RUTHFULLY YOURS

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A Rational Scrutiny Sampler I highlight some of my prefatory remarks on the four Chess Hanrahan detective novels and on the seven Cyrus Skeen novels.

Taking a break from all the doleful and depressing news running riot in the MSM and the Internet and from around the nation and world, and also from reading a superb book on the Montesorri System which I will review later, I have decided to post a sampler of Rational Scrutiny: Paradoxes and Contradictions in Detective Fiction (Patrick Henry Press, 2014), which is available as a print book, on Kindle, and as an audio book. (With the odd exception of The Pickwick Affair, the print editions also are all available at Barnes & Noble, if you prefer to give them your custom instead.)

In this Sampler I highlight some of my prefatory remarks on the four Chess Hanrahan detective novels and on the seven Cyrus Skeen novels. To wit:

In this volume of nonfiction I present excerpts from novels featuring my own two fictional private detectives who take the “intellectual” approach to solving crimes: Chess Hanrahan, who specializes in solving “moral paradoxes,” and Cyrus Skeen, a denizen of the third decade of the last century. Both are college graduates and veterans of the New York City Police Department. Hanrahan went to Fordham University, quit the force after a tongue-lashing by a district attorney, and became a private detective. Skeen is a World War I era Yale graduate who spent a short time on the force as a plainclothesman before following his avocation of writing short stories, and moved to San Francisco where he gleaned most of his story ideas from his private investigations.

Readers of the print and Kindle editions of their stories (and also patrons of the audio book editions) will be familiar with their “inner narrations” or spells of introspection as they sort through a whirlpool of facts, appearances, and chimeras. Hanrahan operates on a motto he culled from a philosophy student’s test paper: Nothing that is observable in reality is exempt from rational scrutiny. Skeen has no motto, and later in his series is moving away from short story writing to publishable essays that plumb the motivations of the criminal mind.

As long as Israel acknowledges that the Palestinian Arabs’ national claims to statehood in Judea-Samaria are authentic and legitimate, Israel can never be secure externally, or internally.

“The Arabs… will not flinch from the war of liberation… This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave…We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors – if there are any – the boats are ready to deport them.”

– Ahmad Shukeiri, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor as PLO chairman, few days prior to the Six Day War

Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

– The Palestinian National Charter

In my column last Friday, I warned that we were on the cusp of carnage. This grim prognosis came true even more rapidly than I had feared.

Early on Tuesday morning, Arab terrorists brutally struck down Jews at prayer inside a Jerusalem synagogue.

New phase in old battle

In the wake of the column, I was interviewed by the Voice of Israel’s Dan Diker, who asked me whether the recent incidents of Arab terror constituted a new phenomenon, or merely a continuation of the Arab enmity experienced in the past.

My response was that they were, in fact, both.

On the one hand, they reflect the continuation of obdurate Arab refusal to countenance any expression of Jewish political sovereignty. On the other hand, they are part of the emergence of a new, more menacing phase of that process. It is, sadly and predictably, a ghastly culmination of almost a quarter-century of gutless, guileless Israeli policy that has drastically undermined Israel’s deterrence, and dramatically emboldened its Arab adversaries.

Terror in Jerusalem By Sarah Stern

Sarah N. Stern is Founder and President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, an unabashedly pro-Israel and pro-American think tank and policy shop in Washington, D.C. (EMET)
Last week in Israel we awoke to the horrific news that four Jews were mercilessly hacked to death while at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue. They were killed by terrorists wielding meat cleavers, knives, guns, and axes. A fifth Israeli Jew, a policeman who responded to the scene, was later pronounced dead. Three of the four worshippers were American citizens.

There is an old familiar feeling of trepidation in the steps we take, here; a quick glance over the shoulders when we feel someone is following us; a suspicion that I don’t like in myself, creeping up within me, when the Arab worker in a neighborhood store helps me out.

A friend of mine, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, confided in me, “If in a synagogue yesterday, who knows where next? In a neighborhood grocery store? In a kindergarten with children at play? …This is like a pogrom in our own nation”

Disgust is also an all too familiar feeling here. There is disgust with CNN who mislabeled the attack on Jewish worshippers in a synagogue as “An Attack in a Jerusalem Mosque”.

There is disgust with the stale, canned statements of leaders who for years, when Israelis are killed, have issued statements of moral equivalency, such as the assertion made yesterday by President Obama, that “too many Palestinians have died”, as well as Israelis. “At this difficult time”, he continued, “I think it’s important for both Palestinians and Israelis to try to work together to lower tensions and reject violence.”

