I’VE ALWAYS LIKED THIS CONCEPT: Should the U.S. Navy Turn Merchant Ships into Floating Missile Magazines? “For the price of one new destroyer with 96 missile silos it could easily have up to 30 ex-commercial vessels with 50 missiles each. One destroyer can only be in one place at a time, but 30 ex-commercial vessels could be in 30 different places all over the globe.”
I had some related thoughts here.
TIME FOR ANOTHER TEA PARTY: ‘Over 90 percent?’ Liberals eyeing White House vie for title of highest tax raiser.
HMM: Ginsburg absence shakes court: White House makes preparations, coming weeks seen as key. So maybe she’ll recover and be back for years, but everyone — left and right media — seems to be acting like she’s a short-timer now. Do they know something they’re not telling us, or are they just going for drama?
WELL, THAT’S MAKING THINGS PRETTY CLEAR: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Responds to Criticism From Joe Lieberman: ‘New Party, Who Dis?’ I gotta say, getting her elected while everyone was focused on Russia was Roger Stone’s best political caper yet.
COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: Chinese Huawei Executive Is Charged With Espionage in Poland.
For years, Washington has labeled Huawei a national security threat, saying it could be forced by China to use its knowledge of the telecommunications equipment it sells around the world to tap into, or disable, foreign communications networks. Huawei has denied that forcefully through the years. Part of its defense has been that it hadn’t been implicated in overseas spying allegations.
Officers of Poland’s counterintelligence agency this week searched the local Huawei office, leaving with documents and electronic data, as well as the home of the Chinese national, said Stanislaw Zaryn, a spokesman for Poland’s security coordination office. The Chinese individual wasn’t named, but was identified by Polish state television as a graduate of one of China’s top intelligence schools, as well as a former employee of the Chinese consulate in the port city of Gdansk.
People familiar with the matter identified him as Weijing Wang. He is known in Poland as Stanislaw Wang, according to these people and a public LinkedIn page that matches his biographical details.
A person who knew Mr. Wang described him as a well-known figure in local business circles, often spotted at events sponsored by Huawei in Poland. “He spoke great Polish,” this person said. “He was a really well-known Chinese guy in Poland and was always around.”
That’s how effective espionage works.
WHY WON’T PELOSI AND SCHUMER NEGOTIATE? Expired Security Certificates Put Government Websites at Risk as Shutdown Drags On. “There could be some realistic opportunities to undermine the security of all U.S. citizens.”
WHY DOES SHE TAKE SUCH ADVANTAGE OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE? Ocasio-Cortez Campaign Slapped With A Fine For Not Providing Proper Workers’ Comp.
GOOD: Scholars blast Portland State for discipline against professor for ‘stress-testing’ publishing standards. “Journal reviewers and editors have never been considered part of human subjects research.” His real sin was exposing the rot in so much of academe. He made people look foolish, and that cannot be forgiven.
DAVID HARSANYI: Angela Davis, Women’s March Honoree And Champion Of Terror, Prisons, And Tyranny. “U.S. Communist Angela Davis was an enthusiastic supporter of the largest and most lethal prison system the world has ever known.”
When the Women’s March honored the Stalinist cheerleader Angela Davis in 2017, there was almost no pushback from Jewish or liberal groups. You can forgive members of the Resistance, concerned with the impending Trumpian dystopia, for not yet comprehending the bigoted and extremist positions of those leading the Women’s March.
Those who participate in the march going forward, however, have no excuses, since it’s now well documented that Jew-haters, theocrats, and other harebrained fanatics litter that movement. Davis’s continued presence is merely another reminder that the progressive left will tolerate the most odious characters as long as they seek “justice” for a favored cause — in this case Palestinians.
In this regard, Davis isn’t a useful idiot. Just as Davis wasn’t merely a communist sympathizer but a champion of the most reprehensible Soviet regimes, she’s not merely a supporter of boycott, divestment, sanction’s Jewish boycotts but a champion of men like Marwan Barghouti, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades leader who coordinated suicide bombings targeting Jewish civilians.
Yet, somehow, Davis claimed to be “stunned” when, after objections from Holocaust remembrance organizations and other Jewish groups, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute recently rescinded their award that was meant to honor her. The incident spurred the usual suspects to say the usual things. Though most of defenses were predictably vacuous, the habit of ignoring her biography is also journalistic malpractice.
Well, there’s a lot of that going on.
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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Harpy Acosta Helps Sell Trump’s Wall and Much, Much More. “The Democrats have made it clear that they will not negotiate with Trump over the wall so it is likely that Trump will declare a national emergency to build the wall. Now the Democrats are getting ready to challenge that authority, which was used by Obama without issue. Now do I like expanding executive power? No I don’t but we all need to play by the same rules. We can’t have the Democrats doing anything and everything to ‘fundamentally transform’ America while we sit back and insist we are bound by rules from fighting back.”
HIGH SPEED: The “future” USS Wichita undergoing acceptance trials.
BYRON YORK: Trump plan would improve current border situation.
The department has already announced where the barriers would go. There would be five miles in the San Diego Sector, 14 miles in the El Centro Sector, 27 miles in the Yuma Sector, nine miles in the El Paso Sector, 55 miles in the Laredo Sector in Texas, and 104 miles in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas.
In all, counting work that is done, being done, and planned, the administration would build 330 miles of new barrier, 150 in areas with no barrier today.
All of it is a project that, in a less crazy time, might be the subject of bipartisan approval. Indeed, as the White House is fond of pointing out, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted in favor of an extensive border barrier back in 2006.
Politics aside, the bottom line is that even the relatively short lengths of barrier the Trump administration is building will do good. Just look at some of the fencing made from rusted steel helicopter landing mats from the Vietnam era. The administration is replacing it with imposing barriers that will discourage illegal crossings. That’s a net plus.
And there is no doubt such barriers work. In San Diego, for example, a barrier has made a tremendous difference. “In the 1980s, migrants overran the border and the Border Patrol,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 2017. “Thousands gathered nightly on a small slice of the border … there, men, women, and children waited for nightfall before making their passage.” In 1986, agents apprehended an astonishing 629,656 illegal immigrants in the San Diego area.
When U.S. officials constructed one barrier, and then another, that number fell dramatically; by 2015, apprehensions fell below 30,000.
Now, the flow of migrants presents a new and different problem. While smaller than several years ago, it is largely made up of families and unaccompanied children who have no valid claim to asylum but who cannot, by U.S. law, be returned to their home countries. As long as those migrants can freely cross the border, they can stay in the United States — a situation that will attract more and more illegal immigration.
The president’s proposal, which in addition to a barrier contains provisions for more immigration judges, more Border Patrol agents, more detention beds, more medical resources, and more technology, would improve the situation. If the political debate were not being fought at such an extreme pitch, that might be obvious to all.
The main thing is, the Dems don’t want Trump to have a win on his signature policy, because they figure that will cement his re-election. Everything else is noise.
ROBBING BEYONCÉ BLIND: Mark Pulliam discusses how litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act continues to run amok.
CONRAD BLACK TO REPUBLICANS: Lift Up Your Hearts: The Democrats Are In A Shambles.
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