Joel B. Pollak - Page 289

It is often said that the President controls foreign policy, and that there is little Congress can do, within its more limited foreign policy mandate, to direct it. The Republican-controlled Congress–and the U.S. House of Representatives in particular–has defied that conventional wisdom by stopping President Barack Obama’s worst foreign policy blunder by far–namely, the effort to end U.S. control over Internet domain names, which would have boosted the enemies of freedom.

Video has emerged from a meeting of student representatives at the University of California Davis last week in which Muslim students shout “Allahu Akbar” at a group of Jewish students holding Israeli flags and leaving the meeting.

After the improbable finish to Super Boxl XLIX, it seems natural to blame Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and his team for calling a pass from the 1-yard line with less than 30 seconds to play, rather than handing the ball to Marshawn Lynch. But while it’s understandable that a Seattle fan might feel Carroll’s was “the worst call in Super Bowl history,” it wasn’t bad. And it was actually New England Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick’s call the play before that won the game.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama explained his stance on radical Islam to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria–and in the process, showed exactly why it is that the U.S. is losing to Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Iran. Obama believes, against all available evidence, that only a small minority of Muslims share the political beliefs of Islamist terror groups. And he is wedded to a particular tactic–the so-called “surgical” strike–that precludes any commitment of troops, giving the enemy wide freedom of action.

The New York Times has continued its reflexive bias against Israeli Prime Minister with a story Friday alleging, falsely, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went behind President Barack Obama’s back in arranging a speech to Congress in March. In fact, Netanyahu only accepted Speaker of the House John Boehner’s invitation once the White House knew of the invitation. The story has since been corrected online, but the incorrect version will misinform print readers today.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is enjoying a surge in the latest opinion polls of Israeli voters. The Jerusalem Post reports that its latest poll shows Bibi’s party, the Likud, is leading the race for the first time in weeks. Other polls agree, and show the Likud leading its rival, the Zionist Union, which is a combination of the Labor and Hatnua parties.

The left hates Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some hate him as they would hate any Israeli leader; they just hate Israel (and they may hate Jews, too). Some hate him because they love Obama, and Netanyahu stands up to Obama–which is why many Democrats who would otherwise love Bibi have chosen to hate him. But at the core, the left hates Netanyahu because just as Israel is a nation-state in a post-national world, Bibi is a modern man in a post-modern era.

Bill Burton, a prominent political aide to Barack Obama, has been hired by SDKnickerbocker to head its new Los Angeles office, a plum position that signals the enduring influence–and burgeoning affluence–of Obama campaign alumni.

The New York Times has launched a full-court press against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer over Netanyahu’s acceptance of an invitation by Speaker of the House John Boehner to address Congress on the subjects of Iran and radical Islam in March without coordinating with the White House.

The speech that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver to a special joint session of the US Congress in March will be the most important address by an Israeli leader in the history of the Jewish state.

The terrorist group known as Daesh, “Islamic State,” ISIS or ISIL has threatened to behead President Barack Obama and turn the United States into a Muslim province, installing sharia law and incorporating America into its fledgling caliphate.

For Goldberg, Obama can do no wrong when it comes to Israel–and only Israel. In his efforts to cover for Obama, he has fumbled away much of his credibility on the issue. There is not much for Netanyahu to fear from the habitual criticism of a pundit who has so clearly departed from reality. But as an example of how American Jewish liberals are tying themselves in knots trying to reconcile their partisan loyalties with the facts of Obama’s failures on Israel, there is no finer specimen.

Netanyahu has one basic responsibility: to protect the security of the State of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people. That is why Ambassador Ron Dermer is correct to call Netanyahu’s speech to Congress a “sacred duty.”

Small business owner Tawni Angel has won the first round of her court battle against a radical animal rights activist who is attempting to ban Angel’s popular pony rides from a weekly Santa Monica farmers’ market. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Hart-Cole ruled last Thursday that Angel’s lawsuit against activist Marcy Winograd can proceed, finding that Angel demonstrated a “sufficient probability of prevailing” on the question of whether Winograd had defamed her.

A 20-year-old volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who grew up near Hollywood has been awarded the Chief of Staff Citation for bravery in last summer’s war in Gaza after he killed four Palestinian terrorists in combat. Sgt. Sahar

There are at least five ways in which Iran has explicitly violated the interim agreement–one hat has been extended twice but has failed to produce anything but more time for Iran to advance to a nuclear weapon.

Former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who left the White House in 2011 amidst rumors of clashes with Valerie Jarrett, has co-written a strident op-ed in Politico urging President Barack Obama to take a tougher stance with Iran.

