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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/west-virginia-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand

Forgive a tad of boasting, but no other election site has such thorough coverage of candidates and issues in every single state. rsk

Primary: May 13, 2014

Voter Registration: http://www.sos.wv.gov/elections/voterinformation/VoterRegistration/Pages/default.aspx

Deadline for Registering to Vote: The deadline for citizens to register to vote, change their address, or switch political parties is exactly twenty-one (21) days before that election. General Election 2014 – October 14, 2014 ​

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

U.S. Senate

US SENATE LOGO SQ
Joe Manchin (D) Next Election in 2018.

Jay Rockefeller (D) Retiring in 2014

Shelly Moore Capito (R) Challenger

Currently represents District 2.

http://www.capitoforsenate.com/welcome/ http://capito.house.gov/#dialog

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/shelley_moore_capito.htm**

Rated -2 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE Congresswoman Capito has championed policies to increase access to affordable and quality health care for all West Virginians. Before coming to Congress, she was a leader in the State Legislature in establishing West Virginia’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Early in her tenure, Congresswoman Capito was a leader in establishing Medicare Part D, a program that today provides prescription drug coverage to over 31 million seniors, including more than 60 percent of West Virginia Medicare beneficiaries, and earns the support of 90 percent of its enrollees. Congresswoman Capito continues to champion medical liability reform to root out frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of health care. She has also co-sponsored legislation that would allow health insurance policies to be sold across state lines in order to reduce the cost of health insurance. Capito voted against President Obama’s health care reform legislation (the Affordable Care Act) because the law increases taxes and government mandates, while doing nothing to address the ever increasing cost of health care. Once fully implemented, the health care reform law will impose 21 separate tax increases which collectively impose over $1 trillion in new taxes over the next 10 years. The regulations included in the law force government into the doctor-patient relationship.

Congresswoman Capito will continue to support efforts to improve the quality and accessibility of health care through patient centered reform, rather than a government takeover of our health care system.

IMMIGRATION Congresswoman Capito believes that a strong immigration policy is important to our nation’s security, as well as to the security of our economy. As a member of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, Capito has worked to secure our borders, prevent amnesty, and enact sound immigration reform. Cracking down on illegal immigration begins with protecting our borders which leads to a secure nation. Capito fully supports efforts to build a security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, including efforts to build a virtual fence that uses cameras, sensors, and motion detectors. Capito wants to make sure border officials have the resources and the manpower necessary to successfully patrol the border and fund the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) During the 112th Congress, Capito voted for the Border Tunnel Prevention Act of 2012, legislation that was passed into law that will strengthen the laws against construction of border tunnels as well as charge individuals who conspire to build or finance a border tunnel with harsh penalties.

Since her first term in 2001, she has supported the employee verification program that allows America’s small businesses to have confidence that their employees are legally eligible to work in the United States. She wants to ensure that millions of jobs are not taken from hardworking Americans by illegal immigrants and believes that employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should be penalized. Capito opposes amnesty for the estimated 7 million illegal immigrants working in the United States. She has cosponsored legislation that excludes illegal immigrants from receipt of social security benefits, as well as opposed the Administration’s announcement to bypass Congress in them granting amnesty.

ENERGY Voted for the keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments West Virginia is an energy state. Supporting an all of the above energy policy that includes West Virginia coal and natural gas, oil produced in North America, together with renewable energy, is one of Congresswoman Capito’s most important legislative initiatives. As a co-chair of the Congressional Coal Caucus, Congresswoman Capito is a leader in the fight against excessive and unnecessary regulations from the EPA and other federal agencies aimed at reducing both the production of and the demand for West Virginia coal. She was a co-sponsor of the Stop the War on Coal Act and has fought to protect the jobs of miners as well as the truckers, contractors, railroad employees, utility workers, and many others whose jobs have been placed at risk by the current regulatory efforts targeting coal. Congresswoman Capito has authored legislation that would require the EPA to perform an economic assessment of any regulation that would negatively impact employment and hold public hearings in local communities adversely affected by regulatory decisions.
Natalie Tennant (D) Challenger

http://natalietennant.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE As the mother of a child who has been denied health-care coverage because of a pre-existing condition, I understand the anxiety associated with not having access to affordable health care. I am disappointed about the implementation of health care reform because it has made it harder for West Virginians to get affordable coverage they expected. Changes must be made to the Affordable Care Act in order for the law to work for West Virginians.

We must work to attract additional health-insurance providers to the West Virginia marketplace so that West Virginians have more options and cheaper premiums. A single provider does not constitute a competitive marketplace.
I support delaying the individual mandate penalty. West Virginians who have previously tried to register and purchase insurance through the website should not be penalized because the site did not originally work as intended.
No West Virginian should lose their current coverage or be forced to see a different doctor because of the Affordable Care Act.
We must also provide additional relief to small business and streamline reporting requirements.
I stand with the 270,000 West Virginians without access to health care.

