Jill Filipovic Attacks Twitchy as a 'Right Wing Hate Machine'

Well, Filipovic was no doubt trolling for some Twitchy traffic by attacking Twitchy.

Here, at Cosmopolitan, "The Right-Wing Hate Machine: Twitchy is not just a popular conservative website. It's also a harassment tool used to target liberal writers."

And the inevitable Twitchy response, "‘Tell me more about how thin your skin is’: Cosmo’s Jill Filipovic has had enough of ‘harassment tool’ Twitchy."

Unleash the #= http://t.co/5j8YvaFaNv

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) August 20, 2015

Watch how hard @JillFilipovic ignores, and thereby sanctions, the left’s horrific harassment of conservative women daily. #FeministFraud

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 20, 2015

#FeministFrauds tolerate harassment of conservative women because they think conservative women are asking for it.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 20, 2015

#FeministFrauds act like victims because that’s how they empower themselves. It’s easier than real effort.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 20, 2015

If what @JillFilipovic is retweeting right now is what she considers “harassment,” she’s more delicate than I thought.

— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) August 20, 2015

Seriously, people need to buck up. Words are not violence. Name-calling is childish but not life-threatening. Move on!

— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) August 20, 2015

Greece Kos Refugees Receive Little Help and No Shelter

The Greek communists would make the Nazis proud.

At Der Spiegel, "Migrant Misery: Greek Island of Kos Makes Refugees Fend for Themselves":

Up to 600 people arrive each night on the Greek island of Kos, fleeing wars, oppression and hunger. When they arrive, they are often made to sleep outside with not sanitation facilities available. Greek authorities seem uninterested in improving the situation.

Along the beach promenade on the island of Kos, a small settlement of tents has sprung up. Colorful clothing flaps in the breeze, hanging from a palm tree after having been washed in the sea. In the shade beneath the tree sits a 14-person family from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo. Children, the 65-year-old grandmother, the pregnant aunt: They're all there.

The women don't want to give their names or be photographed. But they do have something they want to share. "Will you just look at that!" says the grandmother, pointing to the broad, black overcoat that covers her body. It is covered in light-colored dust -- the product of having to spend the night outside, sleeping on a patch of dried-out grass.

The family's home back in Aleppo was destroyed just a few days ago after fighting in their neighborhood flared up again. Now, they are camped under a palm tree on a Greek vacation island with nothing to eat or drink. There is no toilet nearby, much less bathing facilities.

The grandmother once again points accusingly at the spot on her overcoat. Up until 10 hours ago, before her first night under the stars on the island of Kos, she was a proud woman. After leaving Aleppo with her children and grandchildren, she found hotel rooms in Turkey for the family and paid traffickers for the trip across the small strip of the Aegean Sea that separates Turkey's west coast from Greece's easternmost islands. Once they arrived, the family did what they could to find a hotel room on Kos, but nobody wanted to rent a room to them.

Suddenly, on the Greek island, the 65-year-old matron is someone who is unwelcome in the homes of respectable people, someone who the police drive out of the city center at night, someone who is beginning to smell due to a lack of facilities to wash. Someone whose clothes are dirty. "Are we really in Europe here?" she asks. She had expected respect and human dignity.

Like other Greek islands near the Turkish coastline, Kos has for months been experiencing a huge number of new arrivals. Around 600 people land on the shores of the island every day, says the Greek coast guard, in addition to those arriving on Chios, Samos, Lesbos and other nearby islands. The European Union's border agency, Frontex, announced last week that nearly 50,000 migrants arrived in Greece in July. That would be an enormous challenge for any country. But one gets the impression that Greece isn't even trying...

Keep reading.

Marine Le Pen Fights Father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Legacy in Bid to Recast Anti-EU National Front

At the Wall Street Journal, "A Family Drama Splits Far Right in France":

PARIS— Marine Le Pen’s quest to transform the far-right National Front party from a fringe movement into a dominant force in European politics is hitting a fundamental obstacle: her own father.

The clash erupted during a closed-door meeting in early May when Ms. Le Pen attempted to muzzle the 87-year-old Jean-Marie, who had recently outraged the public by repeating his claim that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of history.

“Either you stop talking in the name of the National Front, or you stop making such statements,” Ms. Le Pen said, according to people in the room.

