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Mon., May 8, 2017
Coup Against Jim DeMint Threatens To Tear Apart Heritage Foundation
The power struggle at the Heritage Foundation could upend Republican politics and put millions of dollars at DC's most influential think tank on the line.
By Mollie Hemingway
There are two narratives being spun about the current turmoil at the Heritage Foundation. Last week, Politico reported that the non-profit conservative foundation’s board planned to permanently oust former Sen. Jim DeMint, who was appointed president of the organization in 2013.
The narrative Politico offers, supported by quotes from a single anonymous board member, is that Heritage is in disarray as a result of DeMint’s decisions since taking over several years ago. DeMint destroyed the organization’s brand as an esteemed think tank, prioritized politics over research, and mismanaged the institution’s assets after taking control. As a result, according to this narrative, Heritage Foundation’s executive committee had no choice but to remove DeMint pending a full meeting of the board, which is scheduled to take place on Tuesday morning. DeMint’s five-year contract with Heritage runs out at the end of the year.
That’s the public narrative. The narrative offered independently by multiple sources with intimate knowledge of the ongoing turmoil, several of whom are not particularly sympathetic to DeMint, is quite different. According to these sources, the actual story is the exact opposite of what has thus far been peddled in the media, and it all starts with Ed Feulner’s creation of Heritage Action in 2010 and his decision to let Mike Needham, a brash former Rudy Giuliani operative, control the new operation. Contrary to the media narrative floated last week that DeMint needlessly politicized Heritage and turned it into a brass-knuckle political combat group instead of a policy-focused think tank, these sources say Needham bears much of the blame for politicizing Heritage.
Rather than pushing to make Heritage more political and less focused on producing high-quality policy research, DeMint actually tried to rein in Heritage Action in recent years, as the 501(c)(4) group began racking up enemy after enemy on Capitol Hill without actually putting any congressional policy points on the board. Multiple sources told The Federalist that Needham bristled at DeMint’s repeated attempts to assert control over the splinter organization and began plotting to overthrow DeMint once it became clear that the former South Carolina senator had no desire to outsource control of the think tank to the 30-something political operative with no policy background. At one point, a high-placed source told The Federalist, Needham personally confronted DeMint and his team and told them that DeMint was done, that Needham himself would be taking over the organization.
To be sure, nobody thinks DeMint was blameless. Sources indicate he was slow to develop relationships with board members, arguably reorganized the building too quickly, and didn’t see the threat that Heritage Action posed to the Heritage brand until it was too late. While there is much blame to go around for the failure of Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare, some critics wished Heritage had a successful plan ready to go when the 115th Congress convened.
On Monday afternoon Feulner, who regained effective operational control of Heritage late last week, placed James Wallner, the widely respected head of research at Heritage, on administrative leave after Wallner publicly defended Heritage researchers and the organization’s research projects in the wake of last week’s coup rumors going public. According to a senior official in the Heritage human resources department, Wallner was told to leave the premises immediately and was never given a reason by Heritage brass for its decision.
As Wallner’s ouster demonstrates, the narratives allegedly pitched to the foundation’s board by DeMint’s detractors — that their only goal was to preserve the integrity of the organization’s policy research — are at direct odds with the narratives they sold to mainstream media sources last week. If DeMint made the Heritage Foundation too political, then how will replacing him with the head of Heritage’s purely political 501(c)(4) organization, as is rumored, make things any better? (Sources close to Needham insist he’s not seeking DeMint’s job.)
If Heritage needs to focus on its research and leave the politics to others, then how does firing its head of research, who often clashed with demands from Heritage Action to only publish papers that reached predetermined conclusions, improve the organization’s image? If Heritage’s 501(c)(4) employees were meddling too much with the work of the 501(c)(3) employees, how will removing non-political researchers and placing the remaining ones under the authority of the current head of the organization’s political arm remove the influence of politicos from the building’s policy research activities?
One source familiar with Heritage Foundation’s finances told The Federalist that donors have begun asking questions about the future of the think tank following news last week that DeMint was being ousted. Millions of dollars in previous pledges and commitments have been rescinded, the person said.
