Title :
link :
WWW.MOEISSUESOFTHEDAY
.BLOGSPOT.COM
day, December 5, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
*****
Clinton Foundation ‘Pay to Play’ Model Under Investigation — 7 Documented https://ift.tt/2zKEh84
THE LIBERTY DAILY
The Conservative Alternative to the Drudge Report
CONGRESSIONAL LAW FAILS TO REACH FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
Congress passed a law, but a court says it's unconstitutional. What is the remedy?
Phyllis Chesler
On November 20, 2018, the United States District Court in Michigan ruled that the federal law which criminalized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) more than twenty years ago is “unconstitutional”, and cannot be used to prosecute the doctors and mothers of the very young girls who were brought to be genitally mutilated in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. (See United States of America v. Jumana Nagarwala, et al, 2018 WL 6064968.)
There were eight defendants. A doctor in Michigan, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, herself a member of the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Indian Islam, was accused of mutilating the genitalia of nine girls from three states: Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota. Another doctor, Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, is accused of having allowed Dr. Nagarwala to use his now-shuttered clinic in a Detroit suburb. Two other women, Farida Attar and Taheri Sharia, clinic employees, were also accused of having assisted Dr. Nagarwala. The mothers of the girls were also charged: Farida Atif, Fatima Dahodwala, Haseena Halfal, and Zainab Hariyanawala.
The World Health Organization has spelled out the extraordinary harm and suffering that FGM causes. This includes pain so severe that it can cause shock and trauma; serious infections; urinary problems for life; scarring that makes urination, menstruation, intercourse, and childbirth forms of torture; inability to ever experience sexual pleasure; a fistula which leads to being ostracized and which requires surgery which may not be available; obstetrical complications; and to lifelong psychological post-traumatic stress disorder.
Despite all the understandable outrage and fears about how this ruling will be seen, the decision itself is not really about the epidemic, harmful, and sometimes lethal nature of FGM. It is only concerned with the provisions of the United States Constitution which the prosecution had argued that Congress had the authority to pass a law banning FGM.
I first learned about FGM in the mid-1970s when Dr. Diana Russell and Nicole Van den Ven organized the first-ever Tribunal in Brussels concerning Crimes Against Women. I learned more about FGM in 1979 when Fran Hosken published The Hosken Report, in which she documented the pervasiveness of this plague.
I saw how Hosken’s work was attacked by Arab and African women who felt that eliminating or modifying this atrocity was their job, and did not belong to a white Western woman; that exposing their shame would harm, not aid their desire to abolish this barbaric custom. Egyptian feminist Nawal el-Sadawii revealed that she had been genitally mutilated and crusaded against the practice. African American feminist Alice Walker spent many years documenting and exposing this practice in Africa. In the 21st century, Somali-born American Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author and advocate, has been the most visible crusader against this practice.
However, based on this recent decision, there is no federal remedy available to ban this torturous practice.
According to the Court, in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 566, (1995) the Supreme Court ruled that the “federal government has no 'plenary police power'” and in United States v. Bond 572 U.S. at 858 (2014) that “federalism concerns demand that this division of authority between federal and state governments be respected.”
Thus, the Court found that Congress could not enact this law under the “Necessary and Proper Clause or the Commerce Clause.”
The Court said that Congress cannot enact a ban on FGM based on any treaties the United States had entered into. FGM does not constitute interstate commerce such that Congress could enact such a ban. FGM is not related to commerce between the States, i.e. it does not have a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce. The court found that the prosecution had failed to show that FGM is an economic or commercial activity or that there is an interstate market for FGM (for example, as opposed to the “multi-billion-dollar interstate markets for marijuana and pornography”).
The Court held that FGM is a “local criminal activity” which the States, not the United States Congress, must regulate.
Of course, the practice of FGM is global, not local, and usually involves payment.
But here is the Court’s reasoning: The Supreme Court has stated that “(a) criminal act committed wholly within a State ‘cannot be made an offense against the United States, unless it (has) some relation to the execution of a power of Congress or to some other matter within the jurisdiction of the United States.’ “Bond, 572, U.S. at 854(quoting United States v Fox, 95 U.S. 670, 672 (1878).
