RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11087/pub_detail.asp

While the current administration has a stake in referring to the Muslim Brotherhood as “moderate” and largely secular, there is a reality very different from the view at Foggy Bottom.

The Brotherhood is a popular movement of Islam founded in 1928 by Hasan al Banna, the most prominent representative of what is sometimes referred to as Islamism. For al Banna whatever ails the Muslim world – the umma – can be addressed by the simple sentence, “Islam is the solution.” Religious law – shariah – is to be restored to its central place as an organizing principle for every sphere of life.

From the Brotherhood point of view, whatever ails the world can be traced to the West’s pernicious influence. It stole scientific secrets, deprived Muslims of their religious faith and converted them into docile subjects. While resentment is the main current of Islamism, it is curiously united with modern mass media to spread the faith. Similarly, while the West is deplored, the technical achievements of the West are often welcomed and even aspects of democracy – such as the civil code – which can be exploited to advance Islam is admired. The Brotherhood openly calls for free elections, but only as a way to legitimate its authority. This duality is what confuses the detractors of Islamism. Hoping for the best, some critics rely on the assertions of Western preference to conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood is secular or moderate.

Hillel’s Betrayal of Israel Posted By Daniel Greenfield URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/hillel%e2%80%99s-betrayal-of-israel/ The University of California, Berkeley is ground zero for the campus war against Israel. Students for Justice in Palestine emerged on the Berkeley campus and its annual Israel Apartheid Week is a festival of hate with chilling overtones. But it’s also a campus […]

Michelle Obama’s UnsavorySchool-Lunch Flop
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/286351/michelle-obama-s-unsavory-br-school-lunch-flop-michelle-malkin
The first lady’s initiative has been a disaster.
The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama’s nanny-state intentions. Don’t take my word for it. Schoolkids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the East Wing chef-in-chief’s healthy-lunch diktats. Get your Pepto-Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing.
According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city’s “trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop.” In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama’s federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs, and flavored milk from the menu for “beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads.”
Sounds delectable in theory. But in practice, the initiative has been what L.A. Unified’s food-services director Dennis Barrett plainly concludes is a “disaster.” While the Obama administration has showered the nation’s second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market — stoked not just by students, but also by teachers — is now thriving. Moreover, “principals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away.”
This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional improvements — from $2 million to $20 million alone over the last five years on fresh produce.
This despite a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and 3,000 layoffs earlier this year.
Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school-lunch program “sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat.” The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students’ reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat, and hard rice, one wonders how much of the “free” food will go down the hatch — or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286355
Gingrich and the CourtsTime to rein in the imperial judiciary.
In 2005, Congress barred our terrorist enemies from appealing their wartime detention to the civilian courts. The Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) was an eminently reasonable statute. The handling of captives in wartime had always been exclusively an executive-branch prerogative — war being a political and military exercise, not a litigation. The framers committed all aspects of warfare to the political branches, accountable to the people whose lives are at stake, not to the politically insulated judiciary.
Congress acted comfortably within its powers: The Constitution makes it master of the federal courts’ jurisdiction. Indeed, other than the Supreme Court, all federal courts are creatures of statute — the Constitution does not require their existence. Yet, in a nod to the ambiguities of terrorist warfare, in which jihadists do not operate openly as honorable soldiers, the DTA even provided a narrow avenue of judicial review. That made our enemies the first anti-American belligerents in history to be given systematic access to American people’s courts in wartime — something the World War II–era Congress would not have tolerated, and that the Supreme Court of that time actually warned against.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ The Light That Burns A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again. 120 years after the Maccabees drove out the foreign invaders and […]

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=48229 Former President George W. Bush’s aide Michael Gerson posted a distressingly ignorant column on 12/13/11 which attacked both former speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, and my colleague Andrew C. McCarthy, for their sober, if frank conceptions of the Sharia. The counterfactual basis for Mr. Gerson’s diatribe is his own thoroughly deficient understanding […]

http://times247.com/ Obama slashes Guard: Spartan 300 to defend 2,000-mile border AP Tuesday, December 20, 2011 News Starting in January, the force of 1,200 National Guard troops at the border will be reduced to fewer than 300 at a cost of about $60 million, said Paul Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense. Read more… Read […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/12/the_epas_unconscionable_war_on_fracking.html

The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees that “no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” For government to harm investors in a private business by bringing false charges against that business is most certainly a violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Environmental Protection Agency, it seems, has been engaged in just this sort of unconstitutional activity ever since Obama appointed Lisa Jackson as director.

The main target of this overzealous prosecution has been companies that produce fossil fuels. Whether it be mountaintop mining, offshore or Arctic drilling, or hydraulic fracturing, the Obama EPA has moved swiftly to block new exploration and production. The bias against fossil fuels that exists at the agency would be bad enough, but the fact that the EPA may have employed illegal and unconstitutional tactics in support of its green agenda is far worse.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/20/high-stakes-in-the-taiwanese-elections/

BY A BIZARRE TWIST OF POLITICAL HYPOCRISY…TAIWAN…A FLOURISHING DEMOCRACY IS DENIED MEMBERSHIP IN THE UNITED NATIONS TO ACCOMMODATE THE THUGS IN BEIJING…..ANOTHER LEGACY OF THE FOUL POLITICS THAT STARTED WITH NIXON/KISSINGER BETRAYAL OF TAIWAN IMPLEMENTED BY CARTER WHEN HE REMOVED THE AMERICAN EMBASSY FROM TAIPEI AND TRANSFERRED IT TO PEKING, DUCKING ALL PRINCIPLES AND RESPONSIBILITY TO ALLIES…..RSK

On Jan. 14, Taiwanese voters will elect the country’s next president and parliament. Officials in both Beijing and Washington are closely watching the election campaign, for the outcome could affect both Taiwan-China and U.S.-China relations.

President Ma Ying-jeou, the incumbent from a mainland emigre family and Beijing’s preferred candidate, came to power in a landslide victory in 2008 on a platform of rapprochement with China and reviving Taiwan’s struggling economy. However, most Taiwanese opinion polls show him running behind Tsai Ing-wen, a native of Taiwan and candidate of the island’s major opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which leans toward a more independent Taiwan and rejects unification with China.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/20/bidens-taliban-buddies/

Vice President Joe Biden said the Taliban are not our enemy. If so, it makes one wonder what all the killing is about.

“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Mr. Biden stated in an interview last week. “That’s critical.” White House spokesman Jay Carney, in his customary role as clarifier of Mr. Biden’s statements, explained, “It is a simple fact that we went into Afghanistan because of the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. We are there now to ultimately defeat al Qaeda, to stabilize Afghanistan and stabilize it in part so that al Qaeda or other terrorists who have as their aim attacks on the United States cannot establish a foothold again in that country.”

This rhetorical dance is true so far as it goes, but the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force defines the enemy as “those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations.” The Taliban were given an opportunity to hand over the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks but refused. That’s the simple fact of why America overthrew the regime, and that’s the root of the current spat with Taliban leader Mullah Omar.