COAL AND ENERGY With some of the finest coal in the world, abundant natural gas, manufacturing know-how, and our research capacity, West Virginia should continue its key role in powering our nation as part of an “all of the above” approach. In addition to supporting thousands of families and jobs across our state, our state’s energy resources go a long way toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil and making the United States energy independent. I want to keep our coal miners working and will stand up to any misguided efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will destroy our coal industry. I’ll fight the EPA and any politician regardless of party who tries to stand in our way. Coal should not be a partisan issue – it’s an economic issue for our state and a critical strategic issue for our nation.

To secure the future of coal, we must acknowledge that struggling with the same battles of the past is not enough. In the Senate, I will fight for funding for the development of clean coal technology which is critical to securing coal’s future. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown and West Virginia University should lead the way in clean coal research. As I’m fighting to keep our coal miners working, I will also fight to keep them safe. I will co-sponsor the Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety Act, which has languished in Congress for three years. The number of mine fatalities in recent years in West Virginia is unacceptable and I will support efforts to reduce that number to zero. I also believe the promises made to miners when they are working must be kept when they retire. I have been a strong advocate for the Patriot retirees and miners whose health care benefits and pensions have been jeopardized –because of corporate greed. In the Senate, I will support legislation that reforms our bankruptcy laws so that retirees and workers will not be on the losing end in our court system.

As we are working to secure the future of coal, we must also acknowledge the incredible potential of our natural gas reserves, especially the Marcellus Shale. I support Marcellus Shale development that creates jobs for local workers and improves our communities, while protecting our other natural resources. I am supportive of efforts to build cracker plants in West Virginia – those facilities can be critical in reviving our chemical industry in the Ohio and Kanawha valleys. I will always support efforts to create jobs in coal and natural gas as well as renewable energy – wind, solar, water and biomass. The potential for West Virginia energy jobs is great and I will make it a priority in the US Senate. With our manufacturing capabilities and research base, we need to be growing this industry to complement our coal and natural gas.

US HOUSE OF REP LOGO

District 1
David McKinley (R) Incumbent

http://www.mckinley2014.com/ http://mckinley.house.gov/#dialog

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/David_McKinley.htm**

Rated -7 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE Obamacare – As a former hospital board member and the husband of a critical care nurse, Congressman McKinley draws upon his experiences to influence his work on health care. The rising cost of health care is unsustainable and America is facing a crisis in health care. While advances in technology have brought us treatments our grandparents couldn’t even dream of, the cost of providing care has increased significantly. McKinley believes that we must lower health care costs, increase access to high-quality care, and put patients in charge of their health care dollars and decisions, not government. President Obama’s new health care law does not achieve this.

Affordable Care Act – Rep. McKinley continues to work to repeal Obamacare and replace it with reforms that will help ensure access to affordable, quality health care to all Americans without hurting our economy and adding to our national debt.

ENERGY Voted for the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments. The War on Coal must stop. Coal and other energy sources provide tens of thousands of West Virginia jobs, and Rep. McKinley considers them our state’s lifeblood. He is using his Energy and Commerce Committee assignment to curb the EPA’s over-regulation, which is stifling the energy industry and preventing the creation of more jobs.

In addition to coal, natural gas and oil are very important to the economy of West Virginia and this country. Exploration and aggressive drilling for these two fuels should be permitted without further delay. Rep. McKinley believes we should also encourage the use of wind, water and solar as alternatives to fossil fuels. Additionally, he supports nuclear power as a complement to meet our growing energy demands.

Rep. McKinley believes in market-based solutions to providing America’s energy needs. Protecting American jobs should be just as important as protecting the environment.
Glen Gainer (D) Challenger

http://www.glengainerforcongress.com/

District 2
Shelley Moore Capito (R)
Is a Candidate for US Senate in 2014

Alex Mooney (R) Challenger

http://mooneyforcongress.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

GOVERNMENT AND TAXES Politicians in Washington, D.C., have been racking up $1 trillion deficits annually, leaving our nation with a national debt approaching $17 trillion. This amounts to over $53,000 in federal debt for every man, woman, and child in the United States. We must cut wasteful government spending and eliminate expensive new entitlement programs like Obamacare to ensure our children and grandchildren are not burdened with massive amounts of government debt. I will stand up and vote “No” when President Obama and his liberal allies in Congress propose new wasteful government spending programs. I support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will require the federal government to balance its budget every year. Currently, forty-five states, including West Virginia, require their legislatures to enact a balanced budget – Congress should be required to do the same. Finally, I believe our government has a spending problem. Tax increases are just an excuse for the spending addicts in Washington to spend more of your hard-earned money. That’s why I signed Americans for Tax Reform’s “No New Taxes Pledge.” As your congressman, I will vote against every attempt to raise taxes.

