RUTHFULLY YOURS

Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine with a strong record of satirizing many religious figures, and for years Islam’s prophet Muhammad has been included among the subjects of the satirical cartoons. For the folks working there, death threats from people claiming to be Muslims were not unusual, and a firebomb destroyed its old offices in November 2011, the day after the magazine had announced that it had selected Muhammad as its editor-in-chief.

On January 7, 2015 two gunmen, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, went into the magazine’s offices and gunned down eleven people, including a police officer. The gunmen then killed another police officer outside the offices. It seemed that within minutes of the massacre, pundits and members of the media went into overdrive trying to keep Islam out of the picture; we were assured that the “religion of peace” had nothing to do with this. This was in spite of the facts that the two gunmen were Muslims yelling Allahu Akbar, and were heard shouting in French, “We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad.”

For the nation’s theaters to demand that Jews produce anti-Israel work in their own theater is insulting.

This month Washington DC’s Theater J will open the second half of its 2014-2015 season with Aaron Posner’s new play, “Life Sucks.” For the first time in 18 years the company, one of the nation’s leading Jewish theaters, will be without its longtime artistic director, Ari Roth. Roth’s firing last month caused a firestorm of controversy in the American nonprofit theater community. Acting artistic director Shirley Serotsky will guide Theater J into a period of new leadership under a cloud of condemnation over Roth’s contentious and very public termination. The reaction to that termination betrayed a troubling double standard over theater’s responsibility to tell stories from diverse perspectives. The result was a bizarre and unique demand that Jewish theater producers program plays critical of Israel.

On December 22, artistic directors from many of the nation’s leading theater companies penned an angry letter to the board of the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center, which oversees Theater J. Although the Center stated that Roth was fired for insubordination after going public with internal disputes, the signers of the open letter called the firing blatantly political. They say Roth was fired because his proposed work ran counter to DCJCC’s positions on Israel.

France’s President Charles de Gaulle changed his mind about the Jewish State. There were a number of complicated reasons for his decision, but after the withdrawal from Algeria in 1962, de Gaulle abandoned Israel, and made nice with the Arab world.

Then came the Jew baiting. Not long after the Six-Day War ended, de Gaulle gave his so-called “sermon to the Hebrews.” He liberally conflated Israelis with all Jews, accusing the former of acting like “aggressors” and “oppressors” while arguing that the latter’s “self-assured and domineering people” were at fault for arousing ill feelings “in certain countries at certain times.”

De Gaulle was probably the first Western leader to blame Israel for what was going on in the Middle East. He was certainly the first to imbue Israel’s actions with ugly stereotypes.

Craig Shirley, the chairman of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, is the author of two best-selling books about Ronald Reagan, Rendezvous with Destiny and Reagan’s Revolution. He is also the author of the best-selling December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World. He is now writing several more books about Reagan, including Last Act. He has lectured at the Reagan Library, is the Visiting Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch.
Perlstein on Reagan If you want to learn more about Ronald Reagan, stay away from The Invisible Bridge.
Rick Perlstein, man of the Left and wannabe historian, has finally produced the third book in his trilogy about modern conservatism. It’s too bad he bothered.

The new volume, The Invisible Bridge, is ostensibly about Ronald Reagan’s rise to the pinnacle of American politics. But it’s not really about Reagan — more on that later — and it’s not really history, either. It’s what’s known in journalism as a “clip job,” and an astonishingly one-sided, idiosyncratic, and dishonest one at that.

Don’t take it from me, as I have a bone to pick with Perlstein (more on that later, too), listen to Perlstein’s fellow liberals:

Sam Tanenhaus, former editor of the New York Times Book Review, reviewing the trilogy in The Atlantic, dismissed Perlstein out of hand as simply a “Web aggregator.” Tanenhaus goes on to call Perlstein “intellectually lazy” and says his writing is now characterized by “an insistent vulgarity.” Perlstein, he adds, “now finds rumor more illuminating than fact.”

Nathan Heller of The New Yorker dismisses Perlstein’s work as “cheap, and obfuscatory, and heading toward intellectual dishonesty . . .”

“Liberal bias,” noted the Miami Herald, “permeates Rick Perlstein’s time capsule.”

Noted liberal essayist Steve Donoghue witheringly wrote that Perlstein’s book has a “stink of sloppiness and data-massaging.” Data-massaging is a polite way of saying “making it up.”

Barronelle Stutzman runs a flower shop on Richland, Washington. After a friendly relationship with customer Rob Ingersoll for some ten years, she declined to provide the flower arrangements for his wedding to another man. When the state attorney general’s office heard about the case, it moved against her, as did the American Civil Liberties Union, who are both currently suing Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers. Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, she awaits news from a federal court about whether she can continue what she describes as the work of her heart. — KJL

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What does your flower business mean to you?

