RUTHFULLY YOURS

I was in the House gallery when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a logical and compelling critique of the deal now on the table regarding Iran’s ambitions to obtain nuclear weapons. He laid out a new fact-based proposal that has shifted the burden of persuasion to the White House.

His new proposal is that “If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal is signed, at the very least they should insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal expires.” His argument is that without such a precondition, the ten-year sunset provision paves, rather than blocks, the way to an Iranian nuclear arsenal, even if Iran were to continue to export terrorism, to bully nations in the region and to call for the extermination of Israel.

“House Minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was present for Netanyahu’s address but did not greet him as he came into the chamber nor as he left. Afterwards, she released a statement saying that the speech was “an insult to the intelligence of the United States.”
On his return to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that as a result of his March 2 speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington, “many around the world heard what Israel has to say about the bad deal with Iran.” President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and 60 Democrats of both chambers of Congress were absent at the speech where Netanyahu spoke amidst standing ovations and cheers. Pushing back against critics of the speech (including Obama), Netanyahu said that there are indeed practical alternatives to the current negotiations between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear weaponization program.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s systematic evasion of federal recordkeeping requirements involved both the use of private email addresses and a server system installed in her Chappaqua manse. The servers, according to the Washington Free Beacon, may have been set up by shady longtime Clinton lackey Eric Hothem – under a false name (Eric Hoteham) slightly varied from his true name. It may also have been designed to give users the ability to erase emails without a trace.
Shannen Coffin’s excellent column today points out that Mrs. Clinton’s Clintonesque shenanigans not only appear to be a clear violation of the Federal Records Act; she may also have violated a federal penal statute that makes it a felony for the custodian of government records to conceal or otherwise tamper with them. I think there are other potential criminal violations as well. We don’t know enough about the former secretary of state’s emails yet to make a judgment about whether they involved classified matters – which could trigger liability under the espionage act (which governs the maintenance and severely limits the permissible disclosure of national security secrets).

He came. He spoke, and against a backdrop of political bickering, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered.

The living were attentive. The ghosts were listening.

The gist of his message was that a nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel, the United States, the Middle East and the entire world.

The deal in the works between President Obama and the ayatollahs must be stopped for the safety and security of civilization.

America is being duped by professional con artists.

Netanyahu cited Iran as “the foremost sponsor of global terrorism.” He evoked Haman as the ancestor of today’s murderous Persian imams.

Then it was Queen Esther who helped save the day. But for generations thereafter the Jewish people were scattered and defenseless.

As Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress today, controversy continues to rage over whether House speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) should have invited him without consulting Obama.

As it happens, Boehner did alert the White House an hour before the speech was announced. Whether or not that counts as consultation is an open question.

It’s worth noting though that Congress is a separate and co-equal branch of government. If Congress wants to hear someone speak, it does not have to get permission first from Obama or anyone else in the White House. At some point in the near future, Congress, or at least the Senate, may have to approve or reject whatever deal Obama makes with Iran. America’s duly-elected legislators have every right and power to summon whomever they wish to give them information and perspectives to help them make decisions on any such agreement, as well as broader American policy on the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a brilliant speech before Congress, arguing that the agreement President Obama is so desperate to strike with Iran is a “very bad deal.”

President Obama had turned Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress into a sophomoric beauty contest, complete with plaintive whines about “fairness.” With his thin-skinned resistance to the Israeli leader’s appearance, Obama created an international ruckus, which only served to publicize Netanyahu’s address. Not agreeing to meet with the Prime Minister, sending various proxies out of the country on bogus missions (Biden’s exile to Uruguay postponed by the flu?), bad-mouthing the Israeli leader and his GOP hosts; the White House even “sternly” warned Netanyahu not to divulge details of the proposed nuclear deal. Whatever Mr. Obama’s intentions, the outcome surely could not have been what he had hoped.

Mr. Netanyahu’s approval rating among Americans has soared – up ten points since 2012, and hitting all-time highs. While Republicans tend to have the most favorable opinion of the Israeli leader, the gains in popularity were registered across all political parties.

Embarrassingly, Netanyahu’s favorability ratings are better than Obama’s. Both have 45 percent of the public expressing positive support for them, but Netanyahu is looked upon unfavorably by only 24 percent of the public, compared to 50% from Obama.

If you want to infuriate a liberal, question his patriotism. He’ll sneer, mock and ridicule the question. And then when he is up against the wall, he will mumble that the real patriots don’t need to wear flag pins because they covertly perform their patriotism in the dead of night when no one is looking.

