RUTHFULLY YOURS

Congress has too much power already; it should not have the power to silence citizens.

For two centuries there has been bipartisan agreement that American democracy depends on free speech. Alas, more and more, the modern Democratic Party has abandoned that commitment and has instead been trying to regulate the speech of the citizenry.

We have seen President Obama publicly rebuke the Supreme Court for protecting free speech in Citizens United v. FEC; the Obama IRS inquire of citizens what books they are reading and what is the content of their prayers; the Federal Communications Commission proposing to put government monitors in newsrooms; and Sen. Harry Reid regularly slandering private citizens on the Senate floor for their political speech.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. Senate Democrats have promised a vote this year on a constitutional amendment to expressly repeal the free-speech protections of the First Amendment.

You read that correctly. Forty-one Democrats have signed on to co-sponsor New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall’s proposed amendment to give Congress plenary power to regulate political speech. The text of the amendment says that Congress could regulate “the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to federal elections.” The amendment places no limitations whatsoever on Congress’s new power.

Two canards are put forth to justify this broad authority. First, “money is not speech.” And second, “corporations have no free speech rights.”

Neither contention bears even minimal scrutiny. Speech is more than just standing on a soap box yelling on a street corner. For centuries the Supreme Court has rightly concluded that free speech includes writing and distributing pamphlets, putting up billboards, displaying yard signs, launching a website, and running radio and television ads. Every one of those activities requires money. Distributing the Federalist Papers or Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” required money. If you can prohibit spending money, you can prohibit virtually any form of effective speech.

McCarthy appeared for a multi-part interview about his new book, Faithless Execution, on “Sunday Leaders” with Ginni Thomas.
The first part of the interview is “Does Obama’s End Justify His Means?” The 11-minute video, along with an accompanying article, appears here — or you can past the following link into your browser:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/01/does-obamas-end-justify-his-means/
The next part of the interview is “Prosecutor On Benghazi: ‘Betrayed The People Who Have Put Their Lives On The Line” The 7-minute video, along with an accompanying article, appears here — or you can past the following link into your browser:
http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/01/prosecutor-on-benghazi-betrayed-the-people-who-have-put-their-lives-on-the-line/

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/01/prosecutor-on-benghazi-betrayed-the-people-who-have-put-their-lives-on-the-line/

The terrorist attack on the American installation in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, and what was done afterwards is the “most horrifying of the Administration scandals” to former prosecutor, Andy McCarthy. He has emphasized Benghazi in his new book,”Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment“ which includes six possible articles of impeachment.

In this exclusive DC interview, McCarthy discusses the Benghazi scandal as an “utterly foreseeable” act of terrorism on the anniversary of 9/11. To this author, the problem started with a “unilateral” and “unprovoked war with no American interests” declared by Obama in Libya that included “empowering anti-American jihadists.”

McCarthy says the whole debacle ends with a “trumped up prosecution” of a video-maker exercising his first amendment rights.

In summary, he says about Benghazi: “There, from soup to nuts, you see lawlessness. You see the undermining of the checks and balances that are in our system in order to make sure that no branch of the government is able to tyrannize the country. Basically, you reduce Congress to irrelevancy. You see fraud across the board. And, everyplace you turn, the fundamental rights of Americans are eroded.”

On discussing the victims of the Benghazi debacle, McCarthy states, “If we want good, courageous people to do the things that we need done in the world, in terms of our security and in terms of our diplomacy, we have to make people believe that we will protect our own personnel.”

President Obama’s record of lawlessness is prodigious. There is the assumption of a power to rule by presidential decree — unilaterally amending ObamaCare provisions, immigration statutes, and other enactments in flagrant disregard of Congress’s constitutional power to write the laws.

There is rampant fraud on the American people — think: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period,” just for a start.

In the Benghazi massacre, we see the arc of administration malfeasance: In the absence of congressional authorization, the president instigated an unprovoked and ultimately disastrous war in Libya, empowering virulently anti-American Islamic supremacists. He then recklessly failed to provide adequate security for US officials who, for reasons that remain mysterious, were dispatched to Benghazi, one of the most dangerous places on the planet for Americans.

