RUTHFULLY YOURS

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…”

In the 21st century, doctrinaire liberalism is synonymous with hypocrisy.

Or maybe it is better seen as career insurance, providing exemption from all the many paradoxes of a leftist worldview.

The rich supporter of affirmative action still uses, without apology, the old-boy network to pull privileged strings to get his own son admitted to the proper college. Al Gore flies on a carbon-spewing private jet, saving the planet by getting to conferences more quickly and enjoyably. High-tax proponent John Kerry docks his yacht where he can avoid taxes; how else to ensure downtime for furthering social justice?

A spread-the-wealth Obama, who warns others about making too much money and profiting at all the wrong times, nonetheless chooses the tony haunts of the moneyed and privileged — the Hawaiian resort coast, Martha’s Vineyard, Rancho Mirage — in preference to the old Chicago hood or even Camp David.

It is hard to be a progressive in a sea of capitalist lucre, or an idealist when careerism pays so much better, or personally frugal when personal excess is contextualized and made guilt-free by an abstract selfless agenda.

So how does one balance the conflicting elements of the progressive worldview?

How can one sort out the policies of a radical environmentalist who wants to send life-giving California water out to sea — thereby hurting impoverished immigrant farm workers from Latin America?

ISIS is a threat, but the Muslim Brotherhood is an even greater threat, moving among us and transforming America bit-by-bit, cut-by-cut.

The threat of Islamic terror is constant. Violence may erupt anywhere. Unexpectedly. That’s the nature of terror. And it’s happening more and more, with less and less time between events. Most recently, as AT readers know, a Philadelphia police officer was shot by a Muslim barbarian who pledged his allegiance to ISIS. And now it appears he may be linked to a terror cell. Reuters reports:

Philadelphia police said on Sunday they were seriously pursuing a tip that the man suspected of shooting and wounding a police officer had ties to a group with “radical beliefs.” (snip)

The Philadelphia Inquirer and television station NBC10 in Philadelphia quoted police sources on Sunday as saying that according to the tip-off Archer was associated with three other men and was not the most extreme of the group. The sources said police were warned the threat to them was not over, the two media outlets said. (snip)

People who knew the gunman told Reuters he was a devout, quiet Muslim who became more “combative” after trips to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

As Barack Obama puts the finishing touches on his final State of the Union address, a White House teaser reveals one of his planned props for the evening: “We leave one seat empty in the First Lady’s State of the Union Guest Box for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.”

Blame Woodrow Wilson.

Until Wilson, presidents stretching back to Jefferson had been content to fulfill their constitutional requirement to inform Congress about the state of the union in writing. In 1913, alas, Wilson elected to deliver his assessment in person. Speechwriters of both parties (I served my time in the George W. Bush years) have been embellishing ever since.

The spectacle is made for President Obama. After all, this is the man who strode out on a stage of foam Greek columns when he accepted his party’s nomination for the presidency. How appropriate that in his last State of the Union he now opts for the empty chair routine used to such derision by Clint Eastwood at the last Republican National Convention.

Then again, for Mr. Obama the maneuver has always been the message. From his 2008 campaign appearance before the Berlin Wall (where he declared himself “a fellow citizen of the world”) to his decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize before he had in fact done anything, the stage has always upstaged the substance. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s penchant for the beau geste carries a high price for Americans, not to mention other, less fortunate citizens of the world.

Start with foreign policy. Though Candidate Obama inveighed mightily against the U.S. intervention in Iraq, he also campaigned on the idea that Iraq had distracted us from winning “the necessary war” in Afghanistan. When he announced to the American people his own surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, the cadets at West Point were drafted to serve as the dramatic backdrop.