Hollywood heavyweights come out in support of Israel

Is there hope for Hollywood yet?

Scores of celebrities and power-brokers from the Hollywood establishment have come out in support of Israel and a peaceful resolution to its conflict with Hamas, with stars as diverse as Sarah Silverman, Seth Rogen and Arnold Schwarzenegger signing a joint statement released Saturday.

The statement of support was initially to be published in magazines Billboard, Variety and Hollywood Reporter on Sunday, and later be featured in influential newspapers in the US.

The statement comes after weeks in which a number of celebrities, including Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem, have condemned Israel for its handing of conflict, with Cruz and Bardem even accusing Israel of genocide. But with the notable exceptions of comedian Joan Rivers and actors Roseanne Barr and Mayim Bialik, few have expressed support for Israel.

While many of those are famous names to the general public, such as Schwarzenegger and Rogen, as well as Sylvester Stallone, Kelsey Grammer and Joel and Benji Madden, more than a few are entertainment industry heavy-hitters, including director Ivan Reitman, writer Aaron Sorkin, producers Michael Rotenberg and Avi Lerner, chairman and CEO of PMK•BNC Michael Nyman, talent manager Danny Sussman and mogul Haim Saban. Barr and Bialik, who have been outspoken in their support for Israel, are also signatories.
The statement decries Hamas attacks on Israel and its operation within civilian population centers, and condemns the organization for its charter that calls for the killing of Jews.

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Eric Holder, Racial Profiler

Why has a federal civil-rights murder investigation arisen out of the tumult in a St. Louis exurb? There is only one plausible reason: Eric Holder is guilty of racial profiling.

To be clear, we are not talking here about whether there was justification for the shooting of a young black man, 18-year-old Michael Brown, by a young white police officer, 28-year-old Darren Wilson. Was the shooting a legitimate exercise in self-defense by an officer under attack? Was it an overreaction for which Officer Wilson should suffer serious civil and criminal consequences? Such questions can only be answered by a thorough and fair investigation, the kind of due process owed to both the victim and the subject of the investigation - the kind that, as National Review's editors point out, will be tough to mete out with political thumbs pressing on the scales.

Whatever the outcome, though, murder - including homicide caused by a policeman's application of excessive force - is generally not a federal crime. It is a concern of state law. Only a few categories of murder are within the jurisdiction of federal investigators. In the main, they are far afield from Ferguson: the assassination of a U.S. government official, for instance, or a killing incidental to offenses that have interstate or international repercussions - racketeering, drug-trafficking, and terrorism.

Federal civil-rights laws may be invoked, but only in exceedingly rare circumstances: murders carried out because of the victim's race, ethnicity or religion (see Section 249 of the federal penal code); or murders carried out by police (or other persons acting "under color of law") with the specific intent to deprive a person of some federal right or privilege - usually, but not necessarily, motivated by some animus toward race or analogous personal characteristics (see Section 242).

To constitute a civil-rights crime, it is not nearly enough for a violent act to have the "racial overtones" assorted agitators and commentators choosing to frame the case in racial terms contend it does. To justify a federal investigation, the Justice Department must have a rational basis to believe it could prove these invidious and evil purposes beyond a reasonable doubt. That requires compelling evidence, not a farfetched social-justice narrative.

Remember the similarly tragic Trayvon Martin shooting, when Mr. Holder colluded with the notorious Al Sharpton in raising the specter of a federal civil-rights prosecution, pressuring state officials in Florida to file a specious murder indictment. After a jury swiftly acquitted George Zimmerman, Holder was forced to retreat. As he had to have known all along, the evidence of intent to deprive Mr. Martin of his civil rights was non-existent - even weaker than the state's flimsy murder case.

Well, here he goes again.

Based on what is known about the unblemished six-year record of Officer Darren Wilson and the facts surrounding his shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, there is no reason to suspect racism, much less that any thought was given to Mr. Brown's federal rights during the sudden, violent exchange. There is no way this is a civil-rights case . . . unless you are a backward-thinking dolt who spots racism based on nothing more than the fact that the police officer is white and the victim is black.

