ALAN KEYES: “The next crisis could be the end of the republic: Why we must impeach President Obama.”

There are those who will say that, with less than a year left in his occupancy of the Oval Office, it’s too late to hold him accountable. I have no doubt that among them are some of the same people who rejected the need to turn the 2014 election into a referendum on the issue of impeaching and removing him from office. They reflect the general mentality, suspiciously prevalent in this era of elitist faction domination, which seems never ready to hold elected officials to account for the damage they inflict upon the sovereignty and constitution of the people of the United States. . . .

Given the dictatorial bent Obama’s tenure has more than amply demonstrated in service to their agenda, it’s excusable to suspect that the neglect of accountability intentionally serves the larger agenda of overturning the U.S. Constitution, an agenda now more and more openly avowed.

It’s never too late for the U.S. Congress to use its Constitutional power to thwart this agenda, but it will be too late if and when the U.S. is hit by a crisis damaging enough to encourage Obama, or the next elitist faction tool, to declare that circumstances have suspended the Constitution’s implementation until further notice. Say if you like that it could never happen here. That was true in the days when Americans still had the confidence to stand on the rights the Constitution guarantees, and the courage to defend their stand. Thanks to the triumph of partisan passivity and subservience, that stalwart character is now in doubt. If it were not, the GOP majorities in both Houses of Congress would have already been moved to do what the Constitution requires.

OBAMA SIGNS DEFENSE BILL DESPITE GITMO PROVISIONS: President Obama has quietly (and on the eve of Thanksgiving) signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which renews tight prohibitions against using any federal funds for the transfer of Gitmo detainees to the U.S.

Obama has previously intimated that he would transfer Gitmo prisoners to the U.S. despite congressional opposition. It is unclear whether Obama’s decision to sign the NDAA indicates that he has abandoned plans for U.S. transfer, or whether (as some former Obama Administration officials have argued) Obama believes he has the independent constitutional authority to transfer the detainees to the U.S. anyway.

P.C. RUN AMOK: Political correctness likely contributed to a flash mob theft of a designer store in Georgetown. The store–a Diesel clothing store on M Street–was overtaken by a mob of more than 20 juveniles Tuesday evening, who stole more than $12,000 worth of merchandise within a matter of minutes. The Washington Post story conveniently omits the racial identity of these juveniles.

Some in the Georgetown area started using the app service in February, 2014 after the business organization — Georgetown Business Improvement District — worked with police in the District to launch it. The service called “Operation GroupMe” was meant, some in the area said, as a tool to try to reduce shoplifting in the area. Georgetown is one of the nation’s poshest shopping districts.

But a look at the bulk of the correspondence over a nine-month period of those using the service had some people expressing suspicions about African Americans. About 90 percent of the photographs that were put up showed blacks. And there were descriptions in offensive language.

Joe Sternlieb, chief executive of the Georgetown business group, had said there were concerns that the app could be used to violate shoppers’ “civil rights and individual dignity.”

Um, does anyone care about the rights, dignity, or safety of the store owners, patrons, and employees who work in these stores? If blacks are suspected of crimes in an area, it isn’t “racial profiling” to report suspicion of such individuals. If they are black, they are black. If they are white, they are white. If they are Asian, they are Asian. Simply reporting a suspect’s race is not racial profiling. It is reporting a fact that is useful in preventing crime. Geez. Political correctness is becoming very dangerous.

THEY NEED TO CRYOGENICALLY FREEZE IT: Senator John Barroso (R-WY) has an oped in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Congress Can Cool Off Obama’s Climate Change Plans.”

When the U.N. climate-change talks convene in Paris next week, the risks will be high for American taxpayers. President Obama wants a climate deal and is willing to pay dearly to get it. The inevitable outcome is a plan with unproven benefits and unreachable goals, but very real costs. It will be up to Congress to check the president’s ambition of committing the U.S. to an international green scheme that will produce little or no return. . . .

Todd Stern, the chief American negotiator heading to Paris, has tried to justify the disconnect. Mr. Stern recently told the Senate that developing countries need to be allowed to keep emitting so that their economies can continue to grow by 8%-9% a year. . . .

Why should the U.S. accept a plan—and pay to grease the deal—that keeps its economy stuck at 2% growth while American taxpayers subsidize other countries’ economies growing at 9%?

Almost as bad is that President Obama will likely pledge $3 billion of taxpayers’ money to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. Developing nations are eager to accept this cash, which in theory they will use to address the effects of extreme weather. It seems more likely that the money will end up in the pockets of government officials in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. . . .

