RUTHFULLY YOURS

There are currently 80 veterans serving in Congress. It is appalling that the VA continues with chicanery and there has been no serious challenge from the US Representatives. Go to the site http://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_oversight_report_-_us_department_of_veterans_affairs/ to see how this rogue bureaucracy spends its money and abandons the needs of veterans….rsk

During his Senate confirmation hearing in July 2014 to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, Robert McDonald pledged to “transform” the vast agency. After horrific reports of wait-time manipulation, coverups and even deaths at VA medical facilities across the country, veterans and the American people were calling for honest leadership to restore their trust in the department created to serve them.

Transformation wouldn’t be easy, Mr. McDonald said, but it was “essential.” And “those employees that have violated the trust of the nation and of veterans must be, and will be, held accountable.”

Sixteen months have passed but the VA’s culture of indifference persists, and the climate of accountability Mr. McDonald promised is nowhere in sight.

“Veterans still facing major medical delays at VA hospitals,” read an Oct. 20 CNN article; “VA execs demoted, but get to keep their jobs and fraud money,” reported a Nov. 23 Daily Caller piece. “VA’s own internal probe finds impunity of agency leaders at scandal-ridden hospital,” said a Dec. 16 Washington Post report.

It’s official: The Environmental Protection Agency has violated federal law by engaging in “covert propaganda” and “grassroots lobbying.” That is the finding of a Dec. 14 report by the Government Accountability Office—though EPA bureaucrats are unrepentant.

The investigation began in June, after Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) requested that the GAO review the EPA’s online activities, including its aggressive promotion of the new “waters of the United States” regulatory rule.

Investigators concluded that the EPA illegally used Thunderclap, a social media site, “to correct what it viewed as misinformation.” Government use of social media is not unlawful in itself. But the agency crossed the line by asking supporters to share an EPA-written message on Facebook or Twitter without attributing it to the government. This failure to attribute caused the violation for “covert propaganda.” Simply put, citizens deserve to know when messages presented to them were created by their government.

The violation for “grassroots lobbying” stemmed from an EPA blog post that linked to websites encouraging readers to, for example, “urge your senators to defend Clean Water Act safeguards for critical streams and wetlands.” Federal law prohibits administrative agencies from lobbying the public to support or oppose pending legislation. As the GAO report notes, at least a dozen bills in Congress sought to prevent the EPA’s new waters rule from being implemented.

If you knew nothing about Barack Obama’s presidency and how he has conducted it, you could be forgiven for thinking this was a reasonable, albeit liberal, and even uplifting State of the Union Address. But after seven years of unrelenting presidential condescension, insults and cynicism, it’s very difficult to take his sermons against cynicism and incivility seriously. Cut through the rhetoric and the message was the same as ever: If you agree with me, you’re reasonable. It was all so tediously familiar and grating I couldn’t wait for it to end (much like Obama’s presidency).

I lost track of the straw-men and false-choices. I particularly enjoyed his “big question” of how to keep America secure “without either isolating ourselves or trying to nation-build everywhere there’s a problem.” Ah, yes, those are the only choices other than Barack Obama’s enlightened third way — a third way so enlightened he actually touted Syria policy as a success. I’m sure the quarter million dead Syrians and the Europeans awash in refugees agree that the Obama Way is so much more enlightened.

Probably the most interesting thing about the speech tonight was how it differed from his prepared remarks and what those differences said. Several times I heard him say things that sounded politically ill-advised and so I checked the prepared remarks thinking that maybe I misheard. But I didn’t.

