RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” The words are often attributed to famed Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. Judging from the ungraciousness that has characterized Hillary Clinton’s every public appearance since the November election, she has taken them to heart.

Friday’s commencement address at Wellesley—an attack on the man who defeated her—is only the latest outburst from a failed candidate, who has now vowed to take a leading position in the anti-Trump “resistance.” On the right these things provoke new headlines about sore loserhood. Far more interesting is the irritation Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to fade away is causing among fellow Democrats who blame her for the loss against what should have been an easily defeatable Republican nominee.

This is supremely unfair to Mrs. Clinton. As flawed a candidate as she might have been, the truth is almost certainly the reverse. It is today’s Democratic Party that gave us Mrs. Clinton, as well as the thumping in November.

Yes, the Clintons have always been flexible about principles, a big reason for the appeal of the more purist Bernie Sanders. Back when her husband was running for president as a “New Democrat” in 1992, the idea was that the party had shed its McGovernite past and moved to the center, so that it could now be trusted on values, the economy and national security. At the time Mr. Clinton advertised his wife as “two for the price of one.”

Once they got in, Mrs. Clinton reverted to type by pushing, unsuccessfully, for universal health care. But after that belly-flop and the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, they dialed it back, and by 1996 her husband was telling the American people “the era of big government is over.”

As New York’s junior senator, Mrs. Clinton was firmly ensconced within her party. “On the 1,390 votes she cast in which most senators from one party voted differently from most senators across the aisle,” notes an April 2016 piece from Roll Call, “Clinton went against the Democratic grain only 49 times.”

Even on the single issue that came to be used against her in last year’s Democratic presidential primary—her 2002 vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq—Mrs. Clinton was squarely with her party. We’ve forgotten it today, but more Democrats voted with Mrs. Clinton on that one than against, including Harry Reid, John Edwards, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and John Kerry. Only a few years later she, again like them, opposed the surge.

So which is she, hawk or dove? The truth is that she is both—and neither. In a notable section in the memoirs of fellow Obama cabinet member Bob Gates, he relates a conversation in which she admits her opposition to the surge in Iraq “had been political because she was facing [Barack Obama] in the Iowa primary.” Again this only puts her within the mainstream of her party: Most of the other Democrats who had voted for the war in 2002 would also oppose the surge in 2007.

It has been a consistent pattern for Mrs. Clinton. On almost any issue that energizes her party—from same-sex marriage to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal—Mrs. Clinton has gone where the party has pulled her even if it meant going against where she had been. This is what Hollywood actress Rosario Dawson meant last summer when she asked a group of Sanders delegates at the convention to understand that Mrs. Clinton “is not a leader, she’s a follower.”

But on what became the single overriding theme of her campaign, Mrs. Clinton was truly in sync with her party. This is the idea that she should be elected because she’s a woman, and that a coalition of millennials, minorities and women would come together to make it happen. So where Donald Trump had “Make America Great Again,” Mrs. Clinton had the identity project par excellence: “I’m with her.”

After all, who could be more deserving to succeed the first African-American president than the first woman president?

What may turn into the most explosive investigation in U.S. history regarding the rampant crime, corruption, and sedition of many if not most of the high-level players in the Obama regime.

It was a good plan. After their thunderous loss in the presidential election, our country’s premier Olympian liars––Democrats all––put their heads together to develop a plan to accuse the newly elected president of collusion with our enemy, to get him impeached forthwith, and ultimately to preserve the communist/jihadist government that it took the previous eight years of formal power and a hundred years of planning to accomplish.

First, it was important for the orchestrator and financier of both the former regime and the current “resistance” movement to appear busy with other things, such as financing the travel arrangements of anarchists and thugs, and purchasing shiny new placards to be displayed at often-violent rallies around the country, all protesting the horrible things the newly elected president was doing:

Rounding up criminal aliens
Seating a conservative Supreme Court Justice
Reasserting American military supremacy
Sanctioning the murderous mullahs in Iran
Dropping the Mother Of All Bombs on ISIS targets in Afghanistan
Causing a precipitous rise in employment, et al.
Here’s a more extensive list.

Second, get the putative leader of the former, failed regime out of the country––preferably to an island that doesn’t honor U.S. extradition laws––the better to protect him from indictable crimes should the plan fail.

