RUTHFULLY YOURS

Tyranny of the Majority Leader Harry Reid is ignoring centuries of Senate precedent in his rush to serve Obama.

Patience and reliability are the defining characteristics of successful leadership in the Senate. Good Senate majority leaders work through the rules of the Senate, which protect minority rights, to find a way to please a majority (or possibly a supermajority) of senators and move legislation and nominations to passage. They keep their commitments to open debate, even when their partisan colleagues would prefer to use simple majority power to crush the minority and avoid tough votes or compromises.

The Senate once prided itself on being “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” That it no longer is. According to the Congressional Research Service, Senator Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has obstructed the amendment process for his colleagues 85 times — more than double the total of his six predecessors combined. Neither Republican nor Democratic senators can offer amendments. This negates every senator’s right to debate and amend legislation and thus fully represent his or her constituents.

This was especially evident in May, when Senator Reid killed three bipartisan pieces of legislation in as many weeks. First, he refused to allow even a limited number of amendments to bipartisan energy legislation. The following week, he blocked amendments to a bipartisan tax-extenders bill. Finally, he reached into the Senate Judiciary Committee to torpedo a bipartisan patent bill the committee was poised to mark up. These are the types of bills that passed routinely when the regular order of open debate and amendments was followed in the Senate.

The atmosphere in the Senate has soured due to Senator Reid’s stranglehold on the legislative process. It has been made worse by his failure to keep his repeated — and very specific — promise to follow the Senate’s rules. At the beginning of the 112th Congress, he acknowledged on the Senate floor that “the proper way to change Senate rules is through the procedures established in those rules,” and he committed to “oppose any effort in this Congress or the next to change the Senate’s rules other than through the regular order.”

Despite this very clear commitment, Senator Reid threatened to break the Senate’s rules at the beginning of this Congress. After Republicans agreed to procedural changes that gave the Democratic majority powers greater than those of any previous majority in the history of the Senate, Reid again unequivocally committed to follow the rules of the Senate.

Will Bobby Jindal Have to Fight Common Core in Court?

State education officials threaten to sue over executive orders he issued against the program.

A legal battle over the fate of Common Core, the national education standards developed by a coalition of governors and educators and adopted by the vast majority of states, may be brewing in Louisiana.

The state’s top education board voted on Tuesday to retain legal counsel, a sign it is gearing up for a lawsuit against Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal after he issued a series of executive orders in an attempt to withdraw the state from the Common Core.

Jindal’s decision has sparked an internecine war among Republicans in Louisiana, putting him at odds with his handpicked superintendent of education, John White, and his Republican-dominated legislature. White has said the governor doesn’t have the right to unilaterally prevent the state from adopting the standards and that the move is less about the nature and quality of the education Louisiana children receive and more about “presidential politics.”

The great lengths to which Jindal has gone to pull Louisiana out of Common Core are one indication of the standards’ toxicity among conservative Republicans. His executive orders overrode not only the decisions of the state board of education but also the legislature. That GOP-controlled body rejected several bills that would have removed the state from Common Core and, in fact, passed a bill sponsored by a Democratic legislator in mid June — Jindal vetoed it — that endorsed the standards.

Like the government shutdown, immigration reform, and the midterm elections themselves, the Common Core has pitted the tea-party wing of the GOP against business interests and more moderate, establishment forces. The Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have for months been running ads in favor of Common Core. The target: skeptical Republicans.

The issue has divided the prospective 2016 candidates along the same lines and has obvious implications for Jindal’s presidential prospects, especially if Louisiana Republicans are forced into a legal showdown.

Several of the GOP’s potential 2016 candidates have sought to distance themselves from the standards. In fact, of the twelve Republican governors who have denounced the program, four are talked about as potential presidential contenders: Texas governor Rick Perry, who has signed a bill banning Common Core from his state; Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, whose staff drafted a bill to replace the standards, though it went nowhere in the state legislature; Indiana governor Mike Pence, who withdrew his state from the Common Core and in recent months proposed alternative standards, which have themselves come under fire from the Tea Party for looking too much like Common Core; and Jindal.

Meanwhile, former Florida governor Jeb Bush is perhaps the most outspoken proponent of the Common Core, and he has denounced fellow Republicans for their pivot on the issue. “I just don’t feel compelled to run for cover when I think this is the right thing to do for our country,” Bush told Fox News in April. “And others have — others that supported the standards all of a sudden are opposed to it.”

