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Former US judge on 'one-sided' UN Gaza inquiry headed previous probe that criticized Israel

A former New York State Supreme Court judge who replaced George Clooney’s fiancé on the latest United Nations-sponsored inquiry into human rights violations in Gaza once chaired another U.N. committee that harshly criticized Israeli for a previous military operation into the Hamas-controlled territory.
The “committee of independent experts in international humanitarian and human rights law” chaired by Mary McGowan Davis in 2011 was intended to follow up on  the now discredited Goldstone Commission investigating human rights violations in the wake of the 2008 operations, known as Operation Cast Lead, against the forces of Hamas. 
The Goldstone Commission’s report, which placed responsibility on Israel’s political and military leadership for human rights violations during the conflict including the direct targeting of civilians, was subsequently recanted by its chairman, South African jurist Richard Goldstone, for its unfounded accusations of Israeli war crimes and tilt against Israel—though it lives on in U.N. archives and references.
Both the Davis committee of 2010 and the current inquiry—generated by the U.N.’s 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva—were opposed by the U.S., which cast the sole negative vote against each of them.
In the case of the current three-person probe—called the Schabas commission, after its chairman, Canadian law professor William Schabas— the U.S. declared it was “deeply troubled” by the enabling resolution and said that it created “yet another one-sided mechanism targeting Israel.”
The U.S. attitude now, however, is more wait-and-see.  While reaffirming that the Obama Administration was “strongly opposed” to creation of the Schabas Commission,  a State Department official told Fox News that “we will watch closely to see if the commission takes a constructive, unbiased, and balanced approach to the investigation.”
He warned that “It risks damaging the reputation of the Human Rights Council and its ability to objectively and constructively address human rights in the region.”
Whether the Geneva-based Human Rights Council has any reputation left to damage is perhaps a more pertinent question. Nonetheless, the appointment of Davis, by providing a thread of continuity tracing back to the other distorted U.N. investigations against Israel in the now- simmering Gaza conflict, doesn’t indicate that the Council itself is fretting much about the issue.
For its part, Israel has charged bias against all of the investigations and refused to allow them into the territory.
Davis, who served on the New York Supreme Court from 1986 to 1998, was named to the latest inquiry on Monday by the current President of the Council, Baudelaire Ndong Ella, after British human rights attorney  Amal Alamuddin—better known these days as the fiance of George Clooney—turned down the job.
Davis can at least claim to have impressive amounts of experience on the issue. Before she chaired the 2011 “independent experts” probe, she was a member of its three-person immediate predecessor, which reported in September 2010  along the same lines as her own probe six months later.
When it came to even-handedness, both reports were also about the same. In the report resulting from the  inquiry she chaired, eight pages were devoted to the criticism of the shortcomings of Israeli military investigations into alleged crimes and excessed by Israeli forces, while three pages were devoted to Palestinian investigations—which were, the report noted delicately, “limited.”
The report also heard from Gaza’s ruling Hamas authorities—referred to as the “de facto Gaza authorities,” meaning they had no legal status—that they “did not have access to persons involved in the launching of rockets and mortars into Israel” –an assertion that the probe said left it “concerned,” but not much else.
The committee also took with a straight face the assertion by “de facto authorities” that they had conducted seven investigations of alleged human rights violations by their forces—against fellow Palestinians” but that four of the cases had been “discontinued at the request of the victim.”
Overall, the Davis committee said mildly, “It considers that the de facto authorities should make genuine efforts to conduct criminal inquiries and to hold accountable those who have allegedly engaged in serious violations of international humanitarian law by firing these rockets.”

