Climate Change

National Geographic
If Ice Melted Map

Planetary Visions
The Last Ice Age Map

The Obama Doctrine

The Atlantic -- Jeffrey Goldberg
The Obama Doctrine

A very long but illuminating article on Obama’s perspective on foreign policy

If you are a supporter of the president, his strategy makes eminent sense: Double down in those parts of the world where success is plausible, and limit America’s exposure to the rest. His critics believe, however, that problems like those presented by the Middle East don’t solve themselves—that, without American intervention, they metastasize.

WSJ -- Brett Stephens
Barack Obama Checks Out

A critical review of the article.

“In his place, an exact look-alike of Mr. Obama is giving interviews to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, interviews that are so gratuitously damaging to long-standing U.S. alliances, international security and Mr. Obama’s reputation as a serious steward of the American interest that the words could not possibly have sprung from the lips of the president himself.”

Losing control of internet domain names appears to be just another bad deal.

The president of ICANN should not have any conflicting interest and indeed there should be a financial disincentive for him to support any new international entity.

TheHill.com -- Mario Trujillo
Internet domain handoff takes major step forward

A major step was taken Thursday in the U.S. government's plan to hand off oversight of the Internet domain name system.

A nonprofit international group approved a plan and forwarded it to the Obama administration Thursday for review and approval.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and some others have continued to resist the transition, however. He has said Congress should have to vote before the administration signs off, but he has not succeeded in requiring that. Recently, he has accused the outgoing president of ICANN of having conflicts of interest.

Important world events other than the U.S. primary elections

International New York Times
Democracy’s Disintegration in Turkey

If there was any doubt about why the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized the newspaper Zaman last week, consider this: Within 48 hours after the takeover, the paper began publishing pro-Erdogan propaganda.

CNN - Dana Ford
North Korea threatens nuclear strike over U.S.-South Korean exercises

North Korea warned it would make a "preemptive and offensive nuclear strike" in response to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises that began Monday.

This is what the far left is willing to tolerate.

Huffington Post -- Paul Slansky President Trump Was "Just Fooling Around"

This hateful and dangerous piece of satire (Can the Muslims in the Middle East understand this out of context and in translation as satire?) was put on the Huffington Post.

President Trump said he was "just fooling around" this morning when he placed two pieces of bacon -- a forbidden food in the Muslim religion -- between the pages of the Quran at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. The action instantly provoked a crisis that threatens to plunge the world into Armageddon.

Report: Nearly 90,000 Illegal Immigrant Criminals Released Last Year

Report: Nearly 90,000 Illegal Immigrant Criminals Released Last Year

Nearly 90,000 illegal immigrants that federal officials considered to be “criminal threats” were released from custody last fiscal year instead of being deported. The actions were because of Obama administration policies, the Washington Examiner reports.

As of March 2015 more than 347,000 convicted criminal immigrants remained at large in the U.S. And as of September 2015, 918,369 illegal immigrants with final orders of deportation remained in communities across the U.S.

This could be a problem for Senator Rubio

Breitbart.com
Exclusive: On Eve of South Carolina Vote, Nation’s ICE Officers Detail How Marco Rubio Betrayed Them

CRANE: Sen. Rubio never reached out to us. He surrounded himself with big business and amnesty groups, most of which were more interested in cheap labor and their own political agendas, and had no real concern for the welfare of immigrants, public safety, or the security of our nation. This while he ignored boots on the ground law enforcement officers who work within our broken immigration system every day and know better than any what’s needed to fix it. Common sense dictates that law enforcement be at the table when creating a bill like this. I think Sen. Rubio knew that, but actively chose to exclude us because of his own personal agenda.

Breitbart.com
Law Enforcement Sides with Chris Crane After Rubio’s Anti-ICE Tirade

Hodgson confirmed Crane’s account: “I was down there when the Gang of Eight did their press conference. I was standing right next to him,” Hodgson said. “He was definitely removed from the event. He wasn’t doing anything inappropriate or anything—he was just trying to ask a question, but they asked him to leave.”

Sheriff Hodgson similarly echoed Crane’s characterization of Rubio’s amnesty bill as “irresponsible and misleading for the American people.”