The response from Mr. Le Pen—the firebrand who had put the National Front on Europe’s political map decades before handing the torch to his daughter—was unequivocal.

“Never,” Mr. Le Pen said.

Months later, Ms. Le Pen finds herself locked in a political and legal battle to oust Mr. Le Pen from the party he helped found. In his defiance, the octogenarian is standing in the way of his daughter’s carefully laid plans to seize power in the heart of Europe.

Ms. Le Pen has tapped a groundswell of anti-European Union sentiment in France to position herself as a front-runner for French president in 2017—a prospect that sends shivers through the European establishment.

Currently a member of the European Parliament, Ms. Le Pen espouses pulling France out of the euro—with rhetoric more extreme than that of the far-left Syriza party in Greece, whose antiausterity platform contributed to the latest euro-membership crisis. She also campaigns to roll back key tenets of the EU, which she blames for the surge in immigration.

Ms. Le Pen’s success at the polls, however, ultimately hinges on whether the National Front can broaden its appeal to mainstream voters by removing the stain of World War II-era recriminations that have long made far-right parties taboo in Europe’s highest offices. That struggle is embodied in Ms. Le Pen’s tug of war with her father, a hero of Europe’s far right.

“She needs the votes of those who today are still uncomfortable with the National Front’s affiliation to right-wing extremist parties,” said Emmanuel Rivière, director at French polling agency TNS Sofres.

Ms. Le Pen has punished her father by suspending his membership in the party and excluding him from a caucus she forged inside the European Parliament with other anti-EU forces. She tried to have the party’s rank-and-file vote on whether Mr. Le Pen should be stripped of his role as National Front’s honorary chairman, but a French court suspended the ballot. Ms. Le Pen released the results of the voided vote, which showed 94% of those voting wanted Mr. Le Pen out of the National Front.

On Thursday, Mr. Le Pen will appear before a National Front disciplinary hearing to decide whether he should be expelled from the party.

“Marine Le Pen killed the father,” said Wallerand de Saint Just, a former lawyer of Mr. Le Pen who currently serves as the party’s treasurer, adding: “Freud didn’t have it all wrong.”

Who knows, maybe the old man will buy the farm?

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in 2017, in any case, especially if the Europeans don't get their act together on the migration crisis.

Still more.

Illegal Immigration: More Identity Theft, More Murder, More Rape, and More Drug Dealing

All brought to you by the Obama-Dems.

At End of the American Dream:

Do we want to encourage drug dealers, violent gang members and serial rapists to come into this country? If not, why is that exactly what the Obama administration is doing? Thanks to very foolish U.S. government policies, it is incredibly difficult to immigrate to this country legally, but it is incredibly easy to immigrate to this country illegally. So we are keeping out large numbers of good, honest, hard working people at the same time that we have given a giant green light to criminals and lawbreakers. Does that make any sense at all?  We need an immigration system that forces everyone to come in through the front door.

Instead, we have made the process of getting in through the front door a complete and total nightmare and yet we have left the back door totally wide open.  And if the millions upon millions of lawbreakers that are coming in to this country illegally just took our jobs and drained our welfare system, perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad.  Unfortunately, that is not the case. In fact, illegal immigration has greatly contributed to rising violent crime rates all over the nation. Gang membership is exploding, Mexican drug cartels are operating in more of our communities than ever before, and identity theft by illegal immigrants is at epidemic levels. Something desperately needs to be done.

But instead, the Obama administration is trying to ram amnesty for illegal immigrants through Congress as quickly as possible. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill will cause unemployment to go up and wages to go down for many years. And by rewarding illegal immigration, the federal government will just encourage much more of it. But our politicians don’t really seem concerned with the consequences. In fact, the Senate is going to vote on the immigration bill without even reading it.

Instead of focusing on what we “owe” to those that have broken our laws by entering this country illegally, perhaps we should be talking about some of the horrible crimes that they have been committing while they have been living here...

Keep reading.

New Hole Opens Up at Site of Deadly 2013 Sinkhole Outside Tampa Bay, Florida (VIDEO)

I remember the sinkhole two years ago. It swallowed some guy up who was sleeping.

At the Tampa Bay Times, "Sinkhole reopens two years after it swallowed Seffner man sleeping in his bed."

And watch, at Fox News 13 Tampa, "Hole reopens at site of fatal sinkhole."

