RUTHFULLY YOURS

The left is already apoplectic about the decision.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2014/04/02/supreme-court-strikes-down-limits-on-individual-free-speech-contributions/?print=1

Until this morning, the federal government could limit the amount of money you contribute for political speech. Today in McCutcheon vs. FEC, the Supreme Court invalidated overall contribution limits. The federal government limited individual campaign contributions to $48,000 overall and $123,200 to everything (PACs, candidates, national parties) each cycle.

The Supreme Court struck down the limits, holding that the government’s justification for limiting free speech rights – to keep money out of politics and the avoid the appearance of impropriety – failed.

This decision cuts at the heart of the leftist narrative on free speech attacks. The heart of the narrative on the left (and among a smattering of GOP Senators) is that money in politics is bad and that large financial contributions create the appearance of corruption.

The Court rejected these justifications squarely:

Significant First Amendment interests are implicated here. Contributing money to a candidate is an exercise of an individual’s right to participate in the electoral process through both political expression and political association. A restriction on how many candidates and committees an individual may support is hardly a “modest restraint” on those rights. The Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.

After the page break, we’ll explore the driving force behind the decision.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/republicans-catch-on-that-negative-advertising-works/

People who knew Mitt Romney, or worked with him in business or government, in many cases considered him one of the most decent people [1] they ever knew. But starting in the early spring of 2012, months before Romney had officially secured his Party’s nomination for President, many millions of dollars of attack ads were running in key states such as Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Colorado suggesting that Romney was a despicable, greedy Wall Street banker. He was accused of buying up companies, firing the workers, then closing or selling the companies off, getting very rich in the process. He was also accused [2] of causing people to die of cancer after workers lost their health insurance and were presumably denied treatment.

One might think that Romney’s Bain Capital had discovered a formula where he could get rich more quickly through the failure of the businesses in which he invested, than from their successes. People who have spent their lives outside the private sector and have nested within the Democratic Party, seem to assume that private equity companies mostly invest in businesses that are already winners and if they invest in struggling companies, they should be able to turn them into winners 100% of the time. If some investments go bad, then it must be because the private equity companies make more money by destroying healthy companies than rebuilding them. To be fair, Newt Gingrich, had launched a similar demagogic campaign against Romney when his fortunes began to sink after the early primaries in 2012, though he did not go so far as to accuse Romney of causing cancer patients to die without insurance, and his attack ads did not run in many states.

Even before the first Republican Party primary in Iowa, in the fall of 2011, left wing groups had created a campaign known as “Occupy Wall Street” designed to highlight the 1% (especially the Wall Street variety) versus the 99%. One does not need to be a cynic to believe that the Obama campaign team fully expected Romney would be their opponent in the fall of 2012. The Occupy Wall Street campaign was an easy AstroTurf exercise [3] to change the subject — from the glaring failures of their first term to the inequality in America, symbolized by a rich white guy like Mitt Romney.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14781#.Uz0gBVeCUtV

During Ehud Olmert’s period in the prime minister’s office, I coined the term, “olmertia.”

So bad was the crippling effect Ehud Olmert’s policies had inflicted upon Israel that “olmertia”, a word which both rhymed with and had a similar meaning to the word, inertia, described the situation in Israel; what the Penguin English dictionary referred to a state of being inert and sluggishness; a lack of skill; an indisposition to motion, exertion or change. But the meaning of olmertia for the Jewish state went much further and was far more debilitating than mere inertia.

These symptoms would be bad enough if applied to Israel when confronted by the external aggression launched upon it by Hezbollah from its base in Lebanon and Hamas from its base in Gaza. But most Israelis are capable and anxious to act swiftly and decisively against any enemy.

It was something else. A dreadful force was crippling the very survival of Israel and destroying its famed ability to meet challenges and overcome them. What was this force? It was embodied in the person of the then Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the name to describe its baleful influence on the Jewish State’s existence was the one I coined: olmertia. Perhaps it is still a word destined to enter the dictionaries of the world’s languages.

Prime Minister Olmert came to power when Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke and sank into a coma from which he never emerged. Sharon had caused a seismic rift in Israeli society by his notion that to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, expelling its Jewish communities, he would thus offer the Arab Palestinians a golden opportunity to prove to the world that they could create a civilized and viable society.

As the world now knows, a monstrous Hamastan emerged with no interest in nation building. On the contrary, the Hamastanis, (aka Arabs who call themselves Palestinians) have spent their every waking hour launching missiles at Israeli towns and villages with the intent to kill and maim as many Jewish civilians as they can. The idea, euphemistically called “disengagement,” became an enormous disaster for Israel. It was an idea that Ehud Olmert joyously embraced.