The envoys in Paris should understand: Congress does not support the president’s $3 billion promise. Earlier this year Mr. Obama requested in his budget the first $500 million installment. That budget was voted down 98-1. Congress should continue to reject this spending and insist that any agreement reached in Paris be subject to Senate approval—regardless of whether or not the administration formally calls it a treaty.

Whatever comes of the Paris talks, there is reason to be wary. We’ve seen the Obama administration’s negotiating skills. Anyone who watched the Iran nuclear agreement play out has good reason to be nervous about the concessions this administration will make in closed-door negotiations.

So here we go again: The President of the United States is hellbent on accomplishing a goal that is opposed by the majority of Americans. He is looking for a way (once again) to “work around” Congress. He is willing to strike a deal that puts the U.S. at a disadvantage, in the name of “helping” other “developing” countries, and the “globe” (even though it won’t actually help the latter).  Who does he think he’s the President of, exactly? Because it sure doesn’t seem to be Americans.

Let’s hope Congress shows more courage and intelligence in stopping the President this time than it did with the Iran deal. I won’t hold my breath.

PRINCETON STUDENTS FIGHT BACK: Steven Hayward over at Power Line shares a letter that a group of intrepid Princeton students has sent to the President of the University:

Dear President Eisgruber,

We write on behalf of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition to request a meeting with you so that we may present our perspectives on the events of recent weeks. We are concerned mainly with the importance of preserving an intellectual culture in which allmembers of the Princeton community feel free to engage in civil discussion and to express their convictions without fear of being subjected to intimidation or abuse. Thanks to recent polls, surveys, and petitions, we have reason to believe that our concerns are shared by a majority of our fellow Princeton undergraduates. . . .

This dialogue is necessary because many students have shared with us that they are afraid to state publicly their opinions on recent events for fear of being vilified, slandered, and subjected to hatred, either by fellow students or faculty. Many who questioned the protest were labeled racist, and black students who expressed disagreement with the protesters were called “white sympathizers” and were told they were “not black.” We, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, refuse to let our peers be intimidated or bullied into silence on these–or any–important matters. . . . 

We oppose efforts to purge (and literally paint over) recognitions of Woodrow Wilson’s achievements, including Wilson College, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and his mural in Wilcox Dining Hall. As you have noted, Wilson, like all other historical figures, has a mixed legacy. It is not for his contemptible racism, but for his contributions as president of both Princeton and the United States that we honor Wilson. Moreover, if we cease honoring flawed individuals, there will be no names adorning our buildings, no statues decorating our courtyards, and no biographies capable of inspiring future generations.

We worry that the proposed distribution requirement will contribute to the politicization of the University and facilitate groupthink. However, we, too, are concerned about diversity in the classroom and offer our own solution to this problem. While we do not wish to impose additional distribution requirements on students for fear of stifling academic exploration, we believe that all students should be encouraged to take courses taught by professors who will challenge their preconceived mindsets. To this end, the University should make every effort to attract outstanding faculty representing a wider range of viewpoints–even controversial viewpoints–across all departments. Princeton needs more Peter Singers, more Cornel Wests, and more Robert Georges.

Similarly, we believe that requiring cultural competency training for faculty threatens to impose orthodoxies on issues about which people of good faith often disagree. As Professor Sergiu Klainerman has observed, it reeks of the reeducation programs to which people in his native Romania were subjected under communist rule.

As Hayward observes, “May I suggest that employers write down the names of each of these signatories, for the obvious reason that they’re the kind of young people you want to hire.”

SO SHE’S EMBRACING A TERRORISTS’ VETO? Hillary Clinton says blocking Syrian refugees will make Muslims angry at police officers.

Clinton, who wants to import thousands of Syrian refugees, told reporters in Reno that it would look bad not to let in Syrian refugees, and that might inflame Muslims against law enforcement.

“If you’re in law enforcement, … you want the people in the communities that you are looking to get information from to feel like they want to help you,” Clinton said at a Nevada roundtable. “And if the message from people who are running for president, for example, is that we don’t want to take any Muslims whatsoever, that’s not good for law enforcement.”

“Let’s not be casting this broad, negative rejection of everybody who might be Muslim. That is not smart to protect ourselves. And I want people to understand — that is a law enforcement issue,” Clinton added.

Translated: We’d better let every Muslim refugee in, otherwise Muslims already present in the U.S. will commit acts of terrorism and other violence. Well, that sounds logical.

GITMO FIGHT HEATS UP: 16 veteran GOP House members have signed onto a letter to members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, encouraging them to consult with lawyers before executing any presidential order to transfer Gitmo detainees to the U.S.