New Jersey governor Chris Christie is the only potential top-tier candidate besides Bush who remains a staunch supporter. The Obama administration has praised the standards, and secretary of education Arne Duncan inflamed tea-party Republicans last November when he denounced the opposition as “white suburban moms” who’d discovered “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” Christie has said that some opposition is a “knee-jerk” response to the president’s support and that he agrees with Obama on the issue. “We’re doing Common Core in New Jersey and we’re going to continue,” he said last August. Ohio governor John Kasich, another potential Republican presidential contender, also remains a supporter.

JUST FOR THE RECORD….SDEROT IS IN PRE 1967 ISRAEL….EVIDENCE THAT FOR PALARABS…ALL OF ISRAEL IS “OCCUPIED TERRITORY”….RSK
A group of small children escaped death by a miracle and the grace of a bomb shelter door.
By: Shalom Bear

The small summer camp in Sderot, filled with young children, escaped injury and death by the grace of a bomb shelter door.

The Color Red incoming rocket alert siren had been wailing off and on all night – in fact, all week long. The way to the shelter was a familiar one and this morning the drills and routines paid off.

A Qassam rocket fired by Gaza terrorists at around 8:30 a.m. slammed into the private home that doubles as a children’s summer camp. The rocket blasted part of the home into rubble, but left the shelter intact.

Just seconds before impact, the air raid siren had sent the young campers racing for the bomb shelter.

Not a moment too soon.

All the children made it to the shelter in time and were safely inside when the rocket slammed into the house.

“I heard the first ‘boom!’ Tami, the owner of the camp, told an Israeli radio interviewer. “It sounded close, but we are used to that. “The second one sounded much, much closer though.”

That second explosion was a Qassam hitting another private home and car nearby.

It’s not clear why the Iron Dome anti-missile system failed to intercept the two rockets.

A third Qassam exploded in the city as well. In fact, by 10:00 a.m. five rockets had already exploded in the western Negev.

The debate over the Export-Import Bank is one about political fluidity, cronyism, and the conflicting needs between big and small businesses. It is also a debate over very small potatoes. Last year, the Ex-Im Bank authorized $27.3 billion in direct loans, loan guarantees and credit insurance. In contrast, total American exports were $2.3 trillion, suggesting the hullabaloo regarding the bank is about just over one percent of all exports. Whether it stays or goes will have little effect on employment or the economy, despite dire predictions to the contrary from both fans and foes. From a practical perspective – is this how Congress should spend its time?

Certainly there are arguments against reauthorization. Whenever and wherever business and federally-funded financing opportunities present themselves, cronyism will be found lurking in plain sight. In 2012, 76% of all loans went to ten large companies, like GE, Caterpillar, Bechtel and Boeing, with the latter taking the lion’s share. All of these companies have hundreds of lobbyists wining and dining their favorite members of Congress. Boeing sells planes to foreign airlines, many of which are state owned. Thus, one could argue that the American taxpayer is supporting foreign governments, along with big business. In terms of governments, think China and the United Arab Emirates. The Ex-Im Bank helps foreign airlines that purchase Boeing planes, which is the reason Delta Airlines has been one of the strongest advocates for deep-sixing the Bank. On the other hand, when Delta purchases an Airbus 320 they are being helped by the ECB, at the expense of Air France and BOAC. There is also a question regarding the accuracy of the bank’s statements. Supporters cite the $1.1 billion that the bank returned to the Treasury last year. Detractors argue that the bank’s statements do not accurately reflect capital adequacy and usual accounting standards, possibly placing taxpayers at risk.

Questions come to mind: Why do seventy-six percent of all loans go to only ten large companies? Why should companies like GE that have reduced domestic employment be provided low interest loans? Why should the bank support foreign competitors? Why should American taxpayers provide cheap financing to foreign governments?

