RUTHFULLY YOURS

Today on Public Discourse, Mike Paulsen examines President Obama’s rhetoric regarding the Supreme Court review of Obamacare.

The Unprecedented, Extraordinary, Anti-democratic, Activist Power of Judicial Review
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/04/5246

President Obama’s recent quips about “judicial activism” do not amount to arguments. They are shallow sloganeering.

President Barack Obama has warned the Supreme Court not to rule against the constitutionality of his health care legislation: “Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” he said. “And I’d just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

President Obama must have skipped that day in constitutional law class at Harvard (and in his years teaching at the University of Chicago). How many things, exactly, are wrong with this picture? For openers, it is hardly “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to hold an act of Congress unconstitutional. It has been doing so since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. “Extraordinary” is not exactly the right word, either. Depending on how one counts these things, the Court has struck down many scores of acts of Congress, and hundreds upon hundreds of acts of state legislatures. (Again: so much for “unprecedented.”) All of this is just the ordinary, almost humdrum, exercise of “judicial review.” For President Obama to claim that striking down an Act of Congress would be an unprecedented or extraordinary exercise of judicial authority is simply laughable.

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/15621/Alert-Gaia-scientist-James-Lovelock-reverses-himself-I-was-alarmist-about-climate-change–so-was-Gore-The-problem-is-we-dont-know-what-the-climate-is-doing-We-thought-we-knew-20-years-ago

Alert: ‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock reverses himself: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change & so was Gore! ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago’

Climate Shocker: In 2007, Lovelock Predicted Global Warming Doom: ‘Billions of us will die; few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in Arctic’

MSNBC, perhaps the most unlikely of news sources, reports on what may be seen as the official end of the man-made global warming fear movement.

MSNBC April 23, 2012: ‘Gaia’ scientist James Lovelock reverses himself: I was ‘alarmist’ about climate change & so was Gore! ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago’

Contrast Lovelock’s 2012 skeptical climate views with his 2007 beliefs during the height of the man-made climate fear movement. [ Flashback 2007: Lovelock Predicts Global Warming Doom: ‘Billions of us will die; few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in Arctic’ ]

How fitting that a major organ of the man-made climate fear promotion, MSNBC, would deliver one of the final and most dramatic death knells to the climate movement.

More MSNBC article excerpts: Lovelock pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future…”The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said. “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added…Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.” He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role. “It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said. ‘I made a mistake’ As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.”

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/22/thinknex/

Slowly but surely, Microsoft Israel is making itself more and more relevant for the local startup community. In fact, we recently covered its latest major push, the Windows Azure Accelerator.

Then there’s the annual ThinkNext conference which has become one of the local tech community’s staple events. The more interesting portion of the event (in my opinion at least) is the demo area, where startups chosen by the the local Microsofties showcase their goods. So unless you happen to be at the event in the port of Tel-Aviv this afternoon, here’s what you’re missing out:

Everything.me (formerly TechCrunch Disrupt finalist ‘DoAt’) is a search product that empowers users by putting everything they need at their fingertips. It’s simplicity of search with the mobility of apps. Just say what you need and get your results immediately from fully mobile ‘Instant Apps’.

PointGrab provides hand-gesture recognition software for Windows 8, where users can control a PC, applications and popular games from a distance.

TouchApps makes casual and social mobile games that have reached millions of downloads worldwide.

iOnRoad develops apps that improve driving in real-time using state-of-the-art machine vision algorithms and augmented reality.

Photoccino understands photos and their context. Using computer vision and image processing technologies Photoccino classifies, groups, and selects the best photos, then turns them into photo-based products.

