RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://news.yahoo.com/militant-hamas-moves-join-plo-umbrella-110943864.html

CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas militant group has agreed to join the Palestine Liberation Organization — a key step toward unifying the long-divided Palestinian leadership.

Hamas’ leader Khaled Mashaal on Thursday joined a committee that will prepare for elections to the PLO leadership.

Those elections are likely years away but Mashaal’s move means he will work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah party.

The PLO is the umbrella group of the Palestinian independence movement.

Thursday’s development is an important step toward reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah — which have been split since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Separate elections in the West Bank and Gaza for a unified parliament are tentatively set for next year.

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

“These days, the never-ending cry for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital surely contains a trace of the claim that the city is holy in Islam. But, essentially, the historic record shows that the actions and circumstances on which the claim is based aren’t very holy at all. In fact, by any standard of religious values in any society in the world, artificially imbuing a place with holiness, through wordplay and administrative sleight of hand, constitutes the very opposite of holiness.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204552304577112761003972028.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
It seemed improbable that the best-known American propagandist for our enemies could be near the top of the pack in the Iowa contest, but there it is.

Ron Paul’s supporters are sure of one thing: Their candidate has always been consistent—a point Dr. Paul himself has been making with increasing frequency. It’s a thought that comes up with a certain inevitability now in those roundtables on the Republican field. One cable commentator genially instructed us last Friday, “You have to give Paul credit for sticking to his beliefs.”

He was speaking, it’s hardly necessary to say, of a man who holds some noteworthy views in a candidate for the presidency of the United States. One who is the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace.

http://times247.com/articles/new-epa-plant-rules-to-cost-9-6-billion
Obama’s new EPA rules carry $9.6 billion price tag

Read more at: http://times247.com/articles/new-epa-plant-rules-to-cost-9-6-billion

The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever standards to slash mercury emissions from coal-fired plants, a move aimed at protecting public health that critics say will kill jobs as plants shut down. …

The [EPA] rules will cost utilities about $9.6 billion annually.

Scott Segal, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani, said the rules will result in the loss of more than 1.4 million jobs by 2020 as utilities are forced to shut old coal-fired power plants. Read the original article at Reuters

U.S. could top Saudis, Russia as world’s top energy producer
It may surprise Americans who’ve lived through many years of dependence on foreign fuels, but in less than a decade the United States could pass its 1970s peak as an oil and natural gas producer. Read more…

Read more at: http://times247.com/
Read more…

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11096/pub_detail.asp   “Go ask Osama bin Laden” has become the latest rally call for part of Barack Obama’s re-invented self. During the 2008 election, campaigning on a tough national security footing was too inconsistent with the liberal, anti-war, anti-Bush themes of “change” and “working with the international community.” In 2012, however, with little record to […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1769/pub_detail.asp

1. VIDEO: President Ronald Reagan’s Christmas Address (12/23/81)
2. VIDEO: Occupy vs. Homeless Shelter (Share The Christmas Wealth)
3. VIDEO: Housing Market Worse Off Than Estimated
4. VIDEO: Mayor Calls For Budget Cuts To Offset Millions In “Occupy” Costs
5. VIDEO: Witty rebuttal of Whoopi Goldberg’s comments “Communism looks good on paper.”
6. VIDEO: March 2009: Deputy Attorney General at the time announced new efforts with Project Gunrunner “as directed by the president.”
7. Congress Pushes Back on WH: A secretive review by the WH of all counter-terrorism training has raised concerns that this politically motivated initiative will undermine U.S. national security.
8. VIDEO: If Any State Prevents Us from Spreading Islam on its Soil we will Wage Jihad on That
9. VIDEO: 106-year-old Stockbroker Still Working
10. VIDEO: The Scrooge Award goes to the NYC Sanitation Department for the $100 tickets

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11098/pub_detail.asp
The killing of Osama Bin Laden in May brought a sense of resolution to Americans, but a ruling by a federal judge shows justice has not been delivered. In a decision that should forever change the story of 9/11 and the West’s Middle East policy, Judge George Daniels has just ruled that Iran and Hezbollah are responsible for 9/11.

Judge Daniels concluded that 9/11 happened because of Iran and Hezbollah’s direct support for the plotters, especially the hijackers, and probably would not have happened without it. The evidence presented in court goes even further, strongly indicating that 9/11 was a joint operation between Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime. It took over 10 years after 9/11 for Iran’s covert involvement to be exposed, a frightening testament to the ineptitude of our intelligence community and the experts who assured us that Iran would never work with Bin Laden’s terrorist group or directly target the U.S.

Eight law firms acting under the leadership of Thomas E. Mellon presented reams of publicly-available information and over 25 hours of testimony from three Iranian intelligence defectors, whose accounts were deemed credible by Judge Daniels. The three defectors provided first-hand information to prove the culpability of Iran and Hezbollah.

The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/286391/torch-has-been-passed-new-generation-mark-steyn

In Egypt, the short version of the Arab Spring is that after 60 years the Nasser/Mubarak military has decided to throw its lot in with the Muslim Brotherhood. Given that for three decades the army was largely funded and its senior officers trained by the United States, at least we won’t have to waste a lot of time on “Who lost Egypt?” analyses.

The consequences for Copts, women, Israeli Embassy staff, etc, have been clear for some time. But just as important over the long run may be the loss of historical memory. A few days ago, during the recent military crackdown, the Institut d’Egypte was burned to the ground — mainly because young soldiers either joined in the gleeful savagery or declined to prevent it. Millions of manuscripts were lost.

This blogger (politically correct enough to use the terms “BCE” and “CE” rather than “BC and “AD”) compares it to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. But I’d put it in the context of the Muslim world’s more recent retreat into ignorance represented by the Brotherhood, the Wahhabists, the Ayatollahs et al. The famous statistic from a 2002 UN report — that more books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand — suggests at the very minimum an extraordinarily closed society. Such openness to the world as exists was (as at the Institut d’Egypt) facilitated by the West. The journey from, say, Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, set in the ramshackle but pluralistic Egypt of Farouk’s day, to the city in recent years is a descent into ever more malign parochialism.

If you’re going to turn your country into a squat of theocratic totalitarianism, a stupid population is indispensable. Washington’s most basic problem in Afghanistan, for example, is that most of its upcountry villagers are too ill educated even to be aware of the existence of countries such as the United States. When, after 9/11, a bunch of guys in the full Robocop showed up and started blowing stuff up, your average rural Pushtun simply had no more idea who they were or where they came from than the Americans vis a vis the space aliens in Independence Day.

Egypt is now falling into the hands of men who revel in Taliban-scale parochial stupidity and are bent on imposing it. From 1922 to 2011, the country got worse. It’s now getting worser.

The Justice Department Condones Perjury … Again Posted By Hans A. von Spakovsky

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-justice-department-condones-perjury/

A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all.

http://bigpeace.com/cjacobs/2011/12/21/in-egypt-christians-endure-their-kristallnacht/

Recently Jews in synagogues around the world heard an ancient prophesy about a time of tribulation for the Christians. In the haftarah, the Prophet Obadiah hears G-d warning the Edomites (traditionally a Jewish term for the people who eventually made up the Christian world): “Behold on that day… Your mighty ones to the South will be broken… every man will be cut off by the slaughter…”

How eerily reflective of the moment: Within just the last couple of weeks, the Washington-based Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a “Genocide Warning” for Christians and other religious minorities across the Middle East, and launched a petition urging President Barack Obama to speak up.