RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama didn’t want to comment today on the allegations of unnamed White House officials that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been spying on the United States to undermine a nuclear deal.

“As a general rule, I don’t comment on intelligence matters in a big room full of reporters, and I think I’ll continue that tradition,” he quipped at a joint press conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

But he was ready to throw out some more soundbites in regard to how he feels about Netanyahu.

“With respect to Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, I think it’s important to understand that the issue here is not what I believe, but it’s what the Palestinians and the parties in the negotiations and the Israeli people believe is possible. That’s the most important issue,” Obama said. “You know, I’ve said before and I’ll simply repeat, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu in the election run-up stated that a Palestinian state would not occur while he was prime minister.”

Under regulations announced Friday, fracking on federal lands will be subject to a costly new set of rules covering the entire process of drilling, from application to production. Under the new rules, drillers must submit a detailed plan with site and wastewater control information as part of a lengthy approval process. They must provide covered tanks for wastewater storage, a requirement now in force in only ten states. They must submit a complete report, including a listing of chemicals used within 30 days of well completion. Drillers on federal land will also be required to post their proprietary formulary of chemicals on a website, which could be subject to hacking or leaks. Since when has Coke been forced to post its secret formula online?

Coming on top of Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline and a host of other anti-oil and gas actions, including continued opposition to arctic drilling, the fracking regulations are further proof of the administration’s indifference to economic growth. Altogether, the administration’s hostility toward drilling is costing the nation hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.

Jeb Bush distanced himself Tuesday from James Baker, who is advising him on foreign policy, after the former secretary of state directed criticism at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Baker, who has been a close friend of George H.W. Bush since the two were young men in Houston, was announced as one of Jeb Bush’s 21 unpaid foreign policy advisers last month. In a speech to the left-leaning advocacy group J Street on Monday, Baker blasted Netanyahu for “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship.”

Politico calls J Street “left leaning”; it’s a hardcore leftist pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel organization. Speaking there is the equivalent of speaking to the Muslim Brotherhood or CAIR.

“While he respects Secretary Baker, he disagrees with the sentiments he expressed last night and opposes J Street’s advocacy,” Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell wrote in an email Tuesday.

The moves are part of a raft of new anti-terrorism measures aimed at preventing French citizens or residents from joining jihadist groups abroad. The new powers are controversial because they can be implemented without judicial approval.

“These are legal tools, but not tools of exception, nor of generalized surveillance of citizens. There cannot be a lawless zone in the digital space. Often we cannot predict the threat, the services must have the power to react quickly.” — Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France.

“When you do a projection for the months to come, there could be 5,000 [Europeans waging jihad in Iraq and Syria] before summer and 10,000 before the end of the year. Do you realize the threat that this represents?” — Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France.

The French government has cut the social welfare benefits of nearly 300 jihadists who have left France to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Amid a rapidly expanding jihadist threat, it has also started confiscating passports, imposing travel bans and blocking access to jihadist websites.

The moves are part of a raft of new anti-terrorism measures aimed at preventing French citizens or residents from joining jihadist groups abroad, and at slowing the spread of radical Islam at home. Muslim groups are criticizing the flurry of activity as “Islamophobia.”

Stalin’s Man In Spain ‘Between a Communist and a traitor there can be no relations of any kind,’ Carrillo told his father, a Socialist party member, in 1939.

Stalinism has left an ignominious pantheon, from the famous (Jean Paul Sartre) to the forgotten. Into the latter category falls Santiago Carrillo, the Spanish Communist leader who is now the subject of an exhumation by Paul Preston of the London School of Economics. As the author of “Franco” (1993), still the best biography of the caudillo, and “The Spanish Holocaust” (2012), a brilliant account of the atrocities in the country’s mythologized civil war (1936-39), Mr. Preston has a fair claim to being the world’s leading authority on 20th-century Spain. His new work tells the story of Franco’s “most consistent left-wing enemy,” whom the author knew and poetically deems “The Last Stalinist.”

