RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Ronald Reagan famously described these as “the nine most terrifying words in the English language.” It may be time to propose a two-word corollary.

“Trust us.”

In the end, underneath the geek-speak of encryption, electronic intercepts, forward-looking infrared thermal imaging, satellite surveillance, and sundry collection technologies, that is what the government is really saying when it comes to national security: “Trust us. The intelligence collection we do is important — is essential – to keeping you alive. Oh . . . and don’t ask a lot of questions. You know, can’t discuss that — methods and sources, etc.”

I don’t think that’s going to cut it this time.

Before 2017 is out, we are going to have a brawl over FISA — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Specifically, over FISA section 702, on which much of the sprawling American intelligence enterprise is now based. It will lapse if not reauthorized by Congress.

We ought to be headed into that brawl with a sense of how dangerous the world has become: Competitive great-power geopolitics has reemerged, yet international jihadism remains as threatening as ever.

Instead, foremost in our minds will be how readily the government’s awesome intelligence capabilities can be abused. That is the real significance of the controversy over Obama-administration spying on the Trump campaign and transition.

The scandal that CNN is hell-bent on ignoring brings into sharp relief the very abuses the media, echoing civil-liberties activists, have warned against for years: pretextual uses of intelligence-collection powers to spy on political opponents and dissenters. As a national-security conservative with no illusions about government, I’ve acknowledged these concerns. I’ve countered, though, that the powers are, yes, essential to national security. The abuse of power is thus a reason to get rid of the abuser, not the power.

Livonia, Michigan is known as Little Palestine. The Detroit suburb is famous for its anti-Israel meetings. You could go hear Mustafa Barghouthi, Omar Barghouti and Ali Abunimah without taking a long drive.

It’s also known for its shady doctors.

Dr. Murtaza Hussain was busted for letting unlicensed employees diagnose patients and write prescriptions. Dr. Waseem Alam and Dr. Hatem Ataya pleaded guilty in the nation’s largest Medicare fraud case totaling $712 million in false billings centering on Shahid Tahir, Muhammad Tariq and Manavar Javed’s Livonia medical firms. But what was going on at one Livonia clinic was far worse than the theft of millions. Anyone passing by at the right time could hear the screams of little girls.

We think of horrors like female genital mutilation as a terrible thing that happens over “there.” But as the implacable tide of Muslim immigration swept across Europe, “there” became the United Kingdom.

England recorded 5,700 cases of FGM in less than a year. France has jailed 100 people for FGM. An estimated 50,000 women in Germany have undergone FGM with a 30 percent boost due to the rise of Islamic migration in the last several years. In Sweden, it’s 38,000. And now, as American towns and cities are reshaped by Muslim migration, “there” is now right here. The terrible practice is in America.

Sweden was the first Western country to outlaw FGM. But despite the prevalence of FGM in Sweden, there have only been a handful of convictions. The United States banned FGM in 1997. A Federal report in 2012 warned that 513,000 women and girls in the United States were at risk for FGM.

Now after twenty years of the law’s existence, a Muslim doctor has become the first to be charged.

Operating out of a Livonia clinic, Jumana Fakhruddin Nagarwala abused unknown numbers of little girls. The end came when law enforcement traced calls to her from a Minnesota number. Then they followed the trail to a hotel in Farmington Hills; a Michigan city at the center of an Islamic Center controversy.

It was Friday evening; the holy day of the Islamic week when Muslims are told to “leave off business” and “hasten to the remembrance of Allah.” That is what the two women leading two little girls to be mutilated thought that they were doing. Muslims believe that on Friday, angels stand outside the doors of mosques to record who shows up for prayer. But it was the hotel surveillance cameras that watched and recorded as the two little girls arrived, unaware of the horror that was about to happen to them.

The 7-year-old girl had been told that she was going to Detroit for a “special” girls’ trip. Instead her special trip turned into a nightmare. After the Muslim doctor allegedly mutilated her, she warned the child not to talk about what was done to her.

All new Presidencies are works in progress, though the Trump Administration is less fully formed than most. Amid a shaky early start, leaks and personal feuds, power seems to be shifting away from chief White House strategist Steve Bannon and toward President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn. This makes sense if it helps Mr. Trump put his White House in order and puts results over melodrama.

The transition from running a boutique family business to an election campaign to the most powerful and complicated government on the planet has a steep learning curve. Mr. Bannon, the former Breitbart website publisher, was an architect of Mr. Trump’s populist insurgency, and he entered the West Wing with the President’s ear.

