RUTHFULLY YOURS

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The reemergence of Cosmos could not have come at a better time, not because it has something to teach us about science, but because are living in Sagan’s world where real science is harder than ever to come by.

Carl Sagan was the country’s leading practitioner of the mythologization of science, transforming a
process into a philosophy, substituting political agendas for inquiry and arrogance for research. Sagan was often wrong, but it didn’t matter because his errors were scientific, rather than ideological or theological. He could be wrong as many times as he wanted, as long as he wasn’t wrong politically..

Science has been thoroughly Saganized. The vast majority of research papers are wrong, their results cannot be replicated. The researchers writing them often don’t even understand what they’re doing wrong and don’t care. Research is increasingly indistinguishable from politics. Studies are framed in ways that prove a political premise, whether it’s that the world will end without a carbon tax or that racism causes obesity. If they prove the premise, the research is useful to the progressive non-profits and politicians who always claim to have science in their corner. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t funded.

“Science” has been reduced to an absolute form of authority that is always correct. The Saganists envision science as a battle between superstition and truth, but what distinguished science from superstition was the ability to throw out wrong conclusions based on testing. Without the scientific method, science is just another philosophy where anything can be proven if you manipulate the terminology so that the target is drawn around the arrow. Add statistical games and nothing means anything.

This form of science measures itself not against the universe, but against the intellectual bubble inhabited by those who share the same worldview or those who live under their control. It’s not a bold exploration of the cosmos, but a timid repetition of cliches. The debates are as microscopic as this miniature pocket universe. Discoveries are accidental and often misinterpreted to fit within dogma. Progress is not defined not by the transcendence of what is known, but by its blinkered reaffirmation.

This isn’t science or even scientism because it has little basis in the scientific method. Like all progressive authority, it now derives its credentials from membership in an expert class and advocacy on behalf of a victim class. Global Warming research covers both quotas. On the one hand everyone ought to shut up and listen to the scientists, as long as their message conforms politically, and on the other hand everyone ought to shut up and listen to the victims of Global Warming. Connect the two and you have the basis of progressive authority.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what was described as a major ramping up of sanctions, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Tuesday that the United States had frozen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Netflix account, effective immediately.

“Unless and until Mr. Putin calls off the annexation of Crimea, no more ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Orange Is the New Black’ for him,” Mr. Kerry said. “The United States will not stand by and reward the annexation of another sovereign nation with a policy of streaming as usual.”

While all of the sanctions Mr. Kerry announced on Tuesday were Netflix-related, he warned Mr. Putin that “nothing is off the table.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to remind the Russian President that ‘Game of Thrones’ is about to come back for another season,” he said. “As I have

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what was described as a major ramping up of sanctions, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Tuesday that the United States had frozen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Netflix account, effective immediately.

“Unless and until Mr. Putin calls off the annexation of Crimea, no more ‘House of Cards’ or ‘Orange Is the New Black’ for him,” Mr. Kerry said. “The United States will not stand by and reward the annexation of another sovereign nation with a policy of streaming as usual.”

While all of the sanctions Mr. Kerry announced on Tuesday were Netflix-related, he warned Mr. Putin that “nothing is off the table.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to remind the Russian President that ‘Game of Thrones’ is about to come back for another season,” he said. “As I have said, this thing could get very ugly, very fast.”

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/pre-and-postmodern-poseurs/?print=1

Vladimir Putin thinks he has a winning formula to restore the global clout of the old Soviet Union. Contemporary Russia is a chaotic, shrinking, and petrodollar-fed kleptocracy. It certainly lacks the population, the vast resources, and territory of its former communist incarnation. For Putin, restoring a lot of the latter without necessarily the former failed communist state makes sense — especially if he can do it on the cheap with passive-aggressive diplomacy and not getting into a shooting war with the far more powerful U.S. If there is a downside for Putin annexing the Crimea in the short term, no one has yet to explain it.

To pull his aggression off, he has adopted most of the repertoire of the proverbial dictator. Threats of a preventative war are leveled, mostly to “protect” Russian-speaking minorities in former Soviet republics. Plebiscites follow, with the usual 90%-plus results. Thugs and goons are sent in to remind the population that the Russian army may follow.

Then Munich-like, compromise is offered to appease the “international community” — before the finale of carving out and annexing territory outright, with the trailer promise of having no more territorial demands in Europe. Putin has given speeches almost identical to Hitler’s 1938 Berlin address promising no more thefts in Europe and a new Germany without the shame of 1918.

Note the bullying nature of Putin. He prefers scanning westward to slice off parts of Georgia, Ukraine, and perhaps next the Baltic states rather than eastward to pick a border fight with, say, his neighbor China. He bets big-time that affluent and leisured Americans in the post-Iraq and -Afghanistan Age [1] fear tough diplomacy as much as they do war, and thus skip the former in fear it might lead to the latter.

