RUTHFULLY YOURS

Democrats have succeeded in persuading the Washington press corps that what happened when four Americans died at Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012 isn’t a story. But the House report released Monday about that night and its aftermath contains details that ought to concern Americans who care about political accountability.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in that attack that is dissected in 800-plus pages released by Republicans on a House Select Committee chaired by South Carolina’s Trey Gowdy. The report’s most disturbing facts concern the way the Obama Administration and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spun an alternative narrative that is contradicted by their private statements and the intelligence from the scene.

We learn from the report that the day after Mr. Stevens became the first American ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979, President Obama decided to skip his daily intelligence briefing.

We also learn that on the day of the attack, in a 5 p.m. meeting that included Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Mr. Obama said the U.S. should use all available resources. After that meeting, Mr. Panetta returned to the Pentagon to discuss what military resources were available. The Defense Secretary then issued an order to deploy military assets to Libya.

But nothing was sent to Benghazi, and nothing was even in route when the last two Americans were killed almost eight hours after the attacks began. The holdup seems to have been caused in part by something else we learn from this report: a 7:30 p.m. teleconference of Defense and State officials, including Mrs. Clinton.

Ostensibly they were sharing intelligence and coordinating responses. But they debated whether they needed Libya’s permission to deploy American troops to defend endangered Americans, whether Marines should wear uniforms or civilian clothes, and so on.

Even more telling: Though there was no evidence linking the Benghazi attacks to a YouTube video mocking Islam, of the 10 “action items” from the notes of that meeting, five referred to the video.

Mrs. Clinton referred to the video more than once in her public statements. At 10:08 p.m. on the night of the attack, she issued a public statement on Benghazi: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” She repeated the point the next day at the State Department. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Democratic Party used to embrace homosexuals. Now, its Florida leaders are inviting enemies of the gay community to speak at their functions, and only one week following one of the worst episodes of violence against gays in American history. That was the case earlier this month, when anti-gay imam Maulana Shafayat Mohamed was allowed to speak at the Leadership Blue Gala, the annual banquet of the Florida Democratic Party.

On June 19th, the Florida Democratic Party held its annual Leadership Blue Gala event. US Senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker, was the keynote speaker. However, one of the other speakers, Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, who partook in opening prayers, should have been the main concern.

Shafayat Mohamed is the imam of the Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The mosque has been a haven for terror-related individuals, many of whom have been imprisoned – or, in one case, killed in an overseas anti-insurgent raid – due to their jihadist activities.

“Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla was a student of Shafayat Mohamed’s at Darul Uloom. Now-deceased al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief, Adnan el-Shukrijumah, was a prayer leader at Darul Uloom. And Darul Uloom Arabic teacher Imran Mandhai, along with mosque goers Hakki Aksoy and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, hatched a plot at the mosque to blow up different South Florida structures, including area power stations, Jewish businesses, and a National Guard armory.

Shafayat Mohamed has his own sordid history. In February 2005, an article written by him was published on the Darul Uloom website, entitled ‘Tsunami: Wrath of God.’ In it, he claims that gay sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.”

It is statements such as these that have gotten Shafayat Mohamed thrown off of a number of Broward County boards. Yet, the imam is unrepentant.

Before summer is over, we may see things now scarcely imagined that will make Brexit seem anticlimactic.

Trump’s Attack Mode

I think the following is an accurate statement: No major public figure has ever before attacked the Clintons in the manner that Donald Trump did last week. The details and tone of his charges can be endlessly analyzed, but their central theme resonates: The Clinton couple, broke when they left the White House in 2001, leveraged Hillary Clinton’s planned political trajectories to amass a personal fortune of between $100 and $200 million — all in the form of quid pro quo investments by wealthy individuals and foreign governments in the likely continuance of Clinton political power. Government is not the jungle of Manhattan real estate, and should have demanded at least a veneer of honesty.

The scandals of the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton’s various get-rich and jet-set escapades, and much of Hillary Clinton’s paranoia over the audit of her e-mail communications all revolve around a Clinton circle that can never be squared even by liberal pieties: The wealthy do not make politicians fabulously rich — unless they assume that they will receive something of much greater value in return.

The Clintons are unique — like no other first couple in recent American history. Not the Carters, not the Reagans, not the two Bush couples, not any first family emeritus has so unapologetically charged banks, foreign governments, corporations, and universities so much money for overtly so little, but on the expectation of clandestinely offering so much.

The Clinton ethical miasma is emblemized by the Laureate International Universities scandal — the highbrow version of Trump University, but a public not a private debacle. Between 2010 and 2015 “Chancellor” Bill Clinton was paid $16.5 million by the for-profit Laureate — but for what services he was to become one of the highest-paid university officials in history is not clear. Mirabile dictu, an educational affiliate of Laureate saw its support from the State Department more than triple from a pre-Clinton $15.1 million.