The Court cites a particularly relevant case (United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000)) in which a woman who alleged rape sued under the federal Violence Against Women Act (“VAWA”); in so doing, she created a “private right of action for victims of ‘crimes of violence’ motivated by gender.” The district court, upheld by the Fourth Circuit and ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court dismissed her claim, noting the “importance of the fact that the VAWA did not regulate economic activity. While we may not adopt a categorical rule against aggregating the effects of any noneconomic activity in order to decide these cases, thus far in our nation’s history our cases have upheld Commerce Clause regulation of intrastate activity only where that activity is economic in nature.”
In another case the Court cites, (Norton v. Ashcroft 298 F. 3D 547 (6th Cir. 2002)), anti-abortion protestors were found guilty under the Commerce Clause because abortion services are both national and commercial and forced closings of clinics via blocking access and persuading doctors not to provide services, etc. did have “direct economic effects.”
Although Congress can definitely regulate health care, the Court rejected the prosecutor’s argument that FGM is an “illegal form of health care.” The Court states that: “FGM is a form of physical assault, not anything approaching a healthcare service. The cases the government cites in this section of its brief dealt with abortion services and healthcare generally... which bear no resemblance to the crime of mutilating girls’ genitalia.”
Each state has the authority to ban or criminalize activities including FGM (as well as other crimes). Twenty-seven states have done so. Michigan did so but only after this suit was brought.
Interestingly, in 1996, Fauziya Kasinga, in flight from being genitally mutilated, obtained asylum in the United States on the grounds that FGM constituted "persecution." And yet, there is no asylum for girls who are already living in our country.
Has Congress failed to protect girls and women by passing a law which this Court found is not constitutionally enforceable? Did Congress exceed its authority in having passed legislation which may be the province of each state? Or is the Court’s reasoning faulty?
One may certainly criticize the Court’s belief that this issue concerns only the nine girls involved in this particular lawsuit. Surely, the Court must know that FGM is a secret, hidden practice, sometimes carried out via a visit to the home country, but increasingly performed in the United States. In 2004, the African Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital reported 227,887 girls and women at risk in United States, with 62,519 under 18. This increase can be attributed to increases in total immigration.
According to Hirsi Ali's latest report (2018), these nine girls are “among the estimated 513,000 women and girls in the U.S. who have been or are at risk of being held down and their genitals cut, typically without anesthetic.” Granted, the larger number of victims and the at-risk population were not before the Court.
In addition, Dr. Donna Hughes, an expert in sex trafficking, pointed out that pimps have been arrested and tried based on their use of a cellphone in sex trafficking cases. It is unknown whether these mothers used cellphones. Dr. Hughes led me to a federal law (18 U.S. Code 2421) concerning transportation: “Whoever knowingly transports any individual in interstate or foreign commerce... with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense... shall be fined or imprisoned.” However, the Court ruled that FGM is not a “sexual act.” While true, it is an act which profoundly effects or rather impedes any future sexual act.
The only remedy that remains is a state-based law.
Are we now looking at “safe” states and “unsafe” states in terms of childhood abuse? What about those parents who will travel to “unsafe” states in order to have this procedure carried out—as they did in this case? Has the prosecution failed girls and women by bringing this suit under grounds that were likely to fail?
While the prosecution is considering an appeal, this group of offenders cannot be re-charged for the same “crimes.”
Assuming that FGM is a form of child abuse, and one that may even rise to the level of lifelong torture, there is still no constitutional remedy at hand. According to one lawyer who prefers to remain anonymous, “the federal laws on torture apply to the CIA and armed forces and the like and not to private citizens. In other words, they are concerned with government actors so we ensure they don’t torture people in our name.”
Whether FGM is understood to be a religious or a tribal custom, like polygamy, child marriage, normalized wife-and-daughter beating, incest, and human sacrifice (honor killing or femicide), it has no place in the United States.
Clearly, each of the remaining American states must be persuaded to pass a ban and must then actually enforce it. In a recently-released report, The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation and the Quilliam Foundation recommended just this.
