RUTHFULLY YOURS

Man, Ben Rhodes had an excellent weekend. The 38-year-old Mets’ fan who serves as President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications got to watch the press tear itself apart in rabid confusion, which proves one of his essential points—the U.S. media is a pile of dung.

After a New York Times Magazine profile of Rhodes hit newsstands Saturday night—it was posted on the Times website Thursday—the media split: The article was a hit job by author David Samuels, a crypto-neocon sent by the Mossad who opposed the Iranian nuclear deal from the outset. Or it was a gross puff piece by David Samuels, a Brooklyn liberal who was in the bag for Rhodes even before he was gifted with a box of M&M’s with the presidential seal.

Lots of people don’t know why the administration let Rhodes pull back the curtain. Because the White House won the Iran Deal is why. They wanted to take a victory lap. Obama campaigned as the anti-Iraq candidate. Bush lied and got us into a stupid war, the White House would invariably argue. And yes, as president Obama lied to sell the Iran deal—BUT to keep America out of a stupid war with Iran. Do you want American passion and innovation tied down in a severely damaged part of the world like the Middle East for the next hundred years? This is how a very large number of New York Times readers understood the piece. And as Rhodes knew, it’s how virtually everyone outside of media circles in Washington and New York would read the article.

Lots of media people can’t figure out why Rhodes spoke to Samuels, of all people. As evidence of Samuels’ pre-existing hostility to the White House, some in the Twitter-sphere posted a video of a panel at Hudson Institute I hosted where Samuels appeared with Matthew Kroenig and Michael Doran, both of whom, like me, are outspoken critics of the deal. Samuels wasn’t there to discuss the deal as such. I invited him because because I know him, and because he writes stuff I like. He said yes and maybe regrets it now, or not.

He’s not part of what Ben Rhodes calls the blob and his boss calls the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment. I know him from New York, when I edited the Village Voice Literary Supplement. He was a Brooklyn neighbor, and a baseball fan, and we still hung out even though our political views were often not in synch. I read his 2008 New Yorker article about a truck driver who built a nuclear bomb—a story that highlights the difference between nuclear knowledge, which is easy to come by, and the industrial infrastructure to support the manufacture of nuclear weapons, which is very difficult and costly to build and maintain. For instance, as Samuels told me over the phone for a Weekly Standard article, he said he has the blueprint to make a nuclear bomb in his desk at home—thankfully, no one has given him tens of billions of dollars to build the infrastructure that would allow him to proliferate.

The state of North Carolina and the federal government are now in a state of declared legal war. On Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration sent a letter to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory demanding that the state “not comply with or enforce H.B. 2,” its so-called transgender bathroom law. According to the letter, a state requirement that people use the bathrooms reserved for their biological sex violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Department of Justice gave the state until today, May 9, to assure the federal government that men can use women’s restrooms and showers in state facilities.

Today, the state answered the Department of Justice — with a lawsuit. In its complaint, filed in federal court, North Carolina accuses the DOJ of engaging in a “baseless and blatant overreach,” an “attempt to rewrite long-established federal civil rights laws in a manner that is wholly inconsistent with the intent of Congress and disregards decades of statutory interpretation by the courts.” Simply put, Title VII does not establish “transgender status” as a protected class, and any effort to do so by executive fiat violates the law.

Then the DOJ escalated again. At an afternoon news conference, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a “significant law enforcement” action — its own lawsuit. At the same time, Lynch indicated that the DOJ retained the authority to federal funding to key state entities, issuing a not-so-veiled threat of dramatic action before the courts issue a definitive ruling. At the same time, she preposterously compared the act of preserving bathrooms for people of the same sex to, of course, “Jim Crow” and hearkened back to the days of segregated water fountains.

As a Western revolutionary, Obama has been relentless in his efforts over the last seven years to use all the machinery and influence of government, whether illegally (Since 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled 13 times that Obama’s actions have been unconstitutional) or legally, to fundamentally transform America into the neo-Marxist democracy he and his father have long dreamed about.

His most recent stunt to this end is to use North Carolina’s “bathroom” law or House Bill 2 as a springboard for the U.S. Justice Department to issue a sweeping dictate in the name of social fairness and civil rights. House Bill 2, which requires individuals to use the public bathrooms and showers that correspond to their birth sex, was drafted and passed in order to negate an unconstitutional Charlotte city ordinance that forced different sexes to share public accommodations.

