Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
DES MOINES — Republican leaders are growing alarmed by the ferocious ways the party’s mainstream candidates for president are attacking one another, and they fear that time is running out for any of them to emerge as a credible alternative to Donald J. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Leaders of the Republican establishment, made up of elected officials, lobbyists and donors, are also sending a message to the mainstream candidates, such as former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, that they should withdraw from the race if they do not show strength soon.
The members of the party establishment are growing impatient as they watch Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz dominate the field heading into the Iowa caucuses next Monday and the New Hampshire primary about a week later.
The party elders had hoped that one of their preferred candidates, such as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, would be rising above the others by now and becoming a contender to rally around.
Instead, they have a muddled field of battered mainstream candidates: Mr. Bush, Mr. Rubio, Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey...
CHICAGO—A city police officer was charged with murder Tuesday in the fatal shooting in 2014 of a black teenager, and hours later officials released a graphic video showing the white officer repeatedly firing at the 17-year-old.
The video of the shooting death of Laquan McDonald was released after a news conference held by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.
City leaders said they understood the footage, taken from a camera on a police car dashboard, would be disturbing, but they urged the public not to resort to violence.
“I understand that people will be upset and will want to protest when they see this video,” Mr. Emanuel said, but added that the family of Mr. McDonald had urged people to conduct any protest peacefully.
Mr. McDonald died on Oct. 20, 2014, after officers responded to reports of a man breaking into vehicles.
The video shows Mr. McDonald jogging down the middle of a street. He slows to a walk as he approaches two police cruisers that have pulled in ahead of him. He is holding a small knife at his side.
Two officers hop out of one of the vehicles and point their guns at Mr. McDonald as the teen veers away from them.
Mr. McDonald is a car-lane’s-width away when Officer Jason Van Dyke opens fire, the bullets twisting the teen’s body and sending him to the ground. Puffs of smoke can be seen rising from his body, which prosecutors say is from the officer’s continued gunfire.
None of the other officers on the scene opened fire on Mr. McDonald. Police later recovered a knife with a three-inch blade, prosecutors said.
The video doesn’t show Mr. McDonald advancing on Mr. Van Dyke. An initial police version of the shooting, contained in the medical examiner’s report, said the teenager had lunged at the officers with a knife, leading an officer to open fire. A Chicago police spokesman didn’t respond to questions about that initial account.
The video’s release came after Mr. Van Dyke turned himself in to authorities Tuesday. The first-degree murder charge carries a potential penalty of life in prison.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said the decision to prosecute was made because Mr. Van Dyke hadn’t faced an immediate threat from Mr. McDonald and because he continued to fire at the teen as he lay on the ground after being shot. The youth was hit by 16 shots.
“Clearly this officer went overboard, and he abused his authority, and I don’t believe the force was necessary,” she said at a separate Tuesday news conference.
Mr. Van Dyke’s lawyer, Daniel Herbert, said he expects to prevail at trial. He has said the officer was protecting himself and others.
“This is a case that needs to be tried in a courtroom,” said Mr. Herbert. “This is a case that can’t be tried on the streets. It can’t be tried in the media. It can’t be tried on Facebook.”
Ms. Alvarez said that while she had made the decision to charge the officer internally in recent weeks, the announcement was moved up because of the imminent release of the video.
Mr. Van Dyke, who is 37-years-old, appeared in court Tuesday wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. A judge denied him bail, saying he wanted to view the video before setting bond.
Jeffrey Neslund, an attorney for Mr. McDonald’s family, said they were thankful that the officer had been charged and urged a peaceful response to the video’s release.
“We hope that Laquan will finally get justice,” Mr. Neslund said. “We hope that the city of Chicago will remain peaceful and any demonstrations will be nonviolent.”
The video was ordered released Wednesday by a circuit court judge who ruled last week the footage is subject to public-disclosure laws.
Mayor Emanuel, pastors and community activists have been meeting in recent days in the face of concerns the video could touch off violence in the nation’s third-largest city.
Cities such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore have experienced rioting, looting and vandalism in response to police shootings. But there also have been peaceful protests in many U.S. cities amid a growing call for changes in the use of police force, particularly against black men...
