Wednesday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

The Front Page Cover
 The Events of the Week -- Featuring: 
 
Is That All There Is?
by Tom McLaughlin
 
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 Undermining Our Republic, One Lawsuit After 
 Another 
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By Arnold Ahlert: In 1996, California voters approved a ballot initiative known as Proposition 209. It banned all preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity and gender in public education, employment and contracting. The decision was anathema to the progressive bean-counters and quota-mongers who did what progressives always do when the will of the people conflicts with their agenda: they found U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, who issued a temporary restraining order preventing the law's implantation. Henderson's reasoning? Because the elimination of preferences disadvantaged women and racial minorities, it violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.
          Henderson's affront to logic was eventually overturned, but this saga illustrates two things that afflict the nation to this very day: Leftists remain utterly contemptuous of the democratic process when the results of that process conflict with their "enlightened" worldview; and far more important, Americans have becoming increasingly inured to Abraham Lincoln's warning that "if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."
          Would that it were solely the Supreme Court. As usual, leftists were able to secure a ruling from federal district judge James Robart of Seattle restraining the Trump administration's efforts to temporarily suspend visas for aliens "who cannot be realistically vetted for security risks because their native countries are either sponsors of anti-American terrorism ... or have been left with dysfunctional or nonfunctional governments because of war," as National Review aptly explains.
          This is judicial abuse, and nothing makes it clearer than Section 1182(f) of immigration law, granting the president the power to "suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
          That leftists have twisted Trump's order into an attack on religion is unsurprising. It is even less surprising that a judge with a track record of left-leaning activism would support it.
          But this is just the beginning of the Left's effort to employ "useful" jurists willing to preserve their agenda, even if it thwarts the will of the electorate, a congressional majority and/or the Trump administration. Fred Lucas reports that there are more than a dozen lawsuits challenging Trump's executive order that "largely stem from organizations bankrolled by billionaire leftist George Soros and Democratic state attorneys general" have been filed for exactly that reason.
          The results of Robart's injunction alone are as predictable as they are infuriating. "Lifting of Travel Ban Sets Off Rush to Reach U.S.," proclaims a New York Times headline. The Times also refers to a "vigorous" vetting process that can take as long as two years.
          Not exactly. "Because of a spike in Middle Eastern refugees needing placement, the liar-nObama administration has decided to rush their vetting process to three months, from the original 18-24 months," the Washington Times revealed — last April.   
          Americans should be clear about what is really happening here: progressives are once engaged in the process of finding judges willing to elevate the interests of aliens and their progressive enablers over Americans and national security.
          Americans should also understand this particular battle is only the beginning of a war in which leftists will flood the courts with lawsuits aimed at undermining every facet of Trump's agenda.
          In what may have been one of his most misguided assumptions, Thomas Jefferson argued "for the permanency of the judicial offices" based on the idea that "few men in the society ... have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge."
          The rise of moral relativism, essentially the idea that one man's "depravity" is another man's "lifestyle," has given the nation a plethora of judges completely bereft of anything resembling the union of requisite integrity and requisite knowledge. Thus, for example, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt is quite comfortable wearing her "pussy hat" while sitting on the bench. It's apparently OK because her job is largely administrative, and her judicial powers are limited to conducting marriages and administrative hearings.
          Yet the ultimate judicial divide in our nation is the chasm between judges who believe the Constitution means what it actually says, and those who believe it is a "living" document rife with "penumbras" or implied rights necessitating interpretation. For the latter group, it is completely irrelevant the Framers fought over every word contained in our founding document. Moreover, members of the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court have expressed their comfort with using decisions produced by foreign and international courts to inform their rulings.
          The concept known as judicial supremacy began with Marbury v. Madison, the first time SCOTUS voided congressional legislation. It has now evolved to the point where Americans have been led to believe the Constitution "was deliberately framed in terms of heroic generalities precisely to give federal judges a wider scope for discretion," as Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell put it.
          Columnist Clarke D. Forsythe echoes Lincoln. "Judicial supremacy fundamentally contradicts self-government," he writes.
          Sadly, America's governance is often determined by who sits on our courts rather than who sits in our legislatures. This makes the selection of judges far more critical that it should be, to the point where Harry dinky-Reid invoked the nuclear option to stack the DC Court of Appeals with Democrats. Thus, Democrat hysteria surrounding that elimination of the filibuster to ultimately appoint Neil Gorsuch to the seat vacated by Antonin Scalia rings exceedingly hollow.
          Article III of the Constitution grants Congress to create — or eliminate — every federal court but SCOTUS, a power that could be used to rein in much judicial overreach. But if Congress did put the judges on notice that unconstitutional rulings might cost them their jobs, Americans' focus would be on our elected representatives when divisive political outcomes arose. "Can't have that," columnist Selwyn Duke writes. "Federal judges don't have to be reelected — congressmen do."
          Again, the short-term implications are clear. Progressives will employ every opportunity to use the judiciary as a bulwark against a president they despise, and an electorate that has decimated Democrat legislative power at both the federal and state level. Moreover, as SCOTUS made clear on rulings from Roe v. Wade to Obergefell v. Hodges, jurists will continue to "discover" laws that have "no basis in the Constitution," as Chief Justice John Roberts characterized the latter decision in his dissent.
          That would be the same Chief Justice Roberts who also "discovered" liar-nObamaCare's individual mandate — argued as such by the liar-nObama administration itself — was actually a tax, making passage of the health care law possible. A law giving the federal government control over one-sixth of the nation's economy.
