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Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
Remember when???
Al Gore oomgalagala on climate change. What a charlatan!
The dramatic and tragic end of Roberto Clemente’s career capped a story that is uniquely American and uniquely baseball.
By David Marcus
Forty-five years ago today, baseball fans woke up to the news that the Pittsburgh Pirates’ star outfielder Roberto Clemente had been killed in an airplane crash on December 31 on his way to Nicaragua to deliver disaster relief after an earthquake.
A few months earlier, on September 30, 1972, Clemente had pulled a curveball from New York Met and Rookie of the Year Jon Matlack into the gap for a double. It was his 3,000th hit, and he had become only the 11th player in nearly a century of Major League Baseball to reach that milestone. It was also the last at-bat of his life.
The dramatic and tragic end of Clemente’s career capped a story that is uniquely American and uniquely baseball. While today Latin American players dot Major League lineups like marks on a successful bingo card, when Clemente began his career in 1955, this was not the case. While not exactly the trailblazer that Jackie Robinson was in breaking the color barrier, Clemente nonetheless came to represent the foot in the door for Latino players.
One of the World’s Finest Players
Clemente, born in Puerto Rico in 1934, was the quintessential five-tool player. He could hit for power and average, was fast as lightning on the bases, and could catch anything hit. As Vin Scully once put it, he also “could field the ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pennsylvania.” He can be spoken of in the same breath as Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays and had the pedigree and championships to back it up.
As a relatively young player, Clemente was on the 1960 Pirates team that miraculously beat the mighty Yankees in the World Series. Eleven years later, he would be the Most Valuable Player on the Pirates team that defeated the Baltimore Orioles in seven games. His home run, with two outs in the fourth inning of game seven, propelled steel town to victory.
As a player, Clemente brought rare elegance to the game of baseball. While his contemporary Pete Rose was slapping hits with a tight closed stance, seemingly fighting the pitches off, Clemente had a smooth stroke, driving balls to the gap, often making triples out of obvious doubles. In every aspect of the game, he was stylish.
Throughout his career, which lasted from 1955 to 1972, his greatest struggle was never hitting the ball. It was getting people to say his name. Baseball cards and announcers were more comfortable with Bob or Bobby Clemente than they were with Roberto. This Anglicizing may well have been seen as a compliment in his time. But he didn’t see it that way and insisted his name was the Spanish: Roberto.
A Baseball Great Gives Back to America
In 1958 Clemente joined the Marine Corps reserves, and served until 1964. For the modern baseball fan, such a choice seems unfathomable for a top-tier player. But these were different times, before the age of the multi-millionaire athlete. Clemente, who had come to fame in the United States of his Puerto Rican birth, chose to give back to it.
Throughout his career and in the events leading to his death, Clemente was a dedicated servant of Latin American causes. We look askance sometimes now at the contributions of athletes to important causes. After all, they are rich beyond belief, right? Yet Clemente’s salary in in 1972 was $150,000. It was a lot of money back then, but not so much that it would make for no big deal chartering a plane to fly Nicaragua money.
There is a movement afoot to retire Clemente’s number 21 throughout baseball, just as Robinson’s number 42 was retired. It’s a long shot, but has the support of future Hall of Famer Alex Rodriguez, who said, “Absolutely, I love Roberto…what he did for me and many, many others…he paved the way for guys like me and he was one of my heroes. He was an incredible player and even better person.”
Tragedy is often beautiful. Tears shed at a thing we should have respected and understood without the clarifying calamity of too-soon death help us see the world for what it is. Clemente was a beautiful example of this. On the anniversary of his death, we should think about what his legacy means. We take for granted that a bunch of ballplayers on our favorite teams grew up in Latin America speaking Spanish. But that was not always true. Clemente blazed that path.
Clemente said, “If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don’t do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.” Clemente didn’t waste time. He didn’t waste at-bats. He didn’t waste his modest wealth. As we ring in 2018, it’s good to give a thought to Clemente, and wonder if we can live a little bit in his example.
David Marcus is a senior contributor to the Federalist and the Artistic Director of Blue Box World, a Brooklyn based theater project. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.
Photo photojunkie / public domain
The Consequences of Leading from Behind
Over the past four days, Iranians have taken to the streets in several cities to protest corruption and living conditions in the repressive Islamic Republic.
