RUTHFULLY YOURS

This week brought the stunning news that Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) had discovered, during a meeting with IAEA officials, the existence of secret side deal between the IAEA and Tehran — a side deal that will not, like the main nuclear agreement, be shared with Congress. So critics of the agreement were understandably eager to hear an explanation from Secretary of State John Kerry when he and other senior administration officials testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday.

The hearing produced a new bombshell: In its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear-weapons-related work, the IAEA will rely on Iran to collect samples at its Parchin military base and other locations.

As a former intelligence analyst experienced in the collection of environmental samples for investigations of weapons of mass destruction, I found this allegation impossible to believe when I heard Senator James Risch (R., Idaho) make it yesterday morning.

Surely this wasn’t what Barack Obama had in mind.

One need not revisit the mountains of purple prose that greeted Obama’s ascent to the White House (or his descent, given the Olympian esteem in which many held him). We all remember it well enough. He was a redeemer, a healer, the prophet who vowed to close the partisan divide behind him, like the waters of the Red Sea, after he delivered us to a new promised land.

In 2004, he emerged from the political wilderness to proclaim at the Democratic convention:

The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states.

While the government was never actually much interested in libraries in the first place, it does seem quite interested in how people worship that awesome God these days. From forcing nuns to pay for birth control to suggesting at the Supreme Court that churches might lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to officiate gay weddings, the Obama administration seems keen on imposing its vision on everyone.

“This is an administration which never seems to find a good enough excuse to help Christians, but always finds an excuse to apologize for terrorists … I hope that as it gets attention that Secretary Kerry will reverse it. If he doesn’t, Congress has to investigate, and the person who made this decision ought to be fired” — Newt Gingrich, former Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives.

“The U.S. insists that Muslims are the primary victims of Boko Haram… The question remains — why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer, Washington D.C.

“Stop building churches. Convert to Islam, which is the true religion. Otherwise we will make a horrible example of you.” — Javed David, head of Hope for the Light Ministries, quoting a biker.

The Free Front of Algeria demands that all Christian churches remaining in the North African nation must be closed and reopened as mosques.

Richard Ferrer is the Editor of the Jewish News.

The Prime Minister was right to highlight the wider narrative that leads to Islamist violence. Trouble is, in British Muslim society “non-violent extremists who radicalise young people” are part of the mainstream, and no-one has the courage to say it.

So, it’s congratulations to Bethnal Green schoolgirl Amira Abase and her Australian “ginger jihadi” sweetheart Abdullah Elmir on the occasion of their wedding.

After all the anguish over Amira and her pals fleeing Blighty during school half-term to join ISIS, finally we have the happy ending we’ve waited for. Romance isn’t dead, although the groom hopefully soon will be.

MPs pretend they don’t know what motivates people to swap suburbia for Syria to become psycho killers or the rape slaves of psycho killers. They walk on eggshells for fear of causing offence.

Well, this week, the prime minister finally did what no other politician has the guts to do. Instead of being politically correct he was just, simply, correct.

Two notorious crooks are helping us wrap up another sordid episode in the saga of the United States biofuel mandates, while further highlighting how bungled and long past its expiration date the program is.

Congress concocted the mandates over fears that US gasoline demand would rise forever and keep the United States dependent on foreign oil, as America’s supposedly limited reserves were depleted. The mandates currently require that we blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol with gasoline every year, and produce over a billion gallons of biodiesel. They hammer us consumers every time we fill our tanks.

Turning corn into ethanol requires vast amounts of land, fertilizers, pesticides, tractor and truck fuel, and natural gas for distillation. It enriches some farmers but raises animal feed prices and thus the cost of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, fish and international food aid. Biodiesel from restaurant waste oil makes some sense, but making it from palm oil or soybeans has similar negative ecological impacts.

The selling point of the Iran deal comes down to two things: (1) Iran will take more time to build a nuclear weapon in the future than it would do with no deal; and (2) Iran will have to openly break the terms of the deal to produce enough nuclear bomb fuel to build nuclear weapons.

Let’s start with their nuclear reactor at Arak. It is true that if Iran complies with the restrictions on the Arak reactor it will not be able to produce plutonium that can be easily reprocessed into nuclear fuel. That’s the good.

“Today Connecticut is the home to the highest state and local tax burden nationwide. Dem governor Daniel Malloy forbade CT gov employees from traveling on state business to Indiana, as a protest against Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act — while CT had the same statute for some twenty years.”
A brain-eating toxin has ravaged Democrat party bosses in Connecticut, who just announced, under pressure from the CT NAACP, that the name of its annual fund- raising dinner, the Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner, will be scrapped. Apparently Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson deserve disapprobation, as slave owners and practitioners of Oppression 101, but why should John Moran Bailey share such a disgraceful fall just for his name’s proximity?

Bailey, a notable Democratic Party luminary, headed the Connecticut Dem party machinery in the 50s and 60s. Bailey also was national Dem party chair who presided over the Dems’ notorious 1968 presidential convention in Chicago.

Since Bailey wasn’t a slaveholder, he can stay on the masthead. And add PT Barnum, Bridgeport native and snake-oil king extraordinaire. The Barnum and Bailey dinner has a certain ring…how suitable for such a venerable event.

A training video released today by Liwa Fursan al-Haqq (Knights of Justice Brigade) of the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) opens with the group’s special forces practicing their abduction and kidnapping skills. And yet FSA units, funded, supported and armed by the U.S., have been repeatedly implicated in the abduction and kidnapping of U.S. citizens in Syria.

Here you can see them putting their U.S.-funded training to practice:

Also shown are critical military skills, such as standing on the back of a motorcycle while shooting two U.S.-funded AK-47s one-handed:

Of course no jihadist training video would be complete without the requisite traversing of the monkey bars:

Or the “Fiery Ring of Death”:

Delta Force and the Navy SEALs have nothing on Liwa Fursan al-Haqq. Yet all three elite units are funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars!

News that the Connecticut Democratic Party has dropped the names “Jefferson” and “Jackson” from their annual fundraising dinner is being greeted by incredulity from many historians.

The decision immediately drew criticism from some historians as a politically correct overstep, including Robert Turner, a law professor at the University of Virginia, which was founded by Jefferson.

“It is a sad and short-sighted decision based upon tragic ignorance,” said Turner, who has written extensively about Jefferson’s legacy.

This December will mark the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, which abolished slavery.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, who officially entered the crowded GOP field on Tuesday, told Sean Hannity that Hillary Clinton attended the party in 1997 when he became engaged to his wife Karen.

Sean Hannity, who interviewed Kasich after his announcement on Tuesday, asked the Ohio governor about comments he’s made downplaying the IRS and Benghazi scandals.“You said, ‘I’m more worried about how we’re going to fix America than Hillary’s email server and you said, ‘I don’t believe you beat her by talking about Benghazi or her emails–”

“No, you don’t,” Kasich interrupted Hannity.