RUTHFULLY YOURS

Just as I was ready to discontinue my criticism of President Obama and return to my scribblings on other issues, I find that once again, I overestimated him. I took Obama at his word for the 25 odd times (I have the exact dates) where he assured us that he would never tolerate a nuclear Iran. This was clearly a case of campaign or money raising rhetoric and we know that he doesn’t take such things seriously (unless they are coming from Netanyahu). Even the Washington Post’s editorial points out that Obama’s Iran deal fails to deliver on his promises, ending with: “We hope Mr. Obama will make as much effort to engage in good faith with skeptical allies and domestic critics as he has with the Iranian regime.”

President Obama tells us, with great confidence. that even if Iran cheats, it would still be a year away from having an actual bomb. Of course, he is going to have to explain that logic to Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Turkey who will be clamoring to have their own nuclear weapons. He won’t bother trying to convince Israel of how good a deal this is. They know that if Iran cheats, it would take quite a while to recognize this and an even longer period to do anything about it. By then, it would be too late. If any congressmen dare to oppose this deal, they better have their tax accountants and lawyers on the ready. Ask Menendez and Chaffetz what a vindictive federal government can achieve.

Obama is essentially handing over inspections and verification to the UN, so Iran will be able to get away with anything as they build their nuclear arsenal. AND the global sanctions cannot be reinstituted on a “snap back” basis (except for US only sanctions applied by veto-proof Congress). Rest of World places trade with Iran above nuclear security (odd because Europe is geographically so much closer to Iran than US). Sanctions are the ONLY leverage US has over Iran, and Obama has just thrown away the “sanctions” card. So after UN assumes control over inspections/verification, the US will be unable to do anything but “jaw bone” against Iranian terrorists. Obama is “handcuffing” future US presidents by handing over to UN control over nuclear inspections and verification – any future US prez will become international pariah if he violates/removes UN control over Iranian inspections/verification just because it is not working. When will Republicans start pointing this out to electorate ???

So what did you expect? The “framework” to delay (not to stop) Iran’s nuclear program is a deal that renders us all sitting ducks to the whims of the ayatollahs. For this we can thank the Democrats who spent months working as lawyers for the other side.

Why did it take weeks of negotiations when a quick phone call would have been enough, simply saying, “You win. We lose.”
Well it sure seems that way since the Islamic Republic got everything it wanted and John Kerry came back with nothing.

Why did it take weeks of negotiations when a quick phone call would have been enough, simply saying, “You win. We lose.”

Iran gets to keep its nuclear arsenal intact. President Obama came out to say, “It’s a good deal.”

For them, yes.

The entire effort, concluded on Thursday but to be continued, again, into June, is a production of the Democratic Party.

The Republicans had no say. Will the GOP-controlled House and Senate get a word in edgewise before papers are signed? We don’t know. Obama has the pen.

Immediately after the Democrats, with a straight face, declared, “It’s the best we can do,” the ayatollahs entered laughing.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/passover-message-from-family-security-matters?f=must_reads
All of us at Family Security Matters wish all our readers and supporters a sweet and happy Passover and a joyous and peaceful Easter.

This weekendl Jews will gather with friends and family to celebrate Passover. We will recount the hardships of slavery in Egypt and the harsh oppression by the Pharaoh. We will rejoice in the rescue by Moses who demanded freedom for our people. We will recite the ten plagues that were unleashed on the Egyptians when the Pharaohs refused to free the Jews .The Pharaoh finally relented but when the Jews were leaving he sent an army to capture them and return them to enslavement. We will cheer when we retell how the waters of the Red Sea miraculously parted giving the Jews an escape, and the waters returned drowning the pursuing army.

Then, we will have a moment of silent prayer in memory of the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto who courageously rebelled on Passover in April of 1943 and held off the well-armed Nazis for over a month.

Finally, we will recount another miracle- the return of the Jews to Israel in 1948 when the seas again parted- this time for the steel hulls of vessels bringing besieged and beleaguered and traumatized survivors of the Genocide of World War 2 to safety and succor in the Jewish state of Israel.

Then we will eat, drink and be merry.

But, the story of Passover continues with great consequences:

The federal Restoration of Freedom Act was an unfortunate response to a Supreme Court decision. Back when there was more wisdom in the practice of law, meaning back when the profession had more humility, there developed a sage doctrine: Courts should resist ordering “specific performance” when a personal service contract is breached. The idea is that when a provider, especially one of small scale, breaks an express or implied agreement to provide a service to a consumer, it is not sensible for a judge to direct that the agreement be carried out as written.

