Remember Corporal Louis LeBeau of Hogan's Heroes?

Summing up his Holocaust experiences: "The whole experience was a complete nightmare, the way they treated us, what we had to do to survive. We were less than animals. Sometimes I dream about those days. I wake up in a sweat terrified for fear I'm about to be sent away to a concentration camp. But I don't hold a grudge because that's a great waste of time. Yes, there's something dark in the human soul. For the most part human beings are not very nice. That's why when you find those who are, you cherish them." Robert Clary, above, right,

Actor, author, survivor: the resilience of Robert Clary

. . . "A tattoo on his left arm left him marked as prisoner A5714. Clary was later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Upon his liberation from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, Clary learned that 12 other members of his immediate family, including his parents, had been sent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and did not survive the Holocaust. Three of his siblings had not been deported and instead survived the Nazi occupation of France.

"Clary reflects on how he survived the Holocaust, revealing that he sang to SS soldiers at Buchenwald every week with an accordionist. He believes that singing and entertaining along with his youth and good health allowed him to make it through the ordeal. Clary also notes that due to his age he did not fully understand the severity of the concentration camps.

"His experiences during the Holocaust and the loss of his loved ones affected him deeply. What especially troubles him is that he feels that he and others in his situation were not viewed as human beings by the Nazis, and that they were usually treated as even less than animals. Upon arriving at the Buchenwald camp, Clary and his fellow prisoners had to spend the first night in a shower room. They were terrified that they would actually be gassed to death since Nazi SS officers often used fake showerheads in concentration camp gassing chambers. Clary did not receive food for his first eight days at the camp, and he and other prisoners slept on top of one another only to wake up next to the corpses of those who did not make it through the night."

NEW RULES? TRUMP’S EPIC STRUGGLE WITH THE LEFT

PowerLineBlog  "It is evident that the left, with the active cooperation of the news media, wishes to drive Trump from office. Nothing will sate the left or get them to calm down into a recognizably responsible opposition force.

"And why shouldn’t the left think this can succeed? It has worked before. They bagged two presidents in succession back in the 1960s and 1970s—Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. “In a sense,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote of Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run again in 1968, “he was the first American President to be toppled by a mob. No matter that it was a mob of college professors, millionaires, flower children, and Radcliffe girls.” The night Johnson announced his decision, leftists took to the streets to sing “We have overcome.”

"Now the leftist mob is larger and even more ferocious. The risk for Trump is that, like Nixon, he will commit some dreadful blunder that, as Nixon put it himself later, hands the left a sword that they can run right through him." . . .

 ". . .from the very end of FDR’s speech:

The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

"Sounds just like Trump doesn’t it? No wonder the left is freaking out. He’s using the playbook they wrote, but adding a new chapter of his own in all caps and boldface type. Sad! for the left."

Justice Gorsuch ...Updated

A Supreme Successor to Justice Scalia  . . . "In his grief over the death of a justice he deeply admired and emulated, Judge Gorsuch could hardly have imagined the series of events that would lead to his being selected today to fill the Scalia vacancy. And while he has rightly recognized that no one could ever replace Justice Scalia, there are strong reasons to expect Justice Gorsuch to be an eminently worthy successor to the great justice. 

"Gorsuch is a brilliant jurist and dedicated originalist and textualist. He thinks through issues deeply. He writes with clarity, force, and verve. And his many talents promise to give him an outsized influence on future generations of lawyers." . . .

Neil Gorsuch: A Worthy Heir to Scalia  . . . "That Judge Gorsuch’s judicial philosophy is similar to Justice Scalia’s is evident from a tribute the former gave after the latter’s death. In that tribute, Gorsuch summarized and endorsed Scalia’s method of legal interpretation:" . . .

5 Things You Should Know About Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch  "On Tuesday, President Donald Trump nominated appellate judge Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court. Trump fulfilled his pledge to select a nominee "in the mold of Antonin Scalia," for Gorsuch seems cut from exactly the same cloth.

"Like Scalia, Gorsuch is both a texualist and an originalist — he interprets legal provisions as their words were originally understood, and not according to doctrines like the "Living Constitution." This is important, and points to how he will rule on pivotal cases if confirmed by the Senate." . . .

