Trump lawyers say Mueller illegally obtained transition team emails - Rick Moran

by Rick Moran

What is Mueller doing investigating the transition team in the first place?

Lawyers for Donald Trump's transition team have sent letters to members of congress accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of illegally obtaining emails belonging to transition team officials from the General Services Administration.

The GSA hosted the transition team, using their devices and facilities. But the lawyers claim the ownership of private communications belongs to the individuals on the transition team and not the GSA, who turned over thousands of emails to Mueller's investigation.

Update: Mark J. Fitzgibbons comments:

The Trump lawyer raised the 4th Amendment, but that won't fly since the information is on government servers and in government possession. This is somewhat similar to the issue Gorsuch raised in the Carpenter cell phone information case, but that information was in private corporate possession, not government possession.

Conservative outlets and social media were yelling foul. A problem here is that the independent counsel law can be interpreted to allow pursuit into more than the initial matter being investigated if the independent counsel believes there is something to pursue.

Very clever move by Mueller. Even the privileged legal communications may not be protected from him since they are stored with the GSA, although that may need to be resolved in court.

As I wrote for The NonProfit Times this month, never discuss legal issues or even ask legal questions in email. One innocent question in an email put Arthur Andersen out of business.

CNN:

The lawyer, Kory Langhofer, wrote to leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight and Government Reform committees because he said the General Services Administration, which supports presidential transitions, "unlawfully produced" private materials of the transition although the GSA "did not own or control the records in question."
Langhofer wrote in the letter the Special Counsel's Office "was actively using those materials without any notice" to transition officials.
The letter states there were two other occasions where the Special Counsel's Office did not notify transition officials that their records had been requested or received.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, responded to the accusations early Sunday.
"When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or appropriate criminal process," Carr said.
GSA Deputy Counsel Lenny Loewentritt disputed a claim by Langhofer that the GSA's general counsel had agreed in June that any requests for transition records would go to the Trump campaign, BuzzFeed News reported Saturday night.
Loewentritt said transition officials were told that "in using our devices," materials "would not be held back in any law enforcement" requests. He added there was a series of agreements between the transition and GSA for using its goods and therefore there was no expectation of privacy.
Langhofer's letter also states that Special Counsel's Office had obtained transition laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad after the FBI requested them of career GSA staff without a subpoena.
The letter also says a representative of the Special Counsel's Office told transition officials it did not recover any documents from that hardware, but failed "to disclose the critical fact that ... the Special Counsel's office had simultaneously received from the GSA tens of thousands of emails."
"The materials produced by the GSA to the Special Counsel's Office therefore included materials protected by the attorney-client privilege, the deliberative process privilege, and the presidential communications privilege," the letter maintains.

Why is Mueller investigating post-election activities of Trump's transition team? Contained within those emails are extremely sensitive communications about personnel and other details that should be irrelevant to Mueller's collusion investigation. Why is he investigating how the Trump White House was formed and developed?

Then, there's this:

The sources say that transition officials assumed that Mueller would come calling, and had sifted through the emails and separated the ones they considered privileged. But the sources said that was for naught, since Mueller has the complete cache from the dozen accounts.

William Jacobson explains the implications:

This is sure to escalate the situation, and has all the appearances of impropriety by the Special Counsel’s office. We will update as more becomes known.
Once again, however, this shows how Mueller is going beyond his mandate and investigating post-election politics and political decisions of an incoming administration.
Perhaps this is why rumors started swirling on Capitol Hill that Mueller would be fired.

I think the special counsel can do just about whatever he wants to. That's the whole point of creating the office in the first place so his legal powers are extraordinary.

But here we have transition officials perfectly willing to cooperate with Mueller only to find that he has steamrolled them, seizing what the Trump lawyers believe to be privileged communications - communications that, by definition, have nothing to do with Mueller's investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Obviously, Mueller is finding the collusion angle a dry hole and is casting about for something - anything - he can charge the president and his people with. Perhaps be believes he can find illegality by Trump transition officials and then "flip" them to give up what they know about Russia and collusion. If that's the case, it is a sign of desperation on Mueller's part.

Mueller is ranging far afield of his original mandate with no sign he plans to rein in his investigation. Democrats seem perfectly happy to support an out of control special counsel but Trump and the Republicans are going to start pushing back. You have to think a showdown is coming which almost certainly won't end well for Mueller.