“The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) contemplates that with respect to enlisted personnel and officers in the United States armed forces, when an order given by one’s superiors comes into conflict with the laws of this nation, the latter prevail. We believe that in our democracy — in which governance is undertaken, in the words of Founding Father John Adams, by ‘…a government of laws, and not of men…’ – that understanding necessarily applies equally to orders given by the Commander-in-Chief,” writes the group of 16 House members who are all military veterans.

Current U.S. law does not permit the expenditure of any funds to transfer Gitmo detainees to the U.S., or to construct or modify facilities to house the detainees.

MUSLIMS IN N.J. CHEERING AFTER 9/11? This is what Donald Trump has asserted, and according to the Washington Post report of Sept. 18, 2001, Trump is right.  John Hinderaker over at Power Line has uncovered this Washington Post piece–conveniently archived and available only if one pays $3.95 for it–that the Washington Post’s own fact checker, Glenn Kessler, apparently could not find.

Here’s an excerpt from the 2001 Washington Post story:

In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners’ plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.

So the real question here is this: Why is the mainstream media–and even conservative media–unable to find a story like this, that appeared immediately after 9/11, in one of the largest papers in the country? I think Hinderaker gets it right:

Why does this happen? Are NPR, the Times and the AP incapable of using Google? Perhaps. But here is another possibility: note that the Times and the AP coyly limited their denials to news accounts of “mass cheering” or “mass celebrations” in Jersey City. I think they found the Washington Post story but preferred not to mention it. Instead, they deceived their readers by silently making the implicit judgment that “a number of people” are not a “mass.”

I think that these news outlets are so hysterically eager to discredit any concerns about Islam that they won’t let something as minor as the facts get in their way. There is dishonesty here, but it is on the part of NPR, the New York Times and the Associated Press, not Donald Trump.

Yep. Muslims in New Jersey cheering after 9/11 doesn’t further the liberal/progressive narrative (so it is simply ignored).  And many of the conservative outlets are still hoping that Trump goes away very soon, so they’re not likely to jump to his defense.

HE’S RIGHT: Trump says he’d bring back waterboarding. Good for him for clinging to his common sense.  It isn’t “torture,” as the President’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded in a well-reasoned legal memo back in 2002. The “torture” label is (as usual) just a liberal/progressive subjective conclusion, not an actual legal argument.

WELL, IT’S NOT THE “RADICAL JIHAD” STATE, YOU KNOW:  Rex Murphy writes in the Canadian National Post about Hillary Clinton’s doublespeak hypocrisy:

It’s an odd world. Glamour magazine recently named the former Bruce Jenner as its Woman of the Year. In all respectable circles, she is of course now recognized as Caitlyn Jenner, after coming out as a woman. In this context, coming out is simply to be understood as an act of self-declaration. If a person self-identifies as X, Y or Z, then he, she, ze or hir has to be what he, she, ze or hir professes to be. If it’s a nightmare for grammarians, just think of the chaos in biology departments. .  . .

This is a Euclidean axiom in the new geometry of gender and progressive thought. Names matter — what people are called, and what they themselves wish to be called, matters greatly. So if Jenner says “call me Caitlyn,” Hillary will not oppose the right-thinking baptism. . . .

ISIL is of course Islamic, and it is radical by any definition of that weary word. The president of France, François Hollande, declared war on radical Islam in the wake of its multiple ambushes on Paris’ defenceless citizens. He recognizes it for what it says it is — radical, Islamic and terroristic.

Yet in a debate on this very subject, Clinton refused to utter the phrase radical Islam, pushed vigorously against the idea of naming Islamic terror for what it is, even though ISIL itself wears its radical Islamist motivations, goals and methods with arrogant pride.

On Jenner’s right to call herself what she wants, Clinton is on board. On a fanatic organization brutalizing the Middle East and exporting terror to the capitals of the world, she declines.

She is one with U.S. President Barack Obama on this — they steadfastly refuse to call our enemies by their name. In other words, when it comes to words and concepts that correspond to unalterable reality, she will deny words their meaning to the point of refusing to say them. But on matters that Glamour magazine takes seriously, on which DNA itself has spoken, Clinton is one with all the buzz factories of trendy thought.

She was, it must be noted, for four years the secretary of state of the most powerful country on Earth, and now wishes to be its president. Heaven help us.

Amen. ISIL stands for the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” not the “Radical Jihad State of Iraq and the Levant,” which Clinton, Obama and the other P.C. Democrats seem to think it is. Geez.

Besides, why do Clinton and the Democrats think they need to further clarify matters by prefixing the word “radical” in front of “jihad”? Jihad alone isn’t radical enough?

