RUTHFULLY YOURS

This just in:

A divided Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to halt enforcement of President Barack Obama’s sweeping plan to address climate change until after legal challenges are resolved. The surprising move is a blow to the administration and a victory for the coalition of 27 mostly Republican-led states and industry opponents that call the regulations “an unprecedented power grab.”

By temporarily freezing the rule the high court’s order signals that opponents have made a strong argument against the plan. A federal appeals court last month refused to put it on hold. The court’s four liberal justices said they would have denied the request.

The plan aims to stave off the worst predicted impacts of climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants by about one-third by 2030. Appellate arguments are set to begin June 2.

The compliance period starts in 2022, but states must submit their plans to the Environmental Protection Administration by September or seek an extension.

Many states opposing the plan depend on economic activity tied to such fossil fuels as coal, oil and gas. They argued that power plants will have to spend billions of dollars to begin complying with a rule that may end up being overturned.

President Obama added new funding in his FY 2017 budget to try to save Alaska from the effects of climate change.

That includes $150 million for planning and design to fast-track “a new polar-class icebreaker” to begin production by 2020. “The new, heavy icebreaker will assure year-round accessibility to the Arctic region for Coast Guard missions including protection of Alaska’s maritime environment and resources,” the White House said in a fact sheet on the initiatives this morning.

Under the plan, Alaska would get about $400 million of a $2 billion Coastal Climate Resilience program — including “relocation expenses for Alaska Native villages threatened by rising seas, coastal erosion, and storm surges.”

“This program would be paid for by redirecting roughly half of the savings achieved by repealing unnecessary and costly offshore oil and gas revenue sharing payments that are set to be paid to a handful of states under current law,” the White House said.

An additional $5 million would be added to the previous year’s budget for the federal Denali Commission “to coordinate Federal, State, and Tribal assistance to communities to develop and implement solutions to address the impacts of climate change.”

Late on February 9, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow, albeit temporary, to President Barack Obama’s anti-global warming initiative that was intended to be a hallmark of his second term. In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled to put Environmental Protection Agency regulations on whole so that an appeals court can hear arguments from the more than two dozen states opposed to the initiative. The EPA regulations were intended to control greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.

Climate change skeptic and journalist Marc Morano said of the ruling, “This is a major victory for U.S. sovereignty, energy freedom, climate science and a blow to economic central planning.” Likewise, energy advocates and other climate change skeptics argue that the rules would represent a major and costly shift in the economy by requiring energy companies and consumers to plug into alternative sources such as wind and solar power and away from cheap fossil fuels. Most of the electric power generated in the U.S. comes from coal, oil or natural gas.

“This wasn’t a rule so much as it was a reimagining of the entire electricity system of the United States,” said Michael McKenna, a GOP energy strategist. It’s “the most far-reaching and burdensome rule EPA has ever forced onto the states,” 26 states led by West Virginia and Texas argued in court papers.

The delay will continue until June, when it may go before an appeals court. If the states and energy advocates lose in that court, the hold on the regulations would last until they sought Supreme Court review. So far, the EPA will not be able to enforce the Sept. 6 deadline for states to either submit their emission reduction plans or request a two-year extension. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whose coal-mining state was one of those arguing against the plan. In a statement, Morrisey said, “We are thrilled that the Supreme Court realized the rule’s immediate impact and froze its implementation, protecting workers and saving countless dollars as our fight against its legality continues.”

.We just learned that over 600,000 driver licenses were issued to illegal immigrants in California

The law known as AB60 took effect on January 2, 2015. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) expects a total of about 1.4 million people will get their license under the law by late 2017.

Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed the law in October 2013 to give a legal document to the 2.5 million undocumented immigrants in California alone — most from Latin America and particularly neighboring Mexico.

California officials believe the program — which does not give license holders any US federal benefits — does make roads in the most populous US state safer, several state sources said.

It does not allow license holders, for example, the right to fly on airplanes inside the United States, nor does it give anyone legal residency status, the right to work or to seek a US passport.

