RUTHFULLY YOURS

Amid all the Islamic State’s atrocities — its massacres of civilians, its beheading of hostages, its pillaging of antiquities — the systematic violence the jihadists have carried out against countless enslaved women and girls never fails to shock. For months now, we’ve heard appalling testimony from women who escaped the Islamic State’s clutches, many of whom endured rape and other hideous acts of violence.

Zainab Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, recently conducted a tour of refugee camps in the shadow of the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, war-ravaged countries where the Islamic State commands swaths of territory. She heard a host of horror stories from victims and their families and recounted them in an interview earlier this week with the Middle East Eye, an independent regional news site.

Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States’ oil-rich ally in the Middle East.

Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked disrupting the region’s fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies of the Saudi royal family.

But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At a press conference in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing — the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 — contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

While presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was America’s top diplomat the Department of State that she oversaw approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments forked over millions of dollars to the now-embattled Clinton Foundation.

According to an International Business Times [2] report by David Sirota and Andrew Perez, “at least seven foreign governments that received State Department clearance for American arms did donate to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary.” The article identified the seven nations as Algeria, Australia, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar, and Thailand.

Mainstream media’s surprisingly probing coverage of the unfolding Clinton Foundation donations-for-favors scandal suggests that reporters have turned on the Clintons in the age of Obama.

America’s business and labor leaders agree: President Obama and Congress can do more to modernize the permitting process for infrastructure projects—airports, factories, power plants and pipelines—which at the moment is burdensome, slow and inconsistent.

Gaining approval to build a new bridge or factory typically involves review by multiple federal agencies—such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Interior Department, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management—with overlapping jurisdictions and no real deadlines. Often, no single federal entity is responsible for managing the process. Even after a project is granted permits, lawsuits can hold things up for years—or, worse, halt a half-completed construction project.

Consider the $3 billion TransWest Express, a multistate power-line that would bring upward of 3,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity from Wyoming to about 1.8 million homes and businesses from Las Vegas to San Diego. The project delivers on two of President Obama’s priorities, renewable power and job creation, so the administration in October 2011 named the TransWest Express one of seven transmission projects to “quickly advance” through federal permitting.

Offering vistas previously limited to photographs from helicopters.

The first time I visit—propelled upward a quarter of a mile in an elevator to One World Observatory—it is clear that something momentous is being promised. The observatory, which opens on May 29 at One World Trade Center, calls these five elevators “Sky Pods.” They are enclosed with three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling LED screens so bright and crisp, they could be windows on lower Manhattan. But as we whoosh from the bedrock to the 102nd floor in 47 seconds, instead of seeing the cityscape receding below, we see time-lapse images representing 500 years of history. Lenape wigwams and longhouses give way to early Dutch settlements, and onward: the growth of Wall Street, the evolution of the Battery, the proliferation of skyscrapers and the sounds of contemporary life. For a few seconds, as decades of the 20th century race by, one of the World Trade Center towers fills the eastward screen, then suddenly disappears.

The Koch Foundation gives money to encourage debate on campus. Activists want to silence that debate.

College should be a place where students encounter a diversity of ideas—just ask many of the more than 1.8 million students who are graduating this year. That diversity often relies on charitable foundations, which support countless educational programs across the country. For example, the Charles Koch Foundation, where I work, has responded to hundreds of grant requests from colleges and universities. These requests have led us to support educational initiatives in economics, philosophy, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and other disciplines at more than 250 institutions of higher learning.

A federal appeals court rebukes his immigration order.America’s most powerful former law professor is getting a re-education in the Constitution, and on present course President Obama might flunk out. Witness Tuesday’s federal appeals-court rebuke of his 2014 immigration order, including language that suggests the Administration will also lose on the legal and policy merits.

Mr. Obama caused a furor in November when he suddenly claimed powers he had previously said he didn’t have to award legal status and work permits to millions of illegal immigrants. Texas and 25 other states sued, claiming injury and a violation of their sovereign powers under the Constitution. Federal Judge Andrew Hanen issued a preliminary injunction for the states in February, and on Tuesday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals shot down the Administration’s request to lift the injunction.

The 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel found that the Administration had failed to make its case that Texas and the other states suffered no injury if Mr. Obama’s rule was implemented. Texas cited the fact that it would have to issue driver’s licenses to the newly legal immigrants, and the court agreed this was a cost. Even if Texas raised its license fees to cover the costs, the fact that it had to change its law to accommodate the federal rule was also an injury.

Op-Ed: Does the Jewish Federation of Orange County Aid Pro-Israel Advocacy?

Far from encouraging potent and effective activities to counter the barrage of anti-Semitic attacks on Jews and Israel at UCI, the JFOC has added to the problem.

In defense of recent criticism for attacking Jewish activists on the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus, the leadership of the JewishFederation of Orange County (JFOC – ed. note: Irvine is in Orange County, California) attempted to vindicate themselves and affirm their “pro-Israel bona fides” in the media. Certainly, many of JFOC’s actions, past and present, are indefensible and run contrary to those expected of an organization embracing Israel support as a core mission.

Earlier I pointed out that Sidney Blumenthal, a man widely despised even within his own party, had been passing pro-Muslim Brotherhood material [1]from his even crazier son Max Blumenthal; a bigot who has called for the destruction of Israel.

Max Blumenthal is so out there that his anti-Israel material was used by the Jewish Community Center shooter [2]. It was also used by Hillary Clinton.

Now we know that Max Blumenthal’s views shaped Hillary Clinton’s understanding of Benghazi.

Mark Tapson is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Last Friday, as the week downshifted into the Memorial Day three-day holiday, the official Twitter account of the Democratic Party wished the country a “Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!” and tweeted [2] a pic of – whom else? – President Obama lapping at an ice cream cone while media lapdogs zoomed their cameras in to capture the photo op. CNN anchor Jake Tapper injected a note of perspective by tweeting [3] back, “Respectfully, @TheDemocrats, this is not what Memorial Day weekend is about.”

Indeed it is not, but for Barack Obama, of course, everything is about Barack Obama. And for the Democratic Party, everything is about selling the American people a crock of big-government idolatry, and so they followed up the Obama photo with tweets about a 15% off holiday sale at their website store – because nothing memorializes the men and women of our armed forces who paid the ultimate price for their country quite like a discounted “I Heart O’bama” Shamrock Lapel Sticker [4] or a “Like a Boss” POTUS t-shirt [5].