Census figures show more than one-third of Americans receiving welfare benefits

Fifty years after the “war on poverty” was first waged, there are signs a new offensive is needed.
Newly released Census data reveals nearly 110 million Americans – more than one-third of the country – are receiving government assistance of some kind.
The number counts people receiving what are known as “means-tested” federal benefits, or subsidies based on income. This includes welfare programs ranging from food stamps to subsidized housing to the program most commonly referred to as “welfare,” Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
At the end of 2012, according to the stats, 51.5 million were on food stamps, while 83 million were collecting Medicaid – with some benefitting from multiple programs.
Though the programs were created to help those in need, some analysts worry that the way they’re designed is, increasingly, incentivizing people not to work. They note that when recipients combine several government assistance programs, in many cases they pay better than going to work.
The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner said that in the eight most generous states, the benefits can be tantamount to a $20 minimum wage – which would exceed the $7.25 minimum wage in most states.
“So in many cases people could actually do better on welfare than they could in an entry level job," Tanner said.   
Supporters say the safety net is necessary to keep Americans from living in dire conditions. As for concerns that these benefits pay better than working, they argue the solution is to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
"I think a lot of people would do the jobs when they pay a living wage,” said Melissa Boteach, from the Center for American Progress. “In addition, there's growing jobs in health care and information technology and energy. There's a lot of places where, if able to make investments, we can really grow our economy in those sectors.”
As millions still rely on government assistance programs, technology and automation have eliminated jobs many Americans used to do with a high school diploma. The challenge for policymakers is helping the economy adjust.  
"We have to figure out a way around this. Put innovation in play and really figure out how we're going to create a new economy where we can both raise wages and create more jobs for people," Boteach said.
Tanner said there must be a serious effort to put people back to work because the continued growth of these entitlement programs is unsustainable. The number of people on such benefits is up slightly from 2011.
The government still runs a half-trillion dollar deficit, according to the most recent estimates, and the national debt is nearing $18 trillion.
"You can't in the long run have a society in which you have to rely on a smaller and smaller group of wealth producers who have to support more and more people who are not contributing to that wealth," Tanner said.

Fort Hood shooter says he wants to become 'citizen' of Islamic State caliphate

 Bailey Comment: "This just shows you how politically correct our officials in the government are. He should have been put up against a wall and shot for the mad dog he is !"


The convicted shooter in the Fort Hood massacre has written a letter to the leader of the Islamic State saying he wants to become a "citizen" of the caliphate, in the latest example of the terror group's reach inside the U.S.
The letter from Nidal Hasan, obtained by Fox News, comes after two Americans reportedly died fighting for ISIS in Syria. Sources late Wednesday identified the second as Abdirahmaan Muhumed, of Minneapolis. Fox affiliate KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported that Muhumed was killed in the same battle as Douglas McArthur McCain, who grew up outside Minneapolis in the town of New Hope and most recently lived in San Diego.
The State Department said Thursday it could not confirm Muhumed’s death and efforts to reach his family were unsuccessful.
In the undated letter, Hasan -- who fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 at Fort Hood in 2009 in what the Defense Department called “workplace violence”-- tells ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that he wants to join the caliphate.
"I formally and humbly request to be made a citizen of the Islamic State,”Hasan says in the handwritten document addressed to “Ameer, Mujahid Dr. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
"It would be an honor for any believer to be an obedient citizen soldier to a people and its leader who don't compromise the religion of All-Mighty Allah to get along with the disbelievers."
The two-page letter includes Hasan’s signature and the abbreviation SoA for Soldier of Allah.
Hasan's attorney, John Galligan, said the letter “underscores how much of his life, actions and mental thought process are driven by religious zeal. And it also reinforces my belief that the military judge committed reversible error by prohibiting Major Hasan from both testifying and arguing…how his religious beliefs” motivated his actions during the shooting.
In the last year, the Department of Justice has brought at least five prosecutions against Americans -- in Florida, California, Virginia and North Carolina - for trying to help terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
Omar Jamal, who is well known in Minneapolis’ Somali community, said at least 10 young men from there have been recruited to travel to Syria for ISIS.
"Douglas McCain wasn't the first one and unfortunately he won't be the last,"Jamal told KMSP-TV.
The former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee that investigated radicalization in a series of congressional hearings said there is a pattern.
“It was clear and convincing evidence then, that there was a pipeline from Minneapolis to Islamic jihad overseas,” said Peter King, R-N.Y. “And that people in the community knew about it and that people in the community were covering it up.”

Whopper Cartoon

Minnesota man is second American ISIS fighter killed in Syria, sources say

Is that a American Tank??