Statements such as these fail to recognize the distinction between the arsonist and the firefighter. By President Obama’s failure to recognize this act for what it is: a pure, unadulterated act of evil, these sorts of statements only serve to reinforce the already growing feeling of triumphalism of the jihadist in his bloodthirsty quest for Islamic hegemony.

There is a disgust at the decades-old sentiment that that there is some sort of vast distinction between the jihadists that attack Jews at worship or babies riding on a Jerusalem train with their parents, and acts of Islamic terrorism throughout the globe. Who can be so naïve as to believe that the ISIS fighter in Syria and Iraq does not delight over the news of dead Jews in Jerusalem?

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

An artificial pancreas implant. Type-1 diabetes patients can one day avoid taking insulin injections if the bio-artificial pancreas, developed by Israel’s Beta-O2 passes its human trials in Sweden. The BAir delivers oxygen to replacements for the faulty islet cells that are essential for producing insulin in the patient’s body.
http://www.israel21c.org/headlines/beta-o2-testing-cure-for-type-1-diabetes/

A smartphone for the disabled. Israel’s Sesame Enable is developing “the Sesame Phone,” which is specifically tailored to assist people who have limited or no use of their hands. The system enables control of the smartphone with a combination of small head movements and voice recognition.
http://unitedwithisrael.org/israelis-develop-smartphone-technology-for-the-disabled/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx3iiIapSPY
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sesame-touch-free-smartphone

Wristwatch to monitor Parkinson’s. Intel Israel has developed a Parkinson’s disease monitor that sufferers wear on their wrists. The device records pulse, slowness of movement, tremors and sleep quality, making up to 300 observations per second. Doctors previously relied on patients’ verbal reports and brief hospital checkups.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186505#.VG72tGe0TN4

Diabetes finger monitor gets cash boost. (Thanks to Atid-EDI and Globes) I reported on the non-invasive diabetes finger monitor from Israeli biotech CNoga Medical in Sept 2013. CNoga has just received a $12.5 million investment from Chinese investment fund GoCapital to help expand development and marketing.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-cnoga-medical-raises-12m-1000981111

Over 100 DTMS devices in use. Israel’s Brainsway has now installed 101 Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation devices worldwide – 50% in the USA and has orders for another 36. Brainsways depression-treatment service using DTMS is covered by the insurance policies of 193 million people in the US.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-brainsway-data-presentation-boosts-share-price-1000984374

Mental health advice on New York street. The Israeli start-up Talkspace has erected large transparent bubbles on New York’s Fifth Avenue to offer free online psychological advice to pedestrians. Passersby can enter a make-believe living room inside an inflated dome and chat online with a psychologist.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-therapy-bubbles-pop-up-in-ny/
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Israel’s part in the comet landing. Two Tel Aviv University professors had key roles in the Rosetta project which completed the first ever spacecraft landing on a comet. Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun helped design the craft and its experiments. Prof Morris Podolak and other Israelis will analyze the Dust Impact Monitor experiment.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/historic-landing-on-ill-smelling-comet-may-help-discover-how-planets-formed/

Israeli plants can resist climate change. (Thanks to Stuart) A study by scientists from Israel, Germany and the US shows Israel’s plants to be more resilient than other plant species in being able to withstand the stresses of any threat from global warming. One researcher said, “Our plants are strong and so are the people of Israel!”
http://haifadiarist.blogspot.co.il/2014/11/israeli-plants-resistant-to-climate.html

Israelis win PayPal challenge. Israelis Shai Mishali and Pavel Kaminsky won the $100,000 grand prize at the global hackathon competition held at PayPal’s California HQ. They beat 3,000 international programmers by developing (in 24 hours) AirHop, for messaging without cellular reception or using devices without SIM cards.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2014/11/17/israelis-win-paypal-battle-hack-grand-prize/

The American Studies Association (ASA), allegedly a scholarly association – (“our nation’s oldest (1951) and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history,”) has abandoned its scholarly pursuits to boycott Israel, and banned Israel’s university representatives participation in a forthcoming academic conference at a California hotel/resort. The chain subsequently declined. Why would a once-respectable organization depart from its stated mission, and take on a jihadist agenda? Answer: moral bankruptcy – clearly and definitively anti-Semitic, they have chosen Marxism and Islamism over democracy, virtue, and integrity.

Jihadist professors want to isolate Israel for the “Palestinian cause,” a deflection and façade for the greater global threat of world domination. A blood-thirsty lot, Mahmoud Abbas has openly called for the murder of Israelis. The reign of terror has begun on the Jewish state, just as it is underway in other countries. This is the group that ASA supports; this is the group that ASA has become.

