Thursday Morning ~ The Front Page Cover

 The Front Page Cover 
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
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Featuring:
The Trigger-Happy Generation
Peggy Noonan
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"Know who you are standing with"
"Show me your friends and I'll show you your future"
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 2016 GOP POWER INDEX: PAUL FIGHTS HIS WAY DOWN 
Sen. Rand Paul is in step with his party on most issues. He’s pro-life, a big backer of gun rights, a small-government conservative and he’s an unabashed critic of President nObama and Hilly Clinton. And yet, Paul is again in the spotlight talking about his disagreements with his own party. For months, Paul has been focused on reducing criminal penalties for drugs. Last week, he blamed GOP hawks for the creation of ISIS. Now, he has succeeded in pulling off a one-man blockade of the Patriot Act.
          Like his other views, Paul’s stand is no doubt sincere and he couldn’t control the timing of the deadline. But even if he’s not acting out of political calculation, Paul’s obstruction is also no doubt necessary given his core supporters’ views on the subject. Presumably, the current effort will cement his status as the real libertarian in the race. But how will that help him grow his stagnant 7 percent?  Conservativesgenerally 
share 
Paul’s concerns about over-broad surveillance, but that doesn’t mean that they will like what he’s doing. Even some voters disposed to like Paul are uneasy.
          Paul, who suggested some of his critics were hoping for a terrorist attack during the Patriot Act lapse as fodder for political attacks against him, clearly sees himself as a man locked in an epic struggle with wicked people. Paul could take credit for the changes that will be made once his procedural efforts expire, but instead he is casting himself in a similar, if less damaging, role that Ted Cruz filled during the 2013 nObamaCare government shutdown.
          Attacking him has become a cottage industry for hawks in general and neo-conservatives in particular. It’s hard to imagine Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., debuting his long-shot bid today without Paul in the race, and Graham and others will do their best to keep Paul pinned down defending his national security stances. And like his father in his 2008 and 2012 runs, Paul will become a piñata for other second-tier candidates looking to grab a headline or demonstrate foreign policy bona fides.
          Paul can grab attention and he can be heard above the din of a crowded GOP field. But if he wants the GOP nomination, he will have to find a way to use those gifts to turn his fight back toward Democrats or he will become a marginal figure in fast fashion.  -Fox News  
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 Jeb backs upping Social Security age to ‘68 or 70’ -  The Hill: “Jeb Bush wants to push back the retirement age for Social Security by as many as five years. Instead of allowing Americans to collect full benefits at age 65, the former Florida governor and likely GOP presidential candidate suggested on Sunday that it should be pushed back to 68 or 70. ‘I think it needs to be phased in over an extended period of time,’ he said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation.’”
          “This is hard for me, to be honest with you, to – I have to do the Heisman on my brother that I love. This is not something I’m comfortable doing. But I’m my own person. I have my own life experience. And I will be successful, if I’m a candidate, when I share my heart and talk about what I have done as governor of the state…” –Former Gov. Jeb Bush on CBS News.
          [Bush’s pseudo-campaign, Right to Rise, released a new video of Bush’s trip to Michigan last week. Bush emphasizes the need for innovation as he tours an antique car museum.]  
-Fox News  
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 Walker says U.S. shouldn’t be ‘world’s policeman’ -  Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Tough talk about taking on America’s foes has been a staple of Gov. Scott Walker’s rhetoric in the run-up to his likely presidential bid.  But on a weekend swing here, he mixed his fighting words with some qualifiers. He’s not for ‘open-ended excursions,’ he told GOP activists on a cruise on Lake Winnipesaukee. ‘We don’t need to get into open-ended, endless engagements,’ he said at a banquet speech in Manchester. ‘I don’t think we should be the world's policeman,’ he told his audience at the Snowshoe Club in Concord. ‘I don’t think we should go in everywhere.’”
          Iowa’s favorite - DMR: “Scott Walker’s popularity streak in Iowa is real: He’s seven percentage points ahead of his nearest competition in the presidential horse race here, chased by a tight pack of four in a clear top tier: Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee.”  
-Fox News  
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 HILLY TOOK BIG BUCKS FROM KEYSTONE BACKERS 
HuffPo: “Two Canadian banks tightly connected to promoting the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in the United States either fully or partially paid for eight speeches made by former Secretary of State Hilly Clinton in the period not long before she announced her campaign for president. Those speeches put more than $1.6 million in the Democratic candidate's pocket. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and TD Bank were both primary sponsors of paid Clinton speeches in 2014 and early 2015…Both banks have financial ties to TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline… Further,
Gordon Giffin, a CIBC board member and onetime U.S. ambassador to Canada, is a former lobbyist for TransCanada and was a contributions bundler for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign….
