RUTHFULLY YOURS

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the first Democrat to hold that title in 20 years, assumed office two years ago this month, he and his fellow New York Democrat, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appeared to be political brothers, both progressive former Clinton allies. Mr. Cuomo served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s; Mr. de Blasio was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for her 2000 Senate bid.

Today, though, it’s clear the brothers that Messrs. Cuomo and de Blasio most closely resemble are Michael and Fredo Corleone in “The Godfather” movies. What started as friction grew into a rift and is now undisguised mutual loathing. One of Mr. Cuomo’s top political priorities seems to be using his superior political power to nettle, check and/or humiliate Mr. de Blasio at every opportunity. Nearly every day, the two men act out another scene in one of the most curious and entertaining political psychodramas of our time.

Terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have shown the danger of homegrown Islamist radicals. Naturally, then, progressives want to shame and punish the police who first warned about the threat.

That’s the essence of the settlement disclosed this week between New York City and the American Civil Liberties Union over the police department’s Muslim intelligence program. The deal confirms that the cops have been right all along in saying they did nothing wrong. But it nonetheless embarrasses the cops with a new civilian monitor and castigates them for being right about radicalization.

The settlement proposes changes to the Handschu Guidelines on surveillance that police have followed since they were laid out in a 1986 settlement of a federal lawsuit. In 2003 a judge modified the guidelines to give police the greater investigative freedom to meet the threat from Islamist terrorism.

As part of this effort, the police set out to identify places in New York where a terrorist might turn for shelter, a job, a meal, access to an Internet cafe and so on. Such intelligence might have come in handy, for example, if the Tsarnaev brothers had succeeded in their plan to make New York their next target after they exploded their pressure-cooker bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon.

Enter the Associated Press, which portrayed these tactics as illegal, followed by new Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned by portraying police as the city’s enemy. Mr. de Blasio is close to the activists who sued and—unlike predecessor Mike Bloomberg—seems incapable of standing up for cops. Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has already killed the Muslim mapping program.

Do the ‘zoo police’ under the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
really need body armor?

VA, EPA, FDA among those nabbing heavy armaments
Read ‘Golden Hammer’ story click here:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/7/golden-hammer-feds-spending-millions-to-arm-agenci/#disqus_thread

Many federal agencies are now empowered with increasing police weaponry and technologies.

In our next study – coming soon – entitled OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Arming of the Federal Agencies, we will quantify the purchases of guns, ammo and military-style equipment since 2006.

Today, Washington Times investigative reporter Kellan Howell uses OpenTheBooks data and awards the “Golden Hammer” award to 44 traditionally administrative federal agencies for spending $77.1 million on body armor since 2006.

According to our data at OpenTheBooks.com, $400 million across all federal agencies outside of the Department of Defense was spent on body armor which includes $330 million spent by the traditional law-enforcement agencies such as FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and Homeland Security.

Read the Washington Times Golden Hammer story on federal agencies purchase of $400 million in body armor.

Here’s a snapshot of what was purchased by the administrative agencies as ‘body armor’:

1. Small Business Administration spent $13,119 on ‘ballistic vests’ in 2010.

2. Smithsonian Institution purchased $28,474 on body armor for its ‘zoo police and security officers’ in FY2012.

3. Over $200,000 by Environmental Protection Agency purchasing body armor during the Obama administration and only $30,000 during the previous three years.

4. Over $300,000 by Food and Drug Administration in ‘ballistic vests and carriers’ during FY2014.

5. $2 million spent by Veterans Administration on riot helmets, defender shields, body armor, Milo return fire cannon system, armored mobile shields, Kevlar blankets, tactical gear, tactical equipment for crowd control, and much more.

Read the Washington Times Golden Hammer story on federal agencies purchase of $400 million in body armor.

Stay tuned… 2016 is going to be a ground-breaking year.

President Obama spent the week defending his proposals to curb gun violence, culminating in a CNN town hall. Think about that. What else happened during the last few days that might warrant a presidential town hall?

Oh, nothing much:

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran after the House of Saud executed a Shiite cleric, escalating sectarian warfare in the Middle East

The stock market tumbled on fears of a global economic slowdown

A U.S. soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan, where the Taliban controls more ground than at any time since 2001

Iran revealed the existence of an underground ballistic-missile launch site

North Korea detonated a nuclear device

A terrorist was foiled in Paris on the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre

To hear the Left tell it, the debate over mass Muslim immigration — especially from conflict zones — is a simple contest between compassionate tolerance and cowardly xenophobia. They claim their opponents are cowards because the percentage of refugees or immigrants who are terrorists is very small (your bathtub is more dangerous than a Muslim immigrant), and they’re xenophobes because they have no understanding or appreciation for the blessings and benefits of diversity. Conservatives are all fear and no heart.

According to the rules of this debate, there are but two kinds of Muslim immigrants — the tiny few terrorists and the overwhelmingly deserving, suffering majority. Question this narrative, or call attention to the vast cultural gaps between the refugees and the Western nations they’re fleeing to, and you’re a racist. After all, our cultural elite understands the Muslim world better than you do. They went to Harvard with Muslims, and the Muslims they know have great accents, cool customs, and — most importantly — tales of imperialist oppression that turn the leftist heart to mush. What’s not to love?

