RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/12/leon-panetta-clueless-or-braze

If not for Sen. Jeff Sessions, who would protect our Constitution from assault by Obama, Panetta & Co.?

President Obama and his congressional cohorts have never paid much attention to our Constitution. Nancy Pelosi laughed off the idea of considering it when Obamacare was debated.

Much the same is true whether Obama is implementing Obamacare or brushing aside other constitutional limits on his powers. Remember the “concession” he made on requiring religious institutions to pay for contraception? He just amended the regulations to require the insurance companies to pay for it, without anyone paying them back. That, my friends, is what we call a “Fifth Amendment taking” for which the government — by seizing something belonging to a private citizen — is responsible to pay the damaged party, even if it is an insurance company.

Such constitutional abuses are commonplace these days, but last Thursday the Obama regime took a far more sweeping and dark turn in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was testifying on possible military action against Syria. Under questioning by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala), Panetta said some things that need to be set out clearly before I analyze or characterize them.

The issue is Congress’s power to declare war. Under our Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11) and this power is co-extensive with the power of the president as commander in chief. They — Congress and the president — are the only authorities named directly or indirectly as having a constitutional role in that decision.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=261077 Is a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv the only evidence that the Obama administration will accept as proof of Iranian intentions? Until now, I have refrained from writing on the Iranian issue for various reasons – but mainly because, without being privy to updated intelligence or to Israel’s true operational capabilities, it is almost […]

A Heinous Crime and a Double Standard

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/12/a-heinous-crime-and-a-double-standard/print/

An American soldier has committed a heinous crime in Afghanistan, entering the homes of Afghan civilians, murdering at least 16 people, and wounding five. Barack Obama immediately called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to offer his condolences, said that he was “deeply saddened,” and announced that he was launching an investigation “to get the facts as quickly as possible and to hold accountable anyone responsible.”

Obama also said in a statement: “I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives and to the people of Afghanistan, who have endured too much violence and suffering. This incident is tragic and shocking and does not represent the exceptional character of our military.”

Indeed it does not, and the soldier, reportedly a staff sergeant, should be prosecuted and punished as severely as military justice allows: he has brought shame and discredit upon the U.S. military at a particularly delicate time in Afghanistan, when tempers are running high after the Qur’an-burning incident. And Karzai was in no mood to accept American assurances that the crime would be investigated and the perpetrator punished, saying in a statement of his own: “This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/12/how-derrick-bell-beat-martin-luther-king-jr/

“History proves that the white man is a devil,” said Malcolm X. “Whites are liars,” said Jeremiah Wright. “I love to harass white folks,” said Derrick Bell.

“This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy,” a black teenager said to Allen Coon, a white student on the porch of his own home, as he set him on fire.

“Don’ tell me words don’t matter,” Obama once said. And he was right. Words do matter. The words of his mentors that have rooted hate so deep in the black community that it has become a cancer, a sore that bleeds violence, a stain on the soul.

While white racism continues to decline year by year, black racism has advanced to the White House and into the hearts and minds of millions. It leads to everything from discrimination to murder. It led to a thirteen-year-old boy screaming as fire ate at the flesh of his face, burning away the white skin that his attackers had been taught to hate so much.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/3/12/main-feature/1/the-butcher-and-the-surgeon/e
The Butcher and the Surgeon
They call Bashar al-Assad “son of the butcher,” but he is merely a butcher twice removed.

The original butcher of Syria was Abul Abbas al-Saffah, the last appellation meaning “shedder of blood.” In 750 C.E., al-Saffah marched into Damascus and overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate. Concerned about a possible Umayyad resurgence, he invited the remaining family members to a conciliatory dinner and clubbed them to death before the first course.