Labour Leader Candidate Jeremy Corbyn Invited Vile Anti-Semite Dyab Abou Jahjah to Parliament

Louise Mensch has another sensational journalist coup.

At her blog, Unfashionista, "‘Every dead British soldier is a victory’ – Jeremy Corbyn’s Parliamentary Guest."



And at the Sun UK, "CORBYN INVITED “FRIEND” TO PARLIAMENT WHO REJOICED IN DEATH OF UK SOLDIERS."

Corbyn was denying ever meeting Abou Jahjah late yesterday morning, but it looks like he couldn't deny the overwhelming evidence of his association.

At London's Daily Mail, "Corbyn finally admits he DID host Muslim firebrand who gloated at murder of British soldiers despite claiming he had never met him just hours earlier."

Palmyra Archaeologist Refused to Lead Islamic State to Antiquities

Following-up from previously, "Islamic State Beheads 82-Year-Old Antiquities Scholar in Palmyra, Syria."

At the Guardian UK, "Beheaded Syrian scholar refused to lead Isis to hidden Palmyra antiquities":

Khaled al-Asaad, 82, was interrogated by militants for a month before he was murdered in the ancient city.

The brutal murder of Khaled al-Asaad, 82, is the latest atrocity perpetrated by the jihadi group, which has captured a third of Syria and neighbouring Iraq and declared a “caliphate” on the territory it controls. It has also highlighted Isis’s habit of looting and selling antiquities to fund its activities – as well as destroying them.

Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said Asaad’s family had informed him that the scholar, who worked for more than 50 years as head of antiquities in Palmyra, was killed by Isis on Tuesday.

Asaad had been held for more than a month before being murdered. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said he had learned from a Syrian source that the archaeologist had been interrogated by Isis about the location of treasures from Palmyra and had been executed when he refused to cooperate.

Isis captured the city from government forces in May but is not known to have damaged its monumental Roman-era ruins despite a reputation for destroying artefacts it views as idolatrous.

“Just imagine that such a scholar who gave such memorable services to the place and to history would be beheaded … and his corpse still hanging from one of the ancient columns in the centre of a square in Palmyra,” Abdulkarim said. “The continued presence of these criminals in this city is a curse and bad omen on [Palmyra] and every column and every archaeological piece in it.”

Keep reading.

Courtney Friel Makes Little Boy Cry on First Day of Pre-Kindergarten (VIDEO)

I was terrified when my mom dropped me off for the first day of preschool. I can remember to this day bawling and refusing to get out of the car. Kindergarten wasn't too bad.

At Twitchy, "Awww! Former Fox News anchor Courtney Friel accidentally made a 4-year-old cry on his first day of school [video]."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Courtney Friel makes kindergartner cry when she asks if he will miss his mom."

Ms. Friel is the 10:00pm anchor on KTLA News 5 Los Angeles, and was a former regular on Fox News in D.C.

Folks may remember her from back in 2009, "Courtney Friel, Political Scientist."

New York to Crack Down on Times Square's Topless Women

I heard about this on O'Reilly. He was talking to Kennedy and Katie Pavlich, who obviously didn't approve.

But see CBS News, "Topless women in Times Square breaking the law, NY governor says."

And watch, at CBS News 2 New York, "Topless In Times Square."

Still more at the Wall Street Journal, "N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo Joins Criticism of Times Square’s Topless Women."

'Britain is Frightened' — 'Draw Mohammed' Event Cancelled After Organizers Pressured by Security Services

The news out of Londonistan.

At Jihad Watch, "UK 'Draw Muhammad' exhibit canceled for fear of jihad terrorists."

And see Anne Marie Waters, at Big Government, "'Frightened' Britain Cancels Mohammed Cartoon Exhibit":

There’s a very real possibility that people could be hurt or killed – before, during, and after the event. This, together with the fact that our venue had indicated it wanted to pull out citing security and insurance concerns, and given the fear that people were feeling generally, the only responsible thing to do was to pull back and try to learn some lessons. I have not learned lessons as much as I have had my suspicions confirmed. There are two major messages to take on board from this episode: 1) Britain is a frightened nation, and 2) our freedom is not going away, it has gone.

Yes, cowering before Islamic jihad, right on the home soil. Amazing.

Keep reading.

