RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2011&month=10

Michael Mukasey served as the Attorney General of the United States from 2007-2009, as a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York from 1988-2006, and as an assistant U.S. attorney for that same district from 1972-1976. In 1995, he presided over the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others for a plot to blow up New York area landmarks. He received his B.A. from Columbia University and his LL.B. from Yale Law School.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on September 15, 2011, at the Second Annual Constitution Day Celebration sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship.

President Obama campaigned for office largely on the claim that his predecessor had shredded the Constitution. By the Constitution, he could not have meant the document signed on September 17, 1787. Article II of that document begins with a simple declaration: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Not “some” or “most” or even “all but a teeny-weeny bit” of the executive power. The President is vested with all of it. This is particularly noteworthy when compared with the enumerated legislative powers vested in Congress: “All legislative Powers herein granted.” The Founders understood, based in part on their unfortunate experience under the Articles of Confederation, that the branch of government most likely to be in need of the ability to act quickly and decisively is the executive. The branch most likely to overreach is the legislature.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/11/16/main-feature/1/on-the-road-again/e The chronically tense relations between the Israeli government and Bedouins in the Negev—where unrecognized villages are built, razed, and built again—are certain to grow even more tense with the Israeli Cabinet’s recent approval of a plan that will recognize about half these villages but demolish the other half, sending their 30,000 residents to existing […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/16/evicting-occupy-wall-street/ Finally, after nearly two months during which the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street movement became an incubator of disease, rape and other assaults, thefts and drug peddling, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took action. In the wee hours of Tuesday morning November 15th, the New York Police Department​ took back Zuccotti Park from […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/16/what-about-newt/ With all the chaos surrounding the Republican nomination race, one thing is very clear: somewhere along the way, Mitt Romney​ made a Damn Yankees-like pact with Satan to score this group of individuals to run against.  It is certain that a vast majority of Republican primary voters do not like Mitt Romney.  In fact, […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/16/will-israel-face-iran-alone/

Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem correspondent for Britain’s Telegraph, reports that “Israel has refused to reassure President Barack Obama that it would warn him in advance of any pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” and that Obama “was rebuffed last month when he demanded” such a guarantee.

Blomfield says he has this dope from “insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America’s most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu​ , Israel’s hawkish prime minister….” He’s referring to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Israel last month, during which, in a “private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak,” Panetta conveyed Obama’s “urgent” demand. Yet

the two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States….

Alarmed by Mr Netanyahu’s noncommittal response, Mr Obama reportedly ordered the US intelligence services to step up monitoring of Israel to glean clues of its intentions.

The report meshes with Panetta’s not-so-veiled warning to Israel just before that visit to lay off Iran, and with his statement this week—albeit not explicitly directed at Israel—that an attack on Iran could have “unintended consequences…. It could have a serious impact in the region and it could have a serious impact on US forces in the region.”

The same message came through from Europe this week. French foreign minister Alain Juppe​ said an attack on Iranian’s nuclear facilities would “drag the world into an ‘uncontrollable spiral.’” In the wake of last week’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear progress—confirming all of Israel’s warnings over the years—EU foreign ministers “ruled out any military action for now.”

Egypt Falls into Darkness Posted By Daniel Greenfield URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/16/egypt-falls-into-darkness/Rebuilding the Library of Alexandria some 1300 hundred years after its final destruction at the hands of its Islamic conquerors in a country where blasphemy against Islam is still a crime was always a fool’s errand. But it was a fool’s errand lavishly embraced […]

Iran: America’s Options
We have been indulging in wishful thinking for a decade. It’s time to stop.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/283254
In 2007, America’s intelligence agencies delivered a National Intelligence Estimate to President Bush declaring: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” As the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) makes clear, Iran did indeed end its “structured” nuclear-weapons program. Kudos to the intel agencies for spotting this change. Where they did much less well was in spotting that the “structured” nuclear-weapons program was transitioned into an “unstructured” nuclear-weapons program.

One might wonder what the difference between a “structured” and an “unstructured” program might be. Well, the “structured” program was consolidated under the “AMAD Plan” and coordinated by the “Orchid Office.” In 2003, Iran halted the AMAD Plan and closed the Orchid Office. A few weeks later, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — the head of the Orchid Office — opened the Section for Advanced Development Applications and Technologies (SADAT) and began coordinating nuclear-weapons research in an “unstructured” way. There you have it. All it took to fool the best and the brightest in U.S. intelligence was changing the nameplates on the door. This February, apparently worried that U.S. intelligence had finally found him out, Fakhrizadeh doubled down and renamed his nuclear-weapons research team the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research. That should keep America’s spies running in circles for another few years.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/liberals_israel_and_disaster.html

Liberals start from false premises. False premises always lead to false conclusions. Being stuck with delusional belief systems, they keep running into brick walls, getting bloody noses, and being surprised every time it happens. Then they fix up their false beliefs — mostly by blaming any adults in the vicinity — and go back to their delusions, having learned nothing.

Only to run into another brick wall. (Repeat from the top.)

This is the stuff of the Keystone Kops comedy, but it’s funny only until one of them gets into the White House. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton (who had four chances to get bin Laden handed over without a shot being fired). And now we have the most mentally stuck hero of them all, Barack Hussein Obama.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190504577040190007689600.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
On President Obama: “Either he was incompetent or he didn’t possess a vision.” On the revolts in the Arab world: “The success of these movements [reflects] a failure of the policy pursued by the U.S. year after year to support dictators.” On economics: “The private sector needs more support within the Constitution.”

Am I nodding off to the sound of my own thoughts?

There were moments yesterday morning, as I sat around a conference table at Iran’s Mission to the United Nations, when I almost thought so. But not quite. The speaker is Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary-general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights and older brother to both Sadegh Larijani, Iran’s chief justice, and Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a perennial contender for the presidency. The Larijanis, favorites of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and sons of a famous ayatollah, are often compared to the Kennedys, which is especially apt if you think there was a dark side to Camelot. Then again, none of the Kennedys could hold an intellectual candle to this guy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/15/elections-give-gop-a-solid-hold-on-south/?page=1

The South, once solidly Democratic, is more solidly Republican than ever after the 2011 elections.
Elections give GOP a solid hold on South
Switch of key states could trouble Obama

As the last state legislative races were called this week from the Nov. 8 votes in Virginia and Mississippi, the party of Abraham Lincoln now controls both chambers of every state legislature in the 11 former states of the Confederacy, with the sole exception of Arkansas. And Arkansas Republicans need to flip only a handful of seats in 2012 to make the trend unanimous.

None of this comes as welcome news for President Obama’s re-election campaign. In 2008, Mr. Obama was propelled to the White House in large part with breakthrough victories in such states as Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, but all three states now have Republican-led legislatures, with the GOP’s biggest gains in the 2010 elections.

The shift means that in swing states such as Florida, the GOP 2012 nominee will have a home-field advantage given the local balance of power.

The 2010 midterm vote was “a record-breaking year for Republicans in the state legislatures. There were a couple of benchmarks set that made it a banner year, and what the last election showed is that it hasn’t died down,” said Adam Temple, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee. “It doesn’t paint a pretty picture for Democrats in 2012.”