RUTHFULLY YOURS

One reason American politics is so polarized is that President Obama has been so cavalier about his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws he dislikes. On Monday the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to one of his worst abuses, his 2014 order that rewrites U.S. immigration law.

In United States v. Texas, 26 states sued to block Mr. Obama’s executive diktat that awards legal status, work permits and other government benefits to some 4.3 million illegal immigrants, with no consent from Congress. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction stopping this ukase last year, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Those were narrow rulings, but the Justices enlarged the case to reach constitutional questions and will hear an unusual 90 minutes of oral argument.

We support humane and economically rational immigration reform, but Texas isn’t about the policy merits. The case implicates the Constitution’s separation of powers and the basic precepts of self-government. The Anglo-American legal tradition began as the English rebelled in the late 1600s against the Stuart kings who claimed the power to suspend or dispense with laws passed by Parliament. The first two grievances against the Crown in America’s Declaration of Independence concerned such “Abuses and Usurpations.”

The Framers wrote Article II’s Take Care clause to prevent the President from claiming the same lawmaking powers. The executive shall—not “may”—execute Congress’s laws faithfully, in one of the Constitution’s most specific instructions.

Congress has debated a more generous immigration policy during the Obama years, and all the while Mr. Obama insisted he couldn’t act alone. “I am President. I am not king,” he told Univision in 2014. “I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen.”

But reform failed, and two weeks after the 2014 midterm election Mr. Obama decided he could act like a legislature: “I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing.” He has no such authority. CONTINUE AT SITE

I covered the confirmation hearings in 1991. HBO’s movie heavily edits history to favor Anita Hill.

The current battle over President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland is child’s play compared with the lurid brawl over George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Clarence Thomas 25 years ago. On Saturday, HBO marked the quarter-century anniversary with “Confirmation,” a retelling of how Judge Thomas, a conservative, up-from-poverty black jurist from Pinpoint, Ga., saw his nomination nearly derailed by allegations of sexual harassment made by Anita Hill, a black attorney who had worked for him 10 years earlier.

Ms. Hill’s calm, graphic testimony during the three-day hearing on her charges sparked a national debate about the then relatively little-discussed issue of workplace sexual harassment. Ultimately, the Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed Mr. Thomas for the Supreme Court, 52-48.
As a reporter who covered the at times stomach-churning hearings, I wondered how “Confirmation” would handle a story that ultimately boiled down, as the saying goes, to one of he said-she said—he denied all and stunned the senators by accusing them of staging a “high-tech lynching.” She said he pestered her for dates and subjected her to disgusting, sexually charged conversation.

Despite a surface appearance of fairness, “Confirmation” makes clear how it wants the hearings to be remembered: Ms. Hill told the whole truth and Mr. Thomas was thus a desperate, if compelling, liar. Her supporters were noble; his Republican backers were scheming character assassins.

This is consistent with how the media conveyed the story at the time and, especially, in the years hence. Yet immediately after millions of people witnessed the hours of televised testimony, polls showed that Americans by a margin of more than 2 to 1 found Judge Thomas more believable than Ms. Hill. Viewers of “Confirmation” were deprived of several aspects of the story that might have made them, too, skeptical of Ms. Hill. The most-salient of many examples: CONTINUE AT SITE

Florent Groberg is the 10th living service member that fought in Afghanistan to be awarded the Medal of Honor. As is a tradition that was pioneered by David Letterman, he was invited on to The Late Show now hosted by Stephen Colbert.

Groberg was in the eastern part of Kunar Province in Afghanistan on a security detail for Col. James Mingus, when he saw two motorcyclists head toward his group then run away. At that moment a man came at them from his left, walking backward. When Groberg approached him and struck him with his rifle he realized he had a suicide vest on.
Without hesitating he grabbed the suicide bomber and dragged him away from those he was protecting at which point the man detonated at his feet. When the dust settled, 4 were dead and Groberg’s leg was wounded beyond repair. However, his swift thinking saved the lives of 24 others.

At the end of his interview with Colbert, Groberg did something incredible. The interview was taped shortly after the Paris attacks. Groberg was born in France and fluent in French, he took a moment to give a personal message to the people of France.

Simply incredible. A true hero.

Watch Groberg’s incredible interview on Colbert:

We think in language, and we think in stories, a fact that is appreciated most keenly not by writers or literary critics but by censors.

In the course of writing about the ongoing fraud in which a cabal of left-wing lawyers with connections to the administrations of Barack Obama and Andrew Cuomo has attempted to extort many billions of dollars from Chevron, I had a memorable conversation with an executive at the energy giant. “We are the least sympathetic defendant there is,” he said. “We’re an oil company. You can say almost anything about an oil company. There are no stories in which the oil company is the good guy.” There is one: The one where you go to the 7-Eleven and fill up your miraculous machine with a miraculous energy source that would, within the recent history of the human species, have been indistinguishable from magic.