            More from HuffPo: “While serving as secretary of state, Clinton said that she was ‘inclined’ to approve the pipeline. Since then, she has been mum on the issue, even as environmentalists -- with their major grassroots and money sway in the Democratic Party -- have made stopping the pipeline a priority…. Whether the U.S. government will approve further construction of the pipeline was a hot topic in each of the Q&A sessions hosted by the bank executives. And at every turn, Clinton refused to answer.”   -Fox News  
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 The public pension funding trap  
(Andrew G. Biggs) ~ State and local government pensions were national news during the recession, as unfunded liabilities rose into the trillions of dollars and overheated commentators predicted that rising pension costs could push governments into bankruptcy... Today attention has faded and the public-pension industry claims that plans are back on track. Don’t be too sure. Governments are still failing to make their full contributions; as recently as this week New Jersey’s chief budget analyst deemed it not “fiscally or physically possible” for the state to make its nearly $3 billion full pension contribution this year. Public pensions are taking greater investment risk with the money they do receive. If those investments fail to pan out, the budget picture for many governments will once again be grim.       http://www.aei.org/publication/the-public-pension-funding-trap/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=060215
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 China is gambling nObama doesn’t respond to its  land grab  
(Michael Auslin) ~ You may not have noticed, as ISIS expands its reach across Iraq and Russia fuels conflict in Ukraine, but the odds of an armed confrontation between the United States and China just dramatically increased... After years of ignoring China’s growing assertiveness in Asia, the nObama administration has been taken unaware by a major land and power grab by Beijing. Over the past several years, China has steadily expanded its territorial ambitions, including a claim that the entire South China Sea is under its dominion.       http://www.aei.org/publication/china-is-gambling-obama-doesnt-have-will-to-respond-to-its-massive-land-grab/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITODAY&utm_campaign=060215
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 Diplomatic Activism Won't Bring Israeli-Palestinian Peace  
(Efraim Inbar) ~ The Europeans have decided that the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Holy Land, over a hundred years long, must finally end. High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini recently came to Israel to convey the EU's impatience with the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations... France intends to bring the matter to the U.N. Security Council to set an 18-month deadline on the resolution of the conflict. The European intentions are laudable, but seem to be removed from the Middle Eastern reality. While partition of the Land of Israel between the Jews and the Arabs living in this small part of the world is desirable, the Palestinian national movement has proven to be the wrong partner to implement partition and is largely responsible for the failure of the two-state solution.       http://www.meforum.org/5282/eu-peace-process
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 Alert: ISIS Could Soon Acquire this Game-Changing Weapon  
(patriotsandpolitics.com) ~ In the latest issue of the ISIS propaganda magazine, Dabiq, British photojournalist and ISIS hostage John Cantlie alerts readers to the possibility of the group acquiring a nuclear weapon... Cantlie suggests that owing to their rapid expansion and the vast finances the group controls, the purchase could come within a year. Cantlie, who has been held by the terror group for more than two years, is often used as a pawn in their propaganda, including numerous appearances in the YouTube series, “Lend Me Your Ears.” The article itself makes the bold claim that ISIS has transcended its roots as “the most explosive Islamic ‘group’ in the modern world” to become “the most explosive Islamic movement the modern world has ever seen.” And they have managed it all in less than one year.       http://patriotsandpolitics.com/isis-warns-of-plans-to-buy-nuclear-weapon/
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 nObama Misses the Mark on Iranian Anti-Semitism  
(Jeffrey Herf) ~ Something unusual has begun in the Washington-New Yorkcorridor. Journalists and policy analysts have begun a critical public discussion about President nObama's understanding (or misunderstanding) of the significance and nature of the anti-Semitism of the Iranian regime... They are asking how his view on that subject affects prospects for a nuclear deal to stop the ayatollahs from getting the bomb. Insights about the history and nature of anti-Semitism that we historians have elaborated over the years are finding their way into the pages of several of our major newspapers and at least one important policy-related international relations journal. The President himself, apparently stung by criticism that his approach to Iran is facilitating rather than preventing its path to the bomb and that he bears primary responsibility for the tensions in American-Israeli relations, initiated this discussion when he recently gave an extensive interview to Atlantic magazine journalist Jeffrey Goldberg on May 21.       http://www.meforum.org/5283/antisemitism-iran
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 Congress approves bill to resume, overhaul NSA surveillance  
(foxnews.com) ~ The Senate gave final approval Tuesday to legislation that would restart -- but also overhaul -- controversial government surveillance programs that went dark over the weekend after lawmakers missed a key deadline... In a 67-32 vote, the chamber approved the so-called USA Freedom Act. The legislation, which already won approval in the House, now goes to President nObama's desk. The vote comes after key surveillance programs -- most notably, the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' phone records -- were suspended Sunday after Congress missed the deadline for reauthorization.       http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/02/legislation-to-resume-overhaul-nsa-surveillance-clears-key-senate-hurdle/
