RUTHFULLY YOURS

While presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was America’s top diplomat the Department of State that she oversaw approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments forked over millions of dollars to the now-embattled Clinton Foundation.

According to an International Business Times [2] report by David Sirota and Andrew Perez, “at least seven foreign governments that received State Department clearance for American arms did donate to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary.” The article identified the seven nations as Algeria, Australia, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar, and Thailand.

Mainstream media’s surprisingly probing coverage of the unfolding Clinton Foundation donations-for-favors scandal suggests that reporters have turned on the Clintons in the age of Obama.

America’s business and labor leaders agree: President Obama and Congress can do more to modernize the permitting process for infrastructure projects—airports, factories, power plants and pipelines—which at the moment is burdensome, slow and inconsistent.

Gaining approval to build a new bridge or factory typically involves review by multiple federal agencies—such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Interior Department, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management—with overlapping jurisdictions and no real deadlines. Often, no single federal entity is responsible for managing the process. Even after a project is granted permits, lawsuits can hold things up for years—or, worse, halt a half-completed construction project.

Consider the $3 billion TransWest Express, a multistate power-line that would bring upward of 3,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity from Wyoming to about 1.8 million homes and businesses from Las Vegas to San Diego. The project delivers on two of President Obama’s priorities, renewable power and job creation, so the administration in October 2011 named the TransWest Express one of seven transmission projects to “quickly advance” through federal permitting.

Offering vistas previously limited to photographs from helicopters.

The first time I visit—propelled upward a quarter of a mile in an elevator to One World Observatory—it is clear that something momentous is being promised. The observatory, which opens on May 29 at One World Trade Center, calls these five elevators “Sky Pods.” They are enclosed with three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling LED screens so bright and crisp, they could be windows on lower Manhattan. But as we whoosh from the bedrock to the 102nd floor in 47 seconds, instead of seeing the cityscape receding below, we see time-lapse images representing 500 years of history. Lenape wigwams and longhouses give way to early Dutch settlements, and onward: the growth of Wall Street, the evolution of the Battery, the proliferation of skyscrapers and the sounds of contemporary life. For a few seconds, as decades of the 20th century race by, one of the World Trade Center towers fills the eastward screen, then suddenly disappears.

The Koch Foundation gives money to encourage debate on campus. Activists want to silence that debate.

College should be a place where students encounter a diversity of ideas—just ask many of the more than 1.8 million students who are graduating this year. That diversity often relies on charitable foundations, which support countless educational programs across the country. For example, the Charles Koch Foundation, where I work, has responded to hundreds of grant requests from colleges and universities. These requests have led us to support educational initiatives in economics, philosophy, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and other disciplines at more than 250 institutions of higher learning.

A federal appeals court rebukes his immigration order.America’s most powerful former law professor is getting a re-education in the Constitution, and on present course President Obama might flunk out. Witness Tuesday’s federal appeals-court rebuke of his 2014 immigration order, including language that suggests the Administration will also lose on the legal and policy merits.

Mr. Obama caused a furor in November when he suddenly claimed powers he had previously said he didn’t have to award legal status and work permits to millions of illegal immigrants. Texas and 25 other states sued, claiming injury and a violation of their sovereign powers under the Constitution. Federal Judge Andrew Hanen issued a preliminary injunction for the states in February, and on Tuesday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals shot down the Administration’s request to lift the injunction.

The 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel found that the Administration had failed to make its case that Texas and the other states suffered no injury if Mr. Obama’s rule was implemented. Texas cited the fact that it would have to issue driver’s licenses to the newly legal immigrants, and the court agreed this was a cost. Even if Texas raised its license fees to cover the costs, the fact that it had to change its law to accommodate the federal rule was also an injury.

Op-Ed: Does the Jewish Federation of Orange County Aid Pro-Israel Advocacy?

Far from encouraging potent and effective activities to counter the barrage of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews and Israel at UCI, the JFOC has added to the problem.

In defense of recent criticism for attacking Jewish activists on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus, the leadership of the JewishFederation of Orange County (JFOC – ed. note: Irvine is in Orange County, California) attempted to vindicate themselves and affirm their “pro-Israel bona fides” in the media. Certainly, many of JFOC’s actions, past and present, are indefensible and run contrary to those expected of an organization embracing Israel support as a core mission.