RUTHFULLY YOURS

At 6:30 a.m. on April 24, 2012, federal agents, wearing Kevlar vests and with guns drawn, raided my home in Katy, Texas, with a warrant for my arrest. This was as shocking to me as it would be for any normal, law-abiding citizen.

I’m not a drug dealer, violent criminal or money launderer. I’m an engineer. In 2010 I helped stop the BP oil spill after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig left a damaged well spilling crude directly into the Gulf of Mexico.

On the morning of the raid I left early for work, so I was not at home when it occurred. My wife was alone and had to deal with the shock of a squad of FBI agents ripping through our home. We’ve seen it a hundred times on “Law and Order.” They raced through our house and badgered and interrogated my wife.

Later that morning, after a frantic call from my wife, I drove to a local police station to surrender. As bad as that day was, I had no idea what was about to happen. I didn’t realize I had become a central focus of the Justice Department’s investigation into the BP oil spill. For the next three and a half years, a Justice task force was dedicated to putting me in jail.

What had I done to merit this? I had worked as hard as I knew how for nearly 90 straight days to help stop the Deepwater Horizon spill. Plugging the well, as fast as possible, was the focus of my life.

Looking back now at the Justice Department’s conduct, I realize that I made one egregious error: I naïvely believed that the task force simply wanted the truth. I was certain that once it had the full record of my actions, everything would be fine, and the trauma my family and I had gone through would end.

The debate on cops and blacks deserves facts instead of myths.

If the Black Lives Matter crowd is correct, bloodthirsty, racist cops are blasting black men like clay pigeons at a shooting range. The pace of this alleged slaughter is breathtaking.

The Nation of Islam’s Nuri Muhammad on October 10 told the 20th-anniversary gathering of the Million Man March: “Every other day, we see a young black man being murdered by the Blue Klux Klan.”

​That adds up to 182 such homicides per year.

“When we’re hearing reports that every 28 hours, a black person is murdered by police, it feels like we’re in a war,” Black Lives Matter activist Cherno Biko told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly on a September 4 special on this topic. “It feels like we’re under occupation.”

If that’s true, killer cops are rubbing out some 313 innocent, law-abiding blacks annually.

Rise Up October organized protests in New York City last month. The group complained about “the rampant epidemic of police murder . . . happening all over this country” and asserts that there are “over 1,000 people a year killed by police.”

Charles Murray spoke at a NYC luncheon last week articulating the same logical and effective response to the tyranny of some government agencies….. Read his marvelous book.
By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without PermissionMay 12, 2015
by Charles Murray

The following remarks were delivered at The New Criterion’s gala on April 29, 2015 honoring Charles Murray with the third Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society.

“I am a little wary about receiving an award named for Edmund Burke two weeks before the publication of a book in which I advocate massive, systematic civil disobedience. I am not at all sure that Mr. Burke would approve. So let me try to placate Mr. Burke’s shade by talking for a few minutes about the roots of the book called By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.

http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/america_flag_washington_monument_exceptionalism_2020_500x293.jpg
Twenty20 License

The operational plan I propose in the book is reasonably straightforward. The reasons that I think we are driven to that plan speak to some complex realities facing the United States in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

First, the operational plan: to make large portions of the Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable. I want to make government into an insurable hazard, like flood, fire, or locusts. The way I want to do it is through massive civil disobedience underwritten by privately funded defense funds. Perhaps the best way to illustrate it is by telling you how I was inspired to write the book in the first place.

My wife knows a man in a town near us that I will call Bob. Bob operates one of the many kinds of businesses that use Latino workers. What makes Bob different from almost every other such employer in his line of work is that all of his workers are documented. He spends about $20,000 to $30,000 a year for the excruciatingly complicated visa process. He pays good wages, pays for his workers’ airfares, and is in other ways a model employer and member of his community.

My wife started to tell me stories about how Bob has come under relentless harassment by the government. Why pick on him, when his part of the country is full of employers who have 100 percent undocumented Latino workers? Because, by doing the right thing and documenting his workers, he opened himself up to easy inspection by government enforcers of regulations. He made himself a soft target.

The story that tipped me over the edge involved a stupid regulation that Bob could not comply with. He didn’t have enough American-born employees — and there’s no way he could get Americans to work for him. Bob became so frustrated that he told the bureaucrat that he would fight it in court — at which point the bureaucrat said to him, “You do that, and we’ll put you out of business.” And Bob knew that is exactly what would happen.

Out of my anger came a vision of a mystery man with a pinstriped suit and briefcase who appears from nowhere, taps the bureaucrat on the shoulder, and says: “We are taking over this man’s case. We will litigate it as long as it takes. We will publicize that litigation in ways that will embarrass you and your superiors. None of this will cost our client a penny, and we will reimburse him for any fine you are able to impose. And if you come back and bother him again, we will go through the whole process again.”

