RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350388/obamas-ethical-gymnastics-victor-davis-hanson

Presidential ethics are now situational. Obama is calling for a shield law to protect reporters from the sort of harassment that his attorney general, Eric Holder, and the FBI practiced against Fox News and the Associated Press. Through such rhetoric, he remains a staunch champion of the First Amendment — even though he now has the ability to peek into the private phone records of millions of Americans.

The president is outraged that the IRS went after those deemed politically suspicious. So he sacked the acting head of the IRS, Steven Miller, who was scheduled to step down soon anyway. The administration remains opposed to any partisanship of the sort that might deny tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, founded by the president’s half-brother Malik, but would indefinitely delay almost all the applications from those suspected of tea-party sympathies. Consequently, Lois Lerner granted the former’s request in 30 days, but took the Fifth Amendment when asked the reasons for obstructing the applications of the latter.

These ethical gymnastics were not entirely unforeseeable. Obama ran as a reform candidate for the Senate in 2004, while his campaign was most likely involved in the leaking of the sealed divorce records of both his primary- and general-election opponents. As a senator, he characterized recess appointments as tainted, only as president to make just such appointments — some of which later were declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Senator Obama employed filibusters to block judicial appointments; President Obama now condemns as bad-faith partisans any who might follow his own former custom. He championed public campaign financing before he became the first general-election presidential candidate since the program was enacted to opt out of it. President Obama has railed against any who would vote against raising the debt ceiling as putting partisanship ahead of the national interest — which, as senator, he himself had done. He ran in 2008 on the excesses of the Bush administration’s War on Terror, and then as president embraced or even expanded almost all of the very programs he had so adroitly demagogued in his campaign.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350409/get-behind-gomez-john-fund

Republicans feel they can’t catch a break with U.S. Senate races. First, they lost every close contest but one in 2012, bringing their total seats from 47 to 45. A seat in New Jersey opened up with the death of Democrat Frank Lautenberg this week, but GOP governor Chris Christie strangely left his party adrift by calling a snap special election in October that leaves underdog GOP candidates little time to organize and raise money. New Jersey hasn’t elected a Republican senator in over 40 years, but there was hope that if Christie had delayed the election till November 2014 an appointed incumbent could have built a credible record and held the seat.

Then there is Massachusetts, where on June 25 a special election will be held to fill the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry. Internal polls show Democratic congressman Ed Markey, a 37-year veteran of the House, holding only a single-digit lead over Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez. Nonetheless, Republicans are privately resigned to disappointment — just two years after Scott Brown shocked the nation by winning a special election for a vacant Massachusetts Senate seat.

“Markey has oodles more money than Gomez, there is no fierce urgency among conservatives about winning, unlike with Scott Brown’s 2010 race, and Gomez doesn’t have Brown’s ability to soothe the ruffled feathers of conservatives,” one prominent GOP consultant told me.

Indeed, Gomez is a challenging figure for conservatives to unify behind — even in blue Massachusetts. He has said his party “is stuck in the past” and has refused to sign pledges against raising taxes and to repeal Obamacare. Indeed, during the campaign’s first debate on Wednesday, Gomez went out of his way to praise Romneycare, the intellectual inspiration for much of Obamacare. He simply doesn’t favor a federal solution using many of the same policy tools, he explained. That approach did wonders to confuse voters when Mitt Romney tried it less than a year ago.

Despite their differences, one thing is certain, which is that the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood are intent on more Sharia, more radicalism, and less freedom for all, wherever they gain influence.

http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=47498a2e1ad97dd3d09ae19c5&id=2b3950049a&e=ce445aaf82

For western lay people, it can be hard to distinguish one radical Muslim from another. What is the difference between Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they really all that different? And why do Western governments seem to favour and even partner with Brotherhood-backed groups, but denigrate Salafis?

The 2011 People’s Assembly elections in Egypt focused the world’s attention on the Salafis when they proved to be the ‘dark horse’ of that poll, winning 25% of the seats. This, together with the Muslim Brotherhood’s 47%, gave Islamists almost three quarters of the seats in the Assembly. How do these two powerful Islamic groups compare?

Today the Brotherhood and Salafis also figure prominently in reports from Syria. Both brands of Islamists field rebel forces in Syria, and Brotherhood leaders dominate the Syrian National Council, which has been recognized by the Arab League and some UN states as the legitimate representative of Syria.

Often the past Western politicians have made the mistake of dismissing the Salafis as marginal extremists, while being all too willing to lap up the Brotherhood’s propaganda about their democratic credentials. A good example was David Cameron’s statement in Parliament this past week concerning the Syrian National Council, as he sought to downplay any suggestion that the conflict in Syria had a religious basis:

“When I see the official Syrian opposition I do not see purely a religious grouping; I see a group of people who have declared that they are in favour of democracy, human rights and a future for minorities, including Christians, in Syria. That is the fact of the matter.”

As troubling as Cameron’s ignorance about Brotherhood ideology appears to be, even more disturgin is his intent to forward military support to rebel groups, at the very time that a report has come from Syrian refugees of genocidal measures being enacted by Islamist rebels against the Syrian Christian minority.