On Israel and Iran, President Obama Mistakes Friend and Foe by Jeb Bush
Sorry but these are hollow and perfunctory words…..Jeb Bush has chosen James Baker as his foreign policy guru….Yes the slimy man who just addressed J Street, whose Princeton thesis praised Clement Atlee and Ernest Bevin for their vicious anti-Israel policies during and after World War 2, who was more hostile to Israel than any American Secretary of State since John Foster Dulles….. rsk

Instead of projecting leadership and defending American values, he has withdrawn from the stage or chosen to trust our enemies. A month ago, in a speech to the Chicago Global Forum, I argued that the Obama administration’s foreign policy could best be summarized this way: weak and uncertain. The administration indulges our enemies and attacks our friends. In the weeks that followed that speech, the problem has gotten worse and the world has only become more dangerous. Consider American policy towards Iran, a nation that has waged a relentless campaign of terror and war-by-proxy against U.S. troops and American allies for more than three decades. The administration believes Iran will become a responsible partner for peace once it signs up to a deal that largely leaves in place its nuclear infrastructure. In a region that is in a near-constant state of conflict — with Iran as a primary instigator — this approach is foolish.

Less than an hour elapsed between Ted Cruz’s announcing that he would be running for the presidency and the beginning of the oh-so-predictable “McCarthy!” taunts. On Twitter, the comedian Bill Maher sardonically endorsed Cruz’s candidacy, asking, “What’s not to love about a guy who acts like Joe McCarthy and sweats like Richard Nixon?” On MSNBC, meanwhile, Chris Matthews revived his old critique, charging that Cruz was “deliberately channeling McCarthy again today.” This, alas, is a line that has been trotted out before.

PM Forgive me for my cynicism, but that makes me think she just might not mean it. In a speech in front of a crowd full of journalists at Syracuse University on Monday, Hillary Clinton declared that she had a new hairstyle and would have a new, open relationship with the press along with it — and then didn’t take questions afterwards. “With a room full of political reporters, I thought to myself, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’” Clinton joked, apparently considering the press busting her for illegal e-mail practices that may have put national security at risk to be something to joke about. “But I am all about new beginnings,” she added. “A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new e-mail account. Why not a new relationship with the press?

Rubio’s proud restating of the obvious
On Thursday, two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s landslide re-election, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) delivered a 15-minute tribute to the Jewish state and a simultaneous tirade against President Barack Obama’s treatment of it.

Though Rubio has yet to announce whether he will be running for president in 2016 (another Republican of Latino origin, Ted Cruz, on Monday became the first candidate to throw his hat in the ring), Rubio deserves a standing ovation at this moment for jumping in to defend Netanyahu’s assertion that a “two-state solution” is not possible anytime soon.

There’s precious little point in trying to get Americans’ attention these days except for speculation about who’s ahead or behind in the race to the presidential election that’s still twenty months away. Though twenty months is an eternity in politics – especially geopolitics – we are so befogged with the daily horserace that it’s almost impossible for the media to cover anything else.

But we must. Now that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx) has formally entered the race and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) is soon to follow, we have to spur the Republican Party to do a much better job of vetting their candidate than they have in the past two races. Here are just few of the basic questions. Let’s make it easier by posing a few questions and giving the right answers.

President Obama is about to announce a ten-year deal with Iran that is, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told congress, is a very bad deal. It won’t bar Iran from uranium enrichment or the development of atomic bomb technology, especially including the intercontinental ballistic missiles by which nuclear weapons can be delivered. It won’t mandate unlimited inspections and thus can’t guarantee Iran won’t cheat its way to a nuclear arsenal. Forty-seven Republican senators wrote to the ayatollahs and told them the senate would regard the agreement as voidable by the next president. If you’re elected, what will you do with the Iran nuclear weapons agreement?