RUTHFULLY YOURS

When ISIS beheaded British hostage David Haines, last September, the White House released a statement by President Obama that the U.S. “strongly condemns the barbaric murder,” and — with reference to Britain — “stands shoulder to shoulder [1] tonight with our close friend and ally in grief and resolve.”

When ISIS beheaded British hostage Alan Henning last October, the White House released a statement by President Obama that the U.S. “strongly condemns the brutal murder” and –with reference to American hostages Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff beheaded by ISIS — “standing together [2]with our UK friends and allies, we will work to bring the perpetrators of Alan’s murder — as well as the murders of Jim Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines — to justice.”

The president has long been criticized for his lack of strategic vision. But what if a strategy, centered around Iran, has been in place from the start and consistently followed to this day?

President Barack Obama wishes the Islamic Republic of Iran every success. Its leaders, he explained in a recent interview, stand at a crossroads. They can choose to press ahead with their nuclear program, thereby continuing to flout the will of the international community and further isolate their country; or they can accept limitations on their nuclear ambitions and enter an era of harmonious relations with the rest of the world. “They have a path to break through that isolation and they should seize it,” the president urged—because “if they do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication . . . inside of Iran, and it would be a very successful regional power.”

How eager is the president to see Iran break through its isolation and become a very successful regional power? Very eager. A year ago, Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national-security adviser for strategic communication and a key member of the president’s inner circle, shared some good news with a friendly group of Democratic-party activists. The November 2013 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the “P5+1”—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—represented, he said, not only “the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian [nuclear] issue,” but “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.” For the administration, Rhodes emphasized, “this is healthcare . . . , just to put it in context.” Unaware that he was being recorded, he then confided to his guests that Obama was planning to keep Congress in the dark and out of the picture: “We’re already kind of thinking through, how do we structure a deal so we don’t necessarily require legislative action right away.”

Many groups presented by the media as “representatives of British Muslims” are actually part of established British Islamist networks with a long history of promoting extremism.

Although the government claimed to terminate its relationship with the Muslim Council of Britain in 2009, successive government departments have continued to collaborate with them.

Ninety-four percent of British Muslims do not, in fact, believe that the Muslim Council of Britain represents their views, as revealed in a 2007 survey.

Perhaps the media could abstain from describing such groups as “disappointing,” and instead just dismiss them as ill-disposed extremists, whose comments serve no one but the Islamist preachers and the lobby groups they represent.

Muslim community groups have responded angrily to a government letter that urged British Imams and mosque officials to challenge “men of hate” who preach extremism.

The letter — written by Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and Lord Tariq Ahmad — was sent to mosques all over the country:

It soon appeared that Mona Sahlin seemed more concerned with the well-being of the jihadis than with that of the country’s peaceful majority.

“If you want to increase recruitment for the IS, it’s a fantastic idea. The message is that it’s okay to behave like his and when you come back, we’ll fix you up with jobs, housing and therapy.” — Magnus Norell, terrorism expert, Aftonbladet newspaper.

“In a few months, I’m back in Sweden after being deployed in Afghanistan… There is no permanent job waiting for me when I come home.” — Frederick Brandberg, Swedish soldier.

What will Sahlin think of next: Compensate terrorists for lost income?

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Michael Loftus, host of The Flipside With Michael Loftus, Morgan Brittany, a conservative TV and movie star, and Tommi Trudeau, host of Politics Tonight With Tommi Trudeau.

The Gang discussed Michelle Obama’s “No” to Hijab in Riyadh, analyzing the significance of the First Lady taking a pass on Islamic head-covering in Saudi Arabia. The guests also focused on Hijab Day at NP3 High School, Islam — A House of Cards?, A Day in the Life of Sharyl Attkisson and much more.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/michelle-obamas-no-to-hijab-in-riyadh-on-the-glazov-gang/

Last week, confirmation hearings were conducted for Loretta Lynch, the person who would replace the current Attorney General, Eric Holder. When asked about her views concerning the Obama administration’s policies on immigration, her responses where apparently contradictory.

Before we go further, it is of the utmost importance to understand that with all of the pressing issues that our government needs to address, immigration, unlike most other issues, is not a single issue, but a singular issue because immigration impacts virtually every other challenge and threat America and Americans face in this particularly dangerous and difficult era.

Here is how a Yahoo/AP news report, “Attorney General nominee defends Obama immigration changes,” covered the exchanges Lynch engaged in to discuss the administration’s immigration’s policies:

Lynch said she had no involvement in drafting the measures but called them “a reasonable way to marshal limited resources to deal with the problem” of illegal immigration. She said the Homeland Security Department was focusing on removals of “the most dangerous of the undocumented immigrants among us.”

