Grotesque business of Planned Parenthood

Transcription

At Issue this week...
July 29, 2015
Chattanooga Tragedy
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Planned Parenthood by Rich Lowry
Grotesque business of Planned Parenthood
I
t’s hard to have an honest debate
about abortion in this country, when
the issue is so often shrouded in
evasion and deception.
That’s why we owe a debt to Deborah
Nucatola. She is willing to tell it the way
it is. She eschews careful talking points
meant to obscure rather than illuminate
and doesn’t worry about discomfiting the
squeamish. On abortion, she is the great
clarifier.
Nucatola is the Planned Parenthood
official — and abortion doctor — whose
frank discussion of the destruction of unborn babies was captured on secret video
by an anti-abortion group.
was written by liberal lion Henry Waxman, who had no interest in forbidding
the trade.
The true import of the Nucatola video
is its casual moral grotesqueness. Manipulating a baby in the womb to kill it
in a fashion best suited to selling off its
organs, as Nucatola describes, is a repellant act.
SHE WAS DRAWN out over lunch by
two actors posing as people interested in
buying organs from abortion clinics, and
speaks nonchalantly of the unspeakable.
If watching the video doesn’t turn your
stomach, you are either morally insensate,
or angling to be designated Planned Parenthood’s Person of the Year.
The episode raises a public-relations
challenge unique to that organization:
How do you spin one of your officials casually talking about aborting babies and
harvesting their organs for sale (“a lot
of people want liver”) while sipping red
wine and enjoying a nice meal?
Well, the first rule is not to refer to an
aborted baby as a baby, or in any way to
acknowledge his humanity. A PR firm doing work for Planned Parenthood — and
surely earning every disreputable penny
— called the body parts discussed in the
video “the products of conception.”
The other is to talk about science and
medicine, which are assumed to be invested with a talismanic power that trumps
all other considerations. “In health care,”
Planned Parenthood said in a statement,
“patients sometimes want to donate tissue
to scientific research that can help lead to
medical breakthroughs.”
So nothing to see here, folks. But abortion is not health care — it is an overwhelmingly elective procedure undertaken to end a life. The baby isn’t a patient.
The baby is a victim and has no choice in
what happens to its organs after a Planned
Parenthood abortionist does his work.
Critics of Planned Parenthood have focused on the potential illegalities revealed
in the video. This is a mistake. The federal statute on selling fetal parts for profit
This isn’t merely aesthetics. Yes, as
Planned Parenthood’s apologists argue,
almost any surgical procedure is unsightly. But other surgical procedures don’t involve deliberately ending a life and treating its body as a commodity.
Rich
Lowry
(c) 2015, King Features Syndicate
SUCH IS THE business that Planned
Parenthood is in. The group loves to portray itself as just a friendly neighborhood
provider of health services. Abortion is
left out of this sanitized version.
Nucatola provides the more accurate
picture. She talks of how Planned Parenthood performs 40 percent of the abortions
in the country and how clinics are stuck
with the parts of dead babies (“tissue”)
that they have trouble discarding.
An organization that exists in large part
to perform abortion — about a million
every three years — shouldn’t receive a
dime in public funding. And the best way
to limit the sale of the parts of aborted
babies is to save the babies from being
aborted in the first place, which proposed
bans on late-term abortions in Congress
would at least take a step toward doing.
We have long been told how unborn babies are “blobs of tissue” that deserve no
moral respect or legal protection. Yet here
is an official from the leading abortion
provider in the country talking of their
livers, lungs and hearts, and of preserving
those organs for their value.
WHAT DEBORAH Nucatola describes is the reality of abortion. If you
can’t handle it, you can’t handle the truth.
July 16, 2015
2
Conservative Chronicle
PLANNED PARENTHOOD: July 17, 2015
Let’s face it: Planned Parenthood is evil
I
n America, it’s illegal to donate
money to a candidate without
first reporting it to the government. Even then, if you give more than
is permissible, you could end up in jail.
In this country, you can’t add trans fats
to your foods or smoke cigarettes in
your own bar. Here, Little Sisters of the
Poor can’t tell the state they’d rather
not buy condoms, and bakers can’t tell
a couple they’d rather not participate in
their wedding.
But it’s completely legal to kill an
unborn baby for convenience and then
sell its parts for cash.
LET’S FORGET the legality of the
issue for a moment. And let’s forget
religion and politics, if that’s possible.
Let’s forget the disconcerting economic
incentives inherent in these types of
transactions and ask: What kind of person nonchalantly describes “crushing”
the life from another living being — a
being that might already be named and
loved, a loss that might have a tremendous negative impact on a person or
family or community — over a glass of
wine and some giggles?
Well, an executive at the euphemistic
Planned Parenthood, that’s who. We can
tell ourselves that a life can simply be
written off whenever we deem it inconvenient. We can celebrate the right to
end life. But the depravity of Deborah
Nucatola’s conversation betrays where
it all leads — and also where it started.
If this were a video of some prod- for Republicans to cower under. Unuct researchers talking about the same til Planned Parenthood breaks off its
process but describing the vivisection abortion/wholesale baby-part business
of a monkey or a cat for organ harvest- from its women’s health operations,
ing instead, most Americans would you’re a big investor.
be justly repulsed. Yet because this
AND WOMEN who donate pieces
is Planned Parenthood, an organizababies (and we still
tion fulfilling its eugenicist founder’s of their
don’t
understand
goal of population control, it will be
how this happens,
treated as just anby default or proother dispute in
actively), accordthe culture war,
ing to the U.S.
completely
de(c) 2015, Creators Syndicate
Department
of
void of scientific
Health and Huand moral conman Services, may ask for “reasonable
text.
Because this is Planned Parenthood, payments associated with the transpormost of the media will frame this as a tation, implantation, processing, prespolitical tug of war rather than explore ervation, quality control, or storage
the politics and ethics of allowing of human fetal tissue.” It’s probably
Americans to terminate a life and then not a huge moneymaker, but that’s beharvest organs. Some in the media will side the point. Delaying an abortion to
probably have a difficult time even sell parts at a higher price is illegal in
comprehending why anyone would theory but really, like the Hyde amenddeem this much of a story at all. You’ll ment, completely unenforceable in
recall how a number of politicians practice.
Planned Parenthood argues that its
and reporters struggled to explain the
distinction between a run-of-the-mill peddling of human tissue (known to
late-term abortionist and Kermit Gos- the rest of us as “body parts we need
to survive”) is ethical and useful. The
nell. (Answer: One has a license.)
You’re involved, too. You have no nonprofit was merely negotiating how
“choice.” It is worth reiterating that it would be reimbursed for human
taxpayers, in part, fund this abortion tissue — or, as the Associated Press
industry. The fungibility of dollars that would describe the bartering of aborted
flow into Planned Parenthood makes baby parts, having a discussion about
laws such as the Hyde amendment “the disposition of parts from aborted
nothing more than a political canopy fetuses.” This practice isn’t new.
David
Harsanyi
Killing unborn babies and selling
their organs saves lives, says Planned
Parenthood. (You only need to peruse
the history of the 20th century to find
that line of reasoning disconcerting.)
If Planned Parenthood really wants to
save lives, of course, it could start by
attempting to convince — or at the very
least inform — its would-be customers that they have real choices. What
Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior
director for medical services, really
tells us is that these aren’t just clumps
of cells devoid of moral significance or
purpose — especially when they don’t
meet Nucatola’s scalpel. “We’ve been
very good at getting heart, lung, liver
because we know that,” she explains,
“so I’m not going to crush that part.
I’m going to basically crush below,
I’m going to crush above, and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact.” She
is discussing organs of a baby, evidently more useful to her dead than alive.
HOW MANY Americans are OK
with this practice? We should find out.
Liberals never have a problem making expansive arguments on emotional
grounds. The single woman without
health care tells us all we need to know
about Obamacare; the lone shooter
tells us all we need to know about guns
laws, etc. There is simply no reason
that Nucatola should not be on television ads everywhere, sipping her wine
and intimately describing how abortionists squash the life out of unborn
babies for money. How many Americans would accept this policy as normal?
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3
July 29, 2015
Planned Parenthood’s odious activities
“We’ve been very good at getting
heart, lung, liver, because we know that,
so I’m not gonna crush that part. I’m
gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna
crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can
get it all intact.” That’s how Planned
Parenthood’s senior director of medical services explained to a potential
customer (with a hidden camera) how
unborn baby body parts are routinely
harvested for profitable reuse. PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S president later apologized for the “tone”
of Dr. Nucatola’s chilling remarks at
a business lunch with wine, but could
not deny that they accurately reflect
PP’s business model. As somebody said
2,000 years ago in ancient Rome: “in
vino veritas” (in wine there is truth).
Planned Parenthood’s practices appear to violate two federal laws, one
of which prohibits trafficking in fetal
organs and tissues for profit. The other
law prohibits altering an abortion for the
sole purpose of harvesting organs, and
that’s what PP’s senior executive admit- the same convention whose delegates
booed a motion to recognize God.)
ted doing.
Two generations ago, when a book
In addition to aiming the forceps
“under ultrasound guidance” to “crush called The Population Bomb was ridbelow” or “crush above” the desired or- ing the best-seller list, President Richgan (such as heart, lung or liver) wanted ard Nixon asked Congress to create the
federal program to
by a medical supply company, Dr. Nu- first-ever
promote “family
catola even admitplanning” — the
ted that “people
phrase coined by
will actually try to
PP founder Marchange the presengaret Sanger as a
tation so that it’s
(c) 2015, Creators Syndicate
euphemism
for
not vertex” (head
first). That means intentionally deliver- “birth control.” Nixon’s bill was sponing the baby feet or bottom first in or- sored by then Congressman and future
der to cause “dilation,” which makes it President George H.W. Bush, and it beeasier for the abortionist to “evacuate an came law at the end of 1970.
intact calvarium [head] at the end.”
THE NOTION of a “population
Aside from the apparent illegality of
such activities, how did we reach the bomb” was quickly discredited and the
point in our country where an organi- book by Stanford Professor Paul Ehzation, led by persons with such lack rlich has taken its place among such
of conscience, was able to attain such false alarms as Rachel Carson’s Silent
power, influence, and respectability that Spring and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balits president addressed the last Demo- ance. Contrary to Ehrlich’s prediction,
cratic National Convention? (That was the birth rate has collapsed in the Unit-
Phyllis
Schlafly
Media fails on Planned Parenthood
O
nce again, a courageous
group of pro-life activists
has produced a damning
sting video of Planned Parenthood, and
this one has exposed the most outrageous behavior yet. This isn’t the abortion conglomerate protecting pimps or
statutory rapists as they seek abortions.
This is the selling of the organs of babies after they’ve been killed.
The video will chill you to the bone.
It cannot be described as anything but
what it is: evil.
ing” women and girls to “terminate”
and then to donate tissue. “I think every one of them is happy to know that
there’s a possibility for them to do this
extra bit of good, in what they do,”
Nucatola said. “I actually think it’s an
easier conversation to have, than just
consenting them for the procedure
in general.” She added it’s a “pleasant surprise, in a way,” for women to
discover they can help science after
they’ve ... helped themselves.
A GROUP called the Center for
Medical Progress posed as tissue buyers with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior
medical officer with Planned Parenthood, and filmed her casually, almost
dispassionately discussing over a salad
and wine how she and her colleagues
carefully crush baby corpses to preserve intact organs for sale. Profiting
off the sale of fetal tissue is a felony.
Dr. Nucatola proudly explains that
“We’ve been very good at getting
heart, lung, liver, because we know
that, so I’m not gonna crush that part,
I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m
gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see
if I can get it all intact.”
More than ever, Planned Parenthood
fits the term “merchants of death.” But
in a culture of “free love” and disposable pregnancy, death makes a profit in
the worst ways.
You get a sense Planned Parenthood works hard at getting “consent-
Bozell
Brent
Extra bit of good ... happy to know
... pleasant surprise. Carving up and
selling the body parts — parts developed enough you can recognize them
— of children you’ve killed.
AS FOR THE “donation” business,
Nucatola explained their affiliates “just
want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is selling tissue, this clinic is making money off of
this.’ I know in the Planned Parenthood
world they’re very, very sensitive to
that. ... They want to come to a number
that doesn’t look like they’re making
money.” But that is precisely what’s
happening. She spells out suggested
price tags. It’s moneymaking butchery.
What’s every bit as damnable as the
horror discussed is the silence that fol-
lows. President Obama? Nancy Pelosi?
Anyone who supports Planned Parenthood? To refuse to condemn is to condone. They are condoning something
Josef Mengele would also endorse
were he practicing his brand of medicine today.
Speaking of silent support: Where
on Earth are the “news” media on this?
It’s Kermit Gosnell all over again.
What’s more, they’re demonstrating
how strongly they back Planned Parenthood and the abortion-on-demand
agenda. Planned Parenthood boss Cecile Richards is a regular and honored
guest on MSNBC, and host Lawrence
O’Donnell even told her he’d nominate
her to be America’s ambassador to the
United Nations.
IN RECENT weeks, the allegedly
disinterested media have been a perpetual disavowal machine for Donald
Trump, working hard to force businesses to dump him. They have spent
hours promoting the disavowal of the
Confederate flag in every venue. But
they have barely touched this story.
They have not, and will not make an
effort to force Democrats or other
businesses to disavow any connection
with Planned Parenthood and its grisly
business practices. It’s long past time
any taxpaying pro-life — and now,
pro-choice — American should have
to give a bloody red cent to these monsters.
ed States and throughout the Western
world to the point where most countries’
populations are shrinking except for immigration.
Planned Parenthood became the biggest recipient of the federal spending
named in its honor, and the flow of money hasn’t stopped — over $500 million
in the last fiscal year, comprising 41 percent of PP’s budget. It’s time to end all
federal and state taxpayer support for an
organization that serves no valid public
purpose, does not promote the general
welfare, and is run by people who lack
the basic decency to respect the dignity
of human life in the womb.
Several state legislatures have tried
to cut the flow of state taxpayers’ money
to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates,
which perform more abortions than anyone else, only to be rebuffed by liberal
federal judges. A rare exception was a
Kansas law upheld by the U.S. Tenth
Circuit Court last year. Kansas had been handing out taxpayer dollars under the federal Title
X program for many years to Planned
Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri despite its affiliation with abortion
providers. In 2011, Kansas Governor
Sam Brownback signed an appropriations bill that gave priority to taxpayer
spending first to “public entities (state,
county, local health departments and
health clinics)” and then, if any taxpayer
money remains available, “to non-public entities which are hospitals or federally qualified health centers that provide
comprehensive primary and preventative care in addition to family planning
services.”
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and
Mid-Missouri sued, because it was not
given priority for the taxpayer funding.
After its claims were rejected, Planned
Parenthood closed one of its Kansas
facilities and chose not to seek further
review in the Supreme Court, perhaps
fearing a loss there could set a nationwide precedent. Congress could cut off most if not
all of the $528 million given to Planned
Parenthood and its affiliates in grants by
government, in contracts and in reimbursements from taxpayer-funded Medicaid. Numerous billionaire liberals are
supporters of Planned Parenthood, but
rather than fully funding it themselves,
which they could easily do, they insist
on forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.
OPENSECRETS.ORG reports that
in the 2014 cycle, for example, Planned
Parenthood received slightly more than
$1 million from donors at Bloomberg
L.P. and $500,000 from donors at Soros
Fund Management. Those companies
and their billionaire owners could easily
keep Planned Parenthood afloat without
burdening the taxpayers to support conduct which so many find offensive.
4
CHATTANOOGA TRAGEDY: July 16, 2015
For heaven’s sake, let’s arm our service members!
T
he tragedy of Thursday’s atTo clarify, as this column was being
tacks on two military facili- penned, it was unconfirmed that four
ties in Chattanooga, Tennes- Marines, our nation’s finest, have lost
see, is simply too much to take. It’s their lives due to this senseless attack.
one thing to know that the Obama These soldiers deserved better — and
administration has proposed shrinking so do
we.
the size of our acWe are viewed as
tive duty military,
a weakened nation
and has negotiated
willing to negotideals that inure to
ate for months on
the financial benend with those
efit of nations who
who call us the
hate us. It’s another thing to watch our Great Satan, and who rally with chants
loyal servicemen and women having of “death to America.” But when it
to work on military bases with no abil- comes to securing our most obvious of
ity to protect themselves. This is the targets, our leaders look the other way.
last straw.
According to some reports, there have
been at least 17 attacks or attempted
IN THE EARLY 1990s bureaucrats attacks on military locations since the
in Washington, D.C., began what has tragic murders at Fort Hood, Texas, in
been an extended and renewed ban on 2009.
military personnel carrying firearms
while not engaged in combat. That
AND IT’S NO secret that most acmeans that from our forts and ship- tive terrorist groups have been calling
yards to the two locations involved in for attacks on locations that symbolThursday’s disgusting and sickening
attacks, our brave men and women
IRAN DEAL: July 20, 2015
— those who recruit and support our
service members and strive to keep our
nation strong — are sitting ducks for
lone-wolf assassins, or more coordinated attacks.
At the Navy operational cenf only President Barack Obama
ter where four people were attacked
were as hard-nosed and clever in
Thursday, there was not a guarded
undermining our adversaries as
gate, according to various media sto- he is in kneecapping the U.S. Congress,
ries.
the country’s strategic position might be
The “conservative media” is often transformed.
criticized for misrepresenting regulaThe Iran deal went to the United
tions related to firearms on military Nations Security Council for approval
properties. In essence, rules for many Monday, months before Congress will
decades have allowed only security vote on it, and got unanimous approval.
personnel to carry a weapon. And in The U.N. vote doesn’t bind Congress,
the instance of these attacks, there was but it boxes it in and minimizes it —
no such known active security present. with malice aforethought.
This raises the issue of why we will
arm our military to battle in the hellREPUBLICANS AND Democrats
holes we often enter across the globe, in Congress issued sharply worded
but won’t let them carry firearms while statements about getting pre-empted
working here at home.
by Turtle Bay, although the vast interWe know that our nation is under national machinery that has been set
threat and attack by people who wish in motion won’t be deflected by a few
us harm. It takes the brain of a chicken sharp words from people under the
not to recognize that military loca- misapprehension that they occupy a cotions, particularly support centers and equal branch of the American governrecruitment centers, are easy targets.
ment. What are congressional hearings
As I write this column much is still and the U.S. domestic political debate
not clear about the attacks in Chatta- compared with the “international comnooga. For all I know, the assailant had munity?”
some personal grudge that led him to
Shortly after the U.N. vote, President
shoot at two separate locations miles Obama urged Congress to get with the
apart from each other. But with two program: “There is broad international
separate locations involved, both mil- consensus around this issue,” he said,
itary-related, it really doesn’t matter.
adding that his “assumption is that ConThe time has come to give our mili- gress will pay attention to that broadtary personnel the respect they de- based consensus.” In other words, folserve. That would include better pro- low the lead of the United Nations on a
tection for recruiting centers, which matter of utmost importance to the naby nature are open to the public and tional interest of the United States.
therefore susceptible to exactly this
Secretary of State John Kerry iskind of threat.
sued his own warning over the weekend
Matt
Towery
ize America’s economic and military
strength. It is inexcusable that obvious
potential targets such as these are not
better secured.
I sure hope the White House sends
the same number of officials to Chattanooga as they have to the scenes of
recent “hate crimes,” which they have
been so quick to decry. In fact, if these
lives in Chattanooga have been lost,
I sincerely hope our Commander in
Chief will be there to mourn.
And, damn it, while I’ve been writing this, it has been confirmed that four
people, believed to be Marines, have
died. It has been some four plus hours
since all this unfolded, and all I have
learned from the White House is that
the president is visiting a federal prison
in Oklahoma. Hopefully, in the hours
to come, the threat to our servicemen
and women and today’s tragedy will be
appropriately addressed.
LET THIS loss not be in vain. Arm
and protect our servicemen and women while they are under threat, and do
it now!
Obama kneecaps Congress (again)
I
about the dangers of going our own way:
“If Congress says ‘no’ to this deal, then
there will be no restraints on Iran. There
will be no sanctions left. Our friends in
this effort will desert us.”
And who’s responsible for that? The
Obama administration cut a deal eviscerating the international sanctions regime and got it blessed by the U.N., then
turns around and tells Congress it has no
alternative but to assent because there
will be no meaningful sanctions
regime left regardless.
Rich
Lowry
(c) 2015, King Features Syndicate
The agreement is written to favor
business with Iran. It grandfathers in
all commercial deals cut after the initial lifting of the sanctions, even in the
unlikely event they are reimposed. Plus,
Iran isn’t going to give back its windfall
of tens of billions of dollars handed to it
under the agreement.
KERRY OVER the weekend
seemed offended by the notion that
Congress should get to vote before everyone else locks the Iran agreement
into place: “It is presumptuous of some
people to say that France, Russia, China, Germany, Britain ought to do what
the Congress tells them to do.” This is
admirably internationalist, but Kerry is
supposed to be the secretary of state of
the United States, not a representative
of the interests and prerogatives of its
allies and adversaries.
The New York Times reports that
during the negotiations, Kerry actually pushed to delay a U.N. vote until
Congress reviewed the deal. How sporting of him. It must have been vestigial
loyalty to the Congress he served in for
several decades. Predictably, the Iranians balked (they’re not fools), and so
did the Russians and the Europeans.
Equally predictably, Kerry resorted to
his solution to most every knotty negotiating problem — he caved.
Amazingly enough, the agreement
with Iran doesn’t mention the U.S.
Congress or its review of the deal, but
specifically cites the Iranian Parliament
and its role in approving the so-called
additional protocol of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. At least someone
is willing to stick up for Iran’s (wholly
fraudulent) legislative branch.
It is President Obama’s curse that he
doesn’t have a legislature as compliant
as that of Iran’s supreme leader. The
president clearly disdains Congress as a
body that harbors several hundred Republicans and that can only complicate
his grand legacy-defining initiatives. He
didn’t want Congress to have a say at
all over the Iran deal, but accepted the
Corker bill that requires a near-impossible two-thirds votes to block it.
THE ADMINISTRATION’S message to opponents is that even that supermajority would be too little, too late.
Submission is the only option.
5
July 29, 2015
Jihad on U.S troops is not a ‘circumstance’
F
our U.S. Marines, barred from tunate circumstance. The concerted atcarrying weapons at naval train- tacks and plots against our troops in their
ing facilities despite explicit recruitment centers and on their bases
ISIS threats against our military, are dead here at home are outrageous acts of war.
Have you forgotten?
in Tennessee. Another service member
In June 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid
and a Chattanooga police officer survived
walked into an Arkangunshots after Thursday’s two-stage mas- Muhammad
recruiting
center,
sacre allegedly at the hands of 24-year- sas Army
murdered 24-yearold jihadist Muold Pvt. William
hammad Youssef
Long and gravely
Abdulazeez.
wounded 18-yearNavy Secretary
old Pvt. Quinton
Ray Mabus called
Ezeagwula.