Umoove’s technology allows the control of user interfaces of mobile devices using natural head & eye movements, in real-time and with no additional hardware.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2104/President-Mickey-Mouse-Does-Joisey.aspx

I am not a lawyer but I hereby solicit free legal opinions as to whether, in the folllowing bit of courtroom back and forth that I have unofficially jotted down from video of this month’s New Jersey ballot challenge, Admininstrative Law Judge Jeff Masin led President Obama’s counsel, Alexandra Hill, into stating her case more strongly before actually cutting her off at the moment the young lawyer introduced the national release of the online Obama birth certificate into the court record. It seems to me that despite Judge Masin’s blunt intercession, Hill’s introduction of the nationally (internationally) accessible online birth certificate provided the objectors, represented by attorney Mario Apuzzo, with a rationale for calling an expert witness to testify about the evidence of forgery in the online image. Judge Masin, however, having stifled Obama’s counsel, did not see fit to permit the expert witness on online forgery to testify.

Was that an appropriate judicial contribution? More generally, is it an appropriate to rule that the intent of New Jersey law is to accept presidential candidates for president without any evidence of identity?

Background on the matter is here in my last column, which, not at all incidentally, was declined by such regulars subscribers to my column as Townhall.com and the Washington Examiner. They are not alone, of course, in preventing news of the Obama eligibility scandal from reaching their readers. Almost every single media outlet in the country has a complete news blackout in force on this issue of supreme public interest: apparent fraud in the establishment of the president’s bona fides.

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3546/islamist-fellow-traveler-rep-bill-pascrell

Executive Summary

For more than a decade, Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., has routinely coasted to re-election over token opposition in the Democrat-dominated 8th Congressional District. This year is different, and the eight-term congressman – a close Capitol Hill ally of Islamist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – is fighting for his political life.

After the New Jersey Legislature eliminated fellow Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman’s neighboring district last year, he decided to run against Pascrell in the new, heavily Democratic 9th Congressional District. Before redistricting, the two men (both of them liberals first elected to Congress in 1996) were considered political allies. With the primary less than two months away, they have been transformed into bitter opponents.

Rothman supporters are emphasizing his strong support of Israel, contrasting it with that of Pascrell – one of 54 House members who joined Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., in sending a January 2010 letter to President Obama denouncing Israel and Egypt for blockading Hamas-ruled Gaza. The letter accused Israel of imposing “de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”

Former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said the differences between Rothman and Pascrell on Israel couldn’t be clearer. Pointing to the letter to Obama, Block told the New Jersey Jewish Standard in January that Pascrell (whose hometown of Paterson includes large Arab and Muslim populations) had “actually sided against American support for Israel’s right to defend herself against weapons smuggling and attacks by terrorists.”

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=267295
Terror group recently arrested 10 “veteran and experienced collaborators” with Israel, Hamas Interior Minister says.

Hamas will soon start publicly executing Palestinians who are found guilty of “collaboration” with Israel, Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad announced Monday.
Hammad, who is in charge of the Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip, revealed that his government recently arrested 10 “veteran and experienced collaborators” with Israel.
Related:

When Gaza’s doctors err, remedies are rare

Hamas slams PA for Ramallah dance festival

Earlier this month, Hamas hanged a Palestinian man who was convicted of working for Israel as an informant.

Another two men were executed on the same day for murder and rape.

The predawn executions were carried out inside a Hamas security installation in the Gaza Strip. Hamas did not release the identities of the executed men.

The executions drew sharp condemnations from human rights groups and the Palestinian Authority, whose representatives said that Hamas was not authorized to carry out the death penalty without receiving permission from PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hammad advised collaborators to turn themselves in “before we lay our hands on them.” He added that his government was no longer offering clemency to informants who “repent.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/war-terror-over_640620.html
“Bush said on November 6, 2001. “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”For President Barack Obama, it would seem, one can be both with us and against us–or not with us, but not quite against us.”

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration is grappling with how to handle Islamists, radical adherents to Islam. Particularly, the issue has come to the fore in regards to Egypt, which, as Reuel Marc Gerecht notes, “is now certain” to elect “an Islamist” as its leaders the next time the Egyptian people go to the polls.

But some in the Obama administration are now seeing things differently.