By Megan G. Oprea
By Megan G. OpreaOver the past four days, Iranians have taken to the streets in several cities to protest corruption and living conditions in the repressive Islamic Republic. The unusual public protest of the Iranian regime has provoked a predictable government crackdown. While protests in Iran are rare, they aren’t unprecedented. However, this time, unlike in 2009, the White House is poised to support the protesters, not leave them in the lurch.
Demonstrations began in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Thursday, and quickly spread to several other cities on Friday. They began over high prices, but now protesters are calling for the ouster of Tehran’s powerful clerical class, and speaking out against police beatings and other government abuses. Ironically, the protests began just two days before previously scheduled pro-government rallies that took place on Saturday, meant to mark the eight-year anniversary of the 2009 Green Movement protests that the Iranian regime harshly suppressed.
Much like the complaints that first sparked the Arab Spring in Tunisia in 2011, Iranians are protesting corruption and poor living standards. But those gathered across Iran this week were also protesting something else: Tehran’s involvement in foreign conflicts. Iranians held signs this week that read “Get out of Syria and take care of us” and “Not Gaza, or Lebanon, I would give my soul for Iran.” The protestors also reportedly shouted things like, “Death to Hezbollah.”
All of this refers to Iran’s ongoing and ever-increasing involvement in regional affairs, including its support of the powerful Lebanese militia Hezbollah, as well as the role it has played in helping Syrian President Bashar al Assad crush the rebellion in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Then there’s Iran’s backing of the Houthi rebels in the bloody Yemeni civil war, not to mention its support of various militias throughout the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Apparently, not all Iranians are happy about their country becoming a regional hegemon while problems persist at home.
The connection with the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran is plain to see. President Obama sought desperately to get the United States out of the Middle East, no matter the cost. He wanted to pass the torch, so to speak, so America could go home and no longer be responsible for regional stability. Bizarrely, he saw Iran as the answer to his problems. By empowering Iran and allowing it to be the new Mideast sheriff, America would be free to “lead from behind,” i.e., shrink from the international stage, repudiating the misadventure of the Iraq War.
The path forward for this plan rested on the Iran nuclear deal, which secured unenforceable guarantees that Iran would halt its nuclear program while lifting economic sanctions and welcoming Iran back into international engagements.
With his eye ever on this prize, Obama failed to support Iranian protestErs in 2009 during a would-be revolution that foreshadowed the Arab Spring two years later. The Green Movement protests began after a presidential election in which the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad beat Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a more moderate candidate. Supporters of Mousavi claimed that Ahmadinejad had stolen the election and massive street protests ensued, as did a violent government crackdown that left as many as 100 dead and thousands imprisoned. It was thought to be the largest protest in the country since the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power. Protesters shouted “down with dictatorship,” but Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei backed Ahmadinejad.
Obama was widely criticized for remaining quiet for the first several days of the protests, making weak statements about it being up to Iranians to decide who the nation’s leader would be, and saying that America “respects Iranian sovereignty” even if he is “deeply troubled” by the violent crackdown. Obama even went so far as to tell the protesters that the world was “inspired by their participation” in the political process “regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was.”
After several days of harsh criticism at home, particularly from Sen. John McCain, Obama condemned Iran more forcefully, although administration officials said nothing more could be done. However, they did note that while talks about Iran’s nuclear program appeared stalled then, they hoped that later in the year Iran would be able to come to the negotiating table.
Their meaning was obvious. Obama had plans for Iran that didn’t involve bringing down the ruling party and ushering in reform-minded revolutionaries. They also didn’t involve ticking off the powerful mullahs whose cooperation Obama needed to reach a nuclear deal. The almost-revolution was a fly in the ointment for Obama’s plans for the Middle East. He needed a stable and strong Iranian government with which to do business, not a democratic revolution.
Now, eight years later, we see those anti-government sentiments have not gone away among ordinary Iranians and that many aren’t very happy about Iran’s expanding role in the region.
