Appeasing Donald Trump Won’t Work

OPINION : DAVID FRENCH
THE NEW YORK TIMES: I’m going to begin this column with a rather unusual reading recommendation. If you’ve got an afternoon to kill and want to read 126 pages of heavily footnoted legal argument and historical analysis, I strongly recommend a law review article entitled “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” It’s a rather dull headline for a highly provocative argument: that Donald Trump is constitutionally disqualified from holding the office of president.

In the article, two respected conservative law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, make the case that the text, history and tradition of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — a post-Civil War amendment that prohibited former public officials from holding office again if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to those who did — all strongly point to the conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency based on his actions on and related to Jan. 6, 2021. Barring a two-thirds congressional amnesty vote, Trump’s ineligibility, Baude and Paulsen argue, is as absolute as if he were too young to be president or were not a natural-born citizen of the United States. » | David French, Opinion Columnist | Sunday, August 20, 2023

Czech Election: Milos Zeman Wins Presidential Poll
BBC: Former PM Milos Zeman has won the Czech Republic's presidential election - the first time the position has been decided by direct popular vote.

He won 55% of votes in the second-round poll, compared to Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg's 45%.

Voters had braved freezing conditions to turn out in what was being seen as a nail-bitingly close poll.

Mr Zeman is seen as a hard-drinking, chain-smoking politician, known for his witty put-downs of opponents.

As president, he will represent the Czech Republic abroad and appoint candidates to the constitutional court and the central bank, but the post does not carry much day-to-day power.

Mr Zeman will replace the eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus, who steps down in March after ten years in office.

Both presidential candidates support deeper integration of the European Union. (+ video) » | Saturday, January 26, 2013

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Threatens to Scrap Directly Elected President
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: The deep internal divides at the top of Iranian politics sharpened on Sunday when the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned he could do away with the presidency, currently held by his rival, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In a speech, Ayatollah Khamenei made passing mention of the presidential system, which was his own route to power. "Presently, the country's ruling political system is a presidential one in which the president is directly elected by the people, making this a good and effective method," he said.

"However, if one day, probably in the distant future, it is deemed that the parliamentary system is more appropriate for the election of officials with executive power, there would be no problem in altering the current structure."

There is little chance of such a change before the next presidential elections are due in 2013. But his comments will be viewed, including by Mr Ahmadinejad himself, as a further warning against overstepping the limits of the authority he is granted under Iran's theocratic rule.

The Supreme Leader, appointed by an "Assembly of Experts", has final say in all major issues. Read on and comment » | Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent | Sunday, October 16, 2011

Donald Trump: Barack Obama Wasn't Qualified for Ivy League
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview on Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.

Mr Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate.

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Mr Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Mr Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Mr Obama's 2008 campaign did not release his college transcripts, and in his bestselling memoir, "Dreams From My Father," Mr Obama indicated he hadn't always been an academic star. Mr Trump told the AP that Mr Obama's refusal to release his college grades were part of a pattern of concealing information about himself.

"I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard," Mr Trump said. "We don't know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president." » | Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Mohamed ElBaradei to Run for Egyptian Presidency
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Egypt's reformist Mohamed ElBaradei announced on Wednesday that he planned to run for president in an election expected to be held this year.

It was the first time that Mr ElBaradei, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2005, has explicitly announced he would run for president after President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by an 18-day popular uprising last month.

"When the door of presidential nominations opens, I intend to nominate myself," Mr ElBaradei said on a live talk show on privately-owned ONTV channel.

Mr ElBaradei, 68, also said that he would vote against constitutional amendments in a referendum set for March 19, adding that a new constitution must be drawn instead.

"I will not vote for these constitutional amendments, I will vote against these amendments," he said.

"The current constitution fell. It would be an insult to the revolution if we decided to retrieve this constitution," Mr ElBaradei said, calling instead for "a new constitution, a presidential vote and then parliamentary vote". >>> | Thursday, March 10, 2011

This Is a Must Read! If a Mosque Opens at Ground Zero on 9/11 Next Year, Obama Can Kiss the White House Goodbye
MAIL ONLINE: Nine years after 9/11, the site of the Twin Towers is still an open sore on the face of New York — a festering reminder of the terror attack which claimed almost 3,000 lives.

