RUTHFULLY YOURS

When politicians seek to restrict speech, they are invariably trying to protect their own incumbency.

Liberals often deplore efforts to amend the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and especially when the outcome would narrow individual liberties. Well, now we know they don’t really mean it.

Forty-six Senate Democrats have concluded that the First Amendment is an impediment to re-election that a little tinkering can cure. They are proposing a constitutional amendment that would give Congress and state legislatures the authority to regulate the degree to which citizens can devote their resources to advocating the election or defeat of candidates. Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office.

Led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, these Senate Democrats claim that they are merely interested in good government to “restore democracy to the American people” by reducing the amount of money in politics. Do not believe it. When politicians seek to restrict political speech, it is invariably to protect their own incumbency and avoid having to defend their policies in the marketplace of ideas.

This scheme is doomed to fail when it comes to a vote in the Senate, perhaps as soon as Monday. The Constitution’s Framers had the wisdom to make amending the Constitution difficult, and Mr. Reid’s gambit won’t survive a filibuster. But Senate Democrats know their proposal is a loser. They merely want another excuse to rail against “money in politics” and Supreme Court justices they don’t like.

The rhetoric of these would-be constitutional reformers is focused on two Supreme Court decisions: Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and McCutcheon v. FEC (2014). In Citizens United, the court struck down a law prohibiting unions and corporations from using their resources to speak for or against a candidate within a certain time period before an election.

The Obama administration conceded during oral argument that the law would permit the government to ban the publication of political books or pamphlets. Pamphlets and books ignited the revolution that created this country and the Bill of Rights. In pushing to overturn the court’s decision, Mr. Reid and his Democratic colleagues apparently wish they had the power to stop books, pamphlets—as well as broadcasting—that threaten their hold on their government jobs.

Al Qaeda has a new franchise: Qaedat al-Jihad in the Indian Subcontinent. On Wednesday, Ayman al-Zawahiri, widely believed to be in hiding in Pakistan, appeared in a video announcing the creation of the jihadist group’s latest offshoot. It will be led by Asim Umar, a somewhat obscure militant best known for an online video calling on Indian Muslims to sign up for a global jihad. Zawahiri says the group will “raise the flag of jihad, return Islamic rule, and empower the Sharia of Allah across the Indian subcontinent.”

Mr. Zawahiri’s threats should be taken seriously. However, the bigger danger to India is al Qaeda’s rival for leadership of global jihadism: the terrorist group ISIS, also known simply as Islamic State. Al Qaeda may well have deeper networks in the subcontinent. But in terms of both sophisticated messaging and raw appeal, the 63-year-old Egyptian doctor’s outfit cannot match the ISIS upstarts who burst into the public eye after capturing Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June.

Consider the evidence. At least four Indian Muslims have reportedly signed up to fight with ISIS in Iraq. Last week, one of them, a 22-year-old engineering student named Arif Majeed, was reported killed, possibly in a U.S. airstrike. He left behind a letter to his family in which he explained his reasons for traveling from his home outside Mumbai to Iraq: “It is a blessed journey for me, because I don’t want to live in this sinful country.”

Meanwhile, police in the southern state of Tamil Nadu arrested a Muslim cleric after a group photo of young Muslim men posing outside a mosque in ISIS T-shirts began to circulate on social media.

These may be isolated incidents, and the vast majority of Indian Muslims shows no signs of being attracted to any jihadist group. But ISIS has arguably made a bigger splash in India in three months than al Qaeda could manage in the 26 years since it was founded in Pakistan by Osama bin Laden.

Instead of tackling a complex new investment mission, the Fed should establish a clear portfolio wind-down process.

The Federal Reserve recently made clear it is planning to maintain its enormous balance sheet—roughly $4.5 trillion in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities—for many years, while keeping interest rates near zero at least into 2015.

Far from being neutral or stimulative, these policies have caused huge distortions in financial markets, contributing to slow growth and falling median incomes. Given the tendency of government programs to expand and become permanent, the risk now is that the Fed’s large pool of assets and liabilities evolves into a semi-permanent government-controlled investment fund, a U.S. version of the sovereign-wealth funds created by other governments.

The concept of a sovereign-wealth fund inside the Fed sounds farfetched, but the Fed’s megaportfolio already looks like one in many respects. It is one of the world’s largest and most leveraged bond portfolios, taking massive interest-rate risks. Just to maintain the Fed’s assets as bonds mature will require the Fed to make at least $1 trillion in bond buying decisions over the next five years.