These Protests Re-Expose Years of Iranian Regime Lies
Iran’s harsh response to this week’s protests is a reminder that the Islamic Republic is not a flourishing democracy and the Iranian people aren’t free. Iran’s powerful clerics closely control who runs for office, and the government censors the media as well as what Iranians can access on the Internet. All street gatherings of any kind are banned without a government permit.
This week’s protests once again expose the falsehood of Tehran’s official narrative, which has been aided and abetted by our mainstream media, that Iranians are happy with their country’s leadership and are swelling with national pride. The New York Times recently ran a feature with the headline, “Long Divided, Iran Unites Against Trump and Saudis in Nationalist Fervor.” The article raves about how Iranians are proud of the role Iran is playing in the region and that, by virtue of their leaders locking horns with the Trump administration, Iranians have a newfound self-respect as a nation. But the Times missed (or chose to ignore) the other side of the coin: the apparently large and now vocal constituency of Iranians who value prosperity at home above foreign adventures, reject authoritarianism and corruption, and are not happy with the ways things are going in their country.
Now that Trump is in office, the American response to all of this is likely to be much more supportive of the protesters in Iran than the Obama administration’s was in 2009. Vocally opposed to the Iran nuclear deal, Trump has shown in the last year that his administration is looking to America’s long-time ally — and Iran’s nemesis — Saudi Arabia as its partner in the region. He has called out Tehran repeatedly for its meddling and blatant support of terrorism.
Ironically, and contrary to the New York Times piece, it could turn out that the Trump administration’s tough position vis-à-vis Iran actually emboldens the protesters, giving them hope that someone out there cares what’s happening in their country — and might even support them should things escalate.
Megan G. Oprea is a senior contributor to The Federalist and editor of the foreign policy newsletter INBOUND. She holds a PhD in French linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. You can follow her on Twitter here.
Photo CNN / YouTube
Mexican Border Mayor Tied to Brothels Operating Forced-Prostitution Ring, Say Authorities
by ILDEFONSO ORTIZ AND BRANDON DARBY
Tamaulipas government
REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — State authorities in this border city shut down several businesses and hotels allegedly connected to a sex trafficking and forced prostitution investigation linked to the mayor’s husband. Officials say her husband is identified as part-owner of some brothels in Reynosa.
Carlos Peña Garza, the husband of Reynosa Mayor Maki Ortiz, is singled out as being part owner of some of the establishments that were shut down following the investigation, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office revealed.
This week, Tamaulipas state officials raided four clandestine bars and three makeshift hotels that were reportedly being used as brothels. The businesses were all in an area known as the “Zona de Tolerancia” or “Boys Town.” According to the officials, issues of public safety and the regulation of businesses in the “zona de tolerancia” is a matter that is handled by the city, not the state.
State authorities carried out the raids as part of an investigation into human trafficking and sex trafficking that had started after Mexico’s Grupo Radio Formula published an expose on sex trafficking and forced child prostitution in the border city. The shutting down of the businesses came after management at the various establishments were not able to provide the needed permits to operate as bars, while the makeshift hotels did not meet sanitary standards.
Officials identified Peña Garza as a part owner of some of the establishments allegedly used by the forced-prostitution ring.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Puerto Rico blackout sparks interest in solar power for island's electric grid
by Josh Siegel
The energy industry and others are aiming to turn disaster into opportunity, proposing a long-term reimagining of the power grid. (AP)About 55 percent of Puerto Rico's 3.5 million residents have power more than 100 days after Hurricane Maria pummeled the island, leading to the largest blackout in U.S. history.
As crews work to restore power for the entire territory, a task that could last into May, the energy industry and other stakeholders are aiming to turn disaster into opportunity, proposing a long-term reimagining of the electricity grid.
Puerto Rico has always been vulnerable to dangerous weather events and high energy costs because of its location in the Caribbean.
But industry leaders say another of its natural characteristics, its bountiful sunlight, could facilitate a transition to a system more reliant on solar power, especially if it’s paired with battery storage that can provide backup when the sun isn’t shining.
“There does seem to be some room for optimism in Puerto Rico,” said Lewis Milford, president of the nonprofit Clean Energy Group and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Federal and local officials, along with others, are beginning to see a different way to rebuild the grid that doesn't rely exclusively on the old way of just having more central plant power lines and hoping for the best. For the first time, there seems to be a serious look at some alternatives that include distributed solar and storage applications that can ride out and provide power during outages and storms.”