Yet Mr. Trump told the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin this week that “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late.” He followed up with Journal reporters, noting that “I do my own policy, I’m my own strategist” and calling his aide-de-camp “a guy who works for me.” The Time magazine cover story in February billing Mr. Bannon the “shadow president” probably didn’t help his standing with a boss who doesn’t like to be upstaged.

Mr. Bannon was also the author of the Administration’s early miscalculations, including a divisive inaugural address and especially the immigration executive order. The travel ban was overbroad and poorly drafted, got blocked by the courts, energized Democrats and created dozens of media hardship stories.

Mr. Bannon is also getting blame—perhaps more than he deserves—for the ObamaCare repeal-and-replace failure. He couldn’t deliver the ornery conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, despite issuing a typically blunt ultimatum that they had no choice. But most of the fault lies with the Freedom Caucus’s refusal to compromise that is giving Mr. Trump doubts about the utility of working with conservatives.

Consumers of media may have whiplash from Mr. Bannon’s ebbing influence. Only weeks ago pundits were characterizing Mr. Bannon as the White House’s Rasputin, or Trotsky, but apparently the revolution will be postponed. In recent days sometimes you could almost mistake Mr. Trump for a normal Republican President.

All of this is empowering Messrs. Kushner and Cohn, who are preaching competence and calm. The real-estate heir and former Goldman Sachs No. 2 are expanding their portfolios and Mr. Cohn is running the economic decision-making process.

In the Netflix series House of Cards, President Frank Underwood campaigned for the White House by telling Americans, “You are entitled to nothing.” The fictional president — a Democrat, no less — was forthright with American voters about the unaffordable and unsustainable structure of America’s entitlement programs, and he was rewarded at the polls.

In real-life America, unfortunately, there is no such courageous honesty from the political class. Even many in the Republican party, once the stalwart force fighting against the growth of big government, are now resigned to contemplating a government takeover of the health-care industry in the wake of their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. Charles Krauthammer, for example, woefully predicts that President Trump will opt for single-payer health care. F. H. Buckley, meanwhile, optimistically calls for Trump to look to the Canadian model of universal coverage.

There’s just one problem: The Canadian model of universal coverage is failing.

Assessing Canada’s Single-Payer System

The Canada Health Act (CHA), introduced in 1984, governs the complicated fiscal agreement between the provinces, who administer health services, and the feds, who manage their health-insurance monopoly and transfer funds to the local governments. Unlike in the United Kingdom, where health care is socialized and hospitals are run by the National Health Service, in Canada health care is technically delivered privately, although given the Kafkaesque regulations and restrictions that govern it, the system is by no means market-based. In fact, Canada’s government-controlled health-care system has become more restrictive than communist China’s.

Debates about health-care policy typically revolve around three key metrics: universality, affordability, and quality.

Canada passes the first test with flying colors: Every resident of the country is insured under the CHA, with covered procedures free at the point of delivery. While medical providers are independent from the federal government, they are compelled to accept CHA insurance —and nothing else — by a prohibition on accepting payments outside the national-insurance scheme so long as they wish to continue accepting federal health-transfer funds. The spigot of money from Ottawa thus ensures a de facto government monopoly in the health-insurance market.

The CHA provides and ensures universal coverage from the top down. In Canada, the government determines what procedures are medically necessary. Bureaucrats, not doctors, decide which procedures and treatments are covered under the CHA — based on data and statistics rather than on the needs of patients. While private insurance does exist — an OECD report found that 75 percent of Canadians have supplementary insurance — it applies only to procedures and services that fall outside the CHA — including dental work, optometric care, and pharmaceutical drugs.

When it comes to affordability, the Canadian system also passes, if just barely. Canadians pay for health insurance through their taxes; most never see a medical bill. But that doesn’t mean the system is affordable. Au contraire, it relies almost entirely on current taxpayers to subsidize the disproportionately large health-care needs of elderly Canadians in their final few years of life. Rather than pre-funding the system to deal with the coming tsunami of aging Baby Boomers, Canada’s provincial governments pay and borrow as they go — and rank among the most indebted sub-sovereign borrowers in the world. According to Don Drummond, an economist appointed by Ontario’s Liberal government to help fix its finances, Canada’s largest province is projected to see health-care costs soar to the point where they will consume 80 percent of the entire provincial budget by 2030, up from 46 percent in 2010.

PRAISE FROM DICK DURBIN IS WORRISOME….DURBIN RANKS A + 5 ON THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE’S SCORECARD FOR LEGISLATORS INDICATING A VERY PRO-ARAB VOTING RECORD. HE RECENTLY GRATIFIED HIS SUPPORTERS BY ATTENDING A CAIR 10TH ANNIVERSARY GALA.

