RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Obama administration this weekend began detaining Central Americans who have evaded deportation orders, launching a crackdown on people illegally in the country amid an increase in migrants trying to cross the southwest border.

Just before Christmas, government officials confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security was planning a clampdown on Central American migrants in January that would include women and children. The operation began in Georgia and Texas, immigration attorneys and advocates said Sunday.

Representatives of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Georgia and Texas declined to comment, saying the Homeland Security agency doesn’t discuss ongoing operations. It was unclear Sunday how many people had been taken into custody.

If the raids spread across the country, they would mark the first large-scale operation mounted specifically against Central Americans.

“We are expecting these raids to occur on a national level” since “these families are all over the country,” said Michelle Mendez, a lawyer with Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., a national immigrant-rights organization.

California is such a pro-abortion state that:

1. It allows non-doctor nurse practitioners to terminate fetal life.

2. Its voters have twice refused to vote in a “parent notification” law, requiring that parents of underage girls be told–not approve, just notified–that their daughter had an abortion.

And now:

3. Crisis pregnancy centers–that help women choose to give birth by providing counseling and material support–will be required to post notices of where abortions can be obtained with phone numbers, as well as that they might be obtained for free.

A federal judge earlier ruled that such forced speech is peachy keen because the communication is simply “factual.” Now, a Court of Appeals is allowing the law to go into effect. From the San Francisco Chronicle story:

No doubt you, too, spent the holidays relishing the humiliation of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, the overrated and obnoxious Democratic party hack who, finally, is teetering on the brink of political oblivion. How the former ballet dancer and Sarah Lawrence alumnus parlayed ambition and drive and the ability to scream like a lunatic into high office and a fortune of more than $10 million is one of the remarkable political stories of our time. “Emanuel has succeeded in almost every professional endeavor he has undertaken,” Ryan Lizza wrote approvingly in 2009. Spoke too soon.

How bad is Rahm Emanuel? He makes Bill de Blasio look good. He was forced into an unprecedented runoff before winning a second term last spring. In early December his approval rating was 18 percent. Protesters, including Democratic powerbroker Al Sharpton, want him to resign for the city’s withholding of video in the case of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager killed by a police officer in 2014. Gang violence is pervasive. Municipal finances are a wreck.

Normally one might be inclined to sympathize, however faintly, with a city manager out of his depth and at the mercy of events. Not in this case. And I suspect my reluctance to commiserate is widely shared among the very large class of people in Chicago, in D.C., in Los Angeles, and in New York who have been at the receiving end of one of Emanuel’s tantrums, or had to put up with his B.S., or pretended to excuse his loutishness and misplaced self-confidence as a funny, even endearing, quirk of personality. Emanuel has been wise to limit his screaming of obscenities to “private” interactions with colleagues or employees, so that this revolting side of him is discussed typically in profiles, giving the reader the feeling of being an “insider” who understands what it means to say, “That’s just Rahm being Rahm.”

Marty Makary’s “One Pharm Fix: Limit the ‘Orphan Drug’ Incentives” (op-ed, Dec. 21) addresses shortcomings of the Orphan Drug Act that lead to increased costs to consumers and insurers. While better controls of financial oversight of orphan drugs might lead to lower medical costs and reduce patient expectations for some of the unsupported off-label claims, I would argue that the Orphan Drug Act does not provide enough incentive for the development of drugs to treat low- and mid-grade cancers such as primary brain gliomas and medulloblastoma tumors that I have treated for 43 years.

The drugs needed may take many preclinical years to develop and 12 years to do the clinical trial required by the FDA. In addition, one drug is likely to be insufficient for tumor control and two to three drugs targeted to specific pathways may be needed. Complicating this is the likelihood that one drug may provide limited antitumor efficacy and two to three drugs together may be needed to control tumor growth and future transformation to a more malignant glioblastoma. In this case, Orphan Drug 7-year exclusivity is an inadequate incentive as the drugs may easily take 15-17 years to develop and test and hundreds of millions of dollars in cost, leaving insufficient time to recover costs associated with this risky undertaking to develop chemotherapy for these rare tumors. This argument is also true for many other low- and mid-grade solid cancers.

California has a powerful economy, with 14 million private-sector jobs. It also has burdens: welfare recipients (12.6 million), generously paid government employees (2.1 million) and people collecting government pensions (1.3 million).

