The vicious condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council on December 23, 2016 is a watershed moment in U.S.-UN relations – albeit not as President Obama hoped. Following the vote of fourteen in favor and one American abstention, Palestinian representative Riyadh Mansour and American Ambassador Samantha Power exchanged a telling handshake. Evidently, President Obama believes that he has put one over on Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the incoming Trump administration. But here’s another possibility: treachery at the UN will not be cost free.
The Egyptian decision to withdraw the one-sided anti-Israel Security Council resolution should not mask the sad reality that it is the Obama administration that has been pushing for the resolution to be enacted.
The Russian hacks were the culmination of a failed foreign policy, namely the Obama administration’s blindness to the threat from Moscow and unwillingness to deter our adversaries.
Former President Bill Clinton said in an interview days ago, “Donald Trump doesn’t know much. But one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.”
This past week I was in New York on business and experienced the city’s storied holiday season in full swing—Christmas lights twinkling, the bustling holiday market in Union Square, and my friends and family in the Jewish community preparing to celebrate Chanukah, our festival of lights.
It was not so much as a Christmas miracle as it was a Christmas compromise, but the good news is the cross has been returned to the town Christmas tree in Knightstown, Indiana.
Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have apparently grown weary of making excuses for why their chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton, was trounced by Donald Trump on Election Day and have now moved on to a new line of attack: arguing that Trump’s historic victory falls short of a “mandate” from the American people.
It’s been seventy years since the angel Clarence Odbody gave George Bailey a timeless gift in “It’s a Wonderful Life” -- the chance to see what the world would be like had he never been born.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere we go, from the Judy Garland music loops at the local mall to the inflatable reindeer on the neighbor’s lawn.
What if Christmas is a core value of belief in a personal God who lived among us and His freely given promise of eternal salvation that no believer should reject or apologize for?
Make no mistake. What we are seeing in Europe is the hard lesson of what happens when you put out the “welcome mat” to hundreds of thousands of refugees from known terrorist hotspots.