Several companies have provided renewable solutions on an emergency basis. Tesla installed a solar field and batteries to a children’s hospital in San Juan. Sonnen, a German company, is installing solar and storage systems at emergency centers.
And researchers at the University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute, relying on donations, traveled to a remote mountain municipality called Jayuya to build solar-powered refrigerators in a community center.
The lack of power after Hurricane Maria prevented Jayuya residents from accessing medicines and healthy foods, says Lilo Danielle Pozzo, a professor who led the project.
“It makes perfect sense to have solar in Puerto Rico,” said Pozzo, who grew up on the island. “The question is how you help people acquire the systems. If there was capital to install more solar distributed across the island, people who lost electricity and suffer from health conditions can harness that during emergencies.”
But interested companies must grapple with political unrest and economic uncertainty.
Puerto Rico is facing a festering debt crisis, and its state-run bankrupt power utility, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, is historically averse to investing in renewable energy. Before Maria, Puerto Rico generated about 2 percent of its energy from renewables.
Still, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month released a $17.6 billion grid restoration plan produced by a group of utility companies they formed. The Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Working Group proposes rebuilding the island’s grid with renewables and distributed energy resource technologies such as micro-grids and battery storage.
Separately, the Puerto Rico Energy Commission, the energy authority that regulates PREPA, recently asked for ideas about how to rebuild the grid.
AES, a global electricity provider that already is present in Puerto Rico, offered a plan that would establish a network of solar-powered “mini-grids” backed up by battery storage.
A mini-grid as envisioned by AES is a variation of the more commonly known “micro-grid,” said Chris Shelton, the company’s chief technology officer. A micro-grid is a small, freestanding grid that can separate itself from the main electricity system during a blackout, allowing it to provide backup power.
A micro-grid is generally installed to power a single site or small group of structures that share a common owner, such as a hospital, or school system, whereas a mini-grid could be much larger, possibly the size of San Juan, AES says.
The company already runs a utility-scale solar facility in Puerto Rico built to withstand Category 4 hurricanes. The facility suffered only 6 percent damage from Hurricane Maria, Shelton said.
Shelton says an electric grid consisting of distributed solar panels, paired with batteries, could be more cost-efficient than the current system reliant on imported fossil fuels, especially because of the island’s generous sunshine. AES estimates its plan can be paid for just by 10 years of savings from depending less on fuel imports.
Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who supports the AES plan, says spreading solar panels across the island would make the electric system more independent and reduce the risk of the entire grid going down during a storm.
The nature of the current grid enhances that risk because it is designed so that most power plants are in the south, while most of the population lives in the north.
“To the extent you can reduce reliance on that system by putting generation where it is consumed, you will have a more reliable and resilient system,” Kunkel said.
“It's obvious there is risk in transforming the grid,” Kunkel added. “But this storm has been so devastating to the island’s economy. People don't want to go through this again. Everyone down there will put more premium on reliability than perhaps other places that haven't experienced something like this.”
WikiLeaks Drops Proof That NYTimes Colluded With Hillary Clinton
By JOSEPH CURL @josephcurl
Boston Globe / Contributor / Getty ImagesYou thought 2017 was going to end without a bang — other than the fireworks?
Think again.
After The New York Times on Saturday published a story headlined "Republican Attacks on Mueller and F.B.I. Open New Rift in G.O.P.," WikiLeaks couldn't stand it anymore. In a late-night post on Twitter, WikiLeaks revealed that a Times reporter used to feed State Department email updates of the stories the paper would be publishing DAYS before the stories appeared.
At the time, Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State.
View image on Twitter
Think again.
After The New York Times on Saturday published a story headlined "Republican Attacks on Mueller and F.B.I. Open New Rift in G.O.P.," WikiLeaks couldn't stand it anymore. In a late-night post on Twitter, WikiLeaks revealed that a Times reporter used to feed State Department email updates of the stories the paper would be publishing DAYS before the stories appeared.
At the time, Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State.