Add up the numbers. There are 114 clients drawing from the government for every 100 people chipping in by working outside the government and paying taxes. We’re calling this the Feedme Ratio. Six states have a number over 100.

These states are at risk of going into a downward spiral in the next recession. The burdens will remain but too many of the providers—employers in the private sector—might shrink or decamp. Why add jobs in a state that asks each productive worker to carry not just his or her own weight but also the weight of one other person?

New York is on the list of at-risk states, with a Feedme Ratio of 108. New Mexico is in the worst shape, with 143 government clients for every 100 private-sector workers.

The three other states with Feedme Ratios over 100: West Virginia at 116, Mississippi at 111 and Arkansas at 103. You can check your state on this map.

Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with overwhelming popular goodwill and solid majorities in both houses of Congress. He chose not to translate that political heft into passing “comprehensive immigration reform” (i.e., open borders and amnesties) or more gun control.

He opposed gay marriage. He warned that he could not use presidential fiats to grant amnesty, close down Guantanamo, or remake the EPA in his own image. He borrowed as never before, in vain hopes of kick-starting a natural recovery that he would soon abort through his own anti-business jawboning, more regulations, growth in government, and tax increases.

So far Obama’s legacy is a sudden crash in energy prices and an unforeseen huge expansion in U.S. oil and gas production that came despite — not because of — his efforts.

Indeed, Obama scarcely succeeded in ramming through Obamacare — and only through untruths that it would lower costs and premiums, expand coverage, and ensure continuance of existing plans and patient doctors — and then wisely quit trying to strong-arm other legislation that could have cost him the 2012 election.

A Christmas Day fire at a storefront mosque in Houston that Muslim organizations were quick to blame on “anti-Muslim sentiment” was actually set by a regular attendee of the mosque, Gary Nathaniel Moore. He was arrested by authorities yesterday.

Amazingly, I reported here at PJ Media last year that the 2014 Christmas Day mosque arson attack in Fresno, CA, also turned out to have been committed by a long-time attendee.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

A Houston man has been arrested in connection with a suspected arson at a mosque on Christmas Day.

A spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed that the man was arrested early Wednesday, sometime after midnight, and appeared in court 7 a.m. Wednesday.

The suspect, Gary Nathaniel Moore, 37, of Houston, appeared in court at 7 a.m., spokeswoman Nicole Strong said.

According to a charging instrument released by the Harris County District Clerk, Moore told investigators at the scene that he has attended the mosque for five years, coming five times per day to pray seven days per week.

“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the news was “sobering” as New York and the nation deal with the “new normal” of terrorism.Via Rusty Weiss of the Mental Recession, Cuomo took the left’s “never let a crisis go to waste” mentality to new, absurd heights when he linked the “new normal” of terrorism to global warming.“We talk about the ‘new normal’ with climate and extreme weather … there’s also a ‘new normal’ when it comes to terrorism,” he said.“Just the way we’ve adjusted to weather … this is part of the new world order,” the governor added. “We’re up to it, but it’s going to take every citizen to do their part also.”

A 25-year-old ex-con from Rochester, New York, was arrested Wednesday on charges he was planning to attack a bar on New Year’s Eve to prove to ISIS he was worthy to join the terror organization in Syria.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that Emanuel Lutchman, a Muslim convert, has been charged “with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State in what authorities described as a plot to attack civilians.”

Prosecutors say Lutchman was snared in an FBI sting. He faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

Creeping sharia no longer creeps.
There is a bill before Congress (HR569) that singles out hate speech against Muslims. And then some. As of this writing, the resolution, which is nothing short of sharia law, has 82 co-sponsors. All of them are Democrats. And while the bill has little to no chance of passing, it is a window into our future if we don’t change the self-destructive course we are on with respect to how we understand and relate to the Quran and those who follow its teachings.

The Gates of Vienna reports on this chilling reality – one we may have called creeping sharia in the not so distant past but is advancing at such a rapid pace and across such a broad spectrum of our society that “creeping” is now an outmoded term. It’s racing, and it’s infecting every nook and cranny of our culture.

HR569 is just one of the latest stabs aimed at the heart of America. It is Islamic supremacy and dhimmitude in action, as it elevates Muslims to a protected class, superior in position to all others.

Here is what the resolution says:

Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.