In addition, the Report recommended “training frontline service providers,” “enforcing mandatory reporting” of FGM, “funding education and outreach for at-risk communities” and giving up the “misguided political correctness around condemning cultural and religious practices... which harm women and girls.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Not The Smartest, And Democrats Need To Stop Trying To Squelch People Calling It Out
by Brandon Morse
We’re not allowed to make fun of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, says the left, even in her most insane moments.
Getting up in arms over people on the right making fun of Ocasio-Cortez is fast becoming the latest talking point, and attacking the Democrat’s newest sweetheart from New York is just bad form.
The problem is that the right makes fun of the “democratic socialist” because she cannot get in front of a camera or sit down at a keyboard without rattling off something either patently ridiculous or straight up stupid. It’s gotten so bad that she’s become a meme.
The folks at Townhall compiled seven of the most ridiculous things Ocasio-Cortez has ever said, including how defeating global warming will be comparable to defeating Nazi Germany and how electing Democrats equals ending slavery, which history disagrees with to a great degree.
While these seven examples are great, they’re a drop in the bucket. It seems that Ocasio-Cortez comes out with something stupid to say nearly every day. It wasn’t long ago that she was comparing members of the Honduran migrant caravan to those who suffered through the Holocaust. Recently, the young Democrat thought she had nailed the Pentagon on needless spending that could have been directed toward her loony “Medicare for all” scheme, only to have economic experts AND HER OWN FOLLOWERS tell her to cool it with the reckless stupidity.
By the way, she still can’t tell us how she’d pay for her Medicare scheme and the free college for all on top of that, but what she can do is deliver the largest bowl of word salad you’ve ever seen.
I can cut Ocasio-Cortez a break or two here and there. She’s new to the scene, very young, and obviously kept the company of people with about as much common sense as a weathered brick. The problem is that she hasn’t learned from her mistakes. She continues to get in front of cameras and tweet ridiculous things out, and even doubles down on them when called out.
Not only is that a sign of someone who is not all that intelligent, but it’s also a sign of immaturity. Everyone gets things wrong and isn’t knowledgeable about whole a lot of things about this globe we live on, including yours truly. Ignorance is not stupidity. Stupidity is the choice to stay ignorant and act on that ignorance. Ocasio-Cortez does this like it’s her job, which it might actually be given the fact that her tweets generate such support that I wonder if the Democrats allow it because a stupid vote generated by stupidly generated outrage is still a vote.
Hilariously, if Ocasio-Cortez was on the right, then the left would be having a field day with talking about how stupid and ignorant she is.
They took every measure to see to it that every flaw and gaffe from Sarah Palin was highlighted in order to paint her as the dumbest woman alive. They even attributed a quote to her that she didn’t even say in the form of Tina Fey’s satirical SNL caricature of Palin and her “I can see Russia from my house” line. Interestingly, the left actually bought that Palin had said it and actually used the line as proof of how Republicans were stupid.
George W. Bush was consistently hailed as a moron as the leftist media, from the news to Hollywood, bashed him over his gaffes and his down-home way of speaking ad nauseam. In reality, as former Bush staffer Keith Hennessy would describe telling his students in a superb 2013 article, Bush was usually the smartest guy in the room capable of discerning complicated matters and problem-solving so quickly it would make your head spin.
Dan Quayle misspelled potato once, and you would have thought he was the stupidest man alive by the media’s telling.
For the left, the thought that Republicans are stupid is a default setting. The leftist media in all its forms will do whatever it can to reinforce that fact, even when the person they’re painting as moronic is an intelligence beyond any of them. Meanwhile, they’re only too happy to ignore the idiotic things coming from their own party.
Ocasio-Cortez is one of those things they are purposefully ignoring.
If you were to ask me, the left knows damn good and well that their darling is every bit as foolish and asinine as Republicans claim she is, but so are many of their voters. If Ocasio-Cortez is good at one thing, it’s attracting the youth who know about as much as she does in regards to everything she talks ignorantly about. The amount of likes and retweets that she gets on even her most ridiculous Twitter posts is enough to make you want to take the first settlement shuttle to Mars.
