RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Nam homo proponit, sed Deus disponit,” wrote the medieval cleric Thomas a Kempis. “For man proposes, but God disposes.”

The observation that human intent, however well conceived and deftly pursued, is commonly frustrated, does not require the invoking of God. One can, for example, comprehend the frustrating agent as fate, fortune or simply the exigencies of worldly existence.

But the founders of our republic considered the particular circumstance of people’s aspirations and intent being frustrated by the heavy hand of government, and in addressing this phenomenon they clearly attached importance to invoking God.

In the Declaration of Independence, they assert, of course, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” They further assert that the proper role of government, indeed the raison d’etre of government, is to secure these God-given rights.

Seventy years ago, on Oct. 27, 1945, New York City was the site of the most spectacular homefront display of American military might the nation had ever seen. Navy Day was in effect a monumental victory lap, coming seven weeks after the signing of the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri.

Now the “Big Mo” and other stars and supporting players from the Pacific Fleet had come home. Along a six-mile stretch of the Hudson River, 47 warships gathered—battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and submarine chasers.

President Truman was there. So was I. About 3.5 million people crowded along Manhattan’s West Side, with another 1.5 million viewing from New Jersey, according to press reports. Joining the USS Missouri, with its 16-inch turret guns bristling from its 56,000-ton frame, were the USS New York (an older battle wagon) and the USS Enterprise, the only aircraft carrier that had been active from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day.

At midafternoon, President Truman boarded a destroyer for a two-hour review of the assembled firepower. Twenty-one-gun salutes boomed from many of the vessels. Overhead, 1,200 Hellcat and Corsair fighters, Avenger torpedo planes and Helldiver bombers circled in 12-mile ovals. For half-hour spells on two successive nights the ships turned on their 24-inch and 36-inch searchlights, sending brilliant blue-white beams, with millions in candle power, flashing across the sky and illuminating the city’s skyscrapers. No fireworks display could compare.

Everywhere you look, someone is accusing governments of abusing the rights of people crossing their borders. The United Nations just accused the Czech Republic of human-rights abuses for holding migrants in “degrading” conditions.

Last month, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report in which it demanded that illegal-immigrant families be released from detention centers. Conditions in the centers, the commission suggested, were worse than the abuse and persecution they had fled in their home countries. It demanded that Congress stop funding detention centers.

If we know anything about the human-rights community, it’s that it often combines lofty idealism with dubious anecdotes and shifty statistics that undermine its genuine concerns. Take the U.S. commission’s report: On close examination, it is a dubious farrago of abuse claims used to lobby for a preferred pro-immigrant and pro-union outcome.

The report was supposed to examine conditions at detention facilities for immigrants, but its members didn’t get around to visiting any facilities until the report was nearly finished. They apparently thought they didn’t need to; instead, they relied largely on rumor and innuendo. Indeed, in its initial proposal to study detention facilities — adopted by the commission long before it undertook any research — the commission had already concluded that “egregious human rights and constitutional violations” were occurring.

Paris just one month after All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day.

The climate treaty under negotiation is like a vampire from a bad old horror film. Every time you think it’s dead, it rises from the grave. This vampire is not sucking blood, but money and resources from taxpayers and needy people around the world. It’s time to put a stake through its heart and cut off the head of this climate-treaty monstrosity once and for all.

Congressional Republicans are working to do just that. Politico reports that Neil Chatterjee, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been making the rounds at foreign embassies alerting the countries’ diplomats that Republicans intend to fight President Barack Obama’s climate agenda until the end of his term and beyond.

Obama’s war on Inspectors General started with the firing and subsequent efforts to smear Gerald Walpin…please read:

The White House Fires a Watchdog The curious case of the inspector general and a Presidential ally.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124511811033017539?alg=y

In the sadistic era of fraudulent Hope and Change, inspectors general inside the federal government have been kicked, neutered, and starved of the authority and information they need to do their jobs.

It’s transparently clear: President Obama loathes and fears independent watchdogs.

Accountability is an empty talking point without whistleblower protection and investigative autonomy. That is why Capitol Hill must do everything in its power to stop the White House war on the public’s ombudsmen. Federal inspectors general across dozens of agencies are begging lawmakers to grant them access to public records, as guaranteed by the 1978 Inspector General Act.

The call for help comes as Obama-administration obstructionists and cover-up operatives impede and downplay several key investigations into government corruption and malfeasance.

Last year, 47 of the nation’s 73 federal IGs signed an open letter decrying the Obama administration’s stonewalling of their investigations. The White House, they reported, had placed “serious limitations on access to records that have recently impeded the work” of IGs at the Peace Corps, the EPA, and the Department of Justice, and jeopardized their “ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the responsibility for securing America’s borders against the illegal entry of people and contraband and for conducting inspections of people and cargo entering the United States has been the responsibility of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) a component agency of the DHS.

The Performance and Accountability Report / Fiscal Year 2014 reports that for FY 2014 CBP had 59,544 employees and was provided with a $13.9 billion annual budget for law enforcement and trade operations.

Yet I am compelled to ask, “Why bother spending all that money and expending that effort?”

Consider that President Obama and many politicians from both political parties have declared that we should provide unknown millions of illegal aliens, who evaded the vital inspections process at ports of entry, with lawful status in the United States. While the Democrats want to provide these individuals who have trespassed on the United States with a pathway to United States citizenship, most Republicans “only” want to provide them with lawful status and employment authorization.

Most illegal aliens do not enter the United States seeking United States citizenship. Most enter the United States seeking employment opportunities that ultimately displace American workers on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and, by their sheer huge numbers, suppress the wages for all such workers.

On Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing arguments in Van Hollen v. FEC. Though little-known, this case is a critical part of the left’s campaign to silence political debate after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that upheld campaign spending as protected speech. At stake again are no less than the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and free association.

The central figure is Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who argues that he has a right to participate “in elections untainted by expenditures from undisclosed sources.” He sued the Federal Election Commission in 2011, claiming that the agency infringed upon this right. In his lawsuit, he says that federal law requires nonprofits that fund “electioneering communications”—ads that advocate for a candidate’s election or defeat—to release a full list of supporters. Mr. Van Hollen asked the court to strike down an FEC regulation that prevents such disclosure.

Issued in 2007, the FEC rule requires nonprofits to disclose only donors who gave money for the specific purpose of funding electioneering communications. Those who funded, say, a new research program, didn’t need to be disclosed. The FEC intended to balance the public’s interest in political disclosure with the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. As such, there is disclosure for those who engaged in the electoral process, and privacy for those who didn’t.

Is anyone saving Darfur these days?

You might remember Darfur. Just a few years ago, it was all the rage. There were t-shirts, postcards, and tote bags. There was an Amnesty International compilation album with songs by U2, Jackson Browne, and the Black Eyed Peas. There were baby onesies. Celebrities were all about saving Darfur. In April 2006, thousands of people gathered on the National Mall to urge the Bush administration to intervene. Among the speakers was George Clooney, who a few months later addressed the U.N. Security Council on the subject. Speed-skater Joey Cheek donated his 2006 Olympic bonus money to the cause. In 2009, actress Mia Farrow carried out a twelve-day hunger strike in solidarity with starving victims.

Such passions were not misplaced. The death toll in Darfur since 2003 is somewhere north of 300,000, according to the United Nations. And that is on top of 2.2 million Sudanese wiped out by the government in the south of the country before the atrocities in Darfur began in earnest.

At the head of all of this has been Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, whose reign of terror my colleague Jay Nordlinger chronicled back in 2005: