RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/336117

More than 40,000 people have been slaughtered during the rebellion in Syria, and the death toll rises daily. The European Union does not appear to be particularly concerned. North Korea’s rulers have launched a three-stage rocket, moving closer to their goal of developing a nuclear-tipped ICBM, and they’re sharing nuclear-weapons technology with the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism in Iran. The EU does not seem to be worrying about that either. Israel is considering building homes on barren hills adjacent to Jerusalem. The EU’s 27 foreign ministers said they were “deeply dismayed” and warned Israel of unspecified consequences if the plan is carried out.

The European Union — recent winner, I should note, of the Nobel Peace Prize — has its priorities. So let’s talk about what the Israelis are doing to so distress them.

The area in which Israel may build covers 4.6 square miles. For the sake of comparison, Denver International Airport is 53 square miles. Known as E1, this area lies within a territory that has a much older name: the Judean Desert. Might Jews think they have a legitimate historical claim to the Judean Desert? This question is rarely asked.

For Israeli military planners, E1’s strategic value is more germane than its history. Developing it would help in the defense of Jerusalem, and would connect Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim, an Israeli town with a population of 40,000. Media reports note that both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. Media reports often fail to note that right now both Jews and Arabs live in Jerusalem — for the most part peacefully, with both populations growing — while Hamas vows to forcibly expel every Jew from Jerusalem. Such threats of ethnic cleansing also do not trouble the EU much.

It has been widely reported that if Israel should build in E1, the possibility of a two-state solution would be shattered. The New York Times was among those reporting this but, to the paper’s credit, it later published a correction, stating that building in E1 actually “would not divide the West Bank in two,” nor would it cut off the West Bank cities Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Anyone looking at a map would see that.

People forget, or perhaps choose not to remember, that Israelis always have been willing to give up land for peace, including land acquired in defensive wars. Historically, that has not been a common practice, for a very sound reason: Aggression can be deterred only if it carries substantial risk. Nevertheless, Israelis gave up Gaza and the Sinai, and have offered to give up more land — at least 97 percent of the West Bank, retaining only those areas absolutely necessary for national security.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/arab-winter-hits-mideast?f=puball So after two full years, how’s that Arab Spring “thing” working for you? Not feeling like it’s going our way? Feel free to join the ever-expanding club that embraces that overwhelmingly disappointing notion. After the “over-promises” of the blossoming of a thousand secular, liberal, and democratic forces, the Arab Spring has basically become an […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/come-out-with-your-hands-up The massacre of twenty-six individuals at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14th by mentally unstable (and reportedly autistic) Adam Lanza has again pushed the buttons of anti-gun and gun control advocates. Senator Diane Feinstein has promised to introduce more stringent gun sale regulation in Congress the first day of its […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578189393170142814.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Benghazi ‘Inadequacies’
A State report blames the underlings, while Hillary isn’t mentioned.

With chilling detail, an independent State Department investigation has pointed to “systemic failures” that led to the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi. The report is a step toward accountability, but its narrow focus shouldn’t obscure the deeper policy failures. It’s up to Congress to flesh this out.

To say security was “inadequate” is an understatement. The diplomatic mission in Libya’s second city was starved of proper equipment and personnel. U.S. diplomats relied for protection on a “poorly skilled” local militia and unarmed contract guards, according to an unclassified version of the report, released Tuesday night. Thomas Pickering, President George H.W. Bush’s U.N. ambassador, led the study.
The Pickering report is less useful at explaining the reason for the failures. It faults civil servants at State’s bureaus of diplomatic security and Near Eastern Affairs for “a lack of proactive leadership and management ability” on security. Four State underlings were pushed out of their jobs on Wednesday, but the report doesn’t say whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was aware of security problems at the Libya mission or requests for reinforcements. The Islamist Ansar al-Shariah militia killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, at the diplomatic compound and CIA annex.

http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/12/19/remembering-judge-bork/

Like Roger Kimball and Michael Ledeen, I was privileged to get to know Judge Robert Bork over the years. That was a thrill because he was a hero of mine long before I met him. I was struck not only by the dignity with which he endured the slanders by which the Left’s lapdogs denied him the Supreme Court seat he so richly deserved, but also by the trenchant books he wrote after the ordeal — in particular, The Tempting of America and Slouching Towards Gomorrah. These are not merely towering works of legal philosophy but essential commentaries on our culture by one of its most refined observers — and, for sheer enjoyment purposes, books as witty as they are wise.

Along with Justice Scalia and Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, Bob was among the trailblazers of “originalism,” the theory holding that judges must construe the law, particularly the Constitution, in accordance with what it was understood to mean at the time of its adoption. But he was a legend in many areas of the law, notably antitrust and international law. The latter occasioned the first conversation I ever had with him — he sought me out, when we both happened to be at a function in Washington, with praise for an essay I’d written for Commentary. As a writer, I’ve never had a prouder moment. Remembering it still softens the blow from the time I deeply disappointed him, apres one of Roger’s conferences, by ordering a vodka martini. As the Judge — an expert on this as on so many things — was known to instruct, there is only one kind of martini — gin (as it should not be necessary to specify), straight up but with the barest trace of vermouth … and “olives are to be eschewed, except by people who think a martini is a type of salad.”
I was thrilled back in 2009 when Roger asked me to review A Time To Speak — an anthology drawn from a half-century of Bob’s copious, brilliant writings — for The New Criterion. Rereading the review today, I was again struck by the enduring wisdom of an essay the Judge wrote long before the Age of Obama. I ended the review by discussing it:

