RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was a really nice try.

Heritage Action (the activist arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation) invited Senator Elizabeth Warren to speak at an event dedicated to phasing out the Export-Import Bank. The Ex-Im, as it’s known inside the Beltway, has become a favorite target of populist forces on right.

The Ex-Im gives U.S. taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to the foreign customers of giant U.S. corporations that don’t need the help. It socializes the risk while privatizing the profits. Basically, it’s free money for big businesses like GE, Caterpillar, and particularly Boeing (hence the outfit’s nickname, “the Bank of Boeing”). Even Barack Obama, shortly before he became president, derided Ex-Im as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”

Ex-Im is up for reauthorization in September. Not surprisingly, both the people who get free money and the people who enjoy giving out money that doesn’t belong to them would like to continue doing so.

Since Warren is the dashboard saint of left-wing populism these days, denouncing big business and Wall Street at every turn, the puckish policy pixies at Heritage Action thought they could enlist her in their cause. As first reported by Bloomberg News, Heritage sent Warren a letter asking her to speak against Ex-Im “and the political favoritism it engenders.”

“We, like you, are frustrated with a political economy that benefits well-connected elites at the expense of all Americans,” Michael Needham, the head of Heritage Action, wrote. “Your presence will send a clear signal that you are going to fight the most pressing example of corporate welfare and cronyism pending before Congress right now.”

Warren didn’t take the bait. Her spokeswoman told Bloomberg, “Senator Warren believes that the Export-Import Bank helps create American jobs and spur economic growth, but recognizes that there is room for improvement in the bank’s operations.”

Warren’s decision to turn down the invitation sparked numerous charges of hypocrisy from Ex-Im opponents. As one writer for Reason magazine put it, “That’s right: The woman best known for demonizing big businesses nevertheless wants to maintain an outlandishly generous subsidy package for them.”

It is not hard to tell what kind of persons penned the University of Chicago’s “abguide,” given passages like this:

*While this guide may refer to “women” when discussing study results or use female pronouns in some instances, we recognize that individuals seeking pregnancy counseling or abortion may not identify as women. We encourage readers to keep this in mind and provide sensitive counseling and care.

Abguide.uchicago.edu is the University of Chicago’s online abortion guide, “Accessing Abortion in Illinois: A Guide for Health Care and Social Service Providers,” and the above sentences appear on the homepage, presumably to prevent visitors from journeying further into the site still clinging to a binary view of gender. Created by the university’s Section of Family Planning & Contraceptive Research and its (deep breath) Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health, or Ci3, the abguide is a narrowly tailored resource: Only those determined to counsel women not to seek an alternative to terminating their pregnancy need peruse.

The site contains a predictable conglomeration of reassuring abortion statistics, warnings against crisis-pregnancy centers, and paeans to the importance of value-free pregnancy-option counseling. If, however, your values need “clarification,” you can access this handy worksheet developed by the National Abortion Federation.

All of this, the site announces on its homepage, “should be considered through a reproductive justice framework. . . . As described in one foundational document, the reproductive justice framework recognizes that ‘women’s ability to exercise self-determination — including in their reproductive lives — is impacted by power inequities inherent in our society’s institutions, environment, economics, and culture.’”

The foundational document in question is “A New Vision,” published in 2005 by Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ). The “Reproductive Justice Movement” — yes, there’s a movement — “explor[es] and articulat[es] the intersection of racism, sexism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and class oppression in women’s lives.” Because “reproductive oppression” is “both a tool and a result of systems of oppression based on race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age and immigration status,” reproductive justice must “engage with issues such as sex trafficking, youth empowerment, family unification, educational justice, unsafe working conditions, domestic violence, discrimination of queer and transgendered communities, immigrant rights, environmental justice, and globalization.” The ACRJ casts a wide net.

A premature Gaza cease-fire would help Hamas.

Nations must be militarily strong and determined enough to ensure their own survival. Israelis have long understood this harsh reality of global politics, and it has never been clearer than this week as the world browbeats Israel and the terror group Hamas for a “cease-fire” in Gaza.

