Plan to split California into 3 may be on November’s ballot

Legal Insurrection

Even more California to kick around!

"Last October, I reported that tech billionaire Tim Draper had organized a petition drive to get a vote to split California into 3 states (Northern California, Southern California, and California) on the ballot.

"Draper’s team has managed to get enough signatures to qualify for a vote.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper, who authored an initiative to break up the Golden State, says it has received enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Draper says the initiative, which he calls the “CAL 3” has more than 600,000 signatures and will be submitted to election officials next week.

The initiative needed signatures from 365,880 registered voters – 5 percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2014 election – to qualify for the ballot.

“This is an unprecedented show of support on behalf of every corner of California to create three state governments that emphasize representation, responsiveness, reliability and regional identity,” Draper said.

"The proposed CAL3 plan partitions California into northern and southern regions, with a strip along the coast that would encompass the Los Angeles basin.

"The regions were selected based on their “leading industries. For example, Northern California has wine production and and forestry, Southern California focuses on financial services and trade, and “California” includes tourism and motion pictures.*

"The next hurdle Draper’s team has got to jump is the signature validation process." . . .

*Obama's BFFs. I can see him buying a home there.

Anne Frank is being dejudaized and placed in the service of antisemitism. An UPDATE you may not believe!

That’s a great picture, isn’t it? In the front, you have Jewish Anne Frank next to crying Muslim children. In the background are the children’s screaming mothers in their hijabs. Interestingly, both mothers and children come from countries that have (a) driven out their Jews, (b) seek to destroy Israel, and (c) strongly advocate Jewish genocide.

Is it fair to say the Anne Frank Museum has been made JUDENREIN?












Bookworm Room

"Five years ago, I reported that the Left was erasing Anne Frank’s Jewishness. Since then, the Left has begun using her to support Israel’s destruction."

"This is a post that started back in 2013, when I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam for the first time in 23 years. Although I was impressed by the way in which the museum had been remodeled to make traffic flow more easily, I was distressed by the fact that the exclusively Jewish nature of Anne’s martyrdom (for that was what it was) was almost invisible.

"The museum consistently downplayed the fact that Anne wasn’t killed by random “hate.” Instead, she was killed very specifically because of the oldest, and extremely targeted, hatred — antisemitism. This is what I wrote in 2013:

The museum around the house focuses in tightly on Anne, her family, and her friends. It makes the Holocaust very personal but, by doing so, fails utterly to educate people about the Holocaust or fascism.At the end if the museum, there’s a room with very short videos, many of which are about special interest demands against a greater European culture that is not bowing to their dressing, immigration, or marriage requirements. The videos begin by focusing on a fictional young person with needs, and then, having personalized that need, gives a brief, shallow, fairly even-handed look at the issue, whether it’s veils in schools, forcing Christian civil servants to perform gay marriages, or allowing people to serve in the military while wearing religious garb.  

. . . "A little over a year ago, I learned about the Marxist takeover of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York, which Anne Frank’s father, Otto, founded in 1959. It’s an extremely long post, which I think is worth reading in its entirety, but I’ll quote it only selectively here:" . . . Full article

Get ready for this more than relevant update:

Anne Frank House banned Orthodox Jewish employee from wearing his skullcap at work

"A Jewish employee at Anne Frank House could not believe his ears when his bosses banned him from wearing a skullcap at work.

"Barry Vingerling turned up for work on his first day at the museum in Amsterdam and was told to take off his 'yarmulke'.*
"Anne Frank House is a writer's house and museum dedicated to a famous Jewish teenager who wrote a diary as she hid from the Nazis in World War II.

"The board of the Anne Frank Foundation finally concluded, after more than six months of discussions, that Mr Vingerling could wear his yarmulke."
"He said he was happy to hear he could finally wear his skullcap but still did not understand why the Anne Frank Foundation had made an issue out of it for so long.'I work in the house of Anne Frank, who had to hide because of her identity. In that same house I should hide my identity?' he said."