Rick Moran

Source:http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/12/trump_lawyers_say_mueller_illegally_obtained_transition_team_emails.html

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Austria: New Government to Resist "Islamization" - Soeren Kern

by Soeren Kern

The massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country, appears irreversible.

• A coalition between the anti-immigration Austrian People's Party and the anti-establishment Austrian Freedom Party, which will be sworn into office on December 18, is poised to catapult Austria to the vanguard of Western Europe's resistance to mass migration from the Muslim world.
• The massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country, appears irreversible. Austria has also emerged as a major base for radical Islam.
• "We have a lot in common [with Israel]. I always say, if one defines the Judeo-Christian West, then Israel represents a kind of border. If Israel fails, Europe fails. And if Europe fails, Israel fails." — Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party.

The anti-immigration Austrian People's Party and the anti-establishment Austrian Freedom Party have reached a deal, creating a new coalition to govern Austria for the next five years. The ground-breaking political alliance, which will be sworn into office on December 18, is poised to catapult Austria to the vanguard of Western Europe's resistance to mass migration from the Muslim world.

Chancellor-elect Sebastian Kurz, 31, who won Austria's national election on October 15 after campaigning on a promise to halt illegal immigration, will govern with Heinz-Christian Strache, 48, the Freedom Party leader, who has warned that mass migration is "Islamizing" Austria. Under the agreement, Strache will become the vice-chancellor; the Freedom Party will also take control of the ministries of defense, interior and foreign affairs.

Austrian Chancellor-elect Sebastian Kurz (pictured), who won Austria's national election after campaigning on a promise to halt illegal immigration, will govern with Heinz-Christian Strache, 48, the Freedom Party leader, who has warned that mass migration is "Islamizing" Austria. (Image source: Raul Mee/EU2017EE/Flickr)

Kurz has been a strong critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door migration policy, which has allowed more than a million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to enter the country during the past two years.

During his time as foreign minister, Kurz was instrumental in garnering parliamentary approval of a groundbreaking new law that regulates the integration of immigrants. The so-called Integration Law — which bans full-face Muslim veils in public spaces and prohibits Islamic radicals from distributing the Koran — establishes clear rules and responsibilities for recognized asylum seekers and refugees granted legal residence in the country.

The new law requires immigrants from non-EU countries to sign an "integration contract" which obligates them to learn written and spoken German and to enroll in courses about the "basic values of Austria's legal and social order." Immigrants are also required to "acquire knowledge of the democratic order and the basic principles derived from it."

Previously, Kurz was instrumental in reforming Austria's century-old Islam Law (Islamgesetz), governing the status of Muslims in the country. The new law, passed in February 2015, is aimed at integrating Muslims and fighting Islamic radicalism by promoting an "Islam with an Austrian character." It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

Austria's Muslim population now exceeds 700,000 (or roughly 8% of the total population), up from an estimated 340,000 (or 4.25%) in 2001, and 150,000 (or 2%) in 1990, according to data compiled by the University of Vienna.

The massive demographic and religious shift underway in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country, appears irreversible. In Vienna, where the Muslim population now exceeds 12.5%, Muslim students already outnumber Catholic students at middle and secondary schools. Muslim students are also on the verge of overtaking Catholics in Viennese elementary schools.

At the same time, Austria has emerged as a major base for radical Islam. Austria's Agency for State Protection and Counterterrorism (BVT) has warned of the "exploding radicalization of the Salafist scene in Austria." Salafism is an anti-Western ideology that seeks to impose Islamic Sharia law.

"The immigration seen in recent years is changing our country not in a positive but in a negative way," said Kurz, who campaigned on a "law and order" platform: "Uncontrolled immigration destroys the order in a country."

Strache, a supporter of Israel who has distanced his party from the rhetoric of the Austrian far right, insists that anti-Semitism had no place in his party and has urged a common front against Islamists. He has also pledged "to ensure that boycotts [against Israeli products] get taken off the agenda."

During an April 2016 visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, at the invitation of at the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, Strache said:

"For us, it's important to act against anti-Semitism, and also against Islamism and terrorism, and to discuss the issues we have in common. Anti-Semitism often emerges anew from Islamism and from the left.
"We have a lot in common [with Israel]. I always say, if one defines the Judeo-Christian West, then Israel represents a kind of border. If Israel fails, Europe fails. And if Europe fails, Israel fails."

