RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week the state of Oklahoma “botched” an execution.

Botched is the accepted term in the media coverage, despite the fact that Clayton Lockett was executed. He just died badly, suffering for 43 minutes until he eventually had a heart attack.

Oklahoma’s governor has called for an investigation. President Obama asked Attorney General Eric Holder (who is seeking the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing case) to review the death penalty.

Obama’s position was a perfectly defensible straddle: “The individual . . . had committed heinous crimes, terrible crimes, and I’ve said in the past that there are certain circumstances where a crime is so terrible that the application of the death penalty may be appropriate.”

On the other hand, Obama added: “I’ve also said that in the application of the death penalty . . . we have seen significant problems, racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to be innocent.

“I think we do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions.”

Kimberley Strassel has an article in the Wall Street Journal [1] suggesting that an array of conservative groups, including Tea Party organizations, seem headed for a string of defeats in GOP primaries in their attempts to knock off Republican Senate incumbents. Most of those efforts are in states where the Republican nominee, whether the incumbent or a challenger, is likely to win in November (e.g., Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina). Kentucky is the exception: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seems headed for a decisive primary victory on May 20 against Matt Bevin; after that, McConnell faces a close fall matchup [2] to retain his seat against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

In the election cycles of 2010 and 2012, Republican contests in several Senate primaries produced either hopelessly unelectable nominees such as Christine O’Donnell, or badly flawed candidates such as Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Todd Akin, and Richard Mourdock. All of these candidates self-destructed in the general election campaign, losing winnable races. In each of these cases, the eventual nominee ran well to the right of more mainstream incumbents (Richard Lugar) or other primary contestants.

The GOP hopes for taking control of the Senate in November (by picking up a net six seats) rely on winning two open seats now held by Democrats in South Dakota and West Virginia, and the seat held by a recently appointed replacement senator in Montana. After these three races, all of which now look very good for the GOP, the task gets harder. They must defeat incumbents in Louisiana (Mary Landrieu), North Carolina (Kay Hagan), Arkansas (Mark Pryor), and Alaska (Mike Begich). Two other open seat races held by Democrats (Iowa and Michigan) and two other incumbents (Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire and Jeff Merkley in Oregon) now face bigger challenges than many expected.

In Georgia, the seat of retiring Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss has produced a wide open GOP primary. Five candidates at one time or another have held the lead, and four of the five are still tightly bunched [3] just days out from the May 20 primary (only Congressman Phil Gingrey has faded).

Georgia has become reliably Republican over the last five presidential races and in other statewide races, but is now experiencing rapid demographic shifts [4] that favor Democrats. Mitt Romney won the state by 7%, but the Obama campaign did not actively work the state as they did North Carolina or Virginia. The state’s rapidly expanding economy has attracted hundreds of thousands of Asians and Latinos, and the Atlanta area has always been an attractive location for African Americans, and many are moving to or returning to the area from other states.

The 2013 Walter Duranty Prize for mendacious journalism was awarded in front of an upbeat crowd at a dinner Monday night at New York’s 3 West Club [1].

This prize – in honor (or, more accurately, dishonor) of Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent during the 1920s and 1930s – was first given in 2011 by PJ Media and The New Criterion. For various reasons of sloth and bureaucracy, it has taken the organizations a year and a half to award a second round, but the prize will now be put on an annual basis.

A second award – The Rather (after Dan Rather) — for lifetime achievement in mendacious journalism was initiated this year.

The redoubtable and witty James “Best of the Web” Taranto [2] of the Wall Street Journal again officiated at the event.

The 2013 prizes will be announced here followed by the opening speech of the evening, “Why a Walter Duranty Prize,” by Roger L. Simon.

Starting tomorrow for the next four days we will publish the four presentation speeches from committee members. Next week they will appear in video form from Ed Driscoll [3].

The Duranty Prize for 2013:

Second runner-up: John Judis for his absurdly biased and ignorant reporting on Israel and the Middle East in general in The New Republic. Presentation speech by Ron Radosh.

First runner-up: Candy Crowley of CNN for her unprecedented personal intervention in a presidential debate she was moderating on the subject of Benghazi. The committee realized this intervention took place 2012, but the committee noted Crowley continued to justify this unconscionably biased intervention throughout 2013. Presentation speech by Claudia Rosett.

THE DURANTY FOR 2013: David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times for his supposedly thorough unraveling of the Benghazi affair, “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi [4],” which was revealed almost instantly to be a meretricious piece of deception worthy of Walter Duranty himself. Presentation speech by Roger Kimball.