Well, it’s that time of year again – the State of the Union! Here are my traditional thoughts on the occasion – after which we’ll deal with the peculiar circumstances of tonight’s festivities:

Strange how the monarchical urge persists even in a republic two-and-a-third centuries old. Many commentators have pointed out that the modern State of the Union is in fairly obvious mimicry of the Speech from the Throne that precedes a new legislative session in British Commonwealth countries and continental monarchies, but this is to miss the key difference. When the Queen or her viceroy reads a Throne Speech in Westminster, Ottawa, or Canberra, it’s usually the work of a government with a Parliamentary majority: In other words, the stuff she’s announcing is actually going to happen. That’s why, lest any enthusiasm for this or that legislative proposal be detected, the apolitical monarch overcompensates by reading everything in as flat and unexpressive a monotone as possible. Underneath the ancient rituals — the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod getting the door of the House of Commons slammed in his face three times — it’s actually a very workmanlike affair.

The State of the Union is the opposite. The president gives a performance, extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: “Let’s start right away. We can get this done. . . . We can fix this. . . . Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done.” And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days’ shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it’s some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one.

I do not often watch Barack Obama’s speeches. No one at my daughter’s school is allowed to bring a peanut butter sandwich for lunch because some of the students have an aggravated allergy to nuts. So do I, just not to peanuts. So when my son asked if we could watch Obama’s recent, tearful speech about “gun violence in America,” it was with some reluctance, in addition to an assist from Mr. J. Daniels, over ice, that I agreed. But I am glad I did. It was a remarkable performance and it reminded me why Obama was elected in the first place. I find his rote face-this-way, then turn-and-face-that-way technique irritating, but boy is he good with a teleprompter (and, no, “boy” is not a racial slur). Obama is an attractive guy. He looks serious. He seems earnest, yes, but above all pragmatic. [Swivel.] He speaks slowly and in short sentences. [Swivel.] He is articulate. He is concerned. The atmosphere he creates, folks [Swivel], is one of simple reason battling dark forces. We’re against violence. We proposed reasonable solutions. Republicans in Congress made progress impossible.

Students of Quintilian should watch Obama. As a rhetor, he really is good. He even, as Mark Steyn noted admiringly, got off a little joke with perfect timing: The twin brother of Mark Gifford, the husband of Obama’s “dear friend and colleague” Gabby Gifford, is an astronaut and was in space when Mark came to see Obama. Obama asked Mark how often he spoke to his brother.

And he says, well, I usually talk to him every day, but the call was coming in right before the meeting so I think I may have not answered his call — (laughter) — which made me feel kind of bad. (Laughter.) That’s a long-distance call. (Laughter.)

The case against the IRS for targeting conservatives isn’t over after all. On Tuesday a federal judge in Ohio certified a class-action lawsuit against the IRS by conservative groups whose applications for tax-exempt status were slow-rolled between 2010 and 2013.

The lawsuit by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots was filed in May 2013, shortly after the targeting came to light. It will represent more than 200 groups. In July 2014 Judge Susan Dlott dismissed parts of the lawsuit but allowed key portions to go forward. Those include claims that the IRS engaged in retaliation and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and that the tax agency violated Section 6103 of the U.S. Code, which protects confidential taxpayer return information.

A class action isn’t our favorite legal method, but it fits this case because it appears the IRS targeted groups based on common criteria and treated them similarly—putting them through unprecedented scrutiny and delay. Judge Dlott, a Bill Clinton appointee, has become frustrated by IRS and Justice Department stonewalling.

As he begins his final year in office, President Obama’s legacy project is already in high gear. This includes Tuesday night’s State of the Union, which is best understood as the start of a campaign to persuade Americans that the last seven years have been better than they believe. He needs to start early because this reality makeover won’t be easy.

Start with the economy, which Mr. Obama’s Boswells are attempting to reframe as a “boom.” Mr. Obama certainly inherited a deep recession, but recessions always end and deep ones usually rebound faster and higher. The test of economic policy is the pace and quality of the recovery, and this one has been the slowest since World War II.

The jobless rate has fallen to 5%, but in May 2007 under George W. Bush it was 4.4%. Today’s rate has been able to fall as low as it has in part because so many working-age Americans have left the workforce; the labor participation rate of 62.6% hasn’t been this low since 1977. Real incomes for most households have only recently begun to rise above what they were at the end of the recession in June 2009.

