RUTHFULLY YOURS

I must confess that I’m confused. I still have vivid memories of the tea-party revolution of 2010, when insurgent conservative candidates toppled incumbents and establishment favorites from coast to coast. This was the year of Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

Perhaps most momentous of all, it was the year of Marco Rubio, who overcame long odds to beat Charlie Crist, a man who’s since proven himself to be exactly the kind of soulless politician the tea party exists to oppose. Since his election, Rubio has delivered, becoming one of the most consistent and eloquent conservatives in the Senate. My colleague, Jim Geraghty, has outlined his stratospheric ratings from the American Conservative Union, National Rifle Association, National Right to Life, and the Family Research Council.

In fact, Rubio is largely responsible for the single most effective legislative attack on Obamacare, a move that the New York Times bemoaned in a piece last month:

A little-noticed health care provision that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.

So for all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done something toward achieving that goal.

By blocking bailouts of insurance companies, he’s preventing the White House from passing even more of the costs of Obamacare to taxpayers and forcing insurers to live with the true price of the law.

You knew it was coming!

Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the Texas senator vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee.

“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic.

This is how Donald Trump operates: whenever he’s threatened by someone in the polls, he tries to smear his opponents. He did so with Dr. Ben Carson, calling him pathological, and he now does the same with Ted Cruz by trying to convince voters he isn’t eligible to become president because he wasn’t born in the United States.

Sadly for the billionaire businessman, however, there is one minor problem: in September of last year he admitted that Cruz is eligible:

From what I understand everything is fine. I hear that it [Cruz’s eligibility] was checked out by every attorney, in every which way, and I understand that Ted is in fine shape.

As Mark Levin says: “Oh my.”

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz not only leads in Iowa, but also in California:

A new Field Poll in California finds Ted Cruz has surged ahead of his GOP presidential rivals with 25%, followed by Donald Trump at 23%, Marco Rubio at 13%, Ben Carson at 9%, Rand Paul at 6%, and Jeb Bush at 4%.

And that isn’t the only good news in this poll for Cruz. It also shows that he’s now twice as likely to be GOP voters’ second choice. This means that he will continue to surge if (or when) some of his rivals get out of the race, which they’ll undoubtedly do once they lose (big-time) in Iowa.

Cruz’s surge comes despite relentless attacks from his rivals for the Republican nomination and establishment-friendly columnists like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.

And that proves that 2016 will be different from other years. Until this election season, negative attacks from establishmentarians against real conservatives were always successful, which is how moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney ended up being the Republican nominee. Not anymore. The establishment tried to take out Donald Trump, which only resulted in him rising in the polls. Now they’re going after Cruz, and the results are the same. He’s stronger than ever before and actually seems to be relishing the attacks.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – To hear Marco Rubio talk, Congress is an impotent branch of government that needs a full-scale overhaul – and that’s exactly why he’s running for president.

Federal legislators, in Mr. Rubio’s description, are peripheral figures in Washington, people who can have some impact on policy but are not in a position to set it.

“While I’m a senator I can help shape the agenda — only the president can set the agenda,” the Florida senator said to a woman here who asked him during a town hall meeting how she can defend his record of missing Senate votes to her friends. “We’re not going fix America with senators and congressmen. The only way to turn this around is to reverse the damage this president has done to the United States of America.”
Of course, Mr. Rubio’s meager Senate attendance record has been a point of conflict in the Republican presidential primary for months. Rival Jeb Bush criticized him about it during an October debate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brought it up in New Hampshire.

Mr. Rubio, who is forgoing a bid for a second Senate term in order to run for president, also endorsed constitutional amendments to instate term limits for federal legislators and judges. But congressmen, he said, will never agree to limit their own tenure.

Last week, the White House hailed Iran for shipping most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia. Secretary of State John Kerry called it “one of the most significant steps Iran has taken” under the nuclear deal signed this past summer. But the real news happened several days earlier: Even as the administration heaped praise on the mullahs in Tehran, Iranian Revolutionary Guard ships fired unguided rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz.

This provocation is just the latest in a series of dangerous acts committed by Iran that belie President Obama’s rosy promises of putting pressure on Iran for its aggressive actions. As the so-called “Implementation Day” of Obama’s flawed agreement approaches — and the president prepares to give the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief — it’s important to take stock of Iran’s behavior so far.