President Obama and John Kerry have adopted this ostensibly even-handed trope, and on Tuesday the European Union went further and deplored Israel and Hamas as if they were equal perpetrators. Hamas should stop its “criminal and unjustifiable acts,” the EU said, but it added that it was “particularly appalled” at the human cost of the Israel ground offensive. Particularly?

This all may be intended as fine impartiality, but the reality is that a cease-fire now would help Hamas. The terror group rejected Egypt’s offer of a cease-fire last week after Israel had accepted it, perhaps figuring that Israel wouldn’t risk a ground invasion. Or perhaps it wanted such an invasion figuring the world would condemn Israel for civilian casualties and Hamas would win the propaganda war.

In any case now that it has moved on the ground, Israel will lose if it stops before it achieves its main military objectives. This means blowing up the entire network of tunnels that Hamas uses to infiltrate into Israel and to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt. It also means destroying the stockpiles of rockets and storage sites.

The Israelis are best positioned to judge their progress, and the U.S. should publicly support its military response in a war it didn’t start. This is what will bring the most rapid end to the violence.

We’ve seen what happened at the IRS when Democrats launched a political campaign to crack down on tax-exempt groups that don’t disclose their donors. A similar animus is now at work in the states, where two attorneys general are forcing 501(c) groups to disclose their donors if they want to raise money in those states.

In New York, tax-exempt groups must apply for a license to solicit contributions, a process that has traditionally required the submission of their public IRS form 990. But Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has begun demanding that nonprofits also file their confidential list of donors found on IRS form “Schedule B.” The AG from Occupy Wall Street says a failure to do so makes an application “deficient” and exposes a group to fines or ban for violating the state’s law against unregistered solicitation.

Under New York’s Administrative Procedure Act, a change like this must go through a period of public comment, but Mr. Schneiderman acted by unilateral fiat. In May the 501(c)(4) Citizens United sued on grounds that the AG’s diktat violates its First Amendment and due process rights by imposing a rule without consultation or notice. The suit is pending in federal court.

Mr. Schneiderman says the information will be kept confidential, but New York state law has a robust bias in favor of freedom of information. How long before one of the AG’s liberal allies petitions the government to produce those files? The IRS recently paid $50,000 to settle a suit over the leak of donor information from the National Organization for Marriage to its political adversaries at the Human Rights Campaign.

In California, meanwhile, the Center for Competitive Politics is challenging the Golden State’s requirement that the group must cough up its donors if it wants a license to solicit contributions. The state says the power to seek donor information has been on the books for years, but the Center for Competitive Politics says the state’s demand this year is the first time the information had been required. This new arbitrary enforcement is happening amid the general liberal attack on conservative campaign donors.

California claims its wants disclosure to deter fraud, but state tax-law infringement doesn’t justify a rule that would cover donors nationwide. The Center for Competitive Politics is based in Virginia and draws donors from all over the country. The requirement means a Massachusetts contributor to a Virginia group would be disclosed to the California state AG.

The issue of Obamacare prominent in the 2014 elections….incumbents and challengers have, without some exceptions, listed it as one of their top priorities….the Dems defend it pretty tepidly- while most of the Republicans aim to amend or repeal….stay tuned….rsk

A pair of federal Appeals Court rulings have sown further confusion regarding ObamaCare, even as they illuminate stark differences in ideologically-inspired interpretations of the law. First, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Americans are not entitled to subsidies for their healthcare premiums if they live in a state where the federal government set up a healthcare exchange. Shortly thereafter, a three-judge panel from U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, VA unanimously determined exactly the opposite. The survival of ObamaCare may depend on which decision ultimately prevails.

Both rulings hinge on the wording of the statute. In order to entice the states to set up their own marketplaces, the law used clear language noting that premiums subsidies for low- and middle-income purchasers of health insurance would only be available on exchanges “established by the State.” Democrats and the Obama administration erroneously believed that the threat of withholding subsidies would force the states’ hands. When it didn’t, and only 14 states and the District of Columbia set up their own exchanges, the Obama administration employed an IRS rule to stretch the meaning of the law to include every state in the country, contending that Congress “meant” the law to work that way.