As part of a recently announced legal settlement with representatives of the Muslim community, the NYPD has agreed to purge materials critical to understanding the threat to New York City from domestic Islamic terrorism. The plaintiffs in Raza v. City of New York and Handschu v. Special Services Division charged that the NYPD had targeted Muslims for surveillance solely because of their religious affiliation. Among other things, the settlement stipulates that the NYPD must remove from its website a comprehensive 2007 report authored by senior analysts Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt.

Radicalization in the West identified homegrown Islamic terrorism as the primary extremist threat to New York City. As then-police commissioner Ray Kelly noted in a preface, the report’s aim was to assist policymakers and law enforcement officials around the country by providing a thorough understanding of the danger posed by domestic terrorists. It also sought to help intelligence and law enforcement agencies better understand the radicalization process. Based on a rigorous analysis of almost a dozen jihadist plots across the U.S. and Europe, the report identified the enemy’s ideology on its own terms. The report didn’t say that jihadism had nothing to do with Islam; nor did it suggest that Islam was a “religion of peace.” Its sole concern was assessing the jihadist threat, not undertaking an Islamic exegesis.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his police commissioner have agreed to settle a federal lawsuit that the Muslim Students Association (MSA)—along with a few other plaintiffs—filed against the New York Police Department in 2012. In its complaint, the MSA charged that the civil rights of Muslims were being violated by the NYPD’s use of informants and plainclothes detectives to monitor various Islamic institutions—particularly MSA chapters—in the New York/New Jersey area. The de Blasio settlement explicitly bans police from basing any future law-enforcement investigations on race, ethnicity, or, as in the case of the MSA, religion.

Is this good public policy? Was there any legitimate reason for the police to conduct surveillance on the MSA? To answer these questions, let’s recall exactly what the MSA is, and what its foremost objectives are.

Currently the most influential Islamic student organization in North America, the MSA was founded in 1963 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological forebear of Hamas and al Qaeda. The MSA’s purpose, for more than half a century, has been to spread fundamentalist Islamist ideology across the globe. The group’s enduring ties to the Brotherhood are demonstrated by the fact that the MSA’s organizational “Pledge of Allegiance”—which vows unwavering loyalty to Allah, the Koran, jihad, and martyrdom—is essentially an adaptation of the famous Brotherhood credo: “God is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle [jihad] is our way, and death for the sake of God [martyrdom] is the highest of our aspirations.”

The MSA’s activities are guided at all times by a desire to advance Islam’s influence in the United States, one campus at a time. Toward that end, the Association once published A Guide on How to Run a Successful MSA, which states: “It should be the long-term goal of every MSA to Islamicize the politics of their respective university.” This same objective, explains a former MSA member from UCLA, should serve as a model for the organization’s pursuit of its larger “end goal,” which is “the establishment of [an] Islamic form of government” across the entire globe.

When President Barack Obama takes the stage tonight for his State of the Union address to the American people, he will be doing so with at least two individuals associated with terrorism seated in front of him. The individuals, Nezar Hamze and Sameena Usman, are leaders of CAIR and have involvement with Islamic Relief, two groups that have been named terrorist organizations by the government of United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Nezar Hamze is the CEO and Regional Operations Director of the Florida statewide chapter of CAIR. Hamze is attending the State of the Union (SOTU) at the behest of United States Congressman Alcee Hastings, Democrat from Florida. Sameena Usman is the Government Relations Coordinator of the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) chapter of CAIR. Usman is attending SOTU at the behest of Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, Democrat from California.

CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations was created in June 1994 as a part of a terrorist umbrella organization led by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named a co-conspirator by the US Justice Department for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. In November 2014, along with ISIS and al-Qaeda, the UAE government named CAIR to its list of terrorist organizations.

CAIR-Florida reflects the same extremism as its parent organization. In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!” In August 2014, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God…”