RUTHFULLY YOURS

The leftist media and other American liberals insist on portraying President Trump’s position as a fight against Islam and Muslims. In fact, most moderate Muslims are not offended by the phrase “radical Islam,” because they are very distressed by the fact that their religion has been commandeered by the radicals and transformed from a religion of peace into a more radical version.

I just wonder where those feminists and John Kerry were when millions of Egyptian women needed their support when they marched against the Muslim Brotherhood, asking for America’s help. Where were they when thousands of Syrian and Iraqi women were enslaved and raped by radical ISIS militants?

While not a single voice among these liberal feminists spoke out against these inhumane acts perpetrated against Muslim women by radical Islamists, a Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, Linda Sarsour, co-organized the anti-Trump Women’s March on Washington. What’s worse, these liberal feminists want Sarsour to represent all Muslim women, while in fact she speaks for nobody except herself and those who fund her.

Since the presidential campaign began, and then right up until the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 24, 2017, President Donald Trump has kept saying the same thing: that the United States is at war with radical Islam, mainly represented by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Yet, the leftist media and other American liberals insist on portraying his position as a fight against Islam and Muslims. In fact, most moderate Muslims are not offended by the phrase “radical Islam,” because they are very distressed by the fact that their religion has been commandeered by the radicals and transformed from a religion of peace into a more radical version. Unfortunately, instead of the leftists giving a voice to and supporting these moderate Muslims, a kind of leftist-Islamist alliance has emerged.

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a Saudi columnist for pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat, said in 2004:

“It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims… The majority of those who were suicide bombers on buses, other vehicles, in schools and other places, all over the world, were Muslim”.

This statement from a well-known columnist and a former General Manager of the Al Arabiya news channel demonstrates how moderate Muslims are critical of their own culture and how they are saddened by how their religion has been hijacked by radicals. However, these appeals fall on deaf ears with leftists; they call moderate Muslims passive, which instead supports and furthers the radical Islamists’ cause.

In 2009, while millions of Iranians were in the streets opposing a radical, theocratic regime as part of their Green Revolution, then U.S. President Barack Obama ignored this historic moment and continued reaching out to Iran’s rulers, who are designated by the U.S. government as sponsors of terrorism. His appeasing attitude was a clear sign that the US was so eager to reach a nuclear deal by befriending the Iranian regime, that it was willing to tolerate the mullahs’ brutal repression and its hegemonic policies across the region.

In 2011, we witnessed the Obama Administration’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in the form of billions of dollars that ensured its victory, ignoring the consequences their rule has had on moderate Muslims, Coptic Christians and secular groups. Many moderate Muslim women in Egypt entreated the Obama Administration to support them against the Muslim Brotherhood’s tyranny and misogyny, but to no avail.

With a hat-tip to Mark Twain, reports of the death of the Republican health-care bill have been greatly, vastly, even bigly exaggerated. What we are witnessing isn’t a legislative demise, but the rebirth of a long-lost Washington concept: politics.

From the moment Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled his ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill, the media have declared it a doomed project. The newspapers have run out of synonyms for division, disunity, discord, conflict, struggle, mess. Since the only thing the media enjoy more than bashing Republicans is helping Republicans bash each other, the cable stations have offered a nonstop loop of a handful of GOP naysayers and grandstanders (cue Rand Paul) who wish the bill ill.

Perhaps the talking heads can be excused for their dim outlook. The Obama administration marked one of the more dysfunctional and destructive periods in Washington—eight years of threats, executive rule, noncommunication and opposition politics. So it is undoubtedly confusing for some people suddenly to watch an honest-to-goodness legislative process, with all its negotiating, horse-trading and consensus-building.
Under prior management, Nancy Pelosi did her thing, Harry Reid did his thing, President Obama did his thing, and the three tried not to talk if at all possible. The Obama legislative affairs team couldn’t have found Capitol Hill with a map.

