RUTHFULLY YOURS

Thanks to the Supreme Court, the new Texas voter ID law was in effect when early voting began in the 2014 midterm. The court upheld the Fifth Circuit’s stay pending appeal of an October 11, 2014 District Court injunction barring implementation of the law’s voter ID provisions. The last-minute injunction was issued by Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in an opinion whose content and timing make it smell suspiciously like the grievance industry’s race card.

[E]ven where specific discriminatory practices end, their effects persist. It takes time for those who have suffered discrimination to slowly assert their power. Because of past discrimination and intimidation, there is a general pattern by African-Americans of not having the power to fully participate.

It smells that way because Ramos is channeling Rev. Peter Johnson, “an active force in the civil rights movement since the 1960s.” Johnson apparently possessed Ramos by denouncing the “brutal, violent intimidation and terrorism that still exists in the State of Texas” because “east Texas is Mississippi 40 years ago.” Although the abuse is “not as overt as it was yesterday” it still exists in the form of voter intimidation because “there are still Anglos at the polls who demand that minority voters identify themselves.” Amazing. Not only that Johnson would say it, but that Ramos would repeat it. Apparently, getting your name checked off a list on your way to the machine is as intimidating as paying a poll tax or being lynched.

Johnson’s narrative is, according to Ramos, the “uncontroverted and shameful history” of Texas’ suppression of the minority vote. And his conclusion that nothing has changed becomes her excuse for ignoring Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, the 2013 decision that struck down preclearance, the most oppressive and discriminatory feature of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). If east Texas is still 1960s Mississippi, then Shelby County’s requirement that “current burdens” imposed under the VRA “must be justified by current needs” doesn’t apply, and white Texans deserve to have Judge Ramos in their face calling them racists.

To prove things are just the way they’ve always been, Ramos trots out a timeline that proves they aren’t. At one time or another, the post-Reconstruction Democrats who once dominated Texas politics had white-only primaries, a literacy test, a poll tax, and annual reregistration. But there’s a small problem. These abuses have about as much to do with the Texas voter ID law as Lyndon Johnson picking a dog up by the ears. The last white-only primary was in 1944. The poll tax went away in 1966. The literacy test in 1970. Roll-purging and annual reregistration ended in 1976. So, has there been enough time for black voters to recover from having been discriminated against in 1976? 1970? 1966? 1944?

To understand what drives a young Palestinian to carry out such a deadly attack, one needs to look at the statements of Palestinian Authority leaders during the past few weeks.

The anti-Israel campaign of incitement reached its peak with Abbas’s speech at the UN a few weeks ago, when he accused Israel of waging a “war of genocide” in the Gaza Strip. Abbas made no reference to Hamas’s crimes against both Israelis and Palestinians.

Whatever his motives, it is clear that the man who carried out the most recent attack, was influenced by the messages that Abbas and and the Palestinian Authority leadership have been sending their people.

While Hamas’s rockets and suicide bombers have been killing Israelis over the past twenty-five years, the Palestinian Authority’s rhetoric has not been less lethal.

In fact, it is this fiery rhetoric that has created the inviting atmosphere for launching terrorist attacks against Israel, such as the attack which took place in Jerusalem on Wednesday, October 22.

Chaya Zissel Braun, a three-month-old infant, was killed when a Palestinian man slammed his vehicle into a crowd of people at a light rail stop in the city. Nine people were injured, three seriously, in the attack.

The Palestinian who carried out the attack was identified as 20-year-old Abdel Rahman al-Shalodi of the Silwan neighborhood in east Jerusalem. He was shot on the scene and later died in hospital.

Abbas and the Palestinian Authority [PA] cannot avoid responsibility for killing the baby.

In order to understand what drives a young Palestinian man to carry out such a deadly attack, one needs to look at the statements of PA leaders during the past few weeks. These are the kind of statements that encourage young men such as al-Shalodi to go out and kill the first Jews he meets on the street.

Mr. Lieberman, a former senator from Connecticut, is senior counsel at the law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman. Mr. Beckner is the deputy director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at the George Washington University.

