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I am not a fan of President Trump?s controversial Executive Order on immigration. I think it contains good provisions, such as prioritizing the resettlement of religious-minority refugees who…

Rashid Khalidi is unapologetic. The longtime Columbia University professor last month said repeatedly that supporters of Israel would “infest” the Trump administration — language that evokes the imagery and metaphors of the Nazis. But for all the on-campus sensitivity seminars and trigger warnings that dominate our age, don’t expect an apology in this case. Apparently, no language, even if it is dehumanizing and deeply rooted in historic anti-Semitism, is out of line in condemning Israel. Professor Khalidi is well known as Columbia University’s professor of modern Arab studies. January 17, in a lengthy radio interview on WBEZ Chicago’s “Worldview,” Khalidi warned that this infestation would begin under the new president. Describing Israel supporters in terms that evoke vermin was not a momentary lapse or slip of the tongue. He used “infest” three times, saying “these people infest” the Trump transition team and will soon “infest” the government. Who are “these people?” In his view, they’re a bit crazy but also scheming. Khalidi explains: There are a group of people, a lot of them in Israel and some of them in the United States, who live in a world of their own. That is to say, they think that whatever they want, and whatever cockamamie schemes they can cook up, can be substituted for reality. Free speech is a blessed thing, and hypersensitivity to offensive language is a curse on college campuses. I have no desire to stifle discussion, but it’s fair to ask: What’s become of “reasonable people can differ”? What’s become of civil discourse? What’s become of the golden rule? One has to suppose that Khalidi would take offense if someone analogized Palestinians, rather than Jews, to rats or cockroaches. His remarks may not be the ugliest comment along these lines that ever emerged from the Middle East–studies faculty at Columbia. Professor Hamid Dabashi once described the soul of an Israeli Jew as containing a “vulgarity of character that is bone-deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture.” But the “infestation” theme is nasty enough to warrant special notice. What makes it especially nasty is its historical resonance. To be sure, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism and not all anti-Semitism is Nazism. But there’s no getting around the fact that in his memoir, Mein Kampf, Hitler over and over again described the Jews as an infestation of vermin. That was one of the book’s main metaphors. And that’s why Nazi officials made a point of saying their Jewish policy aimed not to “kill” but to “exterminate” (vernichten), a word more appropriate for bugs or lice than human beings. There’s no getting around the fact that in his memoir, Mein Kampf, Hitler over and over again described the Jews as an infestation of vermin. While characterizing his opponents as nonhuman, Khalidi complains that “these people . . . have a vision whereby there’s no such thing as the Palestinians.” But that’s not an essential trait of Israel’s supporters, many of whom not only recognize the existence of the Palestinians but also sympathize with their suffering. Many believe, contrary to Professor Khalidi’s views, that it’s corrupt and undemocratic Palestinian officials who are mainly responsible for Palestinians’ suffering. But it’s flatly wrong to say that Khalidi’s opponents think “there’s no such thing as the Palestinians.” Further describing Israel supporters, Khalidi says, “They have a vision whereby international law doesn’t exist.” That’s not true, either. Over many decades, Zionists have published voluminous works on international law, explaining how it supports Israel’s existence and policies. Khalidi can challenge their views, but he shouldn’t grossly mischaracterize them.  I know Rashid Khalidi personally. I was a student in his Modern Middle East course last semester and had several private discussions with him. So after his radio interview, I wrote to him and suggested he publicly clarify that he didn’t mean to characterize his political opponents so harshly. He replied by pointing me to the statement he gave to the Forward. In that statement, he acknowledged “infelicitous phrasing,” but that’s even less of an apology than the classic non-apology “I’m sorry if anyone took offense.” In an e-mail to me, he then renewed his attack on “these people” as having “a racialist disregard for Palestinians” and using “anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti–international law rhetoric.” In other words, Khalidi doubled down on his insult when he should have simply said “Sorry.” Rather than grant that both sides of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict have points worth hearing, Khalidi painted Israel’s supporters as crazy extremists who lack rational arguments and who don’t deserve serious consideration. Many good people are puzzled about how the Arab-Israeli conflict can fester and rage for more than a hundred years. A key reason is that Israel’s enemies are so passionate in their hatred that they pass it down through the generations. Rashid Khalidi’s uncivil words demonstrate the problem. They damage the very people he favors. After all, the Palestinian people would benefit from mutual accommodation and peace with Israel. And his words also harm the interests of Columbia students who hope to have mutually respectful exchanges of ideas about controversial subjects. — Dore Feith is a junior at Columbia and the president of Aryeh: Columbia Students Association for Israel.

Oh, the hypocrisy… In 2005 Barack Obama told reporters, “We simply cannot allow for people to pour in, undocumented and ...

A Morehouse College professor said Tom Brady supporting President Donald Trump is more "un-American" than Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem.