To add insult to injury, in the eyes of the victims’ families and the majority of Americans, approval has just been granted for a mosque to be built two blocks away from Ground Zero.

What began as a local planning dispute could come to determine the fate of Barack Obama’s Presidency.

In favour: America’s liberal elite. Against: 70 per cent of the American people. With crucial mid-term elections looming in November, the President finds himself marooned on the wrong side of public opinion. It could cost him control of Congress and, in two years’ time, the White House itself. At an event to mark the Muslim festival of Ramadan, Obama backed the plans for a mosque and Islamic cultural centre 400 yards from Ground Zero, saying: ‘As a citizen and a President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country.

‘That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.’

He also managed to ignite the Bible Belt and God-fearing, moderate Middle America by proclaiming that Islam was a major force in ‘advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings’ and had ‘always been part of America’.

In so doing, he displayed an ignorance of history which made David Cameron’s recent confusion over the timing of America’s entry into World War II look like a minor clerical error.

Obama’s words would have come as a surprise not only to the Founding Fathers, who established the United States on concrete Christian principles, but also to those unfortunate women being stoned to death and subjugated in the more barbaric outposts of Islam.

The President’s inept intervention hosed fuel on the flames of a furore which has been smouldering for months. His attempts to backtrack 24 hours later only made him look weak and indecisive.

This all began when an Islamic group submitted plans to convert a former clothing factory. Despite local protests, City officials could see no lawful impediment to the mosque/cultural centre being built.

In that respect, Obama is absolutely right when he talks about ‘local laws and ordinances’. He is also perfectly justified in defending America’s constitutionally protected religious freedom.

But his reaction was characteristically legalistic, when it should have been empathetic. He concentrated on process, when he should have been focusing on politics and public reaction. Continue reading and comment >>> Richard Littlejohn | Thursday, August 19, 2010

Obama: ‘This Is the Best Job on Earth’

Hundreds Defy Warning to Give Mohammed ElBaradei Hero's Welcome Home to Egypt
THE TELEGRAPH: Hundreds of Egyptian opposition supporters defied warnings to welcome home Nobel Peace laureate and former UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei amid hopes he will run for president.

Chanting the national anthem, the crowd was so large that it twice prevented Mr ElBaradei, 67, from exiting Cairo airport after he flew in from Vienna following 12 years at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

About 1,500 people thronged the airport and wellwishers held up banners that read "Yes, ElBaradei president of Egypt" and "ElBaradei for presidency of Egypt 2011".

Others shouted "ElBaradei 100 per cent, he will bring to account the thieves" in reference to alleged corruption during the 29-year-old regime of President Hosni Mubarak. >>> | Saturday, February 20, 2010

Barack Obama: Stumbling Towards Isolationism
THE TELEGRAPH: One of the ironies of Barack Obama’s presidency is that he is increasingly distant from the world he promised to embrace, writes Toby Harnden in Washington

Photo: The Telegraph
Europeans cheered Barack Obama every step of the way to the White House.

They swooned when the candidate took his stump skills to Berlin, where he spoke of "the burdens of global citizenship" and promised to "remake the world".

He had lived in Indonesia as a boy, travelled to Pakistan and Africa in his youth and came from a family that looked, as he liked to quip, "like the United Nations". Then, in his first year in office, he made 10 trips abroad to 21 countries, making him the most travelled of all United States presidents in their first 12 months.

So it came as a rude shock to Europeans last week when Obama decided not to bother with the European Union knees up Madrid in May - particularly miffing Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain, who, like the American president, campaigned on his opposition to the Iraq war.

American officials intimated that they were unimpressed by European bickering over who would sit next to the Obamas at the summit dinner and even over who would be the first leader to shake the hand of the person that Oprah Winfrey anointed as "the One" in Iowa back in 2008.

