RUTHFULLY YOURS

Justice Stevens’s Liberty-Destroying Amendments

The liberal/left is forever releasing trial balloons to see who shoots at them and who doesn’t. The multiple interviews of retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens upon publication of his new book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, on April 22nd, represent one such balloon. I have not yet read the book, but have ordered it and will review it in a future column. But the lubricious reception of Stevens’s book and the unrestrained fawning over him by the press is such that I can’t hold my tongue. So these remarks will focus on the interviews, and not the book per se.

The book would not be reviewed, nor Stevens even interviewed, but for the liberty-destroying amendments he proposes be made to the Constitution. Liberal “journalists” across the spectrum sidled up to the buffet and feasted on helpings of the retired liberal, pro-government power justice’s fare of senile lunacy, washed down with large draughts of Happy Juice.

All the interviewers treated Stevens as a kind of judicial “guru” whose “wisdom” must be shown deference and couldn’t be challenged or questioned without committing a heinous faux pas. They asked him leading questions to prompt the answers they wanted to hear from Stevens. For example, in the video on the NRO site, George Stephanopoulos asks Stevens about the five words Stevens would add to the “amended” Second Amendment: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms [when serving in the militia] shall not be infringed.”

The “militia” meaning the National Guard or virtually any federal SWAT or armed enforcement entity. It means that the government would have a monopoly on all weapons.

Stephanopoulos: “Wouldn’t that take away any limits what a legislature could do to the rights of gun owners?”

Stevens: “I think that’s probably right.” [Still of rows of hand guns] “I think that’s what should be the rule, that it should be legislatures rather than judges who draw the line on what is permissible….”

Stephanopoulos: “Do you think that….clearly…that was what was intended?”

Stevens: “I do think that was what was originally intended, because there was a fear among the original framers that the federal government would be so strong that they might destroy the state militias. The amendment would merely prevent arguments being made that Congress doesn’t have the power to do what is in the best public interest.” [More “scary” images of weapons; Italics mine]

Stephanopoulos: “But to be clear, if Congress passed a national ban on individual gun ownership, that would be constitutional under your amendment?”

U.S. Cold War Policy Was Designed by a Bigot – George Kennan’s diaries reveal just how much he hated America

n a hot, dusty sunday in September 1959, George Frost Kennan welcomed to his Pennsylvania farmhouse a peculiar trio of political intellectuals. Trekking out to see the retired diplomat and renowned Sovietologist on that Labor Day weekend were the German-born psychologist Erich Fromm, the sociologist David Riesman, and Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist Party nominee for president. Their agenda was the creation of a new socialist party for the United States.

“What a strange quartet we were,” Kennan remarked in wonder. The “brilliant, subtle, and hugely imaginative” Riesman, he rightly observed, had never been enchanted “by the waning power of Marx’s magic spell”; but more to the point, Kennan himself “had little sympathy … with the inherent self-pity of the socialist cause.” As Kennan recorded in his diary that day, Burke, Gibbon, and the nineteenth-century Russian novelists shaped his own thinking much more than any left-wing thinkers ever had. “All my Scottish-Protestant antecedents rose in protest against this egalitarianism,” he wrote. “This really wild belief in the general goodness of man, this obliviousness to the existence of original sin … this grievous Marxist oversimplification of the sources of aggressiveness and bad behavior in the individual as in the mass”—it was all too naïve and wooly-minded. Predictably, the attempted meeting of the minds ended in incoherence, thrusting Kennan back into what he called “the organizational isolation where, evidently, I belong.”

