RUTHFULLY YOURS

Some 600 British citizens are waging jihad in Iraq and Syria with U.K. passports tucked in their pockets. The masked men appearing in Internet videos showing the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff spoke with London accents. So it’s not a moment too soon for Whitehall and other European governments to address the threat such terrorists pose.

David Cameron is calling for the government to restrict or rescind the passports of jihad-bound citizens before they leave the country, and Home Secretary Theresa May has threatened to deprive those Britons already fighting with the Islamic State of their citizenship. The Dutch and Australian governments, among others, are considering similar measures.

A debate also is raging in London over whether to reinstate or expand measures implemented after the 2005 London Underground bombings that allow for surveillance, arrest, detention and relocation of terror suspects. These so-called control orders and pre-charge detentions could be important tools in reducing the risk that returning jihadists will attempt attacks in the U.K.

This has triggered familiar protests by some civil libertarians that such moves are unlawful and put the West on a slippery slope to authoritarianism. But the government would be on firm legal ground because previous governments that wrote the laws have understood that a free society needs sufficient tools to counter terrorist threats.

Ms. May can invoke broad personal authority under the royal prerogative to restrict or rescind a British passport “where a person’s past or proposed activities are so demonstrably undesirable that the grant or continued enjoyment of passport facilities would be contrary to the public interest.” This reflects a longstanding view that a passport is a privilege, not a right. Governments routinely confiscate or restrict passports for less serious offenses than terrorism, such as white-collar crimes. Parliament should give British police the power to temporarily seize passports at the border. Currently, police can’t apply for the prerogative at the border.

The selective investigation of the political speech of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s allies goes to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals next week, and with any luck the judges will vindicate a district court’s preliminary injunction that has shut down the probe. They should do so before the November election because this unconstitutional exercise is being exploited by Mr. Walker’s enemies to defeat him.

The latest media misinformation concerns emails that show Mr. Walker raised money for the Wisconsin Club for Growth. But raising money for Super Pacs and 501(c) groups is routine political behavior, as President Obama and Harry Reid routinely demonstrate.

Prosecutors pursuing Mr. Walker have been pushing a theory of campaign-finance law that the state’s own campaign finance regulator, the Government Accountability Board, has admitted is unconstitutional under Supreme Court precedent. The theory has also been rejected by the Seventh Circuit and by two judges in the Walker probe.
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You’d never guess any of this from reading the anti-Walker press. Legal activity is made to look nefarious with loose references to terms like “coordination” that have precise definitions for what qualifies as political advocacy under the law.

The Washington Post said Mr. Walker solicited contributions from donors “to give large contributions to an allied tax-exempt group that backed him and other state GOP lawmakers.” Well, no, because the Club for Growth never ran campaign ads for Mr. Walker. The NYTIMES said one of Mr. Walker’s campaign aides “directed the political spending of the outside groups, most of them nonprofits, and in effect controlled some of them.” No again, because one person’s relationship with two groups does not equal control or coordination under the law.

Now come climate scientists’ implausible explanations for why the ‘hiatus’ has passed the 15-year mark.

On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?

In effect, this is all that’s left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3).

Even that is likely to be too high. The climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.

First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. Now they say there is a pause (or “hiatus”), but that it doesn’t after all invalidate their theories.

Alas, their explanations have made their predicament worse by implying that man-made climate change is so slow and tentative that it can be easily overwhelmed by natural variation in temperature—a possibility that they had previously all but ruled out.

How many Jews were aboard the Titanic before it sank? This question will likely forever remain unanswered.
Hundreds of Jewish passengers, fleeing years of pogroms, boarded the famous ship on their way to start a new life in America. Most were poor and had no chance of surviving the disaster. A soon-to-be-published book offers fascinating details on the Jewish life they led onboard the ship before it sank.

“According to the White Star Line company’s list, there were several hundred Jews onboard,” says Eli Moskowitz, who studied the story of the Jewish passengers on the most famous ship in history, which sank 102 years ago, claiming the lives of 1,517 people.

“Some of them were in first-class cabins, but most were in the third class which was reserved for immigrants, and where men had the lowest chances of surviving. The exact number of Jews in the third class is still unknown.”