Strache has called Merkel "the most dangerous woman in Europe" because of her migration policies, and has repeatedly said that Islam is "not part" of Austria. Strache has also warned that the "uncontrolled influx of migrants who are alien to our culture, who seep into our social welfare system ... makes civil war in the medium-term not unlikely." A Eurosceptic, Strache has called the European Union a "bureaucratic monster" and has said that Britain will "probably be better off after Brexit."

At Strache's insistence, Karin Kneissl, an independent Middle East expert who speaks eight languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, will become Austria's new foreign minister. Kneissl has been a vocal critic of EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, whom she has described as the "Caesar of Brussels." She has also criticized Merkel's migrant policy as "grossly negligent."

Kneissl has said that most of the "refugees" arriving in Europe are overwhelmingly young males between the ages of 20 and 30 who are "economic migrants controlled by testosterone." In an interview on Austrian television, Kneissl said that one of the main reasons for the revolts in the Arab world was "many young Arab men can no longer find a wife because they have neither work nor their own home, and thus cannot achieve the status of a man in a traditional society."

Freedom Party Chairman Herbert Kickl, a speechwriter for the late party leader Jörg Haider and a close confidant of Strache, will become interior minister, a key position for domestic security and border control, while Mario Kunasek, a professional soldier, will run the defense ministry. Of the 16 future government ministers, only Kurz has Cabinet experience.

A 180-page document explains the new government's agenda between now and 2022. It promises to crack down on political Islam; to crack down on illegal immigration; to speed up asylum decisions and to sponsor an EU summit on immigration when Austria holds the EU presidency in the second half of 2018.

The document also pledges to give Austrians more opportunities to vote in referendums — although it explicitly refuses to allow a referendum on the country's continued membership in the European Union.

In addition, the document promises to: require migrants to learn German; require migrant kindergartners who have insufficient German language skills to repeat kindergarten before progressing to the first grade; increase the legal penalties for sexual crimes; strengthen Austrian defense; hire more police officers; reduce the bureaucracy and not raise taxes.

At the same time, however, the document pledges a strong commitment to the European Union: "Only in a strong Europe can there be a strong Austria in which we are able to take advantage of the opportunities of the 21st century."

Some observers have said that Kurz's professed commitment to the European Union was aimed at calming worries in Europe about the Freedom Party's Euroskeptic and anti-Islamization policy objectives. Others have described Kurz as a pragmatist "who is anti-establishment and establishment at the same time."

Kurz has nevertheless pledged to reject the European Union's compulsory migrant quota. "I will work towards changing this erroneous refugee policy," he said. "Without the proper protection of the external borders of the EU, we will not come to grips with the problem of illegal migration."

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Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11556/austria-islamization

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Abbas and Jerusalem - Elliot Abrams

by Elliot Abrams

Abbas presents Jerusalem as a Christian/Muslim city whose only connection to Jews is that they are defiling it. If these are his views, what chance is there for a successful negotiation?

This piece can be found on Abrams' blog "Pressure Points."

The reaction to U.S President Donald Trump's decision on Jerusalem has varied widely in the Arab world. For example, the Saudi reaction has been moderate. It is well described by Rob Satloff in a report on his recent visit to Riyadh, which is titled "Mohammed bin Salman Doesn't Want to Talk About Jerusalem."

The reaction from Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has been poisonous. In a speech at the special meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, he made numerous false and inflammatory statements about Israel, Jews, and Jerusalem. Here's just one example:

It is no longer possible to remain silent as Israel continues to violate the identity and character of the city of Jerusalem, the continuation of excavations and settlements and, most importantly, its violations of Islamic and Christian holy places, especially Al-Aqsa mosque. Therefore, the situation requires decisive guarantees to stop Israeli violations in Jerusalem and to preserve the historic status quo at Al-Aqsa mosque.

Israeli archaeologists have been exceptionally careful in their excavations of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy places, a stark contrast to what happened in the years when Jerusalem was under Jordanian control and the Jewish Quarter and its synagogues were largely destroyed and Jews were not permitted to visit there. What Abbas is objecting to is that archaeologists keep finding more and more aspects of the Jewish past in Jerusalem, in the Biblical period. Like his predecessor Yasser Arafat, Abbas is now denying any Jewish history in Jerusalem at all – a flagrantly false and insulting claim.

