RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/06/19/michael-hastings-chilling-final-story/

Journalist Michael Hastings was killed early Tuesday morning in a bizarre car incident in Los Angeles. Hastings, 33, was best known for writing the Rolling Stone story that ended in Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Hastings’ final story, “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” was a searing take on the NSA snooping scandal, which Hastings described as “North Korea-esque.” Hastings pulled no punches as he linked the NSA scandal to the Department of Justice’s spying on reporters and the IRS abuse scandal. Hastings built a case that the same Democrats who turned Bush-era anti-terrorism techniques into wedge issues that helped them capture Congress and the White House in 2006 and 2008 were now defending much worse and more widespread spying on American citizens by the Obama administration.

As Hastings detailed likely short-term fallout as the NSA leak is investigated, he wrote:

[J]udging by the DOJ’s and FBI’s recent history, it would seem that any new leak case would involve obtaining the phone records of reporters at the Guardian, the Washington Post, employees at various agencies who would have had access to the leaked material, as well as politicians and staffers in Congress—records, we now can safely posit, they already have unchecked and full access to.

In short: any so-called credible DOJ/FBI leak investigation, by its very nature, would have to involve the Obama administration invasively using the very surveillance and data techniques it is attempting to hide in order to snoop on a few Democratic Senators and more media outlets, including one based overseas.

At the end of the story, Hastings mentions by name several Americans who have come under questionable government scrutiny in the Obama years. Several are household names, but some are not.

Hastings died in a fatal single-car crash at 4:25 on Tuesday morning. A witness said his car “suddenly jackknifed” before crossing the median and hitting a tree, causing a ferocious explosion that reportedly threw the engine block of the brand new Mercedes Hastings was driving 30 or 40 yards from the car. Mercedes engine blocks typically weigh between 290 and 540 pounds. It would take tremendous speed or force to throw one nearly half the length of a football field.

“It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night,” another witness told the TV station. “The house shook, my windows were rattling.”

Hastings’ body was burned “beyond recognition,” according to reports.

TERRY McAULIFFE IS ONE OF BILL CLINTON’S “ENFORCERS”….AND HE IS RUNNING AGAINST REPUBLICAN KEN CUCCINELLI THE PRESENT ATTORNEY GENERAL. ….THE ELECTION IS IMPORTANT FOR THE GOP. IT TAKES PLACE ON NOVEMBER 5TH, 2013……RSK

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/21/mcauliffes-dilemma/

It’s not easy being Terry McAuliffe. The Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia has a union problem in a state that’s not enthusiastic about unions and their bosses.

Since 1947, for example, the commonwealth has protected Virginians from forced membership in a union, however cleverly forced unionism is portrayed, with a tough right-to-work law that protects everyone’s right to hold a job without having to share a paycheck with strangers. Virginia’s stance on right-to-work is rooted in the principle expressed by Thomas Jefferson: “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Mr. McAuliffe has collected $1.5 million for his campaign from unions, much of it deducted from union paychecks around the country, and in exchange, the unions will reasonably expect a return for their money. Union bosses do not like right-to-work. They hate it. In return for their support, as Mr. McAuliffe knows, the union bosses want their man in Richmond to do what he can to overturn or water down the right-to-work law, and “what he can” is expected to be a lot. This puts the astute Mr. McAuliffe in a bit of a pickle, no doubt a sour dill.

He knows the people he’s asking to vote for him don’t particularly like the idea of a man or woman being forced to join a union. Some Virginians might join as long as it’s a free choice. Others want no part of a union. It’s the right to a choice that’s crucial. In a speech in January to the National Federation of Independent Business, Mr. McAuliffe acknowledged this. “We are a great right-to-work state,” he said. “We should never change that. It helps us do what we need to do to grow our businesses here in Virginia. I think it’s very important.”

But that was in January. Now it’s June. Campaigning in Loudoun County this week, Mr. McAuliffe didn’t change his tune, exactly, but he danced around the subject, unwilling to say anything to upset his labor benefactors at an event celebrating Metrorail’s Silver Line, a $6 billion extension of Metrorail to Washington Dulles International Airport. He looked like a man wishing he were somewhere else. There was nothing to say to this audience about what a great right-to-work state Virginia is, nor was there a promise “never to change that.”

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/06/20/hagel-comedy-hour-asks-indian-professer-if-hes-member-of-the-taliban/

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel found some common ground with Vice President Joe Biden in an address at the University of Nebraska.

After talking military posture and global threats, Hagel took questions from the audience.
“Way up in the back there… You’re not a member of the Taliban are you?” he said.“Mr. Secretary, I’m Robin Gandhi. I’m an assistant professor at UNO,” the professor responded.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/dont-end-the-cuban-embargo/ Michael Edghill [1] proposes a novel but convoluted and factually challenged argument to end the United States’ embargo on Cuba’s Castro regime. Edghill begins his argument by highlighting the oft-repeated advice that the Republican Party needs to do a better job of appealing to Hispanics. I agree completely with this and have written extensively […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/how_to_not_inspire_confidence.html This is what happens when the President of the United States is dragged into making foreign and defense policy decisions, instead of determining American interests and then making policy to suit. And it is what happens when the president fails to make a clear case for those policies not only to the American public, […]

The Parochial President
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577904578557550804014908.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Obama’s Catholic school comments are less substantial than his critics think.