THE RATHER: Seymour Hersh for a lifetime of astonishingly dishonest journalism on subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to JFK and Marilyn Monroe. Presentation speech by Roger L. Simon

The committee wishes to thank the readers of PJ Media and The New Criterion for their nominations. It should be noted that Kirkpatrick and Crowley got the highest number of recommendations.

“But Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) countered by claiming “we can all agree that natural variations in the climate are taking place, but man-made global warming still remains a theory.”“The president’s climate change policies will only cause a greater disparity in our nation’s income gap and prevent our nation from achieving its full economic potential,” he said, by “jumping at opportunities to sideline critical domestic energy opportunities for the United States and instead discuss global warming alarmism.”“Fear tactics and money are powerful tools in politics,” he said.”

WASHINGTON – A White House report assembled by 300 noted scientists found that the nation already is experiencing the effects of global climate change and warned that the situation is likely to worsen.

The National Climate Assessment, reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences and overseen by the Department of Commerce to assess current research on global warming and calculate its implications, found that “climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.”

The report concludes that “the evidence of human-induced climate change continues to strengthen and that impacts are increasing across the country.”

“Summers are longer and hotter and extended periods of unusual heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced,” the report said. “Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours. People are seeing changes in the length and severity of seasonal allergies, the plant varieties that thrive in their gardens, and the kinds of birds they see in any particular month in their neighborhoods.”

Average temperatures in the U.S. have increased by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit to 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, according to the report, and most of the increase has occurred since 1970. The most recent decade proved to be the nation’s and the world’s hottest on record and 2012 was the hottest year on record in the continental U.S.

All U.S. regions have experienced warming in recent decades, but the extent of warming has not been uniform. In general, temperatures are rising more quickly in the north. Alaskans have experienced some of the largest increases in temperature between 1970 and the present. People living in the Southeast have experienced some of the smallest temperature increases over this period.

A standard liberal talking point about the Tea Party is that its constitutional designs are “extremist.” But you will search in vain for any Tea Party proposal that is anywhere close to as radical as the current drive by mainstream Democrats to rewrite the Bill of Rights.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unions and corporations to donate to independent political groups has driven liberals to such fits that they now want to amend the First Amendment. At a Senate Rules Committee meeting last week, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer announced a proposal to amend the Constitution to empower government to regulate political speech.

“The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections,” Mr. Schumer said. The Senate will vote this year on the amendment to “once and for all allow Congress to make laws to regulate our system, without the risk of them being eviscerated by a conservative Supreme Court.” He even rolled out retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to pronounce his unhappiness with freedom’s bedrock document.

According to the text of the proposed revision to James Madison’s 1791 handiwork, sponsored by New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, the states and federal government would have the power to regulate the “raising and spending of money” through a wide range of means “to advance the fundamental principle of political equality for all.”

The real guarantee would be political advantage for all incumbents, since it’s the sitting lawmakers who really benefit from any law limiting contributions to candidates or on their behalf. While Beltway boys like Messrs. Schumer and Udall have the name recognition to raise money in small increments, challengers often need the financial boost from a few individuals to get their message heard.

Mr. Schumer is conjuring the age of robber barons, but there were no general limits on what an individual could donate to a federal candidate in this country until as recently as 1974. Contrary to the outrage that greeted the Supreme Court’s recent decision ending aggregate limits to candidates and political party committees in McCutcheon v. FEC, at the time that ruling was issued 32 states already had no aggregate or similar limits on contributions to candidates. That fact was so uncontroversial that Mr. Udall may not even know that New Mexico was among the 32.

Mr. Udall’s amendment is careful to specify that nothing “should be construed to grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press.” In case you don’t follow campaign finance, that is supposed to protect newspapers and TV networks, most of which embrace Democratic causes and candidates.

The real target will be the corporations Democrats have railed against since Citizens United. But why should Warren Buffett’s company enjoy free speech rights because he owns a handful of newspapers along with insurance companies, while Jeffrey Immelt’s is muzzled because GE makes jet turbines? For that matter, what’s to stop political groups from incorporating themselves as newspapers?

Once you’ve opened the First Amendment for revision by politicians, and reinterpretation by judges, anything can happen. We know liberal editors tend to lose their bearings when they write about money in politics, but is the problem so great that it’s worth letting, say, Senator Ted Cruz determine whether the New York Times Co. NYT -1.65% qualifies for protection under the First Amendment?

This prospect doesn’t seem to bother even the great totems of the legal left, who also see an amendment as the only way to end-run the Supreme Court. Amending the First Amendment is a “particularly worthy enterprise,” Harvard’s Laurence Tribe wrote on Slate.com in 2012 “given that the composition of the court prefigures little chance of a swift change in direction.” Who would have thought that the legal left considered rights of speech and association to be so easily tradeable for partisan gain?