His comment about this in his speech was not so much anti-Israel as anti-Semitic. As reported in Tablet, he said:

I don’t want to discuss religion or history because they are really excellent in faking and counterfeiting history and religion. But if we read the Torah it says that the Canaanites were there before the time of our Prophet Abraham and their existence continued since that time – this is in the Torah itself. But if they would like to fake this history, they are really masters in this and it is mentioned in the holy Quran they fabricate truth and they try to do that and they believe in that but we have been there in this location for thousands of years. [emphasis added]

I've known Abbas for about 15 years and it is painful to see this man, generally viewed as a "moderate voice," descend to these depths. He has done it before, and then pulled back when called on it: see his speech to the European Parliament in 2016, when he said Israeli rabbis were calling for the poisoning of water wells in the West Bank and then issued a statement saying he'd been misinformed.

Abbas is now presenting Jerusalem as a Christian/Muslim city whose only connection to the Jews is that they are lying about it and defiling it. It has never been clear to me what he expected to gain from such vile statements, because he will never out-Hamas Hamas, never compete with them successfully in hatred of Jews.

Trump's statement on Jerusalem was criticized in many quarters as threatening the peace process. Reading Abbas's speech, one cannot avoid thinking, "What peace process?" If Abbas is the only, indeed best possible, Palestinian partner for peace and these are his views, what chance is there for a successful negotiation? None, I would think. And this conclusion may be widely shared, even in the Arab world. Many have noted the relatively moderate official Arab reaction, and perhaps  Abbas' speech is his emotional reaction to being abandoned – to his conclusion that Arab leaders have written him off.

That's speculation. What seems to me less speculative is that the peace process is damaged not by decisions like the president's, which was so carefully worded and explained, but by the kind of language Abbas used. It was inflammatory, false and anti-Semitic. I do note that the official Palestinian News Agency version of his speech, linked above, omits the worst anti-Semitic passage. But he said it. The omission only proves that even among Palestinians there is some understanding that you cannot say those things and then hold yourself out as a leader committed to peace and harmonious coexistence.

Elliot Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/abbas-and-jerusalem/

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The Muslim Terrorist Who Hated Christmas - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

Religious freedom means keeping terrorists out.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi Muslim living in Brooklyn, really hated Christmas. He hated Christmas so much that he used Christmas tree lights (along with a battery and some wire) as a trigger for a pipe bomb. He filled the pipe bomb with screws so that when it went off, metal shrapnel would tear bloody holes through morning commuters in Manhattan.

Wearing a hooded jacket and a backpack to cover the pipe bomb strapped to his body, Ullah got on the F Train at the 18^th Avenue elevated subway station off Little Bangladesh. Like the Duke Ellington song says, he switched over to the A Train at Jay Street. It was early morning, but there were plenty of people riding the train. Jay Street is a major transit hub. But Ullah was waiting to blow up somewhere else.

He got off in the crush at the 42nd-St. Port Authority station. Here a whole lot of people can be found rushing up and down crowded staircases and shoving their way through cramped corridors.

Ullah took the long underground corridor that runs between the Port Authority station and Times Square. He strode past movie and beauty ads. He walked under the discouraging poem, “Overslept, So tired, If late, Get fired, Why bother? Why the pain? Just go home. Do it again.” But he wasn’t going home. And there would be no opportunities to do it again. The Muslim terrorist was right on time.

Rush hour was just getting started in the city that never sleeps. The Muslim terrorist probably passed hundreds of people: not to mention a saxophonist or drummer trying out his act on tired commuters.

But he was waiting for something else. Finally he saw it. A Christmas poster.

That’s when he detonated the pipe bomb using a Christmas tree light near a Christmas poster.  

Because if there was one thing that Akayed Ullah, like his ISIS masters truly hated, it was Christmas.

Last month, ISIS supporters had circulated a poorly photoshopped poster of Santa next to a box of dynamite overlooking Times Square. "We meet at Christmas in New York... soon," it read.

As he walked toward Times Square, Ullah appeared determined to carry out the ISIS threat. Using a Christmas tree light in his bomb and detonating near a Christmas poster was a clear statement.

Ullah came to this country in 2011. Three years later, he had already been ‘radicalized’. The Bangladeshi terrorist had come here on a chain migration link that began with a diversity lottery visa. But Ullah didn’t actually like diversity. He didn’t want to share a city or country with Christians.

And so he set out to kill them.

In Ullah’s native Bangladesh, Christian churches have shut down midnight mass before due to threats of violence.