Today’s negotiations over the health bill feature a White House that is working hand-in-hand with congressional leaders to get to yes. Even as the critics looped on cable TV, the Trump administration was working with House leaders on a substantive amendment to the bill to address conservative concerns before the legislation hits the floor.

Vice President Mike Pence held a listening session Wednesday with the Republican Study Committee, an influential bloc of 170 House conservatives. President Trump met last week with conservative activists. Sources confirm daily telephone round robins among Mr. Ryan, Mitch McConnell, President Trump, Mr. Pence, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.

One sign of progress: Rep. Mark Meadows (of the Freedom Caucus) and Sen. Ted Cruz (of Cruz-Still-For-President) penned a joint op-ed Thursday for this newspaper’s online edition, laying out their demands for the health-care bill. These two super-critics have not only refused to walk away from the negotiating table but are positioning themselves potentially to take credit for changes.

President Obama disdained Congress and didn’t want to legislate. He waited to see if he liked what his Democratic underlings brought him. Today veterans of the legislative process are professing admiration for the way Mr. Trump is handling this deal. CONTINUE AT SITE

President Trump’s initial budget for fiscal 2018 is a public service, if not exactly in the way he intends. Its main virtue lies in showing voters the painful trade-offs to come if the U.S. doesn’t do something to control entitlement spending.

The “skinny” budget—so-called because a new Administration needs time to offer more details—is being denounced far and wide for cuts to domestic non-entitlement programs. In broad outline the White House wants to add $54 billion in budget authority for defense offset by $54 billion in cuts to every domestic department save Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

Critics are portraying these domestic cuts as shocking while Mr. Trump is advertising his defense increases as the largest in history. They’re both wrong. The annual federal budget is now more than $4 trillion, so the White House is proposing to shift a mere 1.35% of that to defense from other priorities. That’s it.

The proposal does represent a sharp change in priorities after the past eight years when President Obama squeezed defense in favor of domestic accounts. Defense spending has fallen to about 3% of the economy from 4.7% in 2010. Domestic discretionary spending boomed until the GOP Congress began to rein it in after fiscal 2011. The number of full-time equivalent federal employees increased even with the GOP limits to an estimated 2.137 million this year from 1.978 million in 2009.

The notion that this is a wholesale, much less cruel, restructuring of the federal government is a fantasy that only Washington would attempt to promote. Take the defense increase, which is welcome but not even close to Ronald Reagan’s buildup.

The proposal is a 10% increase over the 2018 budget cap set by the Budget Control Act. But it is only about 3% above what Barack Obama proposed in his final budget as he tried to neutralize the defense issue during the presidential campaign. Most of this money will meet urgent needs in operations and maintenance to keep planes flying and troops trained and moving. A serious defense budget that begins to meet Mr. Trump’s pledge to build a 350 ship Navy will have to start with the fiscal 2019 budget expected in May.

Deterrence is the strategy of persuading someone in advance not to do something, often by raising the likelihood of punishment.

But in the 21st century, we apparently think deterrence is Neanderthal and appeals to the worst aspects of our natures. The alternative view insists that innately nice people respond better to discussion and outreach.

History is largely the story of the tensions between, and the combination of, these two very different views of human nature — one tragic and one therapeutic.

The recent presidential election results favor a more pessimistic view of humans: that without enforceable rules, humans are likely to run amok — quite in contrast to the prior therapeutic mindset of the Obama administration.

Take illegal immigration. The Trump administration believed the answer was to persuade people not to come illegally into the United States, and to convince those who are already residing here illegally and who have broken American laws to go home. So his proposed wall on the border with Mexico and beefed-up patrols are a sort of insurance policy in case immigrants do not heed appeals to follow the law. Deportation and even the threat of deportation also serve as deterrents to persuade others not to enter the U.S. illegally, given the likelihood of being sent back home promptly.

The early result of that proposed deterrent policy is that in just two months, attempted illegal entries into the U.S. have fallen dramatically.