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 ISIS Seized $1 Billion of U.S. Military Aid, Iraqi Leader Admits  
(Alex Newman) ~ The so-called Islamic State, a brutal terrorist group also known as ISIS, seized 2,300 U.S. military Humvees and other weaponry from Iraq’s U.S. taxpayer-funded armed forces in Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi admitted in a TV interview over the weekend...  ISIS militants then paraded the captured U.S. military equipment, reportedly worth over $1 billion, through the streets of the city. They then proceeded to use the American Humvees to lynch and burn Iraqi troops — many of whom had dropped their U.S. supplies and fled — before putting the vehicles to work in suicide bombings and other attacks. One of them was used on June 1 in a suicide strike in Baghdad that killed some 45 people. http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/20986-isis-seized-1-billion-of-u-s-military-aid-iraqi-leader-admits?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=352f89bc35-The_Editors_Top_Picks_3_12_143_12_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8ca494f2d2-352f89bc35-289778381
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 GOP Put Big Bite Behind Gowdy’s Bark Over Foot-Drag On Benghazi  
(Norvell Rose) ~ Chairman Trey Gowdy and Republican members of his House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks have long complained that nObama’s State Department has been dragging its feet in responding to a number of subpoenas demanding documents related to the deadly assault in 2012... The committee has been loudly complaining that officials at State have stalled and offered all sorts of excuses for not turning over the requested material, especially Hilly Clinton’s official emails when she was secretary of state. Now, in a move sure to encourage conservatives and anger liberals, House Republicans are, in a sense, putting their money where their mouth has been.Politico reports that the fed-up GOP lawmakers are “using their most obvious weapon to hold State’s feet to the fire: the power of the purse.” “House Republicans are threatening to withhold a large chunk of State Department funding until officials speed up their responses to document requests, including House demands for documents pertaining to the Benghazi investigation and probe of Hilly Clinton’s emails.”       http://www.westernjournalism.com/house-gop-just-put-big-bite-behind-gowdys-bark-over-state-dept-foot-drag-on-benghazi/
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 Journalists: Bureaucrats Make FOIA Process ‘Useless’  
(Ethan Barton) ~ Members of a House oversight committee were outraged during a bizarre hearing Tuesday in which congressmen listened to journalists discuss how government agencies intentionally botched formal requests for information... The reporters told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of numerous instances where agencies needlessly delayed, denied or redacted Freedom of Information Act requests. The FOIA guarantees the public access to all government documents, subject only to nine exemptions such as for privacy, commercial privilege and national security. The journalists also suggested that government employees who violate the FOIA law should be prosecuted. There are currently no consequences to bureaucrats who don’t abide by the statute that has been on the books since 1966. Sharyl Attkisson is that jornalists.       http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/02/journalists-tell-oversight-committee-bureaucrats-make-foia-process-useless/
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 European Leaders Demand Regime Change in Iran  
(Adam Kredo) ~ Some 200 European officials are calling for Iran’s hardline Islamic government to be dissolved and for the country to allow international inspectors to take inventory of all Iranian sites suspected of housing an illicit nuclear weapons program, according to a letter sent to European Union (EU) Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini on Tuesday... The delegation, comprised of 221 members of the European Parliament from 28 EU member states, slams Iran’s “destructive meddling” throughout the region and criticizes its human rights record, which is ranked among the worst in the world. The delegation also backs regime change aimed to bring down Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his hardline inner circle of allies, according to the letter, which was spearheaded by Friends of a Free Iran (FoFI), a European Parliament group formed in 2003.       http://freebeacon.com/national-security/european-leaders-demand-regime-change-in-iran/
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The Trigger-Happy Generation
Peggy Noonan
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     (peggynoonan.com) ~ Readers know of the phenomenon at college campuses regarding charges of “microaggressions” and “triggers.” It’s been going on for a while and is part of a growing censorship movement in which professors, administrators and others are accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, gender bias and ethnocentric thinking, among other things. Connected is the rejection or harassment of commencement and other campus speakers who are not politically correct. I hate that phrase, but it just won’t stop being current.
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     Kirsten Powers goes into much of this in her book, “The Silencing.” Anyway, quite a bunch of little Marats and Robespierres we’re bringing up.
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     But I was taken aback by a piece a few weeks ago in the Spectator, the student newspaper of Columbia University. I can’t shake it, though believe me I’ve tried. I won’t name the four undergraduate authors, because 30 years from now their children will be on Google, and because everyone in their 20s has the right to be an idiot.

