RUTHFULLY YOURS

The chairman of the New Black Panther Party announced the group will attend pre-RNC events carrying firearms for self-defense.

“If it is an open state to carry, we will exercise our second amendment rights because there are other groups threatening to be there that are threatening to do harm to us,” Hashim Nzinga, chairman of the New Black Panther Party, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“If that state allows us to bear arms, the Panthers and the others who can legally bear arms will bear arms.”

The group says it expects “a couple hundred” members to attend a pre-convention rally called “National Convention of the Oppressed.” The event is scheduled for Thursday and the Panthers said they would leave Cleveland on Sunday before the RNC officially opens.

“We are there to protect … We are not trying to do anything else,” he said. “We are going to carry out some of these great legal rights we have — to assemble, to protest and (to exercise) freedom of speech.”

“I have people literally calling me saying this is the first time in my life I protested and I loved it.” Nzinga told Reuters. “They want to be a part of something. They tried to be a part of the system and the system let them down so they want to be part of a rebellion.”

Senator Scott is one of the GOP’s most conservative stars- who has taken on the Congressional Black Caucus. The Arab American Institute gives him a rank of -4 for his support for Israel…..rsk

WASHINGTON — Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) revealed today that he’s been stopped seven times in the past year by law enforcement for “trivial” reasons in a highly personal speech focusing on experiences of black men and police stops.

Scott called it his “most difficult” floor speech of the week because “it’s the most personal.”

The senator said most police “have two things on their minds: protect and serve.”

However, he added, “we do have serious issues that must be resolved” — the “deep divide” between the black community and law enforcement in many cities, “a trust gap” and “tension that has been growing for decades.”

“And as a family, one American family, we cannot ignore these issues.”

Stressing that Americans should be “thankful” for the good job most police officers do, Scott added that “some do not” do a good job.

“I’ve experienced it myself,” he said. “… I shuddered when I heard Eric Garner say, ‘I can’t breathe.’ I wept when I watched Walter Scott turn and run away and get shot and killed from the back. And I broke when I heard the 4-year-old daughter of Philando Castile’s girlfriend tell her mother, ‘It’s OK; I’m right here with you.'”

“These are people lost forever. Fathers, brothers, sons. Some will say and maybe even scream, ‘But they had criminal records! They were criminals! They spent time in jail!’ And while having a record should not sentence you to death, I say, OK then — I will share with you some of my own experiences or the experiences of good friends or other professionals.”

Scott described the first time he was pulled over as a youth for a headlight not working properly and said he felt “very scared.”

The senator then jumped ahead to experiences he’s had with law enforcement while an elected official.

Following Omar Mateen’s massacre of forty-nine people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, professors of Middle East studies reacted predictably by blaming guns, American homophobia, Christians, Deep South bigotry – anything but Islamic terrorism. Never mind that Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, depicted himself as an Islamic soldier during the attack, had taken two trips to Saudi Arabia, and was interviewed three times by the FBI in connection with terrorism. Excuses must be made, willful ignorance enforced, and the American public bamboozled.

Immediately after the attack, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole announced, “I don’t think it probably was terrorism in any useful sense of the term.” His reasoning? Mateen didn’t “make demands about U.S. government policy,” and hitting soft targets is “not a form of classical strategic terrorism.” The victims of terrorist attacks – many issued without demands – on cafés, malls, restaurants, resorts, schools, social services, and countless other soft targets would beg to differ.

Cole questioned Mateen’s allegiance to the Islamic State, given reports that Mateen frequented the Pulse nightclub regularly and drank heavily, claiming that “puritanical Muslim fundamentalists of the ISIL sort don’t behave that way.” In fact, Mateen’s libertine lifestyle is a hallmark of Islamic terrorists in the West, who are instructed to blend in. In his case, there may have been several motivating factors, but Cole advanced only one conclusion: “To put all this on Muslims and Islam in general is frankly absurd.”

University of Denver Center for Middle East Studies director Nader Hashemi placed the emphasis on the American public, predicting the worst: “There is a huge danger that in the coming days and weeks that American Muslims/Islam will be collectively targeted and blamed for today’s massacre in Florida.” He claimed, “The 1,400-year-old Islamic faith in itself has little to do with the modern jihadist movement.”

Meanwhile, Omid Safi, director of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center, decried “[t]he sickness, the homophobia, the violence, and the ease of access to war-grade guns that brought about this vile terrorist attack,” predicting that “the solution” will come about only when Americans “confront this xenophobia and violence in our own society.”

Safi revealed his own bigotry and provincialism by chalking up the attack to imagined Southern perfidy: “Let us not lose sight of the fact that this horrible attack took place in the South, after years of demonizing gays and lesbians.” Aside from the fact that Orlando is hardly a bastion of Southern culture, there is no moral equivalency between the debates over same-sex marriage and transgender bathroom use he cited and the mass murder of gays.

Sticking with the theme of blaming anyone but the perpetrator, Safi noted that “[t]he killer worked for the G4S security firm with a history of abuse in American prisons and the Occupied Territories/Israel.”

After a slow start, the influx of Syrians to the U.S. has accelerated in recent months, and annual arrivals are likely to reach 10,000 by the end of September, the amount that was promised by the Obama administration.