Despite all the media attention surrounding DeMint’s potential permanent ouster, multiple sources inside the building at 214 Massachusetts Avenue say the vote tally that will determine Heritage’s future is anything but certain at this point, with the two factions currently lacking the votes to win any battle outright. Feulner’s and Needham’s staunchest allies on the board include its chairman Tom Saunders, former Allied Capital CEO Bill Walton, and Nersi Nazari, who also serves on the Heritage Action board. Several sources told The Federalist that the coordinated anti-DeMint media push last week was orchestrated to give fence-sitters on the board the impression that the momentum was all in one direction.
The push to boot DeMint comes as Heritage has re-established itself as the most powerful and influential think tank on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
“The Heritage Foundation might be the biggest winner of 2016,” the Washington Examiner noted after Trump was elected last November. “While others turned their nose up at Trump, they were the ones reading the electorate.”
The New Republic referred to Heritage as “the D.C. think tank behind Donald Trump” in a profile of the institution last February and noted that it was the Heritage Foundation’s political arm — Heritage Action — which had “dismissed Trump as a distraction”:
The Heritage-Trump alliance is one of the more improbable developments in an election season that was full of them. A year ago, Heritage’s political arm dismissed Trump as a distraction, with no track record of allegiance to conservative causes. Today the group’s fingerprints are on virtually every policy Trump advocates, from his economic agenda to his Supreme Court nominees. According to Politico, Heritage employees acted as a ‘shadow transition team,’ vetting potential Trump staffers to make sure the administration is well stocked with conservative appointees. At a Heritage event shortly after the election, John Yoo, author of the notorious Bush-era memos authorizing torture, trotted out a series of one-liners about the foundation’s influence. ‘I’m surprised there are so many people here, because I thought everyone at Heritage was working over at transition headquarters,’ Yoo joked. ‘I asked the taxicab driver to take me to Trump transition headquarters, and he dropped me off here instead.’
In an article about Heritage posted last December, CNN encouraged readers to “Meet Donald Trump’s think tank,” while The Hill noted that the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts “hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation[.]”
Rather than allowing political operatives to take over Heritage’s operations, as the anti-DeMint narrative goes, DeMint actually stood firm against desires the political staff at the 501(c)(4), developed a relationship with Trump’s team, and as a result ended up turning Heritage into the de facto policy arm of the new Republican administration. What more could a conservative think tank’s donors ask for than the freedom to research and recommend conservative policy and the ability and influence to see it adopted by a new president?
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
FBI Is Conducting Even More Interviews Over Alleged Jane Sanders Bank Fraud
STEVE BIRR
Federal investigators are conducting interviews in Florida regarding accusations Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane Sanders, defrauded a bank while serving as president of the now-defunct Burlington College.
Allegations Jane Sanders falsified loan documents to expand the campus of Burlington College, which collapsed into bankruptcy in May 2016, swirled more than a year prior. The Daily Caller News Foundation first broke the news of the allegations against Mrs. Sanders in March 2015. The Department of Justice and the FBI will not confirm the existence of an investigation, but recent interviews conducted by officials from the FBI and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), independently confirmed to TheDCNF, suggest an investigation is ongoing.
Sanders wrote on a 2010 loan application that 83-year-old Corinne Bove Maietta, the daughter of the founders of Bove Restaurants in Burlington, pledged $1 million to Burlington College over five years. Maietta, who has a property in West Palm Beach, says it was not a pledge but an unspecified bequest to be paid to the school upon her death. Maietta’s accountant confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation the FBI contacted him seeking an interview with Maietta.
“It was sometime back in March or April, during tax season,” Richard Moss, Maietta’s accountant, told TheDCNF. “It was in regards to Corine Maietta’s current address and where they could contact her for questions related to Burlington College. If she was in Vermont, the FBI was going to interview her, and if she was down in Florida, a person with the FDIC working with the FBI was going to interview her.”
The FBI also recently interviewed Ron Leavitt, an orthopedic surgeon who moved to Naples, Fla., after leaving Burlington. The agents asked him about a $30,000 donation he made, according to Seven Days, an alternative weekly publication covering local issues in Vermont. Former Burlington College board member Sara Adsit-McCuin confirmed to Seven Days April 28 that two FBI agents interviewed her in person “a couple of weeks ago” regarding the loans.