But among the upsides are that California drivers with the document can drive legally across the entire vast United States, without being fined or facing fear of having their vehicle impounded.

Jane Kahn and Michael Bien, two activists with the anti-Israel New Israel Fund, had a complaint about San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation. They were unhappy that JCF wouldn’t fund Hamas.

Or more specifically, they whined that “we were unable to make donations through our JCF donor-advised philanthropic fund to certain organizations that we support”. One of those organizations was the American Friends Service Committee because the JCF narrow-mindedly refuses to help fund groups that “endorse or promote anti-Semitism” or promote BDS.

The American Friends Service Committee does these things and more. It promotes BDS as if that were its religion right down to a “BDS Summer Institute”. And it has a long and troubled history with anti-Semitism from urging Jews to “tolerate some anti-Semitic remarks” to throwing a shindig for Iranian madman Ahmadinejad.

But, more importantly, the AFSC has urged the United States to deal with Hamas despite its call for the eradication of the Jewish people. It has a history of supporting Hamas front “charities” and its website defends Hamas and describes its murderous terror attacks against Israeli civilians as “the use of violence in resisting Israel’s occupation”. It tells supporters “U.S. government policy officially supports Israel’s continued siege on Gaza and the Isolation of Hamas. This is a situation that must end.” It urges supporters to demand a, “complete end to Israel’s siege on Gaza and engagement with Hamas.”

AFSC Palestine-Israel program director Mike Merryman-Lotze justifies anti-Semitic terrorism by arguing that, “Violence is the inevitable response.” AFSC figures advocate the destruction of Israel in various forms. AFSC coordinates with other extreme anti-Israel groups, including JVP. This isn’t a new development for the AFSC which has an ugly history of defending politically correct genocide.

If you seek to understand Barack Obama and his views, the best place to go is his speeches. But you have to read them in their entirety, not rely on hearing them or on the media’s summary of them. When you do, you come to realize how often what Obama says is morally and intellectually confused and even untrue.

The most recent example was his speech last week at a mosque in Baltimore. In addition to reassuring Muslim Americans that they are as American as Americans of every other faith — a point that any president, Republican or Democrat, would and should make — President Obama spoke a lot of nonsense, some of it dangerous nonsense.

President Obama: “So let’s start with this fact: For more than a thousand years, people have been drawn to Islam’s message of peace. And the very word itself, ‘Islam,’ comes from ‘salam’ — peace.”

Why did Mr. Obama say this? Even Muslim websites acknowledge that “Islam” means “submission” [to Allah], that it comes from the Arabic root “aslama” meaning submission, and that “Islam” is the command form of that verb.

That’s why “Muslim” means “One who submits,” not “One who is peaceful.”

The racial spoils industry survives on several requisites.

One, Americans must be readily identifiable as being non-white or white. Two, once non-white claimants pass the racial litmus test, they must think and speak in a particular progressive manner, in dutiful obeisance to those who set up and perpetuate the racial spoils system. And three, racialism must remain defined as a one-way bias.

The problem with the first criterion is multifold. America today truly is a multiracial, intermarried society in which the old rubric “white” no longer equates to “of European descent.” Obama’s racist former minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright appears whiter than many Americans of Mediterranean heritage.

Lots of Americans of various hues are de facto classified as white, either by themselves or by the government that refuses to make them eligible for affirmative action. Over the years I had hundreds of students who were clearly non-white in appearance, first-generation Americans of Arab, Armenian, and Punjabi background, who did not qualify for any racial set-asides. The vast majority of them were as dark as or darker than third-generation Mexican-Americans who did.

Many whites of European descent are indistinguishable from so-called Latinos. Certainly a Sicilian-American can look more “Latino” than someone of Mexican or South American descent. If Ted Cruz took his mother’s name, no one would know that Ted Wilson was Latino. If George Zimmerman had used the name Jorge Mesa, the Trayvon Martin confrontation never would have made front-page news. Such a rigged system cannot even defend its own biases. Accordingly, it retreats toward the subjective category “diversity” to make up prejudice and its remedies, in ad hoc fashion, on the basis of career and political expediencies.