View image on Twitter
WikiLeaks ✔@wikileaksEmail shows New York Times handed over Cablegate's publication schedule to the US government (without telling @WikiLeaks) giving the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, up to 9 days in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. http://ift.tt/2ltgTox …
1:18 AM - Dec 31, 2017
The heads-up email was intended to give State (and Clinton) time to come up with some spin for stories that may have caused problems. Or, in another possible scenario, the heads up could give the State Department time to create a diversion for the same day, thus overriding a damaging story with other news its friends in the mainstream media would happily cover instead.
The players in the WikiLeaks email are interesting. Scott Shane is the national security reporter for the Times. And the recipient of his email, Philip Crowley, was at the time the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under Clinton’s State Department.
As 2017 comes to an end, it's clear the Clinton scandals won't go away anytime soon.
On Friday, the Justice Department released thousands of Clinton emails. "Several emails with classified information from former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin were among a tranche of documents released Friday that were found on Anthony Weiner's personal computer during an FBI probe," USA Today reported.
After the emails were made public, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the release a "major victory."
"Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents," Fitton said. "That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law."
The FBI said most of the emails ended up on Weiner's computer because of backups from Abedin's personal electronic devices. Former FBI Director James Comey has said investigators could not prove Abedin acted with criminal intent or "had a sense that what she was doing was in violation of the law."
A November 2010 email was partially redacted due to "classified" and "confidential" information. It detailed a planned call between Clinton and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, where then-Secretary of State Clinton would warn al-Faisal about Wikileaks planning to release sensitive documents.
Trump: ‘No More’ Aid to Pakistan, ‘They Have Given Us Nothing but Lies and Deceit’
by JOHN HAYWARD
FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty
President Donald Trump lashed out at Pakistan on Twitter just a few minutes past 7:00 a.m. Eastern time on New Year’s Day, expressing frustration at Islamabad’s inadequate efforts against terrorism and implying that U.S. foreign aid will be terminated as a result.
The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!
It is not yet clear whether the “no more” exclamation means the complete or partial termination, or temporary suspension, of American aid to Pakistan.
If the complete termination of U.S. foreign aid does indeed become official policy, it would be a far more dramatic step than withholding all or part of America’s $255 million in military assistance to Pakistan, a measure reportedly under consideration by the administration over the past few days after Pakistan refused to allow U.S. interrogators access to a captured terrorist from the hostage-taking Haqqani network.
In August, President Trump said the “next pillar” of his strategy for battling terrorism would involve a “change in our approach to Pakistan.”
Trump accused Pakistan of giving “safe haven to agents of chaos, violence, and terror.”
“We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond,” the president said. ”These killers need to know they have nowhere to hide – that no place is beyond the reach of American arms.
The Trump administration withheld $50 million in military aid to Pakistan over the summer because it felt Islamabad was not doing enough to bring down the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. There was some criticism at the time that despite his strong complaints about Pakistan refusing to help fight the Taliban or even actively colluding with it, Trump was dealing more harshly with Egypt over human rights violations by its government.
The Pakistani military rescued a Canadian-American family held hostage for years by the Haqqanis in October. Concerns have been raised that even this rescue might have been the result of a deal between the Pakistanis and the militant network, which has long been suspected of enjoying special favors and protection from elements of the Pakistani security apparatus. The prisoner Pakistan refused to allow the United States to interview was tied to the kidnapping of this Canadian-American family.
On Thursday, Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor warned the United States against taking “unilateral” military action on its soil and denied his country was not doing enough to fight the Taliban and its allies, promising that the results of Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations would be “seen in subsequent years and months.”
After making this declaration, Ghafoor implied Pakistan could actually do more, once its concerns about Afghan refugees are addressed. “If there are any facilitators and abetters inside Pakistan that can only be addressed if the 2.7 million Afghan refugees are sent back to Afghanistan,” he said.
Trump regulatory 'red tape' lowest in a quarter century, 35% below Obama's
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on federal regulations in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017, in Washington. "Let's cut the red tape, let's set free our dreams," Trump said as he symbolically cut a ribbon on stacks of paper representing the size of the regulatory code. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Adding to his administration’s success in cutting Obama era regulations, President Trump also issued the lowest amount of federal red tape in a quarter century, and 35% less than former President Obama in his last year in office.