This vignette is one of many gems in Kennan’s fascinating and damaging journals, now edited by Frank Costigliola, a skilled historian of American foreign relations, and it highlights a riddle of Kennan’s life: his policy ideas were utterly central to the foreign relations of the United States in the twentieth century, but he had no real home in its political system. Normally a supporter of Democrats—in the diaries, he voices support for the presidential bids of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Frank Church (“promptly regretted it deeply”), and Bill Clinton (“without enthusiasm”)—Kennan was nonetheless profoundly conservative in his worldview. This conservatism was neither the belligerent cultural populism bequeathed to today’s Republicans by Richard Nixon nor the happy hawkishness championed by Ronald Reagan (both of whom Kennan abhorred). It partook, rather, of Burke’s chastened view of human nature, and of the declinism of Gibbon, and of the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner—often manifested, in Kennan’s case, in casual and appalling prejudices. Above all, it echoed the brooding anti-modernism and civilizational despair of Henry Adams, to whom, fittingly, Kennan likened himself in the winter of his life. The architect of the policy of containment, it turns out, crafted the policy in defense of a country he never much liked, filled with citizens he by and large despised.

“Freedom of speech is a great thing and we have said nothing that is not allowed.” — Geert Wilders, MP and leader of the Party of Freedom.

Now, the police have apparently decided to become part of the prosecution. They have drafted pre-filled “Wilders forms” to press charges and have offered to come to people’s homes to help them fill out the paperwork.

Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders again made international headlines. Nazi comparisons are rampant, self-proclaimed victims are lining up to sue and now more than ever there is a chance that Wilders actually might be convicted of hate speech.

In an interview on the Dutch Public News Service [NOS] on March 12, Wilders said (10:10): “[People] will now be voting for a safer, a more social, and… in any case a city with fewer costs, and, if at all possible, with fewer Moroccans.”

Geert Wilders is interviewed while campaigning, March 12, 2014. (Image source: Video screenshot from Dutch Public News)

Wilders has the numbers to support his concern. Statistics show that 65% of all Moroccan youths have been arrested by police, and that one third of that group have been arrested more than five times.

Wilders emphasizes the inordinate costs associated with the disproportionately high number of Dutch Moroccans registered as social welfare beneficiaries and who are implicated in welfare fraud.

As I toil in the swamps of electoral politics, I am always dumbfounded at the number of women legislators, who keep hammering away at “Women’s Issues.” There is also a castrati chorus of male legislators who are spooked by the fear that it was that spurious issue that lost the election for Mitt Romney. So, they too, include all the cliches and complaints and faux victimhood of the feministas to show they are sensitive to the vapors of the chicks.

One would think, from reading their agenda that Iranian, North Korean and Russian aggression spares men. Here are a few examples:

Chellie Pingry (D- District 1 Maine) Chellie Pingree does not support military tribunals for suspected terrorists, increasing domestic surveillance of communications, pre-emptive strikes against nations considered to be threats, a national identification card system, and missile defense programs. She does, however, support abortion rights. She believes that abortions should be legal including partial birth abortions and abortions in the case of rape or incest. She sponsored the contraception equity bill (Huh???)while in the Maine senate, as well as cosponsoring other successful legislation in support of abortion rights.

Jan Schakowsky (D) Illinois is in full battle gear as she launched her legislation:
Violence Against Immigrant Women Act – I introduced this bill to assist immigrant victims with legal resources necessary to escape abuse such as U visa protection and timely employment authorization.
International Violence Against Women Act – I introduced the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAVA), a bill to create a comprehensive strategy to combat violence against women and girls abroad.

International Women’s Day Resolution Supports the goals of International Women’s Day – This resolution honors women who have fought and continue to struggle for equality.

Barbara Lee (D-District 13 California)Congresswoman Lee is a staunch defender of women’s fundamental reproductive rights. She is a member of the Pro-Choice Caucus and has received 100 percent ratings from reproductive rights organizations. (huh?)

Donna Edwards (D-District 4- Maryland) Is a staunch advocate of reproductive freedom, fairness in the workplace, women’s health and co-pays for menopausal treatments.

Sheila Jackson Lee (D- District 18-Texas) hosted “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds” in Houston with guest, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, on Tuesday, March 18th, 2014. Perhaps the title should be “When America Succeeds. Women Succeed”…but no.