So the Democrats will stand by silently and hope that no one in her voting group notices how unintelligent she is, and bank on those who do notice to generate enough outrage to the point of people defending her purely out of spite. This won’t sustain, however. Eventually, Ocasio-Cortez is going to drag the entire party down with her, and Democrats will wish they had distanced themselves from her from the get-go.
They should probably just give up the facade now to save face in the future.
Border Crisis Continues To Burn While GOP Fiddles
Our friend Katie Pavlich reported in a recent article for Townhall that some 90,000 illegal aliens have come to America since the caravan formed in October.
And despite what CNN’s Jim Acosta and other Left Wing media figures would like Americans to believe, while the situation in Tijuana, Mexico continues to deteriorate as thousands of illegal aliens wait to gain access to the United States, the border crisis is also growing along many other sectors of the border.
Ms. Pavlich reports this week in Yuma, Arizona, a number of individuals were caught dropping children over the border fence.
"We have a challenging and still potentially volatile situation in Tijuana. We've got well over 7,000 migrants there. They're well organized and brought to the border by a group and we told they would be able to cross easily into the U.S. to present an asylum claim. That is not the case," U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in an interview Tuesday morning. "We do see individuals trying to cross illegally in the San Diego sector, we are addressing that activity and then of course you saw the scenes of the family literally dropping children over the fence. That was in the Yuma Sector in Arizona, also interdicted and apprehended by Border Patrol agents."
Fox News reports border patrol agents in the Yuma Sector said they detained 654 people – most reportedly being family units or unaccompanied minors from Guatemala – in just two days last month.
Officials said the groups of illegal immigrants are not believed to be associated with the large caravan of mostly Central American migrants that have prompted the military deployment.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said Wednesday a group of 55 Central Americans waded across the Colorado River near Yuma and surrendered to agents after walking around vehicle barriers in the area.
CBP said apprehensions in the Yuma Sector are up more than 150 percent compared to the last fiscal year at this time. More than 3,600 people were apprehended in the month of October.
"Since the caravan formed in mid-October, we've seen 90,000 people come to our border. Eighty-five percent of those crossing illegally between ports of entry and all lured by the fact that our legal framework has huge gaps that create the opportunity to stay in the U.S. while awaiting a court hearing even if they don't a lawful permission or protection claim," Commissioner McAleenan said according to Ms. Pavlich’s report. "It's a huge challenge that we need to work with Congress to address...We've got criminal organizations profiting off of vulnerable families, charging $5000-$7000 per person. That's a $2.5 billion business of exploitation and we've got to stop it."
Some border wall construction is being done, such as at San Diego, two miles of wall in Calexico, California and 20 miles of border wall in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and where it has been completed illegal aliens are not being dropped over the fence.
Trump’s new wall replaces the old one that stretched only 8-to-10-feet-high with metal fencing that was built in the 1990s out of scrap metal and re purposed steel plates. The old rusty border wall has proven to be no match for modern day drug smugglers and human traffickers says Jeroslyn Johnson of Hollywood unlocked.com.
Ms. Johnson reports, the U.S. Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector is reportedly one of the most active in the nation. Last year, more than 26,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in addition to nearly 11,000 pounds of marijuana and 3,000 pounds of cocaine that were seized.
“The construction of this new substantial wall will improve overall border security, the safety and effectiveness of Border Patrol agents, the safety of the public, and will enhance the atmosphere for business and commerce in the area,” Rodney Scott, the Chief Patrol Agent for the San Diego Sector said according to Ms. Horn’s report.
Mitch McConnell has already washed his hands of any responsibility for getting the Wall funded, saying it’s up to Trump “to do a deal with the Democrats,” and telling reporters in Louisville, “I think that’s the path to getting a signature and avoiding a government shutdown.”
President Trump has made it clear that funding and building the wall on our southern border is his most important unfulfilled campaign pledge. And his supporters – that is 80 to 90 percent of Republican voters – expect Congress to act to fulfill that pledge.
