RUTHFULLY YOURS

Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, said “there is a danger” in allowing Syrian refugees to resettle in the United States at this time and cautioned the Obama administration to be “prudent” with the process.

“With regard to the refugees, sure, there’s no requirement to be stupid, along with being generous, so my short summary would be simply I would advise the chief executive to speak like and act like Mother Teresa and then before the meeting broke up to grab whoever is filling my chair now, pull them aside, poke his finger into his sternum and say, ‘now you make sure nothing bad happens.’ We can do both. We are talented. We’ve got talent at this,” Hayden said during a homeland security discussion held by the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Look, there is a danger. We should be prudent about it, but just simply saying ‘it ain’t going to happen’ is actually destructive of our security, not just destructive of our character,” he added.

Hayden served as NSA director from 1999-2005 and as CIA director from May 2006 to February 2009.

Former Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Robert Bonner said the U.S. visa waiver program poses more of a threat than the refugee process.

We live in an expanding culture of victimhood fueled by identity politics. Americans are supposedly saved from themselves by a new hipster generation of Silicon Valley zillionaires, socially aware techies, progressive government bureaucrats, crusading liberal journalists, and cranky, mostly irrelevant academics. So why do they not address the need for politically correct self-policing? Here are five examples of how postmodern do-gooders could help the nation in 2016.

iPhone-induced Mayhem

The left believes a corporation or business is ultimately financially responsible for the unanticipated consequences of using its product. Smoke too many cigarettes and the tobacco companies are sued for knowingly having tar and nicotine in their products. We go after fast food and super-sized drinks for inundating unaware Americans with trans fats and processed sugar. Design flaws earn auto companies billions of dollars in recalls and fines.

But why do we ignore smart-phone companies? Studies supposedly reveal that texting or net surfing while driving is a greater impairment than is driving while under the influence. How many of us have seen 20-ton semi-trucks weave down mountain passes, as a 20-something driver is glued to the opiate-like device on his lap? Doesn’t Apple know how its product is being misused and causing death and mayhem—or has it commissioned some secret study showing that its devices are as addictive as painkillers and therefore essential for expanding sales?

Shouldn’t a benevolent government agency in 2016—in the fashion that it regulates less-lethal handguns—go after iPhones to block their use while the user is in motion? Cannot Obama’s consumer protection bureaucrats put an “automatic motion shut-off app” on every smart phone? In one day last week, a vagrant with shopping cart walked into my bumper at a crosswalk while texting, a young woman slammed on her brakes in front of me during a bottleneck while texting, and a driver went off the road into the gravel. Again, all were texting. How about a microchip to turn these gadgets off once they are in motion? Wouldn’t that remedy be as humane and socially aware as trigger locks on new handguns? Could we register lethal iPhones?

For thousands of years, man has sought to ward off the dark by using light to illuminate the night. Now, EPA chief Gina McCarthy and celebrity astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson want to take us back a few thousand years by giving the agency the ability to deal with “light pollution.”

The only way to deal with light pollution is to, well, turn off the lights. This will be a boon to astronomers like Tyson who will be able to see the stars and planets a lot better. But for the rest of us, not so good. Crime will rise, accidents will increase, and more people will die just so that Tyson can study the heavens.

Washington Examiner:

“So is there a day, is there some occasion, where I can add light pollution to your portfolio,” he asked McCarthy during a segment released for Sunday’s episode of “Star Talk,” a weekly late-night talk show he hosts on National Geographic.

“Well, this is another thing that’s been called to our attention for satellites,” McCarthy answered. “The imagery of the United States at night shows all those flares from oil and gas in places that are in the middle of nowhere. It is startling to me, to see the change in the night sky.”

“Go in the big world and see how vast it is, and get a sense of yourself in it,” she added. “It changes your perspective forever. And you’re absolutely right. That’s one of the reasons why we have to be worried about light pollution. It’s in our portfolio, and we’re thinking about it and there are steps we can take, but it needs to be on everybody’s mind because the way in which we disconnect ourselves from the natural world means that my job gets harder and harder.”

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.