The longer the Fed holds its portfolio, the greater the danger that political forces will nudge its investments away from Treasury securities. The Fed already owns bonds created by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, helping them take market share in the mortgage market from the private sector. There have been many proposals in recent years to set up infrastructure banks, for example. Perhaps the Environmental Protection Agency could set up an environment fund that issues bonds for the Fed to buy as a creative way to finance the fight against global warming. Japan, China and others own large holdings of dollar-denominated bonds, and it’s easy to see a future Fed edging its portfolio into euro- and yen-denominated bonds to manipulate the value of the dollar.

Maintaining the large Fed balance sheet raises a host of other concerns too. These include conflicts of interest among the Fed’s monetary, regulatory and investment roles, and the risk of distracting the Fed from its crucial lender-of-last-resort responsibility. Major new problems are inevitable regarding investment transparency and political decisions on the appropriate levels of Fed payments to the Treasury Department and banks.

Exactly as President Obama and Senate Democrats planned, the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has moved to suppress a major challenge to ObamaCare. The gambit is no less remarkable for its nakedness.

Last week the full D.C. Circuit vacated the July decision that some insurance subsidies violate the law’s plain language and agreed to rehear Halbig v. Burwell en banc. ObamaCare’s text authorizes subsidies only through exchanges “established by the State,” so a three-judge panel ruled that the Internal Revenue Service was dispensing them illegally across the 36 exchanges established by the federal government.

Such straightforward statutory interpretation fails the D.C. Circuit’s own high standards for en banc scrutiny. As Washington attorney Adam White recently explained in these pages, since the 1990s the full D.C. Circuit has chosen to rehear merely one or two—and sometimes zero—of the 500 or so cases heard every year. The court’s standard for en banc hearings has been that a panel has overturned a D.C. Circuit precedent, which Halbig does not, or if a matter of “exceptional importance” is implicated, historically meaning some constitutional principle. Reading a statute does not rise to constitutional review.

The difference now is that Harry Reid last year packed the D.C. Circuit with three of President Obama’s nominees, so liberals now outnumber conservatives by eight to five not counting senior judges. The Senate Majority Leader nuked the filibuster rule for judges, allowing them to be confirmed with 51 instead of 60 votes, precisely so the court would become the garbageman to dispose of unpleasant legal challenges to the President’s regulatory decrees. ObamaCare is Exhibit A.

At a press conference on July 22, before the White House had even moved for en banc review in Halbig, Mr. Reid proclaimed that, “It seems clear to me that that decision will be overturned. In a matter of a couple hours, the Fourth Circuit disagreed. Now they’re going to have a hearing en banc.” When asked if Halbig vindicates his filibuster play, Mr. Reid replied, “If you look at simple math, sure does.”

He’ll still write a lawless deportation rule—but not until after November.

So President Obama says he still plans to unilaterally rewrite immigration law—but not until after the election so he can spare Democrats in Congress from the wrath of voters for doing so. And he wonders why Americans are cynical about politics?

White House leakers are saying that Mr. Obama wants to fulfill his June pledge to issue a lawless regulation limiting deportations for millions of illegal immigrants. But he has decided to bow to incumbent Democrats who fear a political backlash that could hand Republicans Senate control in November. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire and even Al Franken, the Minnesota hyper-liberal, have begged Mr. Obama to delay.

“And you know, the truth of the matter is—is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” Mr. Obama said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, referring to the rush of Central American children seeking U.S. asylum at the border. “I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”

He added: “And what I want to do is, when I take executive action, I want to make sure that it’s sustainable.”

According to Burkhard Freier, the director of domestic intelligence for North Rhine-Westphalia, German Salafists are increasingly inclined to use violence to achieve their aims, and many have travelled to Iraq or Syria to obtain combat training.

“The intention of these people is to provoke and intimidate and force their ideology upon others. We will not permit this.” — Wuppertal Mayor Peter Jung.

“In Germany, German law is determinative, not Sharia law.” — Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician Volker Kauder.

Salafist ideology posits that Sharia law is superior to all secular laws because it emanates from Allah, the only legitimate lawgiver, and thus is legally binding for all of humanity. According to the Salafist worldview, democracy is an effort to elevate the will of human beings above the will of Allah.

Muslim radicals have begun enforcing Islamic Sharia law on the streets of Wuppertal, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the largest Muslim population in Germany.