He
the terrorist’s spree
“insidious and unfathomable.” President had planned on killing many more in the
Obama bemoaned the “heartbreaking cir- name of Allah. While the White House
cumstance” in which the murdered Ma- and media decried the “climate of hate”
fostered by Christians, they whitewashed
rines found themselves.
“Unfathomable?” Not if you’ve been Muhammad’s jihadi rage. Muhammad
paying attention. Islam-inspired hate received a life sentence without parole
crimes against our troops have continued for the act he himself described as a “jiunabated since the Obama White House hadi attack on infidel forces.”
It should be noted that Muhammad
first dismissed the 2009 Fort Hood masconverted to Islam at Tennessee State
sacre as “workplace violence.”
University in Nashville and then became
HERE’S WHAT’S unfathomable: further radicalized in Yemen before reWhile the social justice warriors in Wash- turning to the U.S.
ington bend over backward to appease
“THE U.S. has to pay for the rape,
CAIR and Muslim civil rights absolutists, Americans in uniform are dying on murder, bloodshed, blasphemy it has
American soil at the hands of Allah’s done and still doing to the Muslims and
homicidal avengers — but the command- Islam,” Muhammad railed after carrying
er in chief couldn’t even bother to deliver out his plot. “So consider this a small rea live statement to the nation yesterday taliation the best is to come Allah willing.
This is not the first attack and won’t be
about the bloodshed.
Instead, Obama issued another bland, the last.”
As I noted at the time, Obama could
bloodless pronouncement about the asbarely muster up a limp written statement
sassinations of our disarmed troops.
“Heartbreaking circumstance?” Light- expressing “sadness” over what he dening strikes are random events of unfor- scribed as a “senseless act of violence”
Michelle
Malkin
(instead of the intentional systematic act
of Islamic terrorism that it was).
After the Little Rock ambush came
the Baltimore military recruitment center
bomb plot. Muslim convert Muhammad
Hussain, 21, bragged on Facebook about
his devotion to violent jihad. He “dialed
a cellphone that he believed would ignite barrels of explosives packed into a
sport utility vehicle,” the Baltimore Sun
recounted. “The SUV had been parked
by the Armed Forces recruiting station
at a strip mall in Catonsville, a bedroom
suburb west of Baltimore.” Hussain idolized Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan and
“thought about nothing but jihad.”
In June 2011, the feds charged Mus-
lim jihadists Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and
Walli Mujahidh of conspiring to use machine guns and grenades to “kill officers
and employees of the Department of Defense who worked at the MEPS (Military
Entrance Processing Stations) located in
the Federal Center South building in Seattle, Wash., and to kill other persons assisting such officers and employees in the
performance of their duties.” They both
pleaded guilty, but remained unrepentant
and defiant.
In 2012, Ethiopian-born jihadist Jonathan Melaku pleaded guilty to shooting at
the Pentagon, Marine and Coast Guard
recruiting offices, and the National Museum of the Marine Corps, as well as trying to desecrate graves at Arlington National Cemetery containing the remains
of U.S. veterans who fought in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
In April 2015, Mohammed Abdullah
Hasan was arrested after the feds uncovered his ISIS-linked plot to kill American
soldiers with a vehicle bomb at Fort Riley
in Kansas.
ISIS hackers have explicitly targeted
100 U.S. service members whose personal details have been disseminated online.
In May, the Pentagon raised the security
threat level of military bases in the U.S.
to “Force Protection Bravo” — the thirdhighest threat level on a five-tier scale
used by the Department of Defense.
You wouldn’t know it from Obama’s
languid response.
CAN SOMEONE ask the commander in chief: Do U.S. military lives
matter enough yet to do more than issue
a canned, obligatory condolence to the
families of those who serve? How many
more lives must be lost before he is as
roused about our troops under jihad siege
as he is about Bill Cosby, the Confederate
flag, Game of Thrones or Caitlyn Jenner?
This is not a “circumstance.” This is
war.
6
FIRST AMENDMENT: July 22, 2015
More bad news about the First Amendment
I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that most Americans
believe the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious freedom should take
precedence over the newfound privileges
government has bestowed upon a certain
class of people based on their sexual behavior.
THE BAD NEWS — and it’s really disturbing — is it’s not by an overwhelmingly popular mandate.
In an Associated Press poll, 56 percent
believe religious freedom should prevail over “gay rights” after the Supreme
Court decided to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the United States.
Of the religious groups polled, evangelical Christians expressed the biggest
disapproval of same-sex marriage, with
7 in 10 respondents disagreeing with the
Supreme Court ruling on gay unions.
Some 79 percent of evangelicals also
said local officials should be allowed not
to issue marriage licenses to same-sex
couples.
Fifty-two percent of members of the
Protestant denominations that participated in the survey also opposed same-sex
marriage. Sixty percent supported the
refusal of marriage licenses to same-sex
couples.
In terms of partisan divisions, an overwhelming number of Republican respondents — 82 percent in the survey — said
religious liberties are more important
than “gay rights.”
The survey suggests several things
that should be of concern to every American who values the Constitution as the
law of the land and those who understand the difference between inalienable
individual rights and privileges that are
granted by government — either legislatively or by judicial fiat.
The Constitution was designed by the
founders of this country as a document
to strictly limit the power of the federal
government. There are means to amend
it, but with regard to the First Amendment provisions regarding freedom of
speech, freedom of the press and freedom
of religion, there has never been any serious attempt to do so. Those individual
rights have stood for more than 200 years
essentially unchallenged by the amendment process, though there have been
more than a few legislative, executive
and judicial attacks on them.
So how can it be that there is as much
division as this poll suggests as to the
sanctity of religious freedom in America?
The answer is actually pretty simple:
There has been an intentional dumbing
down of basic civics and history in our
schools, in our media and in our stateapproved churches.
Americans, particularly the youngest, don’t understand the importance of
individual rights protected from the intrusions of government based on popular
cultural trends and the shifting sands of in popularity through a combination of
media activism and a vitriolic and hatetime.
Ten years ago, the very idea of same- ful — yet skillful — campaign of namesex marriage, something that had not calling against those who disagreed.
Soon cracks began appearing in the
previously existed in the history of the
world anywhere, was a preposterous wall that had long protected the instituof
marriage as first defined
idea. Politicians of every stripe — Demo- tion
Garden of Eden.
crat, Republican, independent — sought in the
It became increasto put themselves
ingly uncomfortable
on the side of the
for Americans to
institution of marstand firm on marriage defined as a
riage, the very
union between one
foundation of and
man and one woman. That’s what marriage was and always prerequisite for a self-governing society.
The popular culture characterized the
had been, despite some aberrations over
polygamy at different times and places. calls for same-sex marriage as a new
No one had really seriously suggested frontier of freedom, though it was anymarriage could be between two men or thing but.
It is a radical, fundamental change in
two women or different group combinathe nation’s character foisted upon the
tions.
populace by unaccountable judges.
And it threatens America’s most cherBUT WITH THE portrayal of this
new “right” as necessary to stop “dis- ished and unique liberties — namely,
crimination” against gays, the idea grew freedom of religion.
Joseph
Farah
Everyone recognizes that fact, which
is why polls are being conducted on the
conflict.
One would have expected 99 percent
of Americans to line up to support a foundational and inalienable (which means
God-given) right over one so recently
“discovered.” That has not been the case.
As America clearly moves away
from God, religious freedom evidently
doesn’t seem so important to them anymore.
BUT THE consequences of this turning away from God and spiritual things
bodes even more dangerous to our nation than does one foolish act by the Supreme Court. We reached a tipping point
in popular opinion regarding same-sex
marriage. Now we seem to be reaching
a tipping point that places that notion
ahead of America’s most prominent and
distinguishing freedoms as enunciated
in the First Amendment.
God help us.
IMMIGRANT CRIME: July 16, 2015
SF: Repeat offenders, come and stay
S
an Francisco is not likely to
change its ill-conceived sanctuary-city policy because City
Hall must bow to progressives who
don’t believe in deporting undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records. Activists such as Angela
Chan of the Asian Law Caucus believe
that Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi was right to
release Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez
rather than turn him over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as
requested. They don’t care that LopezSanchez had been convicted of seven
felonies and deported five times before
he was arrested for the July 1 shooting
death of Kathryn Steinle.
By 2013, Brown had signed the California TRUST Act, which prevents local law enforcement from honoring ICE
detainers except in cases of serious or
violent felonies. Brown had vetoed earlier legislation with no exception for
convicted felons; he actually had to
fight for that provision before he caved
to the Legislature. Good for Brown,
but why would any lawmaker want to
shield immigrants who keep breaking
criminal laws even though
LOPEZ-SANCHEZ has pleaded
not guilty to murder. Already, city pols
are treating Steinle’s death as an anomaly. Supervisor Malia Cohen told the San
Francisco Chronicle, “I’m not going to
let one extremely unfortunate situation
frame the policy.”
It wasn’t always so. In 2010, when
he was California’s attorney general,
now-Gov. Jerry Brown opposed the
sanctuary-city policy and supported
the federal Secure Communities program, which automatically passed on
the fingerprints of new arrestees to ICE.
The idea was to deport criminal aliens.
Advocates called for an end to the program. Brown, however, reasoned that
it eliminated the possibility of racial
profiling: “Using fingerprints is faster,
race-neutral and results in accurate information and identification.”
they should be on their best behavior because they are here illegally and
should be afraid of being kicked out of
this country?
Debra J.
Saunders
SAN FRANCISCO’S Due Process
for All ordinance, approved unanimously in 2013, is even more porous. It directs local law enforcement to comply
with ICE detainers only if an individual
has committed a violent felony in the
past seven years. By that sorry standard,
the sheriff followed city law in not complying with the federal detainer.
The Chronicle’s Emily Green reports
that not one single San Francisco supervisor wants to change the 2013 law.
Jesse Watters of Fox News confronted
supervisors about the policy on camera.
Supervisor Jane Kim said the real issue
is “gun control,” as no one with Lo-
pez-Sanchez’s criminal record should
have access to a gun. (It turns out the
gun was stolen from a federal agent’s
car, so I don’t see how gun control applies.) Supervisor Katy Tang used two
F-words, one an expletive and the other
“Fox News.” Supervisor Scott Wiener
chanted, “Fox News is not real news.”
Then he ducked into his office. A woman is dead, and these swells only see
Fox News.
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee faults
his nemesis, the sheriff — whom Lee
tried to fire after Mirkarimi pleaded
guilty to a count of domestic violence
— for releasing Lopez-Sanchez. Lee is
right to assert that Mirkarimi could have
— should have — made a phone call to
ICE. Lee is right to fault Mirkarimi for
instructing deputies in March to limit
communication with ICE absent a warrant or court order. But Lee was wrong
to tell the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, “Our sanctuary
policy was never intended to create a
safe haven for criminals who tear our
communities apart.”
THAT’S EXACTLY what the 2013
ordinance was intended to do — to create a safe haven for criminals, except
for recently violent felons, against deportation. The truly unintended part was
that some San Franciscans might object.
Now the truth is out. City Hall is more
invested in protecting undocumented
immigrants convicted of nonviolent
felonies than shielding the general lawabiding public from repeat criminals.
7
July 29, 2015
IMMIGRANT CRIME: July 15, 2015
Every pro-immigration claim is a lie
I
n the wake of Kate Steinle’s murder at the hands of an illegal immigrant, mass immigration advocates have begun a campaign of lies in
defense of their cheap labor. “Studies
show,” they say, that immigrants commit LESS crime than the native population.
Inasmuch as the vast majority of
post-1970 immigrants — legal immigrants — are poor, non-white and come
from countries with far worse crime
rates than our own, that’s at least counterintuitive.
THE MAIN evidence cited in support of the claim that immigrants commit less crime than Americans is a moronic point about cities with a lot of
immigrants seeming to have low crime
rates. Check and mate, Mr. Trump!
The “New York sure seems safe to
me!” argument is like the Saturday
Night Live sketch of Bill O’Reilly arguing that New York has more people than
California.
Bill O’Reilly: You also say that California has more people than any other
state. I say New York state has more
people — tell me where I’m wrong!
Thomas Woodward: (confused) Um
... well ... Bill ... actually, California is
the most populous state.
Bill O’Reilly: I don’t know, counselor. I live in New York, and I walk down
the streets every day, and there’s people everywhere! You can’t move! You
know what I mean? Last week, I was in
California, went to the beach in Malibu.
Nobody! Practically empty. So, for my
money, New York’s got more people.
Probably New Jersey, too.
Thomas Woodward: Well, Bill, your reduction in the national crime rate.
The second main line of attack on
own experience notwithstanding, each
of the last four censuses has clearly the idea that immigrants are committing prodigious amounts of crime are
shown —
Bill O’Reilly: Sorry, counselor, not the apocryphal “studies.”
The two researchers whose work is
buying it! Not buying it!
Thomas Woodward: Bill, I swear to cited over and over again for the proposition that immigrants are less criminal
you, California is our largest state!
Americans are Alex
Bill O’Reilly: Look, Mr. Woodward, t h a n
Piquero, criminology
you’ve got your
professor at the Uniopinion. I’ve got
versity of Texas at
mine. We’re not
Dallas, and Bianca
gonna settle this
Bersani, socioltonight.
(c) 2015, Ann Coulter
ogy professor at
That’s a comthe University of
edy sketch. But
now we’re getting it as a serious argu- Massachusetts, Boston.
Pew cites their studies — and everyment in defense of mass immigration
one in the media cites Pew, leading to
from the Third World.
Reason magazine boasts, for ex- headlines like these:
“UT Dallas prof finds immigrant kids
ample, that El Paso, Texas, has a large
Hispanic population and yet El Paso “is less likely to commit serious crimes, reamong the safest big cities in America.” offend” — The Dallas Morning News
“UMass Boston Prof: Stereotype of
In fact, however, El Paso’s “safe
city” ranking is based on an outdated ‘Criminal Immigrant’ Doesn’t Hold
FBI crime index that includes only Up” — Targeted News Service
“Surprise! Donald Trump is wrong
eight crime categories, excluding such
crimes as drunk driving, narcotics of- about immigrants and crime” — The
fenses and weapons violations. When Washington Post
the FBI’s more complete crime index is
CURIOUSLY, WE are never shown
used, El Paso has a higher crime rate
the actual studies, but simply told —
than the national average.
The reason crime has plummeted with some heat — “studies show!”
I looked up some of these alleged
around the nation in the last few decades is aggressive policing, increased studies this weekend. They’re all hidprison sentences and the expansion of den behind ridiculous Internet payconcealed carry permits. (All policies walls. I was often only the sixth person
to read them.
currently being jettisoned by liberals.)
It turns out that neither Piquero nor
According to the New York Times,
the drop in crime in New York City dur- Bersani compared immigrant crime
ing Giuliani’s first two years as mayor to “the overall population” — as the
alone accounted for 35 percent of the British Guardian recently claimed in
Ann
Coulter
an article purporting to prove Donald
Trump wrong. Rather, they compare
immigrants’ crime rate to the crime rate
of America’s most criminally inclined
subgroups.
Thus, for example, once you get past
the paywall, you will find that Piquero
and Bersani’s joint study, “Comparing
Patterns and Predictors of Immigrant
Offending Among a Sample of Adjudicated Youth,” used as its base group
“adolescents who were found guilty of
a serious offense.”
THAT’S NOT A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE OF AMERICANS! It’s
a representative sample of teenagers
who are convicted criminals.
Similarly, professor Bersani’s oftcited, but never-read study, “An Examination of First and Second Generation
Immigrant Offending Trajectories,”
looked at a population group that included “an over-sample of Hispanic
and African-American youth.”
Instead of immigrants who are less
crime-prone than our native blacks and
Hispanics, we were hoping for immigrants less criminal than our Norwegians.
True, as Bersani explains, “because
many immigrants initially settle in disadvantaged environments and are exposed to a number of crime-inducing
risk factors, their experiences may be
similar to many native-born minorities
— particularly the African-American
population.”
But here’s an idea: How about NOT
taking in immigrants who are poor,
uneducated, come from dysfunctional
families and settle in disadvantaged environments?
Amazingly, Bersani’s study also
produced this startling result: There is
very little difference in crime rates between young native whites and blacks.
Why no headlines about that? Instead
of looking at “studies,” how about we
just count the number of immigrants
arrested, convicted and imprisoned in
America?
Even if the immigrants’ crime rate
were the same as “the overall population” — and it’s not — we’re supposed
to be admitting immigrants who are better than us, not “six of one, half dozen
of the other.”
Why? Because we’re picking them.
If the food in your refrigerator is rotten,
you don’t go out and buy more rotten
food on the grounds that it’s no more
rotten than the food you already have.
This is the new food you’re picking and
you’re paying for.
INSTEAD, WE’RE bringing in
legal immigrants — forget illegals —
who are way more criminal than us,
notwithstanding phony studies no one
bothers to read.
8
DONALD TRUMP: July 21, 2015
Don’t be fooled by the media: This isn’t about Trump
I
s anyone concerned that the me- ably would hurt Trump, or to defend him,
dia have succeeded in using a flap which would hurt those candidates.
Few would defend Trump’s remarks,
between Donald Trump and John
McCain to divert our attention from seri- but how about McCain’s? Is McCain forever excused because of Trump’s overreous issues facing the nation?
Trump has been very outspoken in reaction?
McCain can pretend he used “crazies”
cent weeks on certain issues, especially
immigration. His unfiltered remarks have as a term of affection, but he and his felresonated with people, driving him high low establishment elites do think immigration
hawks are crazies.
in the polls among the GOP hopefuls.
That’s right; they
I don’t think
home in on Trump’s
for a second this
outrages, but their
means Trump has
real beef is with
a realistic chance
conservatives.
of getting the GOP
There is nothpresidential nomination, much less winning the presidency, ing crazy about believing that a soverbut it is a powerful indication that people eign nation ought to control its borders.
are tired of what’s been going on in the There is nothing crazy in insisting that
country. In supporting Trump, people are immigration occur through the proper
rebelling against political correctness and legal channels, which include learning
the refusal of the political class to control about our uniquely glorious heritage and
endorsing the American idea. Any nonour borders.
suicidal nation would require these at a
PEOPLE ARE also tired of left- minimum. The federal government’s deists controlling the narrative and bully- liberate sabotaging of border control is
ing conservatives into silence. They see what is outright nuts.
I wish I had a dollar for every time
Trump as a refreshing figure who is unafraid to fight back. That doesn’t mean someone complained about conservative
candidates always falling for the liberal
they agree with everything he says.
Concerning the McCain-Trump alter- media’s gotcha questions and allowing
cation, McCain drew first blood, calling them to hijack the narrative. “Just refuse
Trump’s supporters “crazies.” Trump to play their game,” they say.
Well, Sen. Ted Cruz is refusing. When
went too far in firing back with “He’s a
war hero because he was captured. I like the media pressed him to condemn
Trump, he refused to take the bait, yet he
people that weren’t captured, OK?”
The leftist media immediately stated that he highly respects McCain’s
pounced on this, gleefully turning it into war record and honors all United States
a feeding frenzy against GOP candidates. veterans.
By doing so, Cruz is sending multiple
Their goal was to force each candidate
either to condemn Trump, which presum- messages: 1) He does not agree with
David
Limbaugh
Trump or condone the insulting remarks.
2) He adores the U.S. military and veterans. 3) Regardless, he refuses to be ensnared and diverted to nonissues. 4) He
won’t say anything to dampen the enthusiasm of patriots who’ve had their fill of
President Obama’s destructive policies.
And 5) he will stay on message and control his own political campaign.
IT’S UNFORTUNATE that some
have denounced Cruz as a moral coward
for refusing to condemn Trump. That is
absurd. He needn’t condemn the indefensible to prove he’s not a moral coward.
He’s making the larger point that we must
stay focused on the issues. We never will
if we continue to defer to those who believe that Caitlyn Jenner is more newsworthy than Iran, which is, with our help,
moving giant steps closer to becoming a
nuclear power.
Instead of faux fretting over Trump,
could we please stay focused on Obama’s
disgraceful nuclear deal with Iran, his
attempted end run around Congress by
taking it to the United Nations first and
his stunning indifference to freeing $150
billion to the diabolical Iranian regime to
fund global terrorism?
While we are all scrambling to castigate Trump to prove our moral bona fides, we are ignoring that the federal government subsidizes Planned Parenthood
and the group’s harvesting of human organs. We are overlooking Obama’s pernicious plan for the federal government
to amass shockingly detailed information
about U.S. citizens for collection in racial databases that will be used to stir up
racial discord in the name of “diversity”
when Obama leaves office. We are allowing Obama to get away, once again, with
refusing to identify the murderer of U.S.
service members as a Muslim terrorist.
There are so many disturbing things
going on we don’t have time to keep up
with all of them even if we aren’t diverted
over what GOP candidate A said about
GOP candidate B.
No, I won’t defend some of Trump’s
statements, but nor will I call his supporters “crazies.” If Ronald Reagan were
alive today, he and his supporters would
be considered crazies and extremists.
Meanwhile, the people who are truly doing crazy stuff have become the new normal. The ordinarily unflappable traditionalist, America-loving citizens have had
it with being vilified and muzzled while
real craziness is elevated to normal. They
appreciate Trump’s outspokenness in
the midst of such widespread cowardice
and surrender on our side — even if they
don’t approve of all his comments.
COULD WE please stay focused on
the real issues? It would be hard to overstate how momentous these matters are to
the future of this nation.
9
July 29, 2015
Friends of Donald Trump — the media?
I
cannot recall another time when
American media have given so
much aid and encouragement to
a fledgling candidate as they have given
to Donald Trump, and he is a billionaire.
He does not need their help.
A couple of weeks ago, he was scrambling within a tight pack of Republican
also-rans. Now, thanks to the media’s
almost ceaseless coverage, he is near
the top of the Republican heap. In some
polls, he is atop the heap. The fact that
the media were endeavoring to ambush
his candidacy should tell you quite a lot
about the media’s own ineptitude in politics and about Trump’s cunning.
TRUMP, IN his characteristically
discursive campaign announcement,
spoke across a whole range of issues,
and the media pounced on the one issue
that would make him a hero to millions.
The media were thinking they would
render him a pariah or, in their words, a
racist. Who knows the public better: the ment — to CNN about not receiving a
floundering media or the accomplished subpoena last March from Congressman
Trey Gowdy’s committee did nothing to
billionaire?
Trump made a perfectly unexcep- enhance her notoriety.
