RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/holy_chutzpah_3_jewish_heroes_of_2011.html

All is not lost. We live in an age of terrifying anti-Semitism, and so far, the Jewish establishment’s only real response has been a competition over who can surrender fastest. But Jewish self-respect is not dead.

A few courageous men and women — barely more than a minyan — jump out of bed each morning, determined to defend Israel and the Jewish people, combat Islamic outrages, and expose the Jews in the Basement — the craven, self-appointed Jewish grandees.

True, this handful of heroes are sometimes reviled in their own communities and threatened with lawsuits and jail. They’re loudly ignored, defamed, and detested by the establishment. It doesn’t matter. Each one is blessed with holy chutzpah — an invigorating spiritual cocktail of brazen effrontery, steely stubbornness, and passion for justice.

Israeli democracy is as healthy as ever

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/719/israeli_democracy_is_as_healthy_as_ever

There is a growing desire to wrest political power from unaccountable bodies and restore it to the citizens of Israel, and the proposed NGO bill is intended to do just that

On Wednesday, William Hague decided to wade into domestic Israeli politics by slamming a proposal to limit the funding of NGOs by foreign governments. According to Hague, the bill would have the effect of “undermining the democratic principles” upon which the State of Israel was founded.

Leaving aside the obvious question of whether a British cabinet minister ought to be lecturing another country’s parliament on its legislative agenda, we might wonder why our foreign secretary was so keen to embroil himself in what is already a very heated debate within Israel.

After all, if Hague really cared about defending democracy, wouldn’t he spend a little less time criticising the Middle East’s only democratic state and a little more time voicing concern over, say, the rise of Islamism in Egypt?

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/717/how_calling_someone_a_white_bitch_is_not_racist_and_being_a_drunken_muslim_saves_you_from_jail

This week’s news story about the twenty-two year old care worker beaten senseless by a drunken gang of Somalian women would have sent chills down the spine of anyone who defends the rule of law as applicable to all. They were spared a jail sentence after their defence lawyer claimed that as Muslims they were unused to drinking.

In a society where we’ve recently railed against our representatives and corporate types for “corruption”, “greed” and for appearing to believe that “the rules don’t apply to them” – we’re apparently still making excuses for our citizens based on gratuitous or farcical claims to “extenuating circumstances”, especially where some of those circumstances can be fitted inside a politically correct agenda. The rules still apply.

http://times247.com/ CNN ran a piece last week entitled, ‘Exclusive: Inside the offices of Occupy Wall Street.’ Photo Credit:CNN Money The so-called leaderless Occupy movement has just been caught red-handed operating what appears to be a nerve center staffed by professional agitators deeply tied to groups funded by billionaire activist George Soros. Those same groups, most […]

Few other places turn out dystopian fantasies quite like the United Kingdom and if the United States has never quite become the chrome skyscraper and flying car utopian wonderland of its utopian fantasies, with its ubiquitous cameras and DNA banks, the United Kingdom seems well on the way to its dystopian destination.

1984, The Prisoner and V for Vendetta are all a train ride away nowadays. Say the wrong thing and you can expect to be wearing a prison suit and nominated for a national run on Two Minute Hate.

Towards the end of last month, the UK launched a nationwide manhunt or womanhunt, in coordination with online activists, Labour politicians and the police to bring the most feared criminal in the islands to justice. The lady, whose last name is appropriately enough West, will be spending Christmas in prison away from her three children. Her crime was to engage in some abrasive taunts with the denizens of the New Britain complete with obscenities and be videotaped doing it.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/resisting-the-obvious/

In much of my recent work — books and articles — I have addressed the issue of antisemitism in the contemporary world. That the beast is once again slouching, not only towards Bethlehem as in the Yeats poem [1], but toward Oslo, Paris, London, Stockholm, Malmo, Copenhagen, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Washington, Toronto, Sydney, Caracas, Brussels, Amsterdam, and many other cities and regions around the globe, should come as no surprise. From biblical times to the present moment, in their own homeland or “scattered among the peoples,” [2] Jews have never been safe. This is precisely what distinguishes the Jewish people from the rest of humanity, the specific nature of their “chosenness.” Wherever they may find themselves they are always at risk, whether actively or potentially, targeted for slander, exclusion, or extinction.