Mrs. Sanders served as president of Burlington College from 2004 until 2011, before reportedly leaving with a $200,000 severance package. As part of an ambitious plan to boost enrollment at the college, Sanders had the college take on $10 million in debt to purchase a piece of land to expand the campus.Sanders stated in a 2010 loan application she had secured $2.6 million in promised donations to pay for the land purchase, which helped secure a $6.5 million loan from the People’s United Bank. Only $676,000 ever materialized over the next four years and the college defaulted on the loans, eventually going bankrupt in May 2016.
Carol Moore, who served as the final president of the college until its closure, told TheDCNF the FBI contacted her as recently as a month ago regarding the allegations.
“BC’s fate was set when its former board members hired an inexperienced president and, six years later, approved the imprudent purchase of a $10 million piece of property for campus expansion,” Moore wrote in an August 2016 letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Moore, who interviewed with the FBI multiple times since the school closed, told Seven Days in April that when FBI investigators interviewed her roughly “three or four weeks ago,” the agents classified the situation as “an ongoing investigation.” Moore also noted the questions asked by investigators were very specific.
Moore recounted to Seven Days some of the questions FBI investigators asked her, “Was there any collusion between Jane Sanders and the bank? Did she falsify records in order to get the loan from the bank?”
Emails obtained by the Vermont Digger in April confirm FBI investigators subpoenaed Coralee Holm, the former Burlington College dean of operations, regarding the fundraising efforts for the land purchase. The emails also reveal the US Attorney’s Office in Vermont and FBI investigators reviewed records from Burlington College earlier this year.
“They were asking for documentation about the fundraising that had occurred before the college had moved to its new location,” Holm told Vermont Digger. “There was not a lot of documentation for me to provide on the topic.”
Holm said the FBI investigators took a “filing cabinet full of donor files” and said they planned to speak with Jane Sanders. She also turned over emails from Sanders to the investigators.
Brady Toensing, a lawyer based in Washington, D.C., made a formal request to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont and the Inspector General of the FDIC in January 2016 to investigate the allegations of fraud against Sanders. Among the evidence Toensing asked the U.S. Attorney to investigate were claims that the senator’s office pressured People’s United Bank to approve the $6.5 million loan.
TheDCNF reached out to the Sen. Sanders but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.
Reporters at TheDCNF obtained a 2011 audit of the school’s finances in March 2015, which failed to account for the $2.6 million in supposed commitments for the land purchase. TheDCNF also obtained internal emails from Vermont Educational and Health Buildings Finance Agency (VEHBFA), a state agency that issues tax-exempt state bonds for the benefit of nonprofit institutions like schools or hospitals.
Jeff Weaver, a representative of Sanders released a Wednesday statement to Vermont Public Radio, saying the FBI has not yet contacted Jane Sanders.
“In February of 2016, in the middle of Bernie’s presidential campaign, the vice-chair of the Vermont Republican Party asked for a federal investigation of Burlington College,” reads the statement, released through public relations firm Revolution Messaging. “Jane has not been contacted by the FBI or any other authority and only knows as much as news reports indicate. Jane served as president of the college from 2004 to 2011. In the five years following her departure, the college experienced major turnovers in leadership, staff and its Board of Trustees.”
Democrat Party the ‘Handmaid’ of the Abortion Industry
At Planned Parenthood’s centennial gala this week, Hillary Clinton cited feminist novel The Handmaid’s Tale to urge supporters of the abortion chain not to relinquish the right to abortion, but – as it turns out – the Democrat Party has succumbed and abandoned many of its principles to become the “handmaid” of the abortion industry.
Planned Parenthood awarded the former Democratic Party presidential nominee its “champion of the century” award in New York City Tuesday evening as the organization held yet another celebration of its centennial anniversary.
The Hollywood Reporter noted that, in her remarks at the event, Clinton cited Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian feminist novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. A new television production of the novel – about a totalitarian theocracy that forces women to procreate – can be seen courtesy of Hulu.
“To paraphrase Margaret Atwood, ‘We can never let them grind us down,'” Clinton said. “In The Handmaid’s Tale, women’s rights are gradually, slowly stripped away. As one character says, ‘We didn’t look up from our phones until it was too late.'”