HEALTHCARE Obamacare has to go. Already, Obamacare has resulted in new taxes and fees, massive regulation, and an increase in the cost of health care. I am fully committed to repealing Obamacare and will do whatever it takes to see that goal through. I support replacing Obamacare with commonsense, free-market health care reforms that will keep health care affordable, increases access to good health care in rural communities, and keeps government out of our most personal health care decisions. Some of these reforms include allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines, expanding health savings accounts, passing commonsense tort reform, and removing the discrimination in our tax code that prohibits individuals from buying health insurance with pre-tax dollars. Finally, doctors struggle to treat patients when government gets in the way. I have witnessed this firsthand due to my wife’s work as a neurosurgeon. Let’s repeal Obamacare so doctors can do what they need to do to treat patients and save lives.

IMMIGRATION Our immigration process is broken, and instead of fixing it, Washington is trying to push through amnesty legislation that will only exacerbate our current problems. I oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants.

As the son of Cuban and Irish immigrants, I want America to be a country that welcomes hard-working legal immigrants who want to live the American Dream. But we must make sure that we do it in a manner consistent with our fundamental belief in the rule of law and fairness. I will support legislation that focuses first on securing our borders and fixing the problems in our immigration system.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS I believe our government has a duty to protect its citizens from foreign threats, but that it can and must do so without sacrificing our fundamental civil liberties. I am deeply troubled by the expansive overreaching of the NSA’s surveillance program and recent revelations about the program’s many abuses. I will fight to make sure our government does not overstep its constitutional bounds in the process of fighting terrorism and protecting our country.

Support for Israel Israel is the United States’ closest ally in the Middle East and one of its closest allies in the world. Not only do we share strategic goals; we share a common belief in democracy and freedom. Like America, Israel is blessed with an entrepreneurial people that have produced military and non-military inventions. U.S. cooperation with and support for Israel makes both countries stronger, more secure and more prosperous.

ENERGY President Obama has made no secret of his disdain for the coal industry. His radical policies and the increasingly burdensome regulations imposed by his administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are destroying jobs and hurting West Virginia families. Liberal Harvard professor, Daniel P. Schrag, a prominent member of Obama’s Presidential Science Panel publicly revealed President Obama’s true intentions when he declared, “A war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” West Virginia has a long and rich history of providing energy to the rest of the nation, and I will do everything in my power to defeat President Obama’s EPA and support West Virginia’s proud coal industry. In addition, I will oppose other radical energy regulations, like President Obama’s proposed cap-and-trade plan that will increase the cost of energy and impose a de facto energy tax on every family in the United States. Finally, I support expanding the development of our natural energy resources in the United States to increase our domestic energy supply and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Nick Casey (D) Challenger

http://nickcaseyforwv.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

ENERGY West Virginia has the energy America needs to make us a more independent and prosperous nation. West Virginia has the coal, gas, wind, hydro, solar, and geothermal energy that our country needs. Washington however does not have a workable energy plan. We are suffering under an ever-expanding web of EPA regulations, especially in our coal industry. Congress needs to set energy policy, not the EPA. I will fight for common-sense regulations that businesses can operate under and our workers can make careers out of to provide for their families.

We need a plan to use all of our energy resources as cleanly and efficiently as possible. As a nation, switching from foreign oil to West Virginia natural gas to fuel our trucks and cars is an obvious opportunity. Vehicles will run cleaner, cheaper and we keep money here at home while creating good paying jobs. Energy gives us a tremendous opportunity to provide many more good-paying jobs and to keep our children in West Virginia…I will to work to make that happen.

JOBS Every politician says ‘they are for jobs,’ but I have a plan… And it’s really a simple plan: we need a government that gets past the petty partisan infighting and gets back to work for the American people.

Our economy is being hurt by the constant fiscal cliffs, shutdowns, debt crises, etc….we need Congress to get back-to-basics and pass budgets on a regular basis. Some agencies, like the EPA, are creating new regulations at a pace that businesses cannot keep up with…we need Congress to work together and set an energy policy that utilizes all of our energy sources. Our federal government has spent $1.7 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan and wasted much of that spending…we need Congress to reprioritize and reinvest that money in infrastructure projects here at home. If you send me to Congress, I will get to work and reach out to representatives on both sides of the aisle, who may often disagree, to develop reasonable solutions that solve problems and help our government foster an environment where businesses can grow and create jobs.

