RUTHFULLY YOURS

Almost every day seems to bring more bad news about the Zika virus: babies born with malformed brains; adults suffering the progressive paralysis of Guillain-Barré syndrome; Americans diagnosed after traveling to the tropics; active transmission of the disease in U.S. territories. Several companies are working on a vaccine, but primarily because of regulatory requirements none is likely to become commercially available before the end of the decade.

Last month President Obama announced that he will ask Congress for $1.8 billion to fight the mosquito-borne disease. But the president seems unaware that the bumbling of his Food and Drug Administration is blocking progress on a vital tool to control the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry and transmit Zika and the viruses that cause dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever.

Using genetic engineering techniques, the British company Oxitec (a subsidiary of American-owned Intrexon) has created male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with a specific mutation that causes them to need a certain chemical (the antibiotic tetracycline) to survive. Without it, they die—and their offspring die before reaching maturity. Releasing the males over several months causes a marked reduction in the mosquito population. Because male mosquitoes don’t bite, they present no health risk, and, because their progeny die, no genetically engineered mosquitoes persist in the environment.

This approach has already been widely and successfully tested abroad. Brazil has approved it, and Oxitec is helping to control mosquitoes in the city of Piracicaba. But in the U.S. the FDA has been paralyzed, unwilling to permit even small-scale testing. How did the feds go wrong? CONTINUE AT SITE

The U.S. Senate is on the verge of settling the nation’s fiercest food fight: GMO labeling. And if you need an example of lawmakers, lobbyists, special interest groups, and corporations wasting time and money on a manufactured problem that is completely inconsequential to the health and welfare of the American people, look no further than this.

The fight is about whether food companies should disclose the presence of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, in their products. This applies to hundreds of ingredients, from soybean oil to vitamins to cheese. In the U.S., almost all corn, soy, and cotton crops are genetically engineered to tolerate herbicides or resist pests, so any by-product of those crops would require a label. Same with canola. Sugar from sugarbeets, which produce more than half the sugar supply here and are also grown via genetically engineered seeds, would need a label. The list goes on.

No good justification for a label exists: Ingredients derived from these crops pose no health or safety concern and do not compromise the nutritional value of food. That, however, has not impressed our esteemed United States Senate, which will take a break from terrorism and trade pacts to deliberate a new label on a can of soup.

On immigration, as on so much else, the Democrats have become the party of Obama — only more so.

Because Wednesday’s debate was co-hosted by Spanish-language network Univision, and the questioning spearheaded by Jorge Ramos, an immigration activist masquerading as a journalist, there was little doubt that the evening would feature what Hillary Clinton’s detractors have derisively labeled “Hispandering.” But Clinton and her remaining challenger, Bernie Sanders, effectively promised an end to American immigration law.

Clinton had previously affirmed her support for President Obama’s massive exercises in “prosecutorial discretion,” DACA and DAPA, both flagrantly unconstitutional amnesties covering together some 5 million people. However, prodded by Ramos, Clinton promised not only that she would not deport children — an assurance that every “unaccompanied minor” who has crossed the southern border in the past few years would be permitted to stay — but that she would not deport anyone without a criminal record, period, guaranteeing a permanent home to almost every illegal immigrant residing in the country, and effectively reducing crossing the border illegally to a minor and ignorable infraction. Clinton also reiterated an earlier commitment to somehow reunite families separated by deportation. With all of this, Sanders concurred.

Failures of the immigration system have a profound impact, exacerbating nearly every challenge and threat that America and Americans confront on a day-to-day basis. However, the true significance of immigration is rarely, if ever, discussed by politicians or by journalists upon whom we depend for information.

Unbridled greed and hunger for power lead the list of factors that motivate many politicians to ignore this side of the immigration debate. Journalists may be ideologues or may be controlled by the executives of their news organizations who are impacted by greed as well.

On June 18, 2015 FrontPage Magazine published my article, “Theft By Deception: The Immigration Con Game: How politicians are robbing citizens of access to the American Dream” in which I laid out some of the ways that so many profit from the failures of border security and failure to enforce our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

The premise of my November 29, 2015 article for the Daily Caller, “Immigration: A Matter Of Integrity – Or A Lack Thereof,” was that the immigration system’s lack of integrity simply parallels the lack of integrity of all too many of our politicians who write our laws, provide or deny funding for programs and devise strategies to either effectively carry out various governmental missions or seek to obstruct missions — often while providing the false illusions that everything that can be done is being done.

Do you remember when we had a First Amendment? It seems to have vanished in the view of the attorney general of the United States, Loretta Lynch, who testified yesterday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Jon Street reports at TheBlaze:

During Lynch’s testimony at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said that he believes there are similarities between the tobacco industry denying scientific studies showing the dangers of using tobacco and companies within the fossil fuel industry denying studies allegedly showing the threat of carbon emissions.

He went on to point out that under President Bill Clinton, the Justice Department brought and won a civil case against the tobacco industry, while the Obama administration has “done nothing” so far with regard to the fossil fuel industry.

Whitehouse concluded his comments by posing a question to the country’s top law enforcement officer.