Third, develop the narrative––Trump’s collusion with Russia––and enlist the entire Democrat Party and 99 percent of the media to hammer relentlessly, 24-7, on this theme, omitting, of course, the fact that it would not require help from the Russians to win an election against the least attractive, least compelling, least accomplished, most corrupt Democrat candidate in decades.
FRUITS OF THEIR LABORS

Another court has weighed in against President Trump’s executive order temporarily limiting entry to the U.S. of aliens from six terrorist hotspot countries in Africa and the Middle East. In ruling against the order last week, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals defied Supreme Court precedent and engaged the judicial branch in areas of policy that the Constitution plainly reserves to the president and Congress. The high court should reverse the decision.

In International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a Maryland district judge’s nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the president’s order. Chief Judge Roger Gregory, writing for the 10-3 majority, acknowledged that the “stated national security interest is, on its face, a valid reason” for the order. But he went on to conclude that the administration acted in bad faith based on, among other things, “then-candidate Trump’s numerous campaign statements expressing animus towards the Islamic faith.”

Whatever one may think of that conclusion as a political matter, as a legal matter the judges overstepped their bounds. The controlling case is Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972), in which the Supreme Court rejected a petition from American scholars seeking admission to the country on behalf of a foreign colleague who had been kept out because he advocated communism. The plaintiffs argued that the government’s refusal to admit their colleague on account of his views violated their First Amendment rights. The justices upheld his exclusion and made three things clear: first, aliens have no constitutional right to enter the U.S.; second, American citizens have no constitutional right to demand entry for aliens; and third, the decision to deny admission to an alien must be upheld if it is based on “a facially legitimate and bona fide reason.”

The high court has repeatedly reaffirmed and followed Mandel. Fiallo v. Bell (1977) rejected a challenge to immigration preferences that openly favored legitimate over illegitimate children and female U.S. nationals over male—distinctions that almost certainly would have been found unconstitutional in a domestic-policy context. In Kerry v. Din (2015), the justices upheld visa denial for the complainant’s husband, who had been a member of the Taliban. When the executive branch makes a decision “on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, quoting Mandel, the judiciary can “ ‘neither look behind the exercise of that discretion, nor test it by balancing its justification against’ the constitutional interests of the citizens the visa denial might implicate.”

In holding that Mr. Trump acted in bad faith, the Fourth Circuit fundamentally misconstrued Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Din, which nowhere suggested that, once the government had articulated a facially legitimate purpose, the courts could weigh whether there might have been an additional, improper purpose. As the Fourth Circuit dissenters explained, Mandel requires only a facially legitimate and facially bona fide reason.

Any other standard would constitute an invitation to the judiciary to direct the nation’s foreign and defense policies. Having misapplied Din, the Fourth Circuit went on to apply a standard domestic case-law analysis, under which the existence of a discriminatory purpose essentially dooms the exercise of governmental authority irrespective of other justifications. Under that approach, the government would have lost in Mandel, Fiallo and Din.

If the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning were to stand, it could cripple the president’s ability to defend the country. The judges claim Mr. Trump’s campaign statements, supposedly hostile to Islam rather than Islamist terror, transform his order into an “establishment” of religion in violation of the First Amendment. If the president is forbidden to impose temporary limitations on immigration from any Muslim-majority nations, it would follow that he is prohibited from taking any hostile or unfavorable actions, including the use of economic sanctions or military force, toward any Muslim-majority nation.CONTINUE AT SITE

The Putin regime is hostile to the United States. Donald Trump’s infatuation with forging an alliance with Russia (much like his infatuation with crafting a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians whose objective is to destroy Israel) has always struck me as reckless, occasionally repugnant, and always hopelessly naïve. Similarly naïve, and obnoxious to the American tradition of resisting royalty, is President Trump’s reliance in major matters of policy on his son-in-law and daughter, two young people who have little if any experience in many of their swelling areas of responsibility.

Put another way, would Jared Kushner be a key senior policy adviser to any president of the United States other than his father-in-law?

The two streams of naïveté collided in December 2016.

Kushner, then 36 and the scion of a wealthy family, is well educated and acquainted with the hardball ways of the New York real-estate business and newspaper publishing. He has no national-security or diplomatic experience, however, but was nonetheless chosen to represent the then-president-elect at a Trump Tower meeting with Russia’s ambassador the United States. That would be Sergey Kislyak, a wily Soviet-apparatchik-turned-Putin-operative, who has been at the game of picking America’s pocket for longer than Kushner has been alive. Retired general Michael Flynn, who was slated to become Trump’s national-security adviser, was also at the meeting. On the agenda was the establishment of a back channel for Trump-administration dealings with the Kremlin. In particular, according to the New York Times, the Trump transition team wanted Flynn to have access to a Russian counterpart to discuss Syria and other issues of mutual interest.