Editor’s Note: This article, originally published in 2005, was written for National Review Online by Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Who do you think said this: “Reliance on constitutional lawsuits to achieve policy goals has become a wasting addiction among American progressives. . . . Whatever you feel about the rights that have been gained through the courts, it is easy to see that dependence on judges has damaged the progressive movement and its causes”? Rush Limbaugh? Laura Ingraham? George Bush? The author is David von Drehle, a Washington Post columnist. This admission, by a self-identified liberal, is refreshing stuff. It is a healthy sign for the country and those rethinking the direction of the Democratic party in the wake of November’s election results. Let’s hope this sort of thinking spreads. There’s no doubt that constitutional lawsuits have secured critical civil-rights victories, with the desegregation cases culminating in Brown v. Board of Education topping the list. But rather than use the judiciary for extraordinary cases, von Drehle recognizes that American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education. This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs — real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce — are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide. At the same time, the politicization of the judiciary undermines the only real asset it has — its independence. Judges come to be seen as politicians and their confirmations become just another avenue of political warfare. Respect for the role of judges and the legitimacy of the judiciary branch as a whole diminishes. The judiciary’s diminishing claim to neutrality and independence is exemplified by a recent, historic shift in the Senate’s confirmation process. Where trial-court and appeals-court nominees were once routinely confirmed on voice vote, they are now routinely subjected to ideological litmus tests, filibusters, and vicious interest-group attacks. It is a warning sign that our judiciary is losing its legitimacy when trial and circuit-court judges are viewed and treated as little more than politicians with robes. As von Drehle recognizes, too much reliance on constitutional litigation is also bad for the Left itself. The Left’s alliance with trial lawyers and its dependence on constitutional litigation to achieve its social goals risks political atrophy. Liberals may win a victory on gay marriage when preaching to the choir before like-minded judges in Massachusetts. But in failing to reach out and persuade the public generally, they invite exactly the sort of backlash we saw in November when gay marriage was rejected in all eleven states where it was on the ballot. Litigation addiction also invites permanent-minority status for the Democratic party — Democrats have already failed to win a majority of the popular vote in nine out of the last ten presidential elections and pandering to judges rather than voters won’t help change that. Finally, in the greatest of ironies, as Republicans win presidential and Senate elections and thus gain increasing control over the judicial appointment and confirmation process, the level of sympathy liberals pushing constitutional litigation can expect in the courts may wither over time, leaving the Left truly out in the cold. During the New Deal, liberals recognized that the ballot box and elected branches are generally the appropriate engines of social reform, and liberals used both to spectacular effect — instituting profound social changes that remain deeply ingrained in society today. In the face of great skepticism about the constitutionality of New Deal measures in some corners, a generation of Democratic-appointed judges, from Louis Brandeis to Byron White, argued for judicial restraint and deference to the right of Congress to experiment with economic and social policy. Those voices have been all but forgotten in recent years among liberal activists. It would be a very good thing for all involved — the country, an independent judiciary, and the Left itself — if liberals take a page from David von Drehle and their own judges of the New Deal era, kick their addiction to constitutional litigation, and return to their New Deal roots of trying to win elections rather than lawsuits. – Neil Gorsuch is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

He's far from perfect, but he has a history of skepticism of executive power -- exactly what we need right now.

