RUTHFULLY YOURS

The critics of self-identification as objective truth finally have their test case. Sky News reports:

A prominent civil rights campaigner is being investigated after it was claimed she had falsely portrayed herself as black for almost a decade.

President of the Spokane, Washington branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Rachel Dolezal reportedly identified herself as part African-American upon applying for her post on the city’s citizen police ombudsman commission.

But networks including KXLY say public records show her parents are white couple Ruthanne and Lawrence — who subsequently confirmed their daughter is also white.

Her mother told The Spokesman Review the family had Czech, Swedish and German roots, with “faint traces” of Native American heritage — adding that her daughter began to “disguise herself” in 2006 or 2007.

“Rachel is very good at using her artistic skills to transform herself,” she told the Coeur d’Alene Press.

Reacting on Twitter, the London Telegraph’s Timothy Stanley was quick to ask what many were thinking. “What,” Stanley inquired, “is the material difference between #RachelDolezal and Caitlyn Jenner?”

Please note:”Tim Hunt is a serious scientist. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research. In 2006 he was awarded the Royal Medal, whose past recipients include Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin, Francis Crick, and Paul Dirac. His topic at the conference where he made his offending remark was the public good of science, and why scientific research should be publicly supported. He was making, as the Royal Medal award says, “important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge” — in this case, on the subject of cancer.”

Sir Tim Hunt has lab coats in a twist.

Addressing the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea on Monday, Hunt — at the time Honorary Professor with the University College London School of Life and Medical Sciences — reportedly said: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

Sir Richard Timothy Hunt is — predictably — no longer Honorary Professor with the University College London School of Life and Medical Sciences. He also no longer sits on the Biological Sciences Awards Committee of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, the oldest learned society for science in existence today, whose members have included Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Stephen Hawking. He resigned from both positions when his comments provoked a media firestorm.

As Hillary Clinton prepares to relaunch her campaign at a set-piece campaign rally on New York City’s Roosevelt Island this weekend, Robby Mook, her wunderkind campaign manager, and the Clinton camp’s chief communications officer, Jennifer Palmieri, did their best to drown an audience at a Politico-hosted event in conventional wisdom.

Mook and Palmieri embarked on a tour de force of classic Clintonian misdirection during the interview with Politico’s Mike Allen.

“She really listens,” Palmieri said.

“She can dive deep into any topic,” said Mook. “She is warm and caring about all of the people on her staff.”

“Her story, her life is advocating for other people,” added Palmieri.

Ah. If only the American people had known about that the last 25 years, then they would have had a completely different perception of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

How is it possible that Hillary is so misunderstood, Allen ventured to ask.

The headline blared, “Ex-Official Says Chris Christie Broke Grand Jury Law.” It is the latest hit piece from the New York Times against the Republican governor of New Jersey and putative presidential candidate. Not surprisingly, it was quickly picked up across the mainstream press.

Readers of my columns may recall that I am not exactly an ardent Christie fan. That said, the Gray Lady’s accusation that the governor violated federal grand-jury-secrecy law is campaign-season hyperbole, not news reporting. It is also rich coming from the Times, which tends to lionize leakers of confidential government information. On West 41st Street, any scrap metal left over when the Christie handcuffs are finished will surely be molded into a trophy for Edward Snowden.

I suspect most Americans who learned the story of race-morphing Rachel Dolezal were shocked. I wasn’t. See, I worked at the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department where Dolezal’s type of race-guilt psychosis could be found in diluted degrees.

First, for those who don’t know the story of local NAACP head Rachel Dolezal, it goes like this: young white woman lives life in black costume, sows racial grievance as NAACP official. As one story put it:

Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal said their daughter has always identified with the African American culture and had black siblings who were adopted. They said she went to school in Mississippi and was part of a primarily African American community.

The Dolezals said Rachel married and later divorced a black man. They said after the divorce in 2004 Rachel began identifying differently. She started claiming to be partially African American and the daughter of bi-racial parents. They said they have noticed her change in physical appearance but do not know how she did so.

New benefits for illegals may make it worth the risk to illegally vote Democrat.

Speaking to a black college audience in Texas last week, Hillary Clinton [1] goaded Republicans while announcing her plans for expanding voting law:

[Republicans are] systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting. … What part of democracy are they afraid of?

Hillary’s already made clear that her idea of democracy includes giving mass amnesty to millions of left-leaning illegal aliens. This, along with the federal government’s refusal to implement sensible proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration (which will continue if Hillary takes the White House), will keep elections in many key states forever vulnerable to illegitimate Democratic victories.

Republicans are afraid that America’s non-citizen population is the largest it has ever been, and that most of the newcomers fundamentally disagree with traditional American principles of states’ rights, civil liberties, and ordered freedom.

