RUTHFULLY YOURS

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatened a response Wednesday if the U.S. extends sanctions against his country for another 10 years, just days after the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of an extension.

Mr. Khamenei, who has final say in most matters of state, didn’t say what action Iran would take if the sanctions are extended. The House voted almost unanimously last week to keep the Iran Sanctions Act in place for a decade more following its expiration at the end of this year.

Such an extension would violate the landmark nuclear deal brokered last year between Iran and six world powers including the U.S., Mr. Khamenei said in comments published to his official website, Khamenei.ir.

“If this sanction is put in place, it’s a violation of the [nuclear deal] and they should know that the Islamic Republic will certainly react against it,” he said.

Mr. Khamenei has asserted both during negotiations and after the deal was finalized that Iran would only remain committed to it as long as the U.S. and other powers honored their obligations. In June, after President-elect Donald Trump suggested reconfiguring the deal, Mr. Khamenei vowed to “light it on fire” in response.

Iran’s commitments under the deal include a reduction in the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges in operation, limits to the amount of nuclear material in its possession and international oversight of its nuclear program.

The House vote to renew the act signals wide agreement on a hard-line approach to Iran despite President Barack Obama’s nuclear diplomacy.

Mr. Trump staked out an antagonistic stance toward Iran during his presidential campaign, making criticism of the nuclear deal a familiar theme during rallies and debates. During the final presidential debate last month, he called it the “stupidest deal of all time.”

A month ago, progressives were having a conniption fit over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election. So of course, now that Trump has won, they are rioting, vandalizing, staging “cry-ins,” ditching class, group-hugging, tweeting threats, calling names, seeking counseling, and doing everything in their power to make sure that their party declines even further. If this behavior continues, and if––a big “if” –– Trump governs the way he promised, we may be witnessing the start of the progressive disintegration.

Start with the melting snowflake millennials, all those “cocksure women and hensure men,” as D.H. Lawrence once described feminists of both sexes. These layabouts have become used to throwing tantrums whenever they don’t like something or they feel “unsafe.” Most of them are spoiled brats, the pampered detritus of the middle class. But don’t forget the Alinskyite activists who manipulate these juveniles and bus them in on George Soros’ dime. These two-bit Leninists are adept at using “useful idiots” in order to further their aim of destroying America’s political and social order. They’re skilled at manipulating empty slogans like “income inequality,” “fair share,” “social justice,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and all the other bumper-sticker bromides in order to consolidate and increase their power and influence.

If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would start with the Democrat party. No true leftist would have sat still for the nomination of a candidate so obviously part of the fat-cat ruling class as Hillary Clinton. (And no, he wouldn’t be happy with Bernie Sanders either, a bumbling blowhard who thinks imitating Sweden’s “social democracy” ––which means an overregulated capitalism leavened with over-generous social welfare benefits––is somehow an epochal revolutionary change.) It was electoral malfeasance to choose a geriatric insider and establishment plutocrat with no charisma and a long record of abusing her privilege and power. So, kiddies, go protest against the DNC and Barack Obama. They’re the reason the Republican party is the strongest it’s been since 1928.

Next, look at yourselves. As Piers Morgan––no conservative he––said recently, “The tragic truth is that America’s millennials are a bunch of phone-addicted, selfie-obsessed, hashtagging, snapchatting, kale-munching, twerking, lazy, whining, ill-informed, politically correct, cossetted narcissists who find absolutely everything mortally offensive and believe there are 165 ways to sexually identify.” It follows that your politics are merely symbolic, expressions of your inflated self-regard, privileged life-style, and arrogant pretensions to sophistication and intelligence. Unsurprisingly, as Morgan points out, according to the National Institutes of Health, 40% of you think you should be promoted every two years despite performance, 77% of you can’t name a senator from your home state, and 80% of you think you’ll be richer than your parents, even as you pile up student debt earning junk “studies” degrees utterly useless for employment in the real world.

Let her go or lock her up?

Hillary Clinton’s fate is one piece of old business that will sit on President Donald J. Trump’s desk and fester like a warm mackerel.

Trump’s ambitious agenda involves scrapping and substituting Obamacare, cutting taxes, liberating the energy sector, securing America’s southern “border,” and much more — nearly everything controversial.

Congressional Democrats will be unusually obstructive due to Hillary’s upset loss, a unified Republican government in Washington, and the GOP’s strongest position nationwide since 1928, according to RealClearPolitics. Liberal politicians and activists called Trump a latter-day Mussolini for saying in his final debate that he would “keep you in suspense” before agreeing in advance to accept Election Day’s results. Leftist street thugs then fascistically rejected the outcome of a fair and decisive election, trashed personal property, smashed windows, sparked fires, and — like dedicated Brownshirts — physically pummeled Trump supporters.

As such, Democrats on Capitol Hill — and their enraged base — likely will be in no mood to compromise. Despite Republican control of the Senate, incoming Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York is no wallflower. He almost surely will tie Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s shoelaces together at every turn. This probably will include filibustering everything this side of legislation on National Asparagus Month.

Against this backdrop, it must be tempting for Team Trump to blow Crooked Hillary’s dank, lawless stench out the nearest window. Indeed, Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC Tuesday that “he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges.”

If true, this would abandon the pledge that Trump made to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who chanted “Lock her up!” at his rallies and the 61.9 million voters who sent Trump to Washington to purify Hillary’s ethical Superfund site.

Hillary auctioned off public favors as if the Clinton Foundation were Sotheby’s and abused state secrets so flagrantly that her maid reportedly printed out classified documents for the former secretary of state to read. According to the New York Post’s Paul Sperry, this may have included the Presidential Daily Brief, the most secret document in Washington.

Donald Trump, after stating that he was going to reinstate waterboarding “and worse” for terrorists, now says he is against waterboarding. He also says global warming, which he once said was a hoax created by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing uncompetitive, may be caused by man-made activities.

Donald Trump seemed to acknowledge that humans contribute to climate change Tuesday in a meeting with New York Times reporters, moving closer to widely held scientific opinion but away from the Republican Party line.

He is keeping an “open mind” when it comes to climate issues, he said.

“I think there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change, Trump said[.]

There is no way any person who is informed about the “theory” of global warming can believe that. The theory of global warming is that human-produced carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. But human-produced CO2 is only 3% of all CO2 (most is produced naturally), which in turn is only 3% of all the chemicals in the atmosphere. Common sense would tell anyone that human CO2 production has no bearing on so-called global warming.

It’s sad that Donald Trump believes this, and worrisome. Will he reverse Obama’s Clean Power Plan rule, which is shutting down important power plants because of the myth of CO2 production?

As for the “climate change” treaty Obama agreed to in Paris, Trump said:

On climate change, he refused to repeat his promise to abandon the international climate accord reached last year in Paris, saying that, “I’m looking at it very closely.” But he said “I have an open mind to it[.]”

An open mind to it? To locking the U.S. into mandatory CO2 reductions, which, like Obama’s Clean Power Plan, will also shut down power plants, make electricity much more expensive, and kill jobs?

A march in support of a wounded St. Louis Metropolitan Police sergeant drew hundreds of participants Monday night, 24 hours after the officer was shot in the face without provocation.

St. Louis Alderman Donna Baringer helped lead the march, which began at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in south St. Louis and went to the intersection where the 46-year-old officer was ambushed.

The unnamed officer was sitting at a stoplight in his patrol car Sunday night when a car pulled up next to him and a man inside fired at him, hitting him twice in the face. Amazingly, the officer was not critically injured and is now recovering at home.

Via Fox2Now:

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson shook the hands of people who lined up outside the church. He told them their presence makes, “all the difference in the world.”

Dotson said the wounded officer is now recovering at home.

One woman who stood in line is the wife of a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Officer and a friend of the wounded officer.

“We read a lot of unkind things towards police officers and it’s hard to be a police officer’s family right now,” she said. “But it means a lot to see everybody come together.”

“I’ve talked to a lot of spouses of police officers who say that could have been my husband, that could have been my significant other,” said Dotson.

The rally ended with a moment of silence and the crowd singing “Let there be Peace on Earth.” Dotson said the show of support should go a long way to helping officers do their jobs.