The pope wants a death penalty ban during his year of mercy

The pope wants a death penalty ban during his year of mercy

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official compendium of Church teaching issued under John Paul, states: “If non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect peoples safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.”

The Climate of Opinion

When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism
International New York Times -- Maureen Dowd

“THE Clinton campaign is shellshocked over the wholesale rejection of Hillary by young women, younger versions of herself who do not relate to her.”

“The interesting thing about the spectacle of older women trying to shame younger ones on behalf of Hillary is that Hillary and Bill killed the integrity of institutional feminism back in the ’90s — with the help of Albright and Steinem.”

“Seeing Albright, the first female secretary of state, give cover to President Clinton was a low point in women’s rights. As was the New York Times op-ed by Steinem, arguing that Lewinsky’s will was not violated, so no feminist principles were violated. What about Clinton humiliating his wife and daughter and female cabinet members? What about a president taking advantage of a gargantuan power imbalance with a 22-year-old intern? What about imperiling his party with reckless behavior that put their feminist agenda at risk?”

Why Donald Trump's vicious attack on George W. Bush was so brutally effective — and brilliant
TheWeek.com -- James Poulos

“But Trump is not just running against Bushism. He's running against what it's a symptom of — the certain kind of insider sophistry that he says defines the political class. That's why he was onstage at all last night. That's why he's in first place now. And that's why he's more at home in the GOP than so many want to admit.”

“To understand how that could possibly be, understand what he's not arguing. The typical critique of politics today is that the ruling class has been corrupted by privilege. There's too much money in politics; there's too much of a cult of access; the tropes go on and on. Trump's not saying that. Instead, he's saying, the ruling class has been corrupted by foolishness. The problem isn't that "the politicians" have vanished behind the velvet rope. It's that they've vanished up their own rear ends. Obsessed with themselves, they have forgotten who they are. They have lost their way — and ours.”

Some interesting articles on genetics, epigenetics, and nature/nurture

NOVA -- Epigenetics
A short video to explain epigenetics

The explosive science of genetics
The Globe and Mail -- MARGARET WENTE

“A good general guess is that genetics explains 50 per cent of the differences in people in terms of personality, vocational interest, depression,”

Gene editing: where medical dreams and ethical nightmares collide
The Globe and Mail -- ANDRÉ PICARD

“CRISPR, which was initially developed to understand how bacteria defend themselves against viruses, has given scientists the ability to delete, tweak or insert genes, even in humans.”

PDR.net -- McGill University News, 01/29/2016

“We found that chronic pain changes the way DNA is marked not only in the brain but also in T cells, a type of white blood cell essential for immunity”

See also Epigenetics in NOVA Science

It Is Time To Consider Abolishing the Death Penalty

U.S. exonerations hit record high as more troubled cases probed
Reuters -- By Jon Herskovitz

“There were 149 known exonerations in 2015, where the exonerated defendants served on average more than 14 years in prison, said the report from the National Registry of Exonerations”

“Among those exonerated, 58 had been convicted of homicide, including five people who had been sentenced to death, it said. About three-quarters of the homicide exonerations included official misconduct”

“Texas had 54 known exonerations in 2015, followed by 17 in New York and 13 in Illinois, the report said.”

See Also -- Reconsidering the Death Penalty in Ohio

Caveat Emptor

New York Post -- By Peter Schweizer
Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich continues to pay big

Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”

“Rich’s business partners, lawyers, advisers and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.”

International NYT -- David Segal
What Donald Trump’s Plaza Deal Reveals About His White House Bid

“He has the ability to imagine what the other party wants him to be and then be that person,” said Michael D’Antonio, author of “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success.” “He presents the Trump that will work in the moment.”

Martin Luther King and our Primary Moral Concept of Equality

Breitbart.com -- by JARRETT STEPMAN
MLK Day:
The Enduring Power of the Declaration and American Ideas

King explained how equality before the law that Lincoln and the United States stood for had not been accomplished, that a century after the Emancipation Proclamation it was time to fulfill the promise of liberty and equal rights for all Americans.

“In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir,” King said. “…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

By framing his argument in the natural rights tradition of the United States—and placing it within the context of the long history of American ideas—King was able to reach many who might not be initially amenable to his views. In many ways this was a rebuke to the idea that the American republic was originally founded on racist premises and prejudice.