He may even trot out that fake Jefferson quote about dissent being the highest form of patriotism. No, Teddy Roosevelt didn’t say it either. He did however say that “Patriotism means to stand by the country… It does not mean to stand by the president… save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.”

And he meant it, ruthlessly attacking Woodrow Wilson until Democratic Senator William J. Stone called the former president “the most seditious man of consequence in America”.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414735/wonderful-m-stanton-evans-rip-quin-hillyer?target=topic&tid=3269
There will be much, much more to write on this topic in the next few days, but let me be one of the first here at NRO to lament the passing of one of the great men of the conservative movement, in some respects the founding father of conservative reporting (slightly different from conservative opinion writing), and a truly wonderful human being, M. Stanton Evans. Steven Hayward wrote an absolutely beautiful tribute to Evans at Powerline, here. For now, let it suffice, until I and others here can find the right words to honor the man who did so much for conservatism and for our country.
Quin Hillyer

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3026/M-Stanton-Evans-1934-2015.aspx
Stan Evans passed away early this morning. He was a great and remarkable and path-breaking American writer. He was an especially dear friend. I find it is in some ways difficult to separate the two — his great life’s work and his dear friendship — because I was greatly privileged to have been blessed by both. … More to come.RIP. Diana West
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/m-stanton-evans-pioneer-of-conservative-movement-dies-at-80.html?_r=0
M. Stanton Evans, Who Helped Shape Conservative Movement, Is Dead at 80 by Adam Clymer
Mr. Evans was the editor of The Indianapolis News, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, a radio and television commentator, a journalism teacher and the author of a raft of books, including a defense of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, in his anti-communist crusade.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414788/stan-man-evans-jay-nordlinger
Stan the Man Evans by Jay Nordliinger

I would like to relate just two memories. He had one of the driest and best wits in the West. I wish you could have heard him say the following, deadpan. It was all in the delivery, believe me. “You always hear that you’re supposed to start out liberal, then become conservative at some point. My view is, you should start out conservative, then get more conservative over time.”

We’ve always known she was a secretive, entitled scofflaw. Now even the New York Times has noticed. Even in the most myopic corners of the Democratic party’s vast and ruthless political machine, the radar is picking up a faint cri de coeur. “Is Hillary really our best choice?” beeps the signal in the darkest parts of the night. And then, before it can provoke too much restlessness or dissension in the ranks, it fades and disappears under the weight of present expectations. In the coming weeks, whenever the progressive soul is at its most restive, this question will haunt the skeptics with a renewed and discomfiting vigor.
Political scandals are never more penetrating than when they confirm a set of pre-existing suspicions, and Hillary’s latest imbroglio is a doozy of election-changing proportions. Sarah Palin was so gravely injured by her inability to name her daily newspaper because the failure served only to buttress the widespread presumption that she was an intellectual lightweight. The endless batch of “elitist!” arrows that were cast at John Kerry in 2004 found their target because, deep down, Americans worried sincerely that he was too effete to be commander-in-chief.
This being so, the news that Hillary Clinton broke a series of federal laws in the name of her own pride will presumably pursue the candidate all the way to the next election. Hillary’s error, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza proposes today, is damaging precisely because it “plays into everything people don’t like about her.” Worse still, the charge was first heard within the pages of the friendly New York Times. The facts of the affair are refreshingly simple. When Hillary became secretary of state, she was required by law to obtain a government e-mail address and to conduct her official business through it at all times. She didn’t.

This new word ‘Islamophobia’ should be consigned to the dustbin of etymological mishaps. The Oxford Dictionary disagrees in its politically correct way, but harbouring a prejudice against religious despotism in no way reflects a tendency to the bigoted and irrational
I looked up the meaning of phobia in my Concise Oxford Dictionary. It is defined as ‘an extreme or irrational fear of something’. I had always thought it meant an extreme and irrational fear. But, I bow to the Oxford in these matters.

Certainly my dictionary was consistent when it came to words like claustrophobia and hydrophobia. However, consistency disappeared when it came to the modern word homophobia. Extreme and irrational are now indeed linked by ‘and’ rather than ‘or’. Moreover, no longer is phobia encompassing a ‘fear of’ but an ‘aversion to’. Disconcerting?

Get over it, I told myself. The English language must move with the times. And so it has with the comparatively recent mass migration of Muslims into the West. The very modern made-up word ‘Islamophobia’ has entered the language. A strange word is this to be sure. So far as I know it is unique in attaching phobia to a religion. I haven’t heard of phobia being attached, say, to Hinduism or Sikhism or Taoism or Hinduism or Buddhism. I looked it up.