Finally, when four Americans including our ambassador were predictably killed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012, the president took no action to rescue them during the siege and then led a tireless campaign to blame an anti-Muslim video, rather than his wayward policy of empowering Islamists — even trumping up a prosecution against the video producer in violation of the First Amendment.

Making recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess.

Ignoring court orders.

Refusing to enforce the immigration laws.

Still another proposal involves making changes to French law that would enable police to confiscate the passports and seize the assets of suspected would-be jihadists, and to deport those foreigners found to be recruiting jihadists in France.

However, Hollande’s anti-radicalization might turn out to be a case of too little too late.

A French former jihadist in Syria has been arrested over the fatal shooting of three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on May 24.

The arrest, announced by French and Belgian prosecutors during simultaneous news conferences in Paris and Brussels on June 1, confirms the worst fears about the security threat posed by battle-hardened European jihadists returning from the fighting in Syria.

Western security officials estimate that up to 2,000 Europeans—including 800 from France and 200 from Belgium—have traveled to Syria in the hopes of overthrowing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and replacing it with an Islamic state.

Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old French national from the northern town of Roubaix, was arrested at the Saint-Charles train and bus station in Marseille on May 30 during a random search for illegal drugs. He was a passenger on an overnight bus that was travelling from Amsterdam to Marseille via Brussels.

Police found a Kalashnikov rifle, a handgun and an “impressive quantity” of high-caliber ammunition in Nemmouche’s luggage. They also found a GoPro miniature video camera as well as a Nikon digital camera containing a 40-second video in which a man believed to be Nemmouche is heard claiming responsibility for the Brussels attack and expressing regret that the GoPro device failed to capture the shooting.

The voice in the video describes the Brussels killings as an “attack against the Jews” and warns that Belgium will experience “fire and blood,” according to Belgian federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw.

The video also shows weapons similar to those used in the Brussels attack and a flag with the words “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” and “Allah is Greater” written on it in Arabic, according to the French anti-terrorism prosecutor François Molins.

In addition, Nemmouche’s luggage was found to contain clothing and a baseball cap similar to that worn by the shooter, as well as press clippings about the Brussels attack.

Britain strips British nationality from immigrants with dual nationality who go to Syria to fight. This act allows British authorities to ban them from re-entering the country. Why don’t European countries do the same?

Yvan Mayeur, the Socialist Mayor of Brussels, said that to combat anti-Semitism and racism, his city needed more “diversity.” But diversity does not mean diversity. Diversity is the new code word for more Islam.

Yesterday, French police arrested the terrorist accused of murdering three Jews in Brussels, Belgium on the eve of the European elections. The killer, 29-year old French citizen Mehdi Nemmouche, a son of Muslim immigrants, had gone to Syria in 2013, where he joined the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad and was trained as a jihadist.

On Saturday afternoon, May 24, Nemmouche walked into the Jewish Museum in Brussels, armed with a pistol and a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He killed three Jews, including two Israeli tourists, and seriously wounded another, who is still fighting for his life in hospital. Then Nemmouche calmly walked out of the museum.

An image of the terrorist, identified by French police as Mehdi Nemmouche, firing his rifle at the Brussels Jewish Museum, taken from security camera footage.

During the past three years, thousands of young Islamic immigrants from France, Germany, Britain and all other European countries, as well as young Western Islamic converts, have gone to Syria, where they trained to be killing machines. Some of them have returned home, where they now constitute the biggest threat to domestic security in decades.

French authorities were able to capture Nemmouche within a week because they had his name on a list of returned Syria fighters. Having his name on a list of jihadists, however, was not able prevent him from committing murder in neighboring Belgium.

In a revolutionary world environment, foreign policy of a great power – and especially the lone superpower – is bound to be full of inconsistencies. Interests are far-flung and constantly demanding new priorities. But one does not have to refer to Machiavelli to recognize rules of the road which when violated are costly and in the case of the U.S., destabilizing for the entire world.

Again, those guidelines are often internally contradictory in the nature of generalizations. But a knowledge of and adherence to them is essential to pursue a foreign policy, and, in this instance, of the superpower, the United States, and world peace and stability..