“My question to you is, other than civil forfeitures and matters attendant to a criminal case, are there other circumstances in which a civil matter under the authority of the Department of Justice has been referred to the FBI?” he asked.

“This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on,” Lynch answered. “I’m not aware of a civil referral at this time.”

As a matter of fact, Lynch and Whitehouse understate the degree of persecution of dissent underway. Over a week ago, it was disclosed that the DoJ has made a criminal referral for views on a scientific dispute. David Hasemyer reported for Inside Climate News last week:

The U.S. Justice Department has forwarded a request from two congressmen seeking a federal probe of ExxonMobil to the FBI’s criminal division.

If alleged Islamophobia causes Muslims to pillage, rape, and slaughter, then how come centuries of anti-Semitism have not produced a raging Jewish population hell-bent on murder? Or if cartoons about Muhammad can cause homicidal riots, how come the daily anti-Semitic cartoons emanating out of the Middle East and other parts of the globe do not result in Jews going on a rampage?

Because civilized people don’t behave this way.

For that matter, how come when people step on the American flag and rip it to shreds, Americans don’t go on assassination raids?

I am absolutely sick and tired of talking heads using a double standard for those Muslims who act like barbarians against their own women and against other people who refuse to accede to their demands.

If you don’t want to eat bacon, then don’t eat bacon.

If you don’t want to drink alcohol, then don’t drink alcohol.

If you don’t want to wear pig costumes, then don’t.

But we will not surrender to your demands.

When people begin to self-censor their ideas, their activities, their food, and their entertainment, we might as well put “RIP” over our heads, because we are triggering our own suicide.

I, for one, opt out of that thinking. If you cannot abide by the American Constitution, and despise what the Stars and Stripes symbolizes, you are certainly free to leave this country. If you cannot use the same toilet as a non-Muslim child, then please do not use the facilities. We are not going backward to a segregation of Muslims vs. non-Muslims.

If you want to pray, you will not take over public space of a taxpayer-funded university and demand a key to lock out anyone else who wants to use the room.

Engaging in female genital mutilation has no place in this country; it is heinous and a form of child abuse.

Reading Jeff Goldberg’s fascinating account in The Atlantic of his conversations with the president of the United States, the conclusion I came to was that Obama was born in the wrong country. (And, yes, contrary to the sinister suspicions of “birthers” like Donald Trump, he really was born in this country.) He would have made a great Scandinavian prime minister.

As Goldberg relates: “Obama has always had a fondness for pragmatic, emotionally contained technocrats, telling aides, ‘If only everyone could be like the Scandinavians, this would all be easy.’” And like a good Scandinavian, he views global warming as the world’s biggest security threat: “ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States,” he told Goldberg. “Climate change is a potential existential threat to the entire world if we don’t do something about it.”

I see Obama as another Jesper Berg, the fictional prime minister of Norway in the great TV series “Occupied” (viewable on Netflix), another handsome, intelligent politician who is also transfixed by the threat of global warming and is nonchalant when the Russians start to invade his country in order to seize its oil production. (Berg had tried to shut down the entire oil industry because he thought it contributed to global warming.)

Like Berg, Obama doesn’t seem unduly disturbed by evidence of Russia’s nefarious designs. He says of Vladimir Putin: “He understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is significantly diminished. And the fact that he invades Crimea or is trying to prop up Assad doesn’t suddenly make him a player. You don’t see him in any of these meetings out here helping to shape the agenda. For that matter, there’s not a G20 meeting where the Russians set the agenda around any of the issues that are important.”

This is almost a caricature of the Scandinavian mindset which holds that the only thing that matters is multilateral meetings at forums like the United Nations or the G20. Putin doesn’t seem to have gotten that memo. He may not be “helping to shape the agenda” at international talkfests, but he is shaping the agenda on the ground with his ferocious aggression which has left the United States and our allies reeling.

For months, news has trickled out of Missouri regarding the negative fallout from the fall student protests. The university capitulated in the face of a racial “crisis” wholly of the protesters manufacture (demanding a chancellor’s resignation over random racial incidents completely outside his control), and the chickens are truly coming home to roost. Previously, I’ve posted about declining student applications and declining donations, yet the true dimensions of the financial disaster are only just now coming into focus. Fox Sports has obtained a copy of the interim chancellor’s letter to the university community:

I am writing to you today to confirm that we project a very significant budget shortfall due to an unexpected sharp decline in first-year enrollments and student retention this coming fall. I wish I had better news.

The anticipated declines which total about 1,500 fewer students than current enrollment at MU in addition to a small number of necessary investments are expected to leave us with an approximate $32 million budget gap for next year. A smaller entering freshman class will have continuing impact on finances as they progress toward their degrees at MU.

Unexpected decline? Only to those who think weeks of coverage dedicated to campus crazies has no effect on market decisions in a competitive college environment. At any rate, the budget shortfall means considerable pain all around:

We are implementing an across-the-board hiring freeze for all units on campus. We urge all campus administrators to carefully review their staffing levels and to not refill any positions unless they are absolutely necessary to the mission. Decisions to add faculty or staff must be exceptional, but will be left to the discretion of the deans, vice chancellors, vice provosts and the director of athletics.