Among other things, the deal has greatly harmed relations between the United States and its traditional allies in the Middle East, Israel first and foremost. It has also emboldened Iran, which will receive important financial assistance to fund its regional aggression in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Syria. In recent days, Iran even allowed the Saudi embassy in Tehran to be ransacked, leading Saudi Arabia to rightfully sever diplomatic relations with Iran.

Now that Hillary Clinton has openly declared that Bill Clinton will be part of her campaign, it is time for the FBI to investigate the Clinton Foundation, of which Bill is the founder, for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 USC 611 et seq).

Since 2008, according to numerous reliable reports, the Clinton Foundation has received hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions from as many as 19 foreign countries and many significant foreign corporations. These include Algeria, Australia, Brunei, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Taiwan, and the UAE. During the same period, former President Bill Clinton has personally received millions in speaking fees from a number of these same nations and corporations.

Common sense and an examination of the record indicate that there was no altruistic explanation for these contributions and fees. On the contrary, these foreign donors were involved in projects or activities that could have benefited politically or commercially from favorable policy decisions by the secretary of state, or from the Clintons’ global contacts. Therefore, the Foundation and the Clintons individually should be investigated for violating the Federal Agents Registration Act (FARA) for failing to register as agents of those foreign governments and failing to fully disclose these payments.

Buried in the thousands of Hillary Clinton emails so far released is a fascinating and significant insight to her mind, something so far apparently noticed only by Geoff Earle of the New York Post. She has surrounded herself with courtiers who take every opportunity to compliment her on her looks:

When a photo of Clinton on her Blackberry started lighting up the Internet in April 2012, an aide forwarded it to Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills under the subject line, “Photo gone viral!”

Mills passed it along to Clinton, who wanted to know why it was so popular.

“You look cute,” responded Mills.

The photo in question is this one:

Now cuteness, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder, but this photo looks sinister. The sunglasses, the black outfit, and the lie Hillary uttered about wanting to use only one device being the reason for her home-brew email server were the reasons this photo was passed around.

Did Hillary really believe her toadies? Apparently, yes, because this sort of ass-kissing was far from rare:

“Donald Trump may be a figure of fun for the U.S. political class, but his message is Winston Churchill’s, and the danger he warns about is just as real. Trump is the only person in recent memory who can pierce the wall of lies put up by the cartel media – which is deeply infiltrated by jihadist money and propaganda. Trump may look like a pop culture icon, but in fact he may signal a major turning point in the jihad war.”
In 1940, on the eve of World War 2, when the English Parliament finally grasped the full disaster of appeasement, those were the words M.P. Leon Avery spoke to Neville Chamberlain. The full quote, from Oliver Cromwell, is:

“Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

A crucial moment came in 1940, before general war broke out, when the British establishment finally saw through its own years of wishful denial. Hitler used those years to build overwhelming arms superiority, threatening and invading one country after another, spreading terror and fear through Europe while promising peace, peace, and more peace. After the “Norway debate” of 1940, Neville Chamberlain took public responsibility for his failures and resigned. Churchill was quickly asked to form the next government. He was ready, and the political establishment finally flipped on the very edge of disaster.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is claiming vindication—albeit in a passive-aggressive way. The inevitable Democratic presidential nominee’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, retweeted a New Year’s Day tweet from Steven Greenhouse, a recently retired New York Times reporter: “Whoops, Donald, Hillary Turns Out to be Right—Your Rant Against Muslims Shows Up On New Terror Recruitment Video,” a headline from a left-liberal blog called Addicting Info.

Trump responded yesterday: “Hillary Clinton lied last week [sic] when she said ISIS made a D.T. video. The video that ISIS made was about her husband being a degenerate.” Followed by this: “Al-Shabbab [sic], not ISIS, just made a video on me—they all will as front-runner & if I speak out against them, which I must. Hillary lied!” (In fact, Mrs. Clinton made her assertion in a Dec. 19 debate, and al Shabaab is transliterated with one “b” and usually a double “a.”)

Was Mrs. Clinton right? One might charitably speculate that naming the wrong terrorist group was the product of honest confusion. But she framed her assertion not as a prediction but a statement of fact: “They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.” That was false at the time she said it. Was it prescient? Maybe, but if one recasts the statement as a prophecy, it could very well have been a self-fulfilling one. That is, it’s quite possible al Shabaab got the idea from her.

Blogger Tom Maguire observes of another Trump response:

He might want to Trump that up a bit. He might say something like “I’m calling it like I see it and trying to be straight with the American people. If other politicians are picking and choosing their words to stay out of terror videos, well, people can judge their candor for themselves.”