Stutzman: I have worked in the floral industry for nearly 40 years. I bought the business from my mom. It is my way of using God’s gift to convey personal messages. Many times people can’t say what they mean, but flowers can say it all when words fail. It is a mission field in many ways because it allows me to use my artistic skill to bless others.

Lopez: Is winning or losing a matter of your livelihood?

How the Obama-Sharpton Alliance Began-Obama dispatched Valerie Jarrett in 2008 to woo the reverend.

Near the end of 2007, Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett met with Al Sharpton in New York City and began to cement a relationship that would eventually make the inflammatory activist the president’s “go-to man” on race, according to multiple sources.

The backdrop to the incipient Obama-Sharpton alliance was the then-senator’s 2008 presidential campaign, which still hadn’t locked away the black vote, and the political cross-currents created by two other controversial reverends, Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright.

That tentative relationship has now grown into a full-blown partnership that has vastly increased the once-shunned Sharpton’s influence and prestige and elevated him into a key White House ally at a time of heightened tension over policing and race.

HuffPo reports:

The chant, known as “adhan,” will resound from the Duke Chapel bell tower every Friday beginning Jan. 16, echoed by members of the Muslim Students Association, the university announced via Duke Today. The chant will sound for three minutes at a “moderately amplified” level to announce the Jummah prayer service, held Friday afternoons in the chapel basement.

The Adhan will be sung in Arabic, then followed by an English translation, according to a Facebook event announcing the call.

“This opportunity represents a larger commitment to religious pluralism that is at the heart of Duke’s mission,” Christy Lohr Sapp, the chapel’s associate dean for religious life, told Duke Today. “It connects the university to national trends in religious accommodation.”

The announcement comes one day after the White House clarified that their anti-terror summit would not cover acts of radical Islamic terror, having determined that those acts are only part of a greater War on Muslims.

HAS ANYONE COMPILED A LIST OF THE CONGRESSIONAL CRETINS?…RSK

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) excused President Obama’s absence from a Paris march on Sunday because last Wednesday’s terrorist attack there was a “spontaneous” event.

At a news conference with her caucus’ new policy and communications committee today, Pelosi elaborated a bit on Obama’s meeting with “a chunk of” House and Senate Democratic and Republican leadership. She said one of the issues he pressed with leaders was Iran negotiations, likely trying to dissuade them from taking legislative action on sanctions while talks with Tehran drag on.

Pelosi said there was no discussion about Obama’s no-show among nearly 50 world leaders who linked arms in Paris in a show of solidarity against terrorism. “That didn’t come up at the meeting,” she said.

“I think that what happened had a spontaneity to it. And presidential travel was not a spontaneous action. I do think that present there or not, our presence on that issue has been widely felt,” she said.

“I think we in Congress had a moment of silence. Many of us — some of us have spoken on the floor to it. We have spoken in public events, I in my own district on Sunday.”

UPDATE: Here’s the criminal complaint.

USA v Christopher Lee Cornell – Complaint by Nathaniel Pruitt
An Ohio man inspired by ISIS was arrested today for planning to target the U.S. Capitol with pipe bombs, and then to shoot anyone fleeing the building.

ABC News reports:

The FBI has arrested an Ohio man for allegedly plotting an ISIS-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol, where he hoped to set off a series of bombs aimed at lawmakers, whom he allegedly considered enemies.

Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, of Green Township, was arrested today on charges of attempting to kill a U.S. government official, authorities said.

According to government documents, he allegedly planned to detonate pipe bombs at the national landmark and open fire on any employees and officials fleeing after the explosions.

The FBI first noticed Cornell several months ago after an informant notified the agency that Cornell was allegedly voicing support for violent “jihad” on Twitter accounts under the alias “Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah,” according to charging documents. In addition, Cornell allegedly posted statements, videos and other content expressing support for ISIS — the brutal terrorist group also known as ISIL — that is wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

A month ago, U.S. Marine veteran Amir Hekmati pleaded with President Obama to help end his ordeal in Tehran’s Evin prison on trumped-up espionage charges.

Now, held for 1,235 days by Iran, he has appealed directly to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for his release — and revealed chilling details about his captivity in the process.

Amir, born in Flagstaff, Ariz., was visiting extended family for the first time in August 2011 when he was seized. “As many other Iranians born in the US, I dreamed of visiting my parents’ homeland and learning more of my Iranian heritage. Unfortunately, after receiving assurances from the Iranian Interest Section in Washington DC, after only three weeks I was arrested, sentenced to death, and subsequently ten years to only discover that the Iranian Interest Section was an accomplice in my arrest. I have been imprisoned for three years now, enduring miserable prison conditions that cause great damage to my physical and mental health,” he wrote.

He spent the first four months in a cell just over three feet by three feet. For 17 months, he “endured a tiny cell with little access to sunlight, little to no contact with family, no access to legal representation, starvation, malnutrition, sensory deprivation, threats, and ridicule and insults to my family and country by Ministry of Intelligence personnel.”