“This is the first time in my life that I find Christians celebrating Christmas with such panic and fear," the Bangladesh Christian Association secretary general had said.

But with the diversity visa lottery, you don’t have to be a Christian living in Bangladesh to be terrorized by Bangladeshi Muslim violence.

And maybe that’s a diversity we could do without.

That same year, Bangladeshi authorities stopped a Christmas Day plot that involves a suicide bomb vest. But this year, America had its very own Bangladeshi suicide bomber. Christians are readying to celebrate Christmas in Bangladeshi churches this year with metal detectors and thousands of security personnel.

But these days that’s not just Christmas in Bangladesh. It’s Christmas in Europe.

Muslim Christmas violence spread terror across Europe last year. These ranged from the ‘Kindergarten bomber’, a 12-year-old Iraqi who planted a nail bomb in a German Christmas market to the Tunisian refugee who rammed a truck into another German Christmas market killing 12 people and wounding 68. These days, German Christmas markets come with car barriers that are gift wrapped with bows.

An estimated 29 ‘lone wolves’ were arrested last year in Christmas terror plots in the UK, France, Brussels and Australia. A number of these plots targeted Christmas markets, carnivals and cathedrals.

The year before, a Pakistani married couple had opened fire at a Christmas party at the Department of Public Health in San Bernardino. The worst half of the couple had groused about the Christmas decorations. Previous attack plots had included the Christmas Day bomber (the Nigerian terrorist also known as the underwear bomber) and Portland’s Somali Christmas tree lighting bomb plot.

This is what a religious war looks like.

Muslim violence spikes around Ramadan, and around Christian and Jewish holidays, because Islamic violence is inherently religious in nature. Islamic Supremacist terrorists like Ullah are lashing out at non-Islamic religions in order to clear the way for the imposition of Islamic rule.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, the lefty pol who dismantled the NYPD’s counterterrorism programs at the behest of Islamist pressure groups, insisted at the post-attack press conference that, “We actually show that society of many faiths and many backgrounds can work.”

A society of many faiths can work. As long as all of them practice mutual tolerance.

When a society includes Akayed Ullah, Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbeki Muslim who ran over tourists on a Manhattan bike path in October, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, the Afghan who set off bombs in New York and New Jersey last year, Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, Talha Haroon, another Pakistani who wanted to massacre New Yorkers in Times Square, Quazi Mohammad, another Bangladeshi who wanted to bomb the Federal Reserve and Raees Qazi, another Pakistani who scouted Times Square for an attack, that society can’t and won’t work.

You can’t coexist with people who refuse to coexist with you. They’re just ticking time bombs. Like Ullah riding the F Train and then the A Train while the passengers around him unthinkingly played games or clicked through Trump headlines not knowing that he could have detonated the bomb at any moment.

There are plenty of Ullahs all around us. Sometimes they wait years before blowing up. Other times hours and minutes. If we’re unlucky, it’s seconds. But the bombs, real and metaphorical, are there.

This is life in a society that has opened its borders to migrants from Islamic states where terrorism isn’t a horrifying aberration, but an ancient religious tradition to which the penitent sinner may turn to when his life no longer seems to have purpose or meaning. This is how we live now. And it will get worse.

Our politicians tout diversity after every attack. They tell us how much it enriches and improves us.

Akayed Ullah was a livery cab driver. His predecessor, Sayfullo Saipov, was an Uber driver. Do we really need two cab drivers so badly that we have to accept eight deaths and sixteen injuries in exchange?

Could we get our cab drivers from somewhere beyond Bangladesh and Uzbekistan?

We don’t have to live like this. We’re only living like this because we’ve been told that it would be mean and unfair of us to actually have a common sense immigration policy that keeps Islamic terrorists out.

The question is would we rather be mean to the Uber drivers of tomorrow or sit next to a ticking time bomb waiting to detonate at the first sight of a Christmas poster?

We’ve been told often enough that a common sense travel ban would violate religious freedom. But the greatest violation of religious freedom isn’t a selective immigration policy, it’s being murdered for your religion. That’s not just the reality in Bangladesh. It’s now the reality in America and Europe.

The diversity visa lottery has brought us the wrong kind of diversity. Our cities have become a diverse assortment of immigrants who will and won’t kill you over your religion. There isn’t much religious diversity in Bangladesh, Pakistan or Afghanistan. If we want to preserve our own religious diversity from going the same way, we have to exclude those immigrants who would kill anyone who is different.

