RUTHFULLY YOURS

I think very highly of Merrick Garland, whom President Obama has nominated to fill the Supreme Court seat of the late, legendary Justice Antonin Scalia. Merrick was a voice of reason and sound judgment as a top official in the Clinton Justice Department during the Nineties when I was prosecuting terrorists. It seems hard to believe now, but our decision to charge the Blind Sheikh and other jihadists with seditious conspiracy (i.e., conspiracy to levy war against the United States) was controversial at the time. It was a real asset to have, in the front office at Main Justice, an attorney of Merrick’s skill: a trial prosecutor’s grasp of strategy and an appellate lawyer’s understanding of potential legal perils. And, besides all that, he was a very nice guy.

Moreover, while my case was a success, it amply demonstrated that federal criminal law was ill-equipped to deal with international terrorism. Judge Garland is one of the lawyers who deserves credit for the mid-Nineties overhaul of counterterrorism law. Once these new statutes were finally enacted in 1996, you could still have a vigorous policy debate over whether international terrorism was principally a law-enforcement or a national-security challenge, but you could never again complain that the legal arsenal for prosecutions was lacking.

In terms of judicial philosophy, I would have deep disagreements with Judge Garland. He clerked for and was obviously deeply influenced by Justice William Brennan, who was about as much of a polar opposite to Justice Scalia as one could be. But there is no doubting Garland’s intellect and integrity. He is not someone a conservative or constitutional-originalist president would appoint; he is, however, as good as we could get from a president of the Left. I was pleased when President Clinton nominated him for the D.C. Circuit, and pleased when he was finally confirmed in 1997.

Of course, the situation today is much different.

What has a three-quarter billion-dollar unfunded liability, is manually calculated on paper inside a Pennsylvania mountain, and costs taxpayers more money annually than the entire state budget of Florida? Answer: Federal employee pensions.

It’s national Sunshine Week across America. During this week, good-government groups advocate for open government and transparency in public spending. One area that remains hidden is federal pensions.

Imagine if you could see how much your former congressman makes in federal retirement pension? Just how many years were ‘worked?’ How much money was paid-in? How much did taxpayers finance? And, once retired, just how quickly did the congressman ‘break-even’ on their own contributions?

Even Illinois – where the state’s #1 manufactured product is corruption – has the courtesy to show taxpayers all of the gory details about pensions. The books are open on all 700,000 public retirees at every level of government.

In Illinois, this transparency has been instrumental in identifying pension abuses. For example, our organization OpenTheBooks.com found that a pair of Illinois union lobbyists who substitute taught for just one day in the public school system actually received their $1 million lifetime ‘teacher’ pensions. This happened despite a state law expressly designed to stop them. In another case, a former chief aide to previous Gov. Pat Quinn (D) was receiving an annual pension of $137,000 per year rather than the proper $20,000. A good-government pension hawk exposed the mistake and stopped the over-payments.

Many other states have public pension transparency. Citizen outrage in California drove lawmakers to pass a state law curbing a $545,000 pension to a city manager in Vernon (population 102). Now, that manager is retired on $115,000 per year – an 80 percent reduction.

Inside the cavernous, windowless, Cold War era federal complex in Pennsylvania, what mistakes has the U.S. government made while hand-calculating retirement pensions? Nobody has a clue, because the Obama administration has cited a ‘privacy’ exemption to the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) and refused to shine a light on federal pensions.

Two years ago, we filed a FOIA request for individual federal pension data. The Office of Personnel and Management rejected our request saying it was, “… a clear unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” But, our request for the active salaries of 2.5 million federal employees was fulfilled, with seven-year histories. We post these salaries and bonuses (with names) at OpenTheBooks.com.

If active salaries/bonuses are subject to transparency, why would posting federal retiree pension amounts, service credits and contributions be an invasion of privacy? The same privacy law underlies both records. The Obama administration’s legal argument against revealing pension data is arbitrary.

President Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton state that climate change is more dangerous to future generations than terrorism. They advocate destroying industries that have greatly improved our quality and length of life. I believe that the American people are entitled to some actual scientific facts instead of talking points. Here are some questions for the global warming bandwagon.

In the 1920s, scientists were warning that because of warming and the melting ice, coastal cities would soon disappear. Why were they wrong then, and why are the same warnings correct today? How did the Earth cool so much from 1945 to 1976 that the experts were warning about a disastrous ice age if rising CO2, rapidly increasing populations, industrialization, and fossil fuels cause warming?