The doctrine leapt to mind during this week of manufactured controversy over the state of Indiana’s near-verbatim replication of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The “no specific performance” doctrine recognizes that, while our law is capable of many things, it cannot force people to get along. To try to do so, especially with people embroiled in a bitter disagreement, would more likely lead to additional strife, not calm resolution. What’s more, there are other, better ways to make a wronged party whole. In most instances, for example, a court can order money damages. That leads us to another quaint bit of prudence:

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out.”

So wrote Benjamin Netanyahu in a Facebook post on March 17, the day of Israel’s elections. Since then the words have been a cause célèbre among critics of Israel—and not least, American Jewish liberals.

The Jerusalem Post reports that a “yawning divide has opened between liberal US Jews and the right-wing Jewish Israeli majority that reelected…Netanyahu,” and that:

More than any of the prime minister’s other statements—which included skepticism about the feasibility of the two-state solution and complaints about foreign influence on Israeli politics—Netanyahu’s fear-mongering against Arabs touched a deep nerve among US liberals who voted for Obama.

Among many other responses, Netanyahu’s words have sparked calls by American Jewish liberals Peter Beinart and Jeremy Ben-Ami (president of J Street) for the Obama administration to “punish” Israel and boycott its presence in lands captured in the 1967 Six Day War.

Thomas Jefferson, Patron Saint of American Liberals, would not recognize his spiritual offspring in today’s liberal President Obama and his handling of the Middle East.

Jefferson, as a trade commissioner and then ambassador in Paris for six years (1784-90), faced almost daily the tragedy of American hostages enslaved by violent Muslims and his own frustrating inability to liberate them.

However, what he learned served him well as the leading hawk for war a decade later when he became president and went to war against belligerent Islam.

In May, A.D. 1784, immediately after America’s Continental Congress, gathered in Annapolis, had signed the final draft of the treaty with England that formally ended the American Revolution, Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson as “trade commissioners” in an effort to open European markets to American commodities — not an easy mission with Europe’s traditionally closed, mercantile economic system.

But when Jefferson reached Paris in August 1784 to join the other two already there, he discovered that one unanticipated reality posed the greatest and most immediate threat to their fledgling United States. Every state was swamped in Revolutionary War debt and the way to pay it off would be shipping to European markets their great natural wealth, e.g. lumber from their endless forests, the produce of their fertile soil, the skins of animals for clothing, etc. But with the thirteen ex-colonies now independent of England, when their merchant ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean now, they would no longer be protected by the Royal Navy, the greatest in the world and by the “tribute” that the King of England paid to the pashas of Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and the Sultan of Morocco. This was basically protection money given to North Africa’s so-called “Barbary Pirate” states to keep them from preying on British shipping.

This from Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post on April 3:

… we are now facing the unfolding disaster that Obama has wrought. … the US has just given the Iranians a green light to behave as if they have already built their nuclear umbrella. … [T]he US and its partners have just removed all significant obstacles from their path to nuclear capabilities. The Iranians know it. Their proxies know it. Their enemies know it.

… The surrounding Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are pursuing nuclear weapons.

Don’t look now, but North Korea is a nuclear power today, with missiles able to strike Japan, and soon Hawaii and California.

The Norks got a free pass, because Bill Clinton’s SecState, Madeleine Albright, faked an agreement with Kim Jong-il in 2000, supposedly to stop uranium enrichment and missile development.

Then the Norks violated it, as everybody knew they would. Today North Korea has nuclear bombs and missiles.

Naturally, the media celebrated Albright’s “accord” with Kim Jong-il, and said nothing about the North Korean breakout.

Islamic State’s appeal for American women can range from the prospect of romance to idea of joining a meaningful religious movement
The arrests this week of women in New York and Philadelphia who prosecutors say were plotting terrorist attacks or trying to provide support to the Islamic State is focusing attention on jihadist efforts to recruit American women.

From Denver’s suburban sprawl to Chicago’s immigrant enclaves, nearly a dozen young American women have been enticed over the Internet by extremist groups to join their ranks in the past year, authorities say, with promises of marriage, humanitarian efforts on behalf of Muslims and martyrdom.

The arrests of the American women come as law-enforcement officials and U.S. Muslim leaders struggle to counter the jihadists’ social-media savvy and the increasing number of young Western women who have joined groups such as Islamic State, or ISIS. These women, in turn, have become a critical part of ISIS’s recruitment, offering advice to fellow Western women contemplating joining the group and cheering on its attacks via the Internet, experts say.

Officials didn’t lie, and I wasn’t fed a line, writes Judith Miller

I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.

OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired.