Joel B. Pollak - Page 286

The news that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is to be tried for desertion casts the 2014 prisoner swap in a new light. President Barack Obama traded five senior Taliban leaders, who had been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, for Bergdahl–and did so without giving Congress 30 days’ advance notice. In doing so, the Obama administration broke the law, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That violation was not just a crime, but also, in context, a high crime.

Iran is refusing to commit to a written nuclear deal ahead of the March 31 deadline that American officials had touted for a general framework to be signed, the New York Times reports.

Former Florida governor and putative presidential candidate Jeb Bush distanced himself from newly-appointed foreign policy adviser James A. Baker III on the matter of U.S. policy towards Israel, according to a report in Politico Tuesday.

Tweet your latest selfie from a #BlackLivesMatter protest. Go to Starbucks and order a “tall blonde, black” and engage your barista in a serious conversation about race. Once you’re feeling suitably guilty–or adequately entitled–head over to your local movie theater, and go see Get Hard, the new comedy out Mar. 27 featuring Will Farrell and Kevin Hart–preferably after midnight, when the audience will be (ahem) more inclined to talk back to the screen. And laugh the P.C. police away.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a foreign policy adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday evening at the Washington gala dinner for J Street, a Soros-funded left-wing group that is devoted to disrupting the close U.S.-Israel alliance. Baker said that Netanyahu had been too forceful in his opposition to a nuclear deal with Iran, and that he had shown insufficient commitment to peace with the Palestinians.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonoough earned raucous cheers from the left-wing activists gathered at J Street’s fifth annual conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday when he attacked Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. “An occupation that has lasted almost 50 years must end,” he said. J Street was founded to disrupt the close U.S.-Israel alliance and to serve as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful pro-Israel group.

Some Democrats are desperately searching for an alternative to Hillary Clinton, who still leads the polls but has drawn little enthusiasm from the media and the party’s “progressive activists.” Dennis Lennox, an opinion columnist for the Central Michigan Morning Sun, says that California Gov. Jerry Brown is the party’s ultimate fallback option–except for the fact that he is “bald, old (76), and white.” Lennox notes that the Republican candidates are younger and more diverse.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) took Tea Party stalwart Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to task for his criticism of liberal Jews: “I don’t understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president. They’re knee-jerk supporters of the president’s policy.” The context was the decision of several dozen Democrats, including some Jews, to boycott the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

NBC News’ Chuck Todd surely knew what he was doing on Sunday morning’s edition of Meet the Press, when he invited California Gov. Jerry Brown to respond to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s recent comments on climate change. Todd has long been enthusiastic about the prospects of a Brown run at the presidency in 2016. And Cruz, the scourge of the Beltway establishment, would be a great ideological foil for a contest more interesting than a Bush-vs.-Clinton dynastic rematch.

Famed defense attorney and retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz ripped President Barack Obama in an address to a conference of pro-Israel activists in Los Angeles on Saturday evening. Dershowitz, who backed Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, expressed strong disappointment with President Obama’s recent treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the weak negotiating posture of the Obama administration in talks with Iran.

California Governor Jerry Brown blasted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday for his recent comments on climate change, calling the Tea Party favority “unfit to run for office.” Cruz had challenged late night host Seth Myers’ assertion that 2014 had been the “hottest year on record,” arguing that the data on temperature told a different story. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd played the clip for Brown, who responded by calling Cruz “unfit to run for office.”

California Gov. Jerry Brown has not (yet) entered the race for President of the United States in 2016, but he laid out a three-point presidential agenda in an appearance on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday morning. Brown, who told host Chuck Todd that he would run if he were ten years younger (he is 76), said that the presidential candidates for 2016 must balance the federal budget; confront climate change, and fund science and education as part of a “positive” agenda.

The emergence of the Freedom Caucus among House Republicans comes as something of a pleasant shock. The organization, headed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), will act as a kind of friendly conservative opposition within the overall GOP caucus to hold members and leadership accountable to the mandate they received from voters–and to prevent the repeat of past negotiating collapses.

The Obama administration is using Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark on the campaign trail about the impossibility of a Palestinian state as an excuse to increase diplomatic pressure on Israel for deep concessions at the UN. Though Netanyahu has made efforts to smooth over the dispute, the White House is refusing to forgive him, suggesting that it is pursuing a plan for retribution, regardless. The result will be to deny Israel strategic depth as it faces new threats.

California Gov. Jerry Brown will be the featured guest on NBC News’ Meet the Press with host Chuck Todd this week. The interview is certain to raise questions about Brown’s possible presidential ambitions, at a time when frontrunner Hillary Clinton is being hit by a slew of new scandals involving her tenure as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, including foreign donations to her private foundation and a hidden e-mail server that may have broken federal laws.

Jim Messina, the co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s super PAC and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama, is earning “tens of millions” of dollars as “Silicon Valley’s go-to government fixer” in Washington. Messina is also famous as the White House staffer who told Democrats to “punch back twice as hard” in town hall meetings on Obamacare in 2009, and as the campaign manager for President Obama’s negatively-themed re-election in 2012.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III is to deliver the keynote at this weekend’s J Street conference, a gathering of left-wing activists opposed to the Israeli government and to recently re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Baker, who served under President George H.W. Bush, is also advising Jeb Bush in his presidential effort, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Baker is considered hostile to Israel and is controversial among Jewish voters.

President Barack Obama is determined to be the last person on earth to congratulate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on winning re-election. In addition, the administration says, there will have to be consequences for the way Netanyahu won–for raising concerns about Arab voters being bused to the polls by foreign-funded non-profits, for committing not to agree to a Palestinian state that would hurt Israel’s security. These are bizarre, self-destructive threats.