The Far-Reaching Impact of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights

This is a big story, at the Los Angeles Times, "How a little-known education office has forced far-reaching changes to campus sex assault investigations":

For the last four years, a little-known civil rights office in the U.S. Department of Education has forced far-reaching changes in how the nation’s colleges and universities police, prosecute and punish sexual assaults on campus.

With a strong mandate from President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, the office's lawyers have redefined campus sexual assault as a federal civil rights issue, changed the standard by which allegations must be judged and publicized the names of a growing number of schools under investigation for allegedly failing to respond properly to complaints of sexual misconduct.

"This is the first administration to call sexual violence a civil rights issue," said Catherine E. Lhamon, a former ACLU lawyer in Los Angeles who, as assistant secretary of Education, heads the Office for Civil Rights and has brought the style of an aggressive litigator to the once-staid education post.

"We don’t treat rape and sexual assault as seriously as we should," she said, citing surveys that found one-in-five women say they were victims of sexual assault or unwanted sexual contact in college. There is "a need to push the country forward."

Members of Congress and activists who fight unwanted sexual incidents on campus have praised the effort. College administrators grudgingly admit that the ratcheting up of pressure has changed a status quo in which some schools allowed perpetrators to go unpunished while failing to provide safety or support for victims.


But what some faculty, administrators and judges call an unyielding and one-sided approach by the government has provoked a backlash. Two weeks ago, a judge in San Diego rebuked the UC campus there for trampling the rights of an accused student.

"Some schools see OCR as a bully with enforcement powers," said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, the lobby group for higher education.

"Universities are desperately trying to do the right thing, but these cases can be really difficult to resolve fairly. Often, you have two conflicting stories, no evidence, no witnesses, and it’s all combined with substance abuse."

University officials, many of whom will speak about the subject only on condition of anonymity, complain of heavy-handed pressure from Washington and a growing bureaucracy.
Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California and a former prosecutor and secretary of Homeland Security, warned in an article in the Yale Law & Policy Review published online this month that "a cottage industry is being created" on campuses dedicated to handling tasks that fall outside the expertise of colleges and universities.

"Rather than pushing institutions to become surrogates for the criminal justice system," she said, policymakers should ask if "more work should be done to improve that system’s handling and prosecution of sexual assault cases."

Under pressure from the Office for Civil Rights, campuses are rushing to set up a parallel legal system to investigate and rule upon murky encounters that often involve inebriated students. They must decide within 60 days whether it is "more likely than not" that an alleged perpetrator was guilty. And they make those decisions without many of the legal protections associated with a criminal trial.

The new procedures vary from school to school, but according to Harvard Law School professor Janet Halley and other critics, many do not allow the accused to know details of accusations against them, to question accusers, or to have lawyers participate in hearings. Many also allow only limited appeals of rulings by a campus administrator or outside expert.

The punishments can be a expulsion and a permanent notation on a student’s transcript, potentially life-altering penalties.

Critics call those moves dangerous procedural short circuits that have resulted in serious injustice.

"It’s tragic what the federal government has done," said Elizabeth Bartholet, a civil rights activist and professor at Harvard Law School. "They are creating a backlash against the very cause they are fighting for."

Bartholet and 27 other members of the Harvard law faculty objected publicly in October to a new university policy on sexual harassment and violence, adopted in the face of an investigation by the Office for Civil Rights...

What a disaster.

Still more (via Instapundit).

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Donald Trump Appeals to Americans Fed Up with Broken and Dishonest Political System (VIDEO)

An excellent segment from Monday night.

O'Reilly cuts through the baloney to nail down exactly what's bugging folks out there, and why Trump's still ahead in the polls.

Marco Rubio: My Vision for U.S. Foreign Policy

So, the Florida senator has a piece up at Foreign Affairs, "Restoring America’s Strength":

America’s status as the greatest and most influential nation on earth comes with certain inescapable realities. Among these are an abundance of enemies wishing to undermine us, numerous allies dependent on our strength and constancy, and the burden of knowing that every choice we make in exercising our power—even when we choose not to exercise it at all—has tremendous human and geopolitical consequences.

This has been true for at least 70 years, but never more so than today. As the world has grown more interconnected, American leadership has grown more critical to maintaining global order and defending our people’s interests, and as our economy has turned from national to international, domestic policy and foreign policy have become inseparable.

