RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton is a seasoned liberal politician, but one with few core beliefs. Her positions on subjects such as gay marriage, free-trade agreements, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War, the Assad regime in Syria, and the use of the term “radical Islam” all seem to hinge on what she perceives 51 percent of the public to believe on any given day.

Such politicians believe truth is a relative construct. Things are deemed false by politicians only if they cannot convince the public that they are true — and vice versa. When the majority of Americans no longer believe Clinton’s yarns about her private e-mail server to the point of not wanting to vote for her, then she will change her narrative and create new, convenient truths to reflect the new consensus.

Donald Trump is an amateur politician but a politician nevertheless. He is ostensibly conservative, but he likewise seems to change his positions on a number of issues — from abortion to the Iraq War — depending on what he feels has become the majority position. And as with Clinton, Trump’s idea of truth is defined as what works, while falsity is simply any narrative that proved unusable.

Politicians glad-hand, pander, and kiss babies as they seek to become megaphones for majority opinions. But ideologues are different. They often brood and lecture that their utopian dreams are not shared by the supposedly less informed public.

For those of you who may still be laboring under the illusion that we live in something resembling the antiquated notion of a constitutional republic, allow me to enlighten you about how things have changed since your high school government class. Here’s how the legislative branch works now:

When the Democrats are in power they get everything they want, even if it means ramming through legislation in the middle of the night and twisting the rules until they are virtually unrecognizable. When the Republicans are in power, the Democrats still get everything they want because the Republicans basically just hand it to them to avoid being called racists or misogynists. When they don’t get what they want, Democrats throw temper tantrums and hold their breath until they get what they want. Either way, they win. Always.

This is definitely not how I learned it in government class, but trust me, this is how it works now.

Right now, House Democrats, led by 1960s civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, are staging a childish sit-in—Occupy-style—on the floor of the House because Republicans won’t cave fast enough on taking away our Second Amendment rights. (Don’t worry, Trump will be here to do it soon enough…I heard his surrogate say it on CNN tonight!) Despite the fact that the terrorist who shot up the nightclub in Orlando wasn’t on the no-fly list, the Twilight Zone-dwellers in the Democratic Party are sure, so very sure, that preventing people on the no-fly list from buying guns would have stopped the attack. (What was that Reagan said about Democrats knowing so many things that aren’t so?)
Democrats Can’t Even Get ‘Gawker’ to Support Their Stupid Sit-In

If you’re envisioning Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. when you picture this House sit-in in your mind, you’d be way off. Think a slumber party with a bunch of 7th grade girls. Our well-paid members of Congress are enjoying Starbuck’s, Chinese food, and taking many, many selfies with their friends (I wouldn’t be surprised if there are manis and pedis too!). They’ve also sent out for pillows and blankies, because you definitely need pillows if you’re going to sit on that luxurious carpet all night.

As a long-time resident of Connecticut, I have been patient and respectful while my representatives in Congress have railed against “gun violence” and called for new and sweeping restrictions on gun ownership. The Newtown, Connecticut, incident was tragic and, politics aside, recognition of the tragedy was appropriate and necessary.

But now they have gone too far. Senator Chris Murphy has been focused on expanding gun control to the exclusion of everything else. He led a filibuster in the Senate to highlight his position — fair enough. But after the gun-control proposals were voted down, Murphy accused Republicans of “sell[ing] weapons to ISIS.” Connecticut’s other senator, Richard Blumenthal, has been a less visible but equally engaged activist for increased gun restrictions. Congressman Jim Himes and other Connecticut representatives walked out of a moment of silence for Orlando in the House of Representatives, saying that silence mocks the victims.

To these legislators, the Orlando incident was little more than an opportunity to revive the memory of Newtown and once again advance their gun control agenda.

These people need to understand some basic truths:

1. Citizens have a natural right to own a gun. This is an unalienable right — by virtue of our right to life, liberty, and property — to defend family, self, and possessions.

2. The right to “keep and bear arms” is not granted to citizens by virtue of the Second Amendment. It is not bestowed upon us by government or by our elected representatives. Rather, it is a fundamental citizen right, and therefore one that government is morally obliged to protect for all citizens.