Interesting too that the public debate has Donald Trump not only as the hypothetical GOP nominee, but as winning the White House altogether. Folks are looking ahead realistically, and it's big.
The suspect, Ezell Graham, 31, is a hardened criminal with multiple priors. He cries like a child when he's called out by the woman, his target (I won't call her a victim because she's too freakin' righteous!)
U.S. law enforcement officials are investigating how classified material found its way into messages that members of Hillary Clinton’s State Department staff sent to her private e-mail address, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the inquiry.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an investigation still in its early stages, said there is some indication that Clinton aides drew upon a variety of messages in classified information systems to produce summaries and updates of events in Libya and elsewhere and then sent them to Clinton or her aides using a private server.
The official didn’t identify the aides.
This transfer of classified information onto a server not approved to handle sensitive material is a focus of the investigation and could form the basis for a criminal probe to determine just how much classified material was sent - and who prepared and sent it.
A spokesman for the State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anybody who knowingly e-mailed classified material to Clinton or her top aides when she was secretary of state could face criminal prosecution, according to current and former U.S. national security officials. Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, isn’t the target of the investigation.
“There’s a responsibility to safeguard classified information,” Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and CIA, said in a phone interview. Failing to protect such data “could get to a level of negligence that criminal penalties would kick in.”
Inspector General
The probe comes after the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies determined that four e-mails on Clinton’s server contained classified information at the time they were sent. The State Department and intelligence agencies now are trying to determine if other material in the e-mails was classified when sent, and whether the data should be classified at all.
Clinton and her aides have said material in her e-mails wasn’t marked as being classified at the time it was sent and received through her server. Law enforcement officials, however, are examining e-mails that contained material known to be classified when sent.
Clinton used a private e-mail system in her home in Chappaqua, New York, while she was secretary of state from 2009 until February 2013. E-mails sent and received by her and top aides that used the system were stored on a server. The Federal Bureau of Investigation took possession of the server on Aug. 12 as part of its investigation.
30,490 E-Mails
Clinton said she turned over paper copies of 30,490 e-mails relating to government business from her tenure. Government screeners have flagged 305 of those documents for further review by U.S. intelligence agencies to see if they contained classified material.
There are several scenarios in which known classified material could have been improperly transferred, according to Hayden and an intelligence official who asked to remain anonymous to speak about a current investigation.
The most egregious way would be to knowingly strip classification markings from documents or other data, a move that would clearly be a criminal act.
Another, and possibly more probable, scenario is that those sending e-mails blended data from multiple sources that ultimately included or referenced some classified content.
“What you’re probably talking about is someone typing a message based on multiple sources in their head,” Hayden said.
As a conservative who has advocated for criminal justice reform, I have a lot of admiration for the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has been remarkably effective at raising awareness of the myriad ways that black Americans are treated differently — or, put more bluntly, treated worse — by law enforcement. Although I haven’t always agreed with their tactics or rhetoric, I have appreciated the movement’s tenacity and unwillingness to be mollified by platitudes and talking points from politicians who’ve attempted to co-opt them.
That’s why I think #BlackLivesMatter is wasting its time pressing Democrats for answers, or action. The party of big government can’t meet their demands.
For starters, the Democratic presidential contenders have done an infamously bad job of responding to #BlackLivesMatter protesters who’ve attended their events. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former governor Martin O’Malley were practically heckled off the stage at the Netroots Nation conference after they were unable to effectively articulate, let alone posit, concrete solutions to protesters’ concerns. Former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has been similarly panned by #BlackLivesMatter leaders.
The relationship has arguably worsened in recent days. There’s video this week of a tense meeting between Clinton and #BlackLivesMatter activists in New Hampshire that shows her responding to a difficult question with: “Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we are going to deal with the very real problems.” After being disrupted twice at recent speaking events by #BlackLivesMatter protesters, in an appearance on “Meet The Press” this Sunday, Sanders appeared to disavow an apology one of his staffers e-mailed to #BlackLivesMatter activists.
The effort to hold these politicians accountable is understandable when you consider that African Americans overwhelmingly vote Democratic. But from another perspective, it seems clear that #BlackLivesMatter is looking for real answers in all the wrong places, and is in danger of being taken for granted in the long term by the Democratic Party...
