RUTHFULLY YOURS

The industry has been beset by punitive fines, armed raids and threats of jail. Even banjo makers aren’t safe.

For more than a century, the music industry escaped the gaze of government agencies thanks to its small scale—$6.8 billion now in the U.S.—and its wholesome, noncontroversial products. Few things seem less deserving of federal regulation than a 5th grader with an oboe. On the rare occasions in history when prominent officials took notice, the magazine I edit, Music Trades, ran celebratory headlines: “President Taft At Baldwin Piano Plant Opening,” or “Clinton Says Playing Music Made Me President.”

Over the past seven years, however, the tenor of the government’s interest in the music business has changed. Our magazine now regularly carries accounts of punitive fines, armed raids and threats of jail time.

Russia’s military exercises in the region can only be an attempt to provoke.

Group of Seven leaders in Bavaria on Monday vowed to extend sanctions if Russia doesn’t dial back its aggression against Ukraine. Previous sanctions haven’t deterred Kremlin land-grabs, and the question now isn’t if Russian President Vladimir Putin will strike again but whom he’ll target next. Mr. Putin considers Europe’s eastern periphery part of Russia’s imperial inheritance.

Yet in recent years the Russian leader has also turned his attention northward, to the Arctic, militarizing one of the world’s coldest, most remote regions. Here in Finland, one of eight Arctic states, the Russian menace next door looms large.

“That is a tough nut to crack, to know exactly what the Russians want,” newly appointed Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini says. “But I’m sure they know. Because they are masters of chess, and if something is on the loose they will take it”—a variation on the old proverb that “a Cossack will take whatever is not fixed to the ground.”

China’s internal power struggle continues. That’s the meaning of Thursday’s announcement that former Politburo Standing Committee Member Zhou Yongkang was sentenced to life in prison for corruption.

After taking power in 2012, Party General Secretary Xi Jinping had former rival Bo Xilai sentenced to life the following year. Then Mr. Zhou disappeared from public view, and his associates were arrested one by one. He is the highest-ranking Party official to be purged since the days of Mao Zedong.

That is no coincidence. Mr. Xi has championed a return to Maoist rhetoric and political mobilization. His propaganda organs sometimes claim that the “ongoing anticorruption campaign” is a sign of the rule of law. But they give the real game away with attacks on Mr. Xi’s enemies for building factions within the Party.

Automatic registration at 18, letting felons vote—it’s all part of an unconstitutional progressive dream.

Declaring that Republican-controlled states have “systematically and deliberately” tried to “disempower and disenfranchise” voters, Hillary Clinton has called for a sweeping expansion of federal involvement in elections. In a speech last week in Houston, laying out what promises to be a major campaign theme, Mrs. Clinton called for automatic voter registration at age 18, a 20-day early-voting period and a maximum 30-minute wait period to vote.

She has also endorsed the idea of a federal law permitting convicted felons to vote and allowing individuals, such as students, who reside in one state to vote in another. All of these federal mandates would augment and make more onerous an unconstitutional election-regulating federal statute known as the “Motor Voter” law enacted during her husband’s White House tenure.

Hamas is pinning high hopes on BDS to pave the way for the destruction of Israel through boycotts, divestment and sanctions. Hamas believes that such tools are no less important than rockets and suicide bombings, which have thus far failed to achieve the goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

U.S. universities that allow the BDS activists to disseminate their hate against Israel are unaware that these people are serving as Hamas ambassadors. Moreover, Western governments, above all the U.S., are unaware that Hamas and BDS allies also consider them enemies of the Palestinians.

What Bahr is actually saying is that the BDS campaign should be intensified until Israel is forced to surrender and accept all the demands of Hamas, which include, of course, ending the existence of Israel.

Nothing could uplift the universal image of Saudi Arabia and King Salman more than if today he issued a pardon. World leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has so far been silent on the issue, should immediately speak out — as should the media and human rights groups.

There was no insult of Islam, of the prophet, or of the Quran, in what Badawi wrote; and, truth be told, God, Islam and the prophet are all beyond insults, and beyond the reach of profanity that occasionally spills forth from the bigoted or tortured minds of individuals.