In what government officials say is a blatant challenge to the rule of law and the democratic order in Germany, groups of young bearded Islamists — some wearing orange traffic safety vests emblazoned with the words “Sharia Police” — have declared parts of downtown Wuppertal to be a “Sharia Controlled Zone.”

The self-appointed guardians of public morals have been distributing yellow leaflets that explain the Islamist code of conduct in the city’s Sharia zones. They have urged both Muslim and non-Muslim passersby to listen to Salafist sermons and to refrain from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, listening to music, pornography or prostitution.

A seven-minute propaganda video in German, entitled “Sharia Police: Coming Soon to Your City,” shows a group of men led by a German convert to Islam, Sven Lau, roaming the streets of Wuppertal at night and pressing wayward youth to embrace radical Islam. In some instances, the men physically attempted to prevent young people from entering bars, casinos and discotheques; those who resisted were pursued and intimidated.

The University of Memphis’ Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) program graduate Fatima Noor has been appointed special assistant in the Office of the Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security.

She majored in psychology with minors in Spanish and international relations. She recently completed a month-long research fellowship in psychology hosted by Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh; her research will be ongoing for this program. Noor was a leader in many honor societies at the U of M. She has done volunteer work with World Relief Memphis and the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Where was Congress? On recess!

“Okay, smart-a___, what is your strategy?”
In a [rather large] nutshell; here are the tactics which when pulled together make up a grand strategy:
Domestic
Make an “America is back!” speech from the Oval Office in the White House modeled on Harry Truman’s “Doctrine” speech of 1947. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/harrystrumantrumandoctrine.html Its principal theme would be recognition that the U.S. and its allies are launched in an extended war — and still from being won — against the Islamic jihadists.
Immediately ask Congress for emergency lifting of all Sequestration applying to the Department of Defense, the CIA and other security agencies for five years. Halt and reverse with continuing extension and recruitment the personnel cutbacks now decimating the American armed forces.
Reverse energy policies to provide the U.S. economy and our allies with a noninflationay stimulus of cheaper fuel, simultaneously directly providing hundreds of thousands of new jobs, by:
Administratively, opening up all federal lands [including offshore Virginia, etc.] to fracking,
Administratively, waiving all EPA regs on fracking for five years.
Administratively, fast-track applications for the dozen or so outstanding applications for liquefied natural gas export facilities, putting on hold any Environmental Protection Agency regulations concerning them for a five-year period.
Ask Congress to lift all oil and gas export restrictions, including a waiver on EPA fossil fuel export regs for five years. [These exports would begin to supply allies in Europe and Asia and simultaneously help mend the balance of payments hemorrhage against the dollar.]
Immediately okay the XL Keystone Pipeline and other Canadian applications for pipelines into the U.S. directed at Houston refineries and their export facilities.
Cooperate with Detroit and foreign-owned auto companies to organize and subsidize a national network of filling stations for an expanded production and use of LNG-fueled vehicles.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156748

This is the 75th anniverary of the non-aggression pact between the Hitler and Stalin, the latter becoming (after Hitler attacked Stalin on June 22, 1941) the member of the “Big Three” known as “Uncle Joe.” In the commemorative essays discussing the twin dictators’ earlier alliance of August 23, 1939, which would be followed by Hitler and Stalin’s conquest of Poland the following month, the pact’s secret protocol that divided the nations of central and Eastern Europe between them is also mentioned. I have yet to see, however, any discussion of how that secret protocol became known to the public.

That disturbing story of near-suppression takes us past the war to the trials of the Nazi high command in Nuremberg — widely hailed the model of international justice. But what a morally rotten exercise it was, as war criminals (Soviets) sat in judgment of war criminals (Nazis) while war crimes (British and US) were occurring all around (Operation Keelhaul, the little known British-US-enabled “repatriation” from the West of millions of Soviet-claimed persons to death/the Gulag, was in full swing).

There, in a Nuremberg prison yard, a German defense lawyer by chance overheard top Nazis (von RIbbentrop and Goering) discussing the contents of the still-secret protocol, which offered evidence of Stalin’s guilt in committing “conspiracy to wage aggressive war,” one of the key charges against the German high command. With Stalin trying to blot out his alliance with Hitler from the record — with full support of his British and American allies — how did the secret protocol ever come to the world’s attention?

Here is what happened at Nuremberg, as discussed in Chapter 2 of American Betrayal, pp. 54-58.