RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Friday, October 21st, the Miami, FL, Commission; the Monroe County, NY, Legislature; the Rochester, NY, Board of Education; and the Rochester, NY, City Council announced proclamations condemning hate speech against Muslims. These proclamations define neither hate speech nor the person or persons who will decide what constitutes hate speech. Far from benign calls to let peaceful Muslims go about their lives and prayers in peace, these proclamations represent a step towards elevating Shariah (Islamic law) over the Frist Amendment.

Why do I make this claim? Backtrack to 2012 and the aftermath of Benghazi, when President Obama told the UN, “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” The subtext of this statement was lost amidst several nods by Obama to the First Amendment later in his speech. The subtext was this: slander in Shariah is not telling lies that hurt someone’s reputation; rather, slander in Shariah is telling a truth or a lie which someone doesn’t want to be told. Slander in Shariah is thus defined by what the potentially aggrieved party wants or doesn’t want to hear, not by evidence.

For evidence of this, see Reliance of the Traveler: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. On page 730 of the English translation of this law manual – – which has been endorsed by the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Al-Azhar University, the premier authority in Sunni Islam – – slander is defined as follows: “to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him.”

Also consider the authentic hadith (report on the words and/or behaviors of Muhammad, the founder of Islam) from Sunan Abu Dawud #4856: “The Prophet was asked: ‘Apostle of Allah! What is slander?’ He replied: ‘It is saying something about your brother which he would dislike.’ He was asked again: ‘Tell me how the matter stands if what I say about my brother is true.’ He replied: ‘If what you say of him is true, you have slandered him, and if what you say of him is not true, you have reviled him.”

Much to the chagrin of the Clinton presidential campaign, FBI Director James Comey, the so-called mainstream news media — who are in the pocket of Hillary Clinton — and the Democratic National Committee, one of the FBI’s great success stories, Assistant Director James Kallstrom, is speaking out against the FBI’s Clinton email investigation and its outcome. And he’s pulling no punches.

In addition, a report says that former Clinton insider and Democratic National Committee Chairman, Virginia’s Gov. Terry McAuliffe, forked over about a half-million dollars in campaign cash to a Democratic candidate connected to the Hillary Clinton criminal case.

According to many insiders within the Washington Beltway — including the former Assistant Director of the FBI — Gov. McAuliffe gave cash and material support to the spouse of an FBI official who was part of the team investigating Hillary Clinton and her unsecured, unauthorized email server from which she conducted official business as Secretary of State which included the sharing of classified material, especially top secret information.
Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliff.
Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliff.

The Democratic political machine of Virginia led by Gov. McAuliffe, is nationally influential with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Reports indicate he authorized nearly $500,000 to be given to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.

Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.

President Obama took a health-care victory lap last week in Miami, celebrating “all the progress that we’ve made in controlling costs” and portraying the law’s critics as “false and politically motivated.” Does that apply to the actuaries at the Health and Human Services Department too? On Monday they reported that ObamaCare premiums will soar 25% on average next year, and this is “progress” all right, in the wrong direction.

That headline number understates the extent of the trouble. Liberals used to dismiss insurance premium shock by saying that the subsidies will offset any increase and, anyhow, beneficiaries can shop around for a cheaper plan. But the 25% figure refers to the rate spike for the second-cheapest “silver” plan on each exchange from state to state, which is a key benchmark in the subsidy formula. In other words, these are the mid-level insurance plans that are performing the best, not the average increase of all ObamaCare coverage.

HHS also disclosed the premium jumps for a 27-year-old buying the second-cheapest silver plan in individual states. Our condolences for such young people in Arizona, where their premiums will climb by 116%. Likewise for Oklahoma (69%), Tennessee (63%) and Minnesota (59%).

In a normal election year, the presidential candidates might debate solutions, but, well, you know. For the time being, perhaps Mr. Obama could show a little more intellectual humility when confronted with evidence of his own failures. But, well, you know.

PBS personality Tavis Smiley stopped by Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a private “Hidden Ivy” with a modest $45K tuition and was asked about whether slavery might make a comeback.

“Mr. Smiley, do you believe that given the crisis state of our democracy, we black folk could ever find ourselves enslaved again?” a student at this elite institution asked the millionaire.

Smiley assured readers of Time Magazine, the flagship product of a multi-billion dollar corporation headquartered near the World Trade Center, that slavery could very well make a comeback.