3. The Second Amendment exists to protect citizens from precisely the gun-rights abuses we are seeing from government today. It exists to prevent our representatives from interfering with our fundamental human right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms, and all else that gun ownership entails (such as access to ammunition and indemnification of gun manufacturers).

4. When I need to defend my family and possessions, the police will surely be far away. Our town police force is capable and competent, the department is certified to high standards, but the town is sprawling, the force is modest, and response times are long. My representatives in government will be even farther away in the event of trouble.

Another day, another judicial rebuke to President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law. On Wednesday a federal judge struck down an oil and gas drilling rule imposed with no statutory authority.

In 2015 the Bureau of Land Management published new regulations about well construction and water management for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that takes place on federal and Indian lands. The BLM asserted “broad authority” to control oil and gas operations on the basis of laws that were passed in 1920, 1930, 1938, 1976 and 1982 and were allegedly ambiguous. Thus the agency said it deserved the benefit of the interpretive doubt that the courts call Chevron deference.

Abusing Chevron is an Obama specialty. But BLM’s overreach was notably egregious because Congress passed an energy law in 2005 that stripped the executive branch of fracking jurisdiction and gave that power to the states.

The BLM argued that Congress’s choice didn’t matter because the bureau wasn’t mentioned by name in the 2005 law. That claim inspired Judge Scott Skavdahl of Wyoming—an Obama appointee—to conduct a remedial seminar in the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Under the BLM argument, Judge Skavdahl writes, “there would be no limit to the scope or extent of congressionally delegated authority BLM has. . . . Having explicitly removed the only source of specific federal agency authority over fracking, it defies common sense for the BLM to argue that Congress intended to allow it to regulate the same activity under a general statute that says nothing about hydraulic fracturing.”

The Obama administration’s relentless campaign against for-profit colleges is succeeding: More than 180 have closed in the past two years. The Education Department projects that 1,400 vocational programs educating 840,000 students won’t survive its gainful-employment rule, which ties federal student aid to debt and earnings.

But the administration isn’t content with shutting down for-profits: Now regulators and prosecutors are even going after a businessman who waved the white flag and converted his vocational schools into nonprofits. With this administration, it’s a sin if you ever tried to make a buck.

In 2012 Carl Barney merged the CollegeAmerica, Stevens-Henager College, Independence University and California College San Diego with the nonprofit Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), which promotes reforms in college philanthropy. The 75-year-old British immigrant, who had been the for-profit colleges’ sole proprietor, tells me that he wanted to reduce his day-to-day responsibilities and channel more resources into education rather than paying taxes. “I didn’t want to be as involved,” he says. “I wanted to put more money back into the colleges.” He became the chairman of the new group of nonprofit colleges.

As the merger was being completed in 2012, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican, began an investigation. In November 2014, the AG sued CEHE. According to the complaint, the colleges duped students into enrolling with deceptive ads such as one promising to help them “make more money and have a real career.”

Federal agents have arrested roughly 300 suspects in what officials call their largest crackdown on Medicare fraud, with charges ranging from taking illegal payments for marketing medications to false physical-therapy claims.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the crackdown Wednesday, citing cases around the country where prosecutors say they found a wide variety of health-care fraud that totaled about $900 million in losses.

In California, officials have charged a man with receiving illegal payments for marketing compound medications, the costs of which were paid by Tricare, a program for members of the military, veterans and their families.

Previously, authorities have said compound-prescription sales involving Tricare were generating hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent transactions. The medications are specially mixed by pharmacists, often to treat pain, and often sell for thousands of dollars per prescription.

Other suspects charged in the crackdown include the managers of physical-therapy clinics in New York City that allegedly laundered money, paid kickbacks and billed Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary treatments for patients.

In the aftermath of the Orlando terrorist attack, many Washington politicians tried to shift the conversation to the Second Amendment and called for an assault weapons bans. But former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, our Honorary Chairman, had another idea. In this interview on CNBC, Coburn said we should improve our system of background checks, but said it was IRS officials and non-military federal personnel who should be subject to an assault weapons ban, not the general public.

This week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com released our findings in an editorial at The Wall Street Journal that quantified the growing federal arsenal. The number of non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority (200,000+) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). Spending on guns, ammo and military-style equipment at 67 federal agencies – including 53 regulatory, administrative agencies amounted to $1.48 billion between 2006-2014.