Into Sharon’s shoes stepped none other than the husband of an allegedly leading “Peace Now” advocate and the father of an extremely left-wing daughter who, it was reported, allegedly made life difficult for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in their attempts to prevent Palestinian terrorism. Such was the family surrounding Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/142371/sec_id/142371
Municipal elections were held in The Netherlands on March 19th and in France on March 23rd. While a minority of registered voters cast ballots in each country, the results appeared to indicate that the Euro skeptic parties may be on the rise. Bloomberg Business Week commented in a mid-February 2014 article on the results of the Swiss anti-immigration referendum that these parties might be in contention to take upwards of 150 of the 751 seats in the May 22nd to 25th European Parliamentary Elections. The Swiss People’s Party referendum on immigration control passed by 19,000 votes. The Economist called Marine Le Pen’s first round municipal election results on Sunday, March 23rd, a veritable “triumph.” Perhaps indicating that her National Front party would do well in the second round on March 30th in France. It trumpeted the devastation of France’s media and President Hollande:
FOR Libération, it was a “slap in the face”. For Le Monde, another daily newspaper, it was an “earthquake”. The first round of voting in French municipal elections on March 23rd was a clear snub to François Hollande, the French president, whose Socialist Party did worse than polls had predicted in several towns. If there was a symbolic victor ahead of the second round of voting on March 30th, it was Marine Le Pen, the leader of the populist National Front.
The leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage, given current trending opinion polls, may be poised to surpass the Labor party. It alleged in a UK Telegraph report that Lady Thatcher’s unofficial biographer considers Farage’s immigration and EU stands “closely aligned” with her views. A decade ago this writer was on a weekly international Radio America panel with Farage where as the lone UKIP Member of the European Parliament he boosted these views. These opinion polls prior to the May European Parliamentary elections reflect the ascendency of the anti-immigration Euro skeptic parties in many EU countries.
In a November 2013 Iconoclast post we wrote glowingly about the prospects of the Euro skeptic alliance led by Le Pen and in The Netherlands by Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV).

I am so obsessed with Congress and 2014 I almost forgot that New York State has a gubernatorial election in November. Governor Andrew Cuomo(D ) is running for reelection and his major challenger is Rob Astorino (R)a splendid man who has been a successful Westchester County Executive. He deserves higher office and will obtain it…but not in this election….the numbers just don’t add up.

The mystery is why Andrew Cuomo is running on some very conservative issues- a better budget and significant cuts in taxes. Does he get what’s blowing in the wind- a general conservative trend nationally? Is he just rehearsing for a Presidential bid?

New York State has had mediocre governors…Andrew’s father among them. Mario Cuomo was, like Adlai Stevenson,- lofty rhetoric masquerading mediocrity even at being mediocre. And George Pataki?

In any event Andrew Cuomo is aggressive, ambitious and sharp.

Why not put his feet to the fire and ask about fracking which will restore New York’s economy significantly? New York State is magnificent- endowed with mountains, rivers and parks- great state colleges and universities- excellent hospitals and medical schools…..and badly in need of help.

Will Andrew Cuomo step up to the task? Ask him.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/protecting-hillary-trumps-benghazi-investigation?f=puball

No matter how many times it is called “phony” or the administration blames Fox News for keeping the scandal alive, the issue of Benghazi and the September 11, 2012 attacks remains alive and well. And this fact is damaging to presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State under President Barack Obama. A recent Pew Research Center/USA Today poll ranked the death of those four Americans that night in Benghazi as the “worst thing about the career of [Hillary] Clinton,” followed by her husband’s affair, according to Bloomberg this March.

The Democratic establishment has started to complain that this is Republican politicking because of Clinton’s unannounced, but presumed, candidacy. But the issue cuts both ways: the Democratic establishment has a glaring conflict of interest when it comes to finding out the truth about the Benghazi attacks because they don’t want some of their own tarnished in the process.

“The total cost of compliance with Benghazi-related congressional requests sent to the department and other agencies is estimated to be in the millions of dollars,” stated the Pentagon in a March 11 letter, according to the Associated Press.