Last year, the U.S. pledged to resettle 85,000 refugees from all over the world in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, including at least 10,000 Syrian refugees.

By March 31, halfway through the fiscal year, only 1,285 Syrians had arrived, according to official data. By June 30, the Syrian number had jumped to 5,211. Overall refugee admissions had reached 49,791.

Among Syrians admitted this year, 20% are adult men, 20% are adult women and 60% are children. The vast majority of the men are in a family unit, said a State Department spokesman.

The deployment of additional staff and resources in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq has enabled both the Departments of State and Homeland Security to review more applications and complete more security checks in recent months, he said.

For instance, between February and April, Homeland Security officers in Amman, Jordan, interviewed about 12,000 individuals referred by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees.
ENLARGE

The U.S. resettled 1,682 Syrians in fiscal year 2015 and only 105 in 2014. So far this fiscal year, Michigan, California and Illinois have been the top three recipients of Syrian refugees.

Due to security checks, it takes about two years for a refugee to be admitted to the U.S. Typically, the vetting includes several interviews of family members, together and apart, background checks, fingerprinting and iris scans, among other things. CONTINUE AT SITE

Rumors are swirling about a Trump and Clinton pick for a running mate. It’s no small matter. An active Vice-President can influence policy, be an effective spokesman for legislation, and if necessary take over the administration and finish an interrupted term. A vice president is also poised to run for election and complete the agenda of a successful predecessor.

The Vice President is first in the line of succession to a President who is removed, resigns, becomes incapacitated or dies. The Vice President as designated by our Constitution, is also the President of the Senate and can break tie votes. That can be crucial in a closely divided Congress.

In the past, electors in the Electoral College, were permitted two votes and the candidate who came in second became the Vice President almost automatically but since 1940 the candidate chooses the potential Vice-President.

The only modern Presidential candidate who did not pick a Veep and had Congress do it for him was Adlai Stevenson, a pompous poseur who lost to Dwight Eisenhower whose Vice President was Richard Nixon.

The qualifications for Vice President are exactly like those for President ….an individual must:

Be a natural born U.S. citizen
Be at least 35 years old
Have resided in the U.S. at least 14 years

Too bad. That leaves Ileana Ros- Lehtinen the doughty Representative from Florida (District 18) out. She is a she, is savvy, great on defense and foreign policy and Hispanic. But, she was born in Cuba.

Although the President is limited to only two terms, a Vice-President has no limit of terms. Thus, Joe Biden could be Vice-President for life as long as a Democrat is President. And Al Gore could have done so too.

In fact, Al Gore could have become President if Bill Clinton had been removed from office after the impeachment. He would have had almost two full years to cool America.What a chilling thought.

The office of Vice President has evolved greatly. At one time it was seen as ceremonial and virtually a sinecure. However, the influence and prestige of the office grew markedly in the last century. Perhaps because a seemingly unprepared and unprepossessing figure like Harry Truman became a worthy successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt who was ill for much of his time in office actually had two Vice Presidents before Harry Truman. John Nance Gardner, a governor of Texas was the Veep in the first two terms (1933-41). Gardner did not think much of the office. He is quoted as saying “the office is not a bucket of warm piss.”

Henry A. Wallace, a Republican progressive served during Roosevelt’s third term (1941-1945). Wallace was an apostle for the “New Deal” and an apologist for Russia. Fortunately President Roosevelt dumped him in 1944 and selected Harry Truman. Imagine America if Wallace had become President. He certainly would have attempted a radical transformation and one can only guess at how the war in the Pacific would have ended.

In 1947 when Wallace tried to run for President a writer described his effort as “”the closest the Soviet Union ever came to actually choosing a president of the United States.”

Harry S Truman of Missouri was elected Vice President for Roosevelt’s fourth term, but served only a few months (Jan-May 1945) before becoming president. The office of the Vice President became vacant when Harry Truman succeeded to the presidency in 1945 and remained so until 1948 when Alben Barkley of Kentucky, was elected.

The more we think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent public outbursts, the more we wonder if the 83-year-old Justice can still perform her duties on the Supreme Court. Her fellow Justices need to stage an intervention and suggest that she make way for someone who knows how a judge is supposed to behave.

We say this more in sadness than anger; Justice Ginsburg would never have talked this way 20 years ago and there’s no joy in seeing a reputation implode. She’d also probably be replaced by another, much younger progressive. But as she indulges her inner Bernie Sanders in public, she is hurting the reputation of the Court and setting a terrible example for other judges.

It’s important to understand how far out of bounds Justice Ginsburg was in her comments to the New York Times. She barged into the presidential race by saying “I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president,” joking that her late husband would say they should move to New Zealand if he won. The Justice kept it up in an interview on Monday with CNN, calling Mr. Trump “a faker” and wondering “how has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?”

Such overt partisanship from a judge should disqualify her from hearing any case related to the presidential election—such as voter ID laws. It would also raise doubts about her fairness in judging executive-branch actions if Mr. Trump becomes President.

Justice Ginsburg further violated judicial norms by lecturing the Senate for not confirming President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. “That’s their job,” she said. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.” CONTINUE AT SITE