Controversy continues to rage after the Israeli elections. It is–or ought to be–a scandal for any leader of a civilized nation to urge one group of voters to “punish” their “enemies” from another group of voters. The exact quote was: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” The leader who uttered those disgraceful words was U.S. President Barack Obama in 2010, and the mainstream media ignored him.

Conservatives are thrilled that Netanyahu stood up to the president–who has openly defied the American electorate and the U.S. Constitution–and won in a landslide. The question that remains is why Republicans have failed to do anything like what Netanyahu has done, from a far weaker position.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently defied the mainstream media and the Obama administration with a stunning, come-from-behind victory in Israel’s elections on Tuesday. Netanyahu’s Likud Party had been projected to lose to Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union by a margin of 26-22. Two exit polls released at the close of voting, however, suggested Likud would win, 28-27 (a third poll showed them tied). Netanyahu is now expected to form a new governing coalition.

The Associated Press reports that the Samiullah Afridi, the attorney representing Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. track down Osama bin Laden, has been shot and killed. Two Taliban terrorist groups claimed responsibility for his death.

“We will teach our principles—the principles of the Founding and of Lincoln, to anyone—red state or blue state.” That’s the message of Michael Pack, the new president of the Claremont Institute, a bastion of conservative thought in Claremont, CA.

As Israelis vote Tuesday, one critical factor may be the youth vote, newly-energized by a contested race (and by millions of dollars in foreign donations, including from U.S. taxpayers, to left-wing get-out-the-vote efforts). One critical factor in the expected strong performance by the Zionist Union opposition to incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party is that young Israelis voting for the first time will have had no real memory of the Oslo peace process–and its failure.

Israeli voters head to the polls on Tuesday to decide which political parties will fill the 120 seats of the 20th Knesset, and–indirectly–who will form the next government. The Zionist Union–a bloc of left and centrist parties–has seen its modest lead grow in recent days. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a “gevalt” campaign (a Yiddish expression of alarm), warning supporters he will lose unless they turn out to vote for his Likud Party over the alternatives.

Bob Schieffer could barely contain his outrage at Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for daring to warn the Iranian leadership that any nuclear deal would have to be ratified by the Senate, under the U.S. Constitution, to be binding. As Cotton explained in his appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Iran is clearly not hearing that from the Obama administration itself, which is desperate to achieve “peace at any price,” rather than using constitutional constraints as leverage to force a better deal.

The Times of Israel is leading Sunday evening with a profile of Amos Yadlin, the Israeli left’s choice for defense minister if the Zionist Union wins Tuesday’s election and is able to form a coalition government. Though Yadlin was a pilot during the mission to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and allegedly helped destroy Syria’s reactor in 2007, he suffers under some of the left’s more destructive policy delusions.

I have been warning for months that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might lose the March 17 election. In November 2014, before elections were called, I noted that Netanyahu had been elected on a promise to oppose Barack Obama, and now that Obama’s lame-duck term had begun, Israeli voters might feel secure enough to look elsewhere for leadership. What they–and indeed many Americans–failed to see was how much damage Obama still intended to cause.

Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday, Mar. 17 to elect a new parliament, a new Knesset. There are a total of 120 seats up for grabs, which will be divided proportionally among all parties that manage to pass the minimum threshold of 3.25%. The resulting government will be formed after the ceremonial President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, chooses a candidate for prime minister to assemble a coalition (61 seats or more). Here are five other important facts to know about Israel’s election.

So the mainstream media have returned to Ferguson, Missouri to document the violence they helped foment. No one said “hands up, don’t shoot” when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in self-defense last summer. But two police officers have now been shot in cold blood and nearly killed at a “peaceful” demonstration incited by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and serial race arsonist Al Sharpton. It is a familiar pattern–not just in America but the Middle East.

Attorneys from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), representing a whistleblower against Planned Parenthood in California, have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to allow their lawsuit against the organization to go ahead. The suit, in which former chief financial officer of the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood Victor Gonzalez claims that the organization defrauded the federal government of over $200 million by overcharging for medical services, has struggled to survive.

When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and 46 other Republican Senators wrote their controversial letter to the leaders of Iran, informing them that a deal with President Barack Obama would have no lasting force unless it was ratified by the Senate under the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, Breitbart News predicted that the gesture would set up “checkmate,” forcing Obama to admit that he had no intention of consulting Congress, and solidifying congressional opposition to the deal.

Two police officers in Ferguson, MO were shot Wednesday evening at a protest against alleged racism in the department and the city itself. It was not enough that the chief of police had just resigned. It was not enough that a local judge had quit. It was not enough that the Department of Justice had exonerated former officer Darren Wilson. No–the mob, told by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder that Ferguson was still guilty of racism, wanted “justice.”

The last pre-election polls in Israel show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains the overwhelming favorite to lead the country, but show his party slipping to second place, losing ground to its center-left, Obama-backed rival. Bibi’s Likud Party will gain seats, but the rival Zionist Union–an alliance between Isaac Herzog’s Labor Party and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua Party–could also gain enough to win the Mar. 17 election. Netanyahu says there is a “real danger” he could lose.

Democrats and the mainstream media have used the words “traitor” and “treason” to describe a letter to Iranian leaders, drafted by freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and signed by 47 Republican Senators, that warns any nuclear deal President Barack Obama signs may be voided by a future administration or Congress if it is not ratified by the Senate. Since they have brought the “t-words” into the debate, it is worth examining the case against Obama himself, which is far more damning.

Democrats are pushing back against the letter, circulated by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and signed by 47 Senators in all, that warns the Iranian regime that any deal it signs with President Barack Obama could be voided by the next president if it is not ratified by the Senate under the U.S. Constitution. They have enlisted Vice President Joe Biden and even retired Sen. Richard Lugar to disparage the effort. In so doing, they have proved Cotton’s point–and checkmated the administration.