What’s most ominous about Obama’s latest maneuver is that the letter sent by the Justice Department to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory stakes out a position for the federal government that would apply to every business in America, as well as all universities and colleges that receive federal funds, that are subject to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to Gov. McCrory, the demand letter (read the letter here) sent to top North Carolina officials should be understood as follows:

One thing the nation has to realize is this is no longer just a North Carolina issue. This order, this letter by the Justice Department, is saying that every company in the United States of America that has more than 15 employees are going to have to abide by the federal government’s regulations on bathrooms. So now the federal government is going to tell almost every private sector company in the United States who can or cannot come into their bathrooms, restrooms, their shower facilities for their employees. And they’re also telling every university in the United States of America — it’s not just North Carolina — they’re now telling every university that accepts federal funding that boys who may think they’re a girl can go into a locker room or a restroom or shower facility.

Barack Obama and his militant Justice Department don’t care at all about individuals confused or rebellious about their gender. As with all revolutionary activity, the goal is to seize upon crisis in order to further the aggrandizement of the State, and its control over every competing area of society.

Obama’s response to North Carolina is a classic Leftist maneuver of setting up a straw man, or transgender in this case, to ensure and continue to expand federal power over the states. From a revolutionary perspective, states with their 10th Amendment constitutional sovereignty are antithetical to the long-term objective of an international socialist system.

It is critical now for states to recognize their pivotal constitutional power and determine to use every available resource to counter, correct and ultimately crush the Left’s war against the Constitution and 10th Amendment. Recall the efforts made by the revolutionary Left to force a Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage and tear down state marriage laws. Their attack on North Carolina is no different in both tactic and objective.

North Carolina has rightly refused to submit to the politically correct federal bully challenging its common sense law, HB 2, which says restrooms should be limited to people with the appropriate plumbing, and that crossdressers sharing the facilities with your daughter, wife, and daughter is not a good, or safe idea.

North Carolina has filed a lawsuit challenging the Department of Justice’s ultimatum demanding that the state cease and desist enforcement of that law. As NBC News reported:

It was the state’s response to the US Justice Department, which last week gave Gov. Pat McCrory until the end of the day Monday to respond to a letter that said the law violates federal civil rights statutes.

Monday’s lawsuit called the Justice Department’s legal position “a baseless and blatant overreach” and a radical reinterpretation of federal laws, especially the Civil Rights Act’s ban on sex discrimination.

“Transgender status is not a protected class,” under the law, the suit said, and if the Justice Department believes it should be, it should ask Congress to change the law.

Of course, reinterpretation of the law and bypassing Congress is nothing new for this administration, which seems to think that saying that only biological females may use the ladies room is equivalent to having “whites only” drinking fountains. This is. of course, nonsense. Rosa Parks made history by sitting in front of the bus. She did not try to use the men’s room at the bus station.

Being black is something you cannot change. Discriminating on that basis is wrong and perniciously evil. But saying a man’s civil right’s are being violated because he self-identifies as a woman and needs to use the lady’s facilities is nonsense based on politically correct psychobabble. Sorry, dude, if you feel you are trapped in the wrong body, deal with it. But you already have a restroom designed just for you.

You are not being denied equal access to a public accommodation. Having the wrong body, if that is to be believed, does not entitle you to use the wrong restroom. It was never the intent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to allow boys to use the little girls room. It is also dangerous, allowing any creep to put on make-op and a dress and follow your daughter, sister, or wife into the restroom.

This was the same sort of nonsense that led the Supreme Court to ignore both federalism and state laws to say gay marriage was a civil right as much as interracial marriage was. But being black is something one cannot change and allowing blacks and whites to marry did not change the state, culturally, and historically sanctioned institution of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Transgender restrooms change everything. Amazingly, the right to privacy championed by liberals has been jettisoned by liberals who see nothing wrong or dangerous in the concept. Kimberly Ross, writing for RedState, notes the slippery slope this puts society on:

Money buys everything, including the allegiance of Senator Robert (“Bob”) Casey (D-PA) to militant Islam.

Mr. Casey, a member of the National Security Working Group and the former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee overseeing the Middle East, has received windfalls of cash from individuals and corporations affiliated with Fethullah Gulen.