Israelis on the left continue to flagellate Israeli settlements in biblical Judea and Samaria as the primary obstacle to the peace.
In two articles within the past week, Nahum Barnea, respected columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth and winner of the Israel Prize for his distinguished writing, has lacerated Israel for diplomatic failure in the recent collapse of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “A radical minority,” he claimed, “is helping turn Israel into an apartheid state.” Repeating the outrageous recent warning from Secretary of State John Kerry that Israel would soon emulate South Africa if it did not follow his advice, Barnea claimed (ynet news, April 29) “to speak on behalf of another population groaning under an occupation — the Israelis.”

Barnea rejected the inescapable conclusion that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas once again fled the diplomatic scene rather than recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Instead, he focused blame on the favorite target of the Israeli left: Jewish settlers. The major contribution to the diplomatic failure, he asserted, came from the “settler lobby.” Whenever negotiations “showed signs of life,” new settlement construction plans were revealed by Housing Minister Uri Ariel, who “sabotaged, undermined and detonated” the peace process without Prime Minister Netanyahu lifting a finger to stop him.

With the announcement of new construction in Gilo, a community of 40,000 Jews located within the Jerusalem Municipality (and a site of Israelite settlement since 1200 BCE), Abbas abandoned diplomacy. This was another victory for the “radical and reckless” settlement lobby that has the power to “shape the face of Israel.” The Jewish state, Barnea predicted, will become an apartheid state, boycotted and besieged internationally. Then “the world will force Israel to become a binational state, a state of all its citizens,” terminating its existence as a Jewish state. All because authorization was granted for the construction of 1,200 new apartments in a Jerusalem neighborhood.

Barnea’s doomsday scenario turned out to be a warm-up exercise for further castigation of Israel. Three days later, in an article (ynet.news, May 2) that quickly went viral, he revealed the content of his exclusive interview with unnamed “senior American officials” who explained “the real reason” for the collapse of negotiations. Their disclosure “is the closest thing to an official American version of what happened.” Lest the Americans be suspected of hostility to Israel, Barnea pointedly noted, “Israel is very dear to them, but the wounds are deep.”

To be sure, there had been no agreement to freeze settlement construction for the duration of the negotiations. (The Israeli government had learned the lesson of a ten-month settlement freeze during a previous round of talks that went nowhere.) Nonetheless, his American sources asserted, Israeli ministers had used construction plans to “sabotage the success of the talks.”

This David, like his namesake King David, refused to back down. Some days ago in Hevron he was taunted, heckled, pushed and shoved by Arab tormentors.
They kept taking pictures. They win either way. If he fights back, hello The New York Times! That image makes front page over there and all over the Internet as proof of Israeli “aggression.”

If he cuts and runs, the terrorists and their leftist enablers get a good laugh watching yet another Jew so easily made defenseless and helpless.

Just like “the good old days.”

Just like that terrified boy in that famous Holocaust picture who is being shoved along by the Nazis.

Just like that humiliated grandmother who is shown in another famous image trying to deflect fistfuls of blows from the same Nazis…as they smirk and laugh.

But this David fought back, and it wasn’t even a fight. He merely cocked and aimed his weapon when he’d had enough from the bullies.
About a year ago we had pretty much the same story involving Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner. See here as he too refused to be a patsy and what happened? He got himself in trouble with the IDF brass.

This David making headlines is a soldier attached to the Nahal Brigade and we do know his real name, but don’t need it here to compound whatever trouble he faces from his commanders. As we get the story, though he was alone in Hevron when he faced the mob, he allegedly overstepped the IDF’s rules of engagement.

A video sharply critical of Islam and Mohammed, “Innocence of Muslims”, was first posted to the Internet in July 2012. Two months later, still a week prior to the anniversary of the attacks in America on 9-11, there had still been little reaction within the Islamic world.

But on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York, armed militants stormed a “diplomatic outpost” in Benghazi, setting the building on fire. Ambassador Stevens, computer specialist Sean Smith, and CIA security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, both former Navy SEALs, were killed over the course of two battles that night.”

The US administration was quick to blame the July video for the rioting in such places as Cairo, Istanbul and Rome that preceded the attacks in Libya, as US facilities and embassies were set on fire and attacked across Northern Africa and in the Middle East. And despite major evidence then available to the contrary from the American intelligence and diplomatic sources on the ground locally, the Libyan attacks were initially and through much of the next weeks still described by senior members of the administration as a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand implying that as such they could not have been anticipated and thus prevented.

