RUTHFULLY YOURS

As of yesterday afternoon, a nonstop round-trip flight from New York City to Los Angeles on Independence Day weekend cost $484. That the price is so low is an incredible story in itself, one that is more important than most of what our children are taught in their history classes and one that we should not fail to appreciate, but it is a subject for another day. Consider, though, that that $484 is a messy number; it isn’t an even $500 or rounded to $480 or $485. Messy numbers are a sign of real calculation, and they are the opposite of political numbers: the first 100 days in office, the five-year plan, the $15 minimum wage.

That $484 is easily expressed in non-U.S. dollar contexts: €445.08, £ 314.56, ¥ 5,9573.87, 2.0349 Bitcoin. (Damn!) On the commodities market, that’s 745.54 pounds of cotton or 338.5 pounds of coffee. It is 0.00000268888 of a Les Femmes d’Alger, the Pablo Picasso painting that recently set a new auction record at Christie’s.

For a time, reset, concessions, and appeasement work to delay wars. But finally, nations wake up, grasp their blunders, rearm, and face down enemies.

That gets dangerous. The shocked aggressors cannot quite believe that their targets are suddenly serious and willing to punch back. Usually, the bullies foolishly press aggression, and war breaks out.

It was insane of Nazi Germany and its Axis partners to even imagine that they could defeat the Allied trio of Imperial Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

But why not try?

When asked how he planned to finance his retirement, a wag once responded he would rely on three sources – Social Security, law suits and the lottery. His answer was an expression of hope over experience. While it was bittersweet, his answer also reflected a cultural shift – a growing dependency and a belief that riches can come with no effort. Social Security, unless changes are made, will be technically defunct in 2033. Frivolous lawsuits are a growing problem. In 2013, about 15 million such suits were filed in the United States, an increase on a population-adjusted basis of 150 times from 1967. Americans spent $78 billion playing lotteries last year, a form of tax that did not exist before New Hampshire introduced the first lottery in 1964.

On Tuesday night, Fox News’s Megyn Kelly conducted an incisive interview with Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) about his opposition to the National Security Agency’s metadata-collection program under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act (the business-records provision). The abbreviated version of the interview as aired is on the Kelly File website, here; the full interview (which runs about 13 minutes and also features Kelly Paul, the senator’s wife) has been posted on Fox News’s blog, here.

I have been making the argument that, while there is a serious question about whether the metadata program violates the statutory limitations spelled out in Section 215, Senator Paul’s claim that it flouts the Constitution is frivolous. It was on this point that Ms. Kelly pressed him Tuesday night. I will address two of the senator’s constitutional claims: the “general warrant” objection and the notion that the Fourth Amendment protects private confidentiality arrangements. I will then add some closing thoughts on other misleading and misguided elements of Paul’s argument.

General Warrant

The senator contends that a court order directing a telecommunications company to turn over the records of usage by its customers is a “general warrant,” an evil the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. He evidently does not understand the concept he is invoking.

Eleven inches of rain drenched Houston on Memorial Day. The Texas metropolis is among the areas hardest-hit by a storm system that has soaked much of Texas, Oklahoma, and northern Mexico since the weekend, resulting in more than 30 deaths and a dozen missing persons. Naturally, Bill Nye the Science Guy had an explanation:

“The severe flooding, following as it does a years-long drought in the Lone Star State, has seemed to many an obvious demonstration of the dangerous consequences of climate change: “A steadily escalating whipsaw between drought and flood is one of the most confident predictions of an atmosphere with enhanced evaporation rates — meaning, global warming,” writes meteorologist Eric Holthaus at Slate. “Texas’s quick transition from drought hellscape to underwater theme park was egged on by both El Niño and climate change.”

It seems that relations between Alison Weir, of the vicious US Israel-demonising campaign group If Americans Knew, and the vicious US Israel-demonising campaign group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), have ruptured.
Apparently, some of Weir’s shenanegans have proved too hard to take, even for JVP.

