RUTHFULLY YOURS

Apparently appointing people as ambassadors to countries because they gave you a bunch of money does not produce good results. So much for that smart, smart power.

Czech President Milos Zeman says he has “closed” the door of Prague Castle, the seat of the country’s presidency, to the U.S. ambassador because of comments he made about Zeman’s planned trip to Moscow.

U.S. Ambassador Andrew Schapiro told Czech television last week that it would be “awkward” if Zeman were the only EU head of state to attend a May 9 ceremony in Moscow marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Zeman told the news site Parlamentni Listy that he “can’t imagine” the Czech ambassador in Washington giving advice to an American president about “where to travel.”

One of George W. Bush’s worst decisions was failing to pardon Lewis “Scooter” Libby before he left the White House, as we and others urged him to do at the time. That abdication looks even worse today as the chief if reluctant prosecution witness against Mr. Libby, journalist Judith Miller, says she now believes her testimony at trial was wrong.
Peter Berkowitz recounts the story in detail nearby based on Ms. Miller’s revelation in her new book, released this week. She says she testified truthfully, but she now believes based on information she didn’t know at the time that she was led into a false conclusion about her notes by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The perjury case against Mr. Libby was always flimsy, hanging on uncertain memories from years earlier about noncriminal behavior. But if Ms. Miller’s testimony was false, then the conviction was an even worse injustice than we thought.

Why bring all this up now? Well, it is never too late to correct an unjust conviction, and Mr. Libby deserves to have his reputation restored. The episode also teaches lessons about the methods of modern prosecutors, as well as the pitfalls of Washington that the many Republicans running for the White House should want to avoid.

What Israel Wants

A complete end to Iran’s nuclear weapons research and development activity
An unspecified but significant reduction in the number of centrifuges
Closure of the Fordow facility as an enrichment site
Complete disclosure of Iran’s past nuclear work and research
Removal of Iran’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium from the country
Right of international inspectors to review any facility at any time

What’s in the Framework

No uranium enrichment over 3.67% purity—the level suitable for power plants but not arms
Reduction in the number of installed centrifuges to 6,104 from about 19,000
Fordow to be converted into a research center
Unclear if Iran would have to disclose past nuclear research
A reduction to Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium from 10,000 kilograms to 300
The right of inspectors to access all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and its supply chains

We are dealing with a case of Mutually Assured Obfuscation.

‘So when you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question: Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?”

That was Barack Obama on Thursday, defending his Iran diplomacy while treating its opponents to the kind of glib contempt that is the mark of the progressive mind. Since I’m one of those inevitable critics, let me answer his question.

The proverbial thin veneer of civilization has never been thinner in California, as if nature has conspired to create even greater chaos than what man here has already wrought. What follows below was a fairly typical seven-day period in the land of the highest sales, fuel, and income taxes that have led to the nearly worst freeways, schools, and general infrastructure in the nation.

I recently came home from an out-of-state trip. Something was wrong: I noticed off in the distance a strange geyser at the top of the hill. Vandals had apparently earlier taken sledgehammers to the pump’s four-inch plastic fittings — all to scavenge two brass valves (recycle value of about $20).

The prescient writings of Adams predicted today’s folly.

Expatriate Iranian journalist Amir Taheri [1] has written an intriguing — and essential — “linguistic” analysis comparing the various diplomatic “framework” statements at the conclusion of the latest round of the deadline-challenged Iranian nuclear negotiations. The discordances range from nuanced but important grammatical differences [1] in how the Persian text delineates Iranian versus U.S. responsibilities, to the Persian and U.S. texts being “diametrically opposed [1].”

It is these latter starkly contrasting representations that merit elaboration. As Taheri describes [1]:

Even in poor countries that become breeding grounds for Islamic terror, the funds needed always come from richer Muslim nations. What we are facing is not a revolt of the poor.

What matters is what you are taught, where and by whom and for what purpose. Many jihadists are taught a vision of the world and the place of Islam in it that is bound to lead to conflict, violence, terror and ultimately war.

Non-Western cultures have no doubt that they are the best… it is only Western civilization that regards self-criticism as as an almost sacred duty. In a civilization built on critical, and self-critical, thinking, we are invited to practice censorship and self-censorship. If danger there is, it comes from those who wish to silence such voices in the name of multiculturalism and “respect for the other.”

The adepts of political correctness in the West measure everyone’s worth with the degree of his or her victimhood.

““The president’s negotiations with Iran have served to legitimize – not limit – their nuclear ambitions,” Perry said. “They are an aggressive power seeking dominance in the Middle East. They fund the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah. They control four proxy states. And nuclear weapons in their hands will destabilize the Middle East, setting off a nuclear arms race that will lead to a Sunni bomb, and create a grave escalation of the threat posed to the one vibrant democracy in the Middle East: Israel.”

Former Texas governor Rick Perry accused the Obama administration of “delusional thinking” and keeping the American military in the dark about the threats facing the country in a speech at the Citadel, South Carolina’s military college, earlier today. “If you choose to wear the uniform of our nation, you deserve the truth about the realities you will face, however unpleasant,” Perry said. “At no time in the last 25 years has the world been more dangerous. And because of it, some of you will be called upon to put your lives at risk.”

Perry effectively accused President Obama of lying in his statements on U.S. efforts against ISIS and other terror groups: “The president’s State of the Union address has become the State of Delusion address,” Perry said. “When Yemen is held up as a model for containing terrorism, when ISIS is declared contained and its religious roots are denied, our president has fallen victim to delusional thinking.” Perry is arguably the only viable GOP presidential candidate in the field with military experience, depending upon whether South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham or former U.N. ambassador John Bolton are considered serious contenders. He served in the Air Force from 1972 to 1977, a unique qualification he’s likely to emphasize in his White House bid.

They can also receive a wide variety of federal benefits once they arrive.
In 2014, unaccompanied alien children from Central America walked across America’s southern border in droves. This year, the U.S. government will pay for unaccompanied alien children to be flown into the country, even if they were convicted of a felony, and furnish them with federal benefits to boot. It sounds outlandish, so how is it happening? It’s called the In-Country Refugee/Parole Program for Central American Minors, and the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security introduced it on November 14, 2014.

From gay weddings to Iran’s muscle-flexing, PC enforcers have a big job. It is not easy being a contemporary thought policeman. No sooner had the radical gay Left demonized the owners of an Indiana pizza parlor, which does not cater weddings, for suggesting that in theory they might not wish to cater a gay wedding than all sorts of stories surfaced saying that lots of Muslim eateries professed that they too would not cater gay weddings. What can the thought bullies do if one victim should victimize another? Money complicates thought policing as well.

The CEO of Apple is outraged at the thought crimes of Indiana pizza-parlor owners who offer his trillion-dollar company no chance of lucre — but he is not outraged at the concretely homophobic culture of the Middle East or the religious intolerance of China, which are hooked on i-products. Are theoretical sins worse than actual ones? We are back in spirit to the scripted outrage of a few years ago at Mormons in California for supposedly voting down gay marriage on a ballot proposition — until exit polls suggested that the state’s black voters had proved as much opposed to gay marriage as the so-called Religious Right.