Columnist.
Last week, as riots in Ferguson, Missouri decrescendoed and the country held its collective breath over the question of the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, rappers Diddy (formerly P. Diddy, formerly Puff Daddy, formerly Sean Combs), 2 Chainz, The Game, and Rick Ross, along with 10 of their fellows, released a song: "Don't Shoot." The Game explained why he felt the necessity to record the song: "I am a black man with kids of my own that I love more than anything, and I cannot fathom a horrific tragedy like Michael Brown's happening to them. This possibility has shaken me to my core."
The vast majority of Americans have never met Phil Weinberg. But that isn't because he's unimportant. It's because he *is* important. Like millions of Americans who toil largely in anonymity, participating daily in acts of courage and generosity, Phil has never been on CNN or Fox News; while he subscribes to The Wall Street Journal, he's never had his picture dot pixelated. That's because he, like so many other Americans, is too busy making the country work. Phil was born at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston in 1951, just down the block from Fenway Park, and grew up a diehard Red Sox fan (of course). He began working as a kid, selling papers on a street corner for eight cents a pop, shoveling snow for neighbors. He headed his junior congregation while still a kid at Hebrew school -- where his future wife, Cheryl, saw him, although she had no clue she'd end up marrying the tall, goofy guy who was leading services.
On Monday, Rasmussen released a poll of Americans regarding the guilt or innocence of Officer Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot unarmed 18-year-old black man Michael Brown six times in Ferguson, Missouri. Those polls show that 57 percent of black adults think that Wilson should be found guilty of murder; 56 percent of whites, by contrast, are undecided on the matter. The latter position is the correct one. Witnesses, including one Dorian Johnson, claim that Brown was pulled over by Wilson, attacked by him and pulled into the car, ran, stopped when told to freeze by Wilson, held up his hands, and was then shot. Other witnesses -- more than a dozen of them, according to local media -- say that Brown attacked Wilson, went for Wilson's gun, fled before being told to stop, then charged Wilson before being shot.
Robin Williams' suicide this week shook up people across the political spectrum -- and for good reason. When a highly successful, incredibly popular figure from our culture decides to take his own life, it feels as though suicide could happen to anyone. It can't. Robin Williams reportedly suffered from mentally illness. He stated during an interview in 2006 that he hadn't been formally diagnosed with depression or bipolar disorder, but stated, "Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah." He added, "I get bummed, like I think a lot of us do at certain times. You look at the world and go, 'Whoa.' Other moments you look and go, 'Oh, things are OK.'" That same year, according to the Huffington Post, he explained the temptation of alcoholism -- he had famously admitted to drug and alcohol addiction problems -- to Diane Sawyer. "It's the same voice thought that ... you're standing at a precipice and you look down, there's a voice and it's a little quiet voice that goes, 'Jump.'"
On Tuesday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer hosted Hamas spokesman Osama Hamden. The week before, Hamdan labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a new image of Hitler" on the network. But now, for some reason, Blitzer stumbled into a random act of journalism: He asked Hamdan about comments he had made suggesting that Jews used Christian blood in matza. Hamdan stumbled around and blamed the Jews for their action in Gaza. Blitzer called Hamdan's comments an "awful, awful smear."
This week, as I have been predicting for months, President Barack Obama announced that he would be considering unprecedented executive action to provide legal status for millions of illegal immigrants. His goal is not to solve the immigration crisis -- you don't grant legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants, then leave the back door wide open if you're interested in solving the problem. His goal is not to help illegal immigrants -- he instead leaves them in limbo by granting them temporary work permits, rather than blanket amnesty. His goal is trolling. Trolling is a practice whereby a person takes a deliberately indefensible position simply to draw passionate excess from an opponent. That is Obama's goal here: He hopes for extreme language, impassioned opposition and eventually, impeachment.
If there's one place on Earth that should understand the danger of Jew hatred, it is Frankfurt, Germany. In 1933, boycotts targeted Jews; by 1938, Germans were burning synagogues down. Between 1933 and 1945, the Jewish population of the city was decimated, dropping from 30,000 to 602. Few Jews, most of them Soviet expatriates, live in the city now. So Frankfurt seems an odd place for a new blood libel against the Jews. Nonetheless, this week, 2,500 protesters, including Muslims and neo-Nazis -- allied once again -- showed up downtown to scream about Israel's defensive action against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Police reportedly helped out the protesters, allowing them to utilize a loudspeaker and a vehicle to shout anti-Israel diatribes. "You Jews Are Beasts," read one sign.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once infamously stated. He never bothered to spell out the unspoken corollary to that appalling statement: And if there is no serious crisis available, manufacture one. The American left has followed that pattern for generations. The left destroyed the nuclear family by incentivizing women to give birth out of wedlock. When out-of-wedlock births exploded, they used that as an excuse to elevate federal spending, elevate taxes and disestablish marriage between a man and a woman as a moral standard. The left crafted a health care crisis by instituting price and wage controls that led to employer-sponsored insurance, and then undercut that insurance with excessive regulation and easy lawsuits. They used elevating costs as an excuse to push Obamacare and elevate taxes.
On Monday, three Jewish boys were found dead, murdered by the terrorist group Hamas: Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, 16. Frenkel was an American citizen. The three were kidnapped while hitchhiking some three weeks ago. In the interim, President Barack Obama said nothing about them publicly. His wife issued no hashtags. His State Department maintained that $400 million in American taxpayer cash would continue to the Palestinian unity government, which includes Hamas. Presumably Frenkel did not look enough like Barack Obama's imaginary son for him to give a damn. Or perhaps Frenkel hadn't deserted his duty in the American military, and therefore his parents didn't deserve a White House press conference. Maybe Michelle Obama was too busy worrying about children's fat thighs to spend a moment tweeting out a selfie to raise awareness.