Also called a kippah

Mark Steyn had these thoughts after seeing "Chappaquiddick"

Mark Steyn "As I wrote a few days ago, I had minimal expectations of Chappaquiddick The Movie, which opened last week despite the best efforts of the Kennedy family and their various retainers and enablers. I have always been revolted by the fact that Ted, after killing Mary Jo Kopechne, did not have the decency to do a John Profumo and retire from public life for the rest of his days - and I was even more revolted by the way Massachusetts voters did not have the decency to impose that choice upon him.

"But utter contempt for your protagonist doesn't make for very interesting drama. So it is to the film's benefit that its director, writers and Jason Clarke in the lead role manage to locate enough humanity in the empty waddling husk of Teddy to make a compelling story. Mr Clarke is Australian, his director John Curran is American but has spent much of his career Down Under, and the screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan are two first-timers born a decade after Chappaquiddick and who'd apparently never heard the word until 2008. That combination of outsiders and neophytes may be one reason why this film is considerably more gripping and potent than a cookie-cutter limousine-liberal yawnfest like The Post.

"In the shorthand of history, Chappaquiddick is a stand-alone event, but it occurred, in fact, on the July weekend in 1969 that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon - and it arose from a reunion of the "Boiler Room Girls", the devoted young ladies who'd worked on Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign of the previous year. " . . .

Trump corrects a historic wrong by pardoning Lewis Libby

Thomas Lifson  "The level of partisan dishonesty that led to a wrongful conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby for lying to an independent counsel investigator probing the alleged leak of Valerie Plame's status as a CIA desk jockey lives on.  A shocking level of misinformation is being broadcast by purportedly reputable sources like the New York Daily News and Jake Tapper of CNN.  More on that below, but first, consider the malpractice that led to Libby's wrongful conviction in the first place.

"The best single source of information on the railroading of Libby is the work of Clarice Feldman here on American Thinker.  Based on her extraordinary work here, the Weekly Standard asked her to write up a comprehensive view, which she did in 2006.  Her lengthy article, "The case of the missing crime," is essential background reading to understand the magnitude of the injustice that befell Libby.  The entire operation of the investigation under Independent Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (who was appointed by none other than his close friend, James Comey!) rapidly became a witch hunt to get something on Vice President Cheney that could drive him from office.  The parallels to today's investigation by Robert Mueller are painfully obvious." . . .

The misrepresentations continue today.  The New York Daily News headlines: "Trump pardons Scooter Libby, Bush administration aide who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity."

Here is a screen grab, in case the Daily News attempts to hide its misreporting

"The kindest thing to say about this headline is that it is recklessly ignorant.  Libby was not the leaker.  By the time he was interviewed, it was known to Fitzpatrick that the leaker was Armitage.  Libby was never charged with being the leaker, either." . . .

. . . "I cannot forgive President George W. Bush's failure to fully pardon Libby, especially in the face of strong pressure from his vice president to do so.  Instead, he commuted the sentence, sparing Libby a prison term but leaving his name and professional standing as a lawyer ruined.  Over the years, as the perfidy of the case became clearer, Libby recovered some of his status.  But only a full pardon would suffice to correct the wrong, and President Trump has delivered that justice.  Of course, the financial losses are not restored, nor can the agony Libby experienced be undone." . . .

Trump’s Tomahawk Diplomacy in Syria

The National Interest

"As horrific and as unacceptable as the use of chemical weapons is, and as odious as Assad’s regime remains, the U.S. would not be using coercive force if there were not interests worthy to protect."

. . . "The ends of America’s strategy are clear. We can’t tolerate a return of the Caliphate. We can’t watch while Iran presses a dagger at Israel’s heart, risking a regional war. We don’t want the problems of Syria to bleed over and destabilize Iraq and Jordan. We don’t masses of refugees on the road again.

"Now the challenge for the Trump administration is to transition to a regional footprint that achieves those ends in a sustained manner over time. The strike should help give the U.S. the time and space to put that presence in place."

A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank’s research on issues of defense and foreign relations. 