In developing this argument in such books as The Big Lie [3] (2007) and Hear, O Israel! [4] (2009), I have been condemned by a number of my critics, who accuse me of exaggeration, self-pity, or a sort of obsolescence, as if my gaze were fixed on the past at the expense of a more amenable or complex present. The fact that many of these detractors are themselves Jewish is only to be expected, for Jews have a long history of wilfully ignoring the signs and rejecting the self-evident. It is not only the JINOs (Jews in Name Only), the “non-Jewish Jews” flagged by Isaac Deutscher, or the apikorsim (“wicked sons” of Jewish public life) enamored of their enemies who are blind to the historical fatwa against them. It is also those whom I refer to as the “good Jews” and whom author and Sun Media columnist Ezra Levant calls the “official Jews” [5] — that is, a significant number of Jewish communicants, as well as their secular counterparts — who refuse to read the writing on the wall even when it is in their own language, inscribed in block letters, and blazoned on every street corner.

These Jewish critics — I have in mind people like Richard Just, editor of The New Republic, éminence grise Clifford Orwin of the Hoover Institution, and Canadian poet Harold Heft, among others who share their inveterate myopia — assailed my analysis as, variously, hyper-inflated, unfair to Islam, scare-mongering, one-dimensional, and so on, as if I refused to align my perspective with the mores of the enlightened and democratic West.

But the enlightened and democratic West is no longer what it very intermittently was — or rather, it is certainly not what it presents itself as being. The legacy media, academia, the political class, and an alarming proportion of the public have made common cause with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign of the growing Islamic hegemony in the realms of ideology and practice. This is especially true of Europe whose Jewish population is increasingly under threat. As French philosopher Guy Milliere observes in his new manuscript Dissident: Why Europe Is Dead and What It Means for America and the World (not yet published), “Almost everywhere in Europe, it is now dangerous for a practicing Jew to wear a yarmulke,” a development that he regards as a visible and repellant symptom “of a wider and more disquieting decay.” There is no doubt, he continues, “that there is something rotten in today’s Europe.”

Impeach Holder and DOJ Officials for DOJ Lies

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2011/12/10/impeach-holder-and-doj-officials-for-doj-lies/

This week in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder doubled down, then tripled down, on Fast and Furious. He dug in, fought back, and pretended nothing is systemically wrong inside his Justice Department. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) even accused him of potential contempt of Congress, a crime (2 U.S.C. 192).

Holder’s testimony was not merely shameful, it was a maturing manifestation of a lawlessness which I first warned about in July of 2010 when I testified about the New Black Panther dismissal. Small acts of lawlessness have given way to larger ones.

In the radio and television interviews I do, I am often asked, “What can be done about Holder and the DOJ?” Until now, I have responded that becoming educated about the DOJ and urging your congressman to action is best. But circumstances have changed, and you as an American can do something about it.

Holder’s brazen display before the House Judiciary Committee signals that the Justice Department is in deep trouble. It is time for Eric Holder to go. It is time for his Chief of Staff Gary Grindler to go. It is time for Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer to go.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/12/10/a-unexpected-wager-an-invented-people-and-a-private-sector-historian-recap-of-the-gop-debate/?singlepage=true

NEWT STUCK TO HIS GUNS ON THE PALARABS WHILE ROMNEY WAFFLED…..PERIOD…..RSK

“Turning to foreign policy, George Stephanopolous asked Ron Paul if Newt Gingrich was right or wise to describe the Palestinians as an “invented people,” as he did today. No, said Ron Paul. Gingrich stood by it and detailed the eliminationist rhetoric of Hamas and Fatah. Romney said Gingrich was mostly right but should not have called the Palestinians “invented.” Gingrich refused to back down, noting that the term “Palestinian” was not in common usage until 1977. Romney called Gingrich a “bomb thrower.” Gingrich capped the exchange by noting that Reagan went around his foreign policy establishment to tell the truth about the USSR, and Newt would do the same regarding the Middle East. The exchange drew out a real difference between Romney and Gingrich. Romney would seek “consensus” while Gingrich would lead on truth and from the gut. Perry said the “invented” controversy itself was essentially invented, and went on to hammer President Obama’s weak foreign policy. “This president is the problem,” noted Perry, “not something Newt Gingrich said.” Deserved applause ensued.”

http://www.jewishledger.com/author/JLedger/

Sometimes things come in threes. Last week for Israel that was the case.