“The Justice Department has taken over the case for prosecution of the peeper, but he’s probably not too worried since Attorney General Eric (“I see nothing”) Holder Jr. is a graduate of the See No Evil School of Prosecution. The poop perp can probably skip to the loo, confident he’ll be able to continue contributing to government waste, one way or the other.”
Government waste redefined at Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency gives a whole new meaning to government waste. It’s accustomed to flushing tax dollars down the toilet, and now the agency has dealt with so many incidents of employees clogging the toilets with paper towels and even “placing feces in the hallway,” that an official at the EPA’s office in Denver dispatched a mass email pleading with the slackers and bums responsible to cease and desist.

“Management is taking this situation seriously,” wrote the EPA’s deputy regional administrator, Howard Cantor, “and will take whatever actions are necessary to identify and prosecute these individuals.” In his email, obtained by Government Executive magazine, Mr. Cantor asked for any employees with knowledge of the poop perpetrator to notify a supervisor.

Management at the EPA — flush with cash — then consulted John Nicoletti, said to be a “national expert” on workplace violence, for advice on what to do next. Mr. Nicoletti averred that using the hallway to do one’s business is definitely a threat to the health of employees. Such behavior, he added, is “very dangerous” and that the perpetrator’s actions would “probably escalate.”

“Our brief consultation with Dr. Nicoletti on this matter,” said EPA spokesman Richard Mylott, ” … reflects our commitment to securing a safe workplace.”

Even if the scatological scofflaw is ultimately identified, little is likely be done about it. Even among federal agencies where “public servants” are invulnerable, the EPA has a remarkably low firing rate. In fiscal 2010, the agency terminated only 19 of its 18,742 employees, or 1/1,000 of 1 percent. Even fewer guvvies are being kicked to the curb today. For fiscal 2013, Federal Times reported last week, “Federal firings continue to drop.” Just 0.46 percent of the federal workforce of 2.05 million was fired, down from 0.49 percent the year before.

Unilateral concessions bolster a Palestinian entitlement mentality

The recent kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers near Hebron should give pause. Israel has named as suspects Marwan Kawasmeh and Amar Abu-Eisha, who are members of Hamas, the U.S.- and European Union-listed terrorist group that calls in its charter for the worldwide killing of Jews. Hamas, recently incorporated into the Fatah-Palestinian Authority (PA) regime, is still receiving U.S taxpayer funding.

Given these circumstances, Israel needs to put an end to its concessionary policy of “confidence-building measures” — removing security checkpoints and roadblocks, and freeing convicted and jailed Palestinian terrorists as demanded by the PA — especially if it emerges that the absence of checkpoints enabled the terrorists to carry out the killings.

That some terrorist acts have been facilitated in this way is beyond argument. The January 2010 killing of Israeli Meir Chai by Fatah’s own Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, occurred during a Palestinian terrorist attack made possible by the removal of a road closure and checkpoint, part of “confidence-building measures” previously urged upon Israel by the Obama administration.

In April 2010, then-U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell again urged Israel to “make a number of gestures to Palestinians, including release of prisoners, removal of checkpoints, transfer of authority over West Bank territories.” Israel acceded to President Obama’s wishes — and that August, Palestinians terrorists killed four Israelis, including a pregnant woman, also near Hebron. The attackers escaped the scene via a route opened by the removal of a checkpoint — part of the “number of gestures” Mr. Mitchell had urged upon the Israelis.

Western governments, including the Obama administration, are continually tantalized at the prospect of renewed negotiations, and the PA has adroitly succeeded in recent years in making Israeli concessions a condition of their resumption. International leaders have willingly obliged.

Here, for example, is a news item from February 2012 about U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “The U.N. chief urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make ‘goodwill gestures’ to bring the Palestinians back to direct negotiations, frozen since September 2010.”

Note that, in such cases, Israelis are not being asked to make these “gestures” in return for anything, merely so that PA will deign to speak to them from across a table. In other words, the intended “gestures” are unilateral Israeli concessions. Unfortunately, peace has never been facilitated by Israeli unilateral concessions. Quite the contrary.

Since the end of the IDF’s Operation Pillar of Defense, through June 30, 2014, 300 aerial attacks have been launched from Hamas-ruled Gaza toward southern Israel.

The fact that many terrorist organizations based in Gaza proudly take responsibility for firing rockets and missiles toward the Israeli civilian population, and not necessarily the ruling terrorist group, Hamas – as the media and Israeli officials continue to emphasize – makes no difference to the families and children of one million Israelis.