Of all the wisdom that overflows from A Time to Speak, it is a thirty-year-old essay, “The Impossibility of Finding Welfare Rights in the Constitution,” that readers may find most relevant. In the waning weeks of last year’s presidential campaign, it emerged that Barack Obama, as an Illinois state legislator, had lamented that the Warren Court “wasn’t that radical” after all. It had, to his mind, failed to take on “the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.” Obama, whose ardor for the “living” Constitution is no secret and who opined throughout the campaign that his judicial nominees’ most important attribute would be “empathy,” faulted the high court for declining to “break free from the essential constraints” he acknowledged were “placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.” Our fundamental law thus remained “a charter of negative liberties”—one that says only what government “can’t do to you.” For the President, economic justice cries out for the positive case: what government “must do on your behalf” (emphasis added).

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3083

THIS IS REALLY A HOOT…ANOTHER OF DERSHOWITZ’S MIXED UP ENDORSEMENTS GOES SOUR…..SEE THIS QUOTE..

“Dershowitz concludes that Carter’s diplomatic positions toward Israel and the Middle East may be honest, but where is the disclosure about his dependence on Arab money? In the American public sphere, Dershowitz concludes, there is no lower level of integrity than that of Carter. “It pains me to say this,” Dershowitz writes, and notes that he is one of Carter’s former supporters.”

It is rare that a journalist finds such a damning indictment, with heavy evidence to support it, against a senior American public figure; yet Harvard University professor and renowned jurist Alan Dershowitz has produced just such an indictment against former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in an article that I recently came across.

After his presidential term ended, Carter devoted himself, of course, to moralizing and harsh one-sided criticism against Israel. As the facilitator of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, many believed that Carter advocated his positions (even the vague hint that Israel is an “apartheid state”) with the understanding, knowledge and, mainly the integrity that the signing of the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country signaled. Dershowitz shatters Carter’s image as a man beyond reproach, as one who acted on fundamental principles and purity of heart. In fact, according to Dershowitz, Carter was driven by Saudi money. A whole lot of it.

Dershowitz published his accusations against Carter in a scathing article published on the Jewish website Aish.com in 2007, whose managers claim they run the richest content site, in terms of Jewish culture, on the web. Politically, Dershowitz supports the Democratic Party and recently voted for the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama. More importantly, Dershowitz notes that he actively participated in the campaign to elect Carter as president. He even notes that he “immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle.”

Why UN Fiat Won’t Turn Terrorists Into Statesmen The Palestinian Authority has now succeeded with its deliberate strategy for acquiring incremental statehood at the United Nations. Though this cynical end-run around authoritative international law managed to skirt all critically governing expectations of the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (The Montevideo Convention, 1934), […]

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/novelists-view-world/2012/dec/19/nbcs-richard-engel-freed-syria-safe-dump-israel-ag/ WASHINGTON, DC, December 19, 2012 – Brian Williams and the brass at NBC News can breathe easier. Their top Middle East reporter Richard Engel is back after being held captive for five days in Syria. He can now resume his bashing of Israel. Engel’s reporting from the region has always been fair and balanced, […]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/12/19/racism-at-the-times/

“DIVERSITY” HISTORY WAS MADE IN SOUTH CAROLINA WHEN A GOVERNOR OF INDIAN ORIGIN APPOINTED A CONSERVATIVE BLACK MAN TO BE SENATOR….BUT THIS “DIVERSITY” IS ANATHEMA TO LIBERALS BECAUSE BOTH THE GOVERNOR AND SENATOR ELECT SCOTT HAPPEN TO BE REPUBLICANS….WHAT ABOMINABLE HYPOCRISY….RSK

There is a New York Times op-ed this morning that is somewhere beyond appalling. It is by Adolph L. Reed Jr., a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Reed writes about the appointment of Rep. Tim Scott to replace the retiring Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Scott, in Reed’s view, is essentially an Uncle Tom because he does not agree with the politics of most black Americans:

. . . his politics, like those of the archconservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, are utterly at odds with the preferences of most black Americans. Mr. Scott has been staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion.

Of course, Tim Scott will not be representing black Americans in the Senate, he will be representing South Carolinians, who are, overwhelmingly, staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion. So it would seem that while white people can be liberals or conservatives according to the dictates of their thinking, blacks cannot. If you’re black but not liberal, in Professor Reed’s worldview, then you’re not really black.

He notes that, “All four black Republicans who have served in the House since the Reagan era — Gary A. Franks in Connecticut, J. C. Watts in Oklahoma, Allen B. West in Florida and Mr. Scott — were elected from majority-white districts.” So? All that proves is that the voters of these districts elected people according to their political positions and not the color of their skins, which is all Professor Reed seems to care about.

He can’t even get skin color right, however. He writes:

Mrs. Haley — a daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India — is the first female and first nonwhite governor of South Carolina, the home to white supremacists like John C. Calhoun, Preston S. Brooks, Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3506/children-weapons If these are not abuses of the human rights of the child, what is? In the Middle East, children are being used by the adults who should be caring for them to turn them into jihadist weapons to conquer the world — sometimes with bombs strapped onto them to kill their perceived enemies. Children […]