RUTHFULLY YOURS

Like it or not, the federal courts should intervene in the state to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights.

The criminalization of politics is bad enough—just ask Texas Gov. Rick Perry —but a new turn to target citizens as well threatens to permanently warp our political discourse. Like it or not, federal courts will have to intervene to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights against win-at-any-cost politics.

Wisconsin is ground zero of this phenomenon. A partisan elected district attorney, John Chisholm, reportedly goaded on by his union-steward wife, Colleen, decided to take aim at Republican Gov. Scott Walker after his 2011 “Budget Repair Bill” cut back on public-sector collective bargaining within the state. But Mr. Chisholm didn’t stop there: After an aggressive criminal investigation failed to knock Mr. Walker out of office, the district attorney set his sights on the governor’s philosophical allies, an assortment of conservative citizen groups that supported Walker’s reforms.

The claim was that these groups illegally “coordinated” their speech on the issues with Gov. Walker’s campaign, thereby circumventing campaign-finance regulations. The evidence? Intercepted emails and phone records showing that some of the groups communicated with Gov. Walker’s campaign, mostly on policy issues. That wasn’t enough to bring charges, but it did allow Mr. Chisholm to launch an aggressive criminal investigation targeting Gov. Walker’s supporters, complete with home raids and everything-but-the-kitchen sink subpoenas.

These efforts had the intended effect: Funding for conservative policy advocacy dried up and Gov. Walker’s supporters were forced to redirect their energies from political activism to courtroom litigation.

This is not the first time the political left has used criminal law as a campaign device. It started with the prosecution of former Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay —who was finally exonerated in 2013 of trumped-up campaign-finance charges nine years after being charged. Another tactic has been to fund groups like the American Democracy Legal Fund, which has deluged Republican lawmakers with ethics complaints.

Yet the dubious innovation in Wisconsin was to target citizens, banking on the fact that they won’t or can’t fight back. The assumption held true for many groups. But not all of them.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/harvard-students-say-america-poses-bigger-threat-to-world-peace-than-islamic-state/

Students at Harvard University said that the U.S. is a bigger threat than the Islamic State, and that America is responsible for the extremists’ rise to power.

Campus Reform reporter Caleb Bonham asked Harvard students, “What’s a bigger threat to world peace—America or ISIS?”

“American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power,” one student said.

“As a western civilization we’re to blame for a lot of the problems that we’re facing now,” another student said. “I don’t think anyone would argue that we didn’t create the problem of ISIS, ourselves.”

One student speculated that Muslims in the Middle East may be drawn to fighting with the Islamic State because they do not understand how Westerners think.

“They have a skewed view of us, just as we have a skewed view of them,” the student said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/08/twisted-ivy-harvard-students-say-us-bigger-threat-to-world-peace-than-isis/

Twisted Ivy: Harvard students say US bigger threat to world peace than ISIS

They got most of their SAT questions right, but students at Harvard blew this lay-up posed by the college blog Campus Reform: Who is the bigger threat to world peace, ISIS or the U.S.?

Various students at the hallowed Ivy League school said they believe that America, not the Muslim fanatics who behead innocent people, is the biggest threat to world peace.

The students were interviewed on the quad by Campus Reform on Saturday, and the shocking video was posted on Tuesday.

“As a Western civilization, we’re to blame for a lot of the problems that we’re facing now,” one student said during an interview. “I don’t think anyone would argue that we didn’t create the problem of ISIS, ourselves.”

Most of the other students interviewed shared the same sentiment — that ISIS would not exist had it not been for the past actions of the U.S.

“American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power,” said another student.

Caleb Bonham, editor of Campus Reform, conducted the interviews and said that the students’ response is nothing new.

“This video demonstrates the absurdity behind the bash America fad,” Bonham told FoxNews.com. “Unfortunately, too many students think it is intellectual to try and piece together a reason why America is a greater threat than this terrorist organization trying to establish a caliphate through public executions, bombings and beheadings.”

The Islamic State is a splinter group of Al Qaeda that has occupied a large swath of Syria and the northern region of Iraq and has tried to establish a caliphate and rule all Muslims under Shariah Law.