And that led to the idea of what I am calling the Madison Fund: a large foundation that funds legal services that will champion individual citizens against Goliath. Its longer-range point is to make clear to other Americans that they don’t have to take it any more. There are ways to force an intrusive government to back off. Specifically, the Madison Fund would have three goals:

To defend people who are innocent of the regulatory charges against them.
To defend people who are technically guilty of violating regulations that should not exist, drawing out that litigation as long as possible, making enforcement of the regulations more expensive to the regulatory agency than they’re worth, and reimbursing fines that are levied.
To generate as much publicity as possible, both to raise the public’s awareness of the government’s harassment of people like them and to bring the pressure of public opinion to bear on elected politicians and staffs of regulatory agencies.
The Madison fund is step one. But there’s no reason why individual professions can’t establish their own defense funds. Let’s take advantage of professional expertise and pride of vocation to drive standards of best practice. For example, the American Dental Association could form Dental Shield, with dentists across America paying a small annual fee. The bargain: dentists who are running practices that meet ADA’S professional standards will be defended when accused of violating a regulation that the ADA has deemed to be pointless, stupid, or tyrannical. The same kind of defense fund could be started by truckers, crafts unions, accountants, physicians, farmers, or almost any other occupation.

Barack Obama remains a fortunate president, insofar as the press is still invested in his success. Or, at least, in muting outrage over his failures. Any other American president who, while prosecuting an unpopular war, saw a series of critical national security advisors resign would probably generate some rather unfavorable coverage.

On September 22, Barack Obama’s hand-selected advisor coordinating global efforts to combat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, retired General John Allen, announced his intention to resign the post. Within a week, Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, also handed in her resignation. Given the ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East into which the West is increasingly committing resources, these resignations are alarming.

In general, the flight of Obama’s war advisors from his administration went unnoticed by all but the keenest of observers. Both Allen and Farkas have determined, however, to make it difficult for the public to ignore their warnings. As both these advisors head for the exits, they and others are seeking exculpation for the increasing tensions and accelerating failures in their respective theaters of operations. What’s more, they are shifting blame toward the White House.

But authorities insist that neither terrorism nor religion were motives.

UC Merced stabber Faisal Mohammad carried a handwritten manifesto that included the names of his targets, a vow “to cut someone’s head off” and as many as five reminders to “praise Allah,” but law enforcement authorities insist that neither terrorism nor religion were motives in the attack.

According to Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke, Mohammad indicated in his manifesto that he was upset because he had been kicked out of a study group.

“There was nothing to indicate he was doing this because of Allah, or because he was going to be rewarded with 72 virgins, or because of ties to a terror group,” Warnke told FoxNews.com. “He appeared to be a devout Muslim, on the strong side of the belief.”

Intrepid Centers are making remarkable progress against the ‘signature wounds’ of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

When Arnold Fisher mustered out of the U.S. Army in 1954 after a stint in Korea, he left as a corporal. But he didn’t leave the service.

Through his day job at the family real-estate business, Mr. Fisher long ago made his mark on the New York City skyline by building several high-profile office towers. Now he is in his eighth decade, and this Veterans Day will find the Fisher Brothers’ senior partner aiming much higher than skyscrapers. Today his obsession is the human brain—specifically, how Americans can help our warriors who return from the battlefield with injuries few understand.

“You take a guy who’s missing half an arm or in a wheelchair and everyone can see what he needs,” says Mr. Fisher, sitting in a midtown Manhattan office whose knickknacks include a personal letter from George W. Bush and a knighthood signed by Queen Elizabeth. “But when a guy comes back and looks normal but doesn’t act normal, we don’t know what to do. And we’ve got hundreds of thousands of these people.”

“Maybe Keystone can be revived in the next Administration, assuming a Republican wins the Presidency and the TransCanada company hasn’t written off America as too politically risky. For now, workers and the economy will have to suffer for Mr. Obama’s green illusions.”

President Obama personally killed the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, dismissing the project as a mere “symbol” that “has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse.” The irony is that the pipeline’s benefits would be tangible, while the symbolism and overinflation are entirely political.

A President more invested in the real economy would have long ago welcomed Keystone’s contribution to North American energy development. But on Friday Mr. Obama emerged, seven years into both his Presidency and multiple State Department reviews of the pipeline, to declare that Keystone is not in the national interest of the United States.

This position is—to borrow his phrase—well outside the bipartisan political center. Mr. Obama would have been more honest if he’d admitted that he is bowing to the interests of the green-left fringe and the Democratic donors who oppose all forms of carbon energy.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline Friday ends a seven-year saga with a declaration that the project is not in the national interest and would undermine U.S. global leadership in fighting climate change.

The permit denial, which was cheered by environmentalists and lambasted by the energy industry, capped a politically charged review of the oil project that had escalated into a broader debate on climate change, energy and the economy. In the end, the administration’s decision likely will not have much impact on the industry’s operations, and the White House said the rejection was important to bolster the country’s credibility as the U.S. urges other countries to confront climate change.

President Barack Obama, who had signaled deep misgivings about the project as he pursued an expansive agenda aimed at combating climate change, said the pipeline ultimately took on an overinflated role in the country’s political discourse.