I happened to hear about Father Patrick Desbois in 2013 when I read the article: “Holocaust Researchers Catalog 42,500 Nazi Ghettos, Camps; Numbers Are ‘Unbelievable’”

The Holocaust-by Bullets
The telling and documenting the mass killing of Jews in Europe has been an ongoing saga. Additional shocking facts appear on a regular basis and with each revelation the dreadful murder of 6 million Jews, among them 1.5 million children, only gets uglier and more horrific. The Holocaust is the trauma of the Jewish people, which cannot be shaken off.
When you look the Holocaust in the face you are defeated by the mystery of evil. When you meet Father Patrick Desbois you are uplifted by the mystery of goodness.
Several months ago I had the honor to meet the Yahad In Unum team, its headquarters is Paris, France: Father Patrick Desbois, Marco Gonzalez and Patrice Bensimon. They were in Los Angeles for the opening of their organization’s exhibition ‘Holocaust By Bullets,’ at the Los Angeles Museum of Holocaust, also the title of Father Desbois’ book: The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews.

I was blessed with the honor to interview Father Desbois, whose mother’s tongue is French and in command of the Hebrew language, which he learned in an Ulpan (a special school in Israel where you learn to speak Israel’s national language, Hebrew) in Israel. Sitting opposite him during the morning hours interview, he appeared to be tired, often on the phone, tense and extremely sincere about his mission to unveil as many unknown mass graves of Jews in East Europe and in a relatively short time.

My first question, which I am sure every interviewer asks Father Desbois was: “What drives you to do what you do?”

A History of Waterloo More Gripping Than a Novel

Where Napoleon Met His Fate Wellington singled out James Macdonell as the bravest man at Waterloo.

The battle of Waterloo, fought on June 18, 1815, was unquestionably one of the decisive battles of history. It put an end to the Anglo-French wars that had been rumbling along for almost five centuries. It also, by smashing the counterweight of French power, opened the gate for the German domination of Continental Europe, which has lasted, with intermissions, to the present day.

That is the only unquestioned fact about it. National pride is still too deeply involved for objectivity. Belgium produced a Waterloo design for a two-euro coin, which the French, not surprisingly, declared unacceptable. Some French historians still argue that Waterloo should be declared a victory for Napoleon, presumably on grounds of superior style. Their German colleagues, by contrast, see the turning point as the late arrival on the battlefield of the Prussian troops led by Marshal von Blücher, while Dutch and Belgian writers complain that the British give no credit to anyone but their own troops and the King’s German Legion.

Bruce Hoffman’s Anonymous Soldiers is a deftly written account of the Jewish revolt against the British in 1940s Palestine. Despite its scholarship—it draws heavily on recently declassified British documents—and its significant bulk, it is a page-turner that leaves the reader feeling sorry once the book is finished.

Unlike most accounts of the Jewish underground, this one tells the story from the British point of view, though without taking Britain’s side. It leaves the reader with no doubt that it was the Irgun, and to a lesser extent the much smaller Lehi, that drove the British from Palestine, and not, as the longtime mythology of Israel’s Laborites would have it, David Ben-Gurion’s skillful politicking.

It was Lehi that began the terror war against the British in 1940. Its members were completely isolated at first, perceived by the Yishuv—a term for Palestine’s Jewish community—as a criminal gang. Lehi was led by Avraham (Yair) Stern, whom Hoffman describes as a man “of grandiose dreams and half-baked plans,” an outstanding classics student at Hebrew University, and a poet. The title of Hoffman’s book comes from a poem written by Stern, which would become Lehi’s anthem. Stern was killed by the British in 1941, and the group’s remaining members killed or captured. The group was revived in 1943 under the leadership of Yitzhak Shamir, decades later to become Israel’s prime minister.

In an article by Connor Wolf called This Is The Difference Between TPP And TPA (Hint: They Are Not The Same Thing), he explains that these two bills are linked together because Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) is a means to fast track passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I am confused by this line of reasoning because as a stand-alone bill, TPA is intended to provide transparency to all trade negotiations by soliciting public and congressional input throughout the process, however, TPP as a stand -alone bill, is behemoth and most of the information to which the public has access has been leaked. Furthermore, it was negotiated behind closed doors. According to the verbiage of TPA, if TPP is not negotiated using TPA guidelines, the fast track option is negated. So why do news outlets and a wide range of legislators portray these two bills disingenuously? Bundling the TPA and TPP as one idea called Obamatrade is no different than bundling immigration reform and border security, which are two separate issues. One is about drug cartels and terrorism and the other is about how we manage people who want to immigrate to the United States.