Have any of them confronted the real family issue in America related to women? The destruction of the family and an endangered future for millions of children born to teenagers. This American tragedy now has four generations of fatherless children brought up by unprepared mothers.

Furthermore, have any of these womenistas who pretend to care about women said a word about female genital mutilation or honor killings or the oppression of women under Sharia law? Well, not really, because that might risk the high grades they get from the Arab American Institute for their anti-Israel and pro Arab stances.
Chellie Pingry gets gets a +4.
Sheila Jackson Lee gets a +4.
Donna Edwards gets a +4.
Jan Schakowsky gets a +3
And the winner is Barbara Lee who gets a +7.

To be honest, cutting off your own foot to maintain handouts from the state sets something of a low point in welfare sponging. But boy, are there some competitors…
About one year ago, I decided to create a “Moocher Hall of Fame” to highlight how certain people went above and beyond the call of indolence in their efforts to sponge off taxpayers.

This award isn’t for ordinary deadbeats. You have to do something really special (the bad kind of special) to get recognized.

* Like convincing a government to give you “disability” benefits so you can satisfy your diaper-wearing fetish.

* Such as cutting off your own foot to maintain handouts from the state.

* Or trying to impregnate 12-year old girls to increase household welfare payments.

* And how about plotting to kill the people who are subsidizing your laziness.

We have a new candidate for the MHoF.

Or perhaps I should say candidates. Our contestants are a husband and wife who enjoyed a first class lifestyle at taxpayer expense. Here are some passages from a Fox News report.

“A Minnesota couple who allegedly lived in expensive homes and owned a yacht while taking more than $160,000 in state welfare benefits has been arrested. …Court documents allege the pair illegally obtained food stamps and other benefits from 2005 to 2012. According to the criminal complaints, over

the years, the Chisholms received medical assistance, welfare payments and food stamp benefits…

“..When they first applied for welfare benefits, the couple allegedly listed their residence as Andrea Chisholm’s mother’s home in Minneapolis. Shortly after getting approved, they moved to Florida, according to court documents. They remained in that state for at least 28 months, first on their $1.2 million yacht, and then moving to a house, officials said. They collected welfare from Florida, as well as Minnesota during that time, which is prohibited, according to court documents.”

So why should the Chisholms win an award?

Well, I thought it was supposed to be difficult for married adults to sponge off taxpayers, particularly if there was an able-bodied male in the household, yet that didn’t stop the Chisholms from raking in the cash.

Happy Earth Day! April 22nd is the day when President Obama and the rest of the gang demonstrate their commitment to saving the planet by flying in to plant a tree somewhere. And say what you like but, when you’re looking for fellows who know how to dig a huge hole, Obama and Harry Reid are pretty much at the top of the list. My township in New Hampshire is 90 per cent forested, but you can never have too many trees, so on Earth Day I always like to plant a couple more, get the tree cover in my town up to 97, 98 per cent, whatever it takes to send climate change into reverse. Of course, it’s always a big pain in the neck the morning after Earth Day, when the holiday’s over, and it’s time to take down the trees. So these days I generally just plant artificial trees with the nice silvery tinselly branches, and then you can just take them down and put ’em in the attic till next year’s Earth Day.

Anyway, in honor of this great occasion, and of my impending trial at the hands of one of the great global warm-mongers of our time, I thought I’d rerun a few highlights from previous years. In 2002, in The National Post of Canada, I offered a quick compilation album of greatest hits from the early days of the movement – “Apocalypse Soon”:

In 1968, in his best-selling book The Population Bomb, scientist Paul Ehrlich declared: “In the 1970s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”

In 1972, in their influential landmark study The Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead, and gas by 1993.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States incredible as it may seem, confidently predicted that “we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”

Now, in 2002, with enough oil for a century and a half, the planet awash in cut-price minerals, and less global famine, starvation and malnutrition than ever before, the end of the world has had to be rescheduled. The latest estimated time of arrival for the apocalypse is 2032. Last week, the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted “the destruction of 70% of the natural world in 30 years, mass extinction of species, and the collapse of human society in many countries … More than half the world will be afflicted by water shortages, with 95% of people in the Middle East with severe problems … 25% of all species of mammals and 10% of birds will be extinct …” Etc., etc., for 450 pages. But let’s cut to the chase: As The Guardian’s headline writer put it, “Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster.”