          Long term, Americans are facing the ever-increasing reality that "five lawyers can determine what law means for 320 million Americans," Duke explains. That system of governance may be many things. A constitutional republic isn't one of them. 
~The Patriot Post
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Russia sends spy ship near US coast, deploys banned missiles at home, officials say
by Lucas Tomlinson
{foxnews.com} ~ A Russian spy ship was spotted patrolling off the East Coast of the United States on Tuesday morning, the first such instance during the Trump administration... and the same day it was learned the Kremlin had secretly deployed controversial cruise missiles inside Russia and buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer, U.S. officials told Fox News. The Russian spy ship was in international waters, 70 miles off the coast of Delaware and heading north at 10 knots, according to one official. The U.S. territory line is 12 nautical miles. It was not immediately clear where the Russian spy ship is headed...  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/14/russia-sends-spy-ship-near-us-coast-deploys-banned-missiles-at-home-officials-say.html  
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Georgetown Muslim Studies Prof:
Slavery & Rape Are Okay When Done In Islam
by Onan Coca and Jeff Dunetz
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{lidblog.com} ~ This is the new standard of measure that everyone should get used to… some things are morally reprehensible UNLESS you do them as a Muslim in the Muslim way... That is basically what Georgetown Professor of Islamic Studies and Muslim convert Jonathan Brown is teaching in his University these days, and he is nor far off. During a recent lecture at the International Institute of Islamic Thought, Brown told his audience that men do not necessarily need consent to have sex with a woman, and that slavery is not in and of itself wrong...Islamic is really sick and they will be in hell for sure. Georgetown what are you doing, you idiots.  http://lidblog.com/georgetown-prof-slavery-rape-done-in-islam/
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DHS Jihadi Jeh’s Clinton Style Personal
Email Accounts Revealed By JW FOIA
by Rick Wells
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{rickwells.us} ~ As the information regarding the illegal activities of members of the liar-nObama regime inevitably come to light, particularly with investigations and FOIA requests no longer subject to political obstructionism... the question becomes one not only of what did they do but what do we do with the information once it’s revealed. Will they be held accountable and will there be an effort to see where the corruption leads? Former Homeland “Security” Secretary and anti-American subversive Jihadi Jeh Johnson is one of those who should soon be facing an inquiry, one in which his characteristic half-answers, word-parsing and claims of ignorance or broken promises of “I’ll get back to you with that” won’t be able to shield him as they once were. Judicial Watch has once again gotten their hands on the goods, this time it’s 216 pages from DHS that reveals liar-Clinton-style email “security” and the use of private, unsecured, webmail-based email accounts by Johnson and other top DHS officials on government computers at a time when the practice was prohibited...  http://rickwells.us/dhs-jihadi-jehs-clinton-style-personal-email-accounts-revealed-jw-foia/
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'Secretary of State Tillerson, Stop funding terror!'
by Yoel Domb
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Nitzana Darshan-Leitner
{israelnationalnews.com} ~ A new investigation by the Israeli organization "Shurat Hadin", an Israel-based civil rights organization and world leader in combating terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them... has revealed that the grant funds transferred by the American administration to Gaza in the last few years to promote reconstruction were instead diverted to terror activity and to sources that identify with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The investigation demonstrated that through an organization posing as a Palestinian humanitarian aid agency, millions of dollars were transferred over the last few years to educational and welfare institutions identified with Hamas, which is considered a terror organization by the US. In the wake of the new revelations, Shurat Hadin appealed to the new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, demanding a cessation of funding to the aid agencies that effectively aid terror organizations by providing funds for Jihadist educational and welfare activities... http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/224987
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America Snoozing
by Bruce Bawer
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{frontpagemag.com} ~ There was a time, in the years immediately after 9/11, when I was reasonably (though not entirely) confident that we Americans would be too savvy to let ourselves be led down the primrose path of Islamization... I assumed that the alarming example of Europe – where the destructive nature of Islam's impact was there for all to see – would be effective enough to persuade us to pull up the welcome mat and double-lock the door. What I didn't count on was that so many of our politicians and media would do such a splendid job of covering up the facts about the European situation and whitewashing the Religion of Peace. Nor could I have imagined that the post-9/11 generation of Americans would grow up to be so thoroughly drenched in political correctness that many of them would, in fact, come to see Islam not as an violent existential threat but as the most vulnerable of victim groups... http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265784/america-snoozing-bruce-bawer
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Is That All There Is?
by Tom McLaughlin
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{tommclaughlin.blogspot.com} ~ On its web site, the BBC showed a picture of the “Oldest Human Ancestor.” It didn’t look like any of my relatives or my wife’s either. In a black and white photo taken through a microscope it resembled the central figure Edvard Munch’s painting: “The Scream” with what look like two eyes and a mouth that’s wide open. It’s tiny — only a millimeter, or .039 inches. Scientists claim it was “covered with a thin, relatively flexible skin and muscles, leading the researchers to conclude that it moved by contracting its muscles and got around by wriggling.”
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Some of my relatives behave that way. Scientists also observed that, “It’s most striking feature is its large mouth, relative to the rest of its body.” That’s another feature sometimes pointed out in members of my family. The kicker, however, was this: “The researchers were unable to find any evidence that the animal had an anus, which suggests that it consumed food and excreted from the same orifice.” Almost everyone has relatives like that. Skeptical that such a tiny creature could be our common ancestor, that helped me consider it.
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Artist's rendering of Saccorhytus
 