What’s upset them, exactly? Her constant harping on the USS Liberty conspiracy theory? Her allegations of racism directed at the late Lubavitcher Rebbe? Her promotion of that infamous set of mendacious maps? And how do her obsessions differ from theirs? Blowed if I can work it out, but there are clues below.

That they’re broiges with her is no inevitable outcome, one would have thought, given the scumbags with which JVP is riddled, of the kind who deny all suggestions that anti-Israel activity and calls for BDS is antisemitic. See here, ar right,for instance, how JVP so facilely links to propaganda by notorious British anti-Israel activist Ben White, who as I remarked in a very recent post is on record as saying that he can understand why antisemitism exists.

Oh, and here’s the JVP trying to look all spick and span. The carbolic soap’s been cleared away here, and the warts are obvious.

On social media, Ms Weir has issued a long screed, of which I quote part:

The arrest of two southern California men last week who were planning to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State brings the number of U.S.-based individuals involved in international terror-related cases this year to 40. (UPDATE: with the arrest of Houston-area Asher Abid Khan late Monday for supporting ISIS, the tally is now 41.)

This number highlights the metastasizing Islamic terror threat in the American homeland. At the current pace, by the end of June — halfway through 2015 — the number of cases will exceed the number from the past two years combined (48).

The Islamic State, as well as al-Qaeda affiliates and other Islamic terror groups, have repeatedly called for supporters to conduct attacks inside the American homeland:

Following up on my report earlier today on the 40 terror-related arrests so far this year — nearly double the number for 2013 and 2014 combined — the FBI arrested yesterday another Houston-area man for conspiring to support ISIS.

Asher Abid Khan, a 20-year-old from Spring, Texas, planned to travel to Syria through Turkey to join ISIS, but was lured back home by his family who lied and told him that his mother was dying.

According to the FBI press release:

The criminal complaint alleges Khan and a friend devised a plan to travel to Turkey and on to Syria for the purpose of joining and waging jihad on behalf of ISIL. Khan had allegedly asked a Turkish-based foreign terrorist fighter facilitator that “I wana join ISIS can you help?” He also told someone else that “I wana die as a Shaheed [martyr],” according to the allegations.

The link is to an Associated Press article headlined “Rand Paul Says GOP Hawks ‘Created’ ISIS.” Dr. Jasser had obviously read my posting of Tuesday, “Jeb Should Withdraw to Save the Country from Hillary.” He wanted me to do the same for Rand. (In fairness to Jeb, my earlier post was meant to prod him to an altruistic, patriotic act. In the case of Rand, it would be because he had, as Bobby Jindal is quoted as saying by the AP, disqualified himself.)

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is blaming his own party for the rise of the Islamic State group.

The freshman senator from Kentucky said Wednesday that the GOP’s foreign policy hawks “created these people.” That assertion led potential 2016 rival Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s governor, to say Paul was unqualified to be president.

Rand Paul Created ISIS The GOP contender rewrites the history of Islamic State.

Well, okay, our headline goes too far. But the claim is about as plausible as Rand Paul’s outburst that Republican internationalists like Lindsey Graham and John McCain are responsible for the rise of the Islamic State.

“ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS,” the GOP presidential candidate said Wednesday on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. “These hawks also wanted to bomb Assad, which would have made ISIS’s job even easier. They’ve created these people.”

Citing Iraq, Syria and Libya, Mr. Paul added that “everything that they’ve talked about in foreign policy, they’ve been wrong about for 20 years, and yet they have somehow the gall to keep saying and pointing fingers otherwise.”

Speaking of gall, and a word of political advice, an aide might want to remind Senator Paul which party’s nomination he is seeking. Republicans who begin their campaigns assailing other Republicans rarely succeed—especially when the accusation is culpability for a would-be caliphate that uses executions, slavery, extortion, rape and general terror to enforce oppression in the Middle East and North Africa, and whose ideology inspires jihadists world-wide.