Month: December 2017

Yesterday, President Trump returned much of the land that the Obama administration stole from the state of Utah under the Antiquities Act.

The Act, passed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, was originally designed to prevent looting of Indian artifacts from archeological sites. But since then, the Act has been abused and perverted in order to justify the federal government seizing land to turn into national monuments at will. This prevented the lands from ever being used by private citizens for other needs.

However, in his quest to roll back as many regulations as possible, Trump decided to set millions of acres of public land in Utah free from federal regulations.

Trump signed two executive orders to shrink two national monuments — Bears Ears by 85%, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante in half. These monuments were created originally by Presidents Obama and Clinton, respectively. The move followed a review conducted in April by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on monument boundaries.

Both Senators from Utah, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, were very pleased with the move. Hatch praised it as Trump giving the people of Utah “a voice in the process.” Lee released a statement via Facebook.

Zinke stated yesterday that this move by the Trump administration is part of a larger picture of scaling back the government and overreach in general, saying, “We’re not taking one square inch of federal land and transferring it or selling it. It is still federal land, with all the protections of federal land.” He added that the biggest change is that the government is “allowing greater use on the areas that were previously in the monument.”

Many Trump skeptics did not believe that he would be serious in rolling back the government or its regulations. This is understandable, as Trump, during his presidential campaign, praised universal health care and stated that he would not touch entitlements or welfare as president. We should be applauding this move by the administration, because even if the Republican Congress isn’t serious in scaling back government in any significant way, it seems that the president is.

Keep it up, Mr. President.

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FBI section chief Peter Strzok, who was fired by special counsel Robert Mueller for sending anti-Trump text messages, conducted interviews with two of Hillary Clinton’s top aides in 2016, who are both accused of lying about their knowledge of Clinton’s private email server when she was secretary of state.

Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin did not face any legal consequences for giving false statements to Strzok during interviews last year, the Daily Caller reported.

The DC reviewed summaries of the interviews that were released by the FBI in 2016 in which Mills and Abedin both claim that they did not know anything about Clinton’s private email server until after she left the State Department.

Those statements were proven false, as email exchanges involving Mills and Abedin show that they communicated about Clinton’s private email server before she left the State Department.

In other words, they did not tell the truth.

What is particularly troubling about this is the fact that Strzok also interviewed former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who lied in his interview about meeting with Russia’s ambassador last year — Flynn was charged with a felony last week for lying to the FBI.

This latest revelation is likely to cause serious damage to the already floundering credibility of Mueller — who is viewed as heavily biased and even corrupt by others — as it is clear that there appears to be one set of standards for Republicans and another for Democrats.

The slightly left-leaning Wall Street Journal’s editorial board penned a piece on Monday calling Mueller’s credibility problem into question:

The latest news supports our view that Mr. Mueller is too conflicted to investigate the FBI and should step down in favor of someone more credible. The investigation would surely continue, though perhaps with someone who doesn’t think his job includes protecting the FBI and Mr. Comey from answering questions about their role in the 2016 election.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that President Trump would declare that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that the government would begin the process of moving the American embassy to the Israeli capital. He will sign a six-month waiver designed to put off the actual legal obligation to move the embassy, however.

This move follows a day of Trump calling Middle Eastern leaders including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who threatened the outbreak of violence and said there would be no Palestinian state without East Jerusalem as its capital; Saudi King Salman, who suggested that such an announcement would “harm peace negotiations and increase tension in the reason”; and the King of Jordan, who warned of “dangerous repercussions.”

Trump’s move would be a powerful one, a legal one, and a wise one. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Jerusalem Is The Eternal Capital Of Israel. Jerusalem is only important because the Jews made it important; it was the capital of the kingdom of Israel, the site of the Temple, and the wellspring of Judaic thought for millennia. Both Christianity and Islam value Jerusalem because Judaism did. The dream of Jerusalem has animated the Jewish people for its entire existence; there is a reason the Psalms (137:5) state, “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.” Jerusalem is mentioned hundreds of times in the Prophets and Writings (during the time of the Torah, it was not yet called Jerusalem). By contrast, Jerusalem is not mentioned at all in the Koran. If Jews do not have a historic claim to Jerusalem, they have no historic claim to any part of Israel, including Tel Aviv.

2. Congress Has Long Recognized Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital. In 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, requiring the movement of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The act also said that Jerusalem should be undivided and be recognized as the capital of Israel. The executive branch has refused to implement the law thanks to both political and separation of powers concerns. Trump would merely be stamping Congressional law with approval. That law, by the way, passed 93-5 in the Senate and 374-37 in the House.

3. Recognizing Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital Recognizes Israel’s Sovereignty. By removing the United States from the position of pressuring Israel to sacrifice its historic, religious, strategic capital, Israel will now be able to negotiate on its own behalf. That means that the US will no longer be in a position to twist the arm of our closest ally in order to pursue separate strategic interests. Imagine the United States pressuring Great Britain to hand over all of Dublin to the IRA. That’s what the US has been doing to Israel for years.

4. Recognizing Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital Will Minimize Violence. Every time negotiations fail, the Palestinians threaten violence and participate in terrorism. The sticking point for such negotiations has generally been Jerusalem – that’s the excuse the Palestinian Authority and Hamas use to launch campaigns of terror, to international approval thanks to the international community’s refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. They hope that using violence as a tactic will earn concessions from Israel, or pressure from the West on Israel. By leading the charge to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the United States will be sending the unmistakable signal that violence over Jerusalem will not be tolerated, and that pressure tactics through murder will earn no rewards.

5. Showing The United States Will Not Be Bullied By Terrorists Is Good Policy. The entire Oslo Accords was based on a blackmail program: Palestinians vowed not to murder Jews if Jews turned over land. That deal wasn’t just blackmail, it was a lie: Israel offered many generous peace deals, and the Palestinians responded with terror waves. The United States shouldn’t participate in such blackmail. If the Palestinians threaten violence, Trump should drop the other shoe: he should refuse to authorize the release of foreign aid to the terrorist government. There’s no reason taxpayers should be paying terrorists in the first place.

6. Recognizing Reality Makes Peace More Possible. A few days ago, the Saudi monarchy reportedly summoned Palestinian leadership and told them to support a peace deal with the Israelis. That deal would retain major Israeli settlement blocs, prevent the establishment of a Palestinian standing army, and leave the PA without Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital. By declaring Jerusalem Israel’s undivided capital, the United States would remove any other option from the table, thereby pressuring both the Saudis and the Palestinians into accepting that deal.

7. Recognizing Jerusalem Means Cementing The Anti-Iranian Alliance. President Obama’s horrific foreign policy united Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel against Iran. But that alliance cannot be cemented until realities are recognized by all parties. Just as George H.W. Bush should have allowed Israel to join the coalition against Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War in order to force the Muslim states to recognize that their common interests with Israel outstripped their differences, Trump would be right to make clear to all parties that Israel has control over its own capital, and that the price of alliance is recognition of reality.

Jerusalem is, was, and always will be Israel’s capital. Failing to recognize that is a slap in the face to history, to reality, and to Israel itself. If Trump does what is necessary, he’ll deserve credit not just for bravery, but for decency.