The creature is called Saccorhytus and it lived 540 million years ago in the Cambrian period, probably between two grains of sand on the sea floor in what is now China. It was a dull life. I would have had fun with this story if I were still teaching the “Beginnings” unit with which I used to start the school year every September. Students learned about the two prevailing concepts most Americans believed about our origins: creation and evolution.
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We compared and contrasted them. They were similar in the order of events: Creation began with sea life, then other creatures, and lastly, humans -- which is what evolutionists contend. However, day four of creation is when stars and other heavenly bodies were made which is after life appeared, and that’s different from Big Bang/Darwinism. Time periods were vastly different too. Also, creation lent some meaning to it all, but not Big Bang/Darwinism.
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Ex Nihilo sculpture at the National Cathedral Washington DC
 
Sometimes, students debated formally. The creationist side always contended there was no explanation in the Big Bang theory about how the exploding object got there, whereas the Judeo/Christian/Muslim creation story claimed God created the universe “ex nihilo” or “out of nothing.” Neither did Darwin explain what was at the beginning of the march of evolution. In his recent book Kingdom of Speech, Tom Wolfe describes a conversation had Darwin with students:

The students had the sort of naive, unbridled, free-floating curiosity most youths unfortunately rein in far too early in life. They wanted to know some small but fundamental details about the moment Evolution got underway and how exactly, physically, it started up — and from what?

That’s what I loved about teaching my eighth graders. They still had that, but back to Wolfe:

Darwin had apparently never thought of it quite that way before. Long pause… and finally, ‘Ohhh,’ he said, ‘probably from four or five cells floating in a warm pool somewhere.’ One student… wanted to know where the cells came from. Who or what put them in the pool? An exasperated Darwin said, in effect, “Well I don’t know. Isn’t it enough that I’ve brought you man and all the animals and plants in the world’

…Darwinism avoided the question of how the world developed ex nihilo. Darwin often thought about it, but it made his head hurt. The world was just… here. 

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My students reviewed the Scopes Monkey Trial about banning lessons on evolution last century, and secular objections to  lessons on Intelligent Design more recently. Always, they asked my opinion, but I deferred until the end when I told them mine was a blend of both.
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It was all controversial. Almost very time a new principal arrived, which was about every two to five years, he or she would approach me before classes started and ask that I stop teaching my Beginnings unit. Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t like that I taught about evolution, while secularists disdained lessons on creation. Both sides lobbied each new principal to get me to scrap it. I resisted, pointing out that I circled back to this dualistic understanding among Americans of how everything started and the way those beliefs influenced their views on other issues. 
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They still do. In these contentious times, creationists tend to cluster in flyover country and Darwinists on the coasts. Creationists are red. Darwinists are blue. Creationists are generally pro-life, Darwinists pro-choice. Creationists anticipate an afterlife. Many Darwinists doubt there’s any such thing and their number grows. We and Saccorhytus live, die, and go back to earth. A refrain from a 1969 song by Peggy Lee went:
Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

It might be the ethos of our age.

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