According to UCAR (the Universal Corporation for Atmospheric Research) the temperature today is around 1.53 degrees warmer than 1880. Wouldn’t that be within the margin of error, especially since the Little Ice Age ended around 1800?

According to scientific studies, CO2 was much higher during the ice age – 2,000-8,000 parts per million vs. 400 today. If CO2 causes warming, why wasn’t the Earth warmer then than it is today?

Recently, the U.S. attorney general said the Justice Department is considering bringing legal action against people who will not go along on climate change caused by humans. Is it any wonder that scientists who are skeptics won’t speak out when their livelihood is threatened?

Shouldn’t the media do some simple research instead of just repeating the talking points that humans cause climate change?

Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor last fall to assail our coverage of his climate agenda. We had criticized his plan to use the RICO law, created to prosecute mobsters, against people who disagree with him about global warming. We also criticized George Mason University’s Jagadish Shukla, who wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other federal officials urging them to follow the Senator’s advice. New developments aren’t helping the credibility of Messrs. Shukla and Whitehouse.

In October Mr. Whitehouse denied that the RICO litigation threat—with its potential for treble damages—was intended to shut down scientific debate. The Rhode Island Democrat claimed he wants civil rather than criminal prosecutions of climate dissenters. As if bringing financial ruin on defendants accused of independent thought isn’t bad enough.

But now it looks like the campaign to silence climate dissidents could move beyond a potential civil case—and we’re not hearing a peep from Mr. Whitehouse. Attorney General Lynch told the Senate last week that her department had referred a request to prosecute climate dissent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Specifically, it was referred to the FBI’s criminal investigative division. A Justice official says on background that this is “not an indication or recommendation of whether a matter merits investigation, but is simply a referral to an appropriate investigative authority at the Department.”

Even as Sen. Whitehouse questioned Ms. Lynch on this very matter at the hearing, he uttered no criticism. His spokesman says the Senator still doesn’t favor criminal investigations and that Mr. Whitehouse thought the FBI referral “appeared unusual for the pursuit of a civil investigation.” But if Justice does throw people in jail for scientific skepticism, the message seems to be: Don’t count on Mr. Whitehouse to defend your liberty.

While the FBI ponders whether to slap the cuffs on people who don’t believe in U.N. climate models, scientists who agree with Mr. Whitehouse are thriving beyond the dreams of most academic researchers. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s welcoming embrace of the slogan “From Palestine To Ferguson” makes it abundantly clear that left-wing racists in America have found their ideological soul mates in the Palestinian anti-Semites of the Middle East.

BLM, you may recall, was born in response to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the “white Hispanic” who had infamously shot and killed Trayvon Martin the previous year. The phrase quickly became a rallying cry for radicals and rioters demanding an end to what BLM termed the “virulent anti-Black racism” that “permeates our society.” Then, when a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed the young black criminal Michael Brown in August 2014, BLM ramped up its allegations of police brutality against “people of color” in America’s “white supremacist system.” The fact that police are significantly more likely to shoot white criminal suspects rather than black suspects has never meant anything to BLM. The movement’s purpose is to promote racial hatred and street riots, not to uncover any truths.

Just a few days after Brown’s death, a worldwide alliance of Palestinian activists—who detested Israel and its Jewish citizens every bit as fiercely as BLM loathed America and white people—decided to draw public attention to their own particular grievances by piggybacking on the turmoil in Ferguson. The timing was favorable for these anti-Semites, given that the Israeli military was then engaged in an effort to dismantle Hamas’s massive terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. The activists adopted the meme “From Palestine To Ferguson” (FPTF)—a pithy catchphrase that, like “Black Lives Matter,” quickly evolved into shorthand for trumped-up charges of victimization, calls to revolution in the name of “social justice,” and vindictive hatred disguised as a plea for respect.

Voicing empathy for the sense of “hurt,” “anger,” and “moral outrage” which BLM feels as a result of “the oppression that continues to target our Black brothers and sisters in nearly every aspect of their lives,” FPTF mouthpieces proudly affirm their own “solidarity with the family of Michael Brown, a young unarmed Black man gunned down by police”; their support for the “struggle” of black Ferguson residents against “a militarized police occupation”; and their contempt for the “racist capitalist system” that “systematically pushes” American blacks “to the margins of humanity.”

In a like manner, adherents of the FPTF mindset routinely portray Israel as a “capitalist settler-state” that pursues “economic expansion” by subjecting the Palestinians to “collective punishment,” “subjugation,” and “war crimes.” In short, says one FPTF spokesman, “the rejection of peace” is structurally “built into [Israel’s] current existence”—a remarkable allegation, in light of the fact that Arab states have flatly rejected favorable opportunities for peace with Israel more than 30 times since 1937.