“The war on terror is over,” a senior official in the State Department official tells the National Journal. “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304299304577350200925769444.html
The Islamist Road to Democracy Muslims cannot be dragged to an embrace of secularism and the liberal values that spring from it. They have to arrive voluntarily at this understanding. BY REUEL MARC GERECHT
C.K. RESPONDS: “This sort of crap evidently passes for deep thinking in the US intelligence community. Islamism, however, isn’t a road to anything. It’s a roadblock manned by a mob of bloodthirsty lunatics.
It derives what credibility it has from the fact that the individual hallucinating it is a neocon.”……

For many on the American left and right, the “Arab Spring” has become the “Arab Winter” of triumphant fundamentalists. In Egypt, where Arab liberalism was once strong, religious parties overwhelmed secularists in recent parliamentary elections. An Islamist is now certain to be elected president, provided the military does not intervene, and a referendum that would likely down the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is probably in the future.

But Westerners should resist nostalgia and depression. Given the awfulness of post-World War II Arab lands, where even the most benign regimes had sophisticated, torture-happy security services, Islamists who braved the wrath of rulers and trenchantly critiqued the moral breakdown of their societies were going to do well in a postsecular age. What is poorly understood in the West is how critical fundamentalists are to the moral and political rejuvenation of their countries. As counterintuitive as it seems, they are the key to more democratic, liberal politics in the region.

The case for a separation of mosque and state has been harder to make in the Middle East because most Muslims have not been burned by internecine strife. The West has become an unrivaled liberal paragon in part because its past savagery was so intense. Westerners now instinctively compartmentalize their faith and temper its expression because their Christian forefathers killed each other zealously over religious differences.

Islam hasn’t seen the sustained barbarism that plagued European Christian and post-Christian—communist and fascist—societies. Reform-minded Muslims have usually critiqued their faith with an eye to the West, to the secrets of European power, without appreciating both the highs and lows of Occidental history.

A hundred years ago, the most consequential Muslim intellectuals were mostly progressive men who tried to work out a synthesis between the West and Islam. The Middle East’s post-World War II rulers, however, merely dictated that the Muslim clergy and the faithful change their ways. Against the seductive power of nationalism, socialism and communism, which in the hands of military men ran roughshod over much of the Middle East, Islam stood as a barrier to “progress.”

The Lessons of the Eisner Affair

http://yoelmeltzer.com/.

Although watching a young Danish tourist getting whacked in the face by an M16 rifle is certainly not a pleasant site and tends to make one cringe, viewing the slightly extended video of the incident simply made my blood boil. For rather than being engaged in the normal activities that soldiers are engaged in, Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner and his comrades had to deal with what appeared to be an obviously planned provocation: crowds of people all around, large signs saying “Stop Ethnic Cleansing”, flashing cameras everywhere and sneering cyclists refusing to disperse. Thus, it came as no surprise that when one of these “innocent” young chaps decided to bump into a soldier with his bicycle and initiate the whole fracas, a very good soldier fell for the trap.

The whole incident is sickening for several reasons. For starters, these people take advantage of the fact that only in Israel – not in America, not in a European country and certainly not in an Arab country – can they get away with such nonsense. They know this and they flaunt it in our face. However, much more infuriating is the fact that we even let such people into our country in the first place. Don’t we have any self respect? Then on top of this, rather than having the police who are trained for such ordeals deal with the whole mess, we foolishly dump it on our soldiers. However the most irritating of all, especially in light of the above, is how several of our illustrious political and military leaders were quick to condemn Shalom Eisner. One can only wonder in cynicism if these same people, as well as the others who quickly denounced Eisner, lifted a voice in protest or shed a tear when viewing the events in Amona a few years back, a particularly gory affair that in comparison made the recent event with Shalom Eisner look like a Lassie episode.

Russia and the Communist Past — on The Jamie Glazov Show
by Frontpagemag.com
Russia expert David Satter joins Frontpage’s radio program to take your calls for the full hour.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/24/russia-and-the-communist-past-on-the-jamie-glazov-show/
Egypt’s Civil War? — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau goes to-to-toe with Dwight Schultz and Evan Sayet on Frontpage’s television show.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/24/egypts-civil-war-on-the-glazov-gang/