First there was the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium lecturing a Jewish audience in Brussels on two kinds of antisemitism as he understands them. One is ‘traditional’ and the other a result of Israel’s actions in the Middle East.

Then there was Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s rant to the Saban Center’s meeting in Washington that centered on his and his administration’s obsession that all that’s needed for peace in the Middle East is more Israeli concessions to the Arabs. “Just get to the damned table” he sneered not once but twice, as if Israel has been the recalcitrant in these non-negotiations.

And then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, unperturbed by the momentous events going on all across the Middle East chooses to focus on two items on Israel’s legislative agenda. One deals with where women sit on a bus in some small part of the country as advocated by a tiny portion of the population, and the other with outside funds coming in to pervert the Israeli democratic process. As a vibrant democracy, Israel is capable of dealing with these matters on its own. Certainly they are not of the same gravity as the stoning of a woman in Iran or the killing of Copts in Egypt, let alone the regime change for the worse in so many capitals in the region.

None of this would be said if those speaking didn’t feel that it was within the boundaries of acceptable speech approved by this administration. The Obama disdain for Israel, from the Obama-Sarkozy exchange of a few weeks ago, to the outbursts of last week, is certainly evident to anyone who cares to listen.

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The State Department’s inept leadership in things Middle East is not new. Anyone familiar with the demise of the Shah of Iran’s regime recognizes the clumsy policy initiatives of yesterday’s State Department — that helped drive the Shah from office — as being of a piece with what we are seeing in the area today — on a much broader scale — from Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Jimmy Carter was amenable to the State Department predisposition against the Shah and facilitated his fall.

Today, Barack Obama is playing the same Carteresque role in several other countries in the Middle East, with the assured effect being destabilization on a wider stage. It’s almost as if the only constant in our policy is the State Department’s avowed bias against America’s interests, with Israel being a subset of those policies. That bias surfaces often, but truly has free reign under Democrat Presidents of similar mind.

If Carter gave us an Iran that was destined to continually cause mischief throughout the region, Obama has given us turmoil that will continue to roil the rest of the world. Today, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and soon possibly Syria are being given the same opportunity to harm the West as Iran was given in the late 1970’s.

Complicit in all of this is a media that can’t discern the difference between reality and hopefulness. After all, it was National Security’s James Clapper who told us that the Sharia-dedicated Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt is secular and benign. The media has run with that ever since.

Much of our foreign policy is encapsulated in Richard Heffner’s 1975 quote. Said Heffner: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” This is precisely the Obama operating mode in both foreign and domestic policy — and we are making mistakes almost daily because of it.

–nrg

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/author/byron-york
Remember the Gerald Walpin affair? Republican Sen. Charles Grassley does.

Walpin was the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the organization that runs the AmeriCorps service program. In June 2009, Walpin received a call from Norman Eisen, who was then the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. Eisen told Walpin he had an hour to either resign or be fired.

Eisen’s call appeared to violate the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which is designed to protect inspectors general from political interference. The Act requires the president to give Congress 30 days’ notice, plus an explanation of cause, before firing an inspector general. In Walpin’s case, the White House did neither.

Walpin had made some CNCS political appointees unhappy by tenaciously investigating misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California and a prominent supporter of President Obama. When Grassley and other lawmakers found out that Walpin had been summarily fired, and that a political motive might be involved, they demanded an explanation.

There was no doubt the White House had failed to give Walpin 30 days’ notice, but on the substance of the matter, Eisen told congressional investigators the White House had done a full investigation of complaints about Walpin’s performance and the CNCS board had unanimously supported Walpin’s removal.

Neither statement was true.

Republican investigators released a report on the matter that was strongly critical of White House actions, and particularly Eisen’s actions, in the Walpin firing. As it turned out, even though interest in Walpin faded, Eisen’s statements would come back to haunt him, because in June 2010 President Obama decided to nominate Eisen to be U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.