Ah, yes. The end of the world’s nighness is endlessly deferred but the blame rests where it always has. With us.

And don’t you forget it! Instead of getting hung up on details, the point to remember, as I wrote in Britain’s Daily Telegraph in 2005, is that time is running out!!!!!!!!!

“Time is running out to deal with climate change,” says Mr Guilbeault [of Greenpeace]. “Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don’t have a lot of time.”
Really? Ten years ago, we had a lot of time? That’s not the way I recall it: “Time is running out for the climate” – Chris Rose of Greenpeace, 1997; “Time running out for action on global warming Greenpeace claims” – Irish Times, 1994; “Time is running out” – scientist Henry Kendall, speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, 1992. Admirably, Mr Guilbeault’s commitment to the environment extends to recycling last decade’s scare-mongering press releases.

Instead of all this airy-fairy time-is-running-out scaremongering, thank goodness some experts are prepared to get more specific. This is from my syndicated column in 2009:

According to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, we only have 96 months left to save the planet.I’m impressed. 96 months. Not 95. Not 97. July 2017. Put it in your diary. Usually the warm-mongers stick to the same old drone that we only have ten years left to save the planet. Nice round number. Al Gore said we only have ten years left three-and-a-half years ago, which makes him technically more of a pessimist than the Prince of Wales. Al’s betting that Armageddon kicks in sometime in January 2016 — unless he’s just peddling glib generalities… As the British newspaper the Independent reported:

Hillary Clinton can enjoy the livelihood provided by her foundation, she can count on men like Steyer and Saban to donate handsomely to any campaign, she can reap the benefits of favorable news coverage from outlets Saban owns, she can drape herself in the cloak of moral righteousness from crusading on behalf of the children. What a brilliant arrangement. What a fantastic racket.

Nor does Clinton have to worry about unfavorable coverage from Univision’s competitor, Telemundo. Comcast owns that growing network, just as it owns NBC and MSNBC. The CEO of Comcast is a golf pal of President Obama’s, and his political giving overwhelmingly favors Democrats. Comcast’s chief lobbyist is a Democratic bundler, who has raised millions for the president and has hosted the president for a lavish fundraising dinner. The president calls him “friend.”

NBC News’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent is a friend and ally of Clinton’s, and her husband was chairman of the Federal Reserve under Clinton’s husband. MSNBC, for its part, is less a cable-news channel than a work of high-concept performance art, its hosts pronouncing in heated tones the Democratic talking points on the hour every hour, its guests running the full range of informed opinion from Rik Hertzberg to Katrina vanden Heuvel, its personalities so cocooned in the pieties of academic liberalism, so out of touch with the world as it is actually experienced, that they have a habit of being fired for making offensive statements. In recent weeks I have seen exactly one MSNBC host dissent from the opinion that a Hillary Clinton presidency is both inevitable and wonderful to behold. That host prefers Elizabeth Warren.

Last year, when CNN and NBC each announced plans for Hillary Clinton biopics and said the movies would be aired in time for the coming presidential campaign, Republicans and conservatives foamed at the mouth. They denounced the projects as fluff, as promotional material, as in-kind contributions from the liberal-leaning networks to the Ready for Hillary Super PAC. The Republican National Committee threatened to boycott the networks if the movies went ahead as planned. And it worked: The movies were cancelled. But Clinton’s deal with Univision has not been met with a similar fury. Stands to reason: Hardly anybody knows about it, and no one wants to criticize a Hispanic institution, out of fear that such criticism might provoke a backlash to the backlash.