“It is not too late for us,” Clinton added. “But we have to encourage the millions of women and men who support Planned Parenthood to keep fighting.”
Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Tom Perez also recently announced that his party’s commitment to abortion is “not negotiable,” and that the Democrat Party would exclude pro-life candidates for office.
Perez’s autocratic remarks came after abortion lobbying group NARAL Pro-Choice America slammed the DNC for its embrace of Heath Mello, an Omaha mayoral Democratic candidate who had previously voted as a state lawmaker with his pro-life conscience.
“The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women — one of the most critical constituencies for the party — of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid,” fumed NARAL’s president, Ilyse Hogue.
In the wake of Perez’s comments, many Democrats have attempted to correct the optic of their party’s subservience to the abortion industry. While the party has attempted to portray itself as built upon morally upright virtues – such as diversity and inclusiveness – Perez’s statement clearly indicates the opposite.
Democrats are now “newly divided … as they attempt to decide who they will welcome, and who they will exclude, amid soul searching over how the party should rebuild after its 2016 loss,” observes Clare Foran at the Atlantic, who interviewed top-level Democrats such as Sens. Claire McCaskill (MO) and Joe Donnelly (IN), who objected to Perez’s exclusion of pro-life candidates.
In a column at Jesuit magazine America, Robert David Sullivan also observed, “Abortion is proving that the Democratic Party can outdo Republicans in self-destruction.”
The author continued:
Abortion is now the single issue defining the Democrats, and Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is the de facto head of the party. This gives the Republicans a major advantage in holding off electoral losses if the Trump administration continues to founder.
Realizing the potential threat of a divide in a party that is already struggling, high-level individuals such as Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards are attempting to smooth over the perhaps harsh reality that the abortion industry is running the Democratic Party.
“Is it difficult right now to be a pro-life Democrat?” Wallace asked Richards. “Do you guys make it difficult?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she replied. “Abortion is one of these issues that it is – I think shouldn’t be politicized.”
Yoder notes, of course, that Planned Parenthood donated $38 million to Clinton’s campaign.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi – known for simultaneously touting her Catholic faith and her pro-abortion views – also tried to soften Perez’s dictum that all Democrats must promote abortion.
“This is the Democratic Party. This is not a rubber-stamp party,” she told the Washington Post, in response to a question about Perez’s exclusive statement.
Pelosi, however, also acknowledged her doubt whether, at this point in time, a true pro-life candidate could ever win a Democratic presidential primary. She suggested, in fact, Democrats lost in the 2016 election races because their far-left positions on social issues did not appeal to average Americans who ended up voting for Donald Trump.
“You know what? That’s why Donald Trump is president of the United States — the evangelicals and the Catholics, anti-marriage equality, anti-choice. That’s how he got to be president,” she said. “Everything was trumped, literally and figuratively by that.”
The Post’s Karen Tumulty, however, reports Pelosi’s comment again drew the wrath of NARAL’s Hogue.
“Encouraging and supporting anti-choice candidates leads to bad policy outcomes that violate women’s rights and endanger our economic security,” Hogue reportedly said in an email.
Stephanie Schriock, the president of Democrat super PAC EMILY’s List, also reasserted the importance of abortion as a major issue for Democrats at her abortion lobbying group’s gala event this week.
“They want us arguing about whether we’re a party focused on elevating diverse voices or a party focused on appealing to the white working class,” Schriock said, reports Roll Call. “And, from what I can tell, a lot of people in the Democratic Party are happy to have that argument. Well, I’m not one of them.”
“I don’t buy the argument that Democrats have to decide whether we’re a party of blue-collar white men in rural America or a party of African-American women in the big cities, a party of immigrants or a party of feminists,” Schriock said. “Democrats should be the party of working people. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of equating ‘working people’ with ‘white men.’”
At the Planned Parenthood event, Clinton – using the common euphemism “reproductive health care” – said about abortion, “[A]nyone who wants to lead should also understand that fundamentally, this is an issue of morality.”
The abortion industry appears to have succeeded at turning its “handmaid,” the former party of the “working class,” into one whose most cherished goal is ensuring women can end their pregnancies as they demand.
Neither Perez nor the DNC responded to Breitbart News’s request for comment.