The Constitution is dead. Long live the executive dictatorship. There is almost nothing the president of the United States cannot do. This week, we found out President Barack Obama's IRS not only targeted conservative nonprofit applicants with impunity but then destroyed the emails that could have illuminated the process behind such targeting. Meanwhile, the attorney general -- the executive officer charged with fighting government criminality -- continues to stonewall an independent prosecutor, maintaining along with his boss that there is not a "smidgen of corruption" in the IRS.
My baby daughter has ruined me. I'm not typically known for being the most openly emotional person. On the incredibly rare occasions in which I find myself crying -- typically when the last track of "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" pipes through the car stereo (why would you leave the Hundred Acre Wood, Christopher Robin, you dolt?!) -- my wife revels in it. The first time it happened, she turned to me, grinning gleefully, and exclaimed, "You *do* have feelings!" At least, that's how it was until Leeya was born. Now I'm a wreck.
President Barack Obama believes he is above the law. That's because he is. This week alone, Obama announced that he would unilaterally change student loan rules, allowing borrowers to avoid paying off more of their debt; he signaled that he would continue his non-enforcement of immigration law, even as thousands of children cross the border; he defended his non-disclosure of a terrorist swap to Congress. And, he said, more such actions were in the offing. "I will keep doing whatever I can without Congress," Obama explained.
On Sept. 30, 2011, two American Predator drones based out of a Saudi Arabian CIA facility swept into Yemen and fired Hellfire missiles at a car containing terrorist and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. He was killed. So, too, was terrorist buddy Samir Khan, an American born in Saudi Arabia. President Barack Obama promptly announced the kill: "The death of Awlaki is a major blow to al-Qaida's most active operational affiliate. He took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans ... and he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda." Nowhere did Obama mention that either man was an American citizen. Last Saturday, Obama announced that the United States had traded five Taliban terrorist leaders in exchange for American Sgt. (sic) Bowe Bergdahl. As the days passed, it became clear that Bergdahl was no American hero: he was, in fact, a deserter. He left a note at his base in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, stating that he hated the military; he emailed his father stating that he hated America. Reports a year later from the U.K. Daily Mail stated that Bergdahl was teaching the Taliban bomb-making and had converted to Islam.
On the day before Memorial Day, President Barack Obama secretly flew into Afghanistan for a surprise visit to the troops. "We're going to stay strong by taking care of our wounded warriors and our veterans. Because helping our wounded warriors and veterans heal isn't just a promise, it's a sacred obligation ... I'm here to say that I'm proud of you," he stated. But he wasn't in Afghanistan out of mere pride for the troops. As usual, Obama was using the troops for political purposes. Whether he's taking credit for their successful missions ("Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan") or portraying them as victims of brutal, hawkish foreign policy (we "have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted" in Iraq), the troops are but implements in Obama's quest for political victory.
Just off of the James C. Lodge Freeway in Detroit is Eight Mile Road. The stretch near the freeway is just east of the famed area that provided the basis for the Eminem film of the same name. To its north lie predominantly white suburbs -- over 77 percent of those who live in Oakland County are white -- with median family income in excess of $65,000. Married couples comprise approximately half of households, with fewer than 15 percent of households led by a single female. Since 1990, the population of Oakland County has jumped from 1.083 million to 1.202 million. South of Eight Mile Road lies the city of Detroit, with a nearly 83 percent black population and a median household income of under $27,000. Almost 74 percent of households in Detroit are led by single parents, nearly all women. The population of the city has dropped from 1.027 million in that same period to approximately 713,000.
This week, a picture emerged of Islamist terror group Boko Haram's leader Abubakar Shekau holding a machine gun in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. On that paper was scrawled: "#WeSurrender." Thus came to an end the Great Hashtag War of 2014. Led by the bravery of First Lady Michelle Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Democratic women of the United States Senate, the West tweeted Boko Haram into submission. When Obama released the H-bomb of twitter -- a sad duck-faced picture of herself in an empty room holding a sign reading #BringBackOurGirls -- total victory was achieved: 276 Nigerian girls who had been kidnapped and converted to Islam avoided sale into sex slavery, and the 150 Nigerians murdered by Boko Haram just last week suddenly sprang back to life.
On Monday, as Vladimir Putin waged an actual war in Ukraine, Bashar Assad waged an actual war in Syria, and a Nigerian terror group waged an actual war on underage girls, President Barack Obama announced his own war on "climate disruption." White House adviser John Podesta explained on Monday afternoon that Obama would be acting alone to push new regulations under the Clean Air Act to combat climate change. That announcement came in the wake of an 840-page report from the federal government suggesting that the globe is on the verge of a meltdown: "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present."
In November 2009, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling settled a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice alleged that Sterling had discriminated against Hispanics, blacks and families without children in his rental properties. The lawsuit contained testimony that Sterling had suggested Hispanics were poor tenants because they "smoke, drink, and just hang around the building," and that "black tenants smell and attract vermin." The settlement cost him and his insurers $2.73 million. The NBA and the national media said virtually nothing. That same year, the NAACP gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2005, Sterling signed a check for more than $5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that he had attempted to prevent non-Koreans from renting in his facilities in Koreatown.
This week, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose standoff with the federal government over taxes and land-use rights has captivated the nation, announced, "I don't believe I owe one penny to the United States government. I don't have a contract with the United States government." His legal case is problematic; the Bureau of Land Management certainly has jurisdiction over the federal lands on which his cattle graze. But his moral case is significantly stronger: paying taxes to a government that uses those tax dollars to restrict your activities on land your family has worked since the 19th century -- over a turtle, no less -- is sickening stuff. A government squeeze is a government squeeze.