We urge readers and friends to contact their Senators and Representatives today to tell them not to waste the Lame Duck. This is the last opportunity Republicans have to fund the Wall before radical Far-Left Democrats takeover the House and impose gridlock on President Trump’s conservative agenda. The toll-free Capitol Switchboard is (1-866-220-0044) call TODAY.
Banned in #MeToo Era: ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,’ Other Classics
Liberal extremists want these tunes silenced — but other people are cranking up the volume this holiday season
By Michele Blood 
The risqué lyrics of “Santa Baby” — originally written for Eartha Kitt (shown above right) — suggest that women must please Santa sexually in order to remain on his “nice list,” according to some liberal snowflakes.
And “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” a wildly successful hit for Mariah Carey (above left), sends single women the terribly disempowering message that they don’t want material things for Christmas, according to some grinches. Instead, these women want only the loving companionship of a man.
People who spot animal living in appalling conditions know what they have to do.
But wait — isn’t that actually more what Christmas is really about? Eschewing the commercialization of the holiday and focusing instead on relationships?
Things have gotten a little crazy out there, clearly.
Citing “complaints from listeners,” San Francisco Bay Area radio station KOIT pulled the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from its playlist earlier this week, following the lead of Star 102 in Cleveland, Ohio.
But San Franciscans still have a chance to save the beloved 1944 Christmas classic.
“I’m very open to putting it [back] in,” Brian Figula, KOIT’s program director, told San Francisco’s KPIX TV station on Monday. “If they say we need to play it, we will. If not, we won’t.”
After receiving hundreds of social media comments and emails demanding the reinstatement of the duet in all its forms, on Tuesday Figula said he’s leaving it to listeners to decide.
96.5 koit ✔@965KOIT
Should we place “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” back into the KOIT playlist? Vote now: http://koit.com/vote
7:07 PM - Dec 4, 2018
The fate of the song will be announced this coming Monday morning, December 10. If the results of KOIT’s poll suggest listeners want the song back, well, the station will comply.
What’s the problem with it, anyway?
Opponents of the song say it promotes a rape culture, citing the playful and oft-misinterpreted “what’s in this drink” line. Their flawed interpretation of the song is one in which a man is inappropriately pressuring a woman to engage with him romantically — against her express wishes.
Cooler heads recognize that the song depicts a playful and romantic scene featuring a dating couple’s mutual flirtation, an interaction welcomed by both the man and the woman.
And the icing on the cake for this interpretation is that the man and woman sing the final line in unison.
But some folks won’t have it, insisting the beloved tune is offensive and pushes a dangerous narrative in 2018 that will somehow result in a spate of holiday rapes.
Last year’s mood-killing and politically correct retread of the Frank Loesser duet received an icy reception despite its attempt to strip the song of its original story and sub in a more sterile narrative in which “consent” plays a primary role.
The original holiday duet famously appeared in the movie “Neptune’s Daughter” in 1949 sung by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban.
It has been covered by duos Dolly Parton and Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé and Idina Menzel, Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon Levitt, and many others in recent years, much to fans’ delight.
“If the left-wing grinches have their way, you may have to stop singing all the songs you love to sing,” said host Laura Ingraham on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday night.
“ABC and others are trying to create their own index of prohibited Christmas songs,” said Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo.
“Songs reflect an era,” Arroyo noted. “All the songs from this era were about innuendo, but they weren’t gratuitous … unlike the age [in which] we find ourselves.”
Innocent boys, if listeners followed the songs, could be subjected to receiving toy guns or hammers, and little girls might receive — gasp! — dolls that laugh and cry or open and shut their eyes for Christmas.
“This is called human experience. It’s what songs are meant to capture — love, sex, desire.”
“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and “Up on the Housetop,” for example, apparently promote gender-stereotyped gift-giving for the most vulnerable among us.
Innocent boys, if listeners followed the songs, could be subjected to receiving toy guns or hammers, and little girls might receive — gasp! — dolls that laugh and cry or open and shut their eyes for Christmas.
The horror!
G’ day…Ciao…
Helen and Moe Lauzier
Thus Article
That's an article
This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.
You are now reading the article with the link address https://capitalstories.blogspot.com/2018/12/www_6.html
0 Response to " "
Post a Comment