Why would NASA ban the use of the word “Jesus” by a Christian group that advertises its meetings in an agency newsletter?

They’re only following federal guidelines, they say, about preventing the “government endorsement” of a religion.

Fox News:

“It was shocking to all of us and very frustrating,” NASA engineer Sophia Smith told me. “NASA has a long history of respecting religious speech. Why wouldn’t they allow us to put the name Jesus in the announcement about our club?”

Liberty Institute, one of the nation’s largest religious liberty law firms, threatened to file a federal lawsuit unless NASA apologizes and stops censoring the name ‘Jesus’.

The JSC Today newsletter is distributed electronically and includes a number of Space Center events – from salsa dancing lessons to soccer camp.

NASA issued a statement late Monday – that did not refute Liberty Institute’s charge.

“NASA does not prohibit the use of any specific religious names in employee newsletters or other internal communications. The agency allows a host of employee-led civic, professional, religious and other organizations to meet on NASA property on employee’s own time. Consistent with federal law, NASA attempts to balance employee’s rights to freely exercise religious beliefs with its obligation to ensure there is no government endorsement of religion. We believe in and encourage open and diverse dialogue among our employees and across the agency.”

Tonight I walked onto the subway and saw the car was half-empty because a stinking bum was lying on a seat, and no one wanted to smell him.

Rome fell. New York is falling down. It is filled with illegalities and filth as a result of the good intentions and failed ideas of liberals. Politicians pretend to want the best while they deliver the worst.

De Blasio and New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Mark-Vivirito have decriminalized public urination and quality-of-life offenses. Are they kidding? De-civilizing a beautiful city is not a positive. It is a fall from grace.

The Broken Windows theory states that small crimes lead to major crimes. De Blasio and Mark-Vivirito should study sociology. Their ignorance is ruining our city.

They pretend to be kind to the poor while they destroy their lives and leave them scantily clothed with no toilet paper on street corners. They whisper sweet things in bums ears while they throw their lives into sewers.

De Blasio and Mark-Vivirito want to lower the quality of life in New York. They are doing a good job at making New York into a third-world country.

When I get on a subway, there are small Mexican bands singing and break-dancers stepping on my feet. I don’t interfere with their solitude; why should they bother me? And I’m supposed to tip them for failing to entertain me?

From the executive summary of “Beach Books: 2014-2016,” a report released Feb. 9 by the National Association of Scholars on its study of more than 350 universities’ “common reading” programs—usually books assigned to freshmen to read the summer before starting school:

Colleges presume students regard reading as a strange and difficult activity, to which they must be introduced with careful thought and great caution. Since these colleges usually do not dare to enforce consequences for not reading the books, they instead have to allure the students with the sweetener of easy, exciting reading. The colleges therefore tend to assign no-fuss digestibles—memoirs and nonfiction, young adult books, science fiction, and comic books, books with young protagonists and books where the students might already have seen the movie, and affirming books that make the students feel good about themselves and what they can do with their college education.

Mission statements for common reading programs further limit the selected texts. Common reading programs that require an author available for a campus visit have to select a recent work, and probably from an author associated with a book publisher specializing in the commercial genre of common reading books. The desire to create community limits the common readings to the most anodyne of topics, excludes any intellectual topic interesting enough to be controversial, and has a marked tendency to redefine community around a shared catechism of belief rather than around a shared love of inquiry into truth. The emphasis on fostering non-academic values such as community, civic engagement, and social justice leads to selecting books that emphasize collective effort for non-academic pursuits rather than the solitary disengagement that is a fundamental component and delight of the life of the mind. College, this sort of common reading tells the incoming student, is a place to indulge a jolly, earnest desire to change the world for the better—and nothing more.