Moskowitz, an educator who defines himself as a “Titanic fan,” turned an MA seminar paper in history into a book about the Jews of the unfortunate ship, which is about to be published soon.

He donated the knowledge he acquired during his research to the Titanic exhibition from the United States, which is docking at the Israel Trade Fairs Center in Tel Aviv until the end of August and is partly dedicated to “the Jews of the Titanic” – from the Jewish newspapers of the era, through the stories of the passengers who died and their widows, to the ship’s kosher menu. Moskowitz, an educator who defines himself as a “Titanic fan,” turned an MA seminar paper in history into a book about the Jews of the unfortunate ship, which is about to be published soon.

He donated the knowledge he acquired during his research to the Titanic exhibition from the United States, which is docking at the Israel Trade Fairs Center in Tel Aviv until the end of August and is partly dedicated to “the Jews of the Titanic” – from the Jewish newspapers of the era, through the stories of the passengers who died and their widows, to the ship’s kosher menu.

During his yearlong captivity at the hands of the barbarians from Islamic State, Steven Sotloff’s colleagues in Israeli media organs purged all of his articles from their websites to erase his connections to Israel and hide the fact that he was an Israeli citizen.

So, too, every effort was made to hide the fact that he was Jewish.

The reason was clear. Given the genocidal Jew-hatred endemic in jihadist doctrine, it was obvious that if Sotloff’s Judaism was exposed, he would have been singled out for torture and execution.

Much has been written since Islamic State released the video of its British executioner chopping off James Foley’s head last month. We have been told by leaders and commentators alike that with this singular crime, Islamic State awakened the sleeping lion of the West. That act of barbarism, we have been assured, will now force the US to lead a global coalition against this Islamic army of butchers.

Clearly Islamic State is not convinced. With the release of the Sotloff beheading video this week, it appears that Islamic State thinks its cinematographers will move the West in another direction – apathy.

Foley’s execution video ended with the preview of coming attractions for the Sotloff execution video.

And the Sotloff execution video ended with the preview of a British hostage’s execution video.

By releasing the films gradually, Islamic State is apparently trying to routinize beheadings. Its leaders are probably betting that by the seventh or eighth beheading video, we will greet the violence with a shrug of our shoulders.

In this, Islamic State is channeling Iran, the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.

Diana West looks askance at suggestions defector from Islamism gave Megyn Kelly

It’s just seven minutes of airtime out of millions since 9/11, but a recent segment of “The Kelly File” on Fox News bears notice. It’s as good an example as any of the state of paralysis that still afflicts the public square since jihad struck Manhattan and Washington, D.C., 13 years ago. We have mourned our dead, fought wars, rebuilt cities, but something still is missing. That something is informed talk about Islam. Frank discussion of the Quran and Muhammad. Without it, there is no stopping the jihad that is shutting down Western civilization.

Host Megyn Kelly interviewed Maajid Nawaz about the Islamic State (ISIS), the latest Muslim horde on a jihad to establish a “caliphate” (pan-Islamic regime) based in Shariah (Islamic law). Nawaz could be considered a defector from Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of the revolutionary Islamic groups, some violent, some removed from violence, dedicated to the establishment of a caliphate based in Islamic law, from al-Qaida to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Nawaz said goodbye to all that in 2007, he says. In 2008, he and fellow defector Ed Husain founded Quilliam, a British “counter-extremism” foundation named for William Quilliam, a 19th-century British convert to Islam. Abdullah Quilliam, as he became known, opened the first British mosque on Christmas Day, 1889. “Co-exist,” right? It’s no stretch, however, to imagine Sheikh Quilliam at home in Hizb ut-Tahrir as a fatwa-issuing advocate of the caliphate and Shariah both. He also issued a fatwa prohibiting Muslims from fighting for or assisting Britain (“contrary to the Shariah”), then fighting Muslim tribes in the Sudan.

Scholar of Islam Andrew Bostom first brought these fatwas to my attention, but they are now accessible on Abdullah Quilliam’s Wikipedia page. Should we take a “counter-extremism” think tank in Quilliam’s name seriously? Could the name have been a mistake? Or is it a joke on gullible infidels? A wink to stealth jihadists?