That we living through revolutionary times does not have to be extensively argued. Suffice it to say that the digital revolution alone has made it harder than ever to distinguish between reality and perception by exaggerating – to quote Sec. Donald Rumsfeld – unknown unknowns. A recent former CIA operative hired by a Swiss bank to prevent fraud put it to me succinctly: the ability to reproduce almost any document [or signature] has led to almost unlimited financial hoax.

In the world of international relations something similar is equally true. But, again, there are basic dictum which are as old, at least, as the European nation-state and apply today as they always have. Many are commonsensical. To be unacquainted with them is to introduce new and additional volatility in an uncertain world.

America’s role Because of its size, its population and continental breadth, and its economy, the U.S. under any conditions would play a major world role — disengaged as well as engaged.. But there are important additional nonphysical aspects. The Founders, however conservative their personal backgrounds [with the unresolved problem of black slavery], constructed a new nation on ideology rather than ethnicity, race or language. They believed that they were creating a new and unique beacon of liberty and justice harking back to Greek and Roman institutions as well as a Judeo-Christian ethic.

That, in essence, is “American exceptionalism”. To associate it with such more precise policies as “interventionism” or “isolationism” is to misunderstand completely. All one has to do is hark back to the 1930s debate of America’s world role in which both poles invoked U.S.singularity, whether Midwest agrarian radical isolationists, or East Coast industrial and financial bureaucratic interventionists.

WHY DID HIS FATHER DELIVER A MESSAGE TO HIS SON IN PASHTUN?….RSK

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the last known American POW, was freed after five years in captivity — an ordeal that began and ended in Afghanistan under a shroud of mystery.

The Taliban turned over Bergdahl Saturday morning to US special forces in exchange for five notorious Islamic militants who had been held at Guantanamo Bay and will be sent to Qatar, where they will stay for a year under the terms of the trade.

At least one of the prisoners, ranking Taliban leader Khairullah Khairkhwa, had direct ties to Osama bin Laden.

Bergdahl was picked up by helicopter in western Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border.

After climbing aboard, the 28-year-old Idahoan, trying to communicate with his rescuers over the roar of the rotors, scrawled “SF?” on a paper plate — asking his rescuers whether they were special forces.

“Yes,” one of the men shouted. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

The Army infantryman — himself nicknamed “SF” by his comrades for his gung-ho interest in special-forces tactics — began to weep.

Bergdahl’s parents, who had lobbied continuously for his ­release, had not seen him by Saturday night, but intimated that he faces an arduous recovery from his ordeal.

Bergdahl is speaking in what appears to be Pashto, said his dad, Bob Bergdahl. It was not clear whether his son can still even speak English, Bob said.

Everyone is celebrating the release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, and we’re glad he’ll be home with his family in Idaho soon.

However, there are questions that must be answered – like, why did the young Soldier walk off his Forward Operating Base (FOB) back in 2009? It’s not the modus operandi for Islamic terrorists to detain American troops when captured, as we reported previously. Our troops are brutally, ritually, and savagely murdered — to include American security contractors (remember the Fallujah bridge) — not held for five years.

And to have this “deal” brokered in Qatar (supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood) calls for even more questions.

What we do know are the identities of the five Afghan Taliban who were released.

According to a report in the Weekly Standard, they are five of the most dangerous Taliban commanders in U.S. custody. The Taliban has long demanded that the “Gitmo 5” be released in order for peace talks to begin in earnest. The Obama administration has desperately sought to engage the Taliban as American forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, but those talks have gone nowhere to this point.

You see, when you’re not comfortable talking in terms of war and victory, you lose the battle of ideas and resolve. I want no part of peace with savages who throw acid on and gun down young girls going to school. I would prefer to crush them and kill them wherever they exist. That’s not being a warmonger. It’s being a realist.

The Weekly Standard reports that the freed detainees are among the Taliban’s top commanders in U.S. custody and are still revered in jihadist circles. Two of the five have been wanted by the UN for war crimes. And because of their prowess, Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) deemed all five of them “high” risks to the U.S. and its allies. The Obama administration wants to convince the Taliban to abandon its longstanding alliance with al-Qaida. But these men contributed to the formation of that relationship in the first place. All five had close ties to al-Qaida well before the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, it is difficult to see how their freedom would help the Obama administration achieve one of its principal goals for the hoped-for talks.