnotizing the world, being disloyal Americans and buying Congress to support Israel?
Palestinian Americans and some of their supporters assert that any denial of their existence as a people, or that the place they consider their homeland is called Palestine, is hateful and delegitimizing.
Prior to 1948 and the birth of Israel, the only group that answered to the name “Palestinians” were Jewish residents of the British Mandate for Palestine. Non-Jews who lived there considered themselves Arabs, not Palestinians, because there had never in history been a separate Palestinian Arab political entity or, prior to the birth of modern Zionism, a national movement that represented the ambitions of such a group. It was only after the birth of Israel that the Arabs embraced the name Palestinian and claimed that the country was “Palestine,” rather than a section of Syria or the Ottoman Empire.
While their national movement is of relatively recent vintage, there is no denying that it does exist now, and it represents the ambitions of millions of people who call themselves “Palestinian.” To deny that there is a Palestinian people is to deny reality. Calling them “so-called” is a pointless insult, not a refutation of their political demands or tactics.
However, Yeger is not wrong to point out that while “Palestine” is recognized as a “non-member observer state” by the United Nations, it is not an actual, functioning country. The Palestinian Authority autonomously rules most Palestinians in the West Bank, but does not exercise sovereignty. Hamas does exercise sovereignty in the Gaza Strip, but is not recognized by anyone since it is a terrorist-run tyrannical state.
But the reason why “Palestine” isn’t a country isn’t a function of prejudice. De Blasio is a supporter of Israel and AIPAC, but he still chided Yeger, saying that denying the right of the Palestinians to a home is a form of prejudice. The trouble with that argument is that Palestinian identity has been inextricably tied to denying the right of the Jews to a state in the same country. Those who advocate, as the New York City mayor does, for a two-state solution to the conflict assert that there is a way for both peoples to have a home alongside each other. However, when people like Omar, Sarsour, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and the BDS movement they support—let alone the leaders of Fatah or Hamas movements—say “Palestine,” they are not referring to a separate state next door to a secure Jewish state. They are, instead, referring to their hope of replacing the State of Israel with a Palestinian state that will deny the right of the Jews to self-determination.
Opposing that ambition—as Yeger clearly intended in his original tweet—is not Islamophobic or even necessarily rooted in hate against Palestinians. While Yeger’s willingness to oppose Israel’s foes in this manner was not the sort of thing that will bring Jews and Arabs together in an ethnically diverse borough, it’s also not the same thing as Omar’s anti-Semitic statements or her support of a BDS movement that aims at Israel’s annihilation.
Foreign policy has long been a theme of New York politics, and in years past, mayoral hopefuls often felt they had to demonstrate their support for the three “I’s”: Israel, Ireland and Italy. But if support for “Palestine,” whether alongside or replacing Israel, is now a requirement, Sarsour is right about a sea change in the city’s politics and that of the Democratic Party that dominates it. If the same party that shielded Omar punishes Yeger, it certainly won’t strengthen the Democrats’ efforts to be considered a pro-Israel party.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate.
1a) NYC councilman who tweeted ‘Palestine does not exist’ loses committee seat
By BEN SALES
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio had condemned Yeger’s statement and said he should step down from the Immigration Committee if he does not apologize.
Kalman Yeger, a New York City councilman, lost his seat on the City Council’s Immigration Committee for tweeting “Palestine does not exist.”
Palestine does not exist.
There, I said it again.
Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too.
Thanks for following me. https://t.co/apM565HoEV
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2) Don’t Lock Hillary Up
But no amnesty for anyone who abused his office because he wanted her to win.
By William McGurn
Thanks to two lucky breaks, Hillary Clinton got away with political murder in 2016.
The biggest break came when opposition research produced by one of her hired hands ended up being used by the FBI to spy on her Republican rival’s campaign and feed accusations of Russia collusion. But she’d also lucked out in early July when the FBI director himself, even though he lacked the authority to do so, publicly and personally cleared her of any charges for having taken her emails as secretary of state off-grid.
This weekend Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) told Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo that the two cases point to a glaring double standard between how the Clinton and Trump investigations went down. Mr. Graham added that he’s not alone. Attorney General William Barr, he said, is “pretty upset” by the way the Justice Department dealt with the Clinton investigation.
“I want a prosecutor to look at this, not a politician,” said Sen. Graham, hinting there may yet be criminal consequences.
But not for Mrs. Clinton. And as disappointing as this may be for the lock-her-up crowd, that’s a good thing.
In practical terms, the challenges to prosecuting Mrs. Clinton and her associates are formidable. The statute of limitations on lying and the immunity agreements her associates received are only some of the obstacles. Even more dispositive, criminally prosecuting an election loser isn’t going to help a nation that needs to move beyond 2016.