But as King, Lincoln, and Jaffa argued, the Declaration’s statement that “all men are created equal” really did mean all men regardless of race—that racial equality before the law was a continuity with the American philosophical tradition, not a break from it.

The Far Center -- James Rutherford
Equality as an Affirmation of our Common Humanity

Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much. Public opinion, or any subject, always has a “central idea, from which all its minor thoughts radiate. That “central idea” in our political public opinion, at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be, “the equality of men.
                                                                      — Abraham Lincoln 1856

See Also

• United States Constitutional Democracy and American Exceptionalism
• The Moral Foundations of United States Constitutional Democracy:
  An Analytical and Historical Inquiry into the Primary Moral Concept of Equality

The Death Penalty End Game

International New York Times -- Editorial Board

Now there may be an answer in the case of Shonda Walter, a 36-year-old black woman on Pennsylvania’s death row. On Friday, the Supreme Court met to discuss whether to hear a petition from Ms. Walter, who is asking the justices to rule that in all cases, including hers, the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

In the past 14 years alone, the Supreme Court has barred the execution of several categories of people: minors, the intellectually disabled, and those convicted of a crime other than murder. In that last case, decided in 2008, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, “When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint.”

Justice Stephen Breyer, in a long dissent from a 5-to-4 ruling that allowed Oklahoma to proceed with its inhumane lethal-injection drug protocol, suggested he would be open to a case challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty itself.

Another Blow against the Death Penalty

Supreme Court deals blow to Florida's death sentencing system
Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

“The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Florida's system of letting judges, not juries, decide whether convicted criminals deserve the death penalty.”

“In Florida, judges can impose the death penalty even if the jury has not ruled unanimously or agreed on any aggravating circumstance. If the jury has issued a recommendation, the judge doesn't have to follow it. No other state gives judges such discretion.”

Courts, States put Death Penalty on Life Support
Richard Wolf and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

"The imposition and implementation of the death penalty seems capricious, random, indeed arbitrary,'' Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said in dissenting from the court's June decision allowing the continued use of a problematic sedative for lethal injections. "From a defendant's perspective, to receive that sentence, and certainly to find it implemented, is the equivalent of being struck by lightning."

An Epidemic of National Drug Overdose Deaths

WP -- Fareed Zakaria
America’s self-destructive whites

“The main causes of death are as striking as the fact itself: suicide, alcoholism, and overdoses of prescription and illegal drugs. “People seem to be killing themselves, slowly or quickly,” Deaton told me. These circumstances are usually caused by stress, depression and despair.”

Drugabuse.gov
National Overdose Death Rates

Goodbye to 2015, a year of absurdity and overreach

WP -- George Will
Goodbye to 2015, a year of absurdity and overreach

“The American Council of Trustees and Alumni reported that 48 of the top 52 liberal arts colleges and universities do not require English majors to take a Shakespeare course.”

“A young girl was sent home with a censorious note from her school because her Wonder Woman lunchbox violated the school ban on depictions of “violent characters.” An Oregon eighth-grader, whose brother served in Iraq, was suspended for wearing a T-shirt that depicted an empty pair of boots representing soldiers killed in action. The school said the shirt was “not appropriate.” A Tennessee boy was threatened with suspension from elementary school because he came to school with a military-style haircut like that of his stepbrother, a soldier. A government arbitrator prevented the firing of a New Jersey elementary school teacher who was late to school 111 times in two years.”

A Series of Three Articles on US Foreign Policy Related to the Sunni

Romancing the Sunni: A US policy tragedy in three acts; Act I
Asian Times -- BY ANGELO CODEVILLA on DECEMBER 21, 2015

“To understand why hopes for help from the Sunni side are forlorn, we must be clear that jihadism in general and Daesh in particular are logical outgrowths of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s (and the Gulf monarchies’) official religion, about how they fit in the broader conflict between Sunni and Shia, as well as about how the US occupation of Iraq exposed America to the vagaries of intra-Muslim conflicts.”

