[CNBC] Trump aide Kellyanne Conway says she may have fewer distractions to contend with than many people in government.
Though she was reportedly skeptical of her ability to take on a key role at first, given the fact that she has four children at home, she is now confident she will be able to balance work and family.
"I don't play golf, and I don't have a mistress, so I have a lot of time that a lot of these other men don't," Conway told the Fox Business Network on Thursday after President-elect Donald Trump named her White House counselor.
"I see people on the weekend spending an awful lot of time on their golf games," she added, "and that's their right, but the kids will be with me; we live in the same house, and they come first."
Conway has 12-year-old twins, an 8-year-old and a 7-year-old.
Her comments may land awkwardly for her boss, since the president-elect's 10-year-old son, Barron, will not be living in the same house as his father: He and his mother will remain in New York after the inauguration.
#3
When Mr. Wife was transferred back to the U.S., the trailing daughters and I took the option of moving a month ahead of him so the girls would be here for the start of school, while he wrapped up his projects in Europe. It matters for a certain kind of child. I switched schools one week into my own first grade year, and spent the entire year trying to figure out the rules the teacher had laid down those first few days. I still don't know what's wanted for a book report at that level. And Mr. Wife belongs entirely to the job for the first six months in a new role, so being a short commute away would be considerably less of a sacrifice.
[Daily Caller] The tall, enigmatic fellow with shocks of white hair and an oil man’s swagger seemed that natural choice for jury foreman, but he told his fellow jurors he wasn’t interested in the spotlight.
He spent lunch breaks thumbing through the newspaper and trading pleasantries with other jurors, while a strapping man with an ear piece looked on. It was several coy answers and many Google searches before anyone learned he was Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, now President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to serve as secretary of State.
Emily Roden, a small business owner in Denton, Texas, served on a jury in Denton County with Tillerson nine years ago, and recounted the experience for The Dallas Morning News.
#2
I don't know anything about the man, but the choices Trump have made for posts so far range from ok to brilliant. So far I like what I see from Mr. Tillerson and will happily give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
#3
I found the comments very telling. More proof that liberals are so divoraced from reality and humanity that they really are a clear and present to all actual human beings.
[DAWN] A FEDERAL republic remains democratically strong if it achieves the professionalisation of its civilian government and maintains balanced civil-military ties. The recent peaceful military transition of power, apart from signalling military professionalism, evinced a move towards achieving the desired equilibrium between military and civilian control. However, alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... while civil-military ties are extensively discussed here, little attention is paid to realising the professionalisation of the civilian government, where there is much room for improvement.
For starters, the government has lately been implicated in scores of diplomatic mistakes. These include the mishandling of Kashmire at the UN in the aftermath of Burhan Wani’s killing and the Uri Camp attack; the inability to highlight the increased levels of LoC transgressions by India in violation of international law; and the recent disclosure of the Sharif-Trump telephone call in breach of diplomatic protocol.
These examples arise in part because Pakistain does not have a foreign minister, a role that has been assumed by the prime minister, who works through a couple of advisers who are not politicians. The prime minister already has his plate full. It is doubtful if he can spare the sort of time required to serve as foreign minister too. Additionally, the conflation of the two posts creates a conflict of interest, because the prime minister loses his objectivity in balancing local and international interests when he is directly involved in both. His office ends up interfering in the working of the foreign affairs ministry, undermining its independence and precipitating diplomatic blunders.
The failure to strengthen the foreign affairs ministry in general, and to appoint a foreign minister in particular, suggests ad hocism in the civilian government. The foreign minister is meant to represent the country at the highest level of international diplomacy and is central to driving state foreign policy. It is a full-time position requiring expertise, intense deliberation, and independence from government branches, because a state’s international interests don’t always align with its domestic imperatives.
The presence of a strong, charismatic foreign minister is essential for Pakistain if it intends to successfully project its diplomatic positions globally. A professional foreign minister has historically been critical to building and maintaining strategic ties, countering the narratives of hostile states, and representing the Global South.
Aside from specialisation, this office also promotes accountability. As a parliamentarian, and mindful of his/ her political career, a foreign minister is acutely aware of the political costs of diplomatic mistakes. Currently, the absence of one is leading to a diffusion of responsibility for diplomatic faux pas.
