RUTHFULLY YOURS

If the means by which Latvia and its neighbours regained their independence were illegitimate, as Putin supporters are loudly insisting, their continued independence is likewise illegitimate. Given any excuse, real or confected, who can doubt that Putin would stay his hand?
A few days ago, it was reported that Russian Duma members Evgeny Fedorov and Anton Roman had requested that Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika assess the legitimacy of the 1991 decision by the then-State Council of the USSR to recognise the independence of the Baltic States. In their letter, the duo claim the State Council, also created in 1991, was an illegitimate and unconstitutional body, and that its decisions caused “great damage to the sovereignty, security and defence capability of the country”. Moreover, these decisions were, “criminal acts and especially dangerous crimes against the state”.

Worth noting is that these two Duma members belong to Putin’s ruling United Russia Party. Were these two on some frolic of their own, independent of the powers that be? The West might hope that this is the case. However there has been so far no sign of any disavowal from the Kremlin. This may be yet another sign of Russia’s reversion to its Soviet past. After Ukraine is reabsorbed into the empire, the Baltic States will be next on the menu. After all, if the means by which the Baltic States regained their independence were illegitimate, their continued independence is likewise illegitimate. Implicitly, Russia has the right to terminate their independence as opportunity offers.

One obvious risk of a nuclear deal with Iran is that the mullahs will pocket Western concessions even as they work on their atomic capabilities in secret. That much was suggested this month by Gen. Michael Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who told Congress that “it is prudent to conclude that there are elements of Iran’s nuclear program that still remain hidden from view.”

But here’s a less obvious risk: The U.S. might find evidence that Iran is cheating but fail to act out of bureaucratic neglect—or a political desire to look the other way.

That’s the message of a report last month by the Government Accountability Office, which found that the State Department had failed to provide timely reports to Congress on the proliferation activities of Iran, North Korea and Syria. Instead of delivering reports every six months, as required by law, delays ranged from 22 months to three years.

There are still far too many Americans who do not perceive the terrifying Nazi-like intentions of Islamic jihadists either through their outright destruction of the infidel and/or the implementation of sharia law as Allah has ordained it to be.

The alphabet-soup-named groups’ ultimate goal of extermination of Jews, Christians and any others deemed infidels has still not penetrated the consciousness of the media or academia. And no matter how many ardent efforts are made to educate and raise awareness of the Islamists’ goals, people either ignore or minimize the dangers.

And, yet, like Churchill, there are those of us who feel a moral obligation to continue the clarion call and not bend, dhimmi-like, to the whims and wishes of those who deliberately abuse the freedoms of this country in order to abolish those very freedoms for the rest of us.

Blumenthal is part of far-flung coterie of confidantes in Clintons’ lives

He advised then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the need for a “ferocious” bombing campaign in Libya during the U.S.’s 2011 military intervention. He sent flattering notes and told Mrs. Clinton she should take her rightful place in history for helping oust former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A new batch of emails released by a congressional committee Monday offers a rare window into the unique and complicated role that Sidney Blumenthal has played in the life of Mrs. Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The United Nations’ verdict of guilty to Israel, in its “Schabas Report,” issued yesterday, was written even before the trial began.

Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.

All public opinion polls in the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas — whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel — would win in a landslide, as in 2006. Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would quickly turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity.

Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last summer, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him.

We know that global warming is a big threat. Oh, it may help us with our mummy problem, and be a boon for great tits,(Birds) but it causes more problems than it solves – shrinking horses, causing seals to be oversexed, causing poison ivy to become even itchier, making trees less colorful, making trees more colorful, making reptiles walk uphill, destroying opium in Afghanistan, and even increasing cannibalism to unacceptable levels, with that last prediction courtesy of former CNN founder and exotic diner Ted Turner.

And now it turns out that global warming is causing a new problem: it is shrinking the size of our buns.

For those not familiar with it, there is currently underway an experiment in interfaith dialogue and coexistence: the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska. The Tri-Faith Initiative wants to have a synagogue, a mosque, and a church located on a common piece of land, each with its own separate building. The religious partners are Temple Israel, the American Muslim Institute, and Countryside Community Church.

The goal of the Tri-Faith “is to build bridges of respect, trust and acceptance” between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But Islamic doctrine prohibits Muslims from respecting, trusting, or accepting Jews and Christians, so how can Muslims support it?

There are no sure things in politics, but Hillary Clinton is the closest thing to a sure thing to become the Democrats’ candidate for president in 2016.

This is one of the painful but inescapable signs of our time. There is nothing in her history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that should disqualify her. What is even more painful is that none of that matters politically. Many people simply want “a woman” to be president, and Hillary is the best-known woman in politics, though by no means the best qualified.

What is Hillary’s history? In the most important job she has ever held — Secretary of State — American foreign policy has had one setback after another, punctuated by disasters.

From the 1960s to the late 1990s, John Barrett Kelly was one of the most influential advisors, writers, and commentators on the Middle East. In 1980 his book Arabia, the Gulf, and the West was prophetic in its analysis of the strategic importance of the Middle East and the need for a Western “forward policy” in the Gulf in order to protect U.S. and European interests, particularly oil and its transport, against both Soviet adventurism and the greed of Middle Eastern potentates. Like all his writing, his advice was based on an intimate knowledge of the region and its culture, especially the tribal mentality intertwined with Islam, a faith historically hostile to Western civilization.

Groucho Marx used to ask contestants, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

A number of Republican candidates showed that they still hadn’t mastered that one when the media came asking them about the Confederate flag in South Carolina.

Like so many chumps undone by Groucho, they thought that they were showing off how noble they were, when all they did was answer, “Yes, I did stop beating my wife. And I mostly oppose it now.”

Instead of looking like heroes, they looked like guilty men confessing to a crime.