A second American killed fighting with the Islamic State group in Syria has been identified as Abdirahmaan Muhumed, of Minneapolis, two sources told Fox News late Wednesday. 
KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported that Muhumed was killed in the same battle as Douglas McArthur McCain, who grew up outside Minneapolis in the town of New Hope and most recently lived in San Diego. The State Department confirmed McCain's death earlier this week, but spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the U.S. has no independent confirmation of the second American's death. "We're looking into it," she said.
A source told Fox News that Muhumed's family had been sent a photo of his body from Syria, but had not been formally notified by the State Department. 
A profile of Muhumed by Minnesota Public Radio this past June described him as a 29-year-old Somali-American who had been married more than once and was a father of nine children. MPR reported, citing the FBI, that at least 15 young men from the Twin Citites' Somali-American community had traveled to Syria to join Islamic State, the militant group formerly known as ISIS that has captured wide swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. 
In a Facebook messages to an MPR reporter, Muhumed wrote "I give up this worldly life for Allah" and "Allah loves those who fight for his cause." A picture posted on the social network showed Muhumed carrying a Koran in one hand and a rifle in the other. 
Federal investigators believe that approximately 100 Americans have traveled to Syria to join Islamist groups. Most of them are disaffected young men targeted by recruitment videos like those one put out by the Somali-based, Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab that praised Minnesota's "martyrs." One such "martyr" was Troy Kastigar, a high school classmate of Douglas McCain and a Muslim convert who was killed in Somalia in 2009. 
Abdi Bihi, a leader in the Twin Cities' Somalian community, told KMSP that ISIS has recently begun trying to recruit young women from the Twin Cities to their cause.
"They are brainwashing them to marry them off to jihadists," he said. "They call them to help out as nurses, help out the wounded -- but the real catch is they will be sexually exploited."
While the jihadists may see fighting as a path to paradise, Bihi said the only thing young people who take that path will face is disappointment, possibly even death.
"What will not change is the pain and agony and suffering of the parents," he lamented.

Federal consumer watchdog agency hit with complaints of retaliation, discrimination

The federal consumer watchdog agency has been beset by complaints of retaliation and discrimination, according to a published report. 
The Washington Times, citing congressional investigators, internal documents, and interviews with employees, reports that workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed 115 official grievances through the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) in 2013 alone. 
Among the complaints are that managers retaliated against employees for comments or questions that they didn't like by denying vacation time, refusing internal requests for promotion, and hiring unqualified acquaintances who would have to be trained by employees in lower positions. 
"Certain managers have adopted an authoritarian, untouchable, unaccountable and unanswerable management style," CFPB enforcement attorney Angela Martin told Congress earlier this year.
More seriously, according to the Times, Martin's testimony alleged the existence of an entire department at the CFPB nicknamed "The Plantation" that is staffed almost entirely of black workers supervised by white managers with no obvious promotional track.
"There is an entire section in Consumer Response Intake that is 100 percent African-American, even the contractors, and it is called 'The Plantation,'" Martin said. "And people tell me it’s very hard to leave The Plantation. You must be extremely savvy, or you must [have] somebody else [help you] to get out. And I will note, you cannot say education is a factor, because there are licensed attorneys and [people with] advanced master’s degrees working there."
CFPB spokeswoman Jen Howard told the Times that Martin's claims are incorrect, claiming that the vast majority of the promotions from the consumer response intake section went to minorities. 
Issues of discrimination first came to light at the CFPB earlier this year, when agency director Richard Cordray told staff members in an email this past May that "broad-based disparities" in the way employees were rated in 2012 and 2013 had been uncovered in several areas including: race/ethnicity, age, bargaining unit membership eligibility, location in the field or at headquarters, and tenure as a CFPB employee.
A 2013 internal agency report found 74.6 percent of white employees ratings of four or five compared with 65.2 percent of Hispanics and 57.6 of black employees. That resulted in the agency scrapping its old rating system, which assigned workers a score between one and five, in favor of giving everyone who scored a three or above a retroactive rating of five and a pay raise.
The Times reported that the issue was addressed at an agency-wide conference this past spring, where a management presentation vowed to "compensate employees to remediate [sic] statistical disparities caused by our prior performance management system and to bargain with NTEU to change it going forward." 
However, agency employees say that the retroactive raises have done nothing to eliminate the disparity, since almost every employee got a bonus of some kind.

George Will: IRS is 'off the rails' and 'corrupted'

George Will said Tuesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that new revelations in the investigation into the IRS targeting scandal show the agency is “off the rails” and “thoroughly corrupted."
The president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch told Fox News Monday that Justice Department attorneys have said the "missing" emails of former IRS official Lois Lerner likely still exist in back-up computers. However, the attorneys told Judicial Watch that retrieving the emails would be “too onerous.”
Will, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, called the revelation a "really interesting defense."
“I can just hardly wait until the IRS lawyers go into that courtroom and tell the judge it would be too onerous to stop obstructing justice in this case," he said.
Will added that it is clear that the Justice Department cannot be trusted to investigate the case fairly. 
"The IRS is the most intrusive and potentially punitive institution of the federal government, and it is a law enforcement and it is off the rails and it is now thoroughly corrupted," he said. "And people are saying, well the Justice Department can take care of this. There’s a reason why Jack Kennedy had his brother attorney general. There’s a reason why Richard Nixon has his campaign manager John Mitchell attorney general. It’s an inherently political office, and it can’t be trusted in cases like this."