Perhaps Obama himself was a touch irritated by Nicolas Sarkozy's new habit of mocking him. "Obama has been in power for a year, and he has already lost three special elections," the French president said last week. "Me, I have won two legislative elections and the EU election. What can one say I've lost?" >>> Toby Harnden's American Way | Saturday, February 06, 2010

Barack Obama Will Be a One-term President If He Doesn't Ditch His Statism
THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama's only chance of a legacy is to stop thinking like Gordon Brown and start emulating Bill Clinton, argues Alex Singleton.

To make comparisons between Barack Obama and Gordon Brown might seem unfair. After all, Obama actually won his leadership position. He's also eloquent, a snappy dresser and comes across as rounded. But he has one fatal flaw - and it's the same as Gordon Brown's.

Mr Obama believes that society is a chessboard, and that the keys to the Oval Office give him the power to move the pawns on the board. But both in Britain and America, the characters on the board object to being treated like pawns in politicians' games. They will only tolerate so much meddling from above.

Brown's endless meddling destroyed Labour's electoral popularity, which Tony Blair had worked so hard to generate. Likewise, in America, Obama's statist interference is putting his chances of a second term in serious jeopardy. He confused a desire for change among the electorate with a desire for big government. Even his proposed land grab of the healthcare sector is unpopular, and Scott Brown's victory in Massachussetts has put it in peril.

It is too early to have expected Barack Obama to have brought change to America or the world, but the president is risking becoming a curious footnote in history - the first black president, but a president who failed to achieve his domestic reforms, who carried on George W. Bush's programme in Iraq, and who was thrown out after his first term. >>> Alex Singleton | Thursday, January 21, 2010

Experts Can Only Guess as We Head Into the Unknown
THE SUNDAY TIMES: American Account

“DON’T project beyond the range of the known observations” is a rule followed by careful economists. In plain English this means, for example, that we know how American consumers behave when petrol prices move between $1 and $4 a gallon, “the range of the known observations”. But we haven’t much of an idea what consumers would do if prices rose to $5 — no experience, no data to inform our forecasts. Which is why we have to be very careful when predicting the effect of the various policies that are being adopted to fight the credit crisis and recession. We simply have no experience of this combination of events.

So we have reason to worry about the galaxy of stars that Barack Obama has assembled to help him right the American economy. They are so bright, so self-confident, so accustomed to being the smartest guy or girl in the room, that doubt is not one of the emotions with which they are familiar, as was true of the bright young “quants” (mathematical economists) who designed the models used to manage the risks taken on by Lehman Brothers and AIG. Something about hubris and nemesis comes to mind. >>> Irwin Stelzer | Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>

Nicolas Sarkozy: The Problem with the President
THE INDEPENDENT: He swaggered into the Elysée Palace on a promise to reinvent France for the 21st century. But after just eight months, Nicolas Sarkozy's popularity is plummeting – and his personal life is becoming a soap opera. Is he up to the job? John Lichfield reports

Tuesday, 12 February 2008

Imagine, for a moment, President Charles de Gaulle in dark glasses and dark roll-top jumper sitting at a café terrace in Versailles with his newly married pop-singer wife.Imagine also le Général in open-neck shirt and jeans on an Egyptian holiday. The tall, austere saviour of France is walking, hand in hand, with Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend. Her small son sits on his shoulders, looking embarrassed.

Imagine, for a moment, President Jacques Chirac in the Vatican, fiddling compulsively with the buttons of his mobile phone as his companions are being presented to the Pope. The presidential entourage includes, incidentally, France's most vulgar and foul-mouthed comedian, Jean-Marie Bigard, a kind of Gallic Bernard Manning.

Imagine, for a moment, President François Mitterrand receiving ministerial visits to his office in the Elysée Palace with his feet up on his desk. Worse, imagine the suave, icy President Mitterrand addressing almost everyone he meets with the familiar "tu", instead of the dignified and respectful "vous".

In his eight months as French head of state, Nicolas Sarkozy has done all these things and more. Genres have been confused, values muddled, conventions trampled, traditions overturned.

President Sarkozy promised last year to reinvent France for the 21st century, while preserving, or rekindling, "traditional values". He has started by reinventing – or, some say, desecrating – the French presidency. Nicolas Sarkozy: The problem with the president >>> By John Lichfield

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)