On the bombing of Syria

Thomas Lifson: A ‘Goldilocks’ air strike on Syria  . . . "But so far, the strike on three targets in Syria appears to have been not too much, not too little, but just right to deliver the necessary message. Here is the official Pentagon map of the targets:" (Click to enlarge)

. . . "The first message is that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.  The huge “red Line” blunder of Obama has been corrected again. This is more than a do-gooder concern for humanity, even though that is what is being said, for the most part. If these weapons are used and not punished, they will used again and again. Not only can terrorists gain access by capturing them in Syria, chlorine is not that hard to fabricate. A poison gas attack on Israel or the United States is not out of the question.

"But there are other messages being delivered.

"The second one is to Russia:" . . .

. . . "The third message is to Kim Jong-un and the mullahs of Tehran:" . . .

Russia claims Syria air defences shot down 71 of 103 missile  "The Russian military has claimed that the Syrian air defences, whose most modern weapon is a three-decades-old Russian-supplied anti-aircraft system, shot down 71 of 103 missiles fired by the US and its allies, the UK and France.

"As further details began to emerge about the sites targeted by the US-led strikes, Col Gen Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military said the strikes had not caused any casualties and that Syrian military facilities suffered only minor damage

"Although it was not possible to verify the claims, the most up-to-date system that Moscow has supplied to the Syrian regime is the short range Pantsir S-1, which has an anti-missile capability." . . .

Mattis: Syria Strikes a ‘One-Time Shot,’ Further Operations Will Depend on Assad  . . . "While last year’s strikes were done unilaterally, and hit one target — a Syrian regime airfield that housed about 17 percent of its air force –  Dunford said Friday’s strikes were conducted with two allies on multiple sites and would “result in a long-term degradation of Syria’s capability to develop chemical weapons.”

“ 'Important infrastructure was destroyed. They will lose years of research and development data, specialized equipment, and expensive chemical weapons precursors,” he said." . . .

Click to enlarge

The Syrian War Is Actually Many Wars  . . . "The United States is in Syria mainly because of isis. At a recent event in Washington, the U.S. envoy to the anti-isis coalition Brett McGurk spelled this out: “We are in Syria to fight isis. That is our mission and our mission isn’t over, and we’re going to complete that mission.” More recently, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress that the United States was not there to take sides in the broader civil war." . . .

Syria's Assad vows to 'crush terrorism' after Western attack  Generally Assad and Putin refer to the anti-Assad forces as terrorists. Meaning those gassed by Assad. TD

How Will Moscow Respond to the Syria Strikes?
For now, the ball is in Moscow's court--and we will see what its response looks like.


Syrian air strikes LIVE: US, UK and France hit Assad's chemical weapons
This article repeats the claim that most missles were shot down.

"Syrian state TV has broadcast these images which it claims proves it shot down some missiles heading for targets in the country yesterday."

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows the damage of the
Syrian Scientific Research Center which was attacked by U.S., British and French military
strikes to punish President Bashar Assad for suspected chemical attack against civilians

Live from Damascus: Syrian TV covers the air raids
Pretty much the same opinion of President Trump as CNN and MSNBC.
. . . "Also at the channel’s website were some new political cartoons and after a search I discovered a whole page of them. The captions for each one, in Arabic, are on the side of the cartoons and can be translated online.

The cartoon at the top, and probably the most memorable one, was a caricature of President Donald Trump. The caption via Google’s translation service translates as “Terrorism ... To the dustbin of history.” “Brush artist Nidal_Khalil.' ”

Ortas

"The cartoons, which largely transcend language barriers, offer direct and telling insights into the official propaganda being issued in a hot spot on the other side of the world."

Obama’s anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism reigned at the IRS from 2010- 2017…

Phyllis Chesler

How one courageous proactive journalist took on the IRS over this issue - and won.

Chesler

 "After a “long, lonely and expensive seven year struggle,” one that she alone, on behalf of Z STREET bore, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the founder of Z STREET has just won a significant legal victory which grants her organization tax-exempt status and definitively exposes Obama’s IRS as obsessively anti-Israel.
Ironically, Marcus founded Z STREET in 2009 in order to “educate Americans about the Middle East and Israel’s defense against terror.”

"The Z Street application was at first delayed, then frozen, because the IRS claimed as a defense, that Israel was viewed as a “terrorist entity,” and a country “with terrorism.”

