RUTHFULLY YOURS

In a famous remark two years ago during a Google Plus Hangout, President Obama boasted that “this is the most transparent administration in history.” This is belied by Administration officials, from Hillary Clinton on down, who have run their communications off the government grid.

A bipartisan consensus has long held that a healthy democracy requires a significant measure of government transparency. That is why since 1950 Washington has operated under the Federal Records Act, which requires the government to preserve documents about its decisions.

Since the 1960s the government has been subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to view those records. In 2009 the National Archives issued rules requiring agencies to preserve employee work on nonofficial accounts in a government record-keeping system.

In November 2014, the leaders of Saudi Arabia made one of the biggest bets in history. Their strategy was flawed, and they’ve already lost.

In an OPEC meeting that month, Saudi Arabia announced it would maintain high oil-production levels despite falling prices. The Saudis were betting that by keeping prices low they could protect their market share and kill America’s energy renaissance—a rebirth driven largely by Texas, which produces 37% of America’s oil and 28% of its marketed natural gas.
The Saudi strategy seemed to make sense. The conventional wisdom was that energy producers working in “tight” shale formations would be squeezed by low prices, since their extraction methods—hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—are more expensive than conventional drilling. So, surely, once that happened Texas would be in serious trouble.

Columnists at the New York Times and elsewhere said the “Texas miracle” was fading, or even dead . . . and some of them seemed happy about it.

But an interesting thing happened on the way to the collapse of the Texas economy—it didn’t collapse.

What a world we live in when a website promoting adultery is held more accountable than a U.S. secretary of state.

Only weeks after a hack exposed the names and other confidential information about Ashley Madison’s mostly male clientele, it’s hard to see how the company can recover. By contrast, Hillary Clinton remains the Democratic Party’s likely 2016 nominee for president, even though we’ve known since at least March 2013 (thanks to a Romanian hacker named Guccifer) that she conducted State Department business over her private email, which has in turn helped her evade the normal oversight and accountability for White House appointees.

How can this be?

One big reason is that much of the back-and-forth about Mrs. Clinton’s emails has focused on secondary disputes: the latest batch of emails coughed up by State in response to a federal judge’s order, the classified information that may be on these emails, and whether what she did was akin to the mishandling of classified information that resulted in a deal for Gen. David Petraeus under which he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

Democracies that trade substance for charisma don’t last. Trump is America’s answer to Hugo Chávez.

If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.

If you have reached physical maturity and still chuckle at Mr. Trump’s pubescent jokes about Rosie O’Donnell or Heidi Klum, you will never reach mental maturity. If you watched Mr. Trump mock fellow candidate Lindsey Graham’s low poll numbers and didn’t cringe at the lack of class, you are incapable of class. If you think we need to build new airports in Queens the way they build them in Qatar, you should be sent to join the millions of forced laborers who do construction in the Persian Gulf. It would serve you right.

Since Mr. Trump joined the GOP presidential field and leaped to the top of the polls, several views have been offered to explain his popularity. He conveys a can-do image. He is the bluntest of the candidates in addressing public fears of cultural and economic dislocation. He toes no line, serves no PAC, abides no ideology, is beholden to no man. He addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment.

President, London Center for Policy Research http://www.londoncenter.org/

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan recently reaffirmed Iran’s position that issues involving Iran’s missile program are not matters for discussion. Presumably Iran is determined to keep developing its missile force. As for attempts to clarify Iran’s past activity regarding the “military dimensions” of its nuclear program, Dehghan noted that Iran will definitely not grant anyone access to its security and military “secrets.”

Concerning statements made by President Obama and Secretary Kerry after the deal was signed, Dehghan said, “The U.S. officials make boastful remarks and imagine that they can impose anything on the Iranian nation because they lack a proper knowledge of the Iranian nation…the time has come now for the Americans to realize that they are not the world’s super power and no one recognizes them as such any longer.”

In 2008, Elliot Dorff joined Rabbis for Obama in their claim that Senator Obama would be a “leader in the fight against serious threats to Israel.”

Dorff, a Beverly Hills based clergyman, showed a deep grasp of geopolitical issues when he claimed that because of President Bush, “now the Taliban inhabit Iraq, where they never used to be.” This would have come as news to both the Taliban and Iraq. But Rabbis for Obama kept Dorff’s testimonial up because no one there seemed to know any better or know anything except how awful Israel is.

Like many of the Rabbis for Obama, Dorff was a left-wing radical who could be counted on to sign any letter attacking Israel. In 2010, he joined the unofficially nicknamed ‘Rabbis for Hamas’ by signing a letter demanding that Israel end the blockade of the genocidal Islamic terrorist group.