“Congressional Republicans have been relentless in investigating the attack, arguing that the Obama administration misled the American people about a terror attack during the heat of the presidential campaign,” reports the Associated Press. “The GOP is determined to press ahead, especially since the assault on the mission occurred during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.” This manufactured public relations framework is aided by the fact that the House GOP established a website dedicated to the investigation into the Benghazi attacks, and has released a number of reports that are authored by the House majority without input from their increasingly alienated minority Congressional partners.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/teddy-roosevelts-real-views-on-immigration

Last Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden quoted Theodore Roosevelt out of context while delivering the keynote address at a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Biden was pushing the Obama Administration’s desire to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants by citing the alleged views of a great and iconic American President who was also a Republican. Immigration “reform” is currently blocked in the GOP House. Biden’s quote of TR (unacknowledged from 1908) went as follows, “Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed or a line of descent. It’s the question of principles, idealism, and character.” Teddy Roosevelt did believe this, but he also championed an immigration policy much more in line with the current conservative position than with the Obama White House. Biden asserted that based on TR’s “standard, 11 million undocumented persons are already Americans, in my view.” This was such a gross distortion of the record that it went well beyond the Vice President’s well-known gift for gaffes. It was a blatant attempt to mislead the public by claiming a false endorsement.

For Teddy Roosevelt, not all immigrants were the same; they did not all have the attributes cited in the quote misused by Biden. As he said in his annual message to Congress as President in 1905, “We cannot have too much immigration of the right sort and we should have none whatsoever of the wrong sort….The prime need is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good citizens. The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be strengthened, Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United States.”

His views did not change over the course of his career. As early as 1888, he said in a speech in New York City, “I wish Congress would revise our laws about immigration. Paupers and assisted immigrants of all kinds should be kept out; so should every variety of Anarchists….We must soon try to prevent too many laborers coming here and underselling our own workmen in the labor market; a good round head tax on each immigrant, together with a rigid examination into his character would work well.”

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304886904579473532432749404?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj

Suddenly ObamaCare is a roaring success, happy days are here again and liberals are euphoric, or claim to be. There are more than a few reasons to doubt this new fairy tale, not least the behavior of Senate Democrats running for re-election this year.

In the Rose Garden Tuesday, President Obama reported that 7.1 million people had signed up so far, confirming a Monday night White House news leak. “That doesn’t mean all our health-care problems have been solved forever,” he conceded with customary modesty. The government appears to have tapped heretofore-unknown reserves of bureaucratic efficiency by releasing numbers timed to this campaign-style pep rally.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/pelosi-founding-fathers-wanted-obamacare/print/

Every day, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi engage in a close race to see which of them can say the craziest thing.

Pelosi won today. Tomorrow, Reid might claim that the Koch Brothers are the cause of the Syrian Civil War.

“It is really so heart warming for those of us who worked so hard [to make sure] many more people in our country would have access to healthcare,” she told reporters at the stakeout position just outside the West Wing portico.

“There are those critics, bumps in the road, but they’ve only been turbulence. They have not been an obstacle to the American people having healthier life that our that our founders wanted for them,” she said.

Those founders wanted “life — a healthier life — liberty and the freedom to pursue their happiness, not [be] job-locked, but having benefits that having health-care policies that are portable, they could be self-employed, be a photographer — they could start their own business, they could change jobs, they could reach their aspirations,” she declared.

All along we thought that the Founders wanted liberty. But no, apparently they wanted the freedom to force everyone to buy worthless health insurance.

The Founders wanted to separate health insurance from employment, an issue that didn’t exist at the time, so that people could become photographers, a profession that didn’t exist at the time. Also they were deeply concerned about the ozone layer, opposed the death penalty and were big fans of Common Core.

Just ask Nancy. Now if only someone would unlock her job.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/pollard-and-the-last-ditch-effort-to-save-the-peace-talks/print/

Secretary of State John Kerry hopped over to Israel from Brussels on Monday and left Tuesday morning. The mission: rescue what is known as the peace process, which has been tottering at the brink of collapse.

His game was to offer both sides inducements that, he hoped, they couldn’t refuse. To the Palestinians: 426 freed prisoners including 26 convicted murderers, along with a partial Israeli building freeze in Judea and Samaria (but not in East Jerusalem). In return for those favors, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was supposed to agree to keep talking with Israel until the end of this year, and not to go to UN bodies to wage diplomatic warfare against it.

To Israel: Jonathan Pollard. In return for that favor, the Israeli government was supposed to—once again—swallow the lopsided terms and agree to keep up the pretense of the talks.

For Israel the terms were still worse than that may sound. Four hundred of the freed Palestinian prisoners were supposed to be minor offenders whom Israel would choose, and who would be released gradually over the course of the year. But of the 26 convicted terrorists (they would be the fourth such group to be released by Israel since last summer), 14 were supposed to be Israeli Arabs.

For Israel that carries a special sting. As president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas has no authority over Arab citizens of Israel, and his demand for the release of the 14 is a particularly brazen slap to Israel’s judicial autonomy—one that, once again, he appeared to be getting away with.