In principle, as stressed by Trump national-security adviser H. R. McMaster, there is nothing wrong with the concept of back channels. All administrations use them. See, for instance, John Hinderaker’s report on President Obama’s establishment of a back channel with the Iranian regime in 2008, when it was already clear Obama would be the next president and when his pre-inauguration signaling to the mullahs undermined the Bush administration, just as the Obama administration no doubt felt undermined by Trump’s transition outreach to Putin. The United States and Russia are global competitors with large nuclear arsenals and some important mutual interests. It is often desirable for adversaries to maintain open lines for frank communication beneath all of their public posturing. Obama certainly seemed to think so when, in his infamous hot-mic mishap, he beseeched Putin factotum Dmitry Medvedev to let Vlad know he’d have “more flexibility” to accommodate Russia on missile defense after the 2012 election was over.

Until last fall, national-security conservatives were ridiculed for agitating about Russia. So it is with back channels, which the media-Democrat complex were not bothered by until a Republican was elected president. To be sure, the structure of the back channel that Kushner undertook to forge is troubling — if, that is, the reporting about it is accurate. That reporting, it must be noted,is based on anonymous Washington Post sources, whom the New York Times has said its own anonymous sources have not been able to corroborate.

In America’s cities and towns today, flags will be placed on graves in cemeteries; public officials will speak of the sacrifice and the valor of those whose memory we honor.

In 1863, when he dedicated a small cemetery in Pennsylvania marking a terrible collision between the armies of North and South, Abraham Lincoln noted the swift obscurity of such speeches. Well, we know now that Lincoln was wrong about that particular occasion. His remarks commemorating those who gave their “last full measure of devotion” were long remembered. But since that moment at Gettysburg, few other such addresses have become part of our national heritage—not because of the inadequacy of the speakers, but because of the inadequacy of words.

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them—not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we—in a less final, less heroic way—be willing to give of ourselves.

It is this, beyond the controversy and the congressional debate, beyond the blizzard of budget numbers and the complexity of modern weapons systems, that motivates us in our search for security and peace. War will not come again, other young men will not have to die, if we will speak honestly of the dangers that confront us and remain strong enough to meet those dangers.

It’s not just strength or courage that we need, but understanding and a measure of wisdom as well. We must understand enough about our world to see the value of our alliances. We must be wise enough about ourselves to listen to our allies, to work with them, to build and strengthen the bonds between us.

Our understanding must also extend to potential adversaries. We must strive to speak of them not belligerently, but firmly and frankly. And that’s why we must never fail to note, as frequently as necessary, the wide gulf between our codes of morality. And that’s why we must never hesitate to acknowledge the irrefutable difference between our view of man as master of the state and their view of man as servant of the state. Nor must we ever underestimate the seriousness of their aspirations to global expansion. The risk is the very freedom that has been so dearly won.

It is this honesty of mind that can open paths to peace, that can lead to fruitful negotiation, that can build a foundation upon which treaties between our nations can stand and last—treaties that can someday bring about a reduction in the terrible arms of destruction, arms that threaten us with war even more terrible than those that have taken the lives of the Americans we honor today.

In the quest for peace, the United States has proposed to the Soviet Union that we reduce the threat of nuclear weapons by negotiating a stable balance at far lower levels of strategic forces. This is a fitting occasion to announce that START, as we call it, strategic arms reductions, that the negotiations between our country and the Soviet Union will begin on the 29th of June.

As for existing strategic arms agreements, we will refrain from actions which undercut them so long as the Soviet Union shows equal restraint. With good will and dedication on both sides, I pray that we will achieve a safer world.

Our goal is peace. We can gain that peace by strengthening our alliances, by speaking candidly of the dangers before us, by assuring potential adversaries of our seriousness, by actively pursuing every chance of honest and fruitful negotiation.

It is with these goals in mind that I will depart Wednesday for Europe, and it’s altogether fitting that we have this moment to reflect on the price of freedom and those who have so willingly paid it. For however important the matters of state before us this next week, they must not disturb the solemnity of this occasion. Nor must they dilute our sense of reverence and the silent gratitude we hold for those who are buried here.

The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery. One gets that feeling here on this hallowed ground, and I have known that same poignant feeling as I looked out across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David in Europe, in the Philippines, and the military cemeteries here in our own land. Each one marks the resting place of an American hero and, in my lifetime, the heroes of World War I, the Doughboys, the GI’s of World War II or Korea or Vietnam. They span several generations of young Americans, all different and yet all alike, like the markers above their resting places, all alike in a truly meaningful way.

