RUTHFULLY YOURS

Too bad the “framework” of a nuclear weapons deal with Iran didn’t come four days earlier on April Fools’ Day. It would have been more appropriate.

The United States is being asked to foolishly believe promises by a regime that is religiously motivated to eliminate Israel and ultimately the United States, is the premier sponsor of terrorism in the world, has a record of breaking promises, including past promises about nuclear weapons, and still holds American prisoners, including a Christian minister, a Washington Post reporter, a former Marine and Robert Levinson, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent taken hostage in 2007.

After Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Sandy “the burglar” Berger stealing documents from the National Archives and Bill’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, political reporters got a bit lazy because they had to sit back and wait for the next scandal to break. The cascading Clintons always served one up.

Some reporters I know openly yearn for a return to the Clinton days. They miss remarks like what then-Sen. Fritz Hollings of South Carolina said when Bill’s poll numbers were falling. There was no reason to worry, Mr. Hollings said, because, “If they reach 60 percent, then he can start dating again.” The joke illustrated the big difference between the Clintons: Bill’s scandals were for the tabloids, and Hillary’s for the business page or the police blotter. His were perverse fun, hers not so much.

Now that the former senator and secretary of state is about to declare her run for the presidency, happy days for political reporters may be here again.

Please note the author is using a pen name because of concerns of retribution at her place of employment:Molly Pitcher is the pen-name for an established opinion editorialist and career educator who, for fear of workplace retribution, chose to assume the voice of this American Revolutionary War heroine. Pitcher not only brought water to soldiers during the War for Independence, but she helped man the cannons. She is sometimes referred to as Captain Molly or Sergeant Molly because General Washington issued her a warrant as an officer, in recognition of her efforts during battle.

According to the discussion around the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act”, the bill is intended to reaffirm religious freedom guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. The law’s main objective is to prohibit the passage of any state or local laws that “substantially burden” the religious beliefs of an individual, business or religious institution. If the general public actually understood what the 1st Amendment truly says – that the government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion, not only would there be an understanding of the redundancy of such a law (hence the word “restoration”), there would be a realization that a law reaffirming our commitment to the 1st Amendment should be unnecessary. To this date, there haven’t been any amendments to the Constitution which are contrary to this extremely important 1st freedom.

Once again, Conservatives, i.e. Republicans, look like clumsy bigots because the message – the argument – is framed wrong. Pundits should be saying, “While we may not like it and are perhaps offended by it, businesses that are not publicly funded have the prerogative to allow religious beliefs to influence their profit making decisions.

Most of the great wars of the past would have been far less bloody had they begun sooner. That emphatically is true of the First World War: if Germany had launched a preemptive assault on France during the First Morocco Crisis of 1905, before Britain had signed the Entente Cordiale with France and while Russia was busy with an internal rebellion, the result would have been a repeat of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 rather than the ghastly war of attrition that all but ruined Western civilization. It was a tragedy that the vacillating Kaiser Wilhelm II rejected the counsel of his general staff and kept the peace. I do not mean to impute moral superiority to Wilhelmine Germany, but to argue, simply, that swift victory by one side was preferable to what followed. It is hardly controversial to argue that Britain and France should have prepared for war with Germany and preempted Hitler’s ambitions no later than the 1936 re-occupation of the Rhineland.

Chuck Schumer announces Congress has the right to disapprove the Iran deal; he is strongly supporting the Corker bill.

Many hard-core Israel supporters thought all hopes of preventing a bad Iran deal was lost when powerful New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D) recently learned he would soon attain a long-coveted starring role in Washington, D.C.

With long-time wheeler-dealer Nevada Senator and minority leader Harry Reid’s announcement that he would retire in 2016, Schumer is the one who will step into that coveted role.