Gulen, dubbed “the most dangerous Islamist on planet earth,” has amassed a fortune estimated to exceed $50 billion to bring about a New Islamic World Order. Much of the money, according to informed sources, comes from the heroin trade.

“The Guide to Gulen’s Activities in the United States” reveals this sampling of contributions to Mr. Casey from known Gulenists:

Omer Alici of Ceren Delivery in Bethlehem – $4,000.00

Ugar Akyildiz of Bethlehem – $1,000.00

Metin Bor of the West Penn Cultural Center in Pittsburgh – $1,300.00

Suleyman Eris of the Lehigh Dialogue Center in Bethlehem – $2,350.

This is a stunning admission from an arch liberal at the NYTimes…..rsk

WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical.

“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.

“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.

“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”

To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.

The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren’t at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.

Four studies found that the proportion of professors in the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the social sciences between 7 and 9 percent.

Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2 percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are independents).

Abraham M. Nussbaum When Doctors Stop ‘Seeing’ Patients

Dr. Nussbaum, the chief education officer at Denver Health, is the author of “The Finest Traditions of My Calling” (Yale University Press, 2016).
Physicians aptly speak of “seeing” patients. After all, medical training is a series of vision lessons. Students look closely at a nameless cadaver and disassemble it until it resembles the pictures in an anatomy text. They watch lectures in which interrelated organ systems are displayed as simple machines.

Often, however, doctors’ vision narrows too far. We begin to see the body as a collection of parts and lose sight of the person before us. Early in my medical training, this way of seeing began intruding on the rest of my life. During movies I imagined the best surgical approach for the actress. I saw friends’ physical imperfections as signs of syndromes.

So I took a leave of absence from med school to study history, literature and theology. The humanities taught me that the questions I was wrestling with are foundational to the history of medicine. In Platonic medicine, a physician sought to diagnose disease as a concrete fact. Hippocrates, who lived around 400 B.C., reoriented doctors toward seeking to understand the beneficial and deleterious forces in a patient’s life and then helping rebalance them in favor of health.

For the past two centuries, physicians have been counseled to pursue something akin to Platonic medicine, to act like scientists. Remarkable technologies—antibiotics, anesthesia, antisepsis—resulted. But physicians also shifted away from the Hippocratic pursuit of understanding patients. Today’s clinics are often alienating, as when a physician spends a checkup gazing into a computer screen. Half of doctors report feeling burned out, and a majority would advise against a medical career. CONCINUE AT SITE

Progressives want to politicize everything, even chicken sandwiches. Witness New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign to get his fellow citizens to boycott the Chick-fil-A restaurants that are opening around the Big Apple.

The fast-food chain opened its first New York restaurant last year, and the line at lunch time at the restaurant near our office stretches around the block. This is no small feat in midtown Manhattan, where you can’t walk 20 yards without hitting a deli, a food truck or some other fast-food joint.

This meeting of popular supply and demand is too much for Mr. de Blasio, who last week urged New Yorkers not to eat the spicy chicken fare because the chain’s owners are known for opposing same-sex marriage.

“Chick-fil-A is anti-LGBT,” said the mayor, who fancies himself a spokesman for all progressive causes. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them. But they do have a legal right.” Good to know he isn’t trying to ban the business, though give him time.

A Chick-fil-A spokesman responded that, “The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect—regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.” There are also laws that ban discrimination. CONTINUE AT SITE

Understandable. We wouldn’t want to stigmatize murderers, drug dealers, rapists and robbers. Their victims might disagree, but they’re just Crimeaphobic.

Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason, who has headed the Office of Justice Programs since 2013, announces in a guest post that her agency will no longer use words such as “felon” or “convict” to refer to released prisoners.

“Many of the formerly incarcerated men, women, and young people I talk with say that no punishment is harsher than being permanently branded a “felon” or “offender,” Mason writes. “This new policy statement replaces unnecessarily disparaging labels with terms like “person who committed a crime” and “individual who was incarcerated,”

Should go over as well as “man caused disasters” for terrorism. But the side benefits of living inside a Groucho Marx movie set in an Orwellian dystopia is that we get plenty of laughs.

“The labels we affix to those who have served time can drain their sense of self-worth”.

I suppose we could discuss the self-worth of their victims, but that would not be politically correct.