Romancing the Sunni: A US policy tragedy in three acts; Act II
Asian Times -- BY ANGELO CODEVILLA on DECEMBER 23, 2015

“Daesh/ISIS attracts and inspires by combining orthodox Sunni Islam with very spectacular brutality. Inflicting pain, humiliation and death on captives or vengeance on presumed enemies has characterized some cultures. In all cultures throughout the ages, some individuals have relished these practices. Embedding brutality in ritual enhances its power to attract practitioners and to bind them to the group. Daesh/ISIS draws and inspires by dispensing the right and duty to engage in it.”

“It does so in the name of Allah with the prophet Muhammad’s own words. The methods– knives for beheadings, formulae for humiliating victims, etc. — it prescribes minutely by Sunni Islam’s authoritative Hadith. In contrast to the Nazi authorities who used to tell the Holocaust’s murderers that theirs was a somber though noble task, the Hadith spells out that those who kill and torture in Allah’s name should do so joyfully, with mirth, and that they should take pleasure in the fruits of their victories including the use of slaves, especially sex slaves.”

Romancing the Sunni: A US policy tragedy in three acts; Act III
Asian Times -- BY ANGELO CODEVILLA on DECEMBER 28, 2015

On Jan. 1, 2015, Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al Sisi told Sunni Islam’s leading scholars gathered at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, its leading temple of knowledge, that they had been leading Islam on a course disastrous for itself and leading to war with the rest of the world.

He said : “ You, imams, are responsible before Allah … that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years … is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world … Is it possible that 1.6 billion [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible! … I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution.”

That is reality. It is also reality that no such revolution is in the works, in part because the West continues to deal with the Sunni world by trying to appease it, romance it, seduce it.

Thomas Jefferson and Religious Freedom

Virginia Historical Society
Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

II. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. The third paragraph reflects Jefferson's belief in the people's right, through their elected assemblies, to change any law. Here, Jefferson states that this statute is not irrevocable because no law is (not even the Constitution). Future assemblies that choose to repeal or circumscribe the act do so at their own peril, because this is "an infringement of natural right." Thus, Jefferson articulates his philosophy of both natural right and the sovereignty of the people.

Wikipedia
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.[4]

Christian Post
USCIRF Report Shows Islamic Countries Are Worst Violators of Religious Freedom; 12 Muslim-Majority Nations Top the List

The annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom shows that 12 of the 17 nations with the worst record of religious freedom are Islamic or Muslim-majority countries.

The trend of Islamic and communist persecution of religious denominations, particularly Christian minorities, continues, but the intensity of attacks on Christians and others has increased.

See Also

• ISIS and Religious Persecution
• United States Constitutional Democracy and American Exceptionalism
• The Evil That Cannot Be Left Unanswered

The Evil That Cannot Be Left Unanswered

International New York Times -- Roger Cohen
The Evil That Cannot Be Left Unanswered

“Across the wide area of Syria and Iraq that it controls, the Islamic State enacts its nihilistic death cult drawn from a medievalist reading of the Koran. They slit throats at public executions, butcher “infidel”’ communities like the Yazidis en masse and turn women and children into sex slaves as they build a self-styled caliphate based on oil revenue, absolutist zealotry and digital slickness.”

At the Yazidi refugee camp, Anter Halef said to me, “We no longer have a life in this world. It’s empty.” He was broken, but at least, unlike his children, he had lived his life. “ISIS has no religion,” he went on. “No sane man would slaughter a child. In one night, they killed 1,800 people.”

For evil, unmet, propagates. To allow Islamic State to consolidate its hold over territory and minds over the coming year is to invite, or at least to accept, an inevitable replay of the Paris or the San Barnardino slaughters. It is to accept that the Syrian debacle will worsen for another year. And that, in turn, will further exacerbate the anxiety and fears on which nationalist, often Islamophobic politicians in Europe and the United States thrive.

Follow the Money

WSJ -- Kimberley A. Strassel
Justice’s Liberal Slush Fund
Legal settlements are being used to funnel millions to left-wing activists like La Raza.

This scandal comes courtesy of the Justice Department, which for 16 months has engaged in a scheme to undermine Congress’s spending authority by independently transferring dollars to President Obama’s political allies. The department is in the process of funneling more than half-a-billion dollars to liberal activist groups, at least some of which will actively support Democrats in the coming election.