According to regulatory watchdog Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, red tape as measured by Federal Register pages dropped from a record 95,894 last year to 61,950. The last time it was so low was in former President Bill Clinton’s first year, 1993, and that was the record.
“This is the lowest count since 1993’s 61,166 pages. That was Bill Clinton’s first year, and his own lowest-ever count,” said Crews in a just-posted blog post.
“A year ago, Obama set the all-time Federal Register page record with 95,894 pages. Trump’s Federal Register is a 35 percent drop from Obama’s record, set last year,” he wrote, adding, “After the National Archives processes all the blank pages and skips in the 2017 Federal Register, Trump’s final count will ultimately be even lower.”
The Federal Register is where all new rules and regulations are presented and a page drop count is symbolic of Trump’s bid to end the era of rules.
It follows on a White House report that the president killed over 1,500 pending Obama regulations.
During the campaign, and in an Executive Order, Trump promised to kill two Obama-era regulations for every new one his team wanted. They cut so many in the first year that the ratio was 22 cut for every new rule.
Said Crews, “Trump has made significant strides in reducing the pace of regulation. Rule counts and Federal Register pages are imperfect but useful gauges, and one hopes impel policymakers toward better measurements. As it stands, since a rule has to be written to get rid of a rule, the Federal Register and rule counts can both grow even in a deregulatory environment, unless Congress short-cuts the process with healthy reform legislation.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com
Donald Trump takes real stand for Iranian protesters – something Obama never did
Michael Vadon / CCL; Daniel Borman / CCLYet again, President Donald Trump has differentiated his proactive and assertive foreign policy from the visionless strategy of his predecessor. While former President Barack Obama practiced “strategic patience” with a rapidly-nuclearizing North Korea, allowed his “red line” in Syria to be trampled, and surrendered Libya to radical jihadists after bombing the country into submission, Trump has chosen a different strategic direction.
In the latest example of his foreign policy strategy, Trump immediately responded to recent widespread Iranian protests by putting the Islamic regime on notice and offering his support to Iranian citizens — a far cry from Obama’s hesitant hand-wringing during a 2009 insurrection.
Unrest in the Islamic Republic
Protests kicked off on Thursday in Iran’s second largest city of Mashhad before spreading to major urban centers throughout the country as citizens took to the streets to express discontent over a deteriorating economy. Demonstrations quickly turned political, with chanted slogans criticizing Iran religious head-of-state, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several rallies spilling over into violent disputes as the government began a crackdown on Saturday.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have stated that protesters will face the government’s “iron fist” if unrest continues, and two Iranians have already been killed during clashes in the western city of Dorud. Tehran has denied responsibility for the shooting deaths, blaming the murders on Sunni Muslim extremists — a common scapegoat for the Shiite majority regime.
It did not take long for an outspoken president with an overt disdain for the Iranian regime to speak out in support of the protests. Soon after reports of the rallies were broadcast by Western media outlets, Trump weighed in on the crisis from Twitter:
Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching! #IranProtests
The president’s message should apply pressure on Iran by attracting international attention to the regime’s treatment of demonstrators. The theocratic state has already deemed many of the impromptu gatherings “illegal” and imprisoned an unknown number of protestors.
Trump’s remarks followed an official statement from State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert which hinted at U.S. support for regime change.
“Iran’s leaders have turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos,” Nauert observed, adding that, “As President Trump has said, the longest-suffering victims of Iran’s leaders are Iran’s own people.”
Polar opposites
The Trump administration’s response contrasts sharply with Obama’s delayed reaction to a 2009 protest in Iran. The Green Revolution began as a reaction to widespread dissent over the election of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and it took days for the Obama administration to condemn the actions of Tehran.
As the government forces used heavy-handed tactics to quell the unrest and stamp out protests, Obama was silent. On the third day of violence, Obama issued a half-hearted statement:
I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days. I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.
Obama’s cautious, meandering remarks failed to call out a hardline Islamic regime that was killing its own people.
“We respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran,” the Democratic president said, clearly conscious of future plans to establish a nuclear agreement with Tehran. Obama continued by giving an oppressive regime the benefit of the doubt:
My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can’t state definitively one way or another what happened.
A week later, Obama finally criticized Tehran for the violence they used to put down peaceful protests. However, by this time, the issue was moot, and the demonstrations had been crushed.
