Forty-seven U.S. Senators have released an open letter to the Iranian government warning that any nuclear deal signed by President Barack Obama could be revoked by a subsequent U.S. president unless it is ratified by the Senate. The letter, while addressed to the “Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” is really a warning to Obama not to bypass Congress.
On Sunday morning’s edition of Meet the Press, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called on Hillary Clinton to “come out” with the truth about her emails after it emerged last week that she had used a private email address for all of her correspondence as Secretary of State, against department policy.
The Clintons’ exploitative ties to Haiti apparently continue. Haitians get the rubble–and Rodham, evidently, gets the gold.
A new bipartisan bill to end vaccine exemptions for personal belief has found a powerful opponent: the chiropractors’ lobby.
Gallipoli was a failure that haunted Churchill as much as supporting the Iraq War haunts many politicians today. Yet he was right about Hitler when others hid from the truth. Churchill, like Netanyahu and unlike Barack Obama, worried more about victory than pride.
Conservatives, long used to the media protecting the Clintons at all costs, are puzzled by the fact that journalists seem to be pouncing on the latest scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s offsite email server. As Clinton scandals go, this hardly seems the worst. It seems that federal laws may have been broken–but they may not have been. (The Wall Street Journal concluded, bizarrely, that the private email system “was legal while she served as the nation’s top diplomat.”) Why the sudden interest?
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, sat down with NBC News this week for an exclusive interview. NBC’s headline for the interview is: “Iran Foreign Minister: We Believe We Are ‘Very Close’ to Nuke Deal.” But the Times of Israel noted a buried lede–“Zarif: The Netanyahu regime ‘should be annihilated’.” While the American editors focused on boosting prospects for President Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic initiative, their Israeli counterparts focused on the threat that remains.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home Wednesday to positive reviews of his speech in Congress the day before. If it had been his intention to use the event to boost his campaign, however, he made little impact, enjoying a modest bump in the polls, at best. In one poll, the speech received rave reviews, with 44% of respondents saying it boosted their opinion of him, versus 12% who said it hurt their image of him. However, his Likud party was still in second place.
It does not matter whether they attended the speech, boycotted the speech, or read the transcript of the speech. Democrats, surprised by how convincing Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday turned out to be, have simply decided to lie about it. Netanyahu said “we should give up on any diplomatic path,” according to Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA). He failed to provide “viable alternatives,” according to President Barack Obama. None of that is true, as the transcript shows.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday was so successful that many of his critics conceded that he had defied their expectations. Some, however, took issue with the fact that he invoked
Following his stirring address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will return home, having made his point about the dangers of the Iran deal currently on the table. The question is: what next for Congress? President Barack Obama has vowed to veto any new sanctions–and may have sown enough division in his party to prevent an override. Yet there is another bill in the works that, after Tuesday, Obama may find he cannot refuse.
How successful was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday? Judging from the changed reactions of his media critics, almost all of whom praised the speech, it was a complete triumph.
Speaker of the House John Boehner will present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a bust of Winston Churchill when he arrives to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, according to the Speaker’s office.
Israeli Prime Minister addresses Congress on Tuesday, March 3. His topic, as per Speaker of the House John Boehner, is to explain “the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.”
While nearly 1 in 4 congressional Democrats had announced their intention to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, one California Democrat said that he was “honored” to have been chosen to be among the legislators who escort Netanyahu into the House chamber.
President Barack Obama took a stab at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Reuters on Monday, on the eve of Netanyahu’s controversial speech to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday morning. Obama said that Netanyahu “made all sorts of claims” about the interim nuclear deal with Iran that turned out to be untrue. Yet Obama mischaracterized Netanyahu’s remarks, and misrepresented Iranian compliance with the terms of the interim deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address Monday morning to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) seemed a curious addition to his visit, a kind of undercard bout before the main event. It turned out to be one of his best speeches ever, the perfect setup for his address to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday. The 34 Democrats who are boycotting the address are likely feeling that they made the wrong decisions. Here are 5 reasons why.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previewed his speech in Congress on Tuesday when he addressed the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday. “Reports of the demise of the Israeli-U.S. relations [are] not only premature–they’re just wrong. You’re here to tell the world that our alliance is stronger than ever,” he said, to applause. “Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” he joked.
UN Ambassador Samantha Power told the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday that the spat over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday would not affect relations between the two countries. The relationship, she says, “transcends politics, and always will.” She said that the partnership between the U.S. and Israel “should never be politicized,” even if there were debates about the best policy to deal with common threats.
The battle over pony rides at the Santa Monica Farmers Market is a classic study in how a tiny minority of activists can seize control of a city to destroy a business–and how a business owner, and the public, can fight back. The saga began last year, with a campaign by a radical animal rights activist to remove Tawni Angel’s pony rides and petting zoo from the market. In September 2014, the City Council voted in the dead of night to advise that the pony contract be dropped.
In most democracies, and especially small ones, politics ends at the water’s edge. Whatever criticism the opposition might have about the government, especially the leader, it refrains from doing so purely for the benefit of a foreign audience. Not so for the Israeli opposition, headed by Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union, who has not only bashed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States as a purely political move, but has done so in a New York Times op-ed.
I’m fasting Monday and praying for Benjamin Netanyahu’s success in his speech to Congress on Tuesday. I don’t care for the pettiness of his American Jewish critics, who typify the establishment that remained silent during the Holocaust; nor the hysterics of his Israeli opponents, who prove by their behavior they are unfit to lead. I am hoping sense will prevail. I trust God and not the mainstream media, here and abroad, who have declared Netanyahu’s speech a disaster in advance.