President Barack Obama has failed to recognize this. He entered office believing the United States was too engaged in too many places and that globalization had diminished the need for American power. He set to work peeling back the protective cover of American influence, stranding our allies, and deferring to the whims of nefarious regional powers. He has vacillated between leading recklessly and not leading at all, which has left the world more dangerous and America’s interests less secure.
It will take years for our next president to confront the residual effects of President Obama’s foreign and defense policies. Countering the spread of the self-declared Islamic State, for example, will require a broadened coalition of regional partners, increased U.S. involvement in the fight, and steady action to prevent the group’s expansion to other failed and failing states. Halting Iran’s regional expansionism and preventing its acquisition of a nuclear weapon will demand equal urgency and care.

The Middle East, however, is far from the only region with crises. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s attempts to dominate the South China Sea, resurgent despotism in South America, and the rise of new threats—from devastating cyberattacks to challenges in space — will all require the careful attention of America’s next president.

Each challenge will be made more difficult by President Obama’s slashing of hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget, which has left the U.S. Army on track to be at pre–World War II levels, the U.S. Navy at pre–World War I levels, and the U.S. Air Force with the smallest and oldest combat force in its history. Our next president must act immediately on entering office to begin rebuilding these capabilities.

The first and most important pillar of my foreign policy will be a renewal of American strength. This is an idea based on a simple truth: the world is at its safest when America is at its strongest. Physical strength and an active foreign policy to back it up are a means of preserving peace, not promoting conflict. Foreign involvement has never been a binary choice between perpetual war and passive indifference. The president has many tools to advance U.S. interests, and when used in proper balance, they will make it less likely that force will ever be required and will thus save lives rather than cost them.

My foreign policy would restore the post-1945 bipartisan presidential tradition of a strong and engaged America while adjusting it to meet the new realities of a globalized world. The foreign policy I propose has three pillars. Each can be best described through an example of a challenge we face in this new century, but they all reveal the need for all elements of American power—for a dynamic foreign policy that restores strength, promotes prosperity, and steers the world toward freedom.

I like it. I just wonder how Rubio's going to differentiate himself from the rest of the pack. With the exception of Rand Paul, pretty much all the GOP candidates will be hammering Obama's withdrawal from the world stage, and his appeasement of America's traditional adversaries.

Keep reading.

Drunken Stepfather's Got Your Evening Rule 5 Links

Here: "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

Plus, "Saki Kashima at Egotastic! All-Stars."

Obama's Environmental Pollution Agency

From Michelle Malkin, "Obama’s toxic Environmental Pollution Agency: Sexual predators, toxic dumps & data stonewalls":

Here in my adopted home state of Colorado, orange is the new Animas River thanks to the blithering idiots working under President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency.

It’s just the latest man-caused disaster from an out-of-control bureaucracy whose primary mission is not the Earth’s preservation, but self-preservation.

As always, the government cover-up compounds the crime — which is why the agency’s promise this week to investigate itself has residents across the Rocky Mountains in stitches. Or tears.

After the EPA and officials and their contract workers accidentally spilled three million gallons of pent-up toxic sludge on August 5 from a defunct mine in San Juan County that hadn’t operated since 1923, EPA apparatchiks delayed notifying residents for more than 24 hours. They vastly underestimated the volume and spill rate of gunk. Then, while refusing to release data, EPA head Gina McCarthy flew to the glowing river to fecklessly declare that the water “seems to be restoring itself.”

The cleanup costs for the Colorado spill alone are estimated at $30 billion. Small farmers, ranchers and tourist-related businesses will be reeling for years to come — yet the EPA is simultaneously pushing forward with Draconian ozone regulations (based on cherry-picked junk science) that will punish the state’s residents with no discernible health benefits.

If only Mother Nature could help wash away the institutionalized corruption that has been leaching from Obama’s EPA headquarters since Day One:

–BP oil spill data doctoring. Former White House Director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner and the EPA suffered no consequences after they repeatedly lied and cooked the books in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. Browner, who pulled the puppet strings of then-EPA head Lisa Jackson, misled the public about the scope of the disaster by falsely claiming that 75 percent of the spill was “completely gone from the system.” Then she falsely claimed that the administration’s initial report on the disaster was “peer-reviewed.”

The Interior Department inspector general also singled out Browner for misrepresenting the White House’s blue-ribbon science panel, which opposed a six-month drilling moratorium, and exposed how she butchered their conclusions to justify the administration’s preordained policy agenda.