As I noted last December, 2013:

[Then-]President Curtis Marez admitted that there are worse countries than Israel but, he added, “One has to start somewhere.” Can you picture Marez as part of a firefighting team sent to extinguish a blaze in Southern California, and he’ll start “somewhere” in North Dakota? So they’re boycotting Israel’s universities, which are also attended by Palestinian students, rather than boycotting Palestinian universities, which were instituted by Israel but are prohibited to Jewish students.

All but the comatose know that Israel has won more Nobel prizes per capita than any other country, has more laureates in real numbers than China, Mexico and Spain; publishes more books translated from other languages, and Israelis read more books per capita than any other nation. She leads with the number of scientists and technicians in the work force (exceeding the U.S. by 63%) and most physicians and engineers per capita, ranks third in producing the most scientific papers per capita, and her contributions to medicine and agriculture are beyond miraculous. With Israel’s dedication to morality and improving life, she appears as the moral conscience that Islam and ASA resent. The association has chosen tyranny over democracy, using Palestinian propaganda to trash Israel, while also harming America and the entire non-Islamic world. We are all Islam’s despised infidels.

The government of Canada took an historic step yesterday by signing the Ottawa Protocol to combat anti-Semitism. By doing so, it recognized anti-Semitism as a pernicious evil and a global threat against the Jewish people, the State of Israel and free, democratic countries everywhere. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper has noted, “Those who would hate and destroy the Jewish people would ultimately hate and destroy the rest of us as Well.”

The protocol is a declaration that hatred of this nature will not be tolerated in this country. It sets out an action plan for supporting initiatives that combat anti-Semitism and provides a framework for other nations to follow.

It also sets out a vibrant definition of anti-Semitism which, for the first time in history, links anti-Semitism to the denial of the right Jewish people have to their ancestral home land — the State of Israel. This, in fact, is what sets post-World War Two anti-Semitism apart from its historic roots. Today’s anti-Semitism is all about denial: denial of the legitimacy of Zionism as a Jewish movement to reclaim the land of Israel; denial of a Jewish history in connection to the holy land and, in particular, the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people; denial of The Holocaust (while at the same time accusing Jews of Nazism); and denial of Jews to live free of anti-Semitism, hate and intolerance.

In announcing the Protocols, Foreign Minister John Baird has expressed his government’s unequivocal support for the State of Israel. In referring to this week’s turmoil at the United Nations and the Palestinian threat to unilaterally declare a state, Baird said, “Canada will not stand behind Israel at the United Nations, we will stand right beside it. It is never a bad thing to do the right thing.”

Mark Durie is the pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-GinsburgWriting Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness. His book The Third Choice explains the implications for Christians of living under Islamic rule.

A slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is “Islam is the solution”. Dean Philip Jensen recently stated in regard to the Islamic State (ISIS) that “It is time to face the truth that Islam itself is part of the problem.” Solution or problem: what is the truth about Islam?

The world has been shocked by ISIS, which has committed beheadings, crucifixions, stonings, enslaving and selling captives, and imposing the notorious ‘three choices’ upon Syrian and Iraqi Christians. More than this, it has showed itself proud to do such things. The fact that thousands of Muslims from around the world have been traveling to the Levant to join ISIS suggests that these people also consider the acts of ISIS to be in accordance with Islam.

The publicly stated position of ISIS is that it is motivated by religious devotion. The English language version of the ISIS magazine Dabiq recently praised the enslavement of the Yazidis, a non-Muslim group in northern Iraq. The article ‘The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour’, defended the practice from Islamic legal history, the example of the first Muslims, and Muhammad himself: “The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the mushrikīn [idolators] were sold by the Companions [of Muhammad] … before them. … enslaving the families of the kuffār [non-Muslims] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharī’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’ān and the narratives of the Prophet [Muhammad] … and thereby apostatizing from Islam.” ISIS is a product of Islamic revivalism. After enduring several centuries of Islamic decline, a view developed across the Muslim world that if only Muslims were more religiously observant, Allah would make them ascendant again. This conviction has driven the Islamic revival, which seeks to renew Islam by going back to original sources, including the life of Muhammad.

The de Blasio Democrats For a party that trumpets its populism and democratic heritage, their brazen apathy toward public sentiment is astounding. By Matthew Continetti

Bill de Blasio, the New York mayor, says he knows why Democrats lost the 2014 election. Income inequality defines our times, he said during a visit to Washington this week, and his party did not talk about the issue enough. De Blasio needs a hearing aid: Democrats speak of little else.