ISIS’s online recruitment is reaching into North America, yet the Obama administration still has no strategy to fight it.

Three teenage girls from Colorado were on their way to join Islamic State, also known as ISIS, last week when they were caught by police in Frankfurt. Reports now suggest that the young women may have been victims of an “online predator” who lured them to travel to Turkey to link up with the jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq. ISIS has certainly proved skillful at using the Internet to spread its message of hatred and violence around the world, particularly through social-media sites like Twitter and the group’s online English-language magazine, Dabiq.

More Americans may be motivated to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS or other terrorist groups. The online radicalization efforts could also encourage “lone wolves” to undertake acts of terrorism within the U.S., similar to the two deadly terrorist attacks in Canada this week, both apparently motivated by ISIS’s online communications.

Islamic State “operates the most sophisticated propaganda machine” of any terrorist group today, as former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen noted in a speech at the Brookings Institution in September. Mr. Olsen warned of the possibility of an ISIS sympathizer “perhaps motivated by online propaganda,” who could “conduct a limited, self-directed attack here at home, with no warning.”

Al Qaeda’s online efforts have evoked similar fears over the past decade, and played a role in inspiring a number of terrorist attacks, including the Islamist terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, where 13 people were killed; the unsuccessful car bombing in Times Square in 2010; and the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, which killed four people.

Democrats’ Advantage Among Women Voters Has Diminished

In a warning flag for Democrats, recent polls suggest the party is failing to draw enough support from women in three key Senate races—in Iowa, Arkansas and Colorado—to offset the strong backing that men are giving to Republicans.

Surveys this week in Arkansas and Colorado for the first time also showed the GOP candidates pulling even or ahead of Democrats among women voters, threatening to close the gender gap that has been a cornerstone of Democratic electoral strategy for decades.

While the situation remains fluid, an erosion in the Democrats’ traditionally large advantage among women would be perilous for the party, especially in an election year in which men, who favor Republicans overall, are showing a greater enthusiasm for voting.

Democrats are making a particular effort to mobilize unmarried women—their strongest supporters, but a group that tends to skip midterm elections. However, the rise of national-security concerns and low approval ratings for President Barack Obama may undercut that effort.

Climate change worse than ISIS, singer Neil Young?

CO2 sinking Miami, EPA chief Gina McCarthy?

Cats and dogs gone by 2023, author Naomi Orestes?

Machine gun Santa, novelist Philippe Squarzoni?

With the Earth continually failing to warm as computer models project, climate campaigners are getting desperate.

Where do they turn? Fear, slander and propaganda.

Marc Morano, who runs CFACT’s award-winning Climate Depot, has rounded up a number of rather shocking accounts of activists veering the global warming debate way off the scientific track.

Climate Depot has become the indispensable, “go-to” source for news and information that challenges global warming alarmism with hard science and analysis. Many thousands of people around the world make Climate Depot a daily destination when reading the news. I hope you’ll bookmark it and join them.

If the media were doing their job, they would ignore the junk science that warming campaigners spew every day. They would at least present experts to counter the junk with facts. Sadly, we know we can’t count on the old media for balance.

Fortunately, today’s new media gives people a chance to examine for themselves the facts that Big Green advocates fear.

The decision by the most prestigious opera house in America to produce an opera that mainstreams Jew-hatred and anti-Jewish terrorism is a great victory for elitist anti-Semitism. In the world of elite anti-Semitism, Jews are told that truth is but a narrative. Jewish history and rights have no more merit – indeed less merit – than the lies of Jew-haters. And if Jews dare to object to the propagation of lies against them, they open themselves to the easy accusation that they seek to stifle free speech.

The goal of elitist anti-Semitism is to erode the right of Jews to have and promote Jewish rights and interests. This is done by demonizing those who defend Jewish rights and advance Jewish interests, while elevating and romanticizing the lives and largely false narratives of those who seek to destroy Israel.

The Met’s singular contribution to the cause of elitist anti-Semitism is the prestige its production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” confers on the cause.

Another dam has been breached. Another safe zone has become a no-go zone.