At this point in the race, Trump has
tional statement, at least for him, about
illegal immigrants in his June 16th state- proved he is not the political neophyte
ington insiders thought
ment, and the hysterics in the press corps W a s h him to be. He seems
lurched
forward
to be converting his
misquoting him,
skill for understandcharacterizing his
ing markets to a
remark as inflamskill for identifymatory, and, of
ing and winning
course,
calling
over key conhim a racist —
though the people he was inveighing stituencies. On illegal immigration, he
against are, if their pictures do not lie, picked a choice issue, and look what the
media did for him. He now has equaled
practically as white as Trump.
Hesto presto, Trump has become the Clinton in name recognition, and he has
most talked-about Republican in the accomplished this without breaking the
race. Hillary Clinton, if she is going to law — no hidden emails, no secret servkeep up with him, will have to ensnare ers.
herself in even trickier scandals. Perhaps
WHAT EXACTLY did Trump say
she will attempt even riskier whoppers.
Her lie — or as she would say misstate- on June 16th? He said: “When Mexico
R. Emmett
Tyrrell
HILLARY CLINTON: July 16, 2015
Defining Hillary Clinton
W
hen I listen to Hillary Clinton speak, as she did Monday at the New School in
New York, outlining her “economic
policy” should she become president,
my first reaction was not to her lack of
substance and the predictability of her
party line about taxing the rich more
and “income inequality,” but to how
boring she is.
I love definitions. They help focus
the mind. But not everyone defines a
word the same way.
Dictionary.com defines “bore” in
several ways, all of which fit Hillary
Clinton. As a verb used with an object,
it says, “to weary by dullness, tedious
repetition ...” As a noun it is defined as
“a dull, tiresome, or uncongenial person; a cause of ennui or petty annoyance.”
EVEN THE synonyms for “bore”
seem to describe Hillary Clinton: “fatigue, tire, annoy.”
She can raise her voice, as she did
in her Monday speech, but that does
nothing for her credibility, or sincerity.
A June 2 CNN/ORC poll found that “A
growing number of people say she is
not honest and trustworthy (57 percent,
up from 49 percent in March).” Decibel
levels can’t touch that.
In an interview last week with CNN,
Clinton defended herself against the
public’s perception that she is not trustworthy, though when you have to attest
to your integrity it reminds one of Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” claim
during the Watergate scandal. Hillary
Clinton knows about that because she
was an aide to the House Judiciary
Committee investigating the cover-up.
In examining her statement earlier
this month that Democratic presidents,
like her husband, would have paid down
the national debt (she ignores the current one who has substantially increased
it), Washington Post fact checker Glenn
Kessler wrote, “It is certainly fair game
for Hillary Clinton to compare the fiscal
record of the Clinton admin-
Cal
Thomas
(c) 2015, Tribune Media Services
istration with the record of the George
W. Bush administration (just as Republicans like to compare Jimmy Carter to
Ronald Reagan). But she goes too far
to suggest that a Democrat could have
preserved the surpluses and paid down
the national debt, when a good chunk
of that supposed (Clinton) surplus was
based on a forecasting error.”
KESSLER GAVE Hillary Clinton’s
claim two out of a possible four “Pinocchios.”
There is nothing she has accomplished that qualifies her to be president
and much that ought to disqualify her.
She is running primarily on her gender
and the standard boilerplate Democratic Party mantra of bigger government,
higher taxes and more regulations,
which would result in less individual
liberty. If Americans want that, they can
have truckloads of it by voting for Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from
Vermont.
Clinton’s economic speech included
a plan to raise middle-class income. She
wants to accomplish this with another
hike in the minimum wage and by use
of other manipulative government techniques.
A better way would be to encourage people to make themselves more
valuable to their employers by taking
college classes, made possible by Pell
grants, student loans, scholarships or
help from nonprofits and churches, or
advanced-training classes, often offered
by employers, which would make them
more marketable, put them in line for
better positions that pay more and make
it easier for them to change jobs if they
hit a wage ceiling. Government might
also help people secure higher-paying
work in other cities and states by providing tax credits, or deductions, if they
find a better job. Such a plan could also
work to help the unemployed and underemployed find full-time work.
People might then come to depend
less on government and more on themselves, and that is not at the heart of
Democratic Party ideology. Less reliance on government equals less reliance
on and possibly fewer votes for Democrats, the party of big government.
TO EMPLOY a tennis term, Hillary
Clinton has double-faulted. She is both
uninspiring and uninteresting. To mix
sports metaphors, add boring and you’d
have a hockey hat trick.
sends its people, they’re not sending
their best (ergo, Trump thinks Mexico
has better people). They’re not sending
you (pointing to his audience). They’re
not sending you (pointing again).
They’re sending people that have lots
of problems, and they’re bringing those
problems to us. They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.
And some, I assume, are good people.”
Later, in an attempt to clarify his statement and quiet the hysterical media, he
wrote: “Many fabulous people come in
from Mexico, and our country is better
for it. But these people are here legally
and are severely hurt by those coming in
illegally.”
Since the media began trying to make
an emotional controversy over what is
obviously not very controversial — who
doubts that illegal immigrants commit
crime? — the evidence has been pouring
in that Trump is right. There are among
the illegal immigrants an awful lot of
dreadful criminals. Almost immediately after Trump spoke, a tragic example
made headlines. Juan Francisco LopezSanchez, an illegal immigrant who had
been deported five times and committed
seven felonies, shot Kathryn Steinle in
the back as she and her father were sightseeing in San Francisco — incidentally,
a “sanctuary” city.
Subsequent news stories appeared attesting to the accuracy of Trump’s warnings against illegal immigrants committing other acts of violence. When
he appeared in Los Angeles a few days
later, he held a sad press conference with
families who had lost loved ones to the
random violence of illegal immigrants.
None was sadder than the father of fallen
football star Jamiel Shaw Jr., who was
gunned down by a gang member who
mistook the young black man for a rival
gang member. His death went unnoticed
until Trump heard about it. Jamiel’s father pronounced Trump “a breath of
fresh air.”
Tim Graham of the Media Research
Center writes that the Border Patrol has
reported 40 cases of sex abuse by illegal
immigrants this year alone. Most of the
victims are children and minors. On July
2, the Border Patrol seized almost $3.5
million of marijuana, and this news, too,
only comes from the Border Patrol. Other law enforcement agencies nationwide
report a vast array of crimes being committed every day by illegal immigrants,
from murder to burglary to hit-and-run
accidents. Yet from the media’s outcry,
you would think it was all Trump’s fault.
THE FACT is, the media picked
from a buffet offering of issues that
Trump presented to them on June 16.
Others were there awaiting their attention. If the press does not mention them,
you can be sure Trump will. He has an
uncanny sense for what the voters want.
10
HILLARY CLINTON: July 17, 2015
Hillary Clinton’s economics: Suddenly it’s 1947
L
ike it or not, Hillary Clinton is
the single individual most likely to be elected the next president. So it’s worthwhile looking closely
at and behind her words when she deigns
to speak on public policy, as she did in
her July 14 speech on economics.
It contained quite a bit of chaff as
well as some wheat. There were laments
about the nation’s current economic
woes, without mention that they come in
the seventh year of a Democratic administration; a few policies first advocated
by Republicans (Jack Kemp’s enterprise
zones); and proposals that she admits are
“time-tested and more than a little battlescarred.”
BUT LACED throughout the sterile
verbiage is an assumption that was more
widely shared by policy elites and ordinary American voters in 1947, the year
Hillary Clinton was born, than it is today, 68 years later. That is the assumption that government is capable of solving just about every problem.
You can understand why that confidence was strong in Clinton’s early
years. The United States had just won a
world war and was facing not the widely
predicted resumption of the Depression
of the 1930s but the surging postwar
prosperity that is still fondly remembered by many.
“We must drive steady income
growth,” Clinton said, as if that were as
simple as popping those new automatic
transmission shift levers into D. “Let’s
build those faster broadband networks,”
which private firms were doing until
Barack Obama demanded an FCC network neutrality ruling. We must provide
“quality, affordable childcare,” as if government were good at this.
“Other trends need to change,” Clinton said, including “quarterly capitalism,” stock buybacks and “cut and run
shareholders who act more like oldschool corporate raiders.” This sounds
like a call to return to the behavior of
dominant big businesses in the early
postwar years, when they worked in tandem with big government and big labor
— and faced little foreign competition or
market discipline.
As for new growing businesses, Clinton hailed the “on-demand or so-called
gig economy,” but said it raises “hard
questions about workplace protections
and what a good job will look like in
the future.” She endorsed the Obama
extension of overtime to $50,000-plus
employees and said, “We have to get serious about supporting union workers.”
In other words, let’s try to slam the
growing flexible economy into the
straitjacket of the rigid regulations and
the union contracts of half a century ago.
Everybody should punch a time clock
and work the same number of hours, in
accordance with thousands of pages of
tion’s Department of Health and Human
Services) say it has no lasting benefit.
Clinton concluded by asking some
interesting questions. “How do we respond to technological change in a way
that creates more good jobs than it displaces or destroys?” And “what are the
ON TOP OF that, Clinton would ex- best ways to nurture startups outside
cessful corridors, like
pand paid family days, mandate more the sucSilicon Valley?”
sick leave, increase
“We” presumovertime pay and
ably means govraise the minimum
ernment, with the
wage even higher
assumption that
— measures that
centralized
exwould tend to subperts can guide
sidize or produce
non-work in an economy that has the others to maximize production and inlowest work force participation in nearly novation. There was some reason to be40 years. She would make “investments lieve that in 1947, when government had
in cleaner renewable energy” — Solyn- spurred technical innovation (the atom
dra? — and spend billions on universal bomb). There’s little reason to believe
pre-kindergarten even though research- it if you look at the recent performance
ers (including the Obama administra- of the Department of Veterans Affairs,
detailed work rules. That template hasn’t
produced much economic growth since
the two postwar decades. But it would
siphon a lot of money via union dues
from the private sector to the Democratic Party.
Michael
Barone
the Office of Personnel Management or
healthcare.gov.
The problem with Clinton’s “paleoliberalism” (columnist David Brooks’
term) is that centralized planning just
doesn’t work. Government is increasingly (to use political scientist Steven
Teles’ term) a “kludgeocracy.”
Clinton’s policies can’t tell us precisely where growth will occur, leading
many Republicans to believe that her
proposals, including higher tax rates and
ever-increasing regulation, will discourage growth.
WE ARE A more fragmented and
personally, economically and culturally
diverse country than the culturally conformist America of 1947 in which most
adult men had just been mobilized in the
military. Policies and approaches that
worked then are not likely to work so
well now.
OBAMA PRESIDENCY: July 17, 2015
Obama roots for the terrorists
I
struggle to be less provocative
than to suggest the president of
the United States is rooting for
terrorists who would harm us, but consider the evidence. Four Americans, including a Christian pastor and a reporter, have been left behind in Iran. The
president specifically said they were
not part of negotiations that not only
lift an arms embargo against Iran, but
also let it continue to grow its nuclear
capabilities.
AT THE SAME time, the president
has given Cuba just about everything
it wants in order to improve relations
with that regime. Cuba, like Iran, has
funded terrorists and terrorist organizations.
Joanne Chesimard killed a New Jersey state trooper named Werner Foerster
during a traffic stop in 1973. Though
she received a life sentence, Chesimard
fled to Cuba, where she has been taking
refuge from the American legal system
ever since. She joined Charlie Hill, who
in 1971 killed a state trooper in New
Mexico and then hijacked a plane to
Cuba. These two cop killers join almost
70 other American murderers, bank
robbers and others sought by the FBI
who have taken up residence in Cuba to
avoid the American legal system.
Just like with Iran, Barack Obama
did not make his dealing with Cuba
contingent on the return of these and
other American fugitives. There are
cop-killers, child abusers, drug lords
and major fraudsters who have killed,
abused and stolen from Americans all
living in Cuba. Obama does not care.
Contrast Cuba and Iran with Bowe
Bergdahl. According to his fellow soldiers, Bergdahl wandered off his base
in Afghanistan in search of the Taliban. His colleagues believed Bergdahl
wanted to join the Taliban. Soldiers
died trying to find Bergdahl.
Obama would not demand that Iran
return four Americans in exchange
for the lifting of an arms embargo. He
would not demand the return of cop
killers from Cuba in exchange
for nor-
Erick
Erickson
malized relations. But he was perfectly
willing and happy to exchange five
members of the Taliban for one deserter. Oh, and by the way, those five members of the Taliban are now gone and
plotting the deaths of more Americans.
TIME AND time again, when given
the opportunity to side with American
national interests or the interests of
those who want to kill us, Obama bows
to the bad guys and sides with them.
The media and Democrats (but I repeat
myself) cheer him on hoping that doing
something differently will lead to different, better results. The results will
certainly be different, but only better
for the bad guys.
As one analyst said of the Iranian
deal, only Tehran lit fireworks and had
street parties after the deal was announced. And what of that deal? Just
two years ago, Obama said Iran should
not get to keep building nuclear facilities underground. Now, not only do
they get to keep building their nuclear
capacity underground, but we are giving them newer equipment to make refining weapons-grade material easier.
On top of that, we have structured
an arrangement with Iran so that our
weapons inspectors will tell Iran where
they want to inspect, and Iran gets
three weeks before they have to let
the inspectors into the facility. Three
weeks is enough time to move any incriminating evidence. But it is actually
worse than that.
Under the terms of the deal, when
inspectors notify Iran that they wish
to inspect a location, Iran gets to appeal to a commission of Americans and
Europeans. The commission is stacked
with Europeans who will be the deciding vote on whether the inspections
can proceed. The deal bakes in a threeweek delay on the commission’s response.
Iran also gets an infusion of capital
assets to its banks. It gets the arms embargo lifted. It gets updated and modern nuclear refining capacity. When
next the world realizes the Iranians are
funding terrorists and building nuclear
weapons, we will face an Iran that is
recapitalized and rearmed.
FOR ALL THAT, Obama could not
even get four Americans returned from
captivity. The president has never met
an enemy of this nation he did not want
to help.
11
July 29, 2015
SHARING ECONOMY: July 19, 2015
Jeb Bush wants to share — uses Uber
T
he most recent time I had seen out, and this is so Clinton-like, namJeb Bush speak in San Fran- ing Uber. She said: “Many Americans
cisco was in January, when are making extra money renting out a
websites,
he addressed the National Automobile spare room, designing
products they deDealers Association. It is hard to imag- selling
sign themselves at
ine a group more
home or even drivinvested in the olding their own car.
school economy.
This on-demand,
It was a friendly
or so-called gig,
crowd. The former
economy is creatFlorida governor
seemed comfortable — and boring. I ing exciting opportunities and unleashleft feeling as if I’d spent an hour listen- ing innovation. But it’s also raising hard
questions about workplace protections
ing to a human BarcaLounger.
and what a good job will look like in
THE JEB BUSH I saw Thursday the future.”
According to the New York Times,
morning was a different candidate. He
had shed some 30 pounds on the Paleo Team Hillary “diplomatically contacted
Diet. His campaign had pulled the dy- top officials at Uber to let them know
nasty name from the campaign logo and about the passage in her speech that
added an exclamation point. Now he’s would draw attention to the service, ac“Jeb!” In this trip to San Fran, Bush ven- cording to people told of the conversatured away from the stolid GOP base to tions.” That passage probably was: “I’ll
address the young workforce of Thumb- crack down on bosses who exploit emtack, a six-year-old digital service that ployees by misclassifying them as conlinks consumers to painters, DJs, dog tractors or even steal their wages.”
Clinton clearly is on the side of poliwalkers and other contractors. Bush
arrived in a Toyota Camry ordered via ticians who want to cripple ride-hailing
Uber — the ride-hailing company that startups that allow individuals to drive
runs roughshod over the single-occu- their cars at their own discretion. These
outfits truly reflect market demand. If
pant vehicle model dear to car dealers.
It’s hard to think of a clearer contrast consumers don’t like a service, they
to Hillary Clinton. In 2014, she told won’t use it. If drivers don’t like the
NADA, “The last time I actually drove terms, they will stop offering rides.
a car myself was 1996.” The former first Competition improves the outcome —
lady, who has Secret Service protection but Clinton wants to impose more regulation.
for life, has no reason to use Uber.
In contrast, the son and brother of
In a recent speech, the former secretary of state took Uber to task — with- former presidents embraced the benefits
Debra J.
Saunders
2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney
extolled “creative destruction” as an
essential element of free enterprise. He
was right, but those words mean nothing to kids used to summoning wheels
with their phones. They just know what
they want. Perhaps 2016 will be the
year capitalism finally clicks for millennial voters.
If so, Bush is ready. When a reporter asked him about Uber, Bush talked
about a college student he met who
“HE’S GOT A good grasp of the graduated without crippling debt —
way tech is changing the workforce,” because he drove for Uber. A ThumbThumbtack economist Jon Lieber told tacker asked Bush about Obamacare.
He turned “repealing Obamacare” into
me after the talk.
an act of disruption that would free consumers to “opt out of these old models.”
When a Thumbtack worker asked
Bush what he thinks of new FCC net
neutrality regulation dear to the South
of Market crowd, Bush did not pander.
He answered, “The unintended consequence of these top-down proven rules
is always negative.”
Unlike the man I saw in January, I
think, I maybe could vote for this Jeb
Bush. CEO Marco Zappacosta, 30,
seemed to be enjoying Thumbtack’s
first presidential hopeful meet-andgreet, so I asked him: Would you vote
for Bush? Zappacosta answered, “I
don’t know.”
It’s not clear at all that feeling the
love for the sharing economy can win
Bush young voters. During the Thumbtack town hall, no one asked Bush about
Uber or Clinton or niggling regulations.
Other than the net neutrality query,
Thumbtackers asked about equal pay
for women, about gun control, whether
Bush supports state laws to protect gays
from discrimination in housing and the
workplace — social issues where, as
with net neutrality, young voters like
government regulation. And really,
they’re not all that impressed when a
Republican uses Uber.
of “disrupting the old order.” Bush started the day extolling businesses such as
Thumbtack on a LinkedIn post. “I love
learning about these kinds of companies
precisely because before they existed,
their market didn’t exist either,” he
wrote. Startups, he added, “cause mental dissonance for people who think they
can plan the future of the economy from
Washington D.C. — people like Hillary
Clinton.”
12
REPUBLICANS: July 18, 2015
Donald Trump reminds Rove of Ross Perot
K
The aforementioned notwithstandarl Rove and Reince Priebus,
with a complicit Republican ing, Republicans and their hacks are goCongress are: A) sticking it to ing after Republican presidential nomivoters who actually care; and B) play- nee Donald Trump like jackals after
raw meat
— and they are doing
ing payola with blacks.
it for one reason and
We’ve heard for
one reason alone. It
the past number of
is because Donald
years that RepubTrump is telling
lican hands were
the American peotied because the
(c) 2015, Mychal Massie
ple exactly what
Democrats held
those who actuthe majority in the
Senate. And, as the lie went, as soon ally care about America already know.
Mexico is no more sending America
as they could wrest control in the Senate away from Democrats, they would the best they have than Fidel Castro sent
the best Cubans to America in the Marichange things.
el Boatlift. Supposedly only 23,000 of
WELL THEY did wrest control the 124,000 illegal alien Cubans were
away from the Democrats in November criminals, with the storyline being that
2014 and the first thing they did was ful- said number of criminals was misleadly fund Obamacare for Obama, approve ing because in the United States, the
hardcore leftist judges, and approve an overwhelming majority of those crimiAttorney General who is Eric Holder’s nals would never have been charged in
ideological twin and who mirrors his the United States to start with. Which I
bigoted racist anti- Americanism. She argue means that there are a lot of peoalso came with a track record of demon- ple not in jail who belong in jail here in
strably questionable legal actions that America. But I digress.
What the Republican establishment
many (myself included) consider outright criminal. Yet after a few weeks of fears more than anything else is another
the obligatory pontificating and bluster- Ross Perot. Rove will die and go to hell
ing, Republicans approved her appoint- early before he allows that to happen.
This is why Rove and the party estabment for Obama.
Let me not overlook their helping lishment have savagely fought to not
Obama win amnesty for illegal aliens. just marginalize the Tea Party but to deAnd to prove they are consistent, Re- stroy it and every candidate it ran and/or
publicans have virtually rubber-stamped was able to get elected.
everything Obama wanted including
THE MANTRA being used against
trade bills that even Democrats, unions,
and leftwing Marxist groups fought to Trump is that he is not good for the Pardefeat. (Remember that Obama’s initial ty. They are upset because voters are
trade deal proposals were defeated by rallying in support of him. Rove, et al
Democrat legislators voting against it did the same thing to Herman Cain and
virtually en masse). But thanks to John Sarah Palin. Cain and Palin were both
Boehner in the House and Mitch McCo- candidates who were connecting with
nnell in the Senate, Obama got his wish. all American voters, not just RepubliIn brief, whatever Obama wants he can cans. Led by Rove, the Republican escount on the Republican establishment tablishment engaged in a scorched earth
making sure he gets even when his own campaign against them, just as they did
against the Tea Party itself.
party votes against him.
Mychal
Massie
Republicans do not give a rat’s tail
about the American people. They do
not give a rat’s tail pursuant what we
want. They thumb their noses at us just
as Obama does. The difference is we do
not expect anything better from Obama.
Republicans are leading an “around
the clock” assault against Trump that
is reminiscent of the liberal media’s reporting on the Middle East War when
Bush was in office. They are calumniators of the highest order.
Pursuant to the Republican establishment playing payola with blacks, it goes
like this. Republicans give a boatload
of money to various blacks who claim
they will use the money to bring black
votes into the Republican Party. The end
result is that blacks do not vote Republican and the blacks who received said
money pocket it. It is an approved scam
that permits the Republican establishment to make a show of reaching out.
If Rove, et al were interested in
blacks voting for Republicans, they
would be truthful. They would stop
blathering about what the Republican
Party has historically done for blacks
and start legislating in way that was
sans a color-coded message and inclusive of an American message.
Blacks are not going to vote for Republicans in any meaningful numbers
no matter how much history you throw
at them. If that were all it took, blacks
would have never stopped voting for
Republicans.
Donald Trump is being attacked by
the Republican hierarchy for telling
truths that are important to the American people. Republicans are lying and
misleading blacks by animating the
same lies blacks have been told by
Democrats for the past 50 years, i.e.,
blacks are victims and if they vote for
them they’ll make special dispensations
for them.
BLACKS DO NOT need special
dispensation, they need the truth. Special dispensation is just another way of
saying you and I get the shaft.
DEMOCRATS: July 15, 2015
Biden could get 56 percent
A
July 9 national poll by Mon- Biden does get into the race, how likely
mouth University shows that would you be to consider supporting
nomination over your
56 percent of Democratic pri- him for the
choice?” The results
mary voters would be “very” or “some- current
are a real boost to
what” likely to
Biden’s chances:
“consider
sup— Already for
porting Joe Biden
Biden: 13 percent
for the nomination
— Very likely
over your current
to switch: 12 perchoice” should he
cent
enter the race.