The IRS gun-locker is an example of this growing federal firepower. Nearly $11 million was spent on guns, ammo, and military-style equipment for 2,316 ‘special agents’ during this period. The IRS stockpile includes pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns with buckshot and slugs; and semi-automatic AR-15 rifles (S&W M&P 15) and military-style H&K 416 rifles. Source: OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Militarization of America

The recent growth of the federal arsenal begs the questions: Just who are the feds planning to battle?

In 1996, the Bureau of Justice Statistics officially counted 74,500 federal officers who had arrest and firearm authority. By 2008, the Bureau quantified over 120,000 such officers. Newly updated counts were supposed to publish by this July but the Bureau now admits that over 80-percent of federal agencies ignored or stonewalled responses to their latest survey. What are they trying to hide?

Some Iranian-Americans argued that NIAC’s policies did not seem to be aimed at improving the lives of Iranian-Americans, but were political and partisan policies more likely aimed at making more money, getting more fame, media publicity and self-promotion, satisfying those who provide funding to them, or going towards where the money is.

“I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic.” — Mohsen Makhmalbaf to the Washington Times.

“It appears that this may be lobbying on behalf of Iranian government interests. Were I running the counterintelligence program at the bureau now, I would have cause to look into this further.” — Kenneth Piernick, FBI special agent in counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

I have often been asked why someone with my credentials joined the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — a political institution, not “nonpartisan” as it sometimes suggests — and advanced the interests of Iran’s ruling clerics, who now lead the world in human rights violations, with a regime that ranks number one in executions per capita.

They also ask why one would work with an organization that is run by a director who is not even Iranian-American; not an American citizen, but holds Iranian and Swedish passports?

Before coming to the United States, I did not know about NIAC and no one I knew in Iran was aware of it either.

Although I wanted to contribute socially in helping Iranian-American communities in the U.S., I also did not want to join a partisan political organization that pretended to help the communities but instead was partisan and sought money, fame, and media attention.

At first, NIAC seemed fine: its mission statement says, “The National Iranian American Council is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people.”

But soon after joining, I discovered several issues.

First, after joining NIAC in a voluntary and unpaid capacity, I felt as if I were back in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I began receiving calls and emails from NIAC indicating that some media outlets were introducing me as “ambassador” for NIAC. Well, one does not always get to choose what title the TV media outlets or magazine use to introduce one. Further, in many instances, journalists would Google my name and find it listed as ambassador for NIAC on its website.

I was still wondering why NIAC would be opposed to the idea that media introduces me as their ambassador. Later on, I encountered an article which said:

“NIAC’s inner contradictions never cease to surprise me, but then I guess that is the nature of Politics. Trita Parsi who staunchly opposed Western intervention in Libya virtually blaming it on Sarkozy’s warmongering and conforted [sic] in his views by the ever clueless moralist Hamid Dabashi accusing the hidden agenda’s of Western ‘Imperialism’ with his Broken record rants on European ‘Neo Colonialism’ while people were being mercilessly slaughtered by Libya’s Caligula has now added to it’s [sic] new list of Ambassador’s [sic] for 2012 an Iranian academic of Syrian heritage. But One who for a change seems to speak some sense in regard to a country he seems to understand far more deeply than NIAC understands Iran…”

It seemed most likely their opposition to me being introduced as their ambassador had to do with my personal views, which differed from those of NIAC. I criticized Iran’s political establishments, strongly condemned human right violations, criticized the Syrian regime for the bloodshed, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for assisting the Syrian regime.

It soon felt as if my freedom of expression were being taken away. I started to worry that a journalist somewhere might quote an interview or text and use the title “Ambassador to the National Iranian American Council,” if he might have found my name on its website. I would then have to track down the journalist, find his or her contacts, and plead with him or her to remove the title. I was also worried that I might say something on television or write something that NIAC might not like. These fears of expressing myself freely were similar to those that I grew up with having lived and worked in Iran and Syria.

I was also wondering why, if NIAC had issues with my personal views, it kept me for some months more. Perhaps, I wondered, it might have had to do with what I had mentioned to them earlier: that I knew some philanthropists who might donate money to the institution.