Now nearly two years later, the video release continues to be blamed for the riots of September 8-11, 2012 that occurred in Yemen, Egypt, and in Istanbul and Rome, although the attacks in Benghazi are now determined to have been a planned terrorist assault. But this narrative is wrong headed.

We have seen this all before, however, and that is a pattern of the US first not understanding the terrorist attacks against us and then falling victim to a serial attempt to find excuses for Islamic terrorism as related primarily to perceived grievances of the Muslim world against America.

For example, on September 30, 2005, a series of cartoons, some depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist with an atomic bomb, were published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. One report concluded that few people outside the Scandinavian nation took notice at the time. A group of Danish Muslim organizations brought the issue to the attention of Danish authorities but failed to get any action. By the end of 2005, any violent reaction in the Islamic world to the cartoons being published was virtually non-existent.

In one of the latest examples of the inability of writers, the media and politicians to clearly define our current enemy, Nick Cohen, writing for “The Observer” makes an impassioned plea for the safety of some two hundred and twenty Nigerian girls, seized by one of the more current and infamous forward elements of Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram. For starters, these girls are Christian and from a predominately Christian village in northeast Nigeria, called Chibok.

What I will agree to is the insulting, narrowly focused Obama Administration which has bent over backwards, seeking asylum for children and families of Islamic origin while unconscionably ignoring the plight of beleaguered Christians in places like Homs, the Coptic villages of Egypt and now, Christians once again being brutalized by the Devil’s forces in Nigeria.

By the end of the Observer piece, Cohen quotes a Peter Singer who allegorically describes an apathetic world community, unwilling to secure the safety of a drowning child for fear of ruining expensive clothing. For Cohen, the self-involved and well-dressed, neer-do-well stranger in the allegory, is the collective westernized cultures who are not willing to fund organizations which purport to be helping these people.

He also misses a salient point; the name “Boko Haram”, translates as “Western Education is Sinful”, ie, everything western is tainted and sinful because most western cultures are not Islamic. So, he castigates westerners for not giving western funds to largely, western charities, to transfer to a region ostensibly controlled by Boko Haram fighters who, by their very name, denigrate – and hate Westerners. It is probably also lost on him and others that these children were taken, largely, for dabbling in western cultural ideas…like giving.

Let me clear this up for him and anyone else listening who is similarly confused; It isn’t that people don’t want to help. It is, however that people don’t trust the true abilities, competency and veracity of those claiming to help – especially, governments. It has been proven, over and over again that these organizations which have been established for the reported purpose of aiding the afflicted, waste money at a rate slightly less than our infamous governing body in Washington DC. To add insult to injury, they are headed by CEO’s or even committees stripping those donated funds to feather their grossly incongruous incomes and retirement packages.

CAROLINE GLICK WHOSE BOOK “THE ONE STATE SOLUTION” MISSES HERE. RAND PAUL IS BAD FOR THE GOP. TO FIND REAL AND STEADFAST SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL CHECK OUT THE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN WHO ARE PRO LIFE, PRO GUN, PRO KEYSTONE PIPELINE, ANTI OBAMACARE- ALL ISSUES THAT ARE A MIXED BAG FO JEWISH VOTERS. THEN COMPARE THAT TO THE TEPID, MOSTLY NEUTRAL AND OFTEN NEGATIVE ATTITUDES TO ISRAEL AMONG SO MANY OF THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS. THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER IN THE GOP WILL COME FROM ONE OF THE REALLY SUCCESSFUL GOVERNORS….NOT RAND PAUL WHO IS A TOTAL TYRO IN FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY….RSK

Republican Senator Rand Paul is an isolationist. This ought to make him a natural ally for appeasers like Steve Walt and John Mearshimer and the whole blame Israel first crowd.

And indeed, he has taken positions, like opposing additional sanctions on Iran that placed him in their camp.

But Paul is a mixed bag.

Last week, following the PLO’s unity deal with terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Paul introduced the Stand With Israel Act. If it had passed into law, Paul’s act would have required the US to cut off all funding to the Palestinian Authority, including its security forces. The only way the administration could have wiggled out of the aid cutoff would have been by certifying that the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had effectively stopped being the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Paul’s conditions for maintaining aid would have required the President to certify to Congress that the PA – run jointly by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PLO –formally and publicly recognized Israel as a Jewish state; renounced terrorism; purged all individuals with terrorist ties from its security services; terminated all anti-American and anti-Israel incitement, publicly pledged not to engage in war with Israel; and honored previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel.