RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/guy-milliere/no-future-for-france/print/

An atmosphere of insurgency hangs over France. Month after month, demonstrations against the legalization of gay marriage bring together hundreds of thousands of people, and mobilization is not weakening. Members of the government are harassed by disgruntled crowds during each trip they make. Bankrupt factories are stormed by angry workers who sometimes occupy the streets to erect barricades made of burning tires. Leftist groups hold rallies and accuse the government of not being radical enough. Rightist groups hold other rallies and suggest that French civilization is threatened and must fight back. Rabid feminists attack Catholics by stripping naked in public and shouting obscene slogans in churches and cathedrals.

Financial scandals are accumulating and slowly discrediting the entire political class. One month ago, Jerome Cahuzac, a Secretary of Finance, center left, who was in charge of the fight against tax evasion, was indicted for tax evasion. Now, Claude Gueant, a former Secretary of the Interior, center right, is accused of bleaching “black money” coming from the former Libyan dictatorship. François Hollande was elected President just one year ago, but he is already discredited and on the ropes: none of his predecessors had fallen from grace so fast. Seventy-six percent of the French express a negative or very negative opinion of him, and the number continues to rise. Mainstream magazines describe him with an unforgiving ferocity: “The Mediocre President,” says one, “He shames us,” adds another.

Articles appeared recently comparing the situation to the 1789 Revolution and Hollande to Louis XVI, a weak King who ended up on the guillotine. Others drew comparisons to February 1934, a time when extremist groups attempted to seize the National Assembly in a context of widespread corruption and political decay. Some analysts, trying to find a ray of light amid the darkness, have spoken of a “French Spring.” But apart from the fact that the calendar says it’s spring in France, it is difficult to see anything that resembles “spring” in what is occurring.

Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of former Congressman Allen West’s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend. The inaugural event took place May 3rd-5th at the Las Colinas Resort in Dallas, Texas. http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/allen-west-how-conservatives-can-win-the-war/ Allen West:  I cannot thank you David Horowitz enough for always allowing me to be here as […]

http://www.steynonline.com/5561/michael-poppins A few years ago, after an enjoyable match at the nearby Victoria Cricket Club, I arrived at Rustico, a fine restaurant in the small village of Flatts at the western end of Harrington Sound in Bermuda. The fellow just leaving seemed vaguely familiar, albeit more luridly dressed than usual, and my dining companion informed […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348328/praise-paranoia/page/0/1

The politics of the political right,” Charles Blow blew in a recent New York Times column, “have become the politics of paranoia.” If this is true, it is to the Right’s immense credit. Contrary to the derisive dismissals of our elites, paranoia is among the most transcendent of American virtues. In a week in which it was revealed that the Department of Justice undertook a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the privacy of the Associated Press, the Internal Revenue Service admitted that it had singled out the president’s enemies for special scrutiny, and the administration’s story on Benghazi started to crumble and fall, it is the credulous — not the skeptical — whose judgment has been called into question.

As it happens, Mr. Blow’s infelicitous sneer was a weak echo of the president’s. On May 5, Barack Obama shamefully told graduating students at Ohio State University:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

This statement is telling. Contrary to the manner in which both Al Gore and President Obama customarily use the term, “self-rule” does not in fact describe a process by which the citizen submits himself to the state and, in return, is given occasion to cast a vote on how the government may run the more significant parts of his life. Instead, “self-rule” denotes a system in which a free man may maintain control over the lion’s share of his decisions while maintaining some say over the government’s conduct in those few areas where it is necessary for government to operate.

To listen to the amateur philosophizing of Obama and Blow is to be unhappily reminded of a 1767 essay, “On Public Happiness,” in which that execrable Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues terrifyingly that one should “give man to the State or leave him entirely to himself.” This dichotomy — pristine solitude or total immersion in the State — is both false and dangerous. Yet Obama shows a particular fondness for it. The government cannot become tyrannical, it essentially holds, because, as Obama seems never to tire of intoning, the government is us. How many times has he insinuated that those who issue warnings about government are “anarchists”?

James Madison, writing as “Publius” in Federalist No. 47, insisted that it didn’t matter whether tyranny was “hereditary, self-appointed or elective,” because tyranny was tyranny. Who cares whether l’état, c’est moi or l’état c’est nous? “Even under the best forms of government,” Jefferson recognized, “those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Alas, in the age of universal suffrage, this truth has been lost on many. In response, we might insist more loudly that democratization does not necessarily equal government virtue and recall that the Bill of Rights effectively presumes that government is guilty, holding as it does that government may not intrude in certain areas of life however good it claims to be, and that the people may not be asked to relinquish their ultimate checks on power however secure they feel themselves to be. This is nothing short of codified paranoia, and America is better off for it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348220/loyalty-truth There’s a duty to speak out about the failures of the Romney campaign. Even before my new book, A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider’s Account, went on sale and could be read, it was suggested to me by former colleagues in a series of e-mails, calls, and statements in the press […]

http://www.newsmax.com/Newswidget/insurance-premiums-obamacare/2013/05/14/id/504399?promo_code=EB8D-1&utm_source=National_Review&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1 Some of the nation’s largest insurance providers are estimating that premiums could increase as much as 400 percent under Obamacare, The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday. Citing internal reports from 17 companies provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Examiner reported the estimated increases would be tied to the cost of implementing the […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348324/slimy-dem-snoops-and-dumpster-divers

It’s always the “low-level” peon’s fault, isn’t it? When Democrats get caught red-handed abusing government powers and bullying their political enemies small and large, nobody at the top knows nuttin’. The buck stops . . . in the janitor’s closet or something.

Here’s what I know: While they pretend to champion privacy rights, top left-wing operatives have routinely ransacked and plundered the private documents and personal records of conservative groups, business owners, and public figures. Through it all, those on the right standing against government tyranny have refused to stand down.

During the Clinton years, senior IRS official Paul Breslan revealed that the administration’s auditors specifically targeted conservative critics. On the hit list: Judicial Watch, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, the National Rifle Association, National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, Citizens Against Government Waste, Concerned Women for America, and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.

Steven Miller, one of the Clinton IRS agents who helped conduct those witch hunts in the 1990s, is currently the head of the Obama IRS department that has now admitted it discriminated against tea-party groups. Jackboot history repeats itself.

In 1997, far-left congressman Jim McDermott obtained and leaked an illegally taped phone call involving House GOP leaders to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times. Far from a low-level underling, McDermott was the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee at the time. Ohio GOP representative John Boehner won a $1 million civil lawsuit against McDermott. McDermott’s leak was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan as “willful and knowing misconduct [that] rises to the level of malice in this case.”

In 2005, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — headed by New York senator Charles Schumer — targeted then-Maryland GOP lieutenant governor Michael Steele as he considered a U.S. Senate bid. Two of Schumer’s staffers illegally obtained Steele’s credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. They set up a fake e-mail account and then impersonated Steele on a website to filch his financial information.

Democrats framed the sleazy move as the work of junior staffers. But the supervising operative involved, Katie Barge, was senior research director of the DSCC, a former researcher at the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America and a researcher for presidential candidate Senator John Edwards.

Schumer’s other document plumber, Lauren Weiner, was a DSCC researcher who had worked for Dick Gephardt and the Democratic National Committee. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a credit report and escaped jail time. After she was fired, she earned a journalism degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism.

In 2006, longtime Democratic operative Bob Fertik called on his minions to attempt to obtain the private phone records of prominent conservatives through shady online information brokers. “If money is scarce,” Fertik vowed, “Democrats.com will reimburse you if you buy the records for an important phone number and discover gold when you get the records.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The media, in one of its bursts of manufactured moral panic, has turned its eye on the teenage girls tweeting and tumblring away in support of Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Serial killers have always had their fan clubs. Before the Boston Marathon bombings spawned the #FreeJahar crowd, there were the Holmies, who adored James Holmes, who murdered 12 people at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

Even if Adam Lanza hadn’t committed suicide, it’s doubtful that he would have his own Lanzies fan club or a #FreeAdam hashtag. It’s not that he killed children. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev murdered Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy. James Holmes murdered Veronica Moser-Sullivan, a 6-year-old girl. Murdering children is not a turnoff for serial killer groupies, but Adam Lanza’s drawn gnomish face and bowl haircut would be.

Charles Manson had an entire cult around him. Some members like Squeaky Fromme went on worshiping him and trying to kill in his name even once he was behind bars. If Fromme were a teenage girl today, she would have a Tumblr and #InLoveThereIsNoWrong would be a hashtag.

But let’s not pretend that there’s much of a difference between New York Times reporters and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s groupies.

The day before the Boston bombings, the New York Times printed an op-ed from one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards complaining how hard it is to be on a hunger strike and the media poured on the sympathy as thickly as any of Dzhokhar’s future groupies.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323716304578483102122589628.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion

One notable aspect of the Internal Revenue Service scandal is President Obama’s strange view of accountability within the executive branch. In his Monday remarks addressing the targeting of conservative groups for tax-exempt scrutiny, Mr. Obama declared that the IRS is “an independent agency.”

In his press briefing after the story broke on Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney hit the same note. “The IRS is an independent enforcement agency with only two political appointees,” he said.

The IRS is many things, but “independent” isn’t one of them. It is formally part of the Treasury Department and is headed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed by the President. The Commissioner is accountable to the President reporting through the Treasury Secretary.

The White House has also been at pains to stress that former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who told Congress in 2012 that there had been no targeting of political groups, was appointed by George W. Bush. So the Commissioner is accountable to the President, as long as he’s the former President? Or what?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324715704578481461934680982.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Even as the politicized tax enforcement scandal expands, the Internal Revenue Service continues to expand its political powers thanks to the Affordable Care Act. A larger government always creates more openings for abuse, as Americans will learn when the IRS starts auditing their health care in addition to their 1040 next year.

Over the last decade or so the tax agency has stretched its portfolio and become an enforcer and decision-maker for government benefits and programs. Three years ago, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates within the IRS, presciently noted that ObamaCare is “the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history.”
This March the IRS Inspector General reiterated that ObamaCare’s 47 major changes to the revenue code “represent the largest set of tax law changes the IRS has had to implement in more than 20 years.” Thus the IRS is playing Thelma to the Health and Human Service Department’s Louise. The tax agency has requested funding for 1,954 full-time equivalent employees for its Affordable Care Act office in 2014.

Instead of going after tax cheats, these bureaucrats will write and enforce tax regulations for parts of the economy in which they have no core competence. For example, do ski instructors or public school teachers count as seasonal workers? How long is a “full time” work week? Is it 40 hours, or 30?

The IRS will also dispense ObamaCare’s insurance subsidies since technically they’re “advanceable” tax credits, i.e., transfer payments made prior to filing a tax return. The IRS will also police the individual mandate-tax to buy health insurance, as well as the business penalties for not offering Washington-approved coverage to employees.