While the term “jihad” can refer to the struggle to maintain Islamic faith, it also (more commonly) refers to a Holy War against non-Islamists. Either way, “jihad” is an exclusionary term, reflecting a religious zeal that is highly intolerant, and possibly quite violent. Under either definition of jihad, it seems pretty “radical” to me.

Liberals/progressives defend Islam so vigorously that they insist on qualifying “jihad” with the adjective “radical,” and they refuse to utter the (accurate) phrase “radical Islam.” How ironic that these liberals/progressives–who repeatedly evince an overt hostility to religion, and who wave the banner of “tolerance” in our faces, to the point of aggression–are so deeply committed to defending such intolerant, religiously motivated actions and beliefs.

THIS EXPLAINS A LOT: US Pilots Confirm: Obama Admin Blocks 75 Percent of Islamic State Strikes.

Strikes against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) targets are often blocked due to an Obama administration policy to prevent civilian deaths and collateral damage, according to Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The policy is being blamed for allowing Islamic State militants to gain strength across Iraq and continue waging terrorist strikes throughout the region and beyond, according to Royce and former military leaders who spoke Wednesday about flaws in the U.S. campaign to combat the Islamic State.

“You went 12 full months while ISIS was on the march without the U.S. using that air power and now as the pilots come back to talk to us they say three-quarters of our ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us,” Royce said. “I don’t understand this strategy at all because this is what has allowed ISIS the advantage and ability to recruit.”

When asked to address Royce’s statement, a Pentagon official defended the Obama administration’s policy and said that the military is furiously working to prevent civilian casualties.

“The bottom line is that we will not stoop to the level of our enemy and put civilians more in harm’s way than absolutely necessary,” the official told the Washington Free Beacon, explaining that the military often conducts flights “and don’t strike anything.”

I’m not surprised. The Obama Administration wages war with the zeal of a sleepy llama.

RELATED: New ISIS video says it will lead Obama and other US leaders “like slaves, like dogs.” 

FAUX “HATE” AT HARVARD LAW: Heather Mac Donald wisely suggests, “Don’t Bet on the Harvard Law School Hate Crime.”

HARVARD LAW “HATE” CRIME: John Hinderaker over at Power Line has an amusing story about the “hateful” genesis of the HLS shield and the school’s early, slaveholding benefactor:

The back story is that the money that founded the law school came from a man named Royall, who was a slaveholder. This is how the law school itself tells the story:

Harvard Law School was established through a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall, a wealthy Antiguan plantation owner and slaveholder who immigrated to Boston. Royall’s coat-of-arms, with its three stacked wheat sheaves, remains the school’s crest to this day.

The law school’s crest is displayed, among other places, at Wasserstein Hall. Someone, presumably a person associated with the movement on campus to do away with such reminders of the Royall family, put black tape over the seal. Then, overnight, someone removed some of the pieces of black tape and put them over portraits of black faculty members that hang in the hallway.

This supposed hate crime was described by a second-year student named Michele Hall, who also posted photos of the portraits with tape over them . . . . The reaction was what you would expect. Ms. Hall writes:

I am constantly reminded of the legacy of white supremacy that founded this school and still breathes through every classroom and lecture hall. I am also shown the small inroads that professors of color have made, breaking apart the notion that whiteness is the epitome of legal scholarship.

Whiteness is the epitome of legal scholarship? Seriously?

Ms. Hall further declared, “The defacing of the portraits of black professors this morning is a further reminder that white supremacy built this place, is the foundation of this place, and that we never have and still do not belong here.”

Okay, so if you really believe this, Ms. Hall (and like Hinderaker, I don’t think she does), why don’t you go to Howard or some other “historically black” law school, where you won’t have to be “reminded” that former benefactors, students and alumni were possibly slaveholders? Is it not sufficient to soothe your soul that you very likely attend one of the best law schools in the country because HLS has vigorously embraced the liberal/progressive policy of affirmative action? And do you really think that any institution that has received a generous grant from a slaveholder means that you do not “belong” there? If this is the case, you do not “belong” in about 90 percent of the best universities in the country, I suspect.

The truth is that Ms. Hall doesn’t really belong in any decent law school. She apparently has zero talent at logic, and her emotions control her brain. Sadly, these traits would likely put her on the short list for a federal court judgeship by the Obama Administration.

I’M NOT SURPRISED: Anonymous Yik Yak threat to “shoot every black person I can on campus” was made by . . . wait for it . . . a black student. His name is Emmanuel Bowden and he’s been arrested on a single charge of making a false report of a threat of terrorism.

This kind of thing is happening a lot these days. So much so, that there is a website dedicated to documenting all of these false accusations of “hate crimes,” and it contains 213 cases in just the last few years.