The Center for Immigration Studies is releasing a report today showing that 124 illegal aliens who were subsequently released over the last five years by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security have been charged with murder.

Washington Times:

In all, some 121 immigrants who were freed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2010 and 2014 went on to be charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes. Another three immigrants were charged with murders in 2015, bringing to 124 the total number of murder suspects the government had, then released.

Two of the immigrants in question had even been convicted of homicide before, but they were released anyway and went on to rack up new murder charges again, the report said. The others had amassed 464 total criminal charges, ranging from drugs to drunken driving, before they landed on the homicide list.

The information was released to Congress by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies analyzed the data and said it shows dangerous practices.

“The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015 Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes,” Ms. Vaughan wrote.

Barack Obama—do you remember him?—will remain in office for another 311 days. But not really. The president has left the presidency. The commander in chief is on sabbatical. He spends his time hanging out at a festival in Austin. And with the cast of “Hamilton,” the musical. And with Justin, the tween sensation from Canada.

In his place, an exact look-alike of Mr. Obama is giving interviews to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, interviews that are so gratuitously damaging to long-standing U.S. alliances, international security and Mr. Obama’s reputation as a serious steward of the American interest that the words could not possibly have sprung from the lips of the president himself.

I was a bit late in reading Mr. Goldberg’s long article, “The Obama Doctrine,” which appeared last week and is based on hours of conversation with the president, along with ancillary interviews with John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Manuel Valls of France, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and other boldface names. Kudos to Mr. Goldberg for his level of access, the breadth of his reporting, the sheer volume of juicy quotes and revealing details.

Still, it’s a deep dive into a shallow mind. Mr. Obama’s recipe for Sunni-Shiite harmony in the Middle East? The two sides, says Mr. Obama, “need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood,” sounding like Mr. Rogers. The explanation for the “sh— show” (the president’s words) in Libya? “I had more faith in the Europeans,” he says, sounding like my 12-year-old blaming her 6-year-old sister for chores not done. The recipe for better global governance? “If only everyone could be like the Scandinavians, this would all be easy,” he says, sounding like—Barack Obama.

Then there’s Mr. Obama the political theorist. “Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence,” the president says in connection to Vladimir Putin’s gambles in Ukraine and Syria. That’s true, in a Yoda sort of way. But isn’t seizing foreign territory without anyone doing much to stop you also a form of “real power”? Is dictatorial power fake because it depends on the threat of force? CONTINUE AT SITE

Earlier this month, mentally ill Kyle Odom shot pastor Tim Remington in Idaho because he “knew” the pastor was a Martian. In his untreated delusional state, Kyle then flew to the White House and started throwing his possessions over the fence to get the president’s attention so he could inform him about all the other Martians in government, including Senators Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Roger Wicker, and Patty Murray.

Congress should learn from episodes like that. Yet at the same time Kyle went on his mission, Senators Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D., Wash.) went on theirs. They revealed a discussion draft of their Mental Health Reform [sic] Act of 2016, which is perhaps the worst mental-health bill ever conceived. It is a rudderless hodgepodge of studies, reports, commissions, and added bureaucracy that would do nothing to help people like Kyle.

John Snook, of the Treatment Advocacy Center, an organization focused on improving care for the seriously mentally ill, told Modern Healthcare, “If this were to pass as is, it would be of no benefit to [people with] severe mental illness.” Mental-illness-policy advocate, blogger, and former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley wrote, “The Senate has now set a low standard.”

Alexander and Murray should know better. There are plenty of bills floating around that include useful provisions they chose to ignore. Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) introduced the Mental Health and Safe Community Act of 2015 (S2002) specifically to reduce violence by the most seriously mentally ill. It encourages states to use assisted outpatient treatment (AOT). Assisted outpatient treatment is only for a tiny group of the most seriously ill who have already accumulated multiple episodes of violence, arrest, homelessness, incarceration, or hospitalization because they refused to stay in treatment. It allows judges to order them into six months of mandated and monitored treatment while they continue to live in the community. It is less expensive to taxpayers and less restrictive and more humane to patients than the alternatives, incarceration and inpatient commitment. It is the only program with independent research showing it reduces homelessness, arrest, incarceration and violence in the 70 percent range.