In Halbig v. Burwell (previously known as Halbig v. Sebelius) the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument. “Section 36B plainly makes subsidies available in the Exchanges established by states,” wrote Senior Circuit Judge Raymond Randolph in his majority opinion, where he was joined by Judge Thomas Griffith. “We reach this conclusion, frankly, with reluctance. At least until states that wish to can set up their own Exchanges, our ruling will likely have significant consequences both for millions of individuals receiving tax credits through federal Exchanges and for health insurance markets more broadly.” Dissenting Judge Harry Edwards, who characterized the case as a “not-so-veiled attempt to gut” the healthcare bill, wrote that the judgment of the majority “portends disastrous consequences.”

If the ruling stands its effects would indeed be dramatic. The federal government’s HealthCare.gov website serves residents of the 36 states that refused to set up their own exchanges. In those states 86 percent, or approximately 4.7 million Americans, currently receive subsidies to offset the cost of their health insurance. Without those subsidies many enrollees will no longer be able to afford such coverage. And since those policies would no longer be “affordable” as defined by the healthcare bill, those affected will no longer be required to have health insurance this year, or pay a fine for lack of coverage next year.

The resultant exodus would more than likely produce a cascading effect of raising premiums for non-subsidized enrollees who remain on those plans. As a group those who remain are also likely be less healthy, which in turn could drive up premium costs even further.

As IDF troops were preparing to enter the Gaza Strip, with the goal of stopping incessant rocket fire on Israeli cities and neutralizing the threat caused by Hamas’ extensive tunnel infrastructure, Balad MK Haneen Zoabi penned an op-ed for the Hamas-affiliated felesteen news site imploring Palestinians to “besiege” the Jewish state (which she referred to throughout her article as ‘Israel,’ in quotations).

“‘Israel’ will in no way eliminate Hamas, the motives for the resistance or the motives for [pursuing] liberation,” she wrote. Zoabi justified Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians as a means to ending the “soft occupation” on the Strip.

In response, Hamas spokesman Husam Bardan praised Zoabi as a “Palestinian patriot worthy of the respect of our people.” He expressed hope that other Israeli-Arab politicians would follow her lead.

And indeed they have.

One day after the launch of Operation Protective Edge, MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) accused the IDF of “committing war crimes in Gaza, including blowing up houses and killing entire families intentionally.”

During the same Knesset plenum, his fellow MK Ibrahim Sarsour read aloud the names of Palestinians who had been “murdered by IDF soldiers,” a scene bearing an eerie resemblance to the Yad Vashem exhibit in which the names of those who perished in the Holocaust are recited.

Arab MK Masud Gnaim, also from Tibi’s party, accused Israel of perpetrating a “massacre” in the Strip.

These outbursts parallel the Israeli-Arab leadership’s collective response to the recent kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens.

Zoabi again was front and center, describing the abductors not as terrorists, but rather as beleaguered people “forced to use these means until Israel will wake up a little.” When pressed in an interview whether she was openly siding with the kidnappers, Zoabi responded: “I’m surprised you’re still walking around freely.”

She went so far as to endanger the life of her own relative, rejecting seventeen-year-old Mohammad Zoabi’s call for the three boys’ immediate release as “stupid” and “twisted.” (Mohammad subsequently received multiple death threats, necessitating a round-the-clock security detail.)

Secretary of State John Kerry – who was heard last Sunday on an open mike between Sunday TV appearances disparaging Israel’s efforts to limit civilian casualties in Gaza – arrived in Cairo on July 21st to frantically cobble together an immediate ceasefire. Seeking the help of Egypt and the United Nations, and even the Hamas-friendly countries of Turkey and Qatar, Kerry is looking for some kind of consensus by the major players in the region for a peace-at-any price formula. He is insisting on a premature ceasefire before Israel is able to find and destroy all the tunnels built under Palestinian civilians’ homes, schools and hospitals, which Hamas is using to hide its weapons and as bases from which to sneak its jihadists into Israel for the purpose of abducting or killing its citizens.