Pressed by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a leading immigration hard-liner, she said citizenship was not a right for people in the country illegally but rather a privilege that must be earned. However, when Sessions asked whether individuals in the country legally or those who are here unlawfully have more of a right to a job, Lynch replied, “The right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here.”

Sessions quickly issued a news release to highlight that response. Under later questioning by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, Lynch clarified it, stating there is no right to work for an immigrant who has no lawful status.

It is disconcerting to consider that what was being discussed was not a matter of opinion or politics but of law.

Ask the White House and it’ll tell you that Al Qaeda is on the run. But it conveniently neglects specifying which direction it’s running in.

While Obama and his small army of spokesmen mumble something about degrading and destroying ISIS, his policies pad out the ranks of Al Qaeda and ISIS with experienced recruits released from Gitmo.

It’s still unclear whether there is any Gitmo terrorist that Obama will not free.

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has said that the White House pressured him to free more Gitmo terrorists faster. White House reports suggested that Obama fired Hagel because he had been moving too slowly on freeing terrorists, making him guilty of thwarting Obama’s plot to close Gitmo.

That would make Hagel the first Secretary of Defense to be fired for failing to undermine national security.

But considering the rate at which terrorists are being released, the only way to empty Jihad Alcatraz any faster would be by moving the whole base to Pakistan overnight.

Obama already freed key Al Qaeda figures, including members of precursor ISIS groups. He freed Abdul Bin Mohammed Abis Ourgy, a bombmaker whom authorities suspected may have known about 9/11. He freed Mohammed Zahir, the Secretary General of the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate, who was caught with nuclear materials to be used to build a bomb. He was also involved in smuggling drugs to the US.

It’s pretty embarrassing when the on-line comments about an article are more logical and knowledgeable than the article. Such is the case with a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week that argued Muslim violence does not reflect traditional Islamic doctrine, but is merely a case of arrested historical development. The whole argument is a tissue of logical fallacies and historical ignorance.

The author, a professor of history at Harvard, starts by explaining that Christianity was once violent and intolerant, but changed over time, and thus can provide an example for “modernizing Islam.” But most of his catalogue of Christian violence and persecution is little more than the tu quoque fallacy. It ignores the fact that Christian violence was typical of the whole pre-modern world, a sad banality of human existence like plagues, war, torture, and famine. The comparison of premodern Christian violence to today’s Islamic terror is as irrelevant as rationalizing modern torture and executions, like the mutilation and beheading regularly practiced in Saudi Arabia, by bringing up the hanging, disemboweling, beheading, and quartering the English used to punish traitors in the 14th century.

The moral panic over U.S. undergraduate life features increasingly illiberal demands to restrict open debate, due process and voluntary association—and the first impulse of most college administrators is to capitulate. So raise a toast to Dartmouth College President Phil Hanlon for responding with pragmatism instead of politics.

For several years the New Hampshire school has been conscripted into the national debate about sex assault, binge drinking, hazing and various forms of “privilege.” Protestors claiming to be oppressed by their Ivy League education occupied Mr. Hanlon’s office for two days last year, while Rolling Stone magazine attempted to smear the college as it did the University of Virginia.

Mr. Hanlon answered this week with a student-life reform plan, and the media seem most impressed with his ban on hard liquor on Dartmouth property. They’ve forgotten the lesson of the 21st Amendment, which is that prohibition rarely succeeds. Students who obey the rules will somehow make do with beer or wine, though perhaps a young entrepreneur is being handed the opportunity to become the Jay Gatsby of Hanover.

It is an indisputable fact that carbon emissions are rising—and faster than most scientists predicted. But many climate-change alarmists seem to claim that all climate change is worse than expected. This ignores that much of the data are actually encouraging. The latest study from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that in the previous 15 years temperatures had risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit. The average of all models expected 0.8 degrees. So we’re seeing about 90% less temperature rise than expected.

Facts like this are important because a one-sided focus on worst-case stories is a poor foundation for sound policies. Yes, Arctic sea ice is melting faster than the models expected. But models also predicted that Antarctic sea ice would decrease, yet it is increasing. Yes, sea levels are rising, but the rise is not accelerating—if anything, two recent papers, one by Chinese scientists published in the January 2014 issue of Global and Planetary Change, and the other by U.S. scientists published in the May 2013 issue of Coastal Engineering, have shown a small decline in the rate of sea-level increase.