Will Trump's Supreme Court battle go nuclear?  . . . "The president has acknowledged that he expects McConnell to overturn the filibuster for a Supreme Court nominee if the Democrats continue to be "obstructionists," while Senator McConnell for his part has said he does not plan to kill the filibuster but has also said he is "going to get this nominee confirmed.' " . . .

Given that McConnell paved the way for a Trump nominee by successfully blocking Obama's attempt to replace Antonin Scalia after Scalia's death last February, McConnell gets some credit as a master Senate tactician and thus the benefit of the doubt in this case.

UPDATES, with much thanks to Lucianne:
Former Sotomayor law clerk, and a Kagan attorney praise Gorsuch
. . . "As Gorsuch was nominated by President Trump, his nomination earned high marks from multiple people who clerked for Gorsuch on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals before working for justices President Obama selected to serve on the Supreme Court."

From Law Nuze: Here’s Why It Would Be Very Stupid for Dems to Block Neil Gorsuch
. . . "But as fun as it would be to watch Democrats tantrum their way into blocking Judge Neil Gorsuch‘s Supreme Court nomination, it’s a bad idea and would follow in the Republicans dangerous precedent." . . .

NY Times: Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch   It is accompanied by a counterpoint on why liberals should oppose Gorsuch.

The selective will of spontaneous rioters

Muslims Occupy Dallas Airport Baggage Claim  "I'd like for TSA to explain why it's okay for Muslims to take over a baggage claim area in a major American airport -- while the rest of us are getting manhandled and groped for having a bottle of water in our carry-on luggage." . . . 

Former President Obama Supports National Temper Tantrums
. . . "These next four years are going to be so.freaking.long if we have to hear from Mr. “get to the back of the bus” every time a few ill-informed protesters whip out their posterboard and markers."

Remember the crowds protesting when Obama banned immigrants?

"Crowds, crowds, crowds!  Or, in some cases, are they a mob of useful idiots?  As Ed Lasky noted, the hysterical reaction of the anti-Trump crowd, erroneously called civil and human rights defenders, to President Trump (R)'s executive ordertemporarily banning visitors and immigrants from a few Muslim-majority terrorist countries (not a ban on Muslims) is hypocritical.  (The Women's March and the airport mobbers all look alike – all sound and fury, signifying nothing but moral narcissism.)

"Below is a photo from the massive crowds in Chicago protesting former (thank goodness!) President Barack Hussein Obama (D)'s 2011 order banning Iraqi refugees for six months.

"Or maybe this is the large, angry crowd reacting to Obama's decision in the final weeks of his administration banning desperate Cubans fleeing failing Communist Cuba from entering the U.S. without a visa." . . .

Why Johnny Is Only “Personally Opposed” to Abortion

Reasoning: . . . "Presently, I support the legality of abortion not because I am Libertarian but because I am libertine. I am sexually active and unwilling to take responsibility for my own conduct. I hope that if I impregnate a woman who knows I am personally pro-life she will just slip away and take care of the problem without me knowing about it."         

Mike Adams

"Last week, a pro-life reader from Pennsylvania wrote to me in frustration. As a young man, he is finding that many of his peers are young libertarian males who say they are “personally opposed” to abortion but nonetheless “pro choice” as a matter of public policy. My frustrated pro-life reader wanted to know how best to engage the contradiction between being personally pro life and politically pro choice. The answer, as usual, lies in learning how to ask the right questions in order to probe the inconsistency. When dealing with this particular contradiction, five questions are usually in order:

"1. As a preliminary matter, you have to ask the personally pro-life pro choicer (hereafter: pro-life/PC), “Why are you personally opposed to abortion?' ” . . .

If only Obama had held up Muslim-dominated countries immigration instead. It would have been OK

Jewish press

Protester To Daily Signal: Obama's Temporary Iraqi Ban In 2011 Was Fine Because I Love Him

Interviewer: In 2011 President Obama banned people from Iraq—did that not concern you?

Protester: No because I loved President Obama. pic.twitter.com/q2ehPVUCwh

              — The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) January 30, 2017
So did Obama.