District 3
Nick Rahall (D) Incumbent

http://www.nickrahall.com/ http://rahall.house.gov/issues

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/nick_rahall.htm**

Rated +2 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

ENERGY AND REGULATIONS Voted against the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments. From programs aimed at generating cleaner electricity using coal to those that would promote the development of liquid transportation fuels from coal, I have long worked to clear the way for coal to address our energy challenges more cleanly, efficiently, and affordably. I have worked to prevent unfair regulatory requirements that could undermine coal jobs, increase energy prices for working families, and reduce energy reliability. In addition, while welcoming the growth of the natural gas industry in West Virginia, I have supported policies that would balance that growth with conservation and protection of property-owner’s rights. Looking ahead to intensifying international competition for energy and increasing concerns about the world’s changing climate, I remain determined to help find workable, long-term solutions to America’s energy challenges. Rahall’s Committee Acts to Rein in EPA’s Permitting Overreach – Apr 9, 2014 Issues: Washington, D.C. – Following the recent move by the Supreme Court not to consider the Spruce Mine case, U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall pushed for congressional action to put an end to the EPA’s Clean Water Act permitting overreaches. Today, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, where Rahall is the top Democrat, advanced H.R. 524, a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) that puts an end to the EPA’s practice of retroactively revoking permits they issue. Rahall is an original cosponsor of the bill.

“The EPA’s overreach threatens coal industry jobs, but it’s also a direct threat to economic activity in communities across the country,” said Rahall. “What good is a permit if it can be retroactively taken away, sometimes years later? I appreciate the Committee’s action today to address this situation moving forward. Allowing the EPA to continue to do business like this will have a chilling effect on our economy and public construction projects nationwide.”

HEALTHCARE I have always believed that quality healthcare must be accessible, affordable, and available for every West Virginian. Let’s fix portions of the new healthcare law that need to be corrected while ensuring that Insurance companies can no longer deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions or place arbitrary financial caps on the amount of coverage patients can receive. And, as I voted to do, let’s allow patients to be able to keep their existing plans.

IMMIGRATION I am proud of my family history and of the immigrants who helped to build West Virginia. My grandfather emigrated from Lebanon and scraped together a living selling linens in West Virginia’s coal camps. He believed in hard work, God, and family, and fell in love with the United States and West Virginia.
West Virginia greatly benefited from the immigrant families who migrated to our southern coal fields in the last century, working in our mines and factories and steel mills and building our railroads and economic infrastructure, as well as contributing to our State’s culture and arts. Certainly, West Virginia and our Nation will benefit from future generations of immigrants. But, we must ensure that those generations live up to their responsibilities as past generations did – learning the English language, absorbing our Constitutional principles, and abiding by the law. And, of course, we must always be protective of the jobs and salaries of American workers, and making sure that the American taxpayer is not forced to shoulder any unfair burdens.
Evan Jenkins (R) Challenger

http://evanjenkins.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

COAL President Obama and his EPA are waging a War on Coal, and Evan will fight it tooth and nail. He’ll strongly oppose Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme, a carbon tax and job-killing EPA regulations. Evan understands that in West Virginia, coal is not just our economic lifeblood – it makes us who we are. In the state legislature, Jenkins has supported numerous measures to protect the health, safety and pensions of West Virginia coal miners, and he is firmly opposed to any cuts to the Federal Black Lung Benefit Program.

HEALTHCARE Jenkins has been an outspoken opponent of ObamaCare since 2009 – Evan knows that ObamaCare will cost trillions, raise premiums and kill jobs. As the disastrous implementation of Obama’s health law has proved, this is a classic boondoggle that will greatly damage our health care system. Evan will lead efforts to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with common sense health care reforms that will improve access to quality health care and preserve your doctor-patient relationship.

Criticized ObamaCare for damaging the doctor-patient relationship
Criticized ObamaCare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional
Criticized ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion
Criticized ObamaCare, predicting a doctor shortage in West Virginia
Criticized ObamaCare’s lack of medical liability reform.

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Even in its weakest moments, would Britain have risked a cease-fire with Nazi Germany during World War II — knowing that Hitler habitually broke his promises?

With their usual mixture of human rights concern and hypocrisy, several countries have stepped into the fresh Israel-Gaza conflict by demanding a cease-fire. Egypt has played an important role in this demarche; Hamas has turned down flatly all the conditions on which Egyptian President al-Sisi insisted. How far the war will go still hangs in the balance. As Israeli ground forces now fight with Hamas in their tunnels and bunkers, over 600 Palestinians (largely made up of men of fighting age) have died[1], as well as over 32 Israelis.

The international pressure from all sides for a ceasefire is widening and intensifying. Of course, what a ceasefire amounts to, as it has before, is to give Hamas a second chance. And a third and a fourth — whatever is needed for them to achieve their clearly stated goals of wiping Israel from the map, and then Jews.

What is odd is that the United States and the EU called for a ceasefire after only seven days — even before the ground offensive began. They did not do that while America and Britain were fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. Nor did anyone call for a cessation of UN-sponsored NATO air and ground attacks during the Bosnian war. Today, calls for a ceasefire fall on deaf ears in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and Nigeria, where governments (good or bad) face the forces of armed Islamist terrorists. So why so much pressure on Israel