— Somewhat likely to switch: 31
THE SURVEY first asked voters for percent
— Not too likely: 19 percent
whom they would vote if the primary
— Not at all likely: 19 percent
were held now. Hillary Clinton led the
— Undecided: 6 percent
field, although she barely eked out a
When you drill down, Clinton’s unmajority:
shakeable base in the Democratic pri— Clinton: 51 percent
mary is only 38 percent (those who said
— Sanders: 17 percent
it was not likely that they would switch).
— Biden: 13 percent
Clinton’s weakness is apparent when
— Webb: 1 percent
one notes that 49 percent of the voters in
— O’Malley: 1 percent
the initial poll chose to be undecided or
— Undecided: 17 percent
Then they asked the voters who to vote for another candidate.
were not voting for Biden (87 percent
THE MYTH of her invincibility is
of the sample) “Joe Biden has not yet
indicated whether he intends to run. If being shattered.
Dick
Morris
13
July 29, 2015
OBAMA PRESIDENCY: July 21, 2015
A historic catastrophe and political blunder
D
istinguished scientist Freeman Dyson has called the
1433 decision of the emperor of China to discontinue his country’s
exploration of the outside world the
“worst political blunder in the history
of civilization.”
The United States seems at this moment about to break the record for the
worst political blunder of all time, with
its Obama administration deal that will
make a nuclear Iran virtually inevitable.
ALREADY THE years-long negotiations, with their numerous “deadlines” that have been extended again
and again, have reduced the chances
that Israel can destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, which have been mul-
tiplied and placed in scattered under- at least realized that we had to “think
ground sites during the years when all the unthinkable,” as intellectual giant
Herman Kahn put it. Today it seems
this was going on.
we don’t want to think
Israel is the only country even likely almost as if
at all.
to try to destroy those facilities, since about it
Our politicians
Iran has explichave kicked the
itly and repeatedly
can down the road
declared its inten— and it is the
tion to wipe Israel
biggest, most anoff the face of the
nihilating exploearth.
How did we get to this point — and sive can of all, that will be left for our
what, if anything, can we do now? children and grandchildren to try to
Tragically, these are questions that few cope with.
Americans seem to be asking. We are
BACK IN THE days of our nuclear
too preoccupied with our electronic devices, the antics of celebrities and poli- standoff with the Soviet Union, some
of the more weak-kneed intelligentsia
tics as usual.
During the years when we confront- posed the choice as whether we wanted
ed a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, we to be “red or dead.” Fortunately, there
Thomas
Sowell
ENGAGED CHRISTIANS: July 17, 2015
Developing the Daniel option
F
or 25 years in WORLD I’ve
written about the long-run primacy of culture: When we lose
media and academia, politics and law
follow. The evidence for that is clear, especially after the same-sex marriage current on June 26 swept along five U.S.
Supreme Court judges. But for the next
16 months, while we continue to work
for cultural change, let’s not neglect
short-run politics.
PASTORS, ELDERS, and deacons
face immense questions. What happens
if Christian churches and schools lose
their 501(c)(3) status? What happens if
freedom of speech regarding sin disappears? Lots of “ifs,” but here’s a near
certainty: By staying home on Nov. 8,
2016, demoralized Christians can turn
those “ifs” into “whens.” The 2008 and 2012 presidential elections were strike one and strike two,
but we are still in the batter’s box. Occasionally a hitter forgets the count
and heads to the dugout with only two
strikes. That’s what separatist Christians are doing — and their prophecies
of doom could be self-fulfilling. Columnist Rod Dreher’s “Benedict
Option,” named after the man who left
Rome around A.D. 500 and founded
Christian communities, isn’t a bad idea,
but those who take it in separatist directions are premature. The Visigoth “Sack
of Rome,” signifying the end of ancient
civilization on the Tiber, occurred in
A.D. 410. The monastery movement did
not begin in A.D. 408. One part of Christian compassion is
refusing to abandon a culture while turning it around is possible. I’m not saying
Christians should wait for 90 years after
a potential Sack of Washington, but we
do have an immediate option: support
the election of a U.S. president who respects religious liberty. We should ask each presidential
candidate directly: What will you do
as the gay movement tries to override
the beliefs of Bible followers? How
specifically will you defend freedom of
speech? Will you pledge that religious
organizations opposed to same-sex
marriages will not lose their tax-exempt
status?
Marvin
Olasky
(c) 2015, God’s World Publications
If we abandon politics prematurely
and another opponent of American exceptionalism seizes the White House,
our rare land of liberty may be no more.
That’s especially true if he or she has
a pliable Congress, and Supreme Court
vacancies to fill. Election of a president
who respects liberty is no panacea, but
it will give us a breathing period of at
least four years. MY COUNTER to seizing the
Benedict Option is the Daniel Option.
Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers brought
Daniel as a captive to Babylon 2,600
years ago and enrolled him in an MBA
(Master of Babylonian Arts) program.
Daniel then risked his life for decades
by speaking truth to Babylon’s kings.
His astrologer associates were jackals.
A den of lions loomed. Nevertheless,
Daniel did not give up.
Those following the Daniel Option
will push for hearings on legislation to
protect individuals acting on their religious belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. If such
a measure could get through Congress,
it would end with an Obama veto; but
the debate would be educational and
would give us more information about
whether a Benedict Option is needed.
Those following the Daniel Option
will work and pray hard for the opportunity in 2016 to vote for a presidential
candidate who will rally believers in
religious liberty. We need one who can
say, with words like those of Aragorn
in The Lord of the Rings, “Hold your
ground! ... A day may come when the
courage of men fails ... but it is not this
day. ... This day we fight!”
So much of the initial reaction to
a 5-4 Supreme Court loss was in line
with Psalm 73. Its author, Asaph, admits that he had become “envious of
the arrogant. ... They set their mouths
against the heavens, and their tongue
struts through the earth.” The result:
“My feet had almost stumbled, my
steps had nearly slipped.” Asaph came
close to despair: “When I thought how
to understand this, it seemed to me a
wearisome task.”
GIVE UP? But then Asaph “went
into the sanctuary of God” and remembered: “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me
to glory.” Don’t give up! “My flesh
and my heart may fail, but God is the
strength of my heart and my portion
forever.”
Reprinted with permission of
WORLD. To read more news and views
from a Christian perspective, call 800951-6397 or visit WNG.org.
were others, especially President Ronald Reagan, who saw it differently. He
persevered in a course that critics said
would lead to nuclear war. But instead
it led to the peaceful conclusion of the
Cold War.
President Barack Obama has been
following opposite policies, and they
are likely to lead to opposite results.
The choices left after Iran gets nuclear
bombs — and intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond
Israel — may be worse than being red
or dead.
Bad as life was under the communists, it can be worse under nucleararmed fanatics, who have already demonstrated their willingness to die — and
their utter barbarism toward those who
fall under their power.
Americans today who say that the
only alternative to the Obama administration’s pretense of controlling Iran’s
continued movement toward nuclear
bombs is war ignore the fact that Israel
bombed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facilities, and Iraq did not declare war. To
do so would have risked annihilation.
Early on, that same situation would
have faced Iran. But Obama’s yearslong negotiations with Iran allowed the
Iranian leaders time to multiply, disperse and fortify their nuclear facilities.
The Obama administration’s leaking of Israel’s secret agreement with
Azerbaijan to allow Israeli warplanes
to refuel there, during attacks on Iran’s
nuclear facilities, was a painfully clear
sabotage of any Israeli attempt to destroy those Iranian facilities.
But the media’s usual practice to
hear no evil, see no evil and speak
no evil in the Obama administration
buried this news, and allowed Obama
to continue to pose as Israel’s friend,
just as he continued to assure Americans that, if they liked their doctor they
could keep their doctor.
Some commentators have attributed
Barack Obama’s many foreign policy
disasters to incompetence. But he has
been politically savvy enough to repeatedly outmaneuver his opponents
in America. For example, the Constitution makes it necessary for the President to get a two-thirds majority in the
Senate to make any treaty valid. Yet he
has maneuvered the Republican-controlled Congress into a position where
they will need a two-thirds majority in
both Houses to prevent his unilaterally
negotiated agreement from going into
effect — just by not calling it a treaty.
IF HE IS THAT savvy at home,
why is he so apparently incompetent
abroad? Answering that question may
indeed require us to “think the unthinkable,” that we have elected a man for
whom America’s best interests are not
his top priority.
14
DISPARATE IMPACT: July 21, 2015
HUD’s ‘disparate impact’ war on suburban America
D
isparate impact. It’s a legal state and local law, by deliberate indidoctrine that may be com- vidual or corporate action or by threat
ing soon to your suburb (if of force and violence. Back in the
you’re part of the national majority liv- 1960s, when the Fair Housing Act was
passed, housing really was effectively
ing in suburbs).
Bringing it there will be the Obama segregated in large parts of the country.
I f
you looked through
Department of Housing and Urban
the 1960 Census
D e v e l o p m e n t ’s
of large suburban
Affirmatively
counties block by
Furthering
Fair
block, as I did,
Housing program.
you would find
It has been given
the numbers of
a green light to
impose the rule from Justice Anthony blacks to be something like: 0, 0, 0,
Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Su- 0, 2, 0, 3, 1, 0, 0, 0. In Northern citpreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Texas ies where large numbers of blacks miDepartment of Housing and Commu- grated in the years from 1940 to 1965,
nity Affairs v. Inclusive Communities you could find whole square miles that
switched from 100 percent white to
Project.
over 90 percent black within a single
THE DECISION purports to inter- year.
That’s not how America works topret the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as
authorizing lawsuits if municipal poli- day. In every large metropolitan area
cies have a “disparate impact” as mea- with a significant black population,
sured by the racial percentages of those you won’t find a single census tract
affected — this despite the fact that the with 0 black residents. Blacks somewords of the Fair Housing Act prohibit times encounter resistance when trying to buy or rent a house that they can
only intentional racial discrimination.
HUD’s 377-page Affirmatively Fur- afford, which is unjust and infuriating,
thering Fair Housing rule requires mu- and a problem for which the Fair Housnicipal governments to “perform an ing Act provides remedies.
assessment of land use decisions and
BUT, OF COURSE, that has not
zoning to evaluate their possible impact
on fair housing choice.” An accompa- created an America in which every
nying document says that this includes community has the same percentage
“land use and zoning laws, such as as the national average of blacks and
minimum lot sizes, limits on multi-unit whites, Hispanics and Asians, marrieds
properties, height limits, or bedroom- and singles, gays and straights, Protesnumber limits as well as requirements tants and Catholics and Jews and Musfor special use permits (and) occupan- lims. Free choice never shakes out that
cy regulations” that might be “factors way. Throughout history, Americans
contributing to segregated housing pat- and immigrants have tended to choose
to cluster with likeminded people.
terns.”
In addition, in a free market econoNote the use of the word “segregated.” Historically, segregation was the my, those with more money inevitably
total exclusion of blacks enforced by have a wider choice of where to live
Michael
Barone
than those with less. And they too tend
to cluster (look up “locations” on luxury store websites to see where). Free
choice inevitably produces disparate
impact.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing is intended to shake this up. HUD
Secretary Julian Castro, mentioned as
a vice presidential candidate despite
having previously been just a part-time
municipal mayor, wants to use the disparate impact doctrine to overturn local zoning laws and place low-income
housing in suburbs across the nation.
Such social engineering is likely to be
widely unpopular.
How did disparate impact come into
the law? In a 1971 Supreme Court case,
Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the Court,
acting when memory was still fresh of
Southern resistance to desegregation,
ruled that the company’s aptitude test
amounted to discrimination because
whites passed at higher rates than
blacks. But that’s true of most aptitude
tests — which as a result aren’t used
much in hiring any more.
An approach more appropriate for
a society where there is no significant forcible resistance to desegregation was advanced by Justice Clarence
Thomas in his dissent. “We should not
automatically presume that any institution with a neutral practice that happens
to produce a racial disparity is guilty of
discrimination until proven innocent,”
he wrote. “The absence of racial disparities in multi-ethnic societies has
been the exception, not the rule.”
DISPARATE IMPACT jurisprudence has not been politically challenged: corporate defendants don’t
want to be attacked as racists. Perhaps
disparate impact policymaking will
be challenged if HUD starts installing
low-income housing in suburbs across
the land.
TRIVIA BITS: July 20, 2015
Trivia Bits
1. To combat bribery, 5th Pillar issued
zero rupee notes meant to “pay off” corrupt officials in what country?
A) Brazil
B) China
C) India
D) Russia
2. Legislators in Pierre passed House
Concurrent Resolution 1009, which required teachers in what state to instruct
pupils that climate change might be
caused by “astrological” [sic] factors?
A) Alabama
B) Alaska
C) Arizona
D) South Dakota
3. In the 1850s, what Italian nationalist
lived as a candlemaker in Staten Island?
A) Giuseppe Garibaldi
B) Giuseppe Mazzini
C) Giuseppe Rossi
D) Giuseppe Verdi
4. It was Michael Baulderstone, not
Peter Parker, who stopped a man from
stealing comics in Adelaide, Australia.
You’d wonder, though, because Baulderstone was dressed as what superhero?
A) Batman
B) Iron Man
Paul
Paquet
C) Spider-Man
D) Superman
5. A rocket scientist, Brad Pitt and
Captain Kirk. These are the things that
have what particular musical connection?
A) Things that don’t impress Shania
Twain much
B) Things that don’t start the fire, according to Billy Joel
C) Things that end the world in that
REM song
D) Things Right Said Fred was too
sexy for
6. The Russo-Japanese War was mostly fought somewhere that was neither
Russo- nor Japanese. Where?
A) Alaska
B) China
C) Mongolia
D) Tibet
(answers on page 19)
15
July 29, 2015
1938 and 2015: Only the names are different
W
e say that evil is dark. But
this metaphor is imprecise.
Evil is actually intensely
bright, so painfully bright that people
look away from it. Many even deny its
existence.
Why? Because once people acknowledge evil’s existence, they know they
have to confront it. And most people prefer not to confront evil.
That is what led to World War II.
Many in the West denied the darkness
of Nazism. They looked the other way
when that evil could have been stopped
and then appeased it as it became stronger.
WE ARE reliving 1938. British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain went to
Munich to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. He
left believing Hitler’s promises of peace
in exchange for Germany being allowed
to annex large parts of Czechoslovakia.
Upon returning to England, Chamberlain
announced, “Peace for our time.”
The American and European negotiations with Iran have so precisely mirrored 1938 that you have to wonder how
anyone could not see it.
The Nazi regime’s great hatred was
Jews. Iran’s great hatred is the Jewish
state. The Nazis’ greatest aim was to
exterminate the Jews of Europe. Iran’s
greatest aim is to exterminate the Jewish state. Nazi Germany hated the West
and its freedoms. The Islamic Republic
of Iran hates the West and its freedoms.
Germany sought to dominate Europe.
Iran has been responsible for more
Iran seeks to dominate the Middle East
American deaths in the past quarterand the Muslim world.
And exactly as Britain and France century than any other group or country.
appeased Nazi Germany, the same two Col. Richard Kemp, the former comcountries along with the United States mander of British troops in Afghanistan,
and Major Chris Driver-Williams
have chosen to appease Iran.
ish special forces,
Today, people mock Chamberlain. of Britsummarized it this
But just change
way: “Iranian milthe names, and
itary action, often
you realize that we
working through
are living through
proxies using tera repetition of Mu(c) 2015, Creators Syndicate
rorist tactics, has
nich. Substitute
the Islamic Republic of Iran for Nazi led to the deaths of well over a thousand
Germany, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanifor Hitler, Barack Obama and John Ker- stan over the last decade and a half.”
The Neville Chamberlains of 2015
ry for Chamberlain, Israel for Czechoslovakia and for Europe’s Jews, and the defend the agreement with Iran on
increasingly unsafe world of 2015 for two grounds: that the only alternative
is war, and that this agreement has the
the increasingly unsafe world of 1938.
In fact, there is considerably less de- capacity to bring Iran into “the commufense for the Iran agreement — which nity of nations.”
awards Iran $150 billion in currently
THE FIRST IS a falsehood for
frozen assets and the right to keep its nuclear program — than there was for the three reasons.
First, the alternative to this agreeMunich agreement. Prior to 1938, Hitler
had not publicly proclaimed his aim to ment was continuing and tightening
annihilate Europe’s Jews. Yet, Iran has the sanctions that were weakening the
been proclaiming its intention to annihi- Iranian regime and greatly diminishing
late the Jewish state for decades. There its ability to fund terror groups around
were no massive “Death to America” the world. Second, because the agreedemonstrations in Germany as there reg- ment so strengthens Iran, it makes war
ularly are in Iran. In 1938, Germany had far more likely. When evil, expansionnot been responsible for terror around ist regimes get richer, they don’t spend
the world as Iran is now. Nor was Ger- their wealth on building new hospitals.
many responsible for the death of more Third, we have been at war with Iran
than a thousand Americans as Iran has for decades — but only one side has
been fighting.
been.
Dennis
Prager
And whoever believes that the agreement will bring Iran into “the community of nations” betrays a breathtaking
ignorance about the Iranian regime.
The Iranian regime is composed of
religious fanatics who are morally indistinguishable from ISIS, al Qaeda,
Boko Haram and all the other massmurdering Islamist movements.
The Iranian regime has executed
more people than any country except
China (and probably North Korea, for
which data are unavailable).
The Iranian regime has killed more
than 6,000 gays for being homosexual.
No woman in Iran is allowed to
leave the country or even to work outside her home without the permission
of her husband. As Zahra Eshraghi, a
granddaughter of the founder of the
Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, has testified: “As a woman,
if I want to get a passport to leave the
country, have surgery, even to breathe
almost, I must have permission from
my husband.”
The Iranian regime repeatedly calls
for the extermination of Israel. No other country in the world is committed to
annihilating another country.
Iran is the world’s greatest funder of
terror organizations.
The late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman indicted Iran for establishing terrorist networks throughout
Latin America, including Argentina,
Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and
Colombia, among other countries.
Iran funds and directs the Lebanese
terror organization Hezbollah, the
most powerful military organization in
Lebanon.
Iran is the major funder of Hamas.
Iran has been responsible for terror
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
According to the 9/11 Commission
Report, eight to 10 of the 9/11 hijackers passed through Iran, and an American judge ruled that Iran bears legal
responsibility for providing “material
support” to the 9/11 hijackers.
Members of Congress who vote to
uphold this agreement will be viewed
as Chamberlain is viewed. The Left
likes to talk about being on “the right
side” of history. Enabling Iran to keep
its nuclear facilities while gaining access to hundreds of billions of dollars
is to be on the wrong side of history.
Question: Would any member of
Congress vote for this agreement if
Iran were situated at the American border?
VERY FEW people have a chance
to do something about the greatest
evil of their time. Members of the
U.S. Congress have that chance. That
should trump loyalty to Obama and his
appeasement of the greatest evil of our
time.
16
July 29, 2015
Worse than we could have imagined
W
Obama claimed in his Wednesday
hen you write a column, as
did I two weeks ago, head- news conference that it really doesn’t
lined “The worst agree- matter because we can always intercept
ment in U.S. diplomatic history,” you Iranian arms shipments to, say, Hezboldon’t expect to revisit the issue. We had lah.
But
wait. Obama has inhit bottom. Or so I thought. Then on
sisted throughout that
Tuesday the final
we are pursuing this
terms of the IraIranian diplomacy
nian nuclear deal
to avoid the use
were published. I
of force, yet now
was wrong.
(c) 2015, Washington Post Writers Group
blithely discards a
Who
would
previous diplomathave imagined we would be giving up
the conventional arms and ballistic mis- ic achievement — the arms embargo
sile embargoes on Iran? In nuclear ne- — by suggesting, no matter, we can just
shoot our way to interdiction.
gotiations?
Moreover, the most serious issue is
WHEN ASKED at his Wednesday not Iranian exports but Iranian imports
news conference why there is nothing — of sophisticated Russian and Chiin the deal about the four American nese weapons. These are untouchable.
hostages being held by Iran, President We are not going to attack Russian and
Obama explained that this is a separate Chinese transports.
The net effect of this capitulation will
issue, not part of nuclear talks.
Are conventional weapons not a sep- be not only to endanger our Middle East
arate issue? After all, conventional, by allies now under threat from Iran and its
definition, means non-nuclear. Why are proxies, but to endanger our own naval
forces in the Persian Gulf. Imagine how
we giving up the embargoes?
Because Iran, joined by Russia — Iran’s acquisition of the most advanced
our “reset” partner — sprung the de- anti-ship missiles would threaten our
mand at the last minute, calculating control over the Gulf and the Strait of
that Obama and Secretary of State John Hormuz, waterways we have kept open
Kerry were so desperate for a deal that for international commerce for a halfthey would cave. They did. And have century.
The other major shock in the final
convinced themselves that they scored a
victory by delaying the lifting by five to deal is what happened to our insistence
eight years. (Ostensibly. The language on “anytime, anywhere” inspections.
is murky. The interval could be consid- Under the final agreement, Iran has the
right to deny international inspectors
erably shorter.)
Charles
Krauthammer
access to any undeclared nuclear site.
The denial is then adjudicated by a committee — on which Iran sits. It then goes
through several other bodies, on all of
which Iran sits. Even if the inspectors’
request prevails, the approval process
can take 24 days.
AND WHAT do you think will be
left to be found, left unscrubbed, after
24 days? The whole process is farcical.
The action now shifts to Congress.
The debate is being hailed as momentous. It is not. It’s irrelevant.
Congress won’t get to vote on the
deal until September. But Obama is taking the agreement to the U.N. Security
Council for approval within days. Approval there will cancel all previous
U.N. resolutions outlawing and sanctioning Iran’s nuclear activities.
Meaning: Whatever Congress ultimately does, it won’t matter because the
legal underpinning for the entire international sanctions regime against Iran
will have been dismantled at the Security Council. Ten years of painstakingly
constructed international sanctions will
vanish overnight, irretrievably.
Even if Congress rejects the agreement, do you think the Europeans, the
Chinese or the Russians will reinstate
sanctions? The result: The United States
is left isolated while the rest of the world
does thriving business with Iran.
Should Congress then give up? No.
Congress needs to act in order to rob this
deal of, at least, its domestic legitimacy.
Rejection will make little difference on
the ground. But it will make it easier
for a successor president to legitimately reconsider an executive agreement
(Obama dare not call it a treaty — it
would be instantly rejected by the Senate) that garnered such pathetically little
backing in either house of Congress.
It’s a future hope, but amid dire circumstances. By then, Iran will be flush
with cash, legitimized as a normal international actor in good standing, recognized (as Obama once said) as “a very
successful regional power.” Stopping
Iran from going nuclear at that point will
be infinitely more difficult and risky.