"Many of us suspected that Obama’s administration had politicized Homeland Security, the DOJ, the FBI, and the American relationship to the United Nations in ways that favored Islamism, Islamic terrorism, Palestine, Iran, and that demonized Zionism and Israel’s attempts at self-defense.

"Z STREET”s successful lawsuit exposes how the Obama administration, through its power to grant or withhold tax-exempt status to groups, politicized and corrupted a policy of even-handedness, transparency, and accountability at the IRS."
. . . 

. . . A: The legal process is an unwieldy, awkward tool for correcting injustice, but sometimes, if you stick to it long enough, it actually works!
Lowenthal-Marcus' recent article on the lawsuit appeared in the Wall Street Journal . . .

"Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology at City University of New York. She is a best-selling author, a legendary feminist leader, a retired psychotherapist and expert courtroom witness. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious, and human rights campaigns in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, and the Far East.  . . ."

Hollywood writers coach progressive candidates as left plots 2018 course

So Hollywood will not only shape our culture and morals, but our politics as well. So what's new?

McClatchy

"The nation’s capital was plunged into chaos this week, beset by Paul Ryan’s retirement, Donald Trump’s threats, and a raid on the home and office of the president’s personal lawyer.

"But removed from the tumult, a few hundred men and women were having a very different experience in a Washington hotel. Gathered for a candidate-training conference, these progressives were reveling in what they believe is the political moment that will vault the liberal movement into power not just in Washington but nationwide.

“ 'What you are doing is making a political revolution,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told the crowd, which rewarded him with uproarious applause throughout his speech. Many of the candidates in attendance count Sanders as their political hero, crediting his unexpectedly effective primary against Hillary Clinton with inspiring their own candidacy.

"The multi-day event, organized by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, drew 450 candidates – many of them running for office for the first time. Not surprisingly, with progressive energy sweeping the country, it was the largest such event the PCCC has ever held. (Last year’s gathering drew a then-record 300 candidates.)" . . .

US conducts missile strikes on Syria with Britain and France

American Military News 
Note: This article has been updated to reflect Secretary of Defense Mattis’ and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dunford comments on the Syrian missile strikes.
"Friday night President Trump addressed the nation in a televised news conference announcing that the United States was carrying out a strategic strikes on Syria with Britain and France as he was speaking.
"The strikes, which contained nearly double the amount of missiles as the 2017 Syrian strike, is in response to Syria’s dictator Assad gassing entire families to death Saturday night in Douma and East Ghouta.
"Groups in the area, which put Assad’s chemical gas attack death toll at more than 70, said many residents were hiding in cellars, suffocating from poison gas.
"There are images and videos emerging of explosions in Damascus, the Syrian capital." . . .

#BREAKING - First photo of #Syrian air defense missile launched against #US, #UK and #French cruise missiles striking the capital #Damascus. Via @AlSuraEnglish

Haley to Russia on Syria’s Chemical Weapons: ‘We Know Who Did This’
"If Russia kept its promise to remove chemical weapons from Syria, “we would not be here today.' ”

Efforts To Minimize Civilian Casualties In Syria Appear Successful  "Looks like there is some additional good news from the airstrikes in Syria tonight: not only were the strikes we conducted in coordination with Britain and France successful in hitting their selected targets, early local sources are reporting no civilian casualties (disregarding of course the obvious Russian/Syrian allied propaganda outlets).

"In a briefing from the Pentagon earlier tonight, Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis described the avoidance of civilian casualties as a top priority.

“ 'We did very close analysis,” said Mattis. “We did everything we could, in our intelligence assessment and our planning, to minimize to the maximum degree possible any chance of civilian casualties. We are very much aware this is difficult to do in a situation like this.' ” . . .

Comey Didn't Tell Trump the Infamous Dossier Was Financed By Hillary Clinton

Katie Pavlich   "In the fall of 2016 just before the presidential election, then FBI Director James Comey informed Republican candidate Donald Trump they had received "materials" alleging salacious misconduct by the business man. Comey warned the candidate the information could be used as blackmail.