The “progressive” movement sustains itself on the idea that it is standing up against abuses of power by the wealthy and well-connected, that it defends the rights of the most vulnerable, that it stops special interests from taking over the state. And yet the “progressive” administration of Barack Obama has done all that, and more. It has not just committed ordinary hypocrisy, selling out its principles or breaking its promises: worse, it has often fulfilled them, blind to the consequences.
There is a simple question that every critic of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday must answer: should he rather wait, as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did, and address Congress after suffering a crushing defeat? Or should Netanyahu hasten to warn America before disaster strikes, before a deal is done with Iran that cannot be undone?
Nobel laureate, Holocause survivor, Jewish leader and world literary figure Elie Wiesel will participate in a bipartisan dialogue on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to a joint session of Congress.
And Esther said to Hathach, and she ordered him to [tell] Mordechai: “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that any man or woman who comes to the king, into the inner court, who is not summoned, there is but one law for him, to be put to death, except the one to whom the king extends the golden scepter, that he may live, but I have not been summoned to come to the king these thirty days. And they told Esther’s words to Mordechai. And Mordechai ordered to reply to Esther, “Do not imagine to yourself that you will escape in the king’s house from among all the Jews.” (Esther 4:10-13)
President Barack Obama is sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power–widely seen as among the most anti-Israel members of his administration–to address a prominent pro-Israel gathering next week. The move is described by the Associated Press as an effort to mend fences after the administration had withheld speakers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. In reality, it is a further slap in the face.
President Barack Obama has done little to stop the terrorist militias of the so-called Islamic State from abducting and murdering Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. As a junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, however, Obama was outspoken on the fate of minorities in Iraq. Obama wrote two letters to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, demanding to know what the Bush administration was doing to secure Assyrian Christians and other minorities in Iraq.
Many of the Democrats denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech next week to a special joint session of Congress as an intrusion into U.S. domestic politics leapt to their feet in 2010 when then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in a similar
Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the U.S. should be wary of trusting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings on Iran, because Netanyahu had also backed the Iraq War. Kerry’s remarks were hypocritical, since he also supported the war. And they raise the disturbing suggestion, beloved of conspiracy theorists, that Israel is dragging the U.S. to war. Yet it is worth asking whether Kerry’s criticism has merit.
Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by liberal Democrat Barbara Boxer after 2016. With strong support among Latino voters in California, Villaraigosa was seen as a major potential threat to Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was the first to declare for the seat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned down an invitation to meet with Senate Democrats, according to Reuters, politely informing them that meeting with one party alone “could compound the misperception of partisanship regarding my upcoming visit,” according to Reuters. It is a response that reprises Democrats’ complaints about the speech Netanyahu is to deliver before a joint session of Congress on March 3–and turns their own arguments against them.
The whiz kids of Silicon Valley are celebrating the GOP’s apparent collapse on Net Neutrality. The New York Times exults: “the little guys appear to have won.” It omits that the “little guys” are some of the richest people in America, and–by their own lights–the smartest. The odd thing is that the nerds who have an app for everythng seem to be unable to explain what Net Neutrality actually is, and why we need it. Case in point: Tuesday’s epic failure by Tumblr CEO David Karp on CNBC.
The Black Conservatives Fund (BCF), a political action committee (PAC) that declares it is “committed to turning out the black vote and elect black conservatives at every level of government,” has launched a fundraising drive around an effort to draft former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to run for U.S. Senate in California to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). A recent poll showed that Rice outperformed all other candidates, actual and potential, from either major party.
A new Field Poll reveals that a majority of California registered voters still have a very positive view of Gov. Jerry Brown–even though a similar majority also believes he spends too much money on big government projects the state cannot afford.
Former Harvard Law School professor and renowned defense attorney Alan Dershowitz has slammed President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats over their efforts to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next week. In an op-ed to be published in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Dershowitz accuses “Obama of direct intrusion on the power of Congress and on the constitutional separation of powers” in his objections to the speech.
The family of Kayla Mueller, the American hostage and humanitarian who was killed by ISIS earlier this month, has launched a new 501(c)3 charity in her memory. The charity, Kayla’s Hands, was announced by the family in an interview with NBC News that aired on the Today show Monday morning. It links to a website that promotes causes with which Mueller had worked, including the International Solidarity Movement, a radical pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel organization.
Despite the presence of Republican presidential contenders in the Golden State this weekend, a pair of Field Polls released late last week look grim for the GOP. One shows President Barack Obama’s approval rating among likely voters in the Golden State rising to 57%, “the best appraisal of Obama in over two years by Californians.” The other shows that fewer than one in five Californians approve of Congress, and a near-majority say Republican control of both houses of Congress is a bad thing.
On the eve of his historic, controversial, and critically-important address to Congress next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a small-ball political barrage in Israel. His party, the Likud, lost a challenge against a U.S.-funded left-wing group, V15. The Prime Minister is being investigated for allegedly pocketing the deposits on beverages served at his residence, and his rivals are blaming him for rising housing prices in Israel, documented in a new report.
Thursday marked the sixth anniversary of CNBC editor Rick Santelli’s famous “rant heard ’round the world” from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. It was the moment that launched a nascent movement, rousing conservatives to stand up to the radical presidency of Barack Obama. As I note in my recent book Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, the Tea Party succeeded in stopping much of Obama’s agenda. It has since helped the GOP retake both Houses of Congress.