WHICH IS Obama’s triumph. He
has locked in his folly. He has laid down
his legacy and we will have to live with
the consequences for decades.
July 17, 2015
This Week’s Conservative Focus
17
Iran Deal
President Obama: Witting or witless?
I was elected to end wars, not start
them. — Barack Obama
The quickest way of ending a war is to
lose it. — George Orwell
A question has hung in the air since
Barack Obama first moved into 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue and began his “fundamental transformation” of this country:
Did he intend harm, or was he merely so
blinded by ideology that he could not see
the damage his policies were creating?
The Iran deal provides an answer.
AT HIS PRESS conference, our duplicitous leader chose to call black white
and claim that the deal does the opposite
of what it does — allow Iran to get nuclear weapons, albeit after a decent interval.
We are deep into Orwellian territory now.
“War is peace. Ignorance is strength.” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is crow-
ing that Iran achieved all of its objectives had demanded anywhere/anytime inand the U.S. none.
spections and negotiated to lift sanctions
The bombproof facility in the moun- only after evidence of Iranian complitain at Fordow — which, until recently, ance. Now, the inspections regime is a
the U.S. had demanded be shuttered and joke: Iran gets 24 days’ notice and sits on
locked — will now have an “interna- the committee that decides
tional presence”
whether inspections
so that attempts to
are necessary. The
thwart its progress
sanctions are lifted
even by sabotage
immediately, handwill be effectively
ing the world’s
blocked. This is
chief sponsor of
permission masquerading as prevention. terror a $100 billion windfall. Deputy
It’s of a piece with the administration’s National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes,
pressure on Israel to refrain from military who was captured on videotape in April
action, which was rewarded with Obama saying anytime/anywhere inspections
aides calling Prime Minister Benjamin would be required, now denies the U.S.
Netanyahu a “chicken” and crowing that ever made that a condition.
his chance had passed.
WHILE THE administration claimed
Permission masquerading as prevention sums up the whole deal. The U.S. it couldn’t negotiate for the release of
four Americans held unlawfully in Iranian prisons because that was outside the
scope of nuclear negotiations, they did
agree to lift the embargo on conventional
arms and intercontinental ballistic missiles, which were also outside the compass of nuclear concerns. Why? Because
“Iran demanded it.” Well, OK then.
Obama’s press conference was a
spectacle of bad faith. A virtuoso of lip
service (see his sympathy for Israel) and
endless conjurer of straw men, he took
few questions but silkily implied he had
answered all objections. “There is no
scenario in which a U.S. president is not
in a stronger position 12, 13, 15 years
from now if, in fact, Iran decided at that
point they still wanted to get a nuclear
weapon.”
What? In 12 to 15 years, Iran will be
an immensely wealthier, better-armed
and more powerful country than it is today. It will be, to quote Obama, “a very
successful regional power” and then
some. It will have acquired advanced
anti-aircraft weapons and ballistic missiles and, doubtless, a much-improved
air force.
The dishonest core of the president’s
the Jewish population, which ultimately
led to the creation of the Jewish state. It pretense is this: that the choice was behas successfully defeated its neighbors’ tween war and diplomacy. Every schoolaggression and survived near constant child knows that diplomacy without
threat of terrorism on its soil and against the credible threat of force is a nullity.
its co-religionists around the world. Does Obama knows how to frighten and inanyone really expect that Israel will stand timidate when he wants to. See his conby while Iran builds bombs and acquires duct toward Republicans or Netanyahu
missile systems that threaten its very ex- or the Supreme Court.
There was always a very different
istence?
The president has consistently main- path available. He could have increased
tained that he had only two choices: forge the sanctions instead of pleading with
a deal with Iran or face war. It is a Hob- Congress not to impose them. He could
son’s choice, and the president knows it. have attacked Syria when it crossed his
Sanctions brought Iran to the bargaining “red line” rather than folding and theretable, but the administration’s eagerness by conveying his fecklessness to Tehto reach a deal erases what leverage we ran. He could have refrained from callhad. Nor did the president even consider ing everyone in the U.S. who favored
other options. The administration has a hard line against Iran a “warmonger”
never been willing to promote regime — again conveying that Iran had nothing
change in Iran, choosing to turn its back to fear from him. He could have supporton protesters who took to the streets in ed the protesters in the streets in 2009
2009 against the regime. It has demon- rather than signaling his support for the
ized the pro-democratic National Council regime. He could have left the negotiatof Resistance of Iran, which has tens of ing table many times, but especially after
thousands of supporters both inside and the IAEA reported earlier this month that
Iran was in violation of earlier nuclear
outside Iran.
In the past, American foreign policy treaties and had increased its stockpiles
entailed working behind the scenes to of enriched uranium by 20 percent. And
promote democratic alternatives to totali- yes, if all of the above failed, he could
tarian regimes. Not so in Obama’s admin- have deployed strategic bombing to deistration. The administration’s goal has stroy Iran’s nuclear program.
been to reassure the mullahs in Tehran,
BUT FROM his first inaugural adnot to encourage freedom for the Iranian
dress onward, Obama both secretly and
people.
openly wooed the Iranian regime. In the
IN FALSELY portraying his options, process, he repeatedly lied to Congress,
the president brings us closer to a Mid- our allies and the American people, setdle East conflagration. It is not “peace in tling, to my satisfaction at least, that he
our time,” but a near guarantee of more is inflicting this potential catastrophe
wittingly.
bloodshed.
Mona
Charen
The options: Choosing dishonor
T
he president has said that the
United States will be safer because of the nuclear deal his
administration and five other nations
fashioned with Iran. “Without a deal, we
risk even more war in the Middle East,”
he said in an hour-long press conference
on Wednesday. It was an unfortunate historical reminder, one the president would
rather we all ignore.
IN 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed a four-party pact
with Adolf Hitler allowing Nazi Germany to seize a portion of Czechoslovakia.
Chamberlain returned from the Munich
Conference, claiming “peace with honor.
I believe it is peace for our time.” But
his Conservative Party rival Winston
Churchill’s words turned out to be more
prophetic: “You were given the choice
between war and dishonor. You chose
dishonor, and you will have war.” In less
than a year, the Nazis invaded Poland,
and the British declared war on Germany.
It is too soon to know exactly how
events will unfold in the Middle East, but
certain things are clear. There will be more
nuclear weapons in the region because of
this deal, not fewer. It isn’t a matter of
whether there will be war — there are already several wars ongoing in the region,
wars in which Iran participates directly or
through its proxies. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force is already on
the ground in Iraq, our erstwhile ally in
the fight against ISIS but, in the long run,
a great threat to our interests. Iran is supporting the Assad regime in Syria and the
rebels in Yemen and is the major sponsor of terrorism in the world. With the
estimated $100 billion in unfrozen assets
soon to be available as Iran sanctions are
lifted, more money will flow into wars
where Iran hopes to expand its influence
and ultimately create hegemony in the
Muslim world.
But don’t expect Saudi Arabia or other
Sunni countries to sit idly by. The Saudis,
rightly, do not trust Iran to keep its promises — and nothing in the agreement
should increase their comfort. Saudi Arabia has little choice but to pursue its own
nuclear program in the face of the likelihood that Iran will build a bomb, if not
secretly during the term of the agreement,
then soon after it lapses.
Linda
Chavez
The Iranians aren’t dismantling their
nuclear program; they are simply putting
on hold some elements — and even that
cannot be assured. The verification regimen put in place by the agreement gives
Iranians ample time to stall in order to
move, hide or repurpose their weaponscreating capacity once notified that inspectors want to visit a site. The president
promised 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear
facilities in any deal his administration
negotiated — he accepted in its place a
plan that will give Iran 24 days before it
allows inspectors in and a bureaucratic
maze to get there.
OF COURSE, the country that is most
endangered by this agreement is Israel.
Our ally and the only democratic country
in the region, Israel is small but powerful, with perhaps the best military in the
world. Its people have already survived
a Holocaust that destroyed one-third of
July 17, 2015
July 17, 2015
18
Obama, Congress gear up for fight over Iran deal
P
resident Obama’s dubious nu- questioning defense of the pact, and its
clear deal with Iran begins an military concessions to Iran, showed
all-out political war in Congress he was “hopelessly disconnected from
that will have a huge, perhaps decisive, reality.”
impact in the 2016 presidential election.
But even the White House must
Immediately after an agreement had h a v e
been surprised by the
been struck to lift
response from higheconomic sancranking Democrattions on the Isic leaders.
lamic
republic,
New
York
GOP leaders were
Rep. Eliot Engel,
(c) 2015, United Media Services
denouncing Iran’s
ranking Demotissue-thin promcrat on the House
ises and plotting their strategy for the Foreign Affairs Committee and one of
congressional battles to come.
Iran’s chief critics, called the agreement “deeply troubling.”
AND EVEN House and Senate DemSen. Charles Schumer of New York,
ocratic leaders were expressing grave the third-ranking member of the Senreservations about the nuclear pact that, ate’s leadership, is described as deeply
critics said, threatened the very survival torn over the issue, and his decision
of Israel and our other allies in the region. could sway the votes of many DemoCongress will have 60 days to review cratic fence-sitters.
the deal after the White House sends the
“I intend to go through this agreetext of the agreement to Capitol Hill, ment with a fine-tooth comb, speak
and it will likely be submitted to a vote with administration officials, and hear
sometime in September after lawmakers from experts on all sides,” he said in a
return from the August recess.
statement Wednesday.
Obama certainly expected Republi“Supporting or opposing this agreecans to mount an all-out offensive against ment is not a decision to be made lighta deal that made risky concessions to the ly, and I plan to carefully study the
Iranians. It calls for lifting the arms em- agreement before making an informed
bargo within five years, dropping sanc- decision,” he said.
tions on its ballistic missiles in eight
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez,
years, and lifting economic sanctions the former top-ranked Democrat on
sooner than even Tehran had expected.
the Foreign Relations Committee, said
That’s when Republican leaders came he was flat-out against the deal.
out with both guns blazing.
“We’re basically legitimizing Iran’s
A spokesman for House Speaker nuclear program,” he said.
John Boehner said that Obama’s unObama has said that if the Republi-
Donald
Lambro
can-run Congress sends him a resolution of disapproval, he will veto it, and
earlier this week it seemed unlikely the
GOP could muster the two-thirds vote
to override his veto.
BUT IF SCHUMER comes out
against the agreement, he might sway
enough Democrats to make that a possibility. With every Republican voting
no, he would need only 12 Democrats
to join him in upholding a vote of disapproval.
The House, with a large GOP majority, is considered more likely to follow suit.
Whatever happens in the forthcoming fight over the Iran nuclear deal, it
is sure to become a major issue in the
2016 elections — one that would work
in the GOP’s favor.
The American Israel Public Affairs
Committee and other Jewish organizations are planning to mount a massive lobbying campaign among swing
Democrats on this one issue. That
could spell deep trouble for Hillary
Clinton, her party’s frontrunner for
the presidential nomination, who has
given her full support to the Iran deal.
“I support this agreement because I
believe it is the most effective path of
all the alternatives available to the U.S.
and our partners to prevent Iran from
acquiring a nuclear weapon,” she said
this week.
But Clinton may find that once the
debate over the Iran deal gets underway, significant parts of her base —
Jewish voters and swing Democrats —
could turn against her.
While a majority may support the
agreement now, that may not hold up
for long when the dirty little details of
the pact flood the airwaves.
And that’s going to work in the
GOP’s favor and against Clinton and
the Democrats.
A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday found 55 percent of
those surveyed said they didn’t trust
Iran “at all” to begin to dismantle its
nuclear program, curb its facilities and
allow unimpeded inspections.
In February, 70 percent of Americans in a CBS poll said they considered
Iran to be either an “enemy” or at least
“unfriendly” toward the U.S.
“That skepticism stands in stark
contrast to the optimism expressed by
President Obama announcing the deal
Tuesday morning,” writes Washington
Post polling analyst Scott Clement.
“Americans are clearly more skeptical about the meaning of a deal, and
will likely be sympathetic to arguments
that the deal does not do enough to stop
Iran from producing nuclear weapons,”
Clement writes.
Americans have a healthy dose of
skepticism about the promises they
hear from Washington and its political class, especially from Obama, who
has lied to us one too many times, or at
least embellished the facts.
Obama’s shaky deal with Tehran’s
government, where truth is always a
moving target, is going to take a beating in the months to come, in the House
and Senate hearings, the floor debate,
the TV ads and the presidential campaign debates that will soon descend
upon us.
AND WHILE we’re experiencing
all of the political claims and counterclaims, remember this: If it sounds too
good to be true, it probably is.
19
July 29, 2015
DEAR MARK: July 17, 2015
Iran deal, baby organs and Bill Cosby
DEAR MARK:
Finally proof that Barack Obama is
in fact a Muslim. The nuclear agreement
with Iran that gives them everything they
wanted is all I need to see. It’s not just
Republicans who are questioning this
deal, many Democrats are against this
deal so what other reason could there be
but what is living in his heart? — Don’t
Trust Him
Dear Don’t: I have no idea what is in
the president’s heart but it can’t be blood
by the way it bleeds so much. You’re
right the nuclear agreement with Iran
has more holes than my favorite boxers
which is why the vice president has been
sent to Capitol Hill to twist Democrat
arms.
For those of you who constantly accuse me of being a Fox News zombie,
even CNN White House correspondent
Jim Acosta slammed the deal. “It clearly
shows that there is weakness in this deal,
in the fact he was not able to secure the
release of those Americans who are being detained in Iran” Acosta said.
Furthermore this agreement perfectly
illustrates President Obama’s dove like
philosophy towards the war on terror. As
we have seen today with the terrorist killing of four U.S. Marines in Chattanooga
Tennessee, by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, ISIS has become emboldened.
It’s very apparent we’re fighting an
ideology and in order to win the war on
terror we are going to have to end radical Islam by destroying groups like ISIS
on their turf. But with this agreement
President Obama and John Kerry have
essentially given Iran, the number one
exporter and financier of terrorism in the
world, $150 billion to continue its malicious killing of innocents.
The president even said “This deal is
not contingent on Iran changing its behavior.” Well it darn sure should have
been or why else should we trust them
with all this money and nukes?
Mark
Levy
(c) 2015, Mark Levy
DEAR MARK:
Planned Parenthood is a vile organization that doesn’t deserve a dime of taxpayer’s money. The news that it is selling
organs harvested from aborted babies is
one of the most horrifying things I have
ever heard of. How can those people in
Planned Parenthood or for that matter the
Democrats who support it sleep at night?
— Sign Me Repulsed
Dear Repulsed:
Come on, who’re you gonna believe,
the president of Planned Parenthood or
the video you saw with your own eyes of
the baby killer explaining how she commits the organization’s heinous acts?
But don’t worry Planned Parenthood
claims they don’t profit from the baby
parts or the “fetal tissue” as they like to
call it but they do accept donations for
the transportation costs of the “tissue.”
That concept sounds vaguely Mafiosolike and also an end around the IRS. If
this is just a misunderstanding I’m sure
PP wouldn’t mind opening its books so
Congress could take a look.
Wouldn’t you like to hear the dinner
conversation between Planned Parent-
hood president Cecile Richards and her
husband?
Hi honey, how was your day? It was
great. We hit an all-time high for abortions
and harvested a record number of baby
organs, I mean fetal tissue. If we keep up
this pace we’re sure to get more federal
money when Hillary gets in. That’s nice
sweetie, keep up the good work.
DEAR MARK:
There’s a petition drive to revoke Bill
Cosby’s Medal of Freedom after the recent revelations of his drugging and raping numerous women. When Barack
Obama was asked about revoking the
medal he said there is no precedent for
revoking that. It’s hard to believe that
the president can’t do anything to take
the award from this animal. What if one
of Cosby’s victims had the last name
Obama? — Macon Mom
Dear Macon Mom:
When the president was asked the
Cosby question I was surprised he didn’t
blame Bush for awarding Cosby the
Medal of Freedom in the first place back
in 2002.
It’s understandable if President
Obama was caught off guard but his response was laughable in the sense that he
acted powerless because there was “no
precedent.” President Obama has signed
so many executive orders that he has carpal tunnel syndrome. One more signature invalidating Cosby’s medal probably
wouldn’t hurt his wrist too much.
E-mail your questions to marklevy92@aol.com. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy
CONTACT INFORMATION
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Napolitano - freedomwatch@foxbusiness.com
Saunders - dsaunders@sfchronicle.com
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Will - georgewill@washpost.com
Contact through Creators Syndicate
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Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen,
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Answers from page 14
TRIVIA ANSWERS
T rivia B I T S
ANSWERS
1) The Indian notes depicted Gandhi.
2) South Dakota urged teachers
to explain “that there are a variety of
climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological,
and ecological dynamics that can effect world weather phenomena.” And
yes, they used “effect” wrong.
3) Giuseppe Garibaldi lived in the
U.S. for a while.
4) He was dressed as Spider-Man.
Or maybe, it WAS Spider-Man!
5) Shania Twain is also unimpressed by Tarzan, Elvis and John
Wayne.
6) The Russo-Japanese War was
mostly fought in China, particularly
Manchuria.
Need to make a
correction on your
mailing label?
Contact us at 800-888-3039 or
conserve@iowaconnect.com
20
EDUCATION: July 15, 2015
Leave the Department of Education behind
T
wo weeks before the 1980 Reagan’s book, Call to Action.
“Right now in public education we are
presidential election, the Associated Press published a story very close to a monopoly,” wrote Reaexplaining that the two major-party can- gan. “Every year thousands of parochial
didates were “poles apart on education and private schools close down because
they can’t compete against the public
issues.”
Carter, the story reminded readers, s c h o o l s , which drain off more and
in taxes. Most of
was the Founding Father of the federal m o r e
us are left with no
Department of Edchoice but the pubucation.
lic schools, good or
“The fate of
bad.”
the
Department
In addition to
of Education, the
terminating
the
$14-billion federal
agency elevated to Cabinet status less federal Department of Education, were
than six months ago, may hang in the there any affirmative education policies
balance on Election Day,” said the story. Reagan wanted America to pursue?
“Reagan favors tuition tax credits,
“Republican Ronald Reagan,” it said,
“hopes to dismantle the agency, which amount unspecified, for parents of parowas created following a promise that chial and other private school students,”
Jimmy Carter made to the National Edu- reported the Associated Press.
“Reagan also supports experimentacation Association in seeking and winning the union’s support four years ago.” tion with a controversial plan to issue
vouchers entitling children to attend priTHE STORY ended with a direct vate or public schools of their choice,”
said the Post.
quote from Reagan.
During his entire presidency, Reagan
“I think that this Department of Education is hoping to make come true the faced a Democrat-controlled House of
dream of the National Education Asso- Representatives, which would not have
ciation, which for many years has been enacted legislation to abolish the Departthat we should have a federal school sys- ment of Education.
Ih 2001, a Republican-controlled
tem, a nationalized school system,” said
House passed the No Child Left Behind
Reagan.
The Washington Post published a sim- Act, co-sponsored by Republican Rep.
John Boehner and Democratic Sen. Ted
ilar story in September 1980.
“And only Reagan speaks and writes Kennedy. Republican President George
about ending the public school ‘monop- W. Bush signed it into law — putting a
oly,’ a theme that fits in with his broad “bipartisan” seal-of-approval on federal
philosophical belief that the private sec- involvement in public schools.
Today, Republicans control both
tor can do most jobs better than the govhouses of Congress — and what are they
ernment,” said the Post.
The paper then cited a passage from doing?
Terry
Jeffrey
In the 1979-1980 school year, according to the department itself, public
primary and secondary schools spent an
average of $6,876 per pupil (in constant
2013-2014 dollars) on their “current expenses.” By the 2011-2012, they were
spending an average of $11,732 per pupil
(in constant 2013-2014 dollars).
Real per pupil spending increased by
$4,856, or almost 71 percent.
Did public-school students get a better
education as a result? No.
In 1980, according to the National
Center for Education Statistics’ “Trends
in Academic Progress 2012” report,
17-year-old public school students
scored an average of 284 out of a posALEXANDER CALLS his bill the sible 500 on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress reading test. That
“Every Child Achieves Act.”
But what has happened in the public rose to a peak of 289 in 1988 and 1990,
schools since Jimmy Carter created the then dropped back to 285 by 2012.
By contrast, the average NAEP readDepartment of Education?
ing score for 17-year-olds in Catholic
schools rose from 300 in 1980 to 309 in
2012 — the highest it has ever been.
In 1980, Catholic school 17-year-olds
scored an average of 16 points higher in
reading than their public school counterparts. By 2012, they scored 24 points
higher.
In 2013, only 38 percent of American
12th graders were grade-level “proficient” or better in reading, according to
the NAEP test.
In math, the average NAEP score for
17-year-olds in public schools in 1978
was 300 out of 500. That rose to a peak
of 307 in 1999 and dropped to 305 by
2012. By contrast, the average score for
17-year-olds in Catholic schools rose
from 309 in 1978 to an all-time high of
325 in 2012.
Only 26 percent of American 12th
graders were grade-level “proficient” or
better in Math in 2013, according to the
NAEP test.
They are trying to craft yet another
law to reauthorize federal programs
aimed at local public schools that President Barack Obama will find acceptable.
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander
of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee, is sponsoring the Senate version of the bill.
“If we should succeed next week, as
I believe we will, why then we will have
a conference with the House of Representatives, and we will develop a bill we
hope the president will be comfortable
signing,” Alexander said on the Senate
floor last week.
WAS RONALD Reagan right in 1980
that America should move away from
the Department of Education and toward
school choice? Absolutely.
21
July 29, 2015
EDUCATION: July 16, 2015
California’s Latino education crisis
T
he Los Angeles Times headline
was cheerful: “It’s Official: Latinos Now Outnumber Whites
in California.” The Times said, “As of
July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the
14.92 million whites in the state.”
Is this good news or bad news?
The L.A. Times seems to think the former. The article cites the chief demographer for the state finance department
who asserts, “A young Latino workforce
helps the economy by backfilling retiring baby boomers.” Really?
EDUCATION PROFESSORS Patricia Gandara of UCLA and Frances
Contreras of University of Washington
wrote the 2009 book The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed
Social Policies. Heather Mac Donald, a
contributing editor of City Journal, reviewed the book. She wrote: “Hispanics are underachieving academically
at an alarming rate, the authors report.