MORE OF THE SAME, REALLY: Krauthammer: After Paris, Obama refuses to lead.

[S]ocialist President Francois Hollande has responded furiously to his country’s 9/11 with an intensified air campaign, hundreds of raids on suspected domestic terrorists, a state of emergency, and proposed changes in the constitution to make France less hospitable to jihad.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427362/obama-isis-strategy-failure, Barack Obama, titular head of the free world, has responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment, and lassitude, compounded by impatience and irritability at the very suggestion that his Syria strategy might be failing. The only time he showed any passion was in denouncing Republicans for hardheartedness toward Muslim refugees. One hundred and twenty-nine innocents lie dead but it takes the GOP to kindle Obama’s ire. . . .

Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere. For example, climate change, which he considers the greatest “threat to our future.” And, of course, closing Guantánamo.

And don’t forget gun control. Of course, the Paris attacks likely would have ended much sooner if someone nearby had been carrying a gun. But hey, never let a good crisis go to waste, right?

THE WOMEN OF THE ISLAMIC STATE: An oped in the Wall Street Journal today discusses radical Islam’s growing appeal among some women:

Why do these young women and girls go? Surely they can see that life is far more just and liberated in the West?

The short answer is that Islamic State is highly effective at analyzing its target audience and tailoring its propaganda to them . . . . The group is especially adept at exploiting Muslim women who feel isolated, perhaps as a result of anti-Muslim hatred, domestic turbulence, gender inequality or the lack of representation in society. As an alternative, they are offered a strong narrative of Islamist ideology, with suggestions that by joining Islamic State they can reverse the ills of life outside the caliphate. They are enticed by the idea that they will find a tight-knit collective sisterhood there that will provide them with support and friendship. This new Islamic life, in turn, is eventually used as a means to justify their radicalization and sacrifice. . . .

Now with the advent of the female suicide bomber Wednesday morning, we are potentially seeing Islamic State synthesize the idea of women as state builders into the idea of them as operational spearheads too—another luring and dangerous appeal to idealistic young women. We may now see women actively targeted and recruited by Islamic State for specific terrorist violence rather than just “state building.” History shows that the allure of physically taking up arms is not limited to men. Recall that the core operatives of Germany’s Baader-Meinhoff gang in the 1970s were women.

Recruiting women in such roles holds a tactical appeal for Islamic State and raises new security challenges for Western officials. Female terrorists can sometimes avoid detection more easily than men, and are less likely to be stopped and searched. Concealing weaponry or physical signs of trepidation before an attack—warning signs that security forces look for—can be achieved by wearing appropriate clothing. . . . .

So Muslim women want to join the “tight-knit collective sisterhood” and become a “spearhead” for misogynist men who view them as little more than property? Um, okay. So ISIS is basically an institutional form of a sociopathic predator:  It lies, lies, lies to get the target “hooked,” with visions of love/grandeur, with the goal of using/abusing them for its own selfish needs.  

THEY HAVE LEARNED NOTHING: French President Francois Holland announced today that his country will accept 30,000 Syrian refugees over the next two years.  Yeah, that sounds logical.

YOU SPELLED TRAITOR WRONG: The Wall Street Journal editors on “President Guantanamo.”

President Obama rode into the White House vilifying George W. Bush’s “unchecked presidential power” and “ignoring the law when it is inconvenient,” as he put it in 2007. Yet now Mr. Obama is poised to exceed any executive action his predecessor so much as contemplated as he may shut down Guantanamo Bay in defiance of inconvenient laws he signed. . . .

With the end of his tenure in sight, the President is now looking for legal excuses to close the prison without Congressional approval. Since the KSM fiasco in 2009, Congresses run by Democrats and Republicans have specified in defense bills that no Treasury money may be used to transfer or maintain detainees to the U.S. The prohibitions in the most recent defense legislation—which passed the Senate 91-3 and the House 370-58—are the strongest ever.

Yet the Pentagon may soon announce a plan to transfer the remaining 107 dangerous combatants that no other country will accept to a domestic facility such as Fort Leavenworth or the Colorado supermax. Amid Mr. Obama’s many executive rewrites on carbon, ObamaCare and labor this flouting of the law would be the worst.

Mr. Obama’s legal surrogates including former White House counsel Gregory Craig now argue that Congress’s spending restrictions are unconstitutional. They claim the executive has exclusive Article II powers as Commander in Chief over the tactical conduct of war and diplomacy, including the custody of detainees.

But control over wartime prisoners is divided between the President and legislature. The Constitution vests Congress with the power to “make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water,” and not even the most zealous unitary executive theorists read the Captures Clause out of Article I. Congress cannot micromanage military operations, but it has a constitutional role in regulating them.