On the other hand, at the end of the day, as bad as elitist anti-Semitism is, over the past decade or so, American Jews have developed tools to deal with it.

In the weeks that preceded the opera’s opening last Monday night, much – although not all – of the Jewish community in New York was able to unify in opposing it. Politicians and luminaries joined with more than a thousand protesters on opening night to express their revulsion at the opera.

Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/death-and-terror-in-ottawa?

Two people, a reserve soldier from Hamilton, Ontario and his apparent murderer, were killed Wednesday morning in an attack that started at Canada’s national War Memorial.

One gunman was shot and killed a short time later inside the nearby Parliament building. It is not yet clear whether additional people were involved in the attack. Video taken by a reporter for Canada’s Globe and Mail seems to capture a shootout inside the Parliament building that led to the gunman’s death.

Canadian authorities are saying very little. But the murder of 24-year-old Nathan Cirillo comes two days after another Canadian soldier died near Montreal after being run down by a car driven by a recent convert to Islam.

CBS News reported late Wednesday afternoon that Canadian officials informed American counterparts that the dead shooter is Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian native who was about 32 years old. A Twitter post claimed that the terrorist group ISIS released a picture it claimed was Zehaf-Bibeau.

If Wednesday’s attacker also proves to be a radical Islamist, it would be at least the fourth attack by Muslim radicals in North America in recent months.

Martin Couture-Rouleau, 25, was shot and killed after he rammed his car into two Canadian soldiers Monday. He reportedly told a 911 operator he was acting in the name of Allah. A friend told reporters that Rouleau had grown radical after converting to Islam about a year ago and dreamed of dying as a martyr.

His passport was confiscated and he was among 90 suspected Islamic radicals being monitored by Canadian authorities. During a news conference Wednesday afternoon, officials declined to say whether the man shot and killed in Parliament also was on that watch list.

Last week, before the two attacks, Canada raised its terror-threat level for the first time in four years. A spokesman said the move was prompted by “an increase in general chatter from radical Islamist organizations like (ISIS), Al Qaida, Al Shabaab and others who pose a clear threat to Canadians.” The advisory from Canada’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC), warned that “an individual or group within Canada or abroad has the intent and capability to commit an act of terrorism. ITAC assesses that a violent act of terrorism could occur.”

‘In the 19th century, as today, there were those who wished to use the empirical claims of science to draw conclusions about philosophy, morality, and religion. Among such advocates of what is now called “scientism” were the social Darwinists, who drew on the biological ideas of Darwin and the political ideas of Herbert Spencer to create an alternative to traditional morality. These views were rejected outright by Darwin and his friend and self-proclaimed publicist, T. H. Huxley, writes Gertrude Himmelfarb:

The emergence of social Darwinism recalls the adage of another eminent Victorian. “Ideas,” wrote Lord Acton, “have a radiation and development, an ancestry and posterity of their own, in which men play the part of godfathers and godmothers more than that of legitimate parents.” Darwin, the unwitting godfather of social Darwinism, disowned even that degree of parentage. He dismissed as ludicrous the charge of one reviewer that he had endorsed “might is right,” thereby justifying the idea “that Napoleon is right & every cheating Tradesman is also right.” Challenged on another occasion to declare his views on religion, he replied that while the subject of God was “beyond the scope of man’s intellect,” his moral obligation was clear: “man can do his duty.” Averse to controversy in general (even over On the Origin of Species itself), Darwin played no public part in the dispute over social Darwinism. That battle was left to Darwin’s “bulldog,” as T. H. Huxley proudly described himself—“my general agent,” Darwin called him. Huxley’s arguments against social Darwinism are all the more telling because they come not, as might have been expected, from a cleric or theologian, but from an eminent scientist and ardent Darwinist.

They persuade the world of what is false by urging upon it what is true.” That is John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University (1852) referring to the sciences of his day, which threatened to dominate and even overwhelm theological education in the university. A science’s teaching might be true in its proper place but fallacious “if it be constituted the sole exponent of all things in heaven and earth, and that, for the simple reason that it is encroaching on territory not its own, and undertaking problems which it has no instruments to solve.”