"Those "materials" Comey referred to was the now infamous and fake Russian dossier put together by British spy Christopher Steele. Steele was paid for the "opposition research" by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. 
"When Comey briefed Trump, he knew where the funding for the dossier came from but failed to disclose those facts at the time.
"Did you tell him that the Steele dossier had been financed by his political opponents?" ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos asked in an interview set to air this weekend.
" 'No. I didn’t," Comey responded. " 'But did he have a right to know that?" Stephanopoulos followed up.

" 'That it had been financed by his political opponents? I don't know the answer to that," Comey said." . . .

HOW A REPUBLIC DIES: The Federal Leviathan Wages All-Out War With a Duly Elected President

 "There are plenty of gatekeepers to keep a common sense idea from being implemented. If a congressman proposes that sensible measure you suggest to him, it will never leave the committee or it’ll be watered down. The Senate will neuter it or the president, on the advice of his advisors, will veto. And then came Trump." 

Daniel Greenfield at the Doug Ross Journal  "In the early seventies, political operatives disguised as delivery men broke into a Washington D.C. office. These efforts to spy on the political opposition would culminate in what we know as Watergate.

"In the late teens, political operatives disguised as FBI agents, NSA personnel and other employees of the Federal government eavesdropped, harassed and raided the offices of the political opposition.

"The raids of Michael Cohen’s hotel room, home and office are just this week’s Watergate.

"Political operatives have now seized privileged communications between the President of the United States and his lawyer. Despite fairy tales about a clean process, these communications will be harvested by the counterparts of Peter Strzok, who unlike him are still on the case at the FBI, some of it will appear in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and some will be passed along to other political allies.

"That’s what happened at every juncture of Watergate 2.0. And it only follows that it will happen again.

"Just like the eavesdropping, the process will be compartmentalized for maximum plausible deniability. The leakers will be protected by their superiors. The media will shrilly focus the public’s attention on the revelations in the documents rather than on the more serious crimes committed in obtaining them.

"Nixon couldn’t have even dreamed of doing this in his wildest fantasies. But Obama could and did. Now his operatives throughout the government are continuing the work that they began during his regime." . . .

The Bolton-Pompeo Package

Columnist Paul R. Pillar likes neither Mr. Bolton nor President Trump. However former assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netayahu, Caroline Glick, calls the Bolton appointment "brilliant"

The National Interest

Pompeo

"The Senate is about to have an opportunity to weigh in on another highly important foreign policy position, that of secretary of state, for which President Trump has nominated Mike Pompeo.  Senators ought to consider that nomination in tandem with the appointment of Bolton as national security adviser, even though the Senate formally has a role with only one of those appointments and not with the other.  Senators should consider the two as a package deal.  They should not vote to confirm Pompeo if they are uncomfortable with either part of the package.

"The main reason to approach the Pompeo nomination this way is that the nation currently has a president who, sad to say, needs restraint.  He will need restraint all the more during the coming months as troubles of his own making increase the chance that he will lash out in destructive ways. The copious commentary during the fifteen months of the Trump presidency about having “adults in the room” to restrain the worst urges of an inexperienced and impulsive president speaks to an important truth. " . . .

Caroline Glick: Bolton’s appointment is a brilliant America first move

Bolton

. . . "While it is true that Bolton is from Washington – or Baltimore, to be precise – and although it is true that he held senior foreign policy positions in both Bush administrations, he has always been a thorn in the side of the establishment rather than a member of that establishment.

"For the better part of three decades, Bolton has bravely held positions that fly in the face of the establishment’s innate preference for appeasement. He was a vocal critic, for example, of then-President Bill Clinton’s disastrous nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

"The 1994 “Agreed Framework” that Clinton concluded with Pyongyang was touted as a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis with North Korea. In exchange for shuttering – but not destroying — its nuclear installations, North Korea received light water reactors from the U.S. and massive economic relief. As Bolton warned it would, North Korea pocketed the concessions and gifts and continued to develop its nuclear weapons. In other words, far from preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, the Agreed Framework preserved the North Korean nuclear program and enabled the regime to develop it effectively with U.S. assistance.

"For his warnings, Bolton has been reviled as a “warmonger” and a “superhawk” by the foreign policy elite, which has gone out if its way to undercut him." . . .