With India’s diplomatic offence and posturing against Pakistain in full force, the absence of a dedicated foreign minister is felt acutely. In response, the prime minister has appointed a team of parliamentarians to counter the Indian narrative on Kashmire. This is self-defeating. International law and diplomacy are structured in ways that recognise a focal person -- one international face -- to lead foreign relations. A coterie of domestic politicians is hamstrung by its inability to negotiate, compromise or commit in the way a single focal person can.
Finally, the failure to appoint a foreign minister prevents the government from availing itself of crucial privileges and protections provided by international law. The minister of foreign affairs is a recognised position within international law; whoever holds it enjoys special immunities, privileges and powers that enhance his or her ability to conduct foreign relations. For example, the International Court of Justice in the ’Arrest Warrant’ case confirmed that, throughout the duration of his or her office, a foreign minister enjoys full immunity from international criminal jurisdiction. Similarly, under Article 7 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the head of state and foreign minister both are presumed to possess ’full powers’ to enter into treaties and, under Article 67, to invalidate, withdraw from, suspend or terminate treaties. Other state representatives do not enjoy this de facto presumption of authority, and can be called upon to produce evidence of their full powers.
In this vein, India’s recent mistreatment of Pakistain’s adviser to the prime minister on foreign affairs at the Heart of Asia conference in Amritsar can be partly explained by the fact that the adviser is not the foreign minister. Arguably, he does not enjoy the corresponding privileges and immunities that could have dissuaded India from disregarding diplomatic protocol. Pakistain risks further embarrassment and increasing isolation if it continues to ignore the legal and diplomatic advantages offered through the foreign minister’s office under international law and the norms of foreign relations.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2016 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] WHEN the Sindh Assembly passed the law against forced conversion, it was hailed as a landmark piece of legislation for the protection of Sindh’s minorities. In rural Sindh, Hindu girls and women are sometimes forced by local landlords and petty thugs to ’convert’ to Islam and get married (pretty much a euphemism for kidnapping and rape). Their families complain they have no legal recourse for registering, let alone prosecuting, these crimes.
On the other hand, there are Hindu girls and women who decide to marry a Moslem and convert of their own free choice. Their angry parents will register an FIR and file a case of kidnapping against the groom and his family. Women in these circumstances place advertisements in local newspapers declaring they have converted and married of their own free will.
In both cases, the rights of the girls and women get trampled on by families, by authorities and by criminals. In the first instance, criminals use physical force and intimidation to harm vulnerable minorities and under-aged children; in the second, a woman’s right to choose her religion and her marriage is endangered by her own family. Both cases are egregious violations of the rights of female Pak citizens, and there has been no legal way to protect them so far.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2016 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE government has been going around in circles where madressah reform is concerned. Its weak attempt at getting these religious schools to agree to uniform control by the state bore little fruit, and the emphasis is now on another old favourite of the authorities: curriculum reform. On Friday, the federal minister for religious affairs stressed the necessity of educational standards at seminaries matching mainstream trends, but there has been little discussion on how to implement such recommendations. This, more or less, sums up the government’s indecision regarding the subject of madressahs.
It is a case of officials not wanting to take the risks entailed. Like the Musharraf regime and the PPP set-up before it, the PML-N government has been reluctant, to the point of being afraid, to deal with the problem. Even though the NAP consensus was expected to empower the PML-N to undertake reform, the campaign to do so has been helter-skelter. There have been several slogans and words about the need to upgrade the seminaries and about the basic principle of streamlining the sources of their finances and ideally creating a system where the state itself allocates the funds. And the talk about curriculum reform has been unending. Nevertheless, there has been growing realisation in this debate that madressahs are not simply the result of the failure of the ’secular’ education system. Growing conservatism in society is a big factor in the mushrooming of madressahs across the country.
There have been so many assessments of the reasons why the reform campaign has failed to take off. Let us add to it a fundamental assertion. Pakistain is still some distance away from understanding a basic fact about these religious schools. The country seeks to deal with -- albeit half-heartedly -- the seminaries through the five boards that represent five schools of thought or sects in Islam. What is still not accepted is that underneath there are so many divisions. There are a large number of seminaries that work as satellites without any outside control and aided by their own sources of finances. They consider themselves as not answerable administratively to the board they might be linked to in theory on the basis of schools or sects. This is against the old norm where seminaries belonging to a school of thought or sect would be under the administrative influence of an order or individual. Authorities wanting change will have to find a direct route to the madressah down the road before it can be brought under a chain of command. As far as the question of sources of funding for the madressahs is concerned, there is no group more capable of keeping an eye on this and on seminaries in general than the state’s own people at the grass roots: the local governments.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2016 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