Judge Orders Text Of Clinton Emails On Benghazi To Be Released
The full contents of two Hillary Clinton emails about the Benghazi attack will soon be brought to light in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling Friday that the State Department has to share with the American people the contents of two emails sent two days after the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya.
The release of the information was secured by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which had sued the State Department through the Freedom of Information Act.
“The full emails may reveal what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama knew about the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi,” Judicial Watch said in a statement.
The two emails, dated Sept. 13, 2012, consist of eight identical paragraphs, Judicial Watch said, and bore the subject line, “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt.”
The State Department originally released the emails to Judicial Watch, but redacted the contents using what’s known as the “deliberative process” exemption.
However, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson read the emails and said the exemption was not applicable.
Comey Defends Action on Clinton Emails, but 'Mildly Nauseous'
Judicial Watch said the redaction was not a mistake but part of a “deliberate effort by the State Department to protect Clinton and the agency by avoiding identifying emails on Clinton’s unofficial, non-secure email server as classified.”
The emails were shared with top Obama administration officials including Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan, Special Assistant Robert Russo, and Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough.
The attack on the Benghazi compound resulted in the deaths of four Americans. Clinton and the Obama White House offered the American public a very different version of the cause than the one they expressed privately.
Clinton had said the administration was “working to determine the precise motivations” of the attackers but that “some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet.”
That material, the Obama administration claimed, was an anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube.
However, Clinton’s private comments were different.
“We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest,” she said in a call to Egypt’s prime minister. “Based on the information we saw today, we believe the group that claimed responsibility for this was affiliated with al Qaeda.”
On Sept. 14, 2012, White House spokesman Jay Carney, said, “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack. The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive. And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of, or to U.S. policy.”
The release of the information was secured by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which had sued the State Department through the Freedom of Information Act.
“The full emails may reveal what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama knew about the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi,” Judicial Watch said in a statement.
The two emails, dated Sept. 13, 2012, consist of eight identical paragraphs, Judicial Watch said, and bore the subject line, “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt.”
The State Department originally released the emails to Judicial Watch, but redacted the contents using what’s known as the “deliberative process” exemption.
However, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson read the emails and said the exemption was not applicable.
Comey Defends Action on Clinton Emails, but 'Mildly Nauseous'
Judicial Watch said the redaction was not a mistake but part of a “deliberate effort by the State Department to protect Clinton and the agency by avoiding identifying emails on Clinton’s unofficial, non-secure email server as classified.”
The emails were shared with top Obama administration officials including Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan, Special Assistant Robert Russo, and Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough.
The attack on the Benghazi compound resulted in the deaths of four Americans. Clinton and the Obama White House offered the American public a very different version of the cause than the one they expressed privately.
Clinton had said the administration was “working to determine the precise motivations” of the attackers but that “some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet.”
That material, the Obama administration claimed, was an anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube.
However, Clinton’s private comments were different.
“We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest,” she said in a call to Egypt’s prime minister. “Based on the information we saw today, we believe the group that claimed responsibility for this was affiliated with al Qaeda.”
On Sept. 14, 2012, White House spokesman Jay Carney, said, “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack. The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive. And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of, or to U.S. policy.”
Dianne Feinstein Admits There’s No Evidence of Collusion Between Russia And Trump
BY V SAXENA
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, broke ranks with her paranoid Democrat peers Wednesday by admitting that she had not yet seen a single piece of evidence proving that President Donald Trump’s election campaign associates had colluded with the Russian government.
“Not at this time,” she replied when CNN host Wolf Blitzer pointedly asked her, “Do you have evidence that there was in fact collusion between Trump associates and Russia during the campaign?”
“Well, that’s a pretty precise answer,” Blitzer then responded.
Indeed it was.
Yet almost every liberal news site or blog features a bevy of delusional leftists in the comments section incessantly complaining about how the Russians allegedly helped Trump steal the election from their martyr, failed Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
To be perfectly honest, this delusion has captured the minds of more than just mere comment trolls. Democrat political leaders and leftist news purveyors have relentlessly continued to peddle this myth, despite a dearth of evidence.
“Guardian Report Claims U.S. Has ‘Concrete Evidence’ of Trump-Russia Collusion,'” the leftist rag Slate cried in triumph last month.