“The objective here is to get the fastest possible ceasefire. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be fast, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, but that’s the goal,” a senior US official travelling with Kerry was quoted by AFP as saying on condition of anonymity.

Kerry is even throwing in additional money for Gaza to help seal the deal. On top of the half a billion dollars that the Obama administration is continuing to send to the Palestinian “unity” government in which Hamas is a partner, Kerry has just offered a $47 million bribe in the form of so-called “humanitarian” aid for Gaza. Some of the $47 million would flow through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This is the very same agency which found at least twenty Hamas rockets in one of its schools and which is reported to have returned those rockets to the “local authorities.” In Gaza, the “local authorities” are presently the Hamas operatives who govern Gaza. Presumably, UNRWA will be sharing the Kerry-provided windfall with those same “local authorities.”

As usual, while the Obama administration is prepared to reward the Palestinians, it seeks to pressure Israel into agreeing to a short term peace that will simply buy Hamas more time to build up an even greater arsenal of deadly weapons. Before Kerry left on his latest jaunt to Cairo, he was heard on the open mike issuing a not-so-subtle warning to Israel not to try the Obama administration’s patience. “I hope they don’t think that’s an invitation to go do more,” apparently referring to the Obama administration’s rhetorical support for Israel’s right of self-defense. “That better be the warning to them.”

After arriving in Cairo, Kerry acknowledged Israel’s right to defend its citizens from Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks, but then added: “We are deeply concerned about the consequences.”

Elizabeth Warren was the star at the annual Netroots Nation conference in Detroit last week. Netroots Nation is the largest gathering of left wing activists, the Left’s answer to those on the extreme Right of the Republican Party. A kiss on the cheek by the Massachusetts squaw, after her talk, left a gay-rights activist “verklempt.” “I want to bottle her and take her everywhere,” said Debby Dingell. (As an aside and totally irrelevant to the subject at hand, Ms. Dingell, wife of retiring Congressman John Dingell, is running for the seat her husband is vacating after 59 years, and which his father occupied for twenty-two years before that. Perhaps, like 19th Century European royalty, a Dingell feels entitled to represent Michigan’s 15th District!)

Liars can be found in abundance in Washington. In fact, it may be that the ability to fabricate is woven into the fabric of a politician. But there are few you can tell whoppers with such aplomb, while exuding such innocence, as the senior Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren. Standing before a crowd of adoring worshippers, as she did recently in Detroit, she shamelessly called out Republicans for “rigging” the system. Yet “rigging” is exactly what she did in securing her teaching job at Harvard Law School. She brazenly lied, claiming to be of Cherokee descent, in order to be considered a minority. And Harvard, arguably home of the nation’s finest law school, never bothered to investigate her claim. She lied to get to Harvard. She lied to secure her Senate seat. She is a student of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in political warfare – don’t debate your opponent; demonize the person, freeze the image, personalize the target in whatever slanderous way you choose and then polarize the pulverized individual to avoid any possibility of sympathy. History is replete with political leaders like Ms. Warren, but very few of them served in a democratic republic.

What is it about the illiberal left wing of the Democrat Party that likes people for what they symbolize, rather than for who they really are? Such attitudes mean we nominate and elect people with little understanding of their true underlying character. Barack Obama was elected President because he had great oratorical skills that allowed him to promise much, but neither the Press (other than some on the right wing), nor most people inquired into his background. His lack of experience in any leadership roles, or, for that matter, his very limited time in Washington was ignored. His associations with those like his minister Jeremiah Wright and mentors like Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Derrick Bell and Bill Ayers did not ring alarm bells. People saw the package, and not the contents. He was intelligent, articulate, good looking, and African American. Voting for him allowed people to feel sanctimonious, and cleansed from any deep-rooted tinge of racial prejudice they might previously have felt.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is coming to Israel on Tuesday, following a visit to ‎Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and U.N. Secretary-General ‎Ban Ki-moon. The purpose of both trips is to try and secure a cease-fire in Gaza.‎

