RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/2011/12/09/its_time_to_stop_keeping_secrets

Last month, I noted that Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jim Webb of Virginia had written to national archivist David S. Ferriero on Nov. 7, asking him to open the records of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Ferriero has summarily sealed for 20 years. Guess what? Webb’s office tells me it still hasn’t received a reply. Where’s WikiLeaks when you need it?

We heard an awful lot about “blood” being on WikiLeaks’ hands, but it all seemed to come down to egg on officials’ faces. The fact is, a government of the people, by the people and for the people — whose officials, as information security experts Elizabeth Goitein and William Leonard recently wrote in The New York Times, “made 77 million decisions to classify information” in 2010 alone — should have the shutters yanked off so the sun can shine in.

Unfortunately, we just get more shutters. For example, the Obama administration just sealed the court records on the murder of federal agent Brian Terry, whose killers, Mexican drug smugglers, used weapons from a failed federal program to smuggle arms into Mexico. As Judicial Watch noted: “No one will know the reason for the confiscation of public court records in this case because the judge’s decision to seal it was also sealed.”

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2011/12/09/holder_blago_richardson_triangle_of_sleaze

It was a rough week for the corruptocracy. White House officials better ho-ho-hold on tight because the sleigh ride isn’t going to get any smoother.

On Wednesday, disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., received a 14-year prison sentence for scheming to sell President Barack Obama’s Senate office, along with several other pay-for-play schemes. Blago played the distressed daddy for the federal judge, invoking his young daughters and wife (who held her notoriously foul tongue in check) to bemoan how his “life is in ruins.”

How far Blago’s fallen from the glory days of 2008, when he was gloating at the prospect of naming a candidate to fill then-President-elect Obama’s seat. “I’ve got this thing, and it’s f**king golden,” he crowed. All that glitters now, though, are the paparazzi flash bulbs that Blago faces on his perp walks.

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/12/08/barry-does-hanukkah-his-way/?print=1

Barry Does Hanukkah His Way…

Posted By Ed Driscoll On December 8, 2011 @ 5:51 pm In Muggeridge’s Law,The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name |

… And Drudge has plenty of fun in response:

* Obama celebrates Hanukkah at White House…
* TWO WEEKS EARLY?
* LIGHTS ALL THE CANDLES…
* ‘We Never Need an Excuse For a Good Party’…

We’ve been told endlessly by the media that Obama is a “constitutional scholar.” Nobody said he was a religious scholar as well (not even Rev. Wright).

http://pjmedia.com/blog/gunwalker-goes-legal-obama-massively-increased-gun-sales-to-mexican-military/?print=1

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has posted a bombshell article [1] detailing how the Obama administration has greatly increased gun sales to the Mexican military. But further investigation into Attkisson’s discovery points toward the padding of a gun-control statistic — one frequently mentioned by the Obama administration — as the motive behind the increased sales.

Writes Attkisson:

One weapon — an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle — tells the story. In 2006, this same kind of rifle — tracked by serial number — is legally sold by a U.S. manufacturer to the Mexican military.

Three years later — it’s found in a criminal stash in a region wracked by Mexican drug cartel violence.

That prompted a “sensitive” cable, uncovered by WikiLeaks, dated June 4, 2009, in which the U.S. State Department asked Mexico “how the AR-15″ — meant only for the military or police — was “diverted” into criminal hands.

And, more importantly, where the other rifles from the same shipment went: “Please account for the current location of the 1,030 AR-15 type rifles,” reads the cable.

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http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=976

The prophets of demographic doom have contended, since the establishment of modern-day Zionism in 1897 and the Jewish state in 1948, that the Jews are doomed to become a minority west of the Jordan River. The facts prove them wrong!
In 2011, in defiance of demographic fatalism, Israel’s Jewish demography is benefiting from a tailwind while Arabs throughout the Middle East are experiencing a demographic headwind.

The annual number of Jewish births, for instance, has surged by 56 percent since 1995 – reflecting a rising fertility rate (number of births per woman) – while the annual number of Israeli Arab births has grown by 10% – reflecting a sharp decline in fertility rate.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/index.php/pruden/full_column/deadly_peril_in_a_fantasy_world If only those pesky Jews would shut up and submit, all would be right with the world. Allah could be praised. Such is the emerging Democratic strategy for making peace in the Middle East. Only this week, Hillary Clinton, the secretary of State, and Leon Panetta, the secretary of Defense, sent reassurances to the […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/285317
The Real Rules of Detention
Senator Paul has it wrong on how detention works.
Earlier this week, Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) responded to my column from last weekend, which criticized (a) his endorsement of enhanced constitutional protections for alien enemy combatants (the practical effect of his call for a return to pre-9/11 counterterrorism), and (b) his proposals to bar the government from subjecting to indefinite military detention al-Qaeda operatives who happen to be American citizens. Senator Paul’s rejoinder described my first claim as a misleading “strawman,” then rehashed his arguments on behalf of American citizens who join our enemies’ war against us. I’ve already addressed the “strawman” complaint. In this column, I undertake to refute Senator Paul’s arguments against law-of-war detention for American enemy combatants.
Those arguments fare no better in the retelling than they did when the Senate decisively rejected them last week. It is true, as Senator Paul says, that “civil liberties need defenders.” Those defenders, however, are not much good if they don’t even grasp how ordinary law-enforcement works, let alone how civil liberties have historically been subordinated to wartime national-security needs — and I refer here not to faux “needs” like abusive TSA groping of patently non-suspicious Americans, but to the real danger posed by treating traitorous enemy combatants as if they were mere criminals.

http://sarahhonig.com/2011/12/09/another-tack-fools-rush-in/

Literally just before stepping down from office, Switzerland’s Micheline Calmy-Rey has reaffirmed her country’s commitment to interfering in our affairs. As outsiders, uninitiated in the mysteries of the Swiss system, it’s not easy for us to define her role but as president of the Swiss Confederation, Calmy-Rey was head of government and, as head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, she was foreign minister.

Said Calmy-Rey spoke at a recent Geneva get-together summoned, in the words of an official Swiss Foreign Ministry communiqué, “to review the achievements of the Geneva Initiative and analyze its potential in the light of current developments in the Near and Middle East.”

We may well ask “what achievements?”

However, the palpable absence of any hint of achievement in itself made the sorry Geneva reunion a fittingly surreal farewell bash for Calmy-Rey. Thirty Israeli and Palestinian “negotiators” were flown by Calmy-Rey’s ministry first-class to Geneva and put up in a posh hotel to mark the eighth birthday of the stillborn initiative, sponsored and bankrolled by the Swiss.

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2650/tunisia-single-mothers Souad Abderrahim — one of the most prominent and controversial feminine figure of the Ennahda party in Tunisia, a mother of two, and a pharmacist by profession — was elected as a member of the Constituent Assembly. During the electoral campaign, she represented the modern image of Ennahda: she does not wear a veil. […]