But the point stands. You can say anything you like, no matter how wild the claim, about an oil company or a financial firm, or, indeed, about any corporation, “corporation” now being the English word that means “a business that I hate.” The demonization of the word “corporation” has proceeded alongside the demonization of the concept. The word “corporation” already had slightly sinister overtones (it is naturally associated with the English word “corpse,” though that word is not in fact derived from the Latin “corpus”) which has been intensified by the immortal, galaxy-spanning corporations of science fiction; I have always thought (here I glance nervously over my shoulder at Kathryn Jean Lopez) that the writers of Star Trek missed an opportunity with the Borg, whose habitual promise that “you will be assimilated” would have been much better rendered “you will be incorporated,” since they, like a Portuguese man-o’-war, form a single colonial organism. Incorporation is a word that strikes terror into many hearts. (Particularly those beating in proximity to Houston.) I spent part of Friday night among Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters in New York, and one very nice young couple warned me darkly that Republicans would “do whatever the corporations tell them to.” The corporations: As if they were all part of the same team, and had meetings.

The American Left, which long ago abandoned its hereditary liberalism for totalitarianism, is very much interested in policing language. Writing this week in Time, which still exists, Katy Steinmetz complains about the use of the word “transgendered” to describe people who were until five minutes ago known as transsexuals, and five minutes before that weird guys in dresses. (The argument, in case you are wondering, is that the implicitly passive form “transgendered” suggests that something was done to these people, as though we could not distinguish between a tossed salad and a spotted owl.) She offers other sage advice: “If you meet a trans person — someone who identifies with a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth — it’s generally a good idea to ask which pronouns (he or she, him or her) they prefer and to use whatever that is.” Other than establishing that she isn’t a reliable guide to pronouns, the merry assumption of absolute nonsense — “the sex they were assigned at birth” as opposed to the sex they are — isn’t just illiteracy. People instinctively resist the lie, which makes it necessary to make the truth almost literally unspeakable, even unthinkable. The lie isn’t quite sold yet, inasmuch as people still roll their eyes a little at the phrase “women with penises,” but it is getting there.

With Islamic terrorism on the rise in the United States and Western Europe, it’s worth mentioning that the Obama administration issued around 680,000 green cards to foreigners from Muslim countries during a five-year period, according to data published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The stats, the latest made available by DHS, also show that the U.S. government admits more than double the number of immigrants from Muslim nations than from the European Union.

This disturbing information was circulated by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration, which assesses that if there’s no change in the current policy, the U.S. will likely grant another 680,000 migrants-possibly more-from Muslim-majority countries green cards in the next five years. According to the DHS figures cited by the panel, Uncle Sam issued approximately 680,000 green cards to immigrants from 49 Muslim nations from fiscal year 2009 through fiscal year 2013. Over the same period, the U.S. issued only 270,000 green cards to migrants from the European Union, according to a committee announcement that reminds us “a green card entitles recipients to access federal benefits, lifetime residency, work authorization, and a direct route to becoming a U.S. citizen.” Some of the recipients are admitted to the U.S. as refugees so they immediately qualify for federal welfare benefits like food stamps and Medicaid.

The DHS stats include a breakdown of the countries where the migrants came from. Pakistan and Iraq sent over the most with 83,000 apiece and Bangladesh had 75,000. Seventy-three thousand came from Iran, 45,000 from Egypt, 31,000 from Somalia, 24,000 from Uzbekistan, Turkey and Morocco had 22,000 each, Jordan and Albania 20,000 each and Lebanon and Yemen each had 16,000. Rounding out the five-digit club is Indonesia (15,000), Syria (14,000), Sudan (13,000), Afghanistan (11,000) and Sierra Leone (10,000). The rest, including Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kosovo and Libya, only sent over a few thousand during the five-year period covered by the DHS data. By contrast, only 65,000 green cards were granted to migrants from the European Union country (United Kingdom) with the highest number during this period. The Senate committee reveals that DHS has not yet published statistics covering fiscal year 2014 and fiscal year 2015 so we’ll be on the lookout for that.

Green activists, some masquerading as attorneys general of New York and California, want to prosecute Exxon as a climate heretic. Its sin? Saying impeccably true things about climate science: The range of uncertainty is high. Climate models are not the climate, and show themselves to be unreliable guides to future warming. There is a cost-benefit test that policy must pass, and it doesn’t.

The AG case is a spinoff of “investigative” journalism by the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News, which we now learn was directly underwritten by climate activists at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Family Fund.

“It’s about helping the larger public understand the urgencies of finding climate solutions. It’s not really about Exxon,” explained a Rockefeller official about a January meeting to coordinate the legal and journalistic attack.

The journalists involved in this travesty, we’re sorry to say, are of the dumber sort—confused about what science is. But their clottedness comes at a poignant moment.