And just two months ago California Rep. Adam Schiff claimed that he had seen “more than circumstantial” evidence showing collusion, according to the Washington Free Beacon. California Rep. Eric Swalwell said something similar a month later, stating unequivocally that there was “evidence of collusion.”
But where? And please don’t reply, “In my head,” because that doesn’t cut it.
Listen to Swalwell below:
“Well, that’s a pretty precise answer,” Blitzer then responded.
Indeed it was.
Yet almost every liberal news site or blog features a bevy of delusional leftists in the comments section incessantly complaining about how the Russians allegedly helped Trump steal the election from their martyr, failed Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
To be perfectly honest, this delusion has captured the minds of more than just mere comment trolls. Democrat political leaders and leftist news purveyors have relentlessly continued to peddle this myth, despite a dearth of evidence.
“Guardian Report Claims U.S. Has ‘Concrete Evidence’ of Trump-Russia Collusion,'” the leftist rag Slate cried in triumph last month.
And just two months ago California Rep. Adam Schiff claimed that he had seen “more than circumstantial” evidence showing collusion, according to the Washington Free Beacon. California Rep. Eric Swalwell said something similar a month later, stating unequivocally that there was “evidence of collusion.”
But where? And please don’t reply, “In my head,” because that doesn’t cut it.
Listen to Swalwell below:
"There is evidence of collusion."
Even former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has debunked these myths, stating in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” two months ago that there was no evidence “to my knowledge” suggesting that Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians.
At some point one has to ask: When will this witch hunt by Democrats finally end?
At some point one has to ask: When will this witch hunt by Democrats finally end?
Should America Ban The Burqa?
Muslim refugees are fleeing Syria and other parts of the Middle East in search of new homes in European countries, the United States and beyond. Yet these refugees are not exactly assimilating to the cultures of the locations they have selected as their new homes.
A symbol of their refusal to adapt to new host cultures is the the burqa, a headdress worn by Muslim women to conceal themselves in public.
There is plenty of talk in several European countries about banning the burqa. The nearly worldwide desire to implement the ban is not fueled by racism or Zionism. Rather, it is fueled by a desire to remain safe in a world that becomes more dangerous by the hour.
A Matter of Public Safety
Imagine a situation in which a bomb explodes at a public market. Numerous witnesses spot an individual with a slim build who is about six feet tall and 150 pounds running from the area where the bomb exploded. This individual was wearing a large backpack as well as a burqa that covered the entire face but for the eyes.
Security camera footage is reviewed after the explosion. It shows this suspicious individual placing the bomb below a small table at the center of the market. Yet a detailed image of the suspect’s facial features cannot be gleaned from the footage or any witness accounts.
This hypothetical situation will soon be a reality in numerous locations across the globe unless the burqa is banned. This precisely why the burqa is a public safety matter rather than a civil rights matter.
Many Muslims and social justice warriors would not be as passionate about the supposed right to wear the garment if one of their loved ones was killed in an attack by an assailant donning this concealing headdress.
Hiding Behind The Burqa
It is time to think of the burqa as a mask. The vast majority of jurisdictions have passed laws that make it illegal to don a mask in public except for youngsters who trick-or-treat on Halloween.
There are no massive protests by those who demand the freedom to wear concealing masks in public. People are completely accepting of the fact that wearing a mask in public jeopardizes the safety of the greater community.
This begs the question: Why do people protest propositions to ban the burqa when it is essentially the same thing as a mask?
The social justice warriors and the greater part of the Muslim population argue that the burqa is an expression of religious freedom, so it should be protected. However, one can also argue that it should be legal to wear a concealing mask made of large spaghetti strainer because he is a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The religious freedom defense is quite the slippery slope here. Just because someone is a member of a religion does not mean the idiosyncrasies of his faith trump the law of the land.
Many Muslim Women Dislike the Burqa
At its core, the burqa is a women’s rights issue. Combined with other traditional Muslim garb, the burqa serves to hide the entirety of a woman’s skin but for the flesh around her eyes. It is an oppressive garment that renders women second class citizens.
A 2016 study led by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research revealed almost half of all women in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, and Tunisia believed they should be able to “dress how they want”.