But Mr. Graham isn’t calling for Mrs. Clinton in prison stripes. He’s after something more fundamental. What he wants is for the American people to appreciate that men and women at the top of the nation’s intelligence and law-enforcement agencies abused the power of their respective offices by putting their fingers on the election scales.
Sen. Graham puts it this way: “I’m not so much worried about retrying her, but I want to make sure that the public understands that she got away with something they wouldn’t get away with.” And how much harsher the standard the same people applied to Mr. Trump.
The good news is that Mr. Graham is in an excellent position to bring about the accounting he wants. True, Beltway drama will continue to swirl around House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff so long as he continues to insist there’s evidence of Russia collusion only he can see (Mr. Graham says Mr. Schiff represents “the Oliver Stone wing of the Democratic Party”). But Mr. Schiff’s investigation is now a sideshow. The real action will be over at the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Mr. Graham now chairs.
Mr. Graham says his committee will pursue three broad questions.
First is the way the Justice Department and the FBI handled Mrs. Clinton’s email investigation. Why, for example, were so many immunity agreements handed out with nothing given in return? “I would like to find out whether or not they basically were in the tank for Clinton and gave her a pass.”
Second, the counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Trump’s campaign. Among the issues raising Mr. Graham’s eyebrows: When the FBI had concerns that China’s intelligence service was trying to recruit a member of Dianne Feinstein’s Senate staff, the bureau informed the California Democrat.
Why didn’t it do the same for Mr. Trump when it suspected members of his campaign of working with Russia? More specifically, the senator wonders whether Congress needs to write rules for launching counterintelligence investigations into a presidential campaign.
Finally, there are the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants the FBI took out on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page—based largely on the dubious Steele dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign. Depending on what the committee finds, Mr. Graham suggests Congress may need to rewrite the laws governing FISA warrants so that what happened to Mr. Page can never happen again.
These are all questions Congress should be asking as part of its oversight responsibilities. Mr. Graham also said he hopes Mr. Barr would appoint a special counsel. The instinct is understandable. A special counsel dogged Mr. Trump for almost two years, yet Mr. Comey drafted Mrs. Clinton’s exoneration before FBI agents had even interviewed her.
Even so, there is no need for another special counsel, especially now that almost all the key players in the Clinton and Trump investigations have left Justice and the FBI. Mr. Barr is more than capable of appointing a solid U.S. attorney to investigate what needs to be investigated criminally, and then to ensure the investigation doesn’t, like almost all special counsel investigations, drag on interminably.
Democracies have long survived lying, cheating and even criminal politicians. So the test isn’t whether Hillary Clinton should go to jail. It’s whether there will be accountability for those whose job was to uphold the rule of law—but who in 2016 lied, cheated and perhaps committed criminal acts simply because they desperately wanted Donald Trump to lose.
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3) A Rule to Speed Up Confirmations
The GOP is moving to break the Democratic stall on presidential nominees.
The Editorial Board
The U.S. Senate has a constitutional duty to confirm or reject presidential nominees, and the Senate’s pace in the Trump era is slower than it has ever been. The reason is deliberate and persistent Democratic obstruction and abuse of Senate rules, so three cheers for Republicans for advancing a modest change in those rules to let President Trump form a government before his first term ends.
Senate Republicans are moving this week to limit Senate debate on most executive and judicial nominees to two hours. The current “cloture” process triggers 30 hours of debate on the floor, even after candidates have been vetted and passed out of committee. Democrats have hit the cloture button regardless of their views on the nominee because it absorbs floor time and slows the Senate to a stall.
Democrats forced some 128 cloture votes in Mr. Trump’s first two years, including for the first time in history on 42 executive-branch jobs. These included five cabinet secretaries, six deputy secretaries, six ambassadors (including to the strategically crucial state of Luxembourg), and a slew of lower-level positions that weren’t at all controversial.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has offered the example of President Trump’s nominee—drum roll, please—to the Federal Railroad Administration. Ronald Batory had worked in the railroad industry for 45 years and attracted no opposition, yet the Senate blocked his nomination for more than 200 days. Another classic: A cloture vote on a nominee to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Who knew seasonal adjustment could be so controversial?
Republicans have been discussing how to speed up this grind. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma has put forth a proposal that would trim debate time to two hours for most nominees and district court judges. The exceptions would be cabinet secretaries and appellate court and Supreme Court nominees, all of whom would be kept at the 30-hour standard.
Two hours is plenty of time for a Socratic dialogue on deputy assistant secretaries and, by the way, most of the time when Democrats demand cloture votes they don’t even show up to debate. The 30-hour standard on the most influential nominees reserves cloture for its original purpose: protracted consideration on the rare controversial nominee.