Though second- and third-generation
Hispanics make some progress over
their first-generation parents, that prog- of performance on reading readiness
ress starts from an extremely low base compared to just 18 percent of white
and stalls out at high school completion. children. By fourth grade, 16 percent of
High school drop-out rates — around Latino students are proficient in reading
50 percent — remain steady across gen- according to the 2005 NAEP, compared
erations. Latinos’ grades and test scores to 41 percent of white students. A similar
are at the bottom of the bell curve. The p a t t e r n
is notable at the eighth
very low share of
grade, where only
college degrees
15 percent of Latiearned by Latinos
nos are proficient in
has not changed
reading compared
for more than two
to 39 percent of
decades. Currently
whites.
only one in 10 La“With respect
tinos has a college degree.”
to college completion, only 11 percent
Before the book came out, co-author of Latinos 25 to 29 years of age had a
Gandara wrote an article for the Na- BA or higher compared to 34 percent of
tional Education Association, where she whites. Perhaps most distressing, howsaid: “The most urgent problem for the ever, is the fact that no progress has been
American education system has a Latino made in the percentage of Latinos gainface. Latinos are the largest and most ing college degrees over a 20-year perapidly growing ethnic minority in the riod, while other groups have seen sigcountry, but, academically, they are lag- nificant increases in degree completion.”
ging dangerously far behind their nonThe New York Times, in 2006, wrote
Hispanic peers. For example, upon en- an editorial called “Young Latinas and
tering kindergarten 42 percent of Latino a Cry for Help:” “About one-quarter of
children are found in the lowest quartile Latina teens drop out, a figure surpassed
Larry
Elder
Why people like Trump
L
ast week, 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump
dropped his second headlinemaking comment of the race. Responding to statements from Senator John
McCain, R-Ariz., in which McCain labeled Trump’s supporters on immigration “crazies,” Trump shot back that
McCain wasn’t a war hero, because he
had been captured. “I like people who
weren’t captured,” Trump said, paraphrasing a 2008 Chris Rock routine in
Michael Scott-like fashion.
TRUMP’S SHOT was mean, nasty,
uncalled for, and idiotic.
The media world immediately declared Trump’s campaign over. A few
days before the comments, Huffington
Post — a publication created by onetime failed California gubernatorial
candidate Arianna Huffington — announced that it would feature Trump in
its entertainment section rather than its
politics section. The Wall Street Journal
editorial board opined, “It came slightly
ahead of schedule, but Donald Trump’s
inevitable self-immolation arrived on
the weekend when he assailed John McCain’s war record. The question now is
how long his political and media apologists on the right will keep pretending
he’s a serious candidate.”
Trump’s rival candidates leapt on the
opportunity to throw dirt on Trump’s
political grave. Governor Rick Perry, RTexas, said, “I have no confidence that
he could adeptly lead our nation’s armed
forces. His comments over the weekend
should completely and immediately disqualify him from seeking our nation’s
highest office.” Senator Marco Rubio,
R-Fla., said, “I do think it’s a disqualifier as commander in chief.” Both trail
Trump substantially in the polls.
Trump will, and ought to, take a serious hit in those polls after his McCain
idiocy. But he will not go
Ben
Shapiro
down this easily. That’s because Trump
exemplifies two qualities many Republican voters seek: brashness and an unwillingness to back down in the face of
critics.
TRUMP’S BRASHNESS is both
his blessing and his curse — but unlike Spider-Man, Trump seems unable
to comprehend that with great power
comes great responsibility. He says
foolish things, and then refuses to back
down from them. But that stubbornness
seems to act as a counterweight to his
brashness, in an odd way: Conservatives hungry for an unapologetic candidate resonate to Trump, even if he
should apologize for his latest tomfoolery. Trump puts himself in a position to
draw fire from both the establishment
Republicans and the media; when he
draws that fire, even for good reason,
the base leaps to his defense.
Even better for Trump, his long history of making inane comments means
that it will be tough for any one comment to finish him. Like Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, Trump is so
flawed a candidate that it’s difficult to
tell where the fatal flaw may lie. In such
a scenario, flaws become assets. Trump
has shifted his positions? Sure, but he’s
done so constantly — he’s a man of the
moment, many believe, and thus we can
believe whatever nostrum falls from his
lips now. Trump has engaged in corrupt
dealings? Sure, but he’s so rich that he
won’t need to take payoffs, unlike those
he’s already paid off. Trump never shuts
up? Well, at least he won’t shut up when
told to by those in power.
UPPER ECHELON Republicans
make a mistake in disqualifying Trump.
Democrats never do this: Hillary won’t
call Bernie Sanders unfit for office, or
vice versa. Trump will undoubtedly
disqualify himself eventually, as well
he should. Republicans can either learn
from Trump’s better qualities while discarding his worse ones, or they can try
to destroy Trump as quickly as possible.
The first strategy would be useful, the
second wildly counterproductive. Unfortunately, as usual, the Republicans
seem to be pursuing the worst possible
option.
only by Hispanic young men, one-third
of whom do not complete high school.
Latinas, especially those in recently arrived families, often live in poverty and
without health insurance.
“ANOTHER PIECE of the puzzle is
how to address the complication of very
early, usually unmarried motherhood.
Religious beliefs in Hispanic families
often limit sex education and rule out
abortion. Federal statistics show that
about 24 percent of Latinas are mothers
by the age of 20 — three times the rate
of non-Hispanic white teens. ... One in
four women in the United States will be
Hispanic by the middle of the century.
The time to help is now.”
Dr. Anna Sanchez performs deliveries
at a hospital in Orange, California, where
the mothers are often Hispanic teenagers. She says: “(The) teens’ parents view
having babies outside of marriage as
normal, too. A lot of the grandmothers
are single as well; they never married,
or they had successive partners. So the
mom sends the message to her daughter that it’s OK to have children out of
wedlock. ... The girls aren’t marrying the
guys, so they are married to the state.”
Married to the state?
City Journal’s Mac Donald, in a 2006
article called “Hispanic Family Values?
Runaway Illegitimacy is Creating a New
U.S. Underclass,” writes: “Hispanics
now dominate the federal Women, Infants, And Children free food program;
Hispanic enrollment grew over 25 percent from 1996 to 2002, while black enrollment dropped 12 percent and white
enrollment dropped 6.5 percent. Illegal
immigrants can get WIC and other welfare programs for their American-born
children.”
“The Latino Education Crisis” authors Gandara and Contreras fear a “permanent underclass.” They write, “With
no evidence of an imminent turnaround
in the rate at which Latino students are
either graduating from high school or
obtaining college degrees, it appears that
both a regional and national catastrophe
are at hand.”
City Journal’s Mac Donald quotes
Anita Berry, a case manager who works
at Casa Teresa, a California program for
homeless single mothers. Berry says:
“There’s nothing shameful about having
multiple children that you can’t care for,
and to be pregnant again, because then
you can blame the system. ... The problems are deeper and wider. Now you’re
getting the second generation of foster
care and group home residents. The dysfunction is multigenerational.”
WHETHER THIS can be turned
around remains to be seen. But it certainly casts doubt on the Times’ blissful assertion that “a young Latino workforce
(will help) the economy.”
22
Medical monsters vs. life-giving angels
Another week, another moneygrubbing Planned Parenthood babyparts harvester exposed.
In the second devastating installment of a three-year journalism investigation, the Center for Medical Progress on Monday released undercover
video of another top abortion industry
doctor haggling over the sale of “intact” unborn baby parts.
LAST WEEK, the Center for Medical Progress introduced us to wineswilling Dr. Deborah Nucatola — a
veritable Hannibal-ina Lecter who
gushed about the growing demand for
aborted baby hearts and livers as she
jibed and imbibed.
This week’s clip features stonefaced, bespectacled Dr. Mary Gatter
— an Ice Queen who chillingly negotiated $100-per-specimen price tags for
organs she promised would be high
quality as a result of “less crunchy”
methods of dismembering innocent
human life. Gatter, the medical director of the abortion empire’s Pasadena
and San Gabriel offices in California,
dryly joked that she wanted a “Lamborghini” for her troubles — after a
prolonged session spouting obligatory
talking points disclaiming a profit motive.
Cecile Richards, president of
Planned Butcherhood, issued a feckless apology last week for the “tone”
of Nucatola’s grisly business-lunch
banter.
What will her excuse be for Gatter? Did the tone elves forget to fill her
stocking, too?
The fundamental problem with
these licensed medical providers, who
greedily have turned the “primum non
nocere” creed on its head under the
guise of “reproductive services,” is not
their defective tenor. It’s their defective souls.
With more barbaric video of the
Planned Butcherhood racket undoubtedly yet to come, it is worth pausing
from this avalanche of evil to remind
the nation that there are thousands of
miracle workers in the health care industry who value life and honor their
professional oath to first do no harm.
I know this firsthand as the proud
daughter of a neonatologist who dedicated his life to using his medical training to save lives, not destroy them.
Nowhere is the sanctity of life more
vividly illustrated than in a NICU. A
father in Texas wrote me with his own
personal story and wanted me to share
his message:
“I read your piece (last week) regarding the monstrous doctor from
Planned Parenthood. Though I have
tried, I really cannot grasp the horror
of the PP abattoirs or the blackness of
the souls that labor within.
“I want to tell you this, because I
“I want to tell you about my family’s encounter with another place that want to tell you about a very bright
shines in this world,
is the antithesis of the Planned Parent- light that
but
it
shines behind the
hood slaughterhouse.
wall of privacy
“My wife and
and
quarantine
I had the great
that is a necessary
misfortune three
function of NICU
years ago of findlife. The six neoing
ourselves
natologists and
with two beautiful but tiny children in the Level 3 all of the amazing nurses who cared
NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) for our children are some of the finat the Woman’s Hospital of Texas in est, most decent, devoted and caring
people I have ever encountered.
Houston.
“They work tirelessly to save every
“OUR BEAUTIFUL daughter life, to give every child in their care as
spent the first five months of her life much of a chance as possible, and they
there, and our brave son spent the en- truly do care for the ‘least of these.’
They go to work every day in a place
tirety of his life there, all 44 days.
Michelle
Malkin
where, in spite of all their efforts, tiny
children pass away in their care. They
are people who deserve to have the
veil lifted from their works.
“I am sharing this with you as answer to the final paragraph of your
moving piece. You ask what kind of a
country we live in? I want you to know
that we also live in a country that God
has truly blessed with these amazing
souls and hundreds more like them:
Dr. Alagappan Alagappan, Dr. Talat
Ahmed, Dr. Salim Bharwani, Dr. William Caplan, Dr. Peter Haney and Dr.
David Simchowitz.
“IN THE FACE of evil, it is easy to
see only the darkness. There are lights
burning still.”
REPUBLICANS: July 16, 2015
The dog days of summer
T
he ancient Romans coined the
phrase “dog days” based on the
period of time that the brightest
star (Sirius, the Dog Star) rose and set in
conjunction with the sun. The Romans
believed that Sirius radiated heat to the
Earth, causing the hottest part of the year
as it traveled with the sun.
The date range for the annual “dogday” period varies based on the source.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac refers to the
40-day period that begins July 3 and ends
August 11. The 1552 Book of Common
Prayer refers to the period from July 6 to
August 17. Many references extend the
“dog-day” period into September.
THE DOG DAYS are popularly believed to be a time of agitation and unruly behavior. This past week’s news
stories provide a glimpse into current
sources of high levels of agitation: the
Greek debt crisis, potential Federal Reserve rate hikes, technical issues at the
NYSE, hacking into government data,
airlines being grounded and more. A
lot of these activities appear to signify
movement, but not movement forward.
In politics, too, there is frenetic activity, with polls reporting rapidly changing
standing on the Republican side of the
action.
“Trump secured 17 percent support,
according to the Suffolk University/
USA Today survey. Former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush garnered 14 percent, while the
rest of the 2016 field remained in single
digits: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the
newest entrant to the race, was at eight
percent; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at six percent; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at five
percent; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at
four percent; and New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie at three percent,” wrote Theodore Schleifer on CNN.com on July 14.
“And about one-third of GOP voters —
30 percent — remain undecided about
who they will back.”
Though we all know that polls often
do not reflect final votes, they appear
to be playing a larger role than normal
among the Republicans gearing up for
the 2016 presidential election.
This year, the RNC announced it has
scaled back the debate process, to
“limit the number of debates,
Jackie
Gingrich
Cushman
spread the debates across the country by
sanctioning no more than one debate per
state, allocate the debates over the course
of seven months, include a larger conservative media presence and allow campaigns to know and plan for the debate
schedule early.”
THE GOAL: to protect the eventual
Republican nominee and to gain more
control over the process. According to a
Jan. 16 Politico article by James Hohmann and Alex Isenstadt, the changes went
beyond limiting the number of debates.
“To give their push to control the debate
process teeth, the party announced Friday that any candidate who participates
in a debate that isn’t sanctioned by the
RNC will not be allowed to participate
in any more sanctioned debates,” they
wrote. “A question clouding the effort
has been whether media organizations
and cash-strapped candidates desperate for free airtime would go forward
with unofficial debates, undercutting the
whole process.”
This week the New Hampshire
Union Leader, the leading newspaper
in the state, posted this announcement
on its website: “A Voters First Forum
for Republican presidential candidates,
co-sponsored by the New Hampshire
Union Leader and leading newspapers
in Iowa and South Carolina, will be
held on Monday evening, Aug. 3, at the
New Hampshire Institute of Politics at
St. Anselm College. It will be broadcast nationally by C-SPAN as well as
by sponsoring Iowa and South Carolina
TV stations.”
Will there be repercussions from the
RNC for those candidates who participate? After all, it is a forum, not a debate. Candidate-friendly super PACs are
getting into the game early to make sure
their candidates have a chance to participate in the sanctioned debate.
As Nicholas Confessore wrote this
week in the New York Times about the
super PAC supporting former Gov.
Rick Perry of Texas, “The super PACs,
known as Opportunity and Freedom,
are investing hundreds of thousands of
dollars in advertising on the Fox News
Channel and other cable channels to
raise Mr. Perry’s profile.”
“We’ve always sort of viewed his
announcement though the debate as a
phase one,” said Austin Barbour, adviser to the super PACs backing Perry. “We
want to do everything we can do to begin the reintroduction to voters in Iowa,
particularly, but also help him qualify
for the first debate.”
IT WILL BE interesting to watch
the interplay of the RNC, national polls,
super PACs and campaigns during the
remaining dog days of summer — the
agitation and unruly behaviors have just
begun!
23
July 29, 2015
Trump’s attack on McCain will be one he will regret
R
eal estate tycoon Donald believe kind imagined by young Trump.
Trump has a serious problem And for his heroic bravery, never once
with American war heroes. He buckling and giving the enemy the insays he doesn’t like them if they were formation they wanted, he was awarded
captured.
a Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart
The New York billionaire said so last and Distinguished Flying Cross.
week about one of our most famous war
McCain was elected congressman,
heroes, Arizona Sen. John McCain, who t h e n
U.S. senator, and in
was taken pris2008 the Republican
oner during the
Party
nominated
Vietnam War afhim for president.
ter his Skyhawk
But
now
dive bomber was
Trump, who has an
(c) 2015, United Media Services
blown out of the
ego the size of the
air over Hanoi, shattering his arms and Grand Canyon and an embarrassing hisone of his legs.
tory of making exaggerated statements,
His parachute landed him in a lake, decided to go after John McCain during
where Vietnamese soldiers dragged him a presidential campaign speech in Iowa.
to shore and took him to a prisoner of
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said
war camp called “the plantation.”
flat-out last week. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that
MCCAIN WAS thrown into a small, weren’t captured.”
filthy, windowless cell, beaten, starved
What is Trump saying here? That
and tortured during the more than five America’s warriors who were captured
years of his imprisonment. A cellmate in combat — as tens of thousands were
told him later that he wasn’t expected in World War II — are not true heroes?
to live. But he survived, and on March
That our best and bravest soldiers who
14, 1973, returned to the United States, fought for their country, bled, lost limbs
a virtual cripple barely held up by his and returned physically broken, were not
crutches.
true heroes because they had been capDuring this same time, Trump, who tured?
had graduated from the Wharton Business School, was working for his father’s
IT WAS A STUPID, ignorant, insenreal estate firm, collecting rent from low- sitive and thoughtless remark — unbeincome families along several blocks of coming any candidate for the presidency
New York.
of the United States who wants to be takIn his autobiography about that pe- en seriously and is seen as someone who
riod, Trump wrote, “Suddenly here I was carefully chooses his words. A candidate
in a scene that was violent at worst and who understands that a wrong or careless
unpleasant at best.”
reply can get our country into war or furBut McCain encountered real vio- ther enflame a delicate national security
lence in North Vietnam, not the make- issue.
Donald
Lambro
Is this the kind of president we want
speaking for our country? Someone who
doesn’t think before he shoots off his
mouth?
Trump isn’t backing away from his
remarks. When ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz asked him on Sunday’s This Week program if he thought he
should apologize to McCain, Mr. Straight
Talker replied, “No, not at all.”
Instead, Trump sought to change the
subject by accusing McCain of having
“done nothing” for veterans. When she
read statements from veterans leaders
who condemned Trump, he said, “Well,
maybe they don’t speak to the same vets
that I speak to.”
Trump’s political style of combat —
and the reason that he gives for his latest attack on McCain — sounds like a
schoolboy’s excuse for name-calling.
He said, for example, that he became
angry when he read that McCain, in a
New Yorker interview, called his supporters a bunch of “crazies.”
When asked by Raddatz if he intends
calling people he disagrees with a “loser”
or “dummy,” he said, “Look, when people attack me, I let them have it back.”
“You know ... people are constantly
attacking my hair. I don’t see you coming to my defense.” Then he continued to
call McCain “a dummy.”
Politics is in some ways a verbal contact sport that can get rough at times, but
the trick is to appear “presidential” and
tough at the same time — and Trump
can’t quite get the hang of it.
Ronald Reagan was a master at the
game when he was running against President Carter. Reagan kept saying that the
economy was in a recession, as Carter’s
advisers said Reagan didn’t even know
the definition of a true recession.
“Well, if it’s definition they want, I’ll
give ‘em one,” he said at a rally launching
his fall campaign. “A recession is when
your neighbor loses his job. A depression
is when you lose your job, and recovery
is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
For Reagan, it was a soft one, two,
three punch, but it knocked Carter out of
the ring.
Trump has moved to the front of the
GOP primary race, with 24 percent in the
latest Washington Post/ABC poll, followed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
(13 percent) and former Florida governor
Jeb Bush (12 percent), with all the others
in single digits.
But it’s early yet, and Trump’s opponents are going to be reminding Republicans, especially veterans and our soldiers
here and abroad, about The Donald’s
remark that John McCain is “not a war
hero.”
A PERSONAL attack can get you
only so far in presidential politics, but
then it can turn against you and bite you
in the behind. Attacking one of America’s true war heroes will likely result in
a very big bite.
24
FIRST AMENDMENT: July 22, 2015
Defend the Little Sisters of the Poor — and liberty
N
o group in the United States every “affected individual” on your plan.
The third: You can turn your back on
today is making a stronger
stand for liberty than the Little what you sincerely believe is your moral
Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic obligation to provide health-care covernuns dedicated to running nursing homes age to your employees and not provide
it.
But
then, in addition to surfor the elderly poor.
ing your conscience
Every friend of freedom should rally renderto the government,
to their cause.
you must pay a fine
The
federal
of $2,000 per emgovernment is now
ployee.
seeking to deny
The fourth: You
these sisters free(c) 2015, Creators Syndicate
can sign a governdom of conscience.
It has already taken its case against their ment form directing the third-party adliberty all the way through the U.S. Court ministrator of your self-insured healthcare plan to provide your employees
of Appeal for the 10th Circuit.
If the government succeeds, it means directly with coverage for sterilizations,
Catholic nuns in this country can no lon- contraceptives and abortion-inducing
ger freely exercise their Catholic faith. drugs and devices.
And the fifth: You can provide HHS
They must be complicit — at the government’s command — in a plan that will with the information it would need to
direct your third-party administrator to
destroy innocent human lives.
provide your employees with coverage
THE DEPARTMENT of Health and for sterilizations, contraceptives and
Human Services has offered the sisters a abortion-inducing drugs and devices.
The one choice HHS will not give the
series of choices — none of which they
can accept without violating their sin- Little Sisters is the one President Barack
cere, and correct, understanding of Cath- Obama repeatedly and mendaciously
promised Americans they would have
olic moral teachings.
The first choice the government has if Congress enacted the Affordable Care
offered is: You must provide health in- Act: “If you like your health care plan,
surance to your employees that covers you can keep your health care plan.”
The government has argued in court
sterilizations, contraceptives and aborthat the Little Sisters should not comtion-inducing drugs and devices.
The second: You can provide insur- plain about choices four and five because
ance for your employees that does not their self-insurance plan is the Christian
cover these things. But then, as punish- Brothers self-insurance plan and a Chrisment for practicing your faith, you must tian Brothers organization is also the
pay a penalty equal to $100 per day for third-party administrator. If the sisters
Terry
Jeffrey
or the government ordered the Christian
Brothers to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs
and devices for the sisters’ employees,
the Christian Brothers, like the Little Sisters, would refuse.
BUT UNLIKE the Little Sisters,
whose nonprofit nursing homes are not
considered fully exempted “religious employers” by the government, the Christian Brothers are currently exempted.
As the Little Sisters and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have pointed
out, however, this does not remove the
sisters’ moral objection to bowing to a
government command that they actively
participate in the government’s plan —
even if that participation does not ultimately achieve the government’s desired
result—to distribute sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs
and devices to those enrolled in the sisters’ health-care plan.
“[T]he Little Sisters have been crystal
clear that their beliefs prevent them from
taking ‘any action that would participate
in facilitating access to abortifacients,
contraceptives, or sterilization,” the sisters’ lawyers explained to the appeals
court.
“This is necessary not only to prevent
complicity in grave sin, but also to avoid
even appearing to condone wrongdoing,
which would violate the Little Sisters’
public witness to the sanctity of human
life and could mislead other Catholics
and the public,” the lawyers told the
court. “Such scandal would itself be sinful and would undermine the Little Sisters’ ability to carry out their ministry.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops unambiguously backs the Little
Sisters in their stand.
“Significantly, the Little Sisters’ religious objection does not turn on whether
the third party administrator receiving
the form actually follows through and
provides the objectionable coverage,” the
bishops told the court in their own brief.
“Appellants object generally to taking
any action that ‘authorize[s] anyone to
arrange or make payments for contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacients,’
— even if the third party administrator
ultimately has the discretion not to provide such payments — and specifically
to ‘[d]eliver[ing] the self-certification
form to another organization that could
then rely on it as an authorization to deliver those contraceptives, sterilization,
and abortifacients to the Little Sisters’
employees now or in the future.
“In short,” said the bishops, “Appellants ‘cannot participate in the government’s scheme without violating their
sincere and undisputed religious beliefs.”
This month, the majority of a threejudge panel on the appeals court ruled
against the sisters. But the Little Sisters
of the Poor are not backing down.