I have disagreed with Senator Ron Wyden on practically every political question there is, but he always has struck me as a decent and honest man, and so it is with a heavy heart that I write these words: Senator Wyden must resign his seat in light of disturbing new information about his past that has come to light. The shocking revelation: Senator Wyden has been, for more than a decade, a willing accomplice to a plot to undermine the American political order and to overthrow the Constitution by infiltrating agents of radicalism into the highest reaches of the federal judiciary. The nefariousness of this undertaking cannot be overstated. The monsters advanced to positions of power with Senator Wyden’s assistance include dangerous extremists whose ideology “represents a breathtaking retreat from the notion that Americans have fundamental Constitutional rights.” His agents take “a very dangerous view to our liberty” that “harkens back to the days when politicians restricted a people’s rights on a whim.” Wyden’s anti-constitutional conspiracy “is couched in the sort of jurisprudence that justified the horrific oppression of one group after another in our first two centuries.” Horrific. I refer, of course, to his longtime support of Neil Gorsuch. Judge Gorsuch, who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, may be unknown to Americans who do not follow the affairs of the judiciary with any great interest, but this monster — Wyden’s own characterization of him is what is quoted above — is hardly unknown in the halls of power. In fact, this atavistic beast, who would strip us not only of our constitutional rights but of our human dignity if given half a chance, was up for a confirmation vote as recently as 2006, when he was named to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most powerful and prestigious of the federal benches. But a curious thing happened in 2006. In spite of Judge Gorsuch’s obvious extremism, the danger he presents to the lives and liberties of every American, and his manifest unfitness to hold any federal judicial seat, he was confirmed. He was confirmed unanimously. Senator Wyden could not stir himself to vote against this human horror, whose defects are so obvious and so well-documented. Neither could Gorsuch’s classmate from Harvard Law, Senator Obama. Senator Dick Durbin knuckled under to the unanimous decision, as did Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (remember her?), Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Harry Reid, Senator Patty Murray, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator John Kerry, even the late Senator Ted Kennedy. And, of course, there was Senator Wyden, who now has turned against his former confederate. Not one Democrat could stir himself to cast a vote against this menace to all we hold dear. There are only a few possibilities that could explain this. The first is that Senator Wyden is so negligent in his duties, so incompetent, so mentally unfit for office that it simply escaped his notice that he was helping to advance the judicial career of a Constitution-killer such as Gorsuch. But that seems to me unlikely — Senator Wyden is many things, but he is not an utterly blind, deaf, and illiterate fool. The second possibility is that Senator Wyden is simply a coward and an opportunist who is interested in Gorsuch now only because the election of Donald Trump has riled up his constituents and donors, and Supreme Court votes make headlines that appellate-court confirmations do not. But it would be a disservice to the intellectual depth of Senator Wyden to believe such a thing. No, that is unthinkable. If Gorsuch is what Senator Wyden says he is today, then that is what he was in 2006. But if we reject the possibility that he is simply a fool or a self-seeking political miscreant, then Senator Wyden must be a villain, one who knowingly and with malice aforethought helped maneuver Gorsuch onto the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he marinated in his own malevolence and awaited his eventual elevation to the Supreme Court. And so, Senator Wyden must resign. In fact, if Senator Wyden remains in office — or Senator Schumer, or Senator Murray, or any of the others who went along with Gorsuch’s unanimous confirmation — then it will be impossible to take seriously the Democrats’ current objections to the nominee, i.e., that he is a uniquely unqualified candidate with a borderline sociopathic style of jurisprudence that would make serfs of us all. Not since Cicero confronted Catiline has a senate seen such a heinous plot or required more dedicated action. If Gorsuch is what Senator Wyden says he is today, then that is what he was in 2006, when every Democrat in the Senate signed off on his nomination. But such are “The Difficulties of a Statesman,” and we all know how that philippic ends: “Resign. Resign. Resign.” — Kevin D. Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent. 

MPs have voted in favour of triggering Article 50 as Brexit passed its first hurdle in the House of Commons.

The Marka group have been given exclusive rights to "manufacture, distribute and sell Real Madrid products" in six Gulf countries

He made his argument by referencing Matthew 2:13.

Imposing a temporary travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim countries, President Donald Trump said the move would help protect the United States from terrorism. But less than one-third of Americans believe the move makes them "more safe," according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

'Will my son's killer get sanctuary in your city?' Pelosi speaks with crying Laura Wilkerson the mother of a child killed by an undocumented immigrant Laura ...

The White House has refused to send its surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out CNN from Trump administration press coverage.

The Tehran government is to stop using the US dollar in its official reports in what looks to be the latest sign of anger at the US ban on Iranians entering the country.

Senate Republicans, frustrated by Democrats’ attempts to delay key Cabinet confirmations, moved swiftly Wednesday morning to advance three nominees to a final vote.

Thousands of angry demonstrators gathered outside Sen. Chuck Schumer?s luxury Brooklyn apartment building — holding up signs and chanting ?What the f?k, Chuck?!? — to protes…

Trump says he will urge Republicans to scrap the filibuster, or take the "nuclear option."

    On Monday, January 30, 2017, Sally Yates ordered the Department of Justice to stand down and not defend President Trump’s executive order to put a temporary stay on immigrants from certain countries until a new vetting system can be put in place. Sally Yates exact words were “as long as I am Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order …”. With these words, Sally Yates violated her duties to her client, the United States of America. One does not have to look very far to find that it is the duty of the Attorney General and the Justice Department to defend the United States of America. The Justice Department’s website states that one of the principle duties of the Attorney General is to “Perform or supervise the performance of other duties required by statute or Executive Order”. Sally Yates put her politics ahead of her client’s interest. This is an absolute no-no when it comes to lawyer’s ethics.?

Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen are both accused of misusing public funds. Fillon allegedly hired his wife for what was essentially a sham position.

It's already been confirmed via WikiLeaks that CNN, *the most trusted name in news*, is working hand-in-hand with the Democrat Party. For goodness sake, then-CNN contributor Donna Brazile was caught leaking debate questions to then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. And now that the network has been exposed, it looks like they have stopped even trying to be seen as objective and have openly joined the #ResistTrump movement. 

I think Schumer should get a knock at the door by the Secret Service, how about you? Why cover this, so that Americans will see just how crazy and sick the left is

I wonder whether there might be any long-term effects from shouting ‘racist’, ‘fascist’, ‘misogynist’ all the time? It is possible?

Hillary Clinton's staff is still furious over her loss, and more than anything, they blame former President Barack Obama. The camps are clashing over the heated blame game. Clinton's side insists O

Sorry #NeverTrumpers, but you don?t get to dismount your high horse and celebrate the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch today.  This is NOT your victory, this is ours! There is a gobsmacking l…

After spending more than $22 million on the Dakota Access pipeline protest, North Dakota wants to make sure any paid activists remember to submit their state income taxes.