It is a violation of federal law to subject a person to criminal investigation solely on the basis of his race. To prevent such government abuse, to root out institutional racism, is the objective of the civil-rights laws, which hold that a person may not be deprived of his rights and privileges - including due process and equal protection under the law - based on his race.

If the Justice Department would not open a civil-rights investigation based on a black police officer's shooting of a civilian, whatever the victim's race, then a white officer is just as entitled to that presumption of innocence. It is no more legitimate for the Justice Department to target a white cop for being white than for a white cop to target a black man for being black. Both would be examples of what the civil-rights laws call "deprivation of rights under color of law."

The U.S. Attorney's Manual, which guides Justice Department prosecutors, is clear on this point (USAM, Sec. 9-27.260):

    In determining whether to commence or recommend prosecution or take other action against a person, the attorney for the government should not be influenced by. . . . the person's race, religion, sex, national origin, or political association, activities or beliefs.

The manual elaborates that prosecutors must, of course, take note of personal characteristics when they are pertinent to the offense. Investigations of immigration violations, for example, necessarily involve a person's national origin. And the fact that a victim and offender are of different races can be considered in building the case for a civil-rights investigation. But this simply means the government need not drop a case that is based on solid evidence of racial animus just because racial difference is part of its proof. It does not mean the mere racial difference can ever substitute for solid evidence of racial animus.

Simply stated, it is impermissible for federal investigations to be commenced in the absence of colorable suspicion based on solid evidence. Yet, despite the absence of any suggestion that Darren Wilson is a racist, we know he has been made the subject of a civil-rights investigation. Obama-administration officials may not yet suspect that Nidal Hasan's 2009 jihadist mass murder of 13 American soldiers was a terrorist attack, or that the Muslim Brotherhood is anything but a "largely secular" organization. They may have given the benefit of the doubt to Assad (the "reformer"), Iran (our good faith negotiating partner), Al Sharpton (Holder's civil-rights adviser), and the IRS (not a "smidgeon" of corruption). But not to Darren Wilson. No sooner had the looting followed the shooting than Holder ceremoniously announced a Justice Department civil-rights murder probe.

Based solely on Wilson's race.

It is ironic at first blush. Holder, after all, is the self-proclaimed scourge of racial profiling. Over the years, he has been a prominent Lawyer Left voice for the idea that institutional racism explains the lopsided representation of black men in the population of American convicts (with strangely less concern for the lopsided representation of black communities among crime victims). The CAIR-driven Muslim grievance sector also has the attorney general's ear: It has become verboten to make the commonsense observation that Islamic doctrine just might have something to do with terrorism plotted against the United States throughout the past quarter-century by Muslims - that all those "smite their necks" verses just might shed some light on the decapitation of American journalists.

So how could Holder be what he purports to abhor, a racial profiler? It is because his selectively zealous anti-racism is the necessary flipside of his race obsession.

This obsession holds that racism is America's original, indelible sin. Crusading for "racial justice" - understood as desired outcome, not due process - becomes the highest cause. And the crusade can never end, no matter how objectively just society has become, because that would put the crusaders out of business . . . and out of power.

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IRS Lied, Currently Hiding Lois Lerner’s Emails!

By now, we all know the story of how the IRS illegally targeted Conservative non-profit groups.

Lois Lerner, the IRS bureaucrat at the heart of the scandal, is on record deliberately targeting these groups. The emails that are available prove that she was collaborating with the FEC and DOJ to go after the President’s opponents.

The vast majority of the evidence proving Lois Lerner’s guilt, however, was destroyed in an alleged “computer crash.”

Well, that was the story that the IRS originally told. Then, they changed their tune and said that the hard-drive was crashed and the data was unrecoverable. Then that turned out to be a lie as IRS technicians testified that they could have recovered the emails, but the IRS chose to incinerate the hard-drive instead. Technicians recounted that the hard-drive has deep gashes in concentric circles, something that was likely handmade and definitely recoverable.