Meanwhile, under the government’s
existing regulatory scheme, almost all
Catholic parents in the United States
must ultimately get a health-insurance
plan that would provide cost-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and
abortion-inducing drugs and devices to
their own daughters.
Do Americans have a God-given right
not to participate in government plans
and regulations that provide drugs and
devices that take innocent life?
CAN GOVERNMENT force us all
to be complicit in the killing?
This is a fight for our own — and our
nation’s — soul.
25
July 29, 2015
MEDICARE: July 22, 2015
President Obama kneecaps Granny again
E
verybody knows if you don’t seniors are getting these operations.
pay to repair your car, you limit When the subject of hip replacements
its life. The same is true with came up in a 2009 town hall meeting, he
human beings. We need medical care to said “maybe you’re better off not having
the surgery but taking the pain
avoid becoming clunkers.
killer.”
For a half cenScience proves
tury, Medicare has
the president is
enabled seniors to
wrong.
Seniors
get that care. But
with severe arthrinow the Obama
tis who opt for
administration is
knee replacement
pressuring hospitals to skimp. Last week, the administra- are 50 percent more likely to still be alive
tion announced the largest-ever change in seven years later than seniors who don’t.
how Medicare pays for care. The change, Pain and immobility are killers.
Medicare is moving from paying doccalled “bundled payments,” is the latest
tors and hospitals for each item and sertrick to squeeze care from seniors.
vice to the new system in January 2016
BUNDLING WILL make it finan- in 75 regions of the country, one quarter
cially risky for hospitals in New York, of the number expected to get hip and
Los Angeles, and many other areas of the knee replacements each year.
country to do hip and knee replacements.
HOSPITALS IN these areas will
These are the two procedures that have
transformed the experience of aging, al- have to settle for a flat fee for all the care
a knee or hip replacement patient might
lowing seniors to stay active.
But President Obama says too many need — including surgery, pain killers,
Betsy
McCaughey
hospital stays, rehabilitation and home
care — regardless of how things go. If
there are complications, the hospital and
doctors lose out. Hospitals will have to
cut corners, and avoid the costliest patients altogether. So if you’ve been considering getting a hip or knee replacement, do it before January.
HISTORY: July 22, 2015
Historical ignorance II
W
e call the war of 1861
the Civil War. But is that
right? A civil war is a
struggle between two or more entities
trying to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take
over Washington, D.C., than George
Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776
and 1861, were wars of independence.
Such a recognition does not require
one to sanction the horrors of slavery.
We might ask, How much of the war
was about slavery?
WAS PRESIDENT Abraham Lincoln really for outlawing slavery? Let’s
look at his words. In an 1858 letter, Lincoln said, “I have declared a thousand
times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the General Government,
nor any other power outside of the slave
states, can constitutionally or rightfully
interfere with slaves or slavery where
it already exists.” In a Springfield, Illinois, speech, he explained: “My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot
be misunderstood. I have said that I do
not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were
created equal in all respects.” Debating
Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, “I
am not, nor ever have been, in favor of
making voters or jurors of Negroes nor
of qualifying them to hold office nor
to intermarry with white people; and
I will say in addition to this that there
is a physical difference between the
white and black races, which I believe
will forever forbid the two races living
together on terms of social and political equality.”
What about Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation? Here are his words:
“I view the matter (of slaves’ emancipation) as a practical war measure,
to be decided upon according
to
the advantages or disadvan-
Walter
Williams
tages it may offer to the suppression of
the rebellion.” He also wrote: “I will
also concede that emancipation would
help us in Europe, and convince them
that we are incited by something more
than ambition.” When Lincoln first
drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union. London and
Paris were considering recognizing the
Confederacy and assisting it in its war
against the Union.
THE EMANCIPATION Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It
specifically detailed where slaves were
to be freed: only in those states “in
rebellion against the United States.”
Slaves remained slaves in states not
in rebellion — such as Ky., Md., Del.
and Mo. The hypocrisy of the Eman-
cipation Proclamation came in for
heavy criticism. Lincoln’s own secretary of state, William Seward, sarcastically said, “We show our sympathy
with slavery by emancipating slaves
where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set
them free.”
Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily
endorsed by the Confederacy: “Any
people anywhere, being inclined and
having the power, have the right to
rise up and shake off the existing
government and form a new one that
suits them better. ... Nor is this right
confined to cases in which the whole
people of an existing government may
choose to exercise it. Any portion of
such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of
the territory as they inhabit.” Lincoln
expressed that view in an 1848 speech
in the U.S. House of Representatives,
supporting the war with Mexico and
the secession of Texas.
WHY DIDN’T Lincoln share the
same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help
with an answer. Throughout most of
our nation’s history, the only sources
of federal revenue were excise taxes
and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs
amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of
tariffs in 1859. What “responsible” politician would let that much revenue go?
Ezekiel Emanuel, the president’s
health care advisor, applauds the impending change, promising that “savings
are immediate and guaranteed.” What
savings? Not for you.
Bundled payments will force cuts in
care, not necessarily “savings.” The new
system will set up a conflict of interest
between patients and the very people
they need to trust. Whatever the patient
gets will come off the hospitals bottom
line and out of the doctors’ own pockets
at the end of the year. Provide more for
your patients and get penalized. Withhold care and get rewarded.
Seniors are guinea pigs in this new
scheme. RAND Corporation says there
are no studies to show the impact on
patients. Isn’t that what health care is
supposed to be about? RAND says the
scheme risks putting “pressure on physicians to spend less time with patients or
on hospitals to decrease amenities.”
Lewin Group, health care analysts,
predicts hospitals will scrimp by sending
patients directly home with only a parttime health aide instead of to full-time
rehabilitation at a skilled nursing facility.
Another risk is that hospitals will use
low cost implants instead of allowing
surgeons to opt for newer prosthetics that
give patients more range of movement.
Bundling payments is one of several
ploys to shortchange seniors. In October
2012, Medicare began awarding bonus
points to the hospitals that spend the least
per senior, despite evidence that spending less results in higher death rates.
Americans know Medicare is running
out of money. But it’s better to have an
honest conversation about how to extend its solvency, including raising the
eligibility age and enlisting competition
among private insurers, rather than the
hidden incentives to cut care the Obama
administration is using. Rationing is invisible. Patients won’t know about the
care they should have gotten or how
much less they could have suffered.
BUNDLED PAYMENTS, like other
perverse incentives buried in Obamacare,
destroy Medicare as we’ve known it.
26
SOCIALISM: July 18, 2015
Governments turn to socialism even though it always fails
A
f ew years ago, the prestigious economic publication Journal of Economic
Literature dubbed the period from
1980-2005 “the age of Milton Friedman.” The article described this era of
greater reliance on free markets and
privatization, which the Nobel laureate
economist Friedman advocated, as arguably the period of greatest economic
advance for mankind in world history.
IT WOULD BE hard to argue
against that. As freedom and free markets were on the march, more than one
billion people worldwide, mostly in
China and India, were moved out of
poverty. Tens of trillions of dollars of
new wealth were created worldwide.
But the past decade could be described as the comeback of socialism.
In response to the financial crisis, nations foolheartedly turned to central
governments to steer them out of crisis.
Government debt, spending and regulatory activity soared all across Europe
and in the United States. The Keynesian model that sees government welfare
spending as a “stimulus” came storming back in vogue — nowhere more so
than in the United States.
Many countries — Greece, Italy,
Spain, Portugal and France, as well as
the United States — experimented with
quasi-socialist governments. Now, the
bitter price is being paid.
This, more than anything else, explains why the world is twisting in financial turmoil in recent weeks. Not
just Greece, but at least a half a dozen
nations appear to be on the verge of
bankruptcy because they can’t afford
the social welfare states they have, and
the bills are coming due. The socialists
are getting hammered.
Meanwhile, China’s government is
responding to a manufactured stock
market bubble with more promises of
Keynesian monetary and fiscal stimulus — interventions that will work there
as well as they have in Japan and the
United States.
Wall Street is acting as though more
government intervention will calm financial markets, when it is the government’s excessive intervention that created the crises in the first place. Greece
is socialism on steroids — a place
where the government gives a lot of
things away for free, few people work
and millions receive government pensions, paychecks or welfare benefits.
Fifty percent of young people don’t
have a job and over half of Greeks retire
before age 60. The wagon is full and no
one is left to pull it. Now Greece thinks
that the Germans or the EU, or the IMF
or the United States is going to pay for
it all. The crash is coming very soon
and the standard of living in Greece will
surely plummet. Thank you, socialism.
But there are so many more dominoes that could come crashing down.
Almost all of Europe is a financial
sinkhole. The debts as a share of GDP
are 100 percent or more and the public
spending as a share of GDP is now just
shy of 50 percent.
PUNDITS ON the left like Paul
Krugman can only lamely respond to
the Europe meltdown by arguing that
there is “too much austerity” even as
debt loads keep rising every year. The
one nation in Europe that didn’t use
massive Keynesian stimulus, Germany, is the one place where the economy
is still functioning.
Dan Mitchell, an economist at the
libertarian Cato Institute, has noted
that the idea peddled by the Left that
nations like Greece are being ruined by
austerity is one of the great mythologies of modern times. “The nations in
the most economic trouble,” he says,
“tend to be the ones that have jacked
up their government spending and debt
the most.”
Even in the U.S., socialism is failing. Connecticut is the Greece of the
East Coast. It keeps raising taxes and
spending, and the state is in perpetual insolvency. The same can be said
of Detroit, Chicago and several California cities that can’t pay their bills.
Puerto Rico is a socialist welfare state,
and it may need to go into receivership
to pay off tens of billions of unpayable
debt.
We are now entering a new era
of global finance when government
bonds — sovereign debt — will be defaulted on because there is no one left
to pay the bills and no one to bail them
out. The poor will get poorer, and the
middle class will fall behind — the opposite of what socialism promises to
deliver.
Shortly before he died in 2006, Milton Friedman lamented: “The enduring
lesson of the 20th century is that socialism is a failure, and free markets
are a success. But the politicians keep
advocating just a little more socialism.”
THAT IS precisely what is ailing
the world economy today.
Guest columnist Stephen Moore is
a distinguished visiting fellow at the
Heritage Foundation and author of
Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
THE LEFT: July 21, 2015
The return of the 1960s
And so, as the 1968 election draws
nearer ...
I know — some of you are thinking
that I meant to write 2016 but fouled
up my typing.
Nope.
Though the calendar year we live in
is 2015, in spirit the moment closely resembles the 1960s. Maybe it is the ‘60s.
Maybe, like Bill Murray in Groundhog
Day, we awaken each morning to find
ourselves living in a long-gone decade,
with Sonny and Cher providing musical accompaniment.
THE NOTION took on more flesh
over the weekend with the outbreak,
in Phoenix, of a patented ‘60s-style
event — the shouting down of a presidential candidate by a mob of yahoos.
I call the mobsters yahoos despite the
pass they earn from many for “demonstrating while black.” The mobsters
wanted tried and (I had supposed) bona
fide lefty, ex-Maryland Gov. Martin
O’Malley, to join them in vowing to
dismantle “structural racism.” So they
took over the stage of a way, way leftwing gathering where O’Malley was
speaking.
“We’re going to hold this space,”
a spokesmobster said, representing
the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “We are going to acknowledge
the names of black women who have
died in police custody.” And what was
O’Malley, a Democratic presidential
candidate, going to do about it? He was
going to dither, that’s what. After some
harmless preliminaries, he picked up
the trademark slogan, “Black lives
matter,” to which he added, “White
lives matter. All lives matter.” The mob
wasn’t buying it. Shouting and chanting ensued.
Care for a chant sample? “If I die in
police custody, burn everything down!
That’s the only way,” and here I adopt
CNN’s transliteration, “motherf-----like you listen!”
Even good old ultra-lefty Bernie
Sanders, who followed O’Malley, encountered what a reporter called “sporadic shouting.” He took it in stride.
Not so O’Malley, who unburdened
himself to the digital news site This
Week in Blackness. Dragging in “white
lives” and “all lives” had been
a huge mistake.
William
Murchison
“I meant no disrespect,” he said.
“I did not understand the tremendous
passion, commitment and feeling and
depth of feeling that all of us should be
attaching to this issue.”
NO, OF COURSE not! But if this is
the ‘60s all over again, you have to expect disruptions of civic order. That’s
the first thing. The second thing is: if
you’re in O’Malley’s position, facing
Authentic Protest, you apologize to
the protestors. You apologize because
you’re a wimp and a weakling and
care less about free speech and civic
processes than you do about being in
sync with the times. We saw it all in
the ‘60s.
Bernie Sanders sure did. Being of
that vintage himself, Bernie knew
how far not to push the mobsters; how
smilingly to hear out their “rage.” Everybody in the ‘60s raged. Bernie, 26
years old in 1968, was no bad hand at
it himself. To find the mobs gathering anew and carrying on as in the old
days must bring nostalgic tears to his
73-year-old eyes.
These aren’t good times for unSanders, non-O’Malley types. But, oh,
what great times for self-appointed
warriors against an American order
that is supposedly racist, homophobic,
sexist, jingoistic — all that terrible
stuff the ‘60s worked to root out.
While American negotiators bend to
the demands of Iranian mullahs, and
demands go forth, uncontradicted, for
junking the post-1865 reconciliation
worked out by Yankees and ex-Confederates, free speech and free exercise
of religion come under assault. Why?
Because of the protections and immunities they supposedly afford un-Sanders, non-O’Malley — and non-mobster
— types.
Everywhere today, it would seem,
there is the stench of the 1960s, when
reason and manners and tolerance took
a backseat to anger and destructive
impulses. The upcoming presidential
campaign provides opportunity for
improvement (if not recovery), but the
O’Malley debacle and all the noxious
Trumpery into which Republican aspirations have fallen in recent days do
not, frankly, inspire confidence.
A BUNCH of nuts are on the loose
in this historical moment — as they
were in that nutty, emotionally ugly,
fog-brained decade 40-odd years ago.
I had hoped we’d left all that behind.
Alas.
27
July 29, 2015
The fact-free left: Not testing their assumptions
T
he outrage over another mul- pirically their beliefs or assumptions.
tiple murder of American mili- There have been careful factual studtary personnel on American ies by various scholars of what happens
soil by another Islamic extremist has after gun control laws have been instibeen exacerbated by the fact that these tuted, strengthened or reduced.
B u t
those studies are
military people had been ordered to be
seldom even menunarmed — and
tioned by gun
therefore sitting
control
activists.
ducks.
Somehow they just
Millions
of
know that gun
American civil(c) 2015, Creators Syndicate
restrictions
reians have also
duce gun crime,
been forbidden to
have guns, and are also sitting ducks — no matter how many studies show the
opposite. How do they know? Because
for criminals, terrorists or psychos.
You might think that, before having other like-minded people say so — and
laws or policies forcing fellow human say so repeatedly and loudly.
A few gun control advocates may
beings to be defenseless targets, those
who support such laws and policies cherry-pick examples of countries with
would have some factual basis for be- stronger gun control laws than ours that
lieving that these gun restrictions save have lower murder rates (such as Engmore lives, on net balance, than allow- land) — and omit other countries with
ing more legal access to firearms. But stronger gun control laws than ours that
have far higher murder rates (such as
you would be wrong.
Mexico, Russia and Brazil).
You don’t test an assumption or beMOST GUN control zealots show
not the slightest interest in testing em- lief by cherry-picking examples. Not if
Thomas
Sowell
you are serious. And if you are not going to be serious about life and death,
when are you going to be serious?
Unfortunately, gun control is just one
of many issues on which the political
left shows no real interest in testing their
assumptions or beliefs. The left glorifies
the 1960s as a turning point in American
life. But they show no interest in testing
whether things turned for the better or
for the worse.
HOMICIDE RATES had been going down substantially, for decades on
end — among both blacks and whites —
until the 1960s. Plotted on a graph, there
The haters of ‘all lives matter’
B
ack in March, the pundits expressed horror at the alleged
extremism of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
On ABC, NPR correspondent Cokie
Roberts insisted “I think the person
that won at CPAC was John Kasich. He
didn’t show up, and I think that’s the
wisest thing for anybody to do.” ABC
pundit Matthew Dowd bizarrely suggested Ronald Reagan would be booed
at today’s CPAC.
ON NBC, they found peril for Scott
Walker after his speech: “Governor’s
gaffe? ... Presidential hopeful Scott
Walker under fire for saying his experience with union protesters has prepared
him to take on ISIS. Is it the first major
blunder of the presidential race?”
On PBS, “conservative” pundit David Brooks said “There’s conservatives
... and then way over on the other side
of the room is CPAC ... this is like the
hardest of the hardcore.”
But when the hardest of the hardcore
left met in Phoenix for Netroots Nation, the networks didn’t see a problem,
when socialist Bernie Sanders actually
gets bum-rushed off the stage early for
not being leftist enough. ABC, CBS and
NBC couldn’t locate that story.
It looked like the raucous, out-ofcontrol George McGovern 1972 Democratic convention as protesters hijacked
interviews with Sanders and Martin
O’Malley. Before the protest, it was
already an extreme show. Their interviewer was Jose Antonio Vargas, the
former Washington Post reporter and
undocumented alien who’s hosting a
new “white privilege” documentary on
MTV.
O’Malley allegedly made a massive
error by asserting that not just black
lives matter, but “all lives matter.” He
was immediately pressed to apologize
by the radical left, who think it’s heinous to insist that black lives aren’t the
most precious ... and the most endangered.
Brent
Bozell
THESE ACTIVISTS don’t mean
black lives are the most at risk from
gang warfare, drug addiction, or from
abortion clinics. They only mean it as
a rhetorical war on our nation’s police
forces. O’Malley didn’t turn the event
into a melee by insisting “police lives
matter.”
On MSNBC, the nut-roots channel,
Caroline Heldman of Occidental College (an Obama alma mater) spoke for
the protesters: “We live in a white supremacy system where we place more
value on white lives. It is empirically
proven time and time again.”
The left assaulted O’Malley as “tone
deaf” for insisting that all lives matter,
but they are the ones that don’t realize
most voters see “all lives matter” as the
most reasonable and most humanitarian
slogan. The left is clogging Twitter with
tweets insisting it’s like telling AIDS
activists that all deadly diseases matter.
But if you care about everyone’s health,
that would be the most politically aware
statement.
At what point does the Democratic
party start having problems with white
voters as the radical left wails about
“white supremacy?” Between their
loathing for police and for any attempt
to enforce the immigration laws, these
agitators could revive the “law and order” majority of the 1970s. Mitt Romney won the white vote by 20 points in
2012, which couldn’t offset the massive
minority tilt toward Barack Obama. But
Hillary Clinton is a member of the “oppressor” race, as are Bernie Sanders and
Martin O’Malley.
At least on PBS, the conference came
up briefly, and political analyst Stuart
Rothenberg warned that the Netroots
disruptions could be a “problem” like
the tea party for Democrats. USA Today’s Susan Page agreed Hillary Clinton
“is going to have to deal with a party
that has moved significantly to the left
since her husband ran for president.”
THE LESSON? Never let the media
decide for you where the center is and
where the fringes are. They can’t find
them with both hands.
is a big U-shaped curve, showing the
turnaround after the bright ideas of the
left were applied to criminals in American courts of law in the 1960s.
This was not the only U-shaped
curve, with its low, turnaround point in
the 1960s. The same was true of the venereal disease gonorrhea, whose rate of
infection went down in every year of the
1950s — and then skyrocketed, beginning in the 1960s.
Teenage pregnancies had also been
going down for years, until the late
1960s, when “sex education” was introduced in schools across the country.
Then pregnancy rates rose nearly 50
percent over the next decade, among
girls 15 to 19 years old — exactly the
opposite of what had been predicted by
the left.
Another program that had the opposite effect from its advocates’ claims
was the “war on poverty” program created by President Lyndon Johnson in
1964.
Contrary to what was said during the
celebrations of its 50th anniversary last
year, the loudly proclaimed purpose of
the “war on poverty” was not simply to
transfer money or other benefits to the
poor. Both Presidents John F. Kennedy
and Lyndon Johnson, and their supporters in Congress and in the media, all
clearly stated that the central purpose of
the “war on poverty” was to reduce dependency on government.
Both poverty and dependency on
government had already been declining
for years before this massive program
began. The proportion of people whose
earnings put them below the poverty
level — without counting government
benefits — declined by about one third
from 1950 to 1965.
This was yet another beneficial trend
that reversed itself after another bright
idea of the left was put into practice in
the 1960s. After half a century and trillions of dollars, the only response of the
left has been to change the criteria, so
that now the “war on poverty” could be
portrayed as a success because it proved
that, if you transferred more resources
from X to Y, then Y would now have
more resources. Who could have doubted that?
CHANGING THE goal after the
fact is just one of the ways the left has
portrayed its failures as successes.
28
Why can’t Obama treat Iran as he treats Republicans?
Q
uery: If President Obama’s said. I pray he’s right about that.
What about Obama’s arrogant disnuke deal with Iran is so
wonderful, why do the ma- missal of his critics and claiming this
jor parties in Israel oppose it? Why is the best deal we could have made?
was Obama so excited about making
FIRST, THIS assumes that a tera deal that, based on his previous positions, he would have opposed earlier? rible deal is better than no deal at all,
highly debatable.
This agreement is baffling on multi- which is
Beyond that, let’s
ple grounds, even
look at some of the
for Obama. What
problems with this
is the urgency for
agreement.
the United States
— It is not
to enter into such
clear whether it
a lopsided deal
will allow the
with a rogue nation that doesn’t have a fraction of International Atomic Energy Agency
our negotiating leverage? Why can’t sufficient access to Parchin, the miliObama deal with Iran’s leaders the tary site where Iran is believed to have
way he deals with Republicans? Is he carried out high-explosives work of
trying to validate conspiracy theorists a sort that could be used to detonate
convinced that he’s the Manchurian a nuclear bomb. Iran has consistently
denied the IAEA access to the site. Excandidate?
perts say we won’t be able to properly
HAVE YOU ever noticed that there assess Iran’s activities without comis an inverse relationship between prehensive access to key scientists,
the wisdom of an Obama policy and sites and documentation. The Obama
his defensiveness concerning it? The administration formerly made such acmedia are abuzz over the alleged dis- cess a condition to the deal, but no lonrespect CBS News White House cor- ger. Why not? And if Iran has nothing
respondent Major Garrett showed to hide, why would it play games and
Obama during a news conference. deny access to the IAEA?
— Obama’s team has made numerBut Garrett wasn’t the only person on
whom Obama unloaded. He lashed ous concessions that will most likely
out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin impede the long-term ability of the
Netanyahu and members of Congress IAEA to police the agreement. For instance, Iran could appeal an IAEA rewho oppose the deal.