And we need to hurry because the Ullahs of tomorrow are applying for their visas today.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268729/muslim-terrorist-who-hated-christmas-daniel-greenfield

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FCC Restores Market Freedom To the Internet - Joseph Klein

by Joseph Klein

Net Neutrality repeal jettisons Obama-era regulatory meddling.

The Federal Communications Commission has jettisoned the heavy-handed regulatory burden placed on a free and open Internet during the Obama administration. The FCC voted 3-2 on December 14th, along party lines, to repeal the so-called “net neutrality” rules adopted by the regulatory agency in 2015. The Obama-era rules had prohibited Internet service providers, such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast as well as smaller Internet service providers, from blocking, slowing access to or charging more (priority pricing) for fast delivery of content above some specified threshold of high bandwidth usage. High-speed delivery of Internet services will no longer be heavily regulated on par with a common carrier utility monopoly service. However, the Internet service providers will have to disclose to the FCC changes to their access policies, which can consider any alleged abuses on a case by case basis. The Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust enforcement responsibility with the Department of Justice, will be tasked to take action against any anti-competitive behavior.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who championed getting rid of the misleadingly named “net neutrality” rules, said that the net neutrality rules purported to fix something that was not broken when they were adopted in 2015. "Following today’s vote, Americans will still be able to access the websites they want to visit. They will still be able to enjoy the services they want to enjoy," FCC Chairman Pai said. "There will still be cops on the beat guarding a free and open internet. This is the way things were prior to 2015, and this is the way they will be once again." Chairman Pai noted that with the heavy regulatory hand of FCC micromanagement removed, “Broadband providers will have more incentive to build networks, especially to underserved areas.”

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat and daughter of South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, condemned the FCC Republican majority for “handing the keys to the Internet" to a "handful of multi-billion dollar corporations.” She had lots of support from the left, which displayed its usual hysteria.

A bomb threat delayed the FCC meeting for several minutes as the room was cleared until the security team dispatched explosive-sniffing dogs to ensure that it was safe for the meeting to proceed. Protesters gathered outside, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Chairman Pai has got to go!”

Consumer activists and some state attorneys general are planning to go to court to invalidate what New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called the FCC’s “illegal rollback” of the “net neutrality” rules. “The FCC just gave Big Telecom an early Christmas present, by giving internet service providers yet another way to put corporate profits over consumers,” Attorney General Schneiderman said in a statement.

Democrat Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts claimed that overturning the “net neutrality” rules is “like letting the bullies develop their own playground rules.” Announcing his intent in a tweet to “introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution that would restore the Open Internet Order and reverse the FCC’s historic mistake of repealing Net Neutrality," he vowed that the “fight is far from over."

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the other Democrat Senator from Massachusetts, tweeted: “The FCC just voted to hand control of the internet over to giant internet companies, but this isn’t over.”

California Democrat Senator Kamal Harris tweeted that the FCC’s repeal of the “net neutrality” rules handed “a big win to multi-billion-dollar broadband companies.”

Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted to his followers, "This is the end of the internet as we know it. In Congress and in the courts we must fight back."

Fake news CNN ran a headline after the FCC vote echoing Senator Sanders’ doomsday prediction that the vote represented the "end of the Internet as we know it."

Hollywood celebrities also got into the act. Chris Evans of Captain America fame, for example, tweeted that the FCC’s repeal decision “benefits no one unless you're a faceless, mega corporation.”

The left would have us believe that the battle over “net neutrality” is between greedy, monopolistic, multibillion dollar Internet service companies and John Q. Public. This is the left’s typical class warfare rhetoric, helped along ironically by multibillion dollar content providers such as Netflix, Google and Facebook that hide behind slogans such as “net neutrality” and “open and free Internet” to obscure their own economic self-interest. Companies the size of Netflix, Google, Facebook, and the new Disney company that may emerge if its purchase of content assets from 21st Century Fox is approved by antitrust officials do not need FCC utility-style regulatory protection from Internet service providers. The FCC should not have placed itself in the position of picking industry sector winners and losers or coming down on the side of content providers, some of whom such as Facebook and Google have substantial market power of their own that allows them to censor content they believe is too controversial.  

Moreover, “net neutrality” may be a nice slogan, but it does not reflect the reality of Internet usage. To understand why this is so requires a brief technology discussion.