Is It a ‘Muslim Ban’?  . . . "Yet the only reason there is an EO is the threat posed by sharia-supremacism, which we inexactly refer to as “radical Islam.” You can’t have radical Islam without Islam. Therefore, the people the EO seeks to exclude are, of necessity, Muslims — not all Muslims, of course, but a significant subset of them nonetheless." . . .

Trump's orders on immigrants bring hypocritical and hysterical uproar

"Did Lady Liberty cry over the Americans mangled and killed over the years by Muslim immigrants (San Bernardino massacre, Boston Marathon bombings and other murders)?"

Ed Lasky  . . . "Lady Liberty is shedding a tear, Democrats declare.  Absurd comparisons are made between this temporary order and Roosevelt’s exclusion of Jews facing genocide. This is not a permanent ban and is geared towards tightening vetting procedures that Barack Obama’s own security officials, FBI head James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, had declared, during his presidency, were weak and exposed Americans to peril. The outcry also ignored the fact that immigrant refugees into Europe have led to increased violence and murder and that ISIS has repeatedly boasted of its plans to infiltrate into America its killers via refugee resettlement programs." . . .

California Shouldn’t Secede from the U.S.; It should divide in two.

One's first reaction to this is often "good riddance".

John Fund at National Review  "Liberals used to hate secession, the notion that states could leave the Union as they did before the Civil War because they didn’t agree with the policies of the federal government. But with Donald Trump’s election, many California liberals suddenly have warm words for a budding ballot initiative that has just begun collecting signatures in order to place secession, or “Calexit,” on the ballot. At the height of the tea-party movement, Texas governor Rick Perry merely hinted at the thought that Texas might react to President Obama’s executive overreach by reclaiming its one-time status as an independent republic. " . . .

Now we read about a “virtual secession". 
. . . "Let the sprawling, diverse state divide up into two or more states to ease tensions between farmers and coastal types, defuse the war of ideology between Left and Right, and allow more policy experimentation."
. . . 
"Of course, it’s unlikely that California will ever be divided. It’s even more unlikely that it would cut its ties to the rest of the nation and become a separate country. But the debate on both ideas is healthy. To what extent should we let arbitrary political boundaries established many decades ago curb our imagination and prevent us from creative solutions to our problems?" . . .

Hoping to escape the oppression of left-wing California would be the citizens of the State of Jefferson  "The State of Jefferson just got one step closer to becoming a reality. On Tuesday California Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced that the secession proposal known as “Six Californians” could move forward and petitions be circulated for signatures.

"For Northern California to split from the rest of the state, State of Jefferson supporters would have to garner at least 800,000 valid signatures and be placed upon the ballot for vote. Even if the Six Californians movement wins on election day, supporters still face an uphill secession battle." . . .

You can buy your own Jefferson flag!

Oh, one more thing:  We will have a real World Series if California secedes  . . . "Second, California may find out that all of those military bases, and the jobs that they create, will start packing east the minute California leaves the rest of us*.

. . . 

"So it won't happen.  California will remain a state, and that is a good thing for them and the rest of us.

"However, one good thing about California being a foreign country is that an L.A. Dodgers vs Texas Rangers final would literally be a World Series.  The winner will finally be the actual world champ."

* And the launch sites at Vandenberg Air Force Base?

How to Live Under an Unqualified President

Haven't we been doing that for the past eight years? TD

John Piper

. . . "The linking of the Christian church with the ruling political regime is not essential to the life and fruitfulness of Christian faith. On the contrary, such linking has more often proven to corrupt the essential spirit of Christ, who typically uses the weak things of the world to shame the strong (1 Corinthians 1:27), and whose life-saving weapons do not consist in media monopolies, commanding wealth, or civil laws.

"Followers of Christ are not Americans first. Our first allegiance is to Jesus, and then to the God-inspired word of Scripture, the Bible. This is our charter, not the U.S. Constitution." . . .

PJ Media commentary on the Piper column  . . . "Finally, America's founders emphasized that virtues make a republican form of government possible. It is important for an American leader to exemplify those virtues — and Trump's character certainly does not.

But this is no excuse for Christians to protest and wave "Not My President" signs, Piper added. Far from it. Even though Trump is morally unqualified for the presidency, he is still president, and Christians should respect his authority and pray for his good.