CAIR has been designated by the FBI and several in Congress as a supporter of U.S.-designated terrorist groups. This is what Durbin said about the organization:
“For more than 10 years, CAIR-Chicago has enhanced the understanding of Islam within our communities by facilitating dialogue, protecting civil liberties, empowering American Muslims, and building coalitions which promote justice and mutual understanding. I applaud your commitment to guaranteeing that our country’s ideals are fully respected and realized for all.” – Dick Durbin U.S. Senator, State of Illinois

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he sees movement in the Trump administration toward the “center stripe” on foreign policy, and “praise the Lord” that Defense Secretary James Mattis is in charge at the Pentagon.

Durbin told MSNBC that it was “absolutely essential” that Trump moved forward the expansion of NATO this week, signing off on ratification after the Senate approved Montenegro’s ascension 97-2. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) were the “no” votes.

That’s in advance of Trump’s first foreign trip to the NATO summit in May. The U.S. “will work to further strengthen our already strong relationship with Montenegro and looks forward to formally welcoming the country as the twenty-ninth member of the NATO alliance,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a Tuesday statement. Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House today.

“Ukraine is the Exhibit A of why it is essential that the countries of Europe, Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine know that the United States committed to NATO. That is the only way to stop Putin’s adventurism in this situation,” Durbin said. “…What you’re seeing is moderation of the views of Donald Trump, at least in his White House foreign policy that differs from what we heard on the campaign trail. On the campaign trail he didn’t back off an inch.”

“…What a dramatic change in such a short period of time. Think a week ago, about a week ago, here is Secretary of State Tillerson saying let the Syrian people decide if Assad has a future. Within seven days we’re attacking them.”

Durbin opined that “there is a transition taking place,” and pinpointed senior advisor Jared Kushner “as one of the elements of that transition” is “true from what I’ve heard.”

“It’s an indication they are moving toward what used to be the center stripe, mainstream on foreign policy,” he added.

On Mattis, Durbin lauded his Tuesday Pentagon press conference, adding, “Praise the Lord that that sort of person is that close to the president.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Instead of “The Trump Presidency Begins,” an alternative headline for this column might have been “Trump’s Presidency Begins.” Each describes a different reality.

Until recently, “Trump’s presidency” has been about one thing—Donald Trump. It’s been Trump 24/7. Mr. Trump owned the presidency the way Mr. Trump owns a tower on Fifth Avenue. For better and for worse, Trump’s presidency was all about him.

In the past few weeks—the Gorsuch appointment, the Syrian strike, the meeting with China’s Xi Jinping —we are finally seeing the beginning of the real Trump presidency.

Like all the others dating back to George Washington, the presidency is not an object captured by one person; it is an office held in trust for the people of the United States.

The Trump-centric phenomenon of these early days is the product of our celebrity-centric times, not least the presidency. He drove it with social media, and the media torrents washed back over him.

There are some realities, though, that the media torrents haven’t washed away yet. America’s institutions, its politics and the distant world are still too large for anyone to hold and command alone. That is the lesson of recent days.

Neil Gorsuch was nominated by Mr. Trump to fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court. What followed was a mighty political struggle. The opposition to Judge Gorsuch, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, revealed that the legal philosophies of progressives and conservatives have arrived at incompatibility.

Confirming Judge Gorsuch required the Trump presidency to recede so its political allies could rise and execute. The legislative branch eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, thereby preserving the president’s prerogatives.

While the Gorsuch drama played out on the Senate floor, Mr. Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with China’s Xi Jinping, who traveled nearly 8,000 miles to meet the American president. Possibly, the Chinese thought that Muhammad going to the mountain would flatter the flatterable Mr. Trump. Instead, the strikingly low-key meeting acknowledged the high stakes for the two nations and the world.

On Wednesday, Mr. Xi called the president to discuss North Korea again. That no doubt had something to do with Mr. Trump’s soufflé surprise over dinner with Mr. Xi—a missile strike against an Assad airfield and chemical-weapons depot in Syria.

Unlike the assassination of Osama bin Laden, when the mission details leaked out overnight, there was no self-congratulatory media dump out of the White House of this presumably ultra-media-conscious president. Just a blow to the Middle East status quo.

For our purposes, the important thing isn’t the strike but what came before. It requires little imagination to guess the import of the conversations about operational and political details between the president and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis —former head of the U.S.’s Middle Eastern Central Command—and his national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster. As Dorothy said to Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. CONTINUE AT SITE