Women are required to adhere to strict dress codes in all aforementioned countries.
Though women might be viewed as inferior to men in many Muslim-majority nations, this is not the case for the countries many of them are migrating to.
Why should western nations bend to the will of an archaic religious practice to accommodate newly-arrived immigrants? The exact opposite should happen. Refugees to any area must realize a certain level of assimilation is necessary when living in a nation where their native cultural norms aren’t recognized.
Residents of the United States and most other nations do not believe women should be stripped of their identity. Gender equality is a generally agreed-upon principle in Western culture. This means women should be able to dress as they please. If given such freedom, most Muslim women would likely choose to ditch the burqa and bare their face.
This small step toward assimilation is necessary to help Muslims gradually blend into American society and other cultures around the world.
~ Conservative Zone
Fact Checking Climate Alarmists’ Favorite Tactics
There’s a lot of talk about science these days, with the battle for the planet itself at the forefront. Climate change alarmists have grown bolder and more vocal every year, and their media blitz has taken a toll. Allegedly, if you aren’t with them, then you’re an enemy of humanity.
Let’s review some of their strongest claims, and see what happens when we sprinkle a little truth on the subject.
Carbon Dioxide Levels
Greenhouse gases form the backbone of the alarmist movement. The claim is pretty simple: carbon dioxide is produced by human industry and it has a greenhouse effect that is raising global temperatures. This is taken as a point of fact, and disputing it with raw data will quickly get you labeled as a “science denier.”
I’ll take that risk and tell you a few things about the correlation between CO2 and temperature. First, carbon dioxide concentration measurements for any time before the 20th century are wildly unreliable, but even if we assume that they are accurate, then pre-industrial revolution saturation was in the ballpark of 280 parts per million (ppm).
This past week, an observatory in Hawaii measured saturation of 410 ppm. This would be terrifying news if the alarmists were correct about the relationship between CO2 and temperature.
Of course, that would mean that the average global temperature today would be close to double what it was before the industrial revolution. Instead, it is 0.7 degrees higher, a change of about 4 percent. We’ll talk about how serious that four-percent change is or is not in a moment.
“Hottest Year on Record”
You’ve heard this so many times now, and to the less skeptical among us, it’s a compelling presentation of the dangers of global warming. However, if you dig even a little into this reporting, it falls flat.
In the last decade, the average temperature has climbed by roughly 0.04 degrees. The margin of error is reported as 0.1 degrees. That means there is no significant change, and that’s the crux of the entire alarmist argument.
No one disputes that there is a positive trend line in global temperatures since the late 70s. The dispute is whether or not it should worry us, and margin of error is why we shouldn’t. In case you haven’t taken any statistics classes, I’ll try to simplify the idea.
Imagine you have waterfront property. You need to know how much the sea level changes with the tide and storms in order to take measures against flooding. In most places, the difference between high and low tide is measured in feet, as is the average ocean wave.
So, if someone told you that the sea level had changed by a few millimeters, you probably wouldn’t be concerned by that notion, would you? In fact, that fluctuation is so large, how could you be sure you didn’t just measure an unusually large or small wave? This is the primary issue with global temperature data. The range of temperatures on any given day is 150 degrees or more.
There’s a mathematical limit to how accurately you can average that kind of data, and it’s why we call the changes we’ve seen so far statistically insignificant.
Sea Ice Myths
“But the sea ice! It’s melting!”
Sure, let’s talk about that. Firstly, only arctic sea ice is melting. Antarctic sea ice hit a record high in 2014, and has stayed at high levels ever since. This isn’t some short-term high. We saw the most sea ice ever measured in the history of science.
The north pole is a decisively different story. While ice melts aren’t at their most extreme, there is no question that ice shelves have receded by statistically significant amounts. At the peak measurement, two-thirds of all arctic sea ice melted.
That seems pretty catastrophic. But, did you notice when this happened? Did the sea levels rise? Did species go extinct?
Ultimately, more than half the ice melted and absolutely nothing happened. Oceanographers measured a total ocean change of a few millimeters, but literally zero people on the whole planet had to relocate as a result. The closest that has come to happening is an Inuit fishing village that saw severe erosion during an El Niño event. That’s it.