Winston Churchill said of those he knew in World War II they seemed to be the only young men who could laugh and fight at the same time. A great general in that war called them our secret weapon, “just the best darn kids in the world.” Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life. Well, they didn’t volunteer to die; they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be, the values which make up what we call civilization. And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.

As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation. And let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish: that no other generation of young men will every have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.

Earlier today, with the music that we have heard and that of our National Anthem—I can’t claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don’t know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as ours does: Does that flag still wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? That is what we must all ask.
Thank you.

The city of New Orleans recently removed three memorials to Confederate leaders (and a fourth marking an obscure clash during Reconstruction.) Why did they do this? Because someone today was offended by a time in American history that they would prefer to obliterate. I believe they chose to demonize these men by viewing them solely through a 21st-century prism.

Revisionist history is a trait of autocracies, not democracies.

A willingness to reduce historical events to a sound bite is worse: “North good. South bad. Destroy anything causing offense today to people who weren’t there and don’t care to learn. Story at 11.”

We need to be clear-eyed about this: the American Civil War was about slavery, not states’ rights. That argument is mostly postbellum revisionism, creating a myth of nobility where none existed. Treating any human being as bereft of intellect, emotion, or soul to be bought and sold as property is a heinous and loathsome assault on all of us. 5000 years of world history in which it occurred on every continent and by nearly every culture does not make it right.

But let us also remember a bit more of our history, a subject seemingly under-taught in U.S. schools today.

The U.S. abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 under President Thomas Jefferson, but it took the Civil War to abolish slavery itself. During these years from 1807-1861, the United States had grown to become a transcontinental power, but one based upon very different regional economies. It should be no surprise that the more industrial, more urban, more economically diversified North would have less in common with the more agrarian, more rural, and more economically commodity-driven South.

There is nothing “civil” about civil war. It is a terrible thing when a father turns against his own son or a brother against his only brother. More than once, I imagine, both died on the same battlefield, each willing to give his life for his beliefs. To suggest today that such a decision is taken lightly is to belittle the anguish of a time we can only view but not experience.

With this history as context, were the three men whose statues were removed traitors or some sort of heinous monsters? Only if you believe the U.S. Military Academy at West Point turns out heinous monsters.

Memorial Day is a time to take stock of the present, reflect on the past, and renew our commitment to the future of America.

Today, as in the past, there are problems that must be solved and challenges that must be met. We can tackle them with our full strength and creativity only because we are free to work them out in our own way. We owe this freedom of choice and action to those men and women in uniform who have served this nation and its interests in time of need. In particular, we are forever indebted to those who have given their lives that we might be free.

I don’t have to tell you how fragile this precious gift of freedom is. Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world.

This Memorial Day of 1983, we honor those brave Americans who died in the service of their country. I think an ancient scholar put it well when he wrote: “Let us now praise famous men . . . All these were honored in their generation, and were the glory of their times. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.” As a tribute to their sacrifice, let us renew our resolve to remain strong enough to deter aggression, wise enough to preserve and protect our freedom, and thoughtful enough to promote lasting peace throughout the world.

Ronald Reagan

In case you haven’t noticed, the Thing That Wouldn’t Leave is back yet again, and still refusing to accept the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Hillary Clinton says that she “beat” Donald Trump—and Bernie Sanders—in a lengthy feature article by New York Magazine. “I beat both of them,” she said, evidently referencing her popular vote win over Trump.

While Clinton did defeat Sanders, who is not a Democrat, in the Democratic primary, she did not defeat Trump, who was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States in January.

In the story, Clinton discussed her post-election status as a member of the “Resistance” to Trump, but she also reflected on the 2016 campaign, which included a harder-than-expected fight against Sanders for the nomination.

Let’s start with the most salient point: it is utterly shameful for the defeated candidate to join a “resistance” against the lawfully elected winner, for no other reason than she lost. Americans despise a sore loser, and both Clinton and her entire graceless party have been wailing since last November about the cosmic unfairness of it all — all the more because they fully expected that the fix was in, and she would cake-waddle into the White House. As Johnny Caspar complains in Miller’s Crossing: “if you can’t trust a fixed fight, what can you trust?”

From the Newsweek article:

Talking about Comey, even the day after his firing, is a risky thing for Clinton to do. The last time she did it was in a conversation a week earlier with CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour at a Manhattan lunchtime gala for Women for Women International. Amanpour had asked Clinton about why she thought she had lost the election. “I take absolute personal responsibility,” Clinton replied. “I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had.” But she had also talked about other factors she believes contributed, citing FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver’s research on the impact of Comey’s October 28 letter. “If the election had been on October 27,” she said, “I’d be your president.”