Why? What possible reason did Tavis Smiley have for anticipating the return of not merely Jim Crow, but cotton plantations and chains? Because the Senate has yet to act on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. The South will rise again… because a judicial nominee’s confirmation was delayed. It’s the sort of thing Senate Democrats used to think was good clean fun.

One of the victims of their judicial delaying tactics was Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a sharecropper’s daughter, who was blocked for years. Judge Garland, unlike Judge Brown, is white. Why does blocking him from tilting the Supreme Court further to the left represent the return of slavery?

Merrick Garland, a man whom Tavis Smiley, like the rest of the left, couldn’t have been bothered to sneeze at a few years ago, is now suddenly the litmus test for the return of slavery. It’s not about Garland. It’s about Obama. And, more specifically, it’s about the insecurity and guilt of the Smileys.

The curious characteristic of this current wave of angry activism is the privileged nature of the activists.

Consider Colin Kaepernick with his $114 million salary standing up to oppression, the $150 million social justice activism of Black Lives Matter, Yale students shrieking themselves silly over Halloween costumes and a dialogue between a millionaire PBS host and a student at a prestigious college over whether slavery might be coming back. These people are not oppressed by grinding poverty, deprivation of civil rights or any other plausible metrics of discrimination. They are oppressed by their privilege.

A federal audit has discovered that up to 10,000 California National Guard enlistees received improper bonuses at the time of their recruitment and now the government wants the vets to pay the bonsues back.

The bonuses were meant to spur recruitment a decade ago when Guard enlistments were lagging. But the money was only supposed to go to recruits who signed up for “high demand” positions. Thousands received the bonuses anyway.

CBS Los Angeles:

“The way to fix it if the law needs to be changed,” says McVey, “that’s what elected officials are for. They should fix the problem not lay it off on what in fact are turning into the victims.”

The money was given to the soldiers upfront, similar to an athlete getting a signing bonus.

According to the LA Time, the bonus money was supposed to be limited to soldiers who were taken on high-demand assignments.

A federal investigation uncovered thousands of bonuses and studentloan payments that were given to California Guard soldiers who didn’t qualify under the high-demand assignment criteria.

Fajardo also spoke to retired US Army Chief Warrant Officer Warren Finch who also served in the Guard.

A decade ago, the California National Guard offered thousands of soldiers large bonuses to reenlist and go to war. After investigations discovered fraud and mismanagement involving those payments, the Pentagon is demanding the money back, making veterans pay for the government’s mistakes.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers — many of whom served in multiple combat tours — have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses (of $15,000 or more), the Los Angeles Times reported. Worse, if the veterans refuse, the Pentagon uses interest charges, wage garnishments, and tax liens to recoup the money.

“I feel totally betrayed,” Susan Haley, a 26-year veteran and former Army master sergeant who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, told the Los Angeles Times.

Haley comes from a family of heroes: her husband also served, and her eldest son lost a leg in Afghanistan while serving as a medic. Haley said she sends the Pentagon $650 every month, a quarter of her family’s income, just to pay the $20,500 in bonuses which was given to her improperly, in exchange for her six-year reenlistment. Haley said she fears her family may have to sell their house to repay the bonuses.

“They’ll get their money, but I want those years back,” she declared.

“It’s egregious that veterans who sacrificed their lives for this country are being asked to retroactively pay the price for sloppy government miscalculations,” Mark Lucas, executive director at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) and a 13-year veteran of the Iowa Army National Guard, told PJ Media. “The California Guard is showing no remorse as it yanks the rug out from under the very heroes it once asked to serve.”

Lucas said that he was not surprised at the bureaucratic mix-up, but that does not make it any better. “This is par for the course from a bureaucratic Pentagon that wastes billions of dollars each year on failed projects and mismanaged funds,” he said. “American veterans and taxpayers alike deserve better from the agency entrusted with over half of our national federal budget each year.”

The enlistment bonuses came at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Pentagon aimed to bulk up forces. Investigations from that time period determined that a lack of oversight allowed widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet their enlistment goals. In other words, the government told officials they needed to hire a certain number of soldiers, and they fudged the numbers in order to bribe more veterans to reenlist.

During that time, the Pentagon started offering the most generous incentives in history to retain soldiers. It also began paying the money up front, like signing bonuses in the private sector.

In 2010, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or whose applications had paperwork errors, according to the Times.