A more recent Syrian butcher was Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, who massacred 20,000 to 30,000 people in Hama on a single evening in 1982, then killed the livestock. Hafez intended his oldest son, Bassel—as murderous and conspiratorial as his father—as his successor. But Bassel had a playboy side and died driving a Maserati at 150 miles per hour. The Syrian leadership blamed the Mossad, and the mantle of successor was laid upon the thin shoulders of Hafez’s next-oldest son, Bashar. When Hafez died in July, 2000, Bashar was in London, enrolled in a post-doctoral program at the Western Eye Hospital. He was—maybe still is—an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon. Ayman Zawaheri, head of al-Qaeda, is a pediatrician. Adherence to the Hippocratic oath does not prevent one from being a thug.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1685/pub_detail.asp White House Official Says Obama Insisted Netanyahu Postpone Attack on Iran Until After November Elections…[YNET HT/WEASEL ZIPPERS] U.S. offers condolences as U.S. service member investigated for alleged killing of Afghan civilians [FOX] ‘IAF strikes in Gaza kill 2 Islamic Jihad terrorists’ [JPOST] Iran rattles sabers: ’11,000 missiles ready to launch’ at Israel, US targets […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11583/pub_detail.asp As Europe struggles inconclusively to stem the fiscal implosion that threatens the Euro and perhaps the European Union itself, another, largely unnoticed and seemingly peripheral, conflict may provide as much if not more insight into the systemic weaknesses of the once-promising European project. Technically, at issue is a quarrel between the European Commission (EC) […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11582/pub_detail.asp
In early November 2009 Americans were shocked to learn that an Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had shot and killed twelve soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, and wounded thirty-one others. Because of the unrelenting political correctness prevailing in the Army and other services, all the signs that Hasan was a ticking time bomb were ignored.

Hasan was known to be a Muslim, had exhibited signs of a growing fanaticism, occasionally showed up in the post exchange dressed in Arab garb, and as it turned out later, was being mentored by Yemen’s al Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki , an American citizen who was later killed by a drone strike. As Hasan stood before the soldiers, firing at them, he yelled “Allah Akbar.”

This and other attacks, planned, failed, and thwarted occurred before and since 9/11; an attack that stunned Americans, all contribute to the worldwide terrorism intended to bring about the domination of Islam. Not only has the memory faded, but in 2009 the Obama administration did away with the earlier description of “a war on terrorism”, it ordered the Pentagon to replace it with “overseas contingency operations.”

http://sarahhonig.com/2012/03/09/another-tack-prelude-to-murder/
The word “occupation” invokes differing definitions in the Arab realm. All involve Israel but the precise connotation depends on the context.Liberal-hearted foreigners, whose sympathy and political support is sought, are told that occupation refers to lands Israel took (obviously out of unadulterated malice) in 1967. Unless these arbitrarily usurped territories are ceded, Mother Earth will know no peace and harmony.

But Arab/Muslim listeners discern other undertones. For them any Jew’s presence, even inside Israel, amounts to sinful and insufferable occupation. Rectifying that wrong means terminating the existence here of all Jewish trespassers.

This ethos was given emotive lyrical expression by Mahmoud Darwish – the late “Palestinian national poet,” once an Israeli-Arab Communist, later a PLO luminary and author of the Palestinian “Declaration of Independence.” Even post-Oslo, with its derivative coexistence prattle and two-state propaganda, Darwish’s verses encapsulate the ideology of his fellow Fatah leaders – Ramallah chieftain Mahmoud Abbas foremost among them.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293103/let-syria-be-andrew-c-mccarthy

We should stop enmeshing ourselves ever deeper in the Muslim morass.

‘We will hold sacred the beliefs held sacred by others.”

That’s the concluding rally cry of the U.S. Department of Defense’s newly issued guidance on the “Proper Handling and Disposal of Islamic Religious Materials — Service Members/Civilian Training.” Here’s how it works: Mainstream Muslims throughout the Middle East believe, based on the Koran and other “Islamic Religious Materials,” that if an infidel force invades a Muslim territory, its members must be killed until the force has been driven out. They further believe that if non-Muslims commit some act — even an inadvertent one — that Muslims perceive as insulting to Islam, a campaign of murder and mayhem is justified.

Our response? We will hold sacred the beliefs held sacred by others.

So as Afghans kill Americans, as our “allied” Afghan trainees turn their guns on their American mentors, Americans policymakers debase themselves by ordering “training to increase awareness of cultural and religious sensitivities regarding Islamic Religious Materials.” As Afghans kill Americans, as the Afghan president demands that Americans be tried and punished for accidentally burning Korans that jihadists had already defiled, our president apologizes for our purported insensitivity. As Afghans kill Americans and explain that the Koran commands them to do so, U.S. policy is to give each captured jihadist a Koran. As Afghans kill Americans and derive support from the Koran’s injunction that Muslims “make ready [against non-Muslims] your strength . . . to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies” (Sura 8:60), U.S. military commanders instruct our troops that the Koran, which non-Muslims are unfit to touch, “is regarded as the verbatim Word of God; the primary source of Islamic guidance.” And, of course, we will hold sacred the beliefs held sacred by others.