While Newman’s notion of science was far broader than ours, including even painting and music, his description of the overreach of science is still apt. We now have a term — “scientism” — for that fallacy, exemplified, as has been demonstrated in these pages, by Richard Dawkins’s pronouncement that genes “created us, body and mind,” and Edward O. Wilson’s claim that biology is the “basis of all social behavior.” If scientism has become so prevalent, it is partly because of the emergence of new sciences, each encroaching, as Newman said, on “territory not its own” (invading, we would now say, the turf of others), and each professing to comprehend (in both senses of that word) the whole. Intended as an epithet, the term has been adopted as an honorific by some of its practitioners. A chapter in the book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (2007) by three philosophers is entitled “In Defense of Scientism.”

At what point does a political hack choose to sacrifice one’s grasp of right and wrong for the job, or for the cause? Time and again, this election season has shown Washington’s careerists to be capable of just about any negation of ethics towards the goals of a campaign, and we’ve certainly seen that from this State Department before, most notably when Hillary Clinton lied about the Benghazi attack to a victim’s family, alongside his body.

But a baby was just thrown “10 to 20 meters” through the air and landed on her head.

The following quote is what the Obama administration, via Jen Psaki, came up with. Bear in mind that the deceased child — called “a pure girl with a holy soul” by her stricken grandfather, and what words could better describe a three-month old – is an American citizen:

The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem. We express our deepest condolences to the family of the baby, reportedly an American citizen, who was killed in this despicable attack, and extend our prayers for a full recovery to those injured. We urge all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident.

The moral sacrifice made by the administration here is the placement of the administration’s worldview ahead of the protection of the grieving family, the nation of Israel, the citizens of the United States, and those members of humanity able to delineate the ramifications of what just occurred. Would you, as a member of a grieving family – and grieving over a baby! – appreciate being told to “remain calm,” being told your place in this event is as one of several “sides”?

The people at State, presumably not psychopaths, know how the family might receive this. They considered the family’s reaction, and weighed that when constructing this quote. And, being political hacks who have objectively jettisoned their compass, the family’s emotions lost.

Be aware that yesterday, someone at State considered employing the word “murdered,” but instead used “killed.” And be aware that the Obama administration’s detestable, amoral foreign policy trumped all else, and resulted in that enraging closing sentence.

Within three days there have been two jihadist attacks in Canada, carried out by Canadian citizens who recently converted to Islam. No terrorist organization has claimed responsibility, at least as yet. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Stephen Harper showed no reluctance in calling the terrorists … terrorists.

Bravo!

Whether the attackers were incited by the summons to jihad from groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, or were actual members of such groups, there should be no question that these were terrorist attacks. The Obama administration’s practice of denying that terrorist attacks are terrorist attacks has been profoundly foolish – and it was good to hear the president seem to inch away from it today.

The point of this cockamamie denial approach is part political correctness and part plain politics.

President Obama has repeatedly claimed to have “decimated” al Qaeda and put it “on the path to defeat.” Actually, the terror network is on the rise. Furthermore, it is now rivaled by ISIS, a jihadist organization that may be even stronger. Denying obvious instances of terrorism, such as the jihadist mass-murder at Fort Hood, is a transparent effort to conceal the obvious falsity of the president’s claims. If these attacks are not really terrorism, the reasoning goes, then there must be less terrorism; therefore, the pretense of defeating terror networks can be spun as validated. As I’ve said before, it is a way of miniaturizing the threat.

It is more than that, though. Terrorism is fueled by an ideology. It is rooted, quite literally, in Islamic scripture. To cite one of many examples, in the Koran’s sura 8:12, Allah instructs Muslims: “I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.” Thus, Omar Abdel Rahman, the infamous “Blind Sheikh” I prosecuted for terrorism in the nineties, used to exhort followers:

Why do we fear the word “terrorist”? If the terrorist is the person who defends his right, so we are terrorists. . . . The Koran mentions the words “to strike terror,” therefore we don’t fear to be described with “terrorism.” . . . We are ordered to prepare whatever we can of power to terrorize the enemies of Islam.