RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has declined a request to host an event to mark Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, two U.S. officials said, apparently breaking with a bipartisan tradition in place with few exceptions for nearly 20 years.

Since 1999, Republican and Democratic secretaries of state have nearly always hosted either an iftar dinner to break the day’s fast during Ramadan or a reception marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month, at the State Department.

Tillerson turned down a request from the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs to host an Eid al-Fitr reception as part of Ramadan celebrations, said two U.S. officials who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

According to an April 6 memo seen by Reuters, the office – which typically initiates such events – recommended that Tillerson hold an Eid al-Fitr reception.

His rejection of the request suggests there are no plans this year for any high-profile Ramadan function at the State Department. The month of fasting and prayer for Muslims gets under way in many countries on Saturday.

When asked by Reuters to comment on Tillerson declining a request to host an Eid al-Fitr event in July for Ramadan, a State Department spokesperson said:

“We are still exploring possible options for observance of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan. U.S. ambassadors are encouraged to celebrate Ramadan through a variety of activities, which are held annually at missions around the world.”

Muslim activists have accused President Donald Trump’s administration of having an unfriendly attitude toward Islam, encapsulated by its attempts to ban citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

The administration says that while it strongly opposes Islamist militants, it has no quarrel with Islam. Aides point to Trump’s visit this month to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam where he addressed the leaders of more than 50 Muslim countries, as evidence of that.

Members of Congress, Muslim civil society and community leaders, diplomats from Muslim countries and senior U.S. officials usually attend the State Department Ramadan event, a symbol of the U.S. government’s diplomatic efforts with Muslim countries and people.

If Tillerson avoids hosting one this year, that could send a message “that it is not as important to this administration to engage with Muslims,” said former U.S. diplomat Farah Pandith, who served in the Bush and Obama administrations and helped plan Ramadan events at the White House and State Department.

New revelations have surfaced that the Obama administration abused intelligence during the election by launching a massive domestic-spy campaign that included snooping on Trump officials.

The irony is mind-boggling: Targeting political opposition is long a technique of police states like Russia, which Team Obama has loudly condemned for allegedly using its own intelligence agencies to hack into our election.

The revelations, as well as testimony this week from former Obama intel officials, show the extent to which the Obama administration politicized and weaponized intelligence against Americans.

Thanks to Circa News, we now know the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama routinely violated privacy protections while snooping through foreign intercepts involving US citizens — and failed to disclose the breaches, prompting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court a month before the election to rebuke administration officials.

The story concerns what’s known as “upstream” data collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, under which the NSA looks at the content of electronic communication. Upstream refers to intel scooped up about third parties: Person A sends Person B an e-mail mentioning Person C. Though Person C isn’t a party to the e-mail, his information will be scooped up and potentially used by the NSA.

Further, the number of NSA data searches about Americans mushroomed after Obama loosened rules for protecting such identities from government officials and thus the reporters they talk to.

The FISA court called it a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue” that NSA analysts — in violation of a 2011 rule change prohibiting officials from searching Americans’ information without a warrant — “had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.”

A number of those searches were made from the White House, and included private citizens working for the Trump campaign, some of whose identities were leaked to the media. The revelations earned a stern rebuke from the ACLU and from civil-liberties champion Sen. Rand Paul.

We also learned this week that Obama intelligence officials really had no good reason attaching a summary of a dossier on Trump to a highly classified Russia briefing they gave to Obama just weeks before Trump took office.

President Trump and First Lady Melania have been tirelessly traveling for almost an entire week and are nearing the end of their first overseas presidential trip. The couple just landed in Belgium and the president will soon be attending the G7 Summit back in Italy on Friday and Saturday. However, with as busy as he’s been for days, he recently dropped everything and quietly slipped out of sight for a few hours and now we know the unbelievable reason why.

There’s been no shortage of media coverage as the Trumps travel the globe this week. Liberal news outlets wait with baited breath for the first sign of slip up on the president’s first overseas trip and will find anything to judge him for. Despite having cameras following the couple practically around the clock, there’s one outing in Israel that media “conveniently” missed and it’s clear as to why they chose not to cover it.

Practically every second of the president’s 27-hours in Israel was packed and planned out, but he still made time to fulfill a wish of a 14-year-old who heard he was coming to her country. As eager as she was to see him, Trump was reportedly eager to meet this special little girl.

The Yeshiva World reports:

“During his recent visit to Israel, President Donald Trump made a 14-year old girl’s dream come true. Emilee Imbar has been battling cancer for the last seven years, and has dreamed of meeting with the U.S. President.”

“Rachashei Lev is Israel’s national support center for pediatric cancer patients, and among their hundreds of invaluable services, they have helped thousands of pediatric cancer patients to achieve their dreams.”

Emilee’s dream was to meet the President of the United States and she got that wish fulfilled by our incredibly personable leader. Trump truly loves kids as much as the First Lady, who seems to have had a compassionate effect on him. Perhaps not surprising, was that the entire media ignored this incredible story and act of love from our president since it’s counter to their narrative.

You can bet that if Barack Obama had done something as thoughtful as this, there would have been a media entourage in tow. On the contrary, liberals accused Melania of only being interested in the “photo op” at her frequent and lengthy hospital visits, which is far from the truth with the genuine love and concern for kids this couple continually exudes.