Different types of usage place different levels of demand on available Internet bandwidth, which Digital Unite defines as “the rate at which data can be transferred to your computer from a website or internet service within a specific time.” The higher an Internet connection’s amount of bandwidth capacity, usually measured in bits per second, the more data can move through the connection in a given amount of time.  Groups of bits strung together that computers use to represent a character such as a letter, number or an image are called bytes.

The bandwidth capacity is not infinite and often shared by multiple users with different volumes of traffic to be transported that may vary by time of day. As Scientific American explained, “the demand for bandwidth is fast outstripping providers' best efforts to supply it.”

Streaming content can use massive amounts of bandwidth. Watching Netflix on high resolution, for example, can utilize at least 2 gigabytes (i.e., 2 billion bytes) of data. As streaming becomes more and more popular, consuming massive amounts of bandwidth capacity relative to other less volume intensive types of usage, heavy data usage by even a limited number of streaming content providers’ customers, at times and places of competing demands for available bandwidth, can negatively affect the service for all Internet users. There needs to be some means to modulate the level of usage by bandwidth-guzzlers through priority pricing or by placing network management controls (for example, blocking or throttling) over usage above specified thresholds. Otherwise, the guzzlers may negatively affect the Internet experience of other users without incurring the full economic cost of the harm they cause to those other users. 

The economics of supply and demand should be permitted to play out under free market conditions. Internet service providers, just like the large content providers, are not monopoly utilities that require utility-style regulation. That said, there will need to be antitrust enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission to prevent anti-competitive abuses, such as an Internet service providers favoring their own affiliated content providers in terms of quality of service, ease of customer access, or discriminatory pricing. The FCC’s repeal of the overly burdensome “net neutrality” rules in no way undermines the ability of the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission to step in and address any abuses that may arise.

The left detests the free market, whether in the context of the Internet or virtually any other segment of the economy. Government knows best, leftists believe. Fortunately, elections have consequences and President Trump put in place at the FCC someone who understands the benefits of the free market. Under Chairman Ajit Pai’s leadership, the FCC removed the dead weight of intrusive regulation on Internet innovation and investment in infrastructure. It also restored the market freedom under which the Internet has thrived.

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268735/fcc-restores-market-freedom-internet-joseph-klein

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UN to vote Monday on rejecting Trump's Jerusalem declaration - David Rosenberg

by David Rosenberg

UN Security Council advances proposed resolution to reject US recognition of Jerusalem, to hold vote on Monday.

The United Nations Security Council will vote on Monday on a proposed resolution rejecting American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.

The proposal was introduced by Egypt, one of 10 non-permanent members of the council. The Palestinian Authority urged Arab states to push for the measure following President Trump’s announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and ordering the State Department to begin work relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

On Saturday, Egypt circulated a draft of the proposed resolution to the representatives of the 15-member council.

According to Reuters, the one-page proposal does not name either the United States or the Trump administration, but would declare “null and void” all actions ‘to alter the character of Jerusalem.

The draft proposes that "any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition" of Jerusalem would "have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council."

It is widely expected that the United States delegation, one of five permanent members with veto power, will block the measure from passing.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon slammed the proposed resolution Saturday evening, calling it an attempt to “reinvent history”.

"In these days, when the Jewish nation is celebrating when Jerusalem was liberated thousands of years ago, the Palestinians continue to try and reinvent history," Danon said.

"No vote or discussion will change the clear facts: Jerusalem is and has always been the capital of Israel. This time, too, we will continue to defend our historical truth, together with our allies."


David Rosenberg

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/239447

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Near Miss: Gaza rocket explodes next to Israeli home - Kobi Finkler

by Kobi Finkler

Terrorists fire rockets from Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, hit Israeli town in western Negev.

Terrorists operating in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired a pair of rockets into Israeli territory Sunday evening.

One of the projectiles hit a town near the Gaza border in the western Negev. The rocket reportedly exploded next to a home in the community, but caused no injuries. No damage to the home or other nearby buildings was reported.

A spokesperson from the Hof Ashkelon (Ashkelon Coast) regional council released a statement shortly after the rocket attack.

“A short time ago, sirens were sounded in the Hof Ashkelon regional council. One [rocket] landed in one of the towns [of the regional council]. There were no injuries.”

Last week, early in the morning Thursday morning, Israeli Air Force aircraft struck three Hamas targets inside the Gaza Strip in retaliation for previous rocket attacks on Israel.