This has really been a bad few months for Muslim bomb makers. Maybe they’ve been making too many bombs in the kitchens of their moms. Maybe the spring heat or the Hashish is getting to them, but the accident rate is through the roof. (via Religion of Peace)

Literally.

A local Taliban commander was among five militants killed following an explosion inside a mosque in eastern Ghazni province of Afghanistan.

Local government officials said the militants were killed while they were making an improvised explosive device (IED) to carry out a roadside bomb explosion.

Deputy provincial governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi said the incident took place on Saturday morning in western party of Ghazni city.

Ahmadi further added that the Taliban commander was recognized as Mullah Sadiq who was killed along with four other militants following the explosion.

At least seven militants were killed while making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) inside a mosque in Deh Yak district late in March.

Blowing up your own mosque. Barry would approve.

For the past nine years, a radio show has been broadcast out of Tampa Bay, Florida every Friday representing the viewpoints of radical Islamists. The subjects on the show, ironically called ‘True Talk,’ almost always revolve around two subjects: extreme hatred of Israel and/or support for those associated with terrorism.

During the month of March, different anti-Israel and terror-related content made its way over the airwaves with the blessing of one of the show’s co-hosts, Ahmed Bedier.

On March 14th, over half of Bedier’s radio show consisted of a recorded speech given by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi discussing strides being made by the boycott movement against Israel. Khalidi has previously been identified in different news reports as “a PLO spokesman” and “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa” (Wikalat al-Anba al-Filastinija), which Khalidi himself has described as “the PLO’s news agency.”

According to the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987, signed into law by then-President Ronald Reagan, “The PLO and its constituent groups have taken credit for, and been implicated in, the murders of dozens of American citizens abroad… [T]he Congress determines that the PLO and its affiliates are a terrorist organization and a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law…”

Bedier took calls in response to Khalidi’s speech, while lauding him as a “Middle East scholar.”

The previous week, on March 7th, Bedier had as a guest on the show the mother of convicted terrorist Ziyad Yaghi. According to the indictment against him, “the multiple defendants in the case,” Yaghi included, “prepared themselves to engage in violent acts and were willing to die as martyrs. They also offered training in weapons and financing and helped arrange overseas travel and contacts so others could wage violent acts overseas.” Yaghi was convicted on all counts and was sentenced to 31+ years in prison. He and his fellow co-conspirators lost their appeal.

According to his mom, Laila, Ziyad did nothing wrong. She called him a “goofy young man… a young man having fun.” She said that his only crime in the eyes of the prosecutors was that he was a Muslim.

In almost every single state this is a big issue- up these with Obamacare for Republican incumbents and challengers. The Dems (with the exception of about 20 legislators who voted for it,without the limiting amendments) will be tarred with this failure…..to pass a job creating and energy freedom providing initiative….rsk

“On Good Friday, President Obama made a bad call. The State Department announced that it would delay its decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the Nebraska supreme court rules in a case involving the route. The administration insists the decision to punt has nothing to do with politics. Pretty much everyone else thinks otherwise.

Obama, who is rarely reluctant to act unilaterally when it benefits him politically, and who regularly brags about his red-tape cutting, is paralyzed by perhaps the only big shovel-ready jobs project he’s been presented with.

He welcomes the Keystone red tape because he’s trapped between an overwhelmingly popular initiative and an overwhelmingly powerful constituency within the Democratic party opposed to it: obdurate rich environmentalists and the door-knocking minions they employ.

Obama’s predicament is just the latest example of how climate-change monomania has become a problem for environmentalists — and the country.

The mark of a truly successful political constituency or lobby is clout in both parties. Since climate change started crowding out other concerns, the environmental movement at the national level has become little more than an adjunct of the left wing of the Democratic party.

Conservation used to be a fairly bipartisan affair. Dubbed the “father of conservation” by the National Park Service, Republican Teddy Roosevelt did more than any other president to preserve large swaths of wilderness. Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded the Clean Air Act, signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and proposed the Safe Drinking Water Act.