Dodging questions about Hillary Clinton, de Blasio praised Elizabeth Warren. He called the liberal heroine “one of the indispensable voices” among Democrats, and appeared with her at a Center for American Progress event later that day. The policy conference featured other darlings of the Left: Julian Castro, Tammy Baldwin, Kamala Harris, Bishop Gene Robinson, Gina McCarthy, and John Podesta. Listening to the speakers, you would not have known that two weeks earlier liberalism had encountered its worst setback in decades.

Indeed, President Obama and congressional Democrats have shown no signs of rethinking their political and policy strategies following the 2014 election. The president has veered left, calling for government regulation of the Internet, agreeing to a burdensome climate deal with China, and ordering an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. Harry Reid elevated Warren to a leadership position and voted to kill the Keystone pipeline — as well as Mary Landrieu’s Senate career. Nancy Pelosi, the most unpopular congressional leader in the country, is going nowhere.

The gap between Democratic performance and liberal behavior is stunning. President Obama is responsible for two of four postwar GOP landslides, polls show Americans dissatisfied with Washington and eager to have congressional Republicans set the agenda, and there is growing fear among Democratic consultants and journalists that the party is headed toward more defeats. How have liberals responded? By blowing a raspberry in all of our faces.

If Congress remains silent, it acquiesces in the president’s constitutional excesses.

In reacting to President Obama’s extraordinary abuse of his power on immigration, Republican officeholders are wisely steering clear of talk of impeachment. “I don’t want to do the ‘I-word,’ nobody wants to throw the nation into that kind of turmoil,” Representative Steve King, an anti-illegal-immigration firebrand, told CNN.

But King and others are pointing out that there is another way for Congress to move against a president who has put himself above the law. And it’s one that Democrats once favored as a means of dealing with Bill Clinton’s perjury under oath and subsequent cover-up of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. None other than Nancy Pelosi proposed that the House censure Bill Clinton, rather than impeach him. She and other House Democrats backed a resolution declaring that President Clinton “fully deserves the censure and condemnation of the American people and the Congress.”

Certainly some action beyond Congress suing the president and trying to withhold money from his efforts to implement his executive orders is needed. A failure to resist President Obama’s repeated, serious offenses against his oath of office not only endangers the Constitution today, but provides a blueprint for future generations to suffer similar assaults from another president.

But what can Congress and the American people do?

The impeachment of a president is a very grave step, a sort of “nuclear option” to be avoided unless absolutely required. Not only is its explicit purpose to legislatively overturn the sovereign judgment of the people at the ballot box, its impact on the work of the government and national life is deeply corrosive.

Congress’ placating the president on immigration would establish a precedent for lawless executive action.

Dear Reader (including those of you in the shadows),

Like a cannibal in a coma ward, I have no idea where to begin. It is always remarkable to me — which is why I am remarking upon it — how the only way this president can be rescued from a bad news cycle is if an even worse one comes along. This is a source of frustration for many on the right who get outraged by the fact that “we” don’t talk enough about Fast & Furious or Benghazi or the IRS scandal or the VA scandal or Ukraine/Syria/Islamic State/China/Libya/Gitmo . . . . etc. The reason some of these topics get pushed to the backburner, even on the right, is that another controversy or scandal suddenly eclipses the previous one. If I ask you to hold a bowling ball and then, five minutes later, I surprise you by throwing a second bowling ball at you and shouting “Catch!” it’s sort of unfair for me to expect you not to drop the ball. (“That may be the worst thing you’ve ever written” — The Couch.)

Phase One of Grubergate came to an end not because the White House or Jonathan Gruber or his legions of activist-journalist homunculi offered the necessary answers or contrition, but because a bigger mess came along. The current fight over Obama’s immigration diktat will probably end when the White House throws Israel under the Mother of All Buses by striking a deal with Iran (already Bibi Netanyahu must feel like Joe Pesci as he walked into the room with plastic sheets on the floor in Goodfellas). The subsequent controversy over that will likely subside when the administration reveals it has been running an illegal dogfighting ring in the White House basement. That brouhaha will conclude when Biden lets it slip that he routinely hunts human beings for sport on the grounds of the Vice President’s residence.

It’s My Way or My Way

So let me bow to the power of this fully operational news cycle and talk about the immigration thing first.

For the last several weeks, the White House’s court spinners have been arguing that Republican inaction is forcing the president to act. Here’s Eugene Robinson in a column titled “Boehner’s immigration inertia forces Obama to act”:

Oh, please. All the melodramatic Republican outrage isn’t fooling anybody. The only reason President Obama has to act on immigration reform is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t.

I repeat: That’s the only reason. The issue could have been settled a year ago. It could be settled in an afternoon. The problem is that Boehner refuses to do his job, preferring instead to spend his time huffing and puffing in simulated indignation.