But even the Left can’t stand her constant bellyaching:

After the exchange, Clinton and her aides had appeared upbeat. The crowd had been enthusiastic, and there was a sense that Clinton had done something that she has long found difficult in public: She had been herself — brassy, frank, funny, and pissed. But on cable news and social media, another reaction was taking shape. The New York Times’ Glenn Thrush, who has reported on Clinton for years, tweeted “mea culpa-not so much,” suggesting that the former candidate “blames everyone but self.” Obama-campaign strategist turned pundit David Axelrod gave an interview claiming that while Clinton “said the words ‘I’m responsible’ … everything else suggested that she really doesn’t feel that way.” Joe Scarborough called her comments “pathetic”; David Gregory suggested she was not “taking real responsibility for the fact that she was not what the country wanted.” And in the Daily News , Gersh Kuntzman delivered a column that began, “Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f— up and go away already.”

Coming from her friends, that’s good advice. Of course, she won’t take it. Her life has no purpose except to claw her way to power, even though she has absolutely no aptitude for it in any lawful way. First she married it, then she coasted into a Senate seat against a hapless opponent in a one-party state, then she was appointed to it. She is, in effect, the anti-Bubba: mean, classless, talentless and very, very angry. No wonder everybody hates her.

Hillary gave the commencement speech at Wellesley College, where she said how important the truth is and that people shouldn’t make up their own facts. The liberal media are wildly cheering that she is back.

She will follow that up with several other topics like:

How important it is for government officials to use only secure computers to send and receive classified documents in order to comply with the law.

The need to keep all emails and other document records and to turn them over when you resign to comply with the law and so you can promptly comply with the law on FOIA requests.

The importance of cooperating with inspectors general because government officials must comply with all laws, not just ones they like.

Making sure your staff doesn’t get paid by up to three organizations to prevent conflicts of interest.

How to block Russia from getting control of U.S.-produced uranium, especially if your family and related entities have been getting huge paychecks from the companies and countries involved.

How to ensure that the ambassadors and staff you are responsible for are safe but if they should get killed, then the importance of putting political priorities first – even if that means scuppering the truth making up things. Can we hear her tell us how very important it is to tell the truth to the families of those who died instead of: “At this point, what difference does it make?”

On the importance of fair elections, she should point out how important it is to have fair primaries. Can she say that it would never be fair to stack the primary tally with superdelegates before the primaries are held to give one handpicked candidate preference?

She could tell a future graduating class how to make $100,000 on cattle futures from a $1,000 investment. She might tell them that technically you shouldn’t be able to trade with only $1,000, but if you marry right, that someone that can trade political favors to ensure that it works. Cattle futures looks so much better than having to admit a kickback. It is obviously OK to do this if you believe you need more money.

Hillary could describe how easy it is to get money for campaigns if you live in the White House. You can have breakfasts and rent out rooms for big money. The Lincoln Bedroom is the most valuable room. When you leave office, you can take stuff with you. And describe yourself as “dead broke.”

Another speech could teach students how to prepare for a debate or any test. She would tell them that if they are as smart as she is, and that if anyone ever slips them the questions or answers prior to the test, they should turn him down, because only cheaters and truly dishonest people would ever accept an unfair advantage like that.

She could do a special speech to young ladies about women’s health care and reproductive rights, saying how Planned Parenthood is very careful when it crushes and crunches babies to save the valuable body parts.

Another speech to women’s groups would involve telling them how to have a happy home life to prevent their husbands from straying. She could tell them that if their husbands do stray with one to a hundred women, they should always treat the other women with respect. There should never be any attempt to call them liars or to destroy their lives. If a woman accuses your husband of rape, she is obviously telling the truth. Whatever you do, never set up a war room.

Hillary likes to focus on women and children because it takes a village to raise a child. She would tell the audience how important it is to raise children who are grounded like Chelsea. Chelsea has said she was never interested in money as she got corporate board seats, a $600,000 network job despite no experience, $75,000 speeches, private jets, and modest living in her $10-million apartment. We have always taught Chelsea to care as little about money as Bill and she herself did.

She should go before environmental groups and tell them that when you are flying in private jets and living in mansions, you should always plant a tree or two to hold down your carbon footprint. If you are talking to fossil fuel companies, make sure you tell them how great it is that they were so instrumental in improving the quality and length of life throughout the world. If someone mistakenly slips a comment in saying you want to bankrupt coal companies, make sure you say that was a misinterpretation.