Putin provides the necessary premodern optics to match his muscle flexing. He is our modern Mussolini [2], with the bare chest, the hunting and fishing poses, the judo posturing, and all sorts of various helmets perched in planes and tanks. Putin believes his people would rather feel proud about increased international swagger than have access to universal health care or Head Start — in the manner that a cow-horned, long-ship raider kept power by reminding his otherwise impoverished Vikings that, beside greater stashes of loot, more people feared and honored them than ever before.

Putin, as the entire administration keeps reminding us [3], is premodern. He should be, but is not, shamed when John Kerry, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and Barack Obama variously proclaim that he is a 19th century dinosaur, or has lost the good will of the enlightened West. Again, we are told Putin worries about this; but I think he is about as concerned as were Norsemen like Eric Bloodaxe [4], who lost all the respect of the monks along the English coast that he so freely raided.

While Putin was making a premodern fool out of himself, blustering and bullying, and lying on the global stage, Barack Obama confirmed most of the Russian stereotypes that he was a postmodern metrosexual [5]. Putin gets up every morning to annoy Barack Obama, piqued not just that he is weak, but that he is sanctimonious and weak. Obama tries to ignore Putin, who grates on him like some Russian version of the folks who tailgate with their Winnebagos at a NASCAR race.

Putin lives to break Western rules. But Obama’s Western rules — deadlines, red lines, step-over lines [6], leading but from behind — are hard to either break or follow because they are not really rules as much as rhetorical constructs that come and go.

Farewell to a Fighter: Meir Har-Zion, Larger-than-Life Israeli Legend, Dies at 80

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/03/23/farewell-to-a-fighter-meir-har-zion-larger-than-life-israeli-legend-dies-at-80/?print=1

Meir Har-Zion, an iconic Israeli military figure, died at 80 on March 14. He never pursued a political career and you probably haven’t heard of him. Indeed, his military exploits were mostly confined to a three-year period in the 1950s. Yet his fame in Israel never wore off, and a 2005 poll ranked him 15th out of the 200 greatest Israelis of all time.

Moshe Dayan—another iconic Israeli figure who was a chief of staff, defense minister, and foreign minister—called Har-Zion “the finest of our commando soldiers, the greatest Jewish warrior since Bar Kochba,” referring to the leader of the 2nd-century-CE revolt against Rome. It was Dayan who had Har-Zion appointed an officer even though he had never undergone officers’ training.

In eulogizing Har-Zion, current defense minister Moshe Yaalon called him “one of the greatest warriors in the history of the IDF—an audacious, distinctive commander whose influence in molding generations of fighters and units was pivotal.”

He was born Meir Horowitz in 1934 in the coastal town of Netanya, fourteen years before the prestate Jewish community declared its independence as the state of Israel. His parents divorced—rare in those days—and he moved with his father to a kibbutz in northern Israel.

THE PRIMARY IN ILLINOIS IS OVER AND THERE WAS NO CHALLENGE TO SENATOR DURBIN WHO IS A STANDARD ISSUE GENERIC LIBERAL SHILL FOR OBAMA POLICIES. IN NOVEMBER HE IS BEING CHALLENGED BY REPUBLICAN JIM OBERWEIS. SEE ALL THE DETAILS OF THE ILLINOIS ELECTIONS AT FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS SERIES.

DURBIN RANKS A + 5 ON THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE’S SCORECARD FOR LEGISLATORS INDICATING A VERY PRO-ARAB VOTING RECORD. HE RECENTLY GRATIFIED HIS SUPPORTERS BY ATTENDING A CAIR 10TH ANNIVERSARY GALA.
CAIR has been designated by the FBI and several in Congress as a supporter of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
1dick_durbin“For more than 10 years, CAIR-Chicago has enhanced the understanding of Islam within our communities by facilitating dialogue, protecting civil liberties, empowering American Muslims, and building coalitions which promote justice and mutual understanding. I applaud your commitment to guaranteeing that our country’s ideals are fully respected and realized for all.”

– Dick Durbin
U.S. Senator, State of Illinois

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579451693060396308?mod=Opinion_newsreel_8

Our understanding of the Constitution lost its way when we embraced the idea that rights are created by a benevolent state.

Over the past three decades, Richard A. Epstein has repeatedly argued—with analytical rigor and astonishing erudition—that governments govern best when they limit their actions to protecting liberty and property. He is perhaps best known for “Takings,” his 1995 book on the losses that regulations impose on property owners. Of late, he has exposed the flaws of a government-administered health system.

In “The Classical Liberal Constitution,” Mr. Epstein takes up the political logic of our fundamental law. The Constitution, he says, reflects above all John Locke’s insistence on protecting natural rights—rights that we possess simply by virtue of our humanity. Their protection takes concrete form in the Constitution by restricting the federal government to specific, freedom-advancing and property-protecting tasks, such as establishing a procedurally fair justice system, minting money as a stable repository of value, preserving a national trade zone among the states, and, not least, guarding the rights listed in the Bill of Rights.