But despite all the evidence, the IRS has always asserted that the emails and data on the hard-drives were lost forever. They claimed that there was absolutely nothing they could do to recover the evidence that Lois Lerner broke the law.

In new bombshell testimony, the IRS’ story has now been debunked and proven to be a COMPLETE LIE!  A Department of Justice attorney told Judicial Watch, a watchdog organization, late last week that Lois Lerner’s emails still exist.

Every keystroke on every government computer is recorded. This is done in case of some catastrophic catastrophe so that government can survive, even when the physical computer systems are destroyed.

This central backup system, which is highly confidential, apparently records EVERYTHING. The only problem is that the data isn’t categorized. It is just archived by its date stamp. This means that there is no easy way to go through the backups and find a specific document.

So when the IRS said that it couldn’t recover Lois Lerner’s emails, that was a complete lie. The IRS has the power to recover everything Lois Lerner ever wrote on her computer… but the tax agency believes it will take too long so it isn’t going to even bother!

That’s right… the IRS has the power and ability to recover all of Lois Lerner’s emails and documents, but has lied in testimony before Congress and a Federal Judge, claiming that recovery was physically impossible.

This is an agency that is supposed to be neutral. Instead, we have entire departments within the IRS that made it their goal to disqualify as many Conservative, opposition non-profit groups as possible. They did this during an election year, which meant that these groups weren’t able to participate fully in the 2012 election!

And now, after more than a year of the IRS stonewalling Congress and claiming the emails were unrecoverable, everything that the Obama administration has told Congress had been proven to be a lie!

The IRS didn’t just lie once… they have lied CONTINUOUSLY to the American people.  If the emails are accessible, the only reason to lie to Congress is if the IRS has something to hide.

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HOW THE WEST WAS LOST

Comment from Australia

Why would the US threaten to place even more sanctions on Russia simply because it attempted to supply humanitarian aid to Russian speaking Ukrainians who are being systematically ethnically cleansed by Ukraine’s war criminal, Petro Poroshenko?

Why would Obama give comfort to Poroshenko and further alienate Vladimir Putin when he has never needed Putin more than he needs him now?

Blame for the rampaging Islamic State and its atrocities rests entirely with Obama. He armed them via the CIA in the hope they would overthrow Syria’s Bashar Assad. They failed. The US has interfered similarly in Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Each is an unholy mess as a result of that interference.

Now Obama is courting the assistance of Assad, the very same bloke he has been trying to kill, to help overthrow the Islamic State. And guess who has been militarily assisting Assad toward the same goal? Yep, Vladimir Putin!

Bloody hell, is this some sort of madness? China, which has a sensible hands-off policy in the Middle East and deals ruthlessly with Islamic terrorists, can’t believe its luck! The US is self-imploding and taking the Middle East and Europe with it.

Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan along with north Africa’s Egypt, Libya and half of central Africa is on fire, ignited by an Arab spring the US promoted. Gaza and the West Bank have erupted because of Obama's unwillingness to support Israel, and now the US wants out? Too late, the Islamic hornet’s nest has been poked.

The Islamic State must be destroyed and quickly but now Obama needs Assad’s and Putin’s assistance. Yet Obama is busily isolating Russia with the assistance of Ukraine, NATO and a bankrupt Europe!

Can Putin really be expected to go sulk silently in a corner somewhere? Has there ever been better ingredients for a World war?
Obama has lit the Islamic fuse yet he still refuses to use the words “Islam” and “terrorism” in the same sentence.

Islam has infiltrated and infested the West to the extent that liberal/left governments are electorally unable to combat it

ASIO’s chief, David Irvine is on the guest speaker circuit for Christ’s sake, he is speaking at the National Press Club this week! The ASIO chief should be neither seen nor heard, he heads Australia’s primary security agency.

A Rudd [Leftist] appointment, Irvine claims publically that there is, "no link between terrorism and Islam". WTF?

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