Kobi Finkler

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/239448

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Think the Alabama result has derailed Donald Trump? Think again - John R. Bolton

by John R. Bolton

Trump's rejection of "feel good" treaties in favor of concrete steps to protect American citizens and national interests will be vindicated.

Pundits are furiously assessing the broader consequences of the Democrats' upset Senate victory in Alabama on Tuesday, but there is less there than meets the eye. True, the Republican Senate majority now hangs by a thread, forcing even harder fights for every legislative victory.

Nonetheless, Republican chances for major gains in November 2018, perhaps six or seven Senate seats, remain strong. Moreover, Democrat 
Al Franken is resigning his seat any day now because of sexual misconduct charges, bringing another totally unexpected Republican opportunity.

Of course, any statewide Democratic victory in Alabama is stunning, but there were also stunning reasons for it. Republican Roy Moore was a flawed candidate even before allegations of sexual misconduct emerged – and he still lost by just one percentage point.

The winner, Doug Jones, will likely be defeated at the next regular election in 2020. The stakes have unquestionably been raised, but President Trump and Republicans hold a strong hand.

At some point, Democrats will have to declare what they believe in. Just as Hillary Clinton, the "inevitable" 2016 victor, fell from grace when she revealed her beliefs, so too will legions of aspiring Democrats.

Trump is also demonstrating how a President can continue to command the national agenda, regardless of the comings and goings of domestic politics. For all these reasons, those who think Alabama marks the beginning of the end for Trump should think again. This is not even the end of the beginning.

There is no better proof of this than his foreign policy moves thus far.

They have not only shown him to be a dogged defender of American interests but an effective one too. Take his announcement that the US will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It is further unassailable evidence that he is not a status quo President.

Despite the anticipated opposition across the Middle East and Europe, apocalyptic predictions of mass rioting by the "Arab street" and the destruction of the "peace process", Trump proceeded nonetheless.

The evidence so far is that widespread violence has not materialized and, inevitably, the Arab-Israeli peace process will rise again. Trump's decision was an act of leadership, a paradigmatic act of realpolitik, not isolationism.

American leadership requires acting before others are willing to do so, not following some ephemeral global consensus, or waiting for Europeans or others to make up their minds.

Moreover, the Jerusalem precedent is consistent with the picture of Trump the "disrupter". He withdrew America from the Paris Climate accord and from negotiations over a Global Compact on Migration. Similar steps to protect American sovereignty will almost certainly follow.

Trump's rejection of "feel good" treaties in favor of concrete steps to protect American citizens and national interests will be vindicated. Indeed, the greatest "disrupter" decision for Trump may still lie ahead: how to correct nearly three decades of failure in the nuclear counterproliferation crusade, as North Korea and Iran grow close to becoming nuclear powers.

The same Establishment foreign policy cognoscenti who rejected Jerusalem as Israel's capital have insisted for 25 years that the judicious application of diplomacy and economic sanctions would resolve the Iranian and North Korean nuclear-proliferation threats.

But this conventional wisdom has been proven flatly wrong. No less a representative of this perspective than Susan Rice, Barack Obama's last national security adviser, conceded this summer that it had not delivered: "You can call it a failure. I accept that characterization over the last two decades." No kidding. And no wonder Trump is looking for alternatives.

Twenty-five years of diplomatic failure has significant consequences. Endless negotiations and failed sanctions have wasted the most precious resource of all: time -- time which has allowed Iran and North Korea to overcome the scientific and technological obstacles to building nuclear weapons.

Accordingly, Trump now faces extremely unattractive choices. The most pressing concerns North Korea. Unless China acts decisively, cutting off fuel and food shipments to the regime, forcing reunification with South Korea or replacing the Kim family dictatorship, the White House will soon face a binary choice: either Washington 
must accept a nuclear North Korea, 
or military force will be required.

The unpleasant alternative of pre-emptive military force is decidedly risky, but considerably less so than a future in which the world is subject to nuclear extortion by Kim's bizarre regime -- a regime perfectly prepared to sell nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to any bidder with the requisite hard currency.

Tut-tutting about where the United States locates its embassy in Israel simply obscures the far harder choices ahead. Let's keep our priorities straight. Trump has shown every evidence he can do so.

President Donald Trump signs the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018, at the White House, December 12, 2017. (Image source: The White House)

This article first appeared in The Daily Telegraph

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John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad".


Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11549/trump-derailed

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