. . . "Some Trump supporters have conceded the president's bad moral character, but argued that it doesn't make a difference for public leadership. They've said they weren't looking for a choirboy. But John Piper laid out concrete reasons why morality matters for leadership." . . .

A Free Media, Unfettered by Integrity

Liberal Daily Beast blames ‘white supremacists’ for Quebec mosque shooting, then retracts  

"Notice that the name on the tweet is “Reuter,” not “Reuters.”  How careless does one have to be to not notice this obvious evidence of a fake news operation? "

The Beast even names names and publishes photos of those -they hoped- were the perpetrators. But....

. . . "In the eagerness to confirm a narrative that would indirectly blame President Trump for an outbreak of anti-Islam violence in the wake of his seven-country entry pause, evidently, no one at The Daily Beast noticed.  Actually investigating whether this was true, or whether Reuters has reported it anywhere else, was a bridge too far for the Beasts who publish daily “news” (including fake news). " . . .

Wait!...What?...Local media reports identify two Quebec mosque shooters, one with first name ‘Mohamed’  "Given the volume of fake news flying around about the Quebec mosque shooters, one must be cautious until the Canadian authorities speak out on the record.  Nonetheless, given the reports blaming “white supremacists” and President Trump for the shooting, it is worthwhile considering what local outlets in Quebec and the U.K. Daily Mail are reporting.

"From the Montreal Gazette:

According to Radio-Canada and LCN, the two suspects in Sunday’s terror attacks in Quebec City are Alexandre Bissonnette and Mohamed Khadir.

"The Daily Mail:

Two students including one of 'Moroccan origin' have been arrested for the slaughter of six people at a Quebec mosque on Sunday which came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned Donald Trump's Muslim travel ban. 

Witnesses said one shooter yelled “Allahu akbar!”

 The media's Trump fail . . . "Even the media’s corporate overlords seem strangely indifferent to the market forces that come from insulting half their potential customers and seeing their product approval drop to the level of exploding cell phones." . . .

Why Hollywood as We Know It Already Over...

Vanity Fair via Drudge

"With theater attendance at a two-decade low and profits dwindling, the kind of disruption that hit music, publishing, and other industries is already reshaping the entertainment business."

"A few months ago, the vision of Hollywood’s economic future came into terrifyingly full and rare clarity. I was standing on the set of a relatively small production, in Burbank, just north of Los Angeles, talking to a screenwriter about how inefficient the film-and-TV business appeared to have become. Before us, after all, stood some 200 members of the crew, who were milling about in various capacities, checking on lighting or setting up tents, but mainly futzing with their smartphones, passing time, or nibbling on snacks from the craft-service tents. When I commented to the screenwriter that such a scene might give a Silicon Valley venture capitalist a stroke on account of the apparent unused labor and excessive cost involved in staging such a production—which itself was statistically uncertain of success—he merely laughed and rolled his eyes. “You have no idea,” he told me." . . .

How Obama and Kerry Betrayed Israel at the UN

"John Kerry insists that the U.S. abstention was motivated by friendship for Israel, but by weakening Israel as it does, the abstention is more a violation than a fulfillment of the obligations of friendship." We did it because we love you?

Joseph S. Spoerl  "The "United Nations announced the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlements east of the 1949 armistice line, that is, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (including the Old City with its ancient Jewish Quarter). Passage of this resolution was only possible because of the deliberate refusal of the U.S. to exercise the veto power it wields as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.  Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that in refusing to veto the resolution, the Obama administration was simply conforming to long-standing U.S. policy in favor of the “two-state solution” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a policy that has also included U.S. condemnation of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. In fact, however, UNSC Resolution 2334 is a departure from past precedent, both for the Security Council and for the U.S., and one that creates big problems for Israel. Moreover, the Trump administration will probably not be able to reverse this new state of affairs, since the other permanent members of the Security Council would presumably use their veto power to protect Resolution 2334. It is therefore important to understand the impact of this resolution." . . .

The UN Security Council is now on record as stating that Israeli occupation of these sites “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” Palestinian negotiators can now use this small patch of earth to extract much bigger concessions from Israel. Imagine a Palestinian negotiating team saying to their Israeli counterparts, “Oh, so you want us to give you the Western Wall. Well, how much is it worth to you?”