Senators Alexander and Murray also ignored provisions in the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015 (S. 1945), proposed by Senators Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) and Bill Cassidy (R., Louisiana). That bill would slightly ameliorate the federal proscription on using Medicaid mental-health funds for those who are so seriously mentally ill they need hospitalization. New York City Police commissioner William Bratton recently described the lack of hospital beds as the top difficulty for officers who are called to assist the seriously mentally ill.

More importantly, Alexander and Murray ignored all the extraordinary work of Representative Tim Murphy (R., Pa.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Texas) in the House. They introduced the bipartisan Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 2646), which would eliminate wasteful, counterproductive federally funded mental “wellness” programs and reallocate the savings to programs that are proven to help the most seriously mentally ill. H.R. 2646 would start by defanging the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), perhaps the most useless bureaucracy in Washington. Its own employees rated it one of the worst federal agencies. SAMHSA funds anti-psychiatrists who lobby Congress, encourages states to use federal mental-illness funds on people who don’t have mental illness, certifies as “evidence-based” programs that don’t help the mentally ill, and wastes money. There is no support for it other than from those who receive funds from it. Alexander and Murray would add more bureaucracy rather than taking a scalpel to it.

Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, the Director of the Miami, Florida-based American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), is advertising on social media a report claiming that the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s was fabricated. This is just one example of many of how Zakkout has belittled and maligned members of the Jewish community and others with the most grotesque manifestations of bigotry – and that’s just in this past month!

On February 14th, Zakkout took to Facebook to promote a report questioning the validity of the Holocaust, entitled, ‘How the Holocaust was faked.’ The piece, which includes gruesome photos of dead bodies piled upon one another, begins, “The alleged ‘Holocaust’ of ‘6 million Jews’ at the hands of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany during WWII is the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity.”

The piece was produced by The Realist Report, a white supremacist outfit located on the outskirts of San Diego, California that regularly targets Jews, blacks and homosexuals. On the group’s website, its viewers are commanded to: “Fight White Genocide. Rise up against the destruction of your race!” while an accompanying video’s narrator ominously states, “We are told to accept our inevitable brown future.”

In April 2013, The Realist Report devoted an entire page on its website to offer birthday wishes to Adolf Hitler. The page states, “Happy Birthday, Adolf Hitler. You were and remain the greatest leader in modern Western history, and offer unparalleled inspiration and guidance to us all. God bless you, and may you forever rest in peace. Heil Hitler!”

Set aside for a moment all the controversies over illegal immigration—the wall, deportation, amnesty, Donald J. Trump, “comprehensive immigration reform,” etc. Instead, contemplate what happens in a social, cultural, and economic context when several million immigrants arrive from one of the poorest areas in the world (e.g., Oaxaca) to one of the most affluent (e.g., California). For guidance, think not of Jorge Ramos, but of the premodern/postmodern collision that is occurring in Germany, Austria, and Denmark.

The first casualty is the law. I am not referring to the collapse of federal immigration enforcement, but rather the ripples that must follow from it. When someone ignores a federal statute, then it is naturally easy to flout more. In Los Angeles, half the traffic accidents are hit-and-run collisions. I can attest first-hand that running from an accident or abandoning a wrecked vehicle is certainly a common occurrence in rural California. Last night on a rural road, a driver behind me (intoxicated? Malicious? Crazy?) apparently tried to rear-end me, then turned off his lights, sped up, and at the next stop sign pulled over swearing out the window in Spanish. In this age and in these environs, why would one call a sheriff for a minor everyday occurrence like that? The point is simply that when there is no federal law, no one has any idea how several million arrive in the U.S., much less what exactly they were doing before their illegal arrival. I note the latter consideration, because legal immigration does require some sort of personal history, and at the airport I am always asked by U.S Customs what exactly I was doing in Greece or Germany that prompted my trip.

Out here almost all laws concerning the licensing and vaccination of dogs seem to have simply disappeared. No one can walk or ride a bicycle along these rural roads without being attacked by hounds that are unlicensed and not vaccinated—and that have no ID or indeed owners that step forward to claim ownership once the victim is bleeding. The Bloomberg Rule reigns (i.e., if you can’t keep snow off the street, deplore global warming or cosmic war): we talk of dreamers because we have not a clue how to ensure that hundreds of thousands of pets are registered and given rabies shots. No one suggests that once one breaks the law of his adopted home, and continues to do so through false affidavits, aliases, and fraudulent documents, then the law itself become an abstraction, useful as a shelter, expendable if an inconvenience. Again, one assumes that if a citizen were to do that, he would face a felony indictment.