This past week evidence has also emerged that among the insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in Benghazi in September 2012 were Egyptians, captured on video saying that ‘Dr Morsi sent us’. Yet Dr Morsi, the Brotherhood President of Egypt, is claimed by the US as an ally, and Brotherhood operatives have had long-standing high-level access to and support from the US Government.

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/06/06/the-thatcher-legacy One who does not disparage politicians as a class can still say that Margaret Thatcher was something relatively rare: a conviction politician, willing to forfeit popularity in order to advance policies in which she fervently believed. Free of double-talk, devoid of triangulation, indifferent to spin, Thatcher did what she thought right and was largely […]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13407

The Chief Rabbi’s stirring words at this week’s “Closer to Israel” rally in London’s Trafalgar Square.

“In July 1938 leaders of 32 nations gathered in the French spa town of Evian knowing that something terrible was going to happen to the Jews,

Knowing that unless they did something a tragedy would unfold that would exceed all the twenty centuries of anti-Semitism put together.

And one by one, without exception, the nations of the world closed their doors. At that moment the Jewish people knew that on all the vast surface of this planet there was not one square inch they could call home in the sense given by Robert Frost as the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.

Today because of Israel the Jewish people has a home.

And when the war was over and one third of our people had been murdered, the Jewish people could have sat and wept and raged at the darkest night humanity has ever known.

But it didn’t.

It looked forward not back.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7452

A deep bow to our “friends” in the Middle East no longer satisfies Barack Obama’s White House. His new ambassador-to-be to the United Nations has a better idea. Samantha Power thinks the president should take a deferential knee. (It worked for Al Jolson, paying tribute to Mammy.)

Mzz Power is nothing if not flexible, and admires “flexibility” in presidents paying court to the nation’s adversaries and enemies. This president just hasn’t bowed deeply enough to suit her.

A decade ago, when Mzz Power was a learned perfessor at Harvard, she set out a few guidelines for how an American president could earn the respect of the squalid and the corrupt, envious as they are of American pelf and power.

She held up the example of German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who in 1970, eager to expiate the sins of the Nazis, went to one knee on a street in the old Warsaw ghetto, scene of one of the great atrocities of World War II, to apologize for the unspeakable and the unforgivable.

“A country has to look back before it can move forward,” she wrote of the gesture in New Republic magazine. “Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When [Willy] Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?”

Into the Fray: A determined domestic thrust is under way to compress Israel back into its precarious pre-1967 frontiers, imperiling the viability of Jewish sovereignty.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/My-prediction-Please-help-prove-it-wrong-315759
Four percent of the country’s residents [i.e. the settlers] cannot decide that they are the only ones who know what’s right… It’s hard not to respect those who are willing to risk their lives and future for the sake of a goal they believe in, yet it becomes a whole different story when they risk the lives and future of others.
– Yair Lapid, “Do the settlers care about us?” October 2, 2010

… there is room for well-considered, controlled unilateral actions. Such actions, which are not dependent on the standing of negotiations, can mitigate the conflict by creating an evolving reality of two states. They should take place along with consistent efforts to negotiate a permanent arrangement, or at least diplomatic agreements that would ultimately result in a permanent arrangement.
– Gilead Sher, “Unilateral withdrawal, by consent,” June 27, 2012

You would think that following Israel’s ruinous unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, unilateralism would be dead in the water… the political Left is impatient. The same people who once sold us Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas as peace partners are now telling us that peace is impossible yet the existing situation is unacceptable, and therefore the unilateral route is the only remaining course of action for Israel… There is a groundswell of “elite” (read: Leftist) opinion building in favor of unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank. I sense that Prime Minister Netanyahu is being pulled in this direction…
– David Weinberg, “The return of unilateralism,” May 30, 2013

I have a strong premonition of dire things to come. For there are increasingly frequent signs of the ominous nature of the emerging realities that soon will be upon us – signs clearly visible to all but those who refuse to acknowledge them, and realities which if left unchecked will – with almost deterministic certainty – herald the end of the era of Jewish sovereignty in our time.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3754/israel-presidents-conference I would, in retaliation, host Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan “Apartheid Weeks.” Stephen Hawking has, apparently, no issues speaking in China and Iran, two countries with appalling human rights records. No one speaks about BDS of Saudi Arabia, where the list of human rights violations is endless. Where were their voices? Or Pakistan, with […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3753/islamic-law-german-legal-system A growing number of German legal exerts are now sounding the alarm about the rise of a parallel Islamic justice in Germany. “It follows its own rules. The Islamic arbiters aren’t interested in evidence when they deliver a judgment, and the question of who is at fault doesn’t play much of a role. Islamic […]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100220493/the-stunning-decline-of-barack-obama-2013-ten-key-reasons-why-the-obama-presidency-is-in-meltdown/ The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 2013. Ten key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown The last few weeks have been among the worst of Barack Obama’s time in office, recalling earlier periods of turmoil for the president in 2010 and 2011, when his ratings also plummeted. In 2013, the situation is […]