I don't know. The problem with Wolf is he buys into tons of the leftist narratives, and he even cites Eric Holder's widely criticized initial report on Ferguson's alleged "racist" policing, including the revenue-generating traffic enforcement policies in Ferguson that are no different from other municipalities around the country. He's right, though: The Democrats are losing it with #BlackLivesMatter.
Take your time reading that entry, which provides an insightful take on the conservative splits over the Trump campaign.
For me, I don't pretend Trump's a conservative. I just like the way he's pushed illegal immigration to the top of the national policy agenda. I certainly don't know if I'd vote for Trump in the GOP primary. Shoot, California's primary is scheduled for June 7, 2016, which means the race could be decided by then in any case. The fact is, Trump's pulling the Republican field to the right on immigration. Voters will vote for those who they see as best representing their interests, and in this case border security and economic nationalism appear as top interests among conservatives (and a lot of independents, according to polls).
So, it turns out that Glenn Beck just can't buy Donald Trump as a genuine conservative, whereas Sean Hannity looks at Trump pragmatically, seeing him as the kinda guy who can turn the country around.
Shoot, I'm surprised the Democrats in Sacramento aren't requiring mandatory Spanish and Chinese immersion courses for all English speakers. Either that, or you'll spend the rest of your days in a camp.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Going through a divorce has been difficult for Sepideh Saeedi. Not understanding what's happening in court because she isn't proficient in English has made the process even harder.
"When you don't understand what the judge is saying, what the other side's attorney is saying, it's very stressful," Saeedi, 33, who speaks Farsi, said after a recent court hearing in Redwood City
Legal advocates say throughout the state, litigants in divorce, child custody, eviction and other civil cases who have difficulty with English are going into court without qualified interpreters. Instead, many are forced to turn to friends or family members -- or worse yet, the opposing party -- for translation.
That's because California only guarantees access to an interpreter in criminal cases, not civil cases.
But the state is looking to change that. Under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, California's Judicial Council this year approved a plan to extend free interpretation services to all cases by 2017.
"You can't have a court hearing without having your client understand it correctly," said Protima Pandey, a staff attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid.
Pandey said she always makes sure an interpreter is available for her clients, but many litigants in family court don't have attorneys to do that for them.
alifornia court officials say extending interpreter services to all cases won't be easy. California has the nation's largest court system spread out over a vast area with many rural counties. The state has about 7 million residents with limited English proficiency who speak over 200 languages.
The courts have also faced funding cuts in recent years that have seen courthouses close and staffs cut. There is no estimate yet on how much it would cost to provide interpreters in all cases, but the plan approved by the judicial council said the courts would need more than the $92 million they were spending.
"California's judiciary is committed to language access and eager to work out the best way to get that done," said state Supreme Court Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, who heads the group in charge of implementing the state's language-access goals.
Sometime back I notice Noah Rothman really going after Donald Trump on Twitter. And I like Noah. It's just, as I've said before, some journalists on the right are really invested in this campaign, to the extent that they appear like GOP operatives rather than reporters. And hey, it's not like I don't want Republicans to win. It's more like I want a conservative to win, and a lot of Republicans aren't very conservative. That's not to say that Donald Trump is, but genuinely hardcore conservatives at the grassroots are falling in love with this guy because he's the only one to give full-throated assertiveness to their positions on illegal immigration. This is the debate we've needed to have. That is, this is the debate the nation needs to be having, because we're definitely at the tipping point of preserving a lot of basic American values. And frankly, that's what's intrigued me about Donald Trump, despite the fact that he's got a long record of supporting left-wing positions. Shoot, Trump has long been boon coons with Bill and Hillary Clinton. In that sense, he's the consummate politician, jettisoning political incorrect associations when the times demand it.
Trump’s “plan” is an assault on not merely the illegal immigrants who have violated American laws, but those who have played by the existing rules to come to the United States. The proposal amounts to a declaration of war on America’s immigrant community, an attack on the foundational nature of America’s character as a melting pot for all the peoples of the world, and the inception of a police state that is incompatible with a free republican democracy.
Hyperbole isn't a strong enough word, but then, you have to read Trump's proposal.
Rothman, for one thing, argues that building a complete border wall all the way to Matamoros "is infeasible; the geography of the border simply does not allow for one unbroken wall." Okay, then build the wall where it is feasible and then beef up human security checkpoints where it's not. The main reason that Arizona and Texas have become the battlegrounds against illegal immigration in recent years is because California essentially militarized its border in the 1990s, and illegals simply moved to entry points further east. This has long been documented, and indeed, the Los Angeles Times has written about it frequently. Border walls work. If you build them, they don't come.
Rothman also complains about how much of Trump's plan, like "E-Verify," has been a staple of Republican reform proposals for like forever. The problem, of course, is that workplace eligibility regulations like this simply aren't enforced, even in red states like Texas. Indeed, sanctuary states like California actively prohibit enforcement of E-Verify regulations. Maybe Trump's plan can turn things around. Lord know there's room for improvement there. (And I don't buy the argument that rigorous enforcement alienates and thus hinders the cooperation of illegal immigrants. These criminals have no reason to cooperate with immigration enforcement to begin with. We need to get real about how we're going to follow through with enforcing policies already on the books. Local law enforcement has already abandoned any pretense of cooperation with federal authorities. As the Kathryn Steinle and Marilyn Pharis cases sadly prove just how true this is in California.)
I agree with Rothman about "birthright citizenship," however. Talk of reforming automatic citizenship for illegal alien children is mostly a sop to the nativist right, because frankly, birthright is strongly embedded in the Constitution and it'll take a constitutional amendment to change it, and that ain't happening. Better to keep illegals out of here in the first place.
And I can't comment knowledgeably on reform of the H1B visas program, and the related ins and outs of workplace-sponsored immigration programs (it's complicated, sheesh). I do know that they're abused to high heaven, and countries like China know are gaming the system like crazy. See Michelle Malkin on that, "The Big, Fat 'American Worker Recruitment First'- Lie of H-1B."
And Trump's plan sounds like a home run to me, in any case:
We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program's lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.
Finally, how much of Trump's plan is genuinely unworkable? Well, beyond birthright citizenship, hardly any of it at all. It's simply going to take someone's who's not afraid of the massive backlash of political correctness, and unending charges of racism. And as we've seen so far, not only is Trump unfazed by such criticism, he's also not been penalized politically for speaking out forthrightly on the crisis.
As I always say, let's see how it all shakes out. We're having another GOP debate on September 16th. Frankly, I can't wait to see how Trump does, and it should be especially interesting because Carly Fiorina's expected to be on the stage. This should be an extremely informative event, all the better because it's going to be held here in California, at the Reagan Library. CNN's putting it on too, so if Megyn Kelly's left-wing talking points weren't enough, I'm sure CNN's moderator Jake Tapper (formerly of far left-wing Salon) will pick up the pace.
LOS ANGELES—For 30 years, Modesto Alejandro Vasquez has supported his family of four by working as a janitor in a downtown office building here. In 2014, he made about $30,000.
Earning 25% above the federal poverty level in costly Southern California, Mr. Vasquez looks forward to this time of year, when a tax refund puts extra cash in his pocket. He said he used the money—$6,000 this year—to pay off debts and repair a computer for his daughter.
A large portion of the refund came via the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC is intended to aid the working poor by reducing the amount of taxes owed, or in many cases, like Mr. Vasquez’s, by providing a refund, based on a taxpayer’s income and number of dependents.
California lawmakers, responding to the state’s nation-leading poverty level, are considering the creation of a state EITC program. Already, half of the states and the District of Columbia offer such refunds and credits. Montana legislators are also considering a state EITC this year, and a several states are evaluating expansions of their state credits. Some of the state credits currently add as much as 50% to the federal benefit.
EITC programs aren’t popular in all quarters. Critics, including many fiscal conservatives, say the federal program is expensive, amounts to a handout to the poor and is subject to errors. They cite a report published last year by the Internal Revenue Service that found 24% of federal EITC payments made in fiscal 2013 were incorrect, including both overpayments and underpayments.
While California has a relatively high minimum wage, with the state’s level set to rise to $10 next year from $9 now, many families struggle. The state is among the five most expensive to live in, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes government-assistance programs into account in calculating poverty rates, places California at the top of the list among the 50 states and D.C., with a poverty rate of 23.4%.