Scientific Consensus
Finally, we come to the politics of it all. You’ve heard that 97 percent of scientists believe in manmade global warming. It turns out that this statistic isn’t very reliable. It’s based on a single survey that cherry picked responses.
Only scientists who had been published in a particular left-leaning journal within the previous year were counted. Out of thousands of survey responses, only about a dozen were included in the 97 percent statistic. Other surveys have shown that 63 percent of meteorologists aren’t at all concerned with climate change. In America alone, over 30,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition urging government leaders not to base policy on alarmism.
Climate change alarmism isn’t the promotion of science – or freedom. It’s a power grab, and the left has shown that they will go to any length to consolidate power. When used correctly, science can be a wonderful tool for society. When abused, it’s just another weapon of manipulation.
Dem Senator Wants Huma Abedin Investigated by Special Prosecutor
BY MARTIN LIOLL
There have been plenty of calls to investigate Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, for her role in Hillary’s email scandal. None of those calls, for reasons that ought to be obvious, have come from people within the Democrat Party.
That just changed, however — and it could have massive implications for both Abedin and her employer.
In an interview on MSNBC on Thursday, Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal said a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate Abedin’s handling of confidential material. Blumenthal’s comments came one day after FBI Director James Comey revealed during congressional testimony that Abedin may have illegally forwarded emails off of Clinton’s server to her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said during testimony, according to Fox News. “His then-spouse, Huma Abedin, appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him to print out for her, so she could deliver them to the secretary of state.”
And that could be a criminal matter, Blumenthal told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.
“If there was classified information and it was improperly passed to a person unauthorized to receive it, yes, naturally it’s a crime,” Blumenthal said. “Without knowing what the intentions were and so forth, there is potentially a prosecutable crime.”
When asked if it should have been grounds for prosecution, Blumenthal said, “It still may be, potentially.”
“It’s not outside the statute of limitations, so far as I know,” Blumenthal said. “It’s one that the Department of Justice is going to have to decide.
“The question is: who will decide it? That’s why we need a special prosecutor to review all of this investigative material.”
Blumenthal’s comments came at the end of a tumultuous week for Abedin — one which saw both Comey’s testimony and the release by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch of some of her emails sent from Clinton’s server.
Among the revelations in the latest email dump were “repeated instances of Clinton’s detailed daily schedules being sent to top Clinton Foundation officials at unsecured email addresses.”
The team on “Fox News Specialists” said Blumenthal’s remarks could be bad news for Abedin.
It’s become obvious that Abedin was playing as fast and loose with the rules as her boss was.
Now, even the Democrats are turning on her for it.
That just changed, however — and it could have massive implications for both Abedin and her employer.
In an interview on MSNBC on Thursday, Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal said a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate Abedin’s handling of confidential material. Blumenthal’s comments came one day after FBI Director James Comey revealed during congressional testimony that Abedin may have illegally forwarded emails off of Clinton’s server to her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said during testimony, according to Fox News. “His then-spouse, Huma Abedin, appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him to print out for her, so she could deliver them to the secretary of state.”
And that could be a criminal matter, Blumenthal told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.
“If there was classified information and it was improperly passed to a person unauthorized to receive it, yes, naturally it’s a crime,” Blumenthal said. “Without knowing what the intentions were and so forth, there is potentially a prosecutable crime.”
When asked if it should have been grounds for prosecution, Blumenthal said, “It still may be, potentially.”
“It’s not outside the statute of limitations, so far as I know,” Blumenthal said. “It’s one that the Department of Justice is going to have to decide.
“The question is: who will decide it? That’s why we need a special prosecutor to review all of this investigative material.”
Blumenthal’s comments came at the end of a tumultuous week for Abedin — one which saw both Comey’s testimony and the release by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch of some of her emails sent from Clinton’s server.
Among the revelations in the latest email dump were “repeated instances of Clinton’s detailed daily schedules being sent to top Clinton Foundation officials at unsecured email addresses.”
The team on “Fox News Specialists” said Blumenthal’s remarks could be bad news for Abedin.
It’s become obvious that Abedin was playing as fast and loose with the rules as her boss was.
Now, even the Democrats are turning on her for it.
G’ day…Ciao…
Helen & Moe Lauzier
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