RUTHFULLY YOURS

The juxtaposition of two headlines on the front page of a recent New York Times suggested ideology supersedes facts. The first: “Arms Stockpile is Found in Home of Two Suspects.” The second: “A Couple Who Lived Quietly, Motives Unknown.” Both headlines, it need hardly be said, dealt with the recent Islamist terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. It has been a failure to connect the dots that characterizes not only the liberal press, but more importantly the Administration. Most egregious was the failure of both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to detect the couple who had been radicalized since at least 2013 – before they met – and who left overt traces of their jihad-extremist sympathies on social media.

While Donald Trump’s remarks about temporarily banning Muslims immigrants from entering the country were reprehensible, they were understandable given the willfulness of the Administration as to the enemy we face. A week ago, Mr. Obama spoke to the nation from the Oval Office. While he mentioned terrorism, he did not use the modifier, Islamist. Mr. Trump’s reaction is a negation of Mr. Obama’s thesis – that his policies are working. When the pendulum swings to the left, it is propelled back an equal distance to the right. It has been the failure of the Obama Administration’s policies regarding immigration and Islamic terrorism that has given rise to the demagoguery of Mr. Trump.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whistleblower Philip Haney made a startling series of revelations Thursday evening (12/10/15) on Fox News’ The Kelly File. Haney described how he began investigating scores of individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat. He maintained the groups were exploiting the visa waiver program to transport suspected jihadist operatives in and out of the U.S., thus he started tracking them, and recording these findings within a DHS database. Haney’s efforts (as summarized by Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller) were eventually noticed by the National Targeting Center (NTC), which operates as an umbrella organization in U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Haney was subsequently asked to work for the NTC and rivet his attention on these Deobandi-related organizations. Over the course of his investigation, Haney received an award for identifying more than 300 potential jihad terrorists with links to the Deobandi affiliates.

Tablighi Jamaat certainly merited the attention Haney was giving it, having been connected to a series of jihad terrorist attacks, which included targeting the U.S.: the October, 2002 Portland (Oregon) Seven, and September, 2002 Lackawanna (New York) Six cases; an Aug. 2006 plot to bomb airliners en route from London to the U.S.; attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, in July 2007; and involvement in the July 7, 2005, London bombings, which killed 52 and injured more than 700. French investigators have further estimated Tablighi Jamaat ideological indoctrination was associated with 80% of their jihad terror cases.

Haney’s fastidious investigations raised serious concerns about the San Bernardino Deobandi movement-affiliated Darul-Uloom al-Islamia mosque—attended by jihad-waging killer Syed Farook. In addition, Farook’s jihadist accomplice wife, Tashfeen Malik, attended a traditionalist Islamic education center in Pakistan, also connected with the Deobandi movement. Notwithstanding his patriotic, yeoman efforts, DHS shut down Haney’s probe, and revoked both his security clearance and access to the databases he compiled. Retributive investigations against Haney by DHS and the Obama Justice Department, however, revealed no wrongdoing on his part. Tragically, as Haney explained, had his probe not been terminated for alleged “civil rights violations” of jihad-indoctrinated Muslim followers of the Deobandi movement:

Charlie Brown: I guess I don’t really know what Christmas is about. Isn’t there anyone who understands what Christmas is all about?
Linus: Sure, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.
— “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

In the Peanuts Christmas (not “holiday”) classic, a morose Charlie Brown struggles to come to grips with “the true meaning of Christmas.” Recall that Lucy, dispensing psychiatric advice as a cure for Charlie Brown’s melancholy, therapeutically tasks him with directing their school’s Christmas play. “You need involvement,” she tells him. “You need to get involved in some real Christmas project.” When the advice fails to pay off, Linus takes to the school auditorium’s stage and having transformed his blanket into a shepherd’s costume recites Luke 2:8-14. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus concludes.

At least one court disagrees. In a ruling issued last week in the case of Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Concord Community Schools, a federal judge ordered an Indiana high school to cancel a live Nativity musical number enjoyed since 1970 as a regular part of its annual “Christmas Spectacular” shows. Over drifting choruses of Christmas carols and surrounding a hay-lined crèche, costumed student performers played the parts of Mary, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, shepherds and angels. In light of last week’s ruling, Linus’ homily no longer represents a message of hope for all mankind. Rather, it is an unconstitutional example of religious indoctrination imposing its cruelty on children vulnerable to religious conversion at the twinkle of a light and the tranquil strains of Silent Night.

Last week, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in the latest round of the Fisher vs. University of Texas case over whether race can be used as a criterion in college admissions policies. The defenders of affirmative-action admissions policies have generally been unwilling to discuss the impact these policies have on black students. Indeed, when Justice Antonin Scalia raised the possibility in oral arguments that these policies actually harm black students by placing many of them at schools that are too demanding, he was immediately vilified.

“Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at ‘Slower’ Colleges,” ran a typical headline at Mother Jones. Senate minority leader Harry Reid called Scalia’s line of questioning “racist,” and Georgia Democratic congressman John Lewis said Scalia’s “evident bias was very troubling,” leading him to question Scalia’s “ability to make impartial judgments.”

Here is what Scalia actually said:

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas.

The brief in question was submitted by UCLA law professor Richard Sanders. A one-time proponent of affirmative action, Sanders changed his position when he studied its effects on black students at American law schools. Sanders found that, because of these schools’ commitment to increasing diversity, the median black student accepted by them placed in the lowest decile of white students admitted — and this translated into low class rankings and low rates of passing the bar exam for these black students. Sanders presented evidence that if black students who had attended a top-tier law school had instead attended a lower-tier school, they would have been more likely to pass the bar exam.