The recent events in Cologne and other German and Austrian cities represent a necessary, reality-based corrective to this absurd binary thinking. On New Year’s Eve, German women faced attacks from roaming gangs of North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, including asylum-seekers. According to German officials, “sexual crimes took place on a huge scale.” More than 100 women were victimized in a single evening, with up to 1,000 attackers involved.

Police Commissioner Richard Ross said the attacker claimed to have been inspired by the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS. Ross said the targeted officer was shot three times and that it was something of a miracle that he survived such a direct attack.
“I don’t know how this officer survived,” Ross said.
The alleged attacker was identified as Edward Archer.
The still images appear to show him approaching a police-car window as he fired his gun, and then hurrying away. They can be seen below:

PHILADELPHIA, PA – JANUARY 8: A headshot of Police Officer Jesse Hartnett, 33, who was ambushed and allegedly shot at 13 times by Edward Archer, 30, last night on January 8, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Surveillance footage reveals the suspect was dressed in Muslim clothing and wearing a mask. Following his arrest, suspect Edward Archer stated, ‘I follow Allah and pledge allegiance to the Islamic State and that is the reason I did what I did.’ (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Bill de Blasio has already overseen a few of these stage managed surrenders to criminals and terrorists. So this isn’t by any means surprising. It should however be remembered that if a successful terror attack occurs in New York, it will be because Bill de Blasio crippled the NYPD at the behest of Islamic groups.

The NYPD didn’t admit any wrongdoing, and the city won’t pay any damages other than about $1.6 million for the plaintiff’s legal fees. The department instead agreed to codify civil rights and other protections required under the court-ordered Handschu decree, which was put in place in response to surveillance used against war protesters in the 1960s and ’70s. The decree was relaxed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to allow police to more freely monitor political activity in public places.

Civil rights groups sued in 2013 in federal court in Manhattan, accusing the NYPD of breaking Handschu rules. A second suit filed that year in Brooklyn federal court by mosques, a charity and community leaders alleged that the department was discriminating against Muslims.

The University of California system is encouraging its students to report everything from “unwanted jokes” to “teasing” using its online “intolerance report form.”

If you hover your mouse over a subsection of the form labeled “hostile climate,” it states that “examples include unwanted jokes or teasing, derogatory or disparaging comments, posters, cartoons, drawings, or pictures of a biased nature.”

It also has a section for “Other Campus Climate Issues,” which it defines as “any intolerant behavior not specified above.”

Of course, any student who is being harassed at school in a way that, as the form puts it, is “severe or pervasive enough to affect campus or academic life,” should be able to contact the administration for help.

But here’s the thing: Even without this form, students would still have plenty of ways to report these kinds of issues. You know, like, these things called “e-mails” and “phone calls,” for example. What’s more, you’d think that if a student was facing discriminatory behavior “severe or pervasive enough” to “affect campus or academic life,” he or she would want to use one of these more direct options for communication to get it handled rather than dump it into a system-wide mass portal.

So . . . why the form? Maybe UC is hell on earth, and these kinds of serious incidents are so common, and were making up so much of administrators’ received e-mails, that it was necessary to have an entire online space devoted to them — and there really should also be an entire staff to sort through them and a task force ready to be deployed to handle the tragedies. Or maybe the point is to encourage students to report incidents (and/or annoyances) that they would not have considered serious enough to report without this kind of prompting.

It’s not often that Minnesota governor Mark Dayton does something that deserves widespread praise. But the Democrat deserves kudos for his handling of a state pollution-control employee who has been caught abusing that position to advocate against a proposed pipeline project.

Scott Lucas works for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. A local paper exposed emails sent by Lucas regarding the pending Sandpiper crude oil pipeline. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

In one e-mail, Lucas sent a message including a link to an environmental report regarding another pipeline, saying it “could be a very useful tool for us to use when making our case against Sandpiper in this area of the state.” The e-mails were first reported by the Pioneer Press.

“Somebody in that position who’s playing an advocacy role with advocate organizations has really crossed the line of what their professional responsibilities are,” Dayton said Wednesday. “If they’re going to get into political advocacy, they should resign their position and run for the Legislature or go to work for one of the organizations that oppose the pipeline.”

President Obama scoffed at CNN host Anderson Cooper for questioning whether it was “fair” for him to brand pro-gun opponents as conspiracy theorists for fearing firearm registration or confiscation.

Obama was surrounded by people on both sides of the gun-control issue at a CNN townhall held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Mark Kelly, husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, asked the president “to explain, with 350 million guns in 65 million places, households from Key West to Alaska — 350 million objects in 65 million places — if the federal government wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that?”

Obama noted “this notion of a conspiracy out there, and it gets wrapped up in concerns about the federal government.”

“Now, there’s a long history of that. That’s in our DNA. The United States was born suspicious of some distant authority,” he said.

Cooper jumped in, “Is it fair to call it a conspiracy? I mean, there’s a lot of people who really believe this deeply — that they just don’t trust you.”