Browner, an inveterate left-wing crony lobbyist/activist, left office without so much as a wrist slap. Brazen data doctoring and destruction are her fortes. As EPA head during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, she was held in contempt by a federal judge after ordering a staffer to purge and delete her computer files. Browner had sought to evade a public disclosure lawsuit by conservative lawyer and author Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation.

–Email evasion and transparency trouncing. While Browner was doing her dirty work as Obama’s unaccountable eco-czar, Jackson busied herself creating sock-puppet email personalities to circumvent public disclosure rules as the agency crafted radical climate-change policies in secret. She learned the tricks of the trade from Browner. Jackson admitted to using the pseudonym “Richard Windsor” on one of at least two separate secret government accounts. Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow Christopher Horner discovered the elaborate ruses in 2012. The agency had stonewalled Horner’s FOIA requests on the use of alias accounts at the agency; CEI sued to force the administration to comply.

In December 2012, Jackson resigned amid multiple investigations. Not a wrist slap. Not a scratch. In March of this year, a federal judge blasted the agency for avoiding a separate FOIA request by Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation related to sock-puppet email accounts created by Jackson and others “who may have delayed the release dates for hot-button environmental regulations until after the Nov. 6, 2012, presidential election.”

Apple Computer hired Jackson in 2013 (and all of her multiple personalities). Two months ago, the company proudly announced that it was promoting Jackson to “vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives” and head of the company’s “global government affairs and public policy teams.”

–Enabling sex predators and porn addicts. Last month, the EPA inspector general finally testified on Capitol Hill about the agency’s chronic mismanagement of alleged sexual perverts on the payroll. One employee “engaged in offensive and inappropriate behavior toward at least 16 women, most of whom were EPA co-workers,” the IG reported. Supervisors “were made aware of many of these actions and yet did nothing.”

Well, not exactly “nothing.” The employee was actually promoted to assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Homeland Security — a position he used to harass six more women...

More.

#BlackLivesMatter Organizer Shaun King's Racial Appropriation

He's not black.

See Big Government, "DID BLACK LIVES MATTER ORGANIZER SHAUN KING MISLEAD OPRAH WINFREY BY PRETENDING TO BE BIRACIAL?"

Also, "SHAUN KING DOESN’T REBUT STORY ABOUT HIS RACIAL HISTORY IN TWITTER MELTDOWN," and "MOREHOUSE COLLEGE DISTANCES ITSELF FROM #BLACKLIVESMATTER FRAUD SHAUN KING, OPRAH STILL SILENT."

 Oh boy that's juicy!

Still more at Twitchy, "‘I’m doubling down now’: Shaun King responds after accusations of being ‘new Rachel Dolezal’."

Top Aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin 'Likely Destroyed' Hillary Clinton's Blackberry

Keep in mind that the incriminating emails could be anywhere, not just on Clinton's Blackberry.

Glenn Reynolds evokes Watergate, "#COVERUP: Clinton aides’ BlackBerrys likely destroyed."

Donald Trump, Birthright Citizenship, and the 14th Amendment

I thought about this yesterday. Seems to me as long as "born or naturalized in the United States" is in the 14th Amendment, then it's going to take an extremely strained reading of it to deny that children of illegal immigrants are citizens of the U.S. at birth.

I'll have to refresh my constitutional law case knowledge a bit, but this piece from Ken Klukowski, at Big Government, is pretty compelling, and could convince me that Donald Trump's on solid ground. See, "CONSTITUTION DOESN’T MANDATE BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP":

Parts of Donald Trump’s immigration plan may raise serious constitutional questions, but the part that launched a media firestorm—ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens—does not.

The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment does not confer citizenship on the children of foreigners, whether legal or illegal.

Media commentators have gotten this issue dead wrong. Fox News’s Judge Andrew Napolitano says the Fourteenth Amendment is “very clear” that its Citizenship Clause commands that any child born in America is automatically an American citizen.

That’s not the law. It has never been the law.

Under current immigration law—found at 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a)—a baby born on American soil to a (1) foreign ambassador, (2) head of state, or (3) foreign military prisoner is not an American citizen.

How is that possible? This is from the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 (INA), as it has been amended over the years. Is this federal law unconstitutional?

No. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Today’s debate turns on the six words, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

As captured in the movie Lincoln, the Thirteenth Amendment—which ended slavery—barely passed Congress because many Democrats supported slavery, and it was only through the political genius and resolve of Republican President Abraham Lincoln that the proposed amendment passed Congress in 1865, sending it to the states for ratification.

In 1866, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act to guarantee black Americans their constitutional rights as citizens, claiming that the Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to pass such laws. But many voted against the Civil Rights Act because they thought it exceeded Congress’s powers, and even many of its supporters doubted its legality.

The Civil Rights Act included a definition for national citizenship, to guarantee that former slaves would forever be free of the infamous Dred Scott decision which declared black people were not American citizens. That provision read, “All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

That was the original meaning of the jurisdiction language in the Fourteenth Amendment. A person who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States is a person who is “not subject to any foreign power”—that is, a person who was entirely native to the United States, not the citizen or subject of any foreign government. The same members of Congress who voted for the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 then voted to define citizenship for freed slaves in a federal law in 1866, then voted again months later in 1866—using only slightly different language—to put that definition of citizenship in the Constitution, language that was ultimately ratified by the states in 1868 as the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1884, the Supreme Court in Elk v. Wilkins noted that the language of the Civil Rights Act was condensed and rephrased in the Fourteenth Amendment and that courts can therefore look to the Civil Rights Act to understand better the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reasoned that if a person is a foreign citizen, then their children are likewise not constitutionally under the jurisdiction of the United States, and therefore not entitled to citizenship. In fact, the Court specifically then added that this rule is why the children of foreign ambassadors are not American citizens.

That is why Congress can specify that the children of foreign diplomats and foreign soldiers are not Americans by birth. They’re not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Congress’s INA does not grant them citizenship; federal law never has.

So why is a child born on American soil to foreign parents an American citizen by birth? Because the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is a floor, not a ceiling. Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution, Congress has absolute power to make laws for immigration and for granting citizenship to foreigners. Congress’s current INA is far more generous than the Constitution requires. Congress could expand it to grant citizenship to every human being on earth, or narrow it to its constitutional minimum.

Media confusion on this issue is puzzling, because the greatest legal minds in this country have discussed the issue. (Just none of them were put on camera to explain it.) Scholars including Dr. John Eastman of Chapman University, and even Attorney General Edwin Meese—the godfather of constitutional conservatism in the law—reject the myth of birthright citizenship...

Still more.

Hillary Clinton Can't Handle #BlackLivesMatter (VIDEO)

Here's RedState's Leon Wolf, at the Washington Post, "#BlackLivesMatter is wasting its time with Democrats: The movement would be better off if it engaged with Republican candidates":

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...

Keep reading.

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.

In any case,  don't miss Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "Video: Hillary gets upbraided by #BlackLivesMatter activists for “mass incarceration system”," and "Dems start to face reality: Hillary is a terrible candidate."

Islamic State Beheads 82-Year-Old Antiquities Scholar in Palmyra, Syria

The guy was 82-years-old?

And he was an archaeologist?

Nothing shocks me anymore. Well, the only thing that's shocking is how far Islamic State has advanced. Glenn Back compares them outright to the Nazis, except saying that ISIS is a hundred times worse.

But hey, O gets to go golfing for Vernon Jordan's 80th birthday with Bill Clinton, so no worries. Everything's under control. Vernon's going see his 81st!

At the Telegraph UK, "Islamic State jihadis 'behead top archaeologist in Palmyra'."

Also at Reuters, "Islamic State militants behead archaeologist in Palmyra: Syrian official":

Islamic State (IS) militants beheaded an antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his body on a column in a main square of the historic site, Syria's antiquities chief said on Tuesday.

I'd link the video, since we know there's a video of the beheading, but I don't see it posted anywhere, even at the hardcore uncensored jihadi terror porn sites. Maybe it's not out yet. No matter. We're inured to it. ISIS could blow up whole cities with nuclear weapons, major metropolitan areas, and that wouldn't cross any red lines. It's all pretty fucked up.

(Oh, and remember, not talking about it helps the Democrats, kinda like doing nothing about illegal immigration helps the Democrats. Depravity helps the Democrats, because they're the party of depravity, of death, of destruction, and the complete abandonment of anything resembling holy righteousness and the sublime.)