Mr. Epstein believes that constitutional law lost its way when it began to embrace a Progressive vision, according to which rights are created by a supposedly benevolent state. Starting especially with the New Deal legislation of the 1930s, the federal government has passed laws that redistribute wealth, water-down procedural protections for property, and dictate the relations between employers and employees. The premise of such laws is that government should establish a pattern of social justice. By such logic, the government may declare rights that are in no way natural (like the right to an old-age pension) and remove others that are fundamental (like freedom of association).

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303775504579395231042008894?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj#

A defining feature of President Obama’s second term is his willfulness in defying limits on executive power to suit his political goals, and no more so than with the Affordable Care Act. The judiciary is the last check on those abuses, and this week it will have another opportunity to vindicate the rule of law.

On Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear one of the more important legal challenges to ObamaCare’s lawless implementation. Unlike the challenge to the individual insurance mandate, Halbig v. Sebelius involves no great questions of constitutional interpretation. The plaintiffs are merely asking the judges to tell the Administration to faithfully execute the plain language of the statute that Congress passed and President Obama signed.
The Affordable Care Act—at least the version that passed in 2010—instructed the states to establish insurance exchanges, and if they didn’t the Health and Human Services Department was authorized to build federal exchanges. The law says that subsidies will be available only to people who enroll “through an Exchange established by the State.” The question in Halbig is whether these taxpayer subsidies can be distributed through the federal exchanges, as the Administration insists.

London Center for Policy Research March 21. 2014 London Center for Policy Research Weekly Commentary Constitutional Disobedience? By: Herb London It is customary for members of the Academy to display anti-American sentiment in the form of multi-culturalism. Rarely, however, does the critique involve the Constitution itself. There is the belief that Supreme Court Justices may […]

http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/time-for-a-shield-law

“Should Congress create a “reporter’s privilege” that would exempt journalists from having to testify in judicial proceedings? A law that would do just is moving through Congress and probably has the best chance of passing in any time in out history.But do we need such a law, and who exactly would it protect? The usual suspects in and around the media are telling us that without it the First Amendment will be gutted. In fact, those usual suspects may be the ones who are doing the gutting. “….Gabriel Schoenfeld

The American press is in crisis, or so say many of its practitioners. Indeed, to hear journalists tell it, reporting the news has never been more difficult, particularly in the national-security arena. The secrecy practices of the U.S. government, they say, have curtailed the flow of information to the public. The Bush administration put the restrictions in place in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the Obama administration has followed suit, continuing many of the same policies and augmenting them with an unprecedented crackdown on leaks of classified information. Over the last five years, the Obama Justice Department has pursued eight leak prosecutions — nearly triple the number under all previous presidents combined — and it has taken extraordinary steps to uncover leakers, including using subpoena powers to rummage through the private and professional email correspondence and telephone records of journalists. Further, the administration has continued to pursue New York Times reporter James Risen, insisting that he testify as a witness in the prosecution of former CIA agent and alleged leaker Jeffrey Sterling. Risen has thus far stood firm, vowing to go to jail rather than name his confidential source in court.

Not surprisingly, news outlets are protesting what they perceive to be hyper-secretive and illiberal government activity. A 2013 Washington Post editorial complained that when “journalists are threatened with or sent to jail because they refuse to give up their sources, people think twice about talking, and reporters are deterred from pursuing their mission.” The government’s actions make it harder for the press to report on what the government is doing, the Post and its allies say, and pose a threat to the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Obama administration’s aggressive attempts to stop and prosecute leaks have prompted free-press advocates to renew their calls for Congress to pass a shield law.

A shield law would prevent journalists from being legally compelled to reveal the identities of their confidential sources. Such a law, which would overturn a historic Supreme Court decision, has never gained sufficient traction to pass. In this Congress, however, the effort has been making unusual headway, with some Republicans joining Democrats in pushing it forward.

The Free Flow of Information Act was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last September and is likely to come to the Senate floor for debate at some point this year. The bill enjoys the backing of President Obama, who opposed similar legislation in his first term. News organizations and a host of civil-liberties and transparency advocacy groups have mobilized behind it, believing that, in the words of one proponent, “[f]or the first time since the post-Watergate era, the stars are aligned” for a shield law to pass.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/why-media-dont-cover-jihadist-attacks-on-christians/print/

“To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace”—Hebrews 6:6

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel. Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a kristallnacht—attacking, destroying, and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests). Al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised atop churches. Christians—including priests, women and children—have been attacked, beheaded, and killed.

Nor is such persecution of Christians limited to Egypt. From Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east and from Central Asia to the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; across thousands of miles of lands inhabited by peoples who do not share the same races, languages, cultures, and/or socio-economic conditions, millions of Christians are being persecuted and in the same exact patterns.