RUTHFULLY YOURS

Using presidential clemency to override existing policy on criminal sentences sets a dangerous precedent.

On Monday President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders, bringing his commutation count to 89, more than the past four presidents combined. Meanwhile, the White House and Justice Department have signaled that this is only the beginning of an enormous clemency initiative by the administration.

Federal sentencing policy for nonviolent drug offenders is seriously misguided, leaving too many behind bars for far too long. But Mr. Obama’s apparent decision to use his clemency power to override existing sentencing policy is also misguided.

The Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate Wilayat al-Sina (Sinai Province) claimed responsibility for the firing of three Grad rockets at Israel on July 3. This attack, which caused no casualties, came closely after a large-scale assault by the group against Egyptian security installations in the Sheikh Zuweid area of northern Sinai.

Both events served notice regarding the growing seriousness of the threat represented by the jihadists in northern Sinai.

The Sheikh Zuweid attacks demonstrated a level of tactical proficiency and sophistication hitherto not seen in Sinai’s Islamic State affiliate. The jihadists used sophisticated weapons systems, reportedly including Russian-made Kornet antitank missiles, and antiaircraft missiles. They also deployed suicide bombers as a weapon of war, rather than as terrorism, to telling effect against Egyptian Army positions.

Jason Riley is absolutely right here. The dangerous immigrants are radical Moslems who encourage jihad and hatred of America and push back on assimilation…..rsk
Newcomers to the U.S. are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or be incarcerated.

Is the conversation that Republicans want to have about immigration any more serious than the one Democrats want to have about race?

The Republican presidential field sports no shortage of individuals capable of speaking intelligently about America’s broken immigration system. Sens. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham have drafted legislation on the issue. Jeb Bush co-wrote an entire book on the subject. And Rick Perry ran a border state with the nation’s second-largest immigrant population for 14 years. So why is Donald Trump, whose comments about immigrants and crime are as ugly as they are uninformed, doing all the talking?

President Obama was right on Tuesday to hail his nuclear agreement with Iran as historic, though not because of his claim that it will “prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” The agreement all but guarantees that Tehran will eventually become a nuclear power, while limiting the ability of a future President to prevent it.

We say this after reading the 159-page text, complete with five annexes, which offers a clearer view than the President’s broad and happy description. “We give up nothing by testing whether or not this problem can be solved peacefully,” Mr. Obama said. “If, in a worst-case scenario, Iran violates the deal, the same options will be available to me today will be available to any U.S. President in the future.”

Even in the matter of “slavery,” the Torah works toward the natural and ideal condition of each and every individual person, which is freedom. In the Torah system, if a master strikes his slave and wounds him, the slave goes free. If a master has enough food for only one, he is obligated to give it to the slave. If he has only one blanket, the slave sleeps under it, not the master. This is precisely why the Western ruling classes have always persecuted the Jews and taught ordinary gentiles to hate them, lest ordinary people learn from the Jews that they have a right to live in freedom and equality. The notion of man being “endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights” comes from Jewish Scripture, certainly not from Greek or Roman political philosophy.

As long as Jews are around — militating passionately for the ideals of freedom, equality and sanctity of human life — tyrants will never be safe. In their view, both the Jews and their seditious Bible have to be done away with utterly. For tyrants, Islam is the perfect solution, whereas Christianity claims to be fulfillment of what is set forth in the Hebrew Bible, and therefore must proclaim its validity. To Islam, the Hebrew Bible is made by man and not by Allah; it has no validity and therefore there is nothing to confront. Islam is the perfect religion for making the world safe for tyranny.

Ask a “progressive” what it is that they would have us “progress” toward. The response will usually be a blank stare. Is it any wonder that “progressive” Western leaders and establishment journalists consistently cave in to Islamic demands to curtail freedom and have given Islam a special status among religions? They protect it against criticism, vilify its detractors and continually serve as public relations flacks for Islam: they keep explaining that the burgeoning global jihad and its expanding horrors “have nothing to do with Islam.” One could contended, with far greater justification, that the Inquisition had nothing to do with Christianity. One could claim that the Inquisition was actually anti-Christian, perpetrated by people who twisted the doctrines of Christianity. No one says such an inane and ridiculous thing, except in defense of Islam.