True, Hillary Clinton, who deleted over 30,000 of her private-server e-mails, can demand hard proof of such payola, but she still cannot rationalize why her husband was paid so much for so little demonstrable work, while she, after stepping down as the nation’s top diplomatic official, followed his reprehensible cue in her retirement.

Trump will continue to expand these charges, no doubt in his characteristic nihilist, take-no-prisoners fashion. Hillary is already replying in like kind, rather than in exalted “Have you no shame?” stature. But the rounds of fire between the two candidates are not quite symmetrical. Trump is brash, crude, and a brawler. Hillary is a carefully scripted and choreographed establishmentarian. Recently, speech coaches seem to have had some success in sedating her screech-owl, nails-on-the-chalkboard rants. She has seemed calmer, quieter, more deliberate.

But in response to Trump’s charges, Hillary is starting to resort to her naturally unpleasant side, both in form and in content. She should learn from Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. When Trump unloaded on them in turn, each eventually stooped to reply in like kind — and seemed suddenly unpresidential. Trump, of course, never claimed to be or perhaps could be completely presidential. But his establishment targets became less presidential once he scraped often their veneers and they climbed down into his muck.

House Democrats made complete fools of themselves with their sit-in temper tantrum this week. Shouting their demands for an immediate vote on gun control legislation – apparently their only “serious” answer to global Islamic jihad – the Democratic disrupters caused pandemonium on the House floor on Wednesday. They sought to paralyze House proceedings with shouts of “No bill, No break!” Representative Maxine Waters of California proclaimed, “I’m prepared to stand here until hell freezes over.” Civil rights hero Representative John Lewis of Georgia declared, “we have to occupy the floor of the House until there’s action.”

The anarchist spirits of Occupy Wall Street and student campus occupations are alive and well in the House Democratic caucus. They shed their responsibilities by flagrantly violating the rules of the institution to which they were elected, intent on creating a media spectacle. They went so far as to use social media video tools to broadcast their sit-in, after the chamber’s official cameras had been turned off.

Even when the House Republican leadership called it a day and adjourned the House until after the 4th of July weekend, the Democrats pressed on with their occupation. Before that, as the real adult leader in the room, Speaker Paul Ryan had managed, despite the mayhem, to push through a major appropriations bill that included funding for combating the Zika virus. At least one of the House leaders was thinking of the welfare of the American people. It certainly was not the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who even refused to leave the House floor temporarily when politely asked to do so by an officer so that the daily security sweep could be conducted.

Any day now the Supreme Court will rule on President Obama’s go-it-alone executive action protecting millions of undocumented persons against deportation. However it comes down, the decision will again inflame this bitterly divided nation; it will also remind moody Republicans why they must absolutely vote for Donald Trump.

Heads-up to Republicans queasy about Trump: there is no question – none at all – that Hillary Clinton’s picks to fill the seat of deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and other judges who may shortly retire would embed and extend President Obama’s progressive agenda for decades to come. If voters don’t like Obama’s single-handed upending of our immigration laws, his push towards Big Labor, or if they disagree with his purposeful extermination of U.S. fossil fuels industries, Donald Trump is their only choice.

Related: Here’s Why the GOP Dug in Its Heels on SCOTUS Nominations

Justice Ruth Ginsberg is 83 years old, Anthony Kennedy is two months away from turning 80, Clarence Thomas is nearly 68 and Stephen Breyer is 77. All could retire in the next four to eight years. Including Scalia, 3 right-leaning or conservative justices are likely to leave the court; were Hillary Clinton to nominate their replacements, there would be a 7-2 leftist majority on the court. Only Samuel Alito (age 66) and Chief Justice John Roberts (61) would tilt right. If Clinton picks candidates in their fifties, we’re talking decades of liberalism spilling from the bench.
Supreme Court Nominations By President | InsideGov

Over the past seven years, the Supreme Court has proved critical in confining an overreaching president. A Republican majority in the House and Senate has barely slowed President Obama’s legacy quest. Nor has the unpopularity of many of his priorities. Twice – in 2010 and 2014 — Obama was rebuked at the voting booth, in historic numbers. It deterred him not a whit.

The only brake on his go-it-alone presidency has been the Supreme Court. When Obama used a faux senate recess in 2012 to appoint three liberal commissioners to the National Labor Relations Board, the Court unanimously ruled (two years later) that he had violated the Constitution. This was a serious slap on the wrist, but also a speed bump, preventing that board from rapidly tilting our labor laws in the direction of France – that is, making our country all but uncompetitive.