Once the siren goes off and they run for shelter and for their lives, they have between 15 and 45 seconds to ask which terrorist organization is firing at them. Instead, they wonder where the rocket will explode: inside or outside their town.

“Rocket reality” is still a basic way of life on the Gaza border.

Compared to recent years, this year has been quieter than others (due to Operation Pillar of Defense), but the Gaza threat grows each day. Realistically, the question is not if Israel will have to take action in Gaza, but rather when.

However, the Russian-roulette reality finally exploded on Saturday night, just after 8 p.m., when an entire factory in Sderot went up in flames that were visible from miles away.

Why are there still those who claim Hamas is interested in maintaining calm? Have they forgotten the Hamas charter, which openly calls for genocide of the Jews in Israel? And what about the statement issued by Izzadin Kassam, the Hamas “military wing” in Gaza, one week before the first cease-fire in November 2006: “We are not going to stop firing the Zionist settlement Sderot, until the last citizen of Sderot leaves.”

Over 20,000 aerial attacks have been launched from Gaza toward Israel after Israel pulled all of its troops and civilians out of Gaza in August 2005.

The world today sees a sudden aggressive presence of Islam in a way not seen since the defense of Vienna in 1532. Large numbers of Muslims are now aggressively present in the West and on all Islam’s world borders. They insist on retaining their religion and customs wherever they reside. They present internal problems in Western nations that they have not had to face before. The leading forces in Islam seem to have decided that the best way to expand through and defeat the west is not by imitating modern science and technology, but by establishing and enforcing Muslim law everywhere, either gradually or quickly.

Yet, a hard-headed Muslim intellectual today, if there be such, would have a sense of the history of theology and of the military means by which Muslim expansion originally took place. He might well judge that, everything seems to be falling into place.

Yet, two dangerous “technical” developments could undermine the present Muslim rigid hold on its own people and on its recently renewed determination to expand. A long dormant Islam, but one that lost few followers in the five centuries since it lost world political power, has overcome its inferiority complex against Western modernity. It has, in various ways, symbolized by the bombing of the World Trade Center by primitive means, developed a new way to defeat advanced technical power that is no longer morally confident of its own principles.

The first caution to this advancement thesis is the realization that vast undeveloped quantities of oil and gas are known to exist outside of Islamic borders. These rapidly developing resources, plus several significant nuclear energy advances, might well, if used with political shrewdness, make Arab oil considerably less important and profitable to the world economy. Arab power and religious expansion have been fueled by oil money. But little in the Arab world itself was the cause of these oil-based riches. Islam sat on oil, protected by Western theories of sovereignty, but it did not develop the economy or the tools that made oil valuable. Much of Arab oil wealth, moreover, has gone into the private hands of rulers and their families. Arab countries themselves are quite poor and comparatively backward

Sahib Bleher and his Islamic Party of Britain [IPB], like many, seem happy to contradict themselves publicly — possibly in the hope that where there is contradiction, there is uncertainty; and where there is uncertainty, there is room for fundamentalists to claim victimization at the hands of their supposedly “Islamophobic” critics, while at the same time reassuring their Islamist supporters that their dogma has not been cut back.

Most extremists probably do not, understandably, like to be accused of extremism. They might even find that in the eyes of the public simply denying the allegation is enough to offset all evidence to the contrary.

Denials, even if not necessarily sincere, can be successful, perhaps because so many people have been persuaded to regard religious extremists as victims of prejudice — a view they rightly do not ascribe to political activists, such as members of neo-Nazi organizations.

Sahib Bleher, a spokesperson for the Islamic Party of Britain [IPB], for instance, claims that, “never and nowhere did the Islamic Party of Britain advocate the killing of homosexuals.” The IPB’s website, however, explicitly states that “Islam condemns and outlaws homosexuality. As far as Islamic law is concerned, the rules are that the state does not interfere in the privacy of people’s homes, but it would need to safeguard public decency by preventing any public advocacy for homosexuality. Such activity would come under the heading of public incitement. The death penalty … only applies to a public display of lewdness witnessed by several people.”

This policy is also archived on Bleher’s own website.

Further references to homosexuality found within the IPB’s publications include mention of the “organized homosexual movement,” in which homosexuals are compared to “thieves, murderers and adulterers” and described as “spiritually sick.”