Barack Obama is turning into a one-man gaffe machine. “Obama repeatedly called British finance minister George Osborne ‘Jeffrey’ at the G8 summit.” Agence France-Presse includes this lovely deadpan observation: “The chancellor, 42, bears little resemblance to Jeffrey Osborne, a 65-year-old African-American hit singer-songwriter known for his 1982 classic ‘On the Wings of Love.’ ”

Sky News called Jeffrey Osborne for comment, and he said: “I was really delighted actually. I was really not aware that [Obama] was that much of a fan that he would call the chancellor Jeffrey Osborne. Tell the chancellor when I come over I will have to hook up with him and we will do a duet of ‘On The Wings Of Love.’ ”

Yeah, well, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. Earlier in the week, Obama made what the Scottish Catholic Observer construed as “an alarming call for an end to Catholic education in Northern Ireland”:

Obama . . . repeated the oft disproved claim that Catholic education increases division in front of an audience of 2000 young people, including many Catholics, at Belfast’s Waterfront hall when he arrived in the country this morning.

“If towns remain divided–if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden–that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” the US president said.

The president’s words rankled on the other side of the Atlantic too. CNSNews.com tied them in with the ObamaCare assault on religious liberty, which America’s Catholic bishops, rightly in our view, call “an ‘unjust and illegal mandate’ that violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to free exercise of religion” (the quote is from CNSNews).

On this point, however, it seems to us that the president’s critics are overreaching. Considered in context, his comments seem to us the product of ignorance and parochialism rather than hostility toward Catholicism (or Protestantism, which he mentioned in a parallel fashion).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324688404578541822549510286.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop Have financial markets become a giant crack house? Investors have certainly been acting like a bunch of junkies lately. Any hint that their main dealer—otherwise known as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke—might start cutting down his generous supply of cash sets them off in a frenzy. Mr. Bernanke’s latest comments on Wednesday, signaling a […]

http://www.newmediajournal.us/

To say that there are items that present in the news each day that make me roll my eyes would be to under-state the fact in a dramatic way. But every now and again — and it is beginning to happen with more frequency, much to the detriment of the forces lending themselves to common sense — there presents a story so outrageous, so infuriatingly hypocritical, so blatant in arrogance, that it conjures the forces of anger from within one’s soul. The coverage of Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis’ words to the City Club of Chicago is such a story.

Ever since the 1850s, when a founding faction of the Progressive Movement – an elitist faction consisting of anti-religious bigots – began to call for the government institutionalization of education in the United States, the American education system has “progressively” marched down the road of, not only ideological monopoly, but of political allegiance. Coincidentally, the level of achieved education in the United States has suffered a continuous and steady decline ever since…you guessed it, the 1850s.

The Heartland Institute’s president, Joe Bast, recently spoke about the state of American education at the Eighth Annual Wisconsin Conservative Conference. During his talk he touched on the topic of, “How the Left Destroyed Schooling in America,” of which he noted:

“Once they had succeeding in kicking the Catholics out of K-12 education they campaigned to ban public funding for all religious schools. They placed Blaine amendments on the constitutions of 37 states, including Wisconsin.

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7582

Berlin hadn’t seen bombing like this since the allies turned the city into a wasteland in the spring of 1945, when American B-17s and B-24s, British Lancasters and Russian heavy artillery took turns making the rubble bounce. This week the bomb was the bomber himself, and when the day was done, the legend of the irresistible eloquence of Barack Obama lay in shreds and tatters.

The allies required 363 raids between 1942 and 1945 to level the city, while President Obama leveled himself with only one. The allies required 200,000 tons of high explosives for the deed, finally including the famous blockbuster, while Mr. Obama made “mission accomplished” with a load of attitudes, platitudes and a ton of what one London newspaper called “pure mush.” It was mush ground from stale corn.

He delivered his remarks in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate, almost exactly a half-century after John F. Kennedy thrilled the Germans and reassured Europe with his “ich bin ein Berliner” speech, declaring that he, too, was a Berliner resisting aggressive Soviet communism. Mr. Obama, fresh out of inspiring bloviation, gave the Berliners only a laundry list of fears to terrorize themselves with – the West’s inventory of nuclear weapons, global warming, Guantanamo, poverty across the world and the heartbreak of teenage acne.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3780/spain-muslims-kings While Spanish Muslims are busy trying to Islamize Spain, Spanish politicians are busy removing all references to Christianity from public discourse…The requirement which will be enshrined in Spain’s legal code law, represents an unprecedented encroachment of Islamic Sharia law within Spanish jurisprudence. Spanish police have arrested a Muslim immigrant in Mallorca after he claimed […]