While Obama rewarded Iran with financial incentives by lifting sanctions in a widely disputed nuclear deal, Trump has reversed course and reimposed the same sanctions that were lifted by his predecessor. The latest Iranian protests, driven by economic grievances, may not have occurred without Trump’s latest round of sanctions to further degrade the Iranian economy.
While Obama rewarded Iran with financial incentives by lifting sanctions in a widely disputed nuclear deal, Trump has reversed course and reimposed the same sanctions that were lifted by his predecessor. The latest Iranian protests, driven by economic grievances, may not have occurred without Trump’s latest round of sanctions to further degrade the Iranian economy.
Trump is leading us in the right direction.
Abortion Supporters Pretend To Care About Woman Judges To Hide Anti-Woman Legal Goals
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards is right: Courts matter. They matter because liberal judges long ago stopped interpreting the law and started inventing it.
It’s the judges, stupid. Cloaked beneath claims of sexism, that message headlined the year-end social media feed of Cecile Richards, president of the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood: “81 percent of President Trump’s judicial nominees are men. If confirmed, they could reshape the judiciary for years to come. Courts matter.”
Richards is right. Courts matter. They matter because liberal judges long ago stopped interpreting the law and started inventing the law. They matter because activist judges ignore clear constitutional mandates while conjuring up imaginary constitutional rights. They matter because liberal judges no longer judge—they pontificate according to their political proclivities. It shouldn’t be this way in a constitutional republic. But it is.
We’d Rather Do Identity Politics Than Debate the Issues
Liberals found this framework favorable, until they didn’t, which is to say when they discovered President Trump intended to keep his campaign promise of appointing men and women in the mold of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was renowned for sticking to the law instead of making law fit his personal politics.
“Women, what women?” they scoff, finding sexism a sturdier basis of attack than judicial philosophy—or at least more easily translated into a midterm campaign theme: The War on Women II. But Richards cares nothing about the sex of the judicial nominees. It’s all about judicial philosophy. Natch. It’s all about abortion.
Just one month ago, Richards penned an op-ed for The Hill targeting Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Why target Barrett if Richard’s complaint is the lack of female nominees to the federal bench? Well, Richards finds Barrett problematic because Barrett “has been a vocal opponent of Roe v. Wade, and she has publicly said that employers should be able to deny their employees access to birth control.”
What Richards wants, then, is a double standard. Judges get props for being women only when they agree with Richards’ politics. She also wants to professionally delegitimize judges based on biology rather than qualifications when she doesn’t like how that judge tends to rule. Heads she wins, tails her opponents lose.
Abortion Pushers’ Legal and Moral Claims Have No Merit
Linda Greenhouse, whose New York Times article “Why Judges Matter” prompted Richards’ tweet, likewise played the sex card, but with more finesse. She led with her true concern—abortion: “The Trump Administration’s increasing bizarre war on abortion continues as immigration officials keep trying to block access to abortion for pregnant undocumented teenagers in their custody.” But with “no law on its side,” federal district court judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the government “to allow two immigrant teenagers to exercise their right to terminate their pregnancies.”
Greenhouse then dangled the question, “Does the fact that [Chutkan is] a woman make [her] more sensitive to the plaintiffs’ claims?” Then down dropped the sex card. “I don’t know,” Greenhouse mused, “but I do know that 81 percent of President Trump’s judicial nominees are men…”
Greenhouse’s concern over the male-female judiciary balance is a farce, just as is her claim that the government has “no law on its side” for refusing to facilitate abortions for illegal aliens who are children. Three federal appellate judges disagreed with Chutkan’s order, including woman judge Karen LeCraft Henderson. Henderson’s dissentpersuasively argues that under Supreme Court precedent, an alien minor detained at the border does not have a constitutional right to an elective abortion.
The Supreme Court, however, never had the chance to resolve the issue because the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the girl, misled the government and arranged for an early-morning abortion to thwart an appeal. On Friday, the Supreme Court will discuss whether the ACLU’s conduct merits vacating the lower-court decision, and possibly even sanctions for playing dirty.