This piqued my interest in Kelly’s Nawaz interview. Zeroing in on the ISIS beheading of Steven Sotloff, she asked: “Where does their thinking come from? … The first reaction many here in the United States and around the world had was these people who are doing this are psychopaths.”

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Sonnie Johnson, the CEO and inspiration of Change the Game (ctghq.org), the new website and activist program launched by the David Horowitz Freedom Center that sets out to expose the failure and racism of progressive policies and to use hip hop culture to reach constituencies previously untouched by conservative messages.

FP: Sonnie Johnson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Johnson: Thank you for having me. I have the feeling this will be the first of many.

FP: You have great intuition!

So let’s begin:

What is Change the Game all about and what inspired you to create it?

Johnson: I never wanted to start my own project. I wanted to bring my talent to projects that currently exist, and I tried. It wasn’t long before I realized if I wanted to do something different, if I really wanted to change the conversation, I was going to have to do it myself.

Plus, there are a lot of black conservatives holding on by a thread. They are one Bundy Ranch, Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown story away from leaving the conservative movement. We’ve lost some really great advocates already. They say they don’t have a home on the conservative side of the aisle. I wanted to provide that home.

FP: Why has hip hop and its constituency been so insulated from conservative messages? Why have so many conservatives been insulated from hip hop?

Johnson: Excellent question. If both sides asked themselves and answered honestly, we could actually have an honest conversation on race and culture.

In my very first “political” speech, I did a comparison between Jay-Z and Ronald Reagan. I took quotes straight from Reagan and mirrored them to lyrics by Jay-Z. I thought I was nailing my political coffin, but I wanted people to see we are saying the same thing. Every Tea Party speech I’ve ever given has hip hop symbolism or direct quotation. When conservatives don’t know the message is coming from hip hop, I get standing ovations.

During the past ten years and two days, the ostrich cabinets did nothing. Every warning was ignored. They lied to the people.

Do not prevent jihadists from leaving our country. Let them leave. I am prepared to go to Schiphol [airport] to wave them goodbye. But let them never come back.

Madam Speaker, war has been declared against us.

Madam Speaker, actually I was expecting flowers from you. I am celebrating an anniversary these days. Exactly ten years and two days ago, I left a party whose name I cannot immediately remember. During these ten years and two days. I have been much criticized. Most importantly for always saying the same thing.

My critics are right. Indeed, my message had been the same during all these years. And today, I will repeat the same message about Islam again. For the umpteenth time. As I have been doing for ten years and two days.

I have been vilified for my film Fitna. And not just vilified, but even prosecuted. Madam Speaker, while not so many years ago, everyone refused to broadcast my film Fitna, we can today watch Fitna 2, 3, 4 and 5 daily on our television screens. It is not a clash of civilizations that is going on, but a clash between barbarism and civilization.

The Netherlands has become the victim of Islam because the political elite looked away. Here, in these room, they are all present, here and also in the Cabinet, all these people who looked away. Every warning was ignored.

As a result, also in our country today, Christians are being told: “We want to murder you all.” Jews receive death threats. Swastika flags at demonstrations, stones go through windows, Molotov cocktails, Hitler salutes are being made, macabre black ISIS flags wave in the wind, we hear cries, such as “F-ck the Talmud,” on the central square in Amsterdam.

Indeed, Madam Speaker, this summer, Islam came to us.

“A Hillary Clinton White House might adhere to the letter of the law, but a de facto second Clinton co-presidency would, like the first, violate both the spirit and the good sense of the Constitution. Buy one, get two—but at far too high a price. ”

It was the first and only time in this country’s history that supreme executive authority had been simultaneously wielded by two people, man and wife. Bill was away on a foreign trip. That left his wife, who’d only recently rebuffed Henry Hyde’s bid to remove them both from power, in command of the nation’s domestic affairs. At this delicate juncture, Bill’s powerful spouse confided her innermost thoughts to a private diary she habitually kept close by and ready for burning in the event of discovery. Few Americans know anything of this diary’s contents, which can now be publicly revealed.