It’s been a while since Kerry has graced the region with his presence. This is just as well. ‎If it hadn’t been for the secretary of state’s flying back and forth between Jerusalem and ‎Ramallah for months on end to “assist” in the establishment of a Palestinian state, there ‎would not be a war going on in Gaza right now.‎

As is always the case when Israel engages in “two-state-solution” talks with the ‎Palestinian Authority, terrorism against the Jewish state ensues. Buoyed by what they ‎perceive as a crack in Israeli armor, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas up the ante on ‎demands already met — such as the release of massive numbers of terrorists held in Israeli ‎prisons — and then launch operations against the Israeli homefront.‎

The present war in Gaza, thus, has Kerry’s fingerprints all over it.‎

But Washington is in a bit of a bind. On one hand, the White House and State ‎Department are hostile to the national camp in Israel, which they see as represented by ‎Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They feel much more comfortable with figures like ‎outgoing President Shimon Peres and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who parrot their own ‎delusions about the way to achieve peace.‎

On the other, even the doves in America are hard put to denounce such a clear-cut case of ‎a “war of no choice” as the one that Israel is being forced to engage in right now.‎

This is why Kerry and U.S. President Barack Obama keep making statements about Israel’s ‎right to defend itself out of one side of their mouths, while urging restraint out of the ‎other.‎

It also explains the dripping sarcasm, caught on a hot mic at Fox News on Sunday, which ‎Kerry expressed about Israel’s assertion that it has been taking every step to avoid killing ‎innocent Gazans. Talking on his cellphone to his deputy chief of staff, Kerry said, “It is a ‎hell of a pinpoint operation. … We’ve got to get over there.”‎

Later, when asked by Fox about his tone, he said he had “reacted obviously in a way that, ‎you know, anybody does with respect to, you know, young children and civilians.” What ‎he did not explain was why his disdain on this score was not reserved for, you know, ‎Hamas, the organization wholly responsible for the deaths of “young children and ‎civilians” — you know, both in Israel and in Gaza.‎

* J. Millard Burr is a Senior Fellow and Rachel Ehrenfeld Director of the American Center for Democracy.

Let no one doubt. Within Islam, no censure is assigned to the personal accumulation of wealth. And no known member of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has been condemned for either the pursuit or the accumulation of wealth.

Muslim scholars gathered in Istanbul last week to debate the ‘Caliphate’ declared recently by the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), aka IS), the Sunni terrorist group that operates in Iraq and Syria.

Titled “World Islamic Scholars: Peace, Moderation and Common Sense Initiative,” delegates from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other countries gathered in Istanbul. The meeting was attended by Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and the President of Turkish Religious Affairs (Diyanet) chaired the event.

Erdogan is a known Muslim Brother, and Gul is certainly an Islamist if not a declared Ikhwan. Davutoglu, an emerging member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), has a special interest in the Balkans. He is known for his close association with Mustafa Ceric, a senior member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and a participant in the U.K.-based “Radical Middle Way” movement involving numerous Ikhwan scholars.

Within a decade of its creation in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was split internally by those who felt that the movement was not sufficiently revolutionary and those who sought to follow an evolutionary path to political power. Indeed, over the years a number of former Muslim Brothers have led terrorist movements, the like of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, Egypt’s Gamaa Islamiya, and even Al Qaeda–movements that have initially been shunned by the Muslim Brotherhood. These groups broke too many rice bowls to be embraced publicly. And if the Muslim Brotherhood leadership was about anything, it was the creation of personal wealth.

Thus, the ISIL formation of an ‘Islamic Caliphate’ devoted to the recreation of a Salifist state not only threatens the Ikhwan ricebowl, it has first offended Turkey (the last home of the Caliphate). Most importantly, it threatens the economic well-being of the Middle East itself, and by projection, the Muslim Brotherhood. But when IS stormed the Turkish Consulate in Mosul on June 10, taking all 49 there hostage — including Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz — Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government passed a law that effectively bans all public debate and reporting of the crisis. Reportedly, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has argued that “the Turkish flag must continue to fly.” The IS made the Turkish Consulate its main headquarters, while Erdogan has warned the United States against any airstrikes against IS in Iraq.