Abortion Pushers Are Waging the Real War on Women
Greenhouse does not limit her op-ed to abortion, though. Like Richards, Greenhouse expands the supposed battlefield to birth control. But just as their focus on the male-female ratio is a charade, so too is their “access to birth control” canard. There is no threat to birth control access. Yet to further the War on Women II narrative, the sisters-in-arms raise the specter of gavel-waving men ready to wrest away contraceptives.
Here’s Greenhouse: “But the administration’s war on birth control came to a grinding halt the other day. In a little-noticed ruling, a federal district judge in Philadelphia issued a temporary injunction against a new policy that lets employers refuse to cover contraception in their employees’ insurance plans if they have either religious objections to birth control or ‘sincerely held moral convictions’ against it.”
So “the war on birth control” is actually the Trump administration’s allowance of religious and moral exemptions to Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, which does absolutely nothing to prevent women from buying any kind of birth control. These gals know what they’re doing. It’s much easier to scare an electorate to the polls with tales of a bogeyman behind every bench, poised to banish birth control from the shores of America, than to broadcast the sad truth: There are no lurking monsters, just modest nuns—the Little Sisters of the Poor—who seek nothing more than to be left alone to fulfill their calling to care for the elderly poor.
Apparently, those women don’t matter to Greenhouse. They also didn’t matter to the Philadelphia federal judge whose womanhood Greenhouse also touted, Judge Wendy Beetlestone. Before barring the government from enforcing the religious and moral exemptions, Beetlestone banned the Little Sisters from the case. The Little Sisters promptly appealed, and the Third Circuit recently agreed to hear the case on an expedited basis.
People Hire Women to Deny Them Birth Control Subsidies?
Yet to Greenhouse, Obama appointee Beetlestone is the one who put politics to the side and crafted a “careful, lawyerly opinion.” Here’s a sampling of Judge Beetlestone’s lawyerly reasoning: “A simple hypothetical illustrates the insidious effect of the Moral Exemption Rule. It would allow an employer with a sincerely held moral conviction that women do not have a place in the workplace to simply stop providing contraceptive coverage. And, it may do so in an effort to impose its normative construct regarding a woman’s place in the world on its workforce, confident that it would find solid support for that decision in the Moral Exemption Rule.”
No matter the outcome, the case has served its purpose: falsely framing the fight over the judiciary as a fight for women’s rights and against sexism.
Beetlestone’s “simple” hypothetical would have us believe employers exist that are willing to violate their moral precepts by hiring women but then claiming a moral objection to providing insurance sponsorship of contraceptives because birth control allows the same women to continue in their employ, which of course the women could still do even if they became pregnant and gave birth. The only way Beetlestone could have crafted a more ridiculous caricature of those benefitting from the moral and religious exemptions would be if she named the hypothetical woman Offred!
Beetlestone’s “careful, lawyerly” opinion contained several significant errors, more of which I highlighted here. Greenhouse’s thinking is similarly facile. Greenhouse believes (or pretends to believe) “that since no one is forcing these employers to use birth control themselves, their moral objection has to be to their employees’ using it.”
This logic ignores the strength of the Little Sisters’ objection to paying for insurance that sponsors birth control and abortifacients. The good sisters’ objection is their moral complicity, not employees’ use of contraceptives or abortifacients.
Yes, the Little Sisters’ insurance creates contraceptive coverage, something easily understood by contrasting two hypothetical employees of the Little Sisters: Susie, who elects health insurance coverage, and Mary who, following the repeal of the individual mandate, decides to remain uninsured. Susie’s participation in the Little Sisters’ health insurance plan entitles her to insurance-subsidized birth control (including some abortifacients) and sterilization, while Mary does not qualify for these freebies.
It will be months, if not years, before courts conclusively rule on challenges to the religious and moral exemptions. But no matter the outcome, the case has served its purpose: framing the fight over the judiciary as a fight for women’s rights and against sexism. And accusations of sexism sell in an election year, maybe even better than the body parts from aborted babies Planned Parenthood affiliates have illegally brokered. That reminds me of another reason Richards cares about the courts—the Trump administration’s newly launched investigation into Planned Parenthood’s pay-for-baby-parts moneymaker.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School as well as a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct professor for the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. Email her: MargotCleveland@nd.edu.
Photo Lorie Shaull / Wikimedia
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