Elliot Dorff had also signed an earlier letter praising the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza, which led the area to be taken over by Hamas. But this was only to be expected from a member of J Street, serving on the anti-Israel group’s Rabbinic Cabinet Executive Council.

The Sheriff’s Office signs off on employment with a terrorist organization.

Nezar Hamze has two paying jobs. In one, he is a Deputy Sheriff at the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO), under oath to watch over, protect and promote the best interests of the community. In the other, he is the Regional Operations Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the Florida chapter of CAIR, an Islamist group with numerous ties to international terrorism. It is disturbing and dangerous that someone from CAIR is involved with law enforcement. It is more disturbing that Hamze has his job at CAIR with the blessings of the Sheriff’s office.

In June 2014, Hamze applied for the position of Certified Reserve Deputy with the BSO. He had applied for the same position in March 2012 but was rejected. At the time of his 2012 application, Hamze was serving as the Executive Director of CAIR-Florida. His 2014 application states (in type) that he, at the time, had the title of Regional Operations Director of CAIR-Florida and has the word “current” penciled next to it.

Europe’s slow-motion immigration disaster has accelerated with the continuing turmoil in the Middle East and Africa. In Calais hundreds of illegal immigrants stormed the entrance to the cross-Channel tunnel in an attempt to reach more immigrant-friendly England. In northern Greece, 3000 migrants attacked the border with Macedonia to get closer to more prosperous northern Europe; Macedonia let them pass a few days later. Hungary, a member of the EU border-free Schengen zone, is deploying its army to slow down the migrant tide, and border-fences are springing up in Bulgaria and Hungary. Meanwhile, thousands of immigrants continue to drown in over-crowded ships or suffocate in smugglers’ trucks while trying to enter Europe.

Europe has long had an immigration problem, but in the last year the numbers have skyrocketed. About 124,000 immigrants reached Greece by sea between January and July this year, a 750% increase from the previous year. Germany estimates 800,000 new migrants will reach the country by year’s end, 4 times as much as last year. The United Kingdom has seen 330,000 enter so far this year, while 107,500 made it to Europe, both numbers new records.

President Obama argues that his nuclear agreement with Iran means “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off.” He says, moreover, that it sets the stage to “incentivize them to behave differently in the region, to be less aggressive, less hostile, more cooperative, to operate the way we expect nations in the international community to behave.” It will be “a lot easier,” he predicts, “to check Iran’s nefarious activities, to push back against the other areas where they operate contrary to our interests or our allies’ interests if they don’t have the bomb.”

The approach is a signature feature of Obama’s foreign policy. He has counted on diplomacy in a whole host of other areas to reduce tensions and preempt military conflict. And this approach has failed him repeatedly.
He reset relations with Russia—and Moscow annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine. He launched a strategic partnership with China—and Beijing occupied and built military installations on disputed islands in the East and South China Seas. He extended an open hand to the Muslim world—and radical Islam erupted. Will the agreement with Iran be the next Obama initiative to invite more violence rather than less?

Why did the illegal-immigration issue launch Donald Trump’s campaign? Why did his recent tense press conference exchange with Univision’s Jorge Ramos please even some of Trump’s liberal critics? What is it about illegal immigration that has finally turned off so many Americans?

1. Race

Over the years immigration activists successfully deconstructed the complex issue of illegal immigration into a race and class morality tale of privileged whites picking on poor brown people. The operative buzzwords were “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.” That theme is now mostly bankrupt given that every great lie eventually falls from its own weight.

It was rarely the host, but more often the activists on behalf of the guests, who framed illegal immigration in racial terms. Activists foolishly fabricated the controversy as “we noble Latinos” against “you prejudiced non-Latinos.” They forgot apparently two obvious truths: one, thirty percent of Americans are not so-called white; and, two, most people resent ethnic chauvinism. Is an unemployed African-American sympathetic to the argument that someone has a birthright to illegally cross into the United States and find instant employment? Is a Punjabi-American, waiting patiently for his engineer cousin to get a green card, eager to be told the United States must make special concessions to the Latino lobby? Does a third-generation Mexican-American prefer that his neighborhood school and emergency room be flooded with indigent illegal Mexican nationals?

Sometime in the last five years, the public woke up and grasped that Latino elite activists were not so much interested in illegal immigration per se, but only to the degree that the issue affected other Latinos. Were 3,000 Chinese illegally entering California per day by ship on the Northern California coast, Latino activists and politicians would probably be the first to call for enforcement of federal immigration law.