     Yet theirs is a significant and growing form of idiocy that deserves greater response.
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     The authors describe a student in a class discussion of Ovid’s epic poem “Metamorphoses.” The class read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, which, as parts of a narrative that stretches from the dawn of time to the Rome of Caesar, include depictions of violence, chaos, sexual assault and rape. The student, the authors reported, is herself “a survivor of sexual assault” and said she was “triggered.” She complained the professor focused “on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text.” He did not apparently notice her feelings, or their urgency. As a result, “the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class.”
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     Safe is the key word here. There’s the suggestion that a work may be a masterpiece but if it makes anyone feel bad, it’s out.
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     Later the student told the professor how she felt, and her concerns, she said, were ignored. The authors of the op-ed note that “Metamorphoses” is a fixture in the study of literature and humanities, “but like so many texts in the Western canon it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom.” The Western canon, they continue, is full of “histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression” that can be “difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.”
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     That makes them feel unsafe: “Students need to feel safe in the classroom, and that requires a learning environment that recognizes the multiplicity of their identities.” The authors suggest changing the core curriculum but concede it may not be easy. Another student, they report, suggested in her class that maybe instead they could read “a Toni Morrison text.” A different student responded that “texts by authors of the African Diaspora are a staple in most high school English classes, and therefore they did not need to reread them.” That remark, the authors assert, was not only “insensitive” but “revealing of larger ideological divides.” The professor, they report, failed at this moment to “intervene.”
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     The op-ed authors call for “a space to hold a safe and open dialogue” about classroom experiences that “traumatize and silence students,” with the aim of creating environments that recognize “the multiplicity” of student “identities.”
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     Well, here are some questions and a few thoughts for all those who have been declaring at all the universities, and on social media, that their feelings have been hurt in the world and that the world had just better straighten up.
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     Why are you so fixated on the idea of personal safety, by which you apparently mean not having uncomfortable or unhappy thoughts and feelings? Is there any chance this preoccupation is unworthy of you? Please say yes.
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     There is no such thing as safety. That is asking too much of life. You can’t expect those around you to constantly accommodate your need for safety. That is asking too much of people.
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     Life gives you potentials for freedom, creativity, achievement, love, all sorts of beautiful things, but none of us are “safe.” And you are especially not safe in an atmosphere of true freedom. People will say and do things that are wrong, stupid, unkind, meant to injure. They’ll bring up subjects you find upsetting. It’s uncomfortable. But isn’t that the price we pay for freedom of speech?
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     You can ask for courtesy, sensitivity and dignity. You can show others those things, too, as a way of encouraging them. But if you constantly feel anxious and frightened by what you encounter in life, are we sure that means the world must reorder itself? Might it mean you need a lot of therapy?
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     Masterpieces, by their nature, pierce. They jar and unsettle. If something in a literary masterpiece upsets you, should the masterpiece really be banished? What will you be left with when all of them are gone?
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     What in your upbringing told you that safety is the highest of values? What told you it is a realistic expectation? Who taught you that you are entitled to it every day? Was your life full of . . . unchecked privilege? Discuss.
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     Do you think Shakespeare, Frieda Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes and Steve Jobs woke up every morning thinking, “My focus today is on looking for slights and telling people they’re scaring me”? Or were their energies and commitments perhaps focused on other areas?
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     I notice lately that some members of your generation are being called, derisively, Snowflakes. Are you really a frail, special and delicate little thing that might melt when the heat is on?
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     Do you wish to be known as the first generation that comes with its own fainting couch? Did first- and second-wave feminists march to the barricades so their daughters and granddaughters could act like Victorians with the vapors?
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     Everyone in America gets triggered every day. Many of us experience the news as a daily microaggression. Who can we sue, silence or censor to feel better?
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     Finally, social justice warriors always portray themselves—and seem to experience themselves—as actively suffering victims who need protection. Is that perhaps an invalid self-image? Are you perhaps less needy than demanding? You seem to be demanding a safety no one else in the world gets. If you were so vulnerable, intimidated and weak, you wouldn’t really be able to attack and criticize your professors, administrators and fellow students so ably and successfully, would you?
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     Are you a bunch of frail and sensitive little bullies? Is it possible you’re not intimidated but intimidators?
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Again, discuss.
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     By the way, I went back to the op-ed and read the online comments it engendered from the Columbia community. They were quite wonderful. One called, satirically, to ban all satire because it has too many “verbal triggers.” Another: “These women are like a baby watching a movie and thinking the monster is going to come out of the screen and get them.” Another: “These girls’ parents need a refund.”
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     The biggest slayer of pomposity and sanctimony in our time continues to be American wit.
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