Honest greens have always said nuclear power is indispensable for achieving big carbon reduction. James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who has been chaining himself to fences since the first Bush administration, was in Illinois last week lobbying against closure of a nuclear plant. Ditto activist Michael Shellenberger. We might also include Bill McKibben, the Bernie Sanders of the climate movement and shouter of Exxon accusations, who told journalist William Tucker four years ago, “If I came out in favor of nuclear, it would split this movement in half.”

Nuclear (unlike solar) is one low-carbon energy technology that has zero chance without strong government support, yet is left out of renewables mandates. It’s the one non-carbon energy source that has actually been shrinking, losing ground to coal and natural gas.

What keeps nuclear costs high? Why do so many opponents misread the Fukushima meltdown, where 18,000 deaths were due to the earthquake and tsunami, none to radiation exposure, and none are expected from radiation exposure? Why has the U.S. experience of spiraling nuclear construction costs not been matched in South Korea, where normal learning has reduced the cost of construction?

The answer increasingly appears to be a real scientific fraud. In a series of peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows how a cabal of radiation geneticists in the 1940s doctored their results, and even a Nobel Prize acceptance speech, to exaggerate the health risk from low-level radiation exposure. At the time, Hermann Muller, their leader, was militating against above-ground atomic-bomb testing. “I think he got his beliefs and his science confused, and he couldn’t admit that the science was unresolved,” Mr. Calabrese told a UMass publication. CONTINUE AT SITE

The issue of the admission of Syrian refugees into the United States has understandably ignited a firestorm of protest by Americans concerned about their safety and the safety of their families. These Americans are not exhibiting “xenophobia,” the usual claim made by the open borders immigration anarchists. They have simply been paying attention to what James Comey, the Director of the FBI, and Michael Steinbach, the FBI’s Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division, have stated when they testified before congressional hearings about the Syrian refugee crisis. They made it clear that these refugees cannot be vetted. There are no reliable databases to check and no capacity to conduct field investigations inside Syria to verify the backgrounds of these aliens.

I focused on these issues in my October 7, 2015 article for FrontPage Magazine, “Syrian ‘Refugees’ and Immigration Roulette: How the government is recklessly playing with American lives.”

Further reports have provided disturbing information that ISIS operatives have seized blank Syrian passports and other identity documents, along with the printing devices used to prepare passports and other ID, and have sold these documents to reporters in false names. These identity documents are indistinguishable from bona fide documents because they are bona fide documents — except that the photos and biometrics do not relate to the original person but create credible false aliases for anyone willing to pay for them.

The challenges our officials face in attempting to vet refugees and others was the focus of my September 15, 2015 article for FrontPage Magazine, “The Refugee Crisis Must Not Undermine U.S. National Security: America’s enemies cannot be permitted to turn our compassion into a weapon against us.”

These multiple challenges, where failures may well cost American lives and undermine national security, are well known to the administration, yet the administration defiantly continues to press for the admission of thousands of Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, the administration ignores a commonsense solution to the refugee crisis that would be far more cost effective and not undermine U.S. national security or pose a threat to public safety: The simple establishment of safe zones in the Middle East for these refugees. This is a proposal made by a number of our true leaders, including Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

In an unsuccessful attempt to assuage the fears of Americans about the vetting process, the administration claimed that the screening process was thorough, noting that the vetting process for Syrian refugees was a lengthy process that took from 18 months to two years. (Of course without reliable databases or the ability to conduct field investigations in Syria, no length of time would be adequate.)

Long after it would have made any difference, President Obama finally turned over thousands of Fast and Furious documents to the House Oversight Committee, revealing a deliberate attempt by some in the Justice Department to keep secret details about the deadly gun-running operation. It’s an effort that continues to this day.

The docs were turned over late last week, hours before the court-ordered deadline, and only represented a fraction of the total number the oversight committee had requested. An Obama-appointed federal judge struck down the president’s 2012 executive privilege claim back in January, giving the DOJ 60 days to hand over all information about its role in the 2009-2011 Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.

Operation Fast and Furious was an ATF and Department of Justice program that purposely allowed the sale and trafficking of thousands of weapons to violent Mexican drug cartels. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed by Mexican bandits in December 2010 and guns from the operation were found at the murder scene. When Sinaloa cartel leader El Chapo Guzman was captured last year, guns from the operation, including a .50 caliber rifle that was used to shoot at a police helicopter, were found in his hideout. Hundreds of Mexican citizens have been killed as a result of the program and thousands of guns are still missing and being used to carry out violent crimes in Mexico and potentially in the United States.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz complained during an interview with Special Report Wednesday that the department was not complying with the law.