When tyrants target the Jews, the real target is everyone’s freedom.

Does the proposed deal with Iran actually prevent the Mullahs from ever developing a nuclear weapon? Or does it merely delay them for a period of years? That is the key question that has not yet been clearly answered.

In his statement on the deal, President Obama seemed to suggest that Iran will never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. He said that this “long-term deal with Iran… will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” He then repeated this assurance: “because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon.” These seemingly categorical statements were intended to assure the world that President Obama would keep his earlier promise that Iran will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

But is that what the deal itself does? Or, as stated by its critics, does it actually assure that Iran will be allowed to develop a nuclear arsenal after a short delay of several years? That is the key question that the Obama administration has refused to answer directly. It must do so before Congress can be asked to buy a pig in a poke for the American people.

Op-Ed: Has Iran agreed to ‘anywhere, anytime’ inspections, an end to R&D on faster centrifuges, and the dismantling of its key nuclear sites? No, no, and no

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday unsurprisingly hailed the nuclear agreement struck with US-led world powers, and derided the “failed” efforts of the “warmongering Zionists.” His delight, Iran’s delight, is readily understandable.

The agreement legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program, allows it to retain core nuclear facilities, permits it to continue research in areas that will dramatically speed its breakout to the bomb should it choose to flout the deal, but also enables it to wait out those restrictions and proceed to become a nuclear threshold state with full international legitimacy. Here’s how.

We’ll remember this as the summer the nation went mad. Lynch mobs are usually brought to the boil by a heinous event, encouraged by heat, humidity and harangue. There was a heinous event, now all but forgotten, but this is hardly a long, hot summer. There’s a drought in Southern California but June and July have been moderate and pleasant, with considerable rain, nearly everywhere else. Nevertheless, a lynch mob with tar, feathers, rails and ropes has been on the scout for somebody to harass, hurt or hang.

Mobs are usually raised from the ranks of the poor, the wretched and the hangers-on from the refuse of the shore, as in Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem at the Statue of Liberty. But not this time. The usual masters of successful rabble-rousing, Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have taken a holiday. We can’t blame them. The usual shouters on all sides have been strangely quiet.

This time the leaders are the “respectables,” as the elites imagine themselves: know-it-all academics, the usual pundits looking for attention, rectors and reverends and other divines out to get a few lines in the public prints, governors, senators, mayors and assorted politicians in pursuit of voters with unrequited grievances.

The nuclear agreement signed by the P5 +1 nations (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States, plus Germany) and Iran is disastrous. It will provide nuclear weapons and hundreds of billions of dollars to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his radical Islamic Shia Iranian regime.

Everything in the past two years has pointed to precisely such a deal which leaves Iran with its nuclear weapons program and infrastructure intact, while additionally shredding the international sanctions regime upon Tehran and infusing its economy with hundreds of billions of dollars in unfreezing of assets and sanctions relief.

It is implied by the oath of office taken by Barak Obama that he will defend the Constitution and this country from foreign powers and from domestic enemies. But he can’t defend either the country or the Constitution if his agenda is to see both torn apart by Islam and Amnesty.

Before turning to the subject of whether or not America wants to exist or will continue to exist as a free country – “To Be, or Not to Be,” not that there’s much freedom left in it – let’s focus for a moment on the two illustrations of “The Immigration Question: Part One.”

The first illustration of the Huns invading Italy from the north is by Spanish painter Upiano Checa (1860-1916). The Huns were nomadic and as a rule did not settle anywhere or put down roots. They were not colonizers, but raiders. They existed to invade, rape, loot, destroy, plunder, collect booty and slaves, demand tribute, and to subjugate, then move on. While the Huns established an empire-of-devastation over a wide swath of Europe in the fifth century, theirs was more of an ISIS empire. They temporarily occupied whatever region they happened to invade and ravish. But the nomadic character of the Huns prevented their occupation from coalescing into a Hunnic “caliphate.” Their “empire” dissolved. Some elements of the Huns eventually settled in what is now Hungary.