Joel B. Pollak - Page 288

This week, Jon Stewart broadcast his last episode of The Daily Show. It was perhaps appropriate that his swan song coincided with the first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election. The Obama era, which Stewart did as much as anyone to create and sustain, is ending.

Fox News co-moderator Megyn Kelly asked former Florida governor Jeb Bush a question about “your brother’s war” at the Republican presidential debate in Cleveland on Thursday evening.

If the Iran deal guarantees war–as argued by a former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–then the question is when.

The Iran deal will “likely and necessarily” lead to war, according to Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Arab states have opposed the Iran deal from a very early stage, seeing Iran’s regional ambitions as a direct threat. As negotiations went on, Saudi Arabia and other states were vocal and demonstrative in their protests, and warned that they, too, might seek nuclear weapons.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the oldest, largest, and most influential Jewish organizations in the United States, announced on Wednesday that it opposed the Iran deal.

President Barack Obama defended the Iran deal in a speech Wednesday, accusing Republicans in Congress of “making common cause” with the hard-liners of the Iranian regime by opposing it. Obama addressed an audience of students and journalists at American University. Obama

President Barack Obama will deliver a speech on the Iran deal at American University on Wednesday in an attempt to cement support in Congress.

The White House tweeted to the anti-Israel website Mondoweiss on Tuesday, via the Obama administration’s official Twitter account supporting the Iran deal, @TheIranDeal. Mondoweiss has also been widely accused of antisemitism–even by far-left critics of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke via web and telephone to 10,000 American Jews on Tuesday, telling them to oppose the Iran deal. “This is the time to stand up and be counted,” the Israeli leader said from Israel. “Oppose this dangerous deal.”

While Israelis, left and right, are overwhelmingly opposed to the deal, American Jews are torn between their general support for President Barack Obama–only black voters have been more loyal–and the reality of what the deal will do to strengthen Iran and threaten both American and Israeli security.

California Gov. Jerry Brown welcomed President Barack Obama’s “Clean Power Plan,” a new set of environmental regulations to cut down what the administration calls “carbon pollution.” The goal is to cut national carbon dioxide emissions 32% from 2005 levels by 2030.

The Iranian regime has filed a complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency, alleging that the United States has already broken the nuclear deal.

Planned Parenthood survived a procedural vote Monday in the U.S. Senate on a bill to defund the organization, after a series of undercover videos emerged to suggest that the organization may have been willing to sell fetal organs from late-term abortions to tissue companies.

On Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced his support for the Iran deal. In a statement, Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee admitted the deal’s flaws, but said he was supporting it because he believed there was no alternative. He also said that Congress should work with the administration to make the Iran deal stronger.

A new Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday shows that American voters oppose the nuclear deal with Iran by a two-to-one margin. That two-thirds majority corresponds to the vote margins needed in the U.S. House and Senate to override the president’s veto and cancel the deal.

If you want to be on the right side of history, you cannot repeat that mistake. “Never again” means voting no.

As rumors swirl that Vice President Joe Biden may jump into the 2016 presidential race, pressure is mounting on California governor Jerry Brown to decide whether he will enter the race–a possibility he has not entirely ruled out.

President Barack Obama gave Medicare and Medicaid, the federal and state health care entitlements for the elderly and poor, respectively, a clean bill of financial health in his weekly address on Saturday as he marked the programs’ 50th birthday.

Critics of the Iran deal have pointed out that President Barack Obama has imposed a false choice on Congress: accept a bad deal, or go to war—as if those are the only two alternatives. In fact, Obama has imposed a second false choice: either cooperate with the international community, or go it alone.

If Obama and his supporters are so concerned about comments that portray the president as an antisemite, he should stop trying to act like one. At the very least, it shows he knows he cannot defend the Iran deal on its merits.

If you understand the “Deflategate” football scandal, you understand what is wrong with the Iran nuclear deal.

In his recent broadcasts, talk radio host and conservative author and litigator Mark R. Levin has told his listeners that the subtitle of his new book, Plunder and Deceit, is even more important than the title. The subtitle reads: “Big Government’s

A plurality of American Jews now say they oppose the Iran nuclear deal, 45% to 40%–and a majority oppose the deal after they learn more about what is in it, according to a new poll.

An American dentist from Minnesota has allegedly killed an iconic Zimbabwean lion named Cecil with a bow and arrow in a trophy hunt. The Internet is outraged, perhaps rightly so. It is telling, however, that the deaths of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans, and the starvation and displacement of millions, have failed to rouse anything like the same level of anger.

During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that states may retain their own sanctions against Iran. However, Kerry said, the Obama administration “will take steps” to urge the states “not to interfere.”

Secretary of State John Kerry misled the House Foreign Affairs Committee in his attempt to defend the Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, claiming in his opening statement that Iran had complied with the interim agreement “completely and totally,” and that Iran was “required” by the deal to ratify a key agreement that would prevent it from developing dangerous nuclear technologies in the future. In fact, Iran violated parts of the interim agreement, and there is no guarantee that it will ratify the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A new CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday suggests that the majority of Americans want Congress to reject the Iran deal negotiated by President Barack Obama. Of the 1,017 adults surveyed by telephone July 22-25, 52% want the Iran deal rejected, and 44% want it approved.

The States of New York and California have no intention of complying with the Iran deal’s requirement that state and local governments lift their own sanctions against the Iranian regime.

On Monday’s edition of CNN’s Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer opened the show by telling viewers that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had “essentially, essentially likened Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.” However, that is a mischaracterization of Huckabee’s remarks.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) promised in 2013 “that together, Democrats and Republicans are gonna work to see that we don’t let up on these sanctions, as this agreement did, until Iran gives up not only all nuclear weapons, but all nuclear weapon capability, all enriched uranium, all the centrifuges, and all the heavy water reactors at Arak.”

The Iran deal, by Schumer’s own standards, is a failure. In May, at a dinner for Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish group that lobbies for religious concerns, Schumer laid out “five things we have to be very, very careful about” in the emerging deal. The Iran deal fails four of five.

The Iran deal will provide Iran with a cash windfall as sanctions are eased and assets are unfrozen. The total amount is estimated to be as high as $150 billion. If so, the Iran deal would give more cash to Iran than

On July 22, Breitbart News was the first to point out that the states have the power to block significant portions of the Iran deal, whether or not it passes Congress. That is because most states have enacted legislation divesting from Iran, and some, like New York, have even harsher legislation that prevents the state from doing business with the regime or with companies that do so. In an op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, constitutional lawyers David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey agree: the states are “free to impose their own Iran-related sanctions.”

A crowd of well over 1,000 gathered outside the Federal Building in West Los Angeles to demand that Congress vote “no” on the nuclear deal with Iran–and to override President Barack Obama’s anticipated veto. The majority of participants were from the local Jewish community, but there was also a significant Christian presence, as well as participation from Muslims opposed to the Iranian regime.

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus and noted defender of Israel, has reacted to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s comments on Breitbart News Saturday. “This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven,” Huckabee said.