The rule change would be permanent, which means Republicans are surrendering the opportunity for obstruction payback in 2021 if a Democrat is President. One purpose of permanence is to give Democrats an incentive to make the rule change bipartisan. In 2013 when Democrats held a Senate majority, Mr. McConnell as Minority Leader agreed to limit debate on President Obama’s nominees to eight hours.
The GOP put the Lankford proposal to a vote Tuesday but Democrats blocked it. The GOP should now move to invoke a procedure that lets the majority change the rule with 51 votes. Let’s hope Republicans don’t go wobbly amid faux Democratic outrage and faux press eulogies for Senate courtesy and tradition that Democrats long ago abandoned.
The GOP is right to frame this as a debate about the proper functioning of government and the Senate’s duty of advice and consent. The current Senate approach to nominees is a variation of that old joke about the Soviet Union. In 200 years the Senate will vote on a bill. In the morning or afternoon?
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4) Netanyahu announces Putin visit just after phone call on Syria
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday in the aftermath of a phone conversation between the two leaders on military coordination in Syria.
Putin had spoken with Netanyahu on Monday at Israel’s request.
“We talked about the situation in Syria and the continued coordination between the IDF and the Russian Army. You know how important this relationship is for Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Kremlin confirmed Tuesday that a brief working meeting would now be held between the two leaders, just five days before the April 9 Israelis elections.
“An agreement has been reached that on April 4, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will fly to Moscow for a brief working visit. On April 4, such brief working talks will be held and the sides will synchronize their watches,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed, according to the Russian News Agency TASS.
As part of his election campaign, Netanyahu has hammered home his diplomatic successes, including his strong ties with both Russia and the United States.
Last month, Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump in the White House. At the end of February, he also visited Putin in Moscow. This week, he is hosting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in Jerusalem.
Election campaigning aside, however, Israel and Russia have joint interests in regional issues, such as Syria, particularly given the Russian military’s involvement in the country and Israel’s continued aerial strikes against military targets.
After the February meeting, Netanyahu told journalists that an Israeli-Russian task force had between set up to ensure the removal of foreign forces from Syria.
Israel is particularly concerned about Iranian efforts to entrench itself militarily in Syria so that it can use that country as a base from which to attack the Jewish state.
It is also concerned about increased Hezbollah activity in southern Syria, which borders Israel.
Last week, Israel allegedly carried out an aerial attack against an Iranian munitions depot.
After the Trump-Netanyahu meeting, a senior Israeli official told reporters that the prime minister had presented the president with a plan to remove the Iranians from Syria, and that he is also trying to enlist Putin’s support for that plan. The Kremlin denied that the topic was raised in the February meeting.
Also likely on the agenda for the Netanyahu-Putin meeting is Trump’s declaration last month recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Russia has opposed. Thursday’s meeting between Putin and Netanyahu will be their first since that declaration.
Putin had spoken with Netanyahu on Monday at Israel’s request.
“We talked about the situation in Syria and the continued coordination between the IDF and the Russian Army. You know how important this relationship is for Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Kremlin confirmed Tuesday that a brief working meeting would now be held between the two leaders, just five days before the April 9 Israelis elections.
“An agreement has been reached that on April 4, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will fly to Moscow for a brief working visit. On April 4, such brief working talks will be held and the sides will synchronize their watches,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed, according to the Russian News Agency TASS.
As part of his election campaign, Netanyahu has hammered home his diplomatic successes, including his strong ties with both Russia and the United States.
Last month, Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump in the White House. At the end of February, he also visited Putin in Moscow. This week, he is hosting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in Jerusalem.
Election campaigning aside, however, Israel and Russia have joint interests in regional issues, such as Syria, particularly given the Russian military’s involvement in the country and Israel’s continued aerial strikes against military targets.
After the February meeting, Netanyahu told journalists that an Israeli-Russian task force had between set up to ensure the removal of foreign forces from Syria.
Israel is particularly concerned about Iranian efforts to entrench itself militarily in Syria so that it can use that country as a base from which to attack the Jewish state.
It is also concerned about increased Hezbollah activity in southern Syria, which borders Israel.
Last week, Israel allegedly carried out an aerial attack against an Iranian munitions depot.
After the Trump-Netanyahu meeting, a senior Israeli official told reporters that the prime minister had presented the president with a plan to remove the Iranians from Syria, and that he is also trying to enlist Putin’s support for that plan. The Kremlin denied that the topic was raised in the February meeting.
Also likely on the agenda for the Netanyahu-Putin meeting is Trump’s declaration last month recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Russia has opposed. Thursday’s meeting between Putin and Netanyahu will be their first since that declaration.
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