Past approaches to illegal immigration were largely therapeutic. Bilateral talks with Mexico, sanctuary cities, de facto amnesties, and non-enforcement of immigration laws supposedly would ensure that immigration was orderly and a positive experience for both hosts and guests. Instead, the border effectively became wide open and chaos ensued.

Currently, there are no real repercussions on campus for students who disrupt public discourse or prevent invited speakers from presenting lectures. Universities in theory claim this is a bad thing — a violation of the constitutional rights of free expression and assembly. But campuses rarely punish students for violating the rules. They seldom ask local law enforcement to apply the full force of local and state laws to (often violent) student lawbreakers.

For much of Preet Bharara’s first year as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York, your humble correspondent was his supervisor. I have always thought highly of him, personally and professionally, so I’m sorry to see him end a memorable tenure leading our former office with a politicized prima donna schtick.

One of the great things about law enforcement done right is that I didn’t know Preet’s politics back then. The SDNY is headquartered in Manhattan and its prosecutors and alumni tend to come from the nation’s top law schools (Bharara went to Harvard, then Columbia Law). Naturally, they tend to lean left. But political predisposition is irrelevant to a job that is principally about figuring out facts and applying legal principles to them.

It wasn’t until he emerged, in the mid-oughts, as Sen. Chuck Schumer’s chief counsel that I realized Preet was a partisan Democrat. I wasn’t surprised, though, to hear that he was well-liked by peers and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, particularly on the Judiciary Committee. His smarts and competence combine nicely with a winning temperament. I was delighted when President Obama nominated him to return to the SDNY as the boss, and fully expected that he would do a bang-up job, as he did.

Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten the defining attribute of the great institution that is the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York: The work is bigger than any one person doing it. It is an easy mistake to make: When big cases are successful, the prosecutor in charge gets the plaudits; you must constantly remind yourself that you are being celebrated for the collective effort of scores of people; their dedication is responsible for the glow in which you bask.

In just the last generation, before Preet’s turn came, the SDNY was run by Rudy Giuliani, Mary Jo White, Jim Comey, and Mike Garcia among a handful of other stellar prosecutors who made their distinct mark before taking other lofty posts in public life. In each case, when the boss moved on, a new boss moved in and the work of the office went on seamlessly.

Contrary to the media consternation — which is more about loathing of the incoming president than loving of the outgoing U.S. attorney — the work will go on without Preet, too. All of it, including the political corruption cases. The “Sovereign District” has always prided itself on independence from Main Justice; the party in power in Washington made little or no difference to the day-to-day in Manhattan.

WASHINGTON — The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence Committee declared today that they have seen no evidence of Obama administration wiretapping at Trump Tower, while the president retorted that wiretapping was a broad term and “interesting” things related to his tweet would surface within a couple of weeks.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump tweeted March 4 while in Mar-a-Lago. “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”

That sparked congressional review of the claims in committees already probing Russia’s influence campaign during the presidential election.

“We don’t have any evidence that that took place… I don’t believe there was an actual tap of Trump Tower,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters today at a joint press briefing on Capitol Hill with Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, said there remains the possibility of the “incidental collection on Americans who were tied to the Trump campaign” in the course of other investigations, but they’ve yet to substantiate that.

Schiff added, “I’ve seen no evidence that supports the claim that the president made that his predecessor wiretapped he and his associates at Trump Tower — thus far, we have seen no basis for that whatsoever.”

The Justice Department missed this week’s deadline to turn over evidence of wiretapping to the committee; Schiff said the committee extended the deadline until March 20 and stressed that both he and Nunes are willing to use “the compulsory process” if necessary. He added that FBI Director James Comey will be asked in open session if such evidence exists at a March 20 hearing.

“It concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis,” Schiff said. “I would think it’s in the public’s interest that this be addressed very openly by the director, and we certainly expect that he will.”