Vice President Joe Biden wrapped up his California visit on Friday by telling doctors that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, had “ended the debate” about whether health care is a privilege or a right, according to the Orange County Register.

On Friday, White House spokesperson said that President Barack Obama would not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits Washington, D.C. in March due to a policy of not meeting with foreign leaders prior to their election campaigns, “to avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country.” However, that excuse proves empty against the historical record, as Bill Clinton met then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres in 1996.

Vice President Joe Biden told students at West Los Angeles College on Friday that President Barack Obama’s plan to offer “free” community college would prepare young Americans to compete for opportunities in the global economy. “The rest of the world is catching

J Street, a George Soros-funded, far-left organization that styles itself as “pro-Israel” but spends its energy opposing Israeli policies, is trying to stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from addressing Congress in a special session in March.

“I am not here to make the case for war. I am not even here to make the case for new sanctions. You know it well enough. On both sides of the aisle, you have leaders who can speak more powerfully than I about why more pressure is needed, after a year of fruitless talks. No—I am here to ask merely that America be what America is: the leader of the free world.”

A new study by the RAND Corporation has found that Americans are increasingly likely to work while on vacation–and that Republicans are 37.5% more likely to work on vacation than Democrats, even when controlling for all other factors.

President Barack Obama took his State of the Union on the road yesterday, telling college students in Boise, ID that he will make two years of college “free” and “universal.” What he did not tell them, however, is that he wants to tax 529 savings plans to pay for those two free years of community college–which are already free anyway for poor students, under federal grants.

Israel’s Army Radio, via the Jerusalem Post, reports that local sources claim U.S. President Barack Obama arranged the leak of a Mossad report on the Iran nuclear talks as an act of revenge against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for agreeing to speak to Congress in February about radical Islam and the Iranian threat. The Mossad report allegedly suggests new sanctions would cause talks to collapse, and its release is calculated to suggest disagreement with Netanyahu.

Speaker of the House John Boehner announced Wednesday morning that he would invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress on Feb. 11. “In this time of challenge, I am asking the Prime Minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life,” Boehner said in a press statement. The timing suits Netanyahu perfectly, as it comes five weeks before Israelis will go to the polls on March 17.

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama repeated his threat from last year’s address to veto any new Iran sanctions passed by Congress. He also claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been stalled, and pledged to reach a deal by the end of the year. The language was almost the same as he used in 2014, though he failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program or to reach a deal over the past year, and in fact extended talks twice past the original deadline agreed one year ago today.

In his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama touted his foreign policy successes–but failed to mention Yemen, where Shia militias overthrew the government earlier in the day, and where Americans anxiously anticipated evacuation from the embassy and the country.

The Iraq War may have been a serious mistake. Regardless, we cannot dwell on that mistake so obsessively that we fail to act–as we did in the 1930s–to stop a new threat.

On the one-year anniversary of the start of talks with Iran, and as President Barack Obama prepares to give his State of the Union address, Russia has signed a military deal with Iran. The agreement covers “includes expanded counter-terrorism cooperation, exchanges of military personnel for training purposes and an understanding for each country’s navy to more frequently use the other’s ports,” the AP reports.

“Trolling.” That’s the theme of commentary on President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address as he prepares to face a Congress that is totally controlled by Republicans. Since guiding his party to a staggering defeat in a midterm election

In the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, the moment when the momentum shifted decisively against Hillary Clinton was when the New York Senator embroiled herself in a controversy over whether President Lyndon Baines Johnson or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deserved

If the Court does uphold same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, it will mark a stunning transformation of marriage in less than seven years. In 2008, voters in California, easily one of the most liberal states, passed Proposition 8, which made traditional marriage the only form of marriage recognized in the state, overturning an earlier ruling by the state’s courts. Rather than make their case again to the voters, gay marriage advocates took to the courts, dominated by liberal judges.

Obama claimed: “What was remarkable was that when I came into office, the world was divided around this issue. Iran was united. Through some very strong diplomatic work, we united the world and isolated Iran.” Obama also claimed: “The agreement has held and negotiations have been serious. We have not lost ground. Iran has not accelerated its program during the time these negotiations have taken place.” All of those claims, however, are false–and dangerously so.

CNN international correspondent Jim Clancy has left the network after 34 years–and after a bizarre anti-Israel rant on Twitter in which the veteran journalist blamed pro-Israel advocates for connecting the Charlie Hebdo massacre with Islam.

On Tuesday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls addressed the National Assembly and gave the most stirring speech on antisemitism since Chaim Herzog literally tore up the “Zionism is racism” resolution at the UN General Assembly in 1975. Valls reiterated his recent argument that