In 2009 Office of Legal Counsel chief Steven Bradbury wrote an opinion disavowing the legal argument Mr. Craig is now promoting, and Mr. Obama has abided by Congress’s restrictions for seven years. No current emergency justifies ignoring Congress, as Mr. Obama claimed when he traded five Taliban for Bowe Bergdahl in violation of a prisoner swap law.

With this President, it’s not the Constitution that defines his power; it’s what he can get away with.  

4 UNBIGOTED REASONS TO BE WARY OF SYRIAN REFUGEES: Ian Tuttle at NRO explains why today’s Syrian refugees are not analogous to 1939’s Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, contrary to the assertions of liberal/progressive pundits:

The first, and most obvious, difference: There was no international conspiracy of German Jews in the 1930s attempting to carry out daily attacks on civilians on several continents. No self-identifying Jews in the early 20th century were randomly massacring European citizens in magazine offices and concert halls . . . .

On a related note, the sympathies of Syrian Muslims are more diverse than those of Nazi-era German Jews. A recent Arab Opinion Index poll of 900 Syrian refugees found that one in eight hold a “to some extent”-positive view of the Islamic State (another 4 percent said that they did not know or refused to answer). A non-trivial minority of refugees who support a murderous, metastatic caliphate is a reason for serious concern. No 13 percent of Jews looked favorably upon the Nazi party.

Third, European Jews in the early 20th century were more amenable to assimilation than are Syrian Muslims in the early 21st.  . . .

Finally: Jewish refugees — for example, those in the SS St. Louis — were coming from Germany (or Nazi-controlled Austria or Czechoslovakia), but most Syrian refugees seeking entry into the United States have already found refuge elsewhere. . . .

Asylum is not a blanket solution to every refugee situation that arises around the globe.  It makes sense in certain contexts, but not in others. One size does not fit all, and employing such reasoned judgment is not tantamount to bigotry. Playing the xenophobia card is (as usual) a distraction from the actual facts and issue.

A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF PROGRESSIVE FREE SPEECH ILLOGIC:  A writer in the Guardian exemplifies muddled progressive thinking about the meaning and value of free speech:

The American university system is currently the battleground for what looks to be our next great culture war: free speech versus political correctness. On one side are the ever-harrumphing Reasonable White Men, such as New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who fretted extravagantly over “political correctness” in an interview with National Public Radio: “I would define PC as a new ideology that is completely intolerant of dissent on issues relating to race and gender. So, it’s an illiberal kind of politics that does not grant any political legitimacy to criticism on identity issues. So, even if it’s made in response to legitimate racism and legitimate sexism that people have every right to be concerned about, it shuts down democratic politics in a way that we should be concerned about.”

The other side – which is not really a “side” at all so much as a vast, multifarious crowd of marginalised people all advocating for their own humanity with varying degrees of success and silliness – includes trauma survivors requesting trigger warnings, feminists criticising rape jokes, people of colour trying to explain cultural appropriation to white people who think the earth is their toy chest, and black students sick of universities gobbling their tuition money but treating them like dangerous interlopers. . . .

After setting up her false dichotomy between “ever-harrumphing Reasonable White Men” and “a vast, multifarious crowd of marginalised people all advocating for their own humanity,” the writer then draws a (predictable) false conclusion:

But here is the thing: white students parading around campus in blackface is itself a silencing tactic. Telling rape victims that they’re “coddled” is a silencing tactic. Teaching marginalised people that their concerns will always be imperiously dismissed, always subordinated to some decontextualised free-speech absolutism is a silencing tactic.

Framing student protests as bratty “political correctness gone mad” makes campuses a hostile environment for everyone except for students who have no need to protest. . . If you’re genuinely concerned about “free speech”, take a step back and look at what’s actually happening here: a bunch of college students, on the cusp of finding their voices, being publicly berated by high-profile writers in national publications because they don’t like what they have to say. Are you sure you know who’s silencing whom?

So basically, her argument is this: If individuals–mostly “white students”–express their disagreement with the views of the “marginalised people” (who may well come from very privileged backgrounds, but that doesn’t matter of course)–is a “silencing tactic” that is antithetical to free speech. She believes, in other words, that it is imperative to silence some speech so that others’ voices may be heard.

The writer has obviously not been schooled on the Constitution’s First Amendment, which is grounded in the theory that a robust–even offensive–marketplace of ideas is necessary to individual liberty and the quest for truth. But then again, I’m certain the writer does not care much for the pesky Constitution, which is precisely why her perspective is so dangerous.

UPDATE:  Just to be clear: the writer of this Guardian piece is an American journalist, not British.