“They are breaking the law by telling us they’re only going to provide a couple of the documents,” he said

“When you have a duly issued subpoena, you must comply with it,” Chaffetz continued. “There was a concerted effort here to make sure the Congress never saw the light of day on these documents. They still owe us more.” He added, “if you’re going to withhold documents … there needs to be a consequence to that and the new administration I hope will go back and prosecute these people, because they’re clearly breaking the law.” But in order for there to be any consequences, we “have to have an administration with integrity,” Chaffetz said. “That’s why it’s time for us to have another election and get another administration in there.

El Niño has doused northern California, but farmers in the state’s Central Valley won’t see much benefit. The Obama Administration is again indulging its progressive friends at the expense of low-income communities.

The Bureau of Reclamation recently announced that Central Valley Project agricultural water contractors south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta would receive a mere 5% of their contractual allocation this year despite brimming reservoirs in the North. Lake Shasta is at 90% capacity, and billions of gallons of water were released from Lake Folsom this winter to avert flooding.

Meantime, wildlife refuges and farmers north of the Delta—those in Democratic Reps. Jerry McNerney and John Garamendi’s districts—will get 100% of the water they’re owed. The liberal gentry in the Bay Area, which pipes its pristine water directly from Hetch Hetchy reservoir, also won’t be affected by this government water rationing. Federal biological opinions limit Delta water pumps to a third of capacity to protect endangered smelt and salmon, which can get sucked into the machines. Despite these restrictions, fish populations continue to decline.

The Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged last year that “existing regulatory mechanisms have not proven adequate” to halt the smelt’s decline and that “we are unable to determine with certainty which threats or combinations of threats are directly responsible.” The bigger culprits appear to be invasive species, Delta farm fertilizer, Sacramento effluence, the drought and, perhaps, natural selection.

The Obama Administration is nonetheless doubling down on a failed policy. Amid this winter’s storms, Delta water regulators reduced water pumping to protect putatively vulnerable larval and juvenile smelt. Three adult smelt—and no juveniles or larvae—have been killed by the pumps this year. CONTINUE AT SITE

We can find all the barbaric civilizations to suit an entire faculty’s worth of anthropologists in the Middle East. And then back home we can see the decadent civilization that employs their kind to bemoan the West. Vigorous civilizations are a rarer breed. They change the world. But don’t last.

America used to be vigorous when it was moving west, producing at record rates and becoming a world power. It is growing decadent. And decadent civilizations fall to barbarians.

The barbaric civilization is purely crude. It runs on kinship. It is pre-rational and its guiding ethos is self-esteem often misspelled as honor. It has no notion of enduring facts or objective reasoning. It is incapable of recognizing inconsistencies in its code because truth is whatever it feels at a given time.

The barbarian has no morals. He obeys tribal codes that he does not understand, but accepts. Fairness exists only relative to his own interests. Empathy is foreign to him. He holds life cheaply and kills casually. He loathes outsiders and obeys no universal laws. His tribe is ruled by hierarchies which gain their position through brutality and trickery. And he assumes the world works the same way.

He cannot and will not interact with a more advanced civilization on any terms other than these. Cunning barbarians may learn the languages of more advanced civilizations and even ape their values for their own purposes, but they never adopt them. When a barbarian speaks of democracy, he means power. When he talks of religion, he means the worship of his own power. When he prattles of morality, he does not mean universal laws, but anything that impinges on his own power.

To the barbarian, all values are reducible to power. They are his gods, his religions and his laws.

The decadents are obsessed with filtering hierarchies of ideas and people. Their societies have grown too complex, too full of ideas, cultures and interest groups. The management of this unmanageable plenitude occupies all the energies of their fading civilization. They are the miser with the fading memory still struggling to count his gold. Decadents have too much of everything and no idea what to do with it except to squander it in fits of misguided and destructive impulses.

The decadent civilization has a million laws which it applies selectively. Its universal laws, inherited from a vigorous civilization, are buried between equivocation. Decadents don’t believe in objective truths and so they cannot have universal laws. Instead they mire them in so many legalisms as to be meaningless. The laws must be interpreted by a specialized caste. Everyone is always in violation of some obscure law. Life depends on a lawless dispensation from the law. Justice is impossible. Corruption is mandatory. The only way for the decadent civilization to function is to bypass its own safeguards through corruption, black markets and lobbying. This is true in all things.

The crucial task of the law is interpretation that keeps everyone from constantly being punished. This task is accomplished by lawyers, lobbyists and the politicians who are constantly adding more laws to fix the interpretations in the old laws creating a complex mass of contradictory information.

This holds true in every other area of decadent life.

Interpretation is what the decadent civilization does best. While vigorous civilizations discover new things, decadent civilizations endlessly categorize and re-categorize them to accommodate intellectual fads. Decadents compulsively seek new systems of organization. The computer age is the glorious final era of the decadents who finally have infinite ways to manage infinite information.

What they lack is any way of distinguishing what is worthwhile in both information and systems.