Chief Dotson told reporters that this neighborhood happens to be where the unnamed officer lives and that St. Gabriel’s is “very close to him.”

One year ago this Sunday, a man named Robert Lewis Dear attacked a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colo. During the assault and resulting standoff, he shot and killed three people and wounded nine. While he suffered — like many mass shooters — from mental-health issues, his motives seemed clear. In court, he shouted that he was a “warrior for the babies.” In a rambling interview after his arrest, he allegedly said “no more baby parts” and made other statements indicating that his terrorist attack was motivated by an opposition to abortion.

The incident immediately kicked off yet another “national conversation,” this one about “Christian terrorism” and the threat of pro-life speech. Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, accused pro-life groups of igniting a “firestorm of hate.” She claimed that pro-life activists “knew there could be these types of consequences” yet “ratcheted up the rhetoric anyway.” Over at Patheos, atheist writer Dan Arel wrote a widely shared piece proclaiming Christian terrorism “a bigger threat to U.S. freedom than Islamic extremism.” ThinkProgress made sure to label the violence specifically Christian and went on to repeat what was (before San Bernardino and Orlando) a favorite left-wing talking point: that right-wing extremists had killed more Americans since 9/11 than Islamic terrorists.

After Dear’s horrific attack, the National Abortion Federation listed a total of eleven anti-abortion murders and 26 attempted murders since 1993. The rate of killings works out to roughly one death every four years since Roe v. Wade. Each death is inexcusable. Each attack is evil. It’s a sad toll, to be sure. But it can hardly be mentioned in the same breath as jihadist violence.

Fast-forward one year from Dear’s attack. Last weekend, four police officers were shot on a “bloody Sunday” for our nation’s law enforcement, three of them in what appeared to be targeted, ambush-style attacks. In San Antonio, an assassin killed a police officer and sped away. In St. Louis, a man shot a passing officer in the face and was later killed in a gun battle with other cops. In Sanibel, Fla., an officer was shot as he sat in his patrol car after a traffic stop.

I have only one complaint regarding the splendid news that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) to be the next attorney general of the United States: He is such a valuable legislator, he may be irreplaceable in the Senate.

But that’s alright. The Senate is going to be the Senate. Plus, there are talented young conservatives with strong legal backgrounds there, so hope springs that one can step into Jeff’s big shoes.

By contrast, the Justice Department, the institution in which I proudly spent most of my professional life as a lawyer, is in crisis. For eight years, we have had not the rule of law but a Ruler of Law — the imperial president, Barack Obama, aided and abetted by his hyper-political courtiers Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, derelict in the fundamental duty of his office to execute the laws faithfully.

The Obama Justice Department has been the most politicized in the nation’s history. It has weaponized the law against the president’s political adversaries and scapegoats, while insulating the president’s allies against investigation and prosecution. It has made progressive political activism the touchstone of Justice Department hiring, stacking various departmental sections with social-justice warriors who see the law as their arsenal to achieve fundamental societal transformation. It has exploited the legal process as an extortionate tool to shakedown deep-pocketed institutions for the purpose of funding progressive rabble-rousers. It has used law-enforcement to craft political narratives that, for example, propped up Obama’s “blame the video” fraud after the Benghazi massacre; framed the nation’s financial institutions for the mortgage meltdown, to the exclusion of reckless government policies; and undermined Second Amendment rights while getting federal agents killed (see the “Fast and Furious” debacle, over which Holder was held in contempt of Congress). It has injected racial discrimination into the enforcement of civil-rights laws in blatant violation of the equal-protection principles those laws are supposed to assure. It has exhibited a contempt for Congress and a propensity to obstruct legislative oversight that would have made the Nixon administration blush. It has repeatedly engaged in appalling prosecutorial misconduct and then lied to federal judges to cover it up. It has not only refused to enforce the immigration laws and sued to prevent sovereign states from enforcing them, but has also endorsed the president’s claimed power to ignore congressional statutes. It is abetting a war on the nation’s police departments, seeking to nationalize them under the guise of baseless and ruinously divisive smears that cops are hunting down African-American men, and that the justice system is rigged against black people.