In 2013, an estimated 9.8 million Californians—more than a quarter of the population—qualified for the federal EITC. California residents accounted for $7.3 billion of the more than $66 billion federal EITC claims in 2013.
Eight previous EITC proposals have been unsuccessful in California, but some legislative leaders say the state’s economic recovery and budget surplus could make the program more affordable this time around. “Politically, it seems more viable than it has in the last decade,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget Project, a think tank focused on the state’s low- and middle-income residents...
A number of outlets are reporting that Secretary of State John Kerry is opening talks on security cooperation with Iran, which is world's biggest state-sponsor of international terrorism.
It boggles the mind that the Obama administration would be seeking an entente with our greatest enemy in the region, or perhaps not, since the president and his treasonous cronies have been scheming to reduce U.S. global power from their first day in office.
U.S. military commanders in Iraq say Iranian-made weaponry is killing American troops there at an unprecedented pace, posing new dangers to the remaining forces and highlighting Tehran’s intensifying push to gain influence over post-U.S. Iraq.
June was the deadliest month in more than two years for U.S. troops, with 14 killed. In May, the U.S. death toll was two. In April, it was 11. Senior U.S. commanders say the three primary Iranian-backed militias, Kataib Hezbollah, the Promise Day Brigade, and Asaib al Haq, and their rockets were behind 12 of the deaths in June.
A detailed U.S. military breakdown of June’s casualties illustrates the growing threat posed by Iranian munitions.
Military officials said six of the 14 dead troops were killed by so-called “explosively formed penetrators,” or EFPs, a sophisticated roadside bomb capable of piercing through even the best-protected U.S. vehicles. Five other troops were killed earlier in the month when a barrage of rockets slammed into their base in Baghdad. It was the largest single-day U.S. loss of life since April 2009, when a truck bomb killed five soldiers. The remaining three troops killed in June died after a rocket known as an “improvised rocket-assisted mortar,” or IRAM, landed in a remote U.S. outpost in southern Iraq.
U.S. officials say the EFPs, rockets, and IRAMs all come from neighboring Iran. Tehran denies providing the weaponry to Shia militias operating in Iraq.
“We’re seeing a sharp increase in the amount of munitions coming across the border, some manufactured as recently as 2010,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said in an interview. “These are highly lethal weapons, and their sheer volume is a major concern.”
Buchanan said much of the current weaponry is passing into the country through its formal border crossings with Iran. Current and former American military officers claim that those border crossings are guarded by Iraqi security personnel whose long-standing financial relationships with their Iranian counterparts means they will accept bribes or turn a blind eye in order to allow munitions through.
IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of Sept. 22 had killed or wounded 21,200 Americans, is both a proximate cause and a metaphor for the miscalculation and improvisation that have characterized the war.
Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed.
The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Tehran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime.
Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams.
The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.
The Sunday Telegraph revealed in April that Iranian-made devices employing several EFPs, directed at different angles, were being used in Iraq.
And in June, this newspaper obtained the first picture of one of the Iraqi insurgent weapons - designed to fire an armour-piercing EFP - believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers.
British Government scientists have already established that the mines are precision-made weapons thought to have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.
Members of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee have released the details about the three bomb factories gathered by the exile group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI).
Here are graphic photos of the destruction inflicted by these devices. In your mind's eye, situate yourself behind the controls of a Humvee patrolling Baghdad in 2007. Via Pajamas Media, "How Iran Is Killing U.S. Troops in Iraq." These projectiles explode at more than 2,000 feet-per-second:
And now the U.S. is seeking to give Tehran a lead role in resolving the crisis in Iraq? That'd be like opening talks on cooperation with the German High Command as British and French forces were being evacuated at Dunkirk in 1940.
The Obama administration has sold out American interests and placed the lives of Americans and untold number of Iraqis at risk. The solution is not to let Iran gain greater influence in Iraq. We have the options to reverse the ISIS advance. And we have over a decade of on-the-ground experience in defeating the jihadi extremist. All we need is the requisite leadership to beat back this incursion and avoid an existential defeat in the Middle East.