UPDATE: C. Bradley Thompson points me to an open letter he and some colleagues at Clemson recently penned to Clemson students, pledging their opposition to any unconstitutional attempts by the university to suppress free speech, including speech that makes others uncomfortable. We need more faculty like this, but I won’t hold my breath.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Mizzou protesters segregate by race, demanding a “black-only healing space.”  Nice.  Well played, race baiters, well played! There can be no healing when whitey’s around.

What’s next, separate but equal dorms and classes? Because, you know, we wouldn’t want there to be racial violence or anything.

The best thing about the Obama Administration has been all the post-racial healing.

REAPING WHAT PROGRESSIVISM HATH SOWN: Kevin Williamson on “Yale’s Idiot Children“:

On Friday, I was honored to be a guest of the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale, where I participated in a panel on freedom of speech with the wonderful writer Harry Stein and Professor Bradley A. Smith, a noted law scholar. The Yale kids did their screaming best to prevent us from having a conversation about free speech — the Yale kids are utterly immune to irony — but the event went much as planned. Coming and going, we were chanted at by idiot children screaming, “Genocide is not a joke!” . . .

If you’re wondering about the genocide thing, so were we.  . . . The idiot children were screaming about Lukianoff because he said they were overreacting to Christakis’s criticism that they tend to scream and overreact. Well played, idiot children.

Of course, these idiot children aren’t children. These are young adults who can serve in the military, get married, buy firearms, drink alcohol, etc. They are at the beginning years of adult life, but they are entirely unprepared for adult life. . . .

As for me, I think that they’re clowns, and worse than that, really: They’re bad citizens, and defective people from defective families. They aren’t motivated by good will, but by fear: of the dawning realization that they, as people, aren’t really all that important, despite having been told all their lives how important they are.

We’re all real sorry about your safe spaces and your pacifier and your stuffed puppy, Caitlyn. Really we are. Yet the perpetual revolution of configured stars continues in its indifference, and the lot of man is ceaseless labor, and though you may find the thought terrifying — and thinking itself terrifying — it may turn out to be the case that the screaming in the dark you do on campus is more or less the same screaming in the dark you did in the crib, the same howl for the same reason.

Christakis–the liberal Yale Professor who dared to question P.C. orthodoxy–has profusely apologized to the “offended” snowflakes who are now running the progressive asylums universities:

“I have disappointed you and I’m really sorry,” Nicholas Christakis told about 100 students gathered in his living room on Sunday for a meeting also attended by Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College, and other university administrators. Christakis said his encounter on Thursday with students in the college’s courtyard, in which numerous black women upbraided him for being inattentive to them, broke his heart, according to a voice recording of the conversation provided to The Washington Post.

“I mean it just broke my heart,” Christakis said. “I thought that I had some credibility with you, you know? I care so much about the same issues you care about. I’ve spent my life taking care of these issues of injustice, of poverty, of racism. I have the same beliefs that you do … I’m genuinely sorry, and to have disappointed you. I’ve disappointed myself.”

James Taranto aptly noted the Orwellian tone of Christakis’s apology,  “But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” 

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ISN’T ONLY FOR DEMS: Charles Hurt explains, “Jeb Bush, John Kasich seal their fates by pandering to illegal immigrants.”

Outside the debate hall, protesters beat drums and screamed for amnesty. One man with a bullhorn kept repeating over and over again that justice is not possible in America. And every third time or so he accused Mr. Trump of being a “racist” for vowing to enforce America’s immigration laws. No word on whether he was a plant, paid for by the Bush campaign.

On stage inside the debate hall, Mr. Trump stuck to his guns and said that immigration laws passed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and approved by presidents from both parties should simply be enforced. That is all he is saying.

Yet Mr. Bush not only thinks these laws should be summarily dismissed, he said during the debate that even having a discussion about enforcing our immigration laws is a terrible thing. We should dismiss these laws and there should not even be a debate about it.

“They’re doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign right now when they hear this,” Mr. Bush said.

Wow. Truly astonishing. Not only does Mr. Bush not belong in the White House or the Republican Party, he should just be deported. Perhaps to Mexico, where he might be happier and find greater success in politics.

Astonishingly, Mr. Bush was not alone on the Republican stage. “Think about the families!” cried Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “C’mon, folks!”

These people really have no clue how desperately frustrated and estranged American voters in both parties are over this issue of rampant illegal immigration and Washington’s absolute refusal to take simple, common sense measures to fix the problem.

John Kasich should be deported right behind Jeb Bush.