It works likes this: The Justice Department prosecutes cases against supposed corporate bad actors. Those companies agree to settlements that include financial penalties. Then Justice mandates that at least some of that penalty money be paid in the form of “donations” to nonprofits that supposedly aid consumers and bolster neighborhoods.

ISIS and Religious Persecution

RealClearPolitics -- Michael Novak
The Tragedy of Christian Persecution

“If you are going to read only one book on the most massive violations of religious liberty -- happening today, even as you read this -- or you feel it's your duty to read only one thing in solidarity with this immense suffering, Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy by George J. Marlin is the one to keep at hand.”

“The chairman of Aid to the Church in Need covers eight nations of the Middle East, from Turkey to the Sudan, in some painful detail. Behind this detail, lie many hundred thousands of Christian families faced with instant death (or sexual enslavement) or two other choices (1) renounce their hard-won historical faith and submit to the authority of Allah, or (2) enter intodhimmitude, that half-life of paying fines for just being allowed to live and of keeping one's faith completely private, invisible and silent.”

“Then, summarizing the findings of the Muslim director of Yafa Center for Study and Research, Nasry lists five aims of terror in Islam. In cruelly brief form they are: (1) to punish infidels for unbelief (2) to frighten infidels into keeping their treaties with believers (3) to be a definitive tool of divine might. Q8:12 "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite them above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them." (4) to cut as a two-edged sword: striking fear into infidels, and protecting believers from their evils and (5) to put an end to oppression, tumult, and division. Fr. Nasry applauds those who try to bring Islam "up-to-date, but regrets that they have so far been very broadly rejected.”

See also:

• Religious Persecution of Christians and the Silence of Obama
• What ISIS Really Wants
• Foreign Policy -- Debate -- Can the wave of violence sweeping the Islamic world be traced back to the religion's core teachings? An FP debate about the roots of extremism.
  
  • Islam Is a Religion of Violence -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  • Islam Is a Religion of Peace -- Manal Omar

Another result of the corruption in the Chicago Democratic political machine

The Corrupt System That Killed Laquan McDonald
The Atlantic -- Conor Friedersdorf

In short, Chicago does an atrocious job of identifying and disciplining bad cops. And this failure appears to have directly contributed to the wrongful death of McDonald—Van Dyke had 18 civil complaints filed against him, but had never been disciplined. “The Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian board that handles the most serious cases, doesn't take into account previous complaints against the same officer when investigating a new one,” according to a Tuesday editorial in the Chicago Tribune. “11 officers racked up a combined 253 complaints that resulted in a single five-day suspension. Come on. What does it take to flag a problem cop?”

If police shooting video had been released sooner, would Emanuel be mayor?
Chicago Tribune -- John Kass

Would Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been re-elected if voters had seen the video of Laquan McDonald's execution?

No.

Rahm would have lost the election. Why? Because he would have lost Chicago's black vote.

"No," said the alderman, meaning no, Rahm would not have won the election. "But you already knew that. Why are you asking us?"

American Universities Begin to Implode

American Universities Begin to Implode
Real Clear Politics -- Dennis Prager

“For over half a century, American universities, with few exceptions, have ceased teaching and begun indoctrinating. In the last few weeks, this downhill spiral has accelerated. The university is now a caricature of an educational institution. It is difficult to come up with an idea or policy that is more absurd than the ideas and policies that now dominate American campuses.”

“The University of California, once an elite public institution, now circulates a list of "microaggressions" that students and faculty must be careful to avoid lest they engage in racism and bigotry. Some examples: "There is only one race, the human race." You read that right. The denial of the significance of race in favor of the primacy of the individual and the affirmation of the equality of all human beings -- one of the noblest achievements of liberal Western society -- is now officially listed by the University of California as a racist statement. It is a pure expression of moral inversion.”

America’s higher education brought low -- WP - George Will

“People who are imprecisely called educators have taught, by their negative examples, what intelligence is not.”

The Yale Problem Begins in High School
HeterodoxAcademy -- Jonathan Haidt

“After the first dozen questions I noticed that not a single questioner was male. I began to search the sea of hands asking to be called on and I did find one boy, who asked a question that indicated that he too was critical of my talk. But other than him, the 200 or so boys in the audience sat silently.”