I refer, of course, to the private papers of Queen Mary II, who ruled England with her husband, King William III, from 1689 to 1694, an example of joint sovereignty unique in English history. Mary’s share in the government of England was recently described in an essay by historian Richard Price, based on her heretofore neglected private papers. It is a curiosity of history that, much like a later ruling couple in America, William and Mary fought off efforts to displace (if not impeach) them by one Henry Hyde, Mary’s uncle, the 2nd earl of Clarendon.

The reign of William and Mary is a relatively rare historical example of smoothly functioning joint executive power. The couple’s accession to the throne was the foundation stone of England’s Glorious Revolution, which replaced a reigning king with a monarch elected by Parliament. As the daughter of the displaced king, and wife of the new one, Mary’s presence on the throne smoothed over the break in succession. William, however, held full executive power, by grant of Parliament.

With the king frequently out of the country prosecuting a war against France, Mary was left to take control of domestic affairs. Parliament passed a Regency Bill granting her authority while William was away, yet the nature of the arrangement remained ambiguous. What if Mary’s commands contradicted William’s wishes? What if William issued a counter-order negating hers? Thanks to Mary’s limited enthusiasm for governance, along with her determination to solidify the joint monarchy’s tenuous legitimacy, these difficulties were never faced. For all practical purposes, Mary successfully served as William’s vicegerent.

William and Mary are the exception that proves the rule. From ancient Rome to contemporary Latin America, history shows that in the absence of clear, hierarchical lines of authority, joint executive power tends to produce debilitating confusion and weakness.

Although she frequently invokes her White House years as a credential, Hillary Clinton’s scandal-plagued past is nowadays generally dismissed as irrelevant to her political future. Most Americans, for example, have long since forgiven, forgotten, or discounted the Whitewater affair, Mrs. Clinton’s startling acumen at investing in cattle futures, even Vince Foster’s suicide. And when it comes to Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, and other such friends of Bill, the public’s sympathies seem to be solidly on the First Lady’s side.

The Obama administration is playing with fire at the UN Security Council, actively considering the idea of capitulating to Arab demands over a resolution on Gaza. Now on the table are draft versions from the United States, Europe and Jordan/the Arab group.

The Europeans are pushing for the introduction of an “international monitoring and verification mission” in Gaza that would supposedly ensure the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. What it would actually do is prevent Israel from exercising the right of self-defense against Hamas attacks emanating from Gaza in the future, since the international personnel would immediately serve as human shields for Palestinian terrorists. The European proposed mission would also supposedly investigate and report on violations, despite the reality that UN missions in other Arab countries (such as Lebanon) have never satisfactorily fulfilled similar mandates.

The United States draft resolution asks Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to develop options for a verification mechanism for “dual-use” materials – such as concrete – that Israel would be expected to allow into Gaza. That’s the same Secretary-General who spent the 50-day war slandering Israel with the charge of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians.

The United States holds the presidency of the Security Council for the month of September and may view a Gaza resolution as a “victory” during its tenure. The frequent course of UN diplomacy is to expect the U.S. to capitulate to European demands as a faux “middle-ground.” Moreover, it would not be the first time that the Obama administration played protecting Israel against international coalition-building on other fronts.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States is open to a new U.N. resolution on Gaza but only if it contributes to sustaining the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations said Wednesday.

Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters that a resolution must “do no harm” to the cease-fire that has been holding in recent days and Israeli-Palestinian talks that are scheduled to resume in Cairo, and should “play a positive role in supporting a durable solution.”

“Nothing underscores the urgency of securing … a negotiated two-state solution like the crisis in Gaza and the heartbreak that so many people on both sides suffered throughout that crisis,” she said.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior figure in the Palestine Liberation Organization, told a news conference here Tuesday that the Palestinians are demanding a commitment to the 1967 borders and a deadline for the end of Israel’s occupation, adding when pressed that “within three years, the occupation should end.”

She also criticized the failed U.S. peace initiative by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, saying it allowed Israel “to persist in policies” that she characterized as unilateral and abusive.