Yep. When I heard Bush and Kasich make these remarks about (not)  enforcing existing immigration laws, I wondered if they realized how much damage they were doing to their quest to obtain the GOP nomination. While I’m sure both Bush and Kasich sincerely hold these beliefs, they are shockingly out of touch with GOP voters.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: White House Not Sure if Closing GITMO With Executive Order is Constitutional, Hints Obama Might Do It Anyway.

Congress has repeatedly prohibited the transfer of Gitmo prisoners into the U.S., including most recently in the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act.  But as the Wall Street Journal editorial board put it last week:

Mr. Obama’s inability to negotiate honestly with the legislature is a hallmark of his Presidency. More damaging is the precedent he is setting by making major policy changes with no more than a wave of his executive hand. Press reports note that Administration lawyers are working on legal justifications for the Gitmo order. Decision first, the law later.

The 2016 NDAA recently passed by Congress would have extended the anti-transfer prohibition, which is likely one reason why President Obama vetoed the bill on October 22.  It is unlikely that there are sufficient votes in Congress to override the President’s veto (which requires a 2/3 supermajority of both houses of Congress). Consequently, the House leadership has indicated that it plans to markup an entirely new NDAA rather than attempt to override the veto.  Media reports suggest that GOP leadership does not anticipate that the President would veto this revised NDAA. 

If Congress cannot managed to pass a new NDAA or otherwise statutorily extend the anti-transfer provisions, President Obama’s legal position is strengthened considerably, as any transfer of Gitmo prisoners would no longer be contrary to law.

WHO’S BURNING BLACK CHURCHES? OH. Michelle Malkin exposes the media myth that angry, racist white folks have been burning down black churches:

Over a two-week period in October, an arsonist targeted seven churches in the St. Louis area — including several in Black Lives Matter protest hotspot Ferguson, Missouri.

The Atlantic magazine, invoking the “long history of terrorism against black churches in America,” lamented that the crime spree had been “slow to get the same attention” in the local and national media as another string of church arsons that occurred earlier this summer.

Reminder: Several of those hyped hate crimes against “black churches” had been committed by black suspects; a significant number of the “black churches” were, in fact, white churches; and the complex motives behind the crimes included mental illness, vandalism and concealment of theft.

Reminder: The same hyperventilators who stoked fears about this summer’s church incidents had also stoked hysteria about the 1990s black church arson “epidemic” that fell apart under scrutiny and ended with USA Today admitting that “analysis of the 64 fires since 1995 shows only four can be conclusively shown to be racially motivated.”

Undaunted, agitators did their best to fan the flames over the latest alleged wave of race-based black church burnings in October. On Twitter, social justice activists resurrected the #WhosBurningBlackChurches hashtag. “Black churches are burning again,” Oklahoma State University professor Lawrence Ware lamented in Counterpunch. The far left propaganda outfit U.S. Uncut concluded unequivocally: “Racists in Ferguson Burn Down 5 Black Churches in 9 Days.”

Except, they didn’t. Again.

Last week, police charged 35-year-old David Lopez Jackson, who is black, with setting two of the fires. “Forensic evidence linked him to the fire on Oct. 18 at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1011 Theobald Street,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, and “video of his car near New Life Missionary Baptist Church, 4569 Plover Avenue, links him to the fire there on Oct. 17, police Chief Sam Dotson said.” Jackson is a suspect in the other fires and additional charges are pending.

The arrest follows another black church hate crime spree-gone-bust in my adopted hometown of Colorado Springs. In late June, after a pair of churches received menacing notices (“Black men, be aware, you are the target,” read one), black suspect Vincent Broughton admitted to posting the ugly signs.

And yes, Colorado Springs is also the home of the January 2015 NAACP office bombing that wasn’t.

Why is it that liberals/progressives–whose ideological core is defined by its adamant belief in various -isms (e.g., racism, sexism)–feel compelled to create examples of -ist actions? Logic suggests that if American society is so racist or sexist, liberals/progressives would not be compelled to invent these faux -ist incidents to justify their own hateful worldview.

Can you imagine conservatives purposefully engaging in activities they condemn, to “prove” that such activities are ubiquitous? Would conservatives obtain an abortion in the sixth month of pregnancy and inform the media that they did so because they decided they just didn’t want the inconvenience and expense of a child, hoping reporters would write stories about the moral/ethical hazards of late abortions? Would a conservative ever bomb or deface a church and spray paint “Christians beware–your faith is a lie!,” to trigger media reports about “hate” crimes and discrimination against Christians by atheists or non-Christians?

And even if conservatives did violate their own principles in a desperate attempt to keep a narrative alive, would the liberal/progressive media even bother writing a story to “highlight” such “hateful” or “disturbing” behavior?