Obama dared his critics to present quest to visit a questionable site, and
a better alternative and, as usual, im- a decision would take some 24 days,
plied their opposition is not based on during which Iran could remove matethe facts but a matter of political pos- rial and evidence of its activities in vituring and pressure from lobbyists. “I olation of the agreement. Compoundam not betting on the Republican Par- ing the problem is that the agreement
ty rallying behind this agreement,” he gives the decisive vote on Iran’s com-
David
Limbaugh
pliance to the European Union, sort of
like the way Justice Anthony Kennedy
is often the key player in major Supreme Court decisions.
— The administration has had to
backpedal from its initial claim that it
would never approve of a deal unless it
included “anytime/anywhere” inspections of Iranian military and nuclear
sites. Now administration officials insist they never imposed such a condition, though a video recording exposes
their earlier statements.
— In 2013, Obama said Iran doesn’t
need to have an underground fortified facility, a heavy-water reactor or
advanced centrifuges for its peaceful
nuclear energy program, but this deal
permits the country to have all of these.
Just as Obama rewards immigrants
who came here illegally for violating our laws, he is rewarding Iran for
building these facilities in violation of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
— The deal legitimizes Iran as a
nuclear state and will very likely cause
a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,
some evidence of which we’re already
observing. Saudi Arabia is in negotiations to buy nuclear reactors from
France, which could later be converted
to weapons use in the future.
— All economic and financial sanctions against Iran will be removed.
The deal will also lift sanctions on a
general who helped terrorists target
Americans.
— Iran’s nuclear infrastructure
will be preserved, and it will continue
nuclear enrichment on more advantageous terms than we have offered to
our allies. Saudi Arabia has stated that
it will demand similar terms for uranium enrichment.
— None of Iran’s nuclear sites will
be closed, despite our earlier demands
for that.
— Iran’s arms embargo will be lifted.
— Some $150 billion of Iran’s
blocked revenues held in foreign banks
will be unfrozen, and it will be free to
use those funds to sponsor international terrorism, and the Obama administration has admitted as much.
— The deal may delay Iran’s quest
for nuclear weapons capability, but it
won’t stop it.
— Iran has made no pretense of its
ongoing hatred for the United States
and Israel, and its leadership continues
to advocate “death to America.”
Obama could have used our disproportionate negotiating leverage to
condition this deal on Iran’s release of
four fraudulently held American hostages, but he lifted nary a finger to help
them. Obama suggested he cares deeply about these Americans but didn’t
want to conflate this issue with the allimportant nuclear deal. Why not? The
Iranians were certainly able to secure
concessions that had even less to do
with the deal.
Obama desperately wanted this
deal, which is why he unilaterally forfeited our bargaining advantage and
continued to walk back conditions he
had earlier imposed. It is obvious that
Iran was fully aware of Obama’s desperation and exploited it throughout
the negotiations.
THIS DEAL is worse than a disgrace. It’s a national security nightmare.
29
July 29, 2015
FOREIGN POLICY: July 21, 2015
National interests and a Mideast game of thrones
A
s President Obama’s nuclear
deal with Iran is compared to
Richard Nixon’s opening to
China, Bibi Netanyahu must know how
Chiang Kai-shek felt as he watched his
old friend Nixon toasting Mao in Peking.
The Iran nuclear deal is not on the
same geostrategic level. Yet both moves,
seen as betrayals by old U.S. allies, were
born of a cold assessment in Washington
of a need to shift policy to reflect new
threats and new opportunities.
SEVERAL EVENTS contributed to
the U.S. move toward Tehran.
First was the stunning victory in June
2013 of President Hassan Rouhani, who
rode to power on the votes of the Green
Revolution that had sought unsuccessfully to oust Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
2009.
Rouhani then won the Ayatollah’s
authorization to negotiate a cutting and
curtailing of Iran’s nuclear program, in
Saudi Arabia sees Shiite Iran as a
return for a U.S.-U.N. lifting of sanctions. As preventing an Iranian bomb geostrategic rival in the Gulf, allied
had long been a U.S. objective, the with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in
Americans could not spurn such an of- Damascus, the Shiite regime in Iraq
and the Houthis in Yemen. It also sees
fer.
as a subversive threat
Came then the Islamic State’s sei- I r a n
in Bahrain and the
zure of Raqqa in
heavily Shiite oil
Syria, and Mosul
fields of Saudi Araand Anbar in Iraq.
bia itself.
Viciously
antiIndeed,
RiShiite as well as
yadh, with the
anti-American,
Sunni challenge of
ISIS made the U.S.
and Iran de facto allies in preventing ISIS rising, and the Shiite challenge of
Iran growing, and its border states althe fall of Baghdad.
But as U.S. and Iranian interests ready on fire, does indeed face an exisconverged, those of the U.S. and its old tential threat. And, so, too, do the Gulf
allies — Saudi Arabia, Israel and Tur- Arabs.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a
key — were diverging.
Turkey, as it sees Bashar Assad’s al- crown in the Middle East today.
liance with Iran as the greater threat,
THE ISRAELIS, too, see Iran as
and fears anti-ISIS Kurds in Syria will
carve out a second Kurdistan, has been their great enemy and indispensable
pillar of Hezbollah. For Bibi, any U.S.abetting ISIS.
Pat
Buchanan
Selectively arm military personnel
T
he genius of American federalism is at work, in this instance
responding to an international
threat our national government irresponsibly disregards.
Six state governors have done what
the White House and Department of
Defense should have done years ago. In
the wake of the deadly July 16 terror attacks in Chattanooga, Tenn., governors
in Ark., Fla., Ind., La., Okla. and Tex.
have authorized their respective National Guards to bear weapons in order
to better protect themselves and their
installations. Florida’s governor is moving Guard recruiter offices into secured
National Guard facilities.
WHY? THE Chattanooga terrorist,
Mohammad Abdulazeez, launched his
first attack on a recruitment office located
in a strip mall. Then he attacked a Navy
support center, murdering four Marines
and a sailor before an armed policeman
killed him.
Most recruiting stations are in civilian
facilities, and they are soft targets. However, uniformed service members staff
these soft targets, and they are unarmed.
Our terrorist enemies know it. Official Pentagon weapons policy is public
knowledge. That policy is scandalous.
Troops on Army posts remain unarmed,
despite Maj. Nidal Hasan’s November
2009 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas. The
Obama administration still cannot call
that attack what it clearly was: a terror
attack by an Islamist terrorist.
Competent governments arm soldiers
assigned to hazardous duty stations.
That’s because competent governments
take war seriously. The U.S. is still very
much at war with radical Islamist terrorists.
The war’s U.S. domestic front opened
with the 1993 terror attack on the World
Trade Center, though we didn’t accept
this reality until 9/11.
The Obama administration addresses
the terror war with sporadic
seriousness. However, it
Austin
Bay
shies from confronting the terrorist threat
to the domestic front.
In 2009, the Obama administration
declared the Bush administration’s global war on terror defunct. With one burst
of polemic magic, the global war became
an “overseas contingency operation.”
Poof. The war here was done.
YET, TERROR attacks by radical Islamists were attempted in Detroit, New
York and Portland, Ore. Hasan waged
war in Texas, not in Iraq. Since 2009,
including Chattanooga, there have been
nine attacks on U.S. military personnel
that could be classified as terror attacks.
Our terrorist enemies consider every
single American serviceman and woman
to be a legitimate target, no matter where
our soldiers serve. The terrorist war on
us is global.
Was Abdulazeez an Islamist terrorist?
His anguished Arab immigrant parents
say their son was depressed, took drugs.
OK, he was a vulnerable soul. Friends
say he changed after a 2014 visit to Jordan. Now that may lead somewhere.
Other domestic Islamist terrorists had
radical epiphanies in the Middle East.
An FBI report saying Hasan’s terror
guide, the now deceased Anwar al-Awlaki, influenced Abdulazeez via recorded Internet rants is even more incriminating.
In 2009, the Foundation for Defense
of Democracies published “Homegrown
Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K.” Islamist
terrorists were defined as “homegrown”
if they had “spent a significant portion
of their formative years in the West” or
their radicalization had Western connections. The study identified “behavioral changes” that characterize radicalization. Trusting “the interpretations of
a select and ideologically rigid set of religious authorities” (like Awlaki) is one.
No reasonable person can doubt that
Abdulazeez launched a terror attack on
U.S. military personnel on U.S. soil —
so he is a terrorist. If we confirm his
infatuation with violent Islamism, then
reasonable people ought to conclude he
conducted an Islamist-inspired attack.
TERRORISTS LIKE Abdulazeez
will continue to try to kill U.S. military
personnel serving on the domestic front.
For the foreseeable future, recruiters
need to carry sidearms. Officers and senior NCOs should be allowed to selectively carry sidearms on military installations. To do otherwise is folly.
Iran rapprochement is a diplomatic disaster.
Which brings us to a fundamental
question of the Middle East.
Is the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal and our
de facto alliance against ISIS a temporary collaboration? Or is it the beginning of a detente between these ideological enemies of 35 years?
Is an historic “reversal of alliances”
in the Mideast at hand?
Clearly the United States and Iran
have overlapping interests.
Neither wants all-out war with the
other. For the Americans, such a war
would set the Gulf ablaze, halt the flow
of oil, and cause a recession in the West.
For Iran, war with the USA could see
their country smashed and splintered
like Saddam’s Iraq, and the loss of an
historic opportunity to achieve hegemony in the Gulf.
Also, both Iran and the United States
would like to see ISIS not only degraded
and defeated, but annihilated. Both thus
have a vested interest in preventing a
collapse of either the Shiite regime in
Baghdad or Assad’s regime in Syria.
And, thus, Syria is probably where
the next collision is going to come between the United States and its old allies.
For Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel all want the Assad regime brought
down to break up Iran’s Shiite Crescent
and inflict a strategic defeat on Tehran.
But the United States believes the fall
of Assad means the rise of ISIS and al
Qaeda, a massacre of Christians, and
the coming to power of a Sunni terrorist
state implacably hostile to us.
Look for the Saudis and Israelis, their
agents and lobbies, their think tanks
and op-ed writers, to begin beating the
drums for the United States to bring
down Assad, who has been “killing his
own people.”
The case will be made that this is the
way for America to rejoin its old allies,
removing the principal obstacle to our
getting together and going after ISIS.
Once Assad is gone, the line is already
being moved, then we can all go after
ISIS. But, first, Assad.
What is wrong with this scenario?
A U.S. no-fly zone, for example, to
stop Assad’s barrel bombs, would entail
attacks on Syrian airfields and antiaircraft missiles and guns. These would be
acts of war, which would put us into a
de facto alliance with the al Qeida Nusra
Front and ISIS, and invite retaliations
against Americans by Hezbollah in Beirut, and the Shiite militia in Baghdad.
ANY U.S.-IRAN rapprochement
would be dead, and we will have been
sucked into a war to achieve the strategic goals of allies that are in conflict
with the national interests of the United
States. And our interests come first.
30
The Republican’s difficult Iran dilemma
F
rom first reactions, it appears
that Hill Republicans will be
near unanimous in voting a
resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal.
They will then vote to override President Obama’s veto of their resolution.
And if the GOP fails there, Gov. Scott
Walker says his first act as president
would be to kill the deal.
But before the party commits to abrogating the Iran deal in 2017, the GOP
should consider whether it would be
committing suicide in 2016.
FOR EVEN if Congress votes to
deny Obama authority to lift U.S. sanctions on Iran, the U.S. will vote to lift
sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.
And Britain, France, Germany, Russia
and China, all parties to the deal, will
also lift sanctions.
A Congressional vote to kill the Iran
deal would thus leave the U.S. isolated,
its government humiliated, unable to
comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the
United States with egg all over its face?
And if Congress refuses to honor the
agreement, but Iran complies with all its
terms, who among our friends and allies
would stand with an obdurate America
then?
Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?
And as foreign companies raced to
Iran, and U.S. companies were told to
stay out, what would GOP presidential
candidates tell the business community?
Would the party campaign in 2016 on
a pledge to get tough and impose new
sanctions? “Coercive diplomacy,” the
Wall Street Journal calls it.
If so, what more would they demand that Iran do? And what would
they threaten Iran with, if she replied:
We signed a deal. We will honor it. But
we will make no new concessions under
U.S. threat.
Would we bomb Iran? Would we
go to war? Not only would Americans
divide on any such action, the world
would unite — against us.
And would a Republican president
really bomb an Iran that was scrupulously honoring the terms of the John
Kerry deal? What would we bomb? All
the known Iran nuclear facilities will be
crawling with U.N. inspectors.
“Either the issue of Iran obtaining
a nuclear weapons is resolved diplomatically through negotiation or it’s
resolved through force,” said the president, “Those are the options.”
Is that not pretty much where we are
at, even if the GOP does not like it?
Republicans seem to be unable to
grasp the changes that have taken place
in this century. With the Arab Spring,
the fall of half a dozen regimes, the
rise of al Qaeda and ISIS, civil wars in tence for the State of Israel.” But one
Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, we have trusts that, this time, the GOP will add
a dose of salt to what the hysterics are
a new Middle East.
Our principal enemies are now al Qa- bellowing.
After all, it was Bibi’s rants — Iran
eda and ISIS. And while both have been
aided by our old allies, Turkey, Qatar, is hellbent on getting a bomb, is only
and Saudi Arabia, both are being resist- months away, and military action is
needed
now to smash the
ed by Iran.
whirling centrifugBut, we are rees — that teed up
minded, Iran’s rethe talks for Tehran.
gime is founded
All Iran had to
upon ideological
do
was prove it
hatred of America.
had no bomb proBut, so, too, were
Mao’s China and Stalin’s USSR. Yet gram, which was not difficult, as U.S.
Nixon forged a detente with Mao and intelligence had repeatedly said Iran
FDR partnered with Stalin. And Ronald had no bomb program.
Then the Iranians proved it. They
Reagan negotiated a strategic arms deal
agreed to cut their centrifuges by twowith the “evil empire” of his time.
thirds, to eliminate 98 percent of their
BIBI NETANYAHU and AIPAC, uranium, to halt production of 20 perthe Saudis and Gulf Arabs, will demand cent uranium at Fordow, to convert the
that Congress kill the Iran deal that heavy-water reactor at Arak that proLindsey Graham says is a “death sen- duces plutonium to a light water reactor
Pat
Buchanan
that produces one kilogram a year, and
to let cameras in and give U.N. inspectors the run of their nuclear facilities.
And how is Israel, with hundreds of
atom bombs, mortally imperiled by a
deal that leaves Iran with not a single
ounce of bomb-grade uranium?
What does Iran get? What Iran always wanted. Not a bomb which would
make Iran a pariah like North Korea and
could bring down upon her the same
firestorm America delivered to Iraq, but
a path to become again the hegemon of
the Persian Gulf.
Remarkable. Iran agrees not to build
a bomb it had already decided not to
build, and we agree to lift all sanctions.
And they pulled it off.
WHAT IS one or two atom bombs
you can’t use, without committing national suicide, compared to $100 billion
in freed assets and a welcome mat back
to the community of nations.
Obama, you’re no Ronald Reagan
A
t his press conference last
Wednesday, our president
of self-regard again linked
himself with Ronald Reagan, seeking
to equate his supposed success in gaining a deal with Iran not to build a nuclear
weapon for 10 years to Reagan’s arms
control negotiations with the Soviet
Union.
THERE IS at least one major difference, which causes Obama’s analogy
to collapse. Reagan regarded the Soviet
Union as an “evil empire” and vowed
to defeat it. He said not just the Soviet
Union, but communism itself, would
wind up “on the ash heap of history.”
Obama hears, sees and speaks no evil
against the evil empire of Iran, or the vile
terrorist groups it supports across the region. Instead he seeks accommodation,
not elimination of this modern scourge.
David French, writing on National
Review.com, refers to a report by Col.
(ret.) Richard Kemp, former commander
of British Special Forces in Afghanistan,
and Maj. (ret.) Chris Driver-Williams,
former UK Special Forces, highlighted
on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
org, which “comprehensively outlines
Iran’s acts of war against the United
States.”
According to the report, “Iranian military action, often working through proxies using terrorist tactics, has led to the
deaths of well over a thousand American
soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan over the
last decade and a half.
“Throughout the course of the Iraq
campaign, a variety of weapons flowed
into the country through direct purchases
by the government of Iran. These included Explosively Formed Penetrators
(EFPs), a shaped charge designed to
penetrate armor. These weapons — often
camouflaged as rocks — were identical
to those employed by Hizbullah against
Israeli forces. In 2006, the British (Daily)
Telegraph revealed that three Iranian factories were “mass producing” the roadside EFP bombs used to kill soldiers in
Iraq ...
Cal
Thomas
(c) 2015, Tribune Media Services
“IRAN PAID Taliban fighters $1,000
for each U.S. soldier they killed in Afghanistan. The Sunday Times reported
that a Taliban operative received $18,000
from an Iranian firm in Kabul as reward
for an attack in 2010 that killed several Afghan government troops and destroyed an American armored vehicle.”
These are the people who can supposedly be trusted not to cheat on a deal
with a government they regard as “satanic” and worthy of every tactic they can
employ to eradicate it? These are people
who will not stop pursuing whatever
weaponry they need — conventional
or nuclear — toward their stated objective of ushering in the Islamic messiah,
whom some mullahs have predicted will
arrive only after a nuclear war has begun.
Islamic theology is an embarrassment
to secular diplomats and reporters. At
the president’s press conference, no one
asked him the most obvious question:
If Iran’s leaders believe their god wants
them to lie, cheat and build a nuclear
bomb in the pursuit of their often-stated
goal of eliminating Israel and terrorizing
America, how do you, whom they regard
as the infidel president of an infidel nation, get them to disobey what they believe are direct orders from Allah?
Wouldn’t you love to hear that question asked and answered?
Appeasing evil never works. It merely
delays war and allows one’s enemy to
grow stronger.
President Obama claims there were
only two choices: his agreement, or war.
There were other options, including
stepped-up sanctions, which were hurting the Iranian economy, and a stated
goal of regime change. In 2009, following an uprising after a rigged election in
Iran, President Obama could not bring
himself to say a word in defense of moderates in Iran who sought to topple the
regime. This showed the Mullahs that
America could be had.
This agreement has proven them right.
A cartoon in the London Daily Telegraph
shows the Ayatollah Khamenei, running
“rings” around President Obama. The
rings are the atomic sign.
THE HEADLINE on liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s
column is descriptive: “Obama’s news
conference was a case for American
weakness.”
There will be hell to pay for this deal,
possibly literally.
31
July 29, 2015
Barack Obama’s legacy: A nuclear Iran
P
resident Obama finally has his nuclear program, two of its primary re“deal” with Iran, and even the actors, at Arak and Fordow, are to be
most enthusiastic supporters of repurposed for engineering and nuclear
the administration admit that Iran is the physics research.
How is this markedly different from
real winner here. Reading the terms of
the agreement, it’s not hard to see why. weapons research? How will inspectors
The long-standing sanctions on Iran be able to tell the difference?
D a vid Kay, former UN
will be lifted immediately, freeing up
chief weapons inover $150 billion
spector, warns that
for the country’s
they won’t. In an
use. This was the
interview
with
most crucial leverDefense
One’s
age that the West
technology edihad with which to
ensure that Iran kept to the terms of any tor Patrick Tucker, Kay points out that
negotiated arrangement. Opponents of if radiation is detected and the Iranians
this deal have long argued that sanctions are challenged, they can simply claim
needed to be lifted gradually, over time, that the radiation is from old programs
after verifying Iran’s compliance. That or newer, permitted, “civilian” uses.
Kay also explains that current techleverage is now gone. And once the
sanctions are lifted, it will be extremely nology often has multiple purposes,
difficult — if not impossible — to put making it suitable for both permitted
together the international scheme neces- and forbidden uses. This, Kay warns,
sary to re-impose them. Iran knows this will pose the most serious challenge for
inspectors:
better than anyone.
“If I had to place a bet on the first
BUT KEEPING to the terms of this violation, it would be in the procuredeal doesn’t appear to be terribly ardu- ment of potentially nuclear-related ...
ous for Iran in any case. Experts have es- dual-use equipment. The Iranians have
timated that Iran was just a few months the best clandestine procurement at
away from having enough weapons- work that I’ve ever seen ...With dualgrade uranium to make a bomb. This use equipment, you’re often able to gin
new agreement extends that timetable up a permitted use.”
to — wait for it — one year.
TUCKER EXPLAINS, “For inSeriously?
Iran is also supposed to reduce its stance, some machine tools used to pronumber of centrifuges, but will still be duce centrifuges are ‘perfectly usable’
able to keep thousands of centrifuges in various conventional-weapons prooperational. And because Iran gets to grams: ‘making your missiles fly better,
keep — and ramp up — its “civilian” straighter, producing with numerically
Laura
Hollis
controlled machine tools, all sorts of
stuff like that.’”
Then, of course, there is software.
“You’re talking about computers, software programs, codes that allow you
to calculate how neutrons interact with
other materials,” Kay said. “Some of it
might be related to a nuclear weapons
device, some might be related to a nuclear physics program.”
If the substance of inspection jobs
will pose problems, the process to reach
the point of inspection is no better. Those
most familiar with Iran’s nuclear work
had pressed for “anytime, anywhere” inspections. But here, again, Iran got what
it wanted, and the U.S. caved. Iran now
has 24 days to grant an inspection after
one is requested. If, thereafter, it does
not grant access, the matter must go to
an international arbitration committee
upon which Iran will have a representative, as will Russia and China. One can
easily imagine those negotiations going
on for days or weeks — all the while
Iran could be flouting the terms of the
agreement.
Finally, the time limits imposed by
this “deal” are so short as to be nearly
meaningless. With enough weaponsgrade uranium to build a bomb in one
year, the only thing missing is a delivery
device. Happy to oblige: Iran gets the
ability to buy conventional weapons —
on the open market — within five years,
including missiles, warships, jets, tanks
and helicopters. Need it be mentioned
that Iran’s ability to purchase these
translates to its ability to provide them
to the terrorist organizations it supports
all over the planet?
It’s hard to understand what motivates President Obama to trust a regime
that can simultaneously be negotiating,
all the while calling for the destruction
of Israel, chanting “death to America”
and simulating the destruction of a
U.S. aircraft carrier during war games.
Events since the president’s 2009 Cairo
speech should have disabused him of the
naive notion that enemies in the Middle
East will “come around” if we’re just
nice enough. The fact that he apparently
still clings to this notion is deeply disconcerting.
Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu was mocked for his rhetoric when he
spoke before Congress earlier this year,
but he has been proven correct: This
deal is not about whether Iran gets a
nuclear bomb, but when. Obama seems
to assume that, once they have it, they
will change their minds about what to
do with it.
IT IS HARD to overestimate the folly of that assumption.
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Shrouded in Evasion and Deception
Reality of Abortion
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 • Volume 30, Number 30 • Hampton, Iowa

Grotesque business of Planned Parenthood

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