RUTHFULLY YOURS

Philadelphia comedian Jim Kenney has a flair for absurdist humor, and his talents were on abundant display Thursday, when a local jihadi, a convert to Islam named Edward Archer, shot and seriously wounded police officer Jesse Hartnett, and then explained: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic state. That is why I did what I did.” Kenney’s response was as dazzling a sendup of the willful ignorance of today’s public officials as you’ll ever see.

Pretending to be the Mayor of Philadelphia, Kenney, one of the most daring and imaginative comedians on the scene today, said this after showing a surveillance video of Archer garbed in Islamic dress and shooting at Hartnett: “In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam has anything to do with what you’ve seen on the screen….It is abhorrent. It is terrible and it does not represent the religion or any of its teachings. This is a criminal with a stolen gun who tried to kill one of our officers. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”

Brilliant! Kenney had the audience laughing, clapping and howling for more with his poker-faced impersonation of an intentionally clueless contemporary public official. His performance recalled some of the career highlights of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and their British colleague in comedy, David Cameron, such as Obama’s classifying the Fort Hood jihad massacre as “workplace violence” and Kerry’s suggesting that all jihadis needed to discard their romantic dreams of being a modern-day warrior for Allah would be a chance to say “Would you like fries with that?”

Michigan Democrats have a second issue for which they hope to roast Gov. Rick Snyder (R) over a fire of public outrage. The first was, and still is, Michigan’s terrible, pothole-filled roads. That is bad. But the new issue could be even more emotional: the poisoning of children.

Gov. Snyder, who was mentioned briefly as a GOP presidential primary candidate because of his perceived ability to just get things done without worrying about politics, had to apologize Dec. 29 for his administration’s inability to keep lead out of the drinking water of Flint, Mich.

A week later, Snyder declared a state of emergency for Flint and Genesee County, which means state officials decided local resources would not be enough to clean the water and keep it pure.

Snyder also forced the former head of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Dan Wyant, out of office that day, as the Republican admitted it was because the DEQ botched the testing of Flint’s water that the children of Flint have been poisoned by lead in the water.

Two Veterans Affairs managers from the Phoenix VA facility who faked wait lists for treatment that led to the deaths of dozens of veterans are going back to work after being suspended — with pay — for nearly two years.

Agency investigations into their wrongdoing proved to be “inconclusive,” says the VA.

Washington Free Beacon:

Two top administrators at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs health system in Phoenix, Arizona, who were suspended following revelations of fake waitlists and delayed patient care will return to agency jobs Monday.

The Arizona Republic reported:

Lance Robinson, associate director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System, will be assigned as a planner at the VA’s southwest regional office in Gilbert, known as VISN 18, according to spokeswoman Jean Schaefer. Brad Curry, the system’s chief of Health Administration Services, will serve as a data analyst. The two men have been focal points in a controversy over the VA’s perceived failure to hold leaders accountable for mismanagement and misconduct that caused a breakdown in care for veterans in Arizona and nationwide.

Robinson and Curry were placed on paid leave and given termination notices in May 2014. During their suspensions, they have been given hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay and benefits.

Legal immigration has historically been classically liberal and a great boon for the United States.

Immigrants often bring in energy and fresh ideas.

In the past, newcomers from around the world were eager for a second start in the United States. They nearly all worked hard, reminding American-born citizens that that they can never rest on their laurels.

Immigrants honed American competition and helped to keep the nation productive.

Immigrants were typically hyper-patriotic. They reminded complacent Americans how lucky they were to be born in the U.S.

No one knew better how uninviting were the alternatives abroad than did those who had been forced to live under fascism, communism, totalitarianism, tribalism, or endemic poverty and corruption. Most immigrants believed that they always had been Americans in spirit, just unfortunately born in the wrong country.

Immigrants characteristically had rejected their native cultures and were eager to adopt a new American identity. So they were not foolish enough to question what had made America attractive to them in the first place: constitutional government, the rule of law, personal freedom, free-market capitalism, and an independent judiciary and press.

Instead, immigrants often enriched that immutable Western core with diverse contributions of food, music, literature, and art.

Through integration and intermarriage immigrants quickly became part of the American dream. The path from Italian to Italian-American to American usually was completed in two generations.

What then were the ingredients of past successful American immigration policy?

WASHINGTON—Congressional Democrats are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to hold Iran accountable for its testing of ballistic missiles.

Both supporters and opponents of the multinational nuclear accord with Iran say that to maintain U.S. credibility in enforcing the deal, the White House must move forward with sanctions on Iran after two missile tests in the fall.

The administration in late December told lawmakers it planned to impose new financial penalties on nearly a dozen companies and individuals for their alleged role in developing Iran’s ballistic missile program. It then reversed course, saying it needed more time for diplomatic work with the Iranian government, but it hasn’t given a timeline for when they would be imposed.

The delay has put some Democrats, particularly those who represent large Jewish constituencies and donors, in an uncomfortable position. Many such lawmakers agonized this summer over whether to support the nuclear deal, which was opposed by Israel, saying their backing was contingent on strict oversight of Iran’s behavior.

“They ought to impose sanctions because we have to show we take this seriously,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), who backed the nuclear deal, said in a recent interview. “Iran is very destabilizing, very aggressive and very badly behaved and we have to do what we can to stop that.”

“We will issue those sanctions and those designations at the appropriate time. There’s no question about it,” Denis McDonough, the president’s chief of staff, said on Fox News Sunday.
The House is expected to vote Wednesday on GOP legislation ensuring that as the administration eases sanctions on Iran under the nuclear deal, it doesn’t lift sanctions against individuals involved in the country’s ballistic missiles program or terrorism. Many Democrats said they were reviewing the legislation.

Mr. Obama also faced resistance from his own party in November when nearly four dozen House Democrats defied his veto threat to support legislation to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees after the Islamic State attacks in Paris. That biil hasn’t been passed by the Senate.

The debate over the nuclear deal reached with Iran in July is likely to intensify as it is formally implemented and sanctions against Tehran are lifted. “I’m hopeful that Democrats, even those who voted to support the president’s deal, will recognize we’re in a bad place” under the agreement, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) said.

With the incidents of the past two months, ranging from San Bernardino to Merced to Rochester, we now know that we are essentially unprotected from terrorist attacks.

What San Bernardino amounted to is that government fumbled the ball and then refused to pick it up. Every single error made on the federal level concerning terror since the first inauguration of Barack Obama came to a head, from encouraging Muslim immigration to enabling terrorists to enter the country to crippling security investigations in the name of PC.

The federal government has unilaterally broken a basic element of the social contract — that the citizen will give up private use of violence and support the government in exchange for protection.

That protection is no longer forthcoming. Both the military and police have given up any pretense of attempting to control Islamic terrorism. Homeland Defense was founded to create a new basis for a public employee’s union. It fulfills that role admirably. It does nothing else. (Consider the Lutchman case in Rochester, N.Y. in which Emanuel Lutchman, a near-lunatic, was infatuated by ISIS websites but transparently unable to act upon them without help. He obtained this from government agents, who not only encouraged him, but in fact purchased the items he was going to use in the attack. That he was groomed as a trophy bust is difficult to deny.)