The treatment of Raif Badawi stands out, not merely for its cruelty, but how it has come to symbolize the grotesquely repulsive nature of the Saudi kingdom and what it represents behind the mask of religious austerity.

Tomorrow, Friday, the virtual death sentence by 1000 lashes, delivered “very harshly” according to the flogging order, fifty at a time, might continue for Raif Badawi, a 31-year-old Saudi blogger and father of three, for allegedly “insulting Islam.”

Scott Walker is advocating a reform in Wisconsin that could have more profound an impact on America than anything we have seen in a long time. Establishment leftism depends upon institutions that support and promote its philosophy and agenda using our money. The most obnoxious offender is Big Education, especially tenured professors who mock our values even as they rob our pockets.

Tenured professors are impossible to remove, they need do almost no work, and these goons spout Marxist nonsense and abuse conservative students with impunity. Even worse, overpaid professors and bloated state universities not only squeeze the taxpayers in tight state budgets, but also force middle-class families and young adults into debt to purchase the dubious benefits of a college degree.

Walker is proposing to end tenure in the state university system. Predictably, the overpaid and underworked professorial class is screeching about the loss of academic freedom. These are the same clowns who regularly intimidate conservative students in their classes, who exclude qualified conservatives from the very tenure they are defending, and who participate in keeping conservative speakers off campuses.

The progressive storm troopers at the University of California are ramping up their PC agenda. A faculty seminar discussing “diversity in the classroom” held at nine of the 10 UC campuses during [2] the 2014-2015 school year came with a worksheet [3] entitled “Tool: Recognizing Microagressions and the Messages They Send.” “Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership,” states the opening sentence. The ultimate cure for such “hurtful” behavior? Tossing free speech on the ash heap of history.

The worksheet is divided into three columns, Themes, Microagression Examples, and Message. In one Theme section, under the subheading of “Ascription of Intelligence,” professors are informed about the potential pain engendered by “Assigning intelligence to a person of color or a woman based on his/her race/gender.”

And just in case professors are insufficiently erudite or “sensitive” enough to figure out exactly what produces such suffering among the student to whom they are tasked with disseminating this newfound wisdom, faculty trainers provide specific Microagression Examples. These include trigger statements such as, “You are a credit to your race,” and “Wow! How do you become so good in math?” Two more examples are apparently for the more obtuse faculty members as they spell out which ethnic group is targeted. “To an Asian person, ‘You must be good in math, can you help me with this problem?’ and “To a woman of color: ‘I would have never guessed you were a scientist.’”

Jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) are carrying on the rocket war against Israeli civilians from where Hamas left off. Following several rocket attacks in the last several weeks for which the Islamic State has taken credit, rockets launched from Gaza Thursday night exploded in the Ashkelon area.

Israel is still holding Hamas responsible for the attacks as the governing authority in Gaza.

“The IDF understands that Hamas wants quiet and is making an effort to prevent the shooting, but the State of Israel still sees Hamas as responsible for what happens in Gaza,” said Sami Turgeman, head of IDF’s Southern Command.

The Israeli military responded with measured attacks on Hamas facilities, while at the same time trying to avoid setting off a wider war at this time. But Israel’s hand is being forced by the Islamic State, which is evidently working assiduously to supplant Hamas as the authoritative Islamic power in Gaza. The Gaza branch calls itself the Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade. It is cooperating with another ISIS-affiliated group operating in the Sinai Peninsula, which calls itself Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

Staff Sgt. Ahmed Altaie was the last American soldier to come home from Iraq. His body was turned over by Asaib Ahl al-Haq or The League of the Righteous; a Shiite terrorist group funded and trained by Iran.

Altaie had been kidnapped, held for ransom and then killed.

It was not Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s only kidnapping and murder of an American soldier. A year after Altaie’s kidnapping, its terrorists disguised themselves as Americans and abducted five of our soldiers in Karbala. The soldiers were murdered by their Shiite captors after sustained pursuit by American forces made them realize that they wouldn’t be able to escape with their hostages.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s obsession with American hostages was a typically Iranian fixation. Iran’s leaders see the roots of their international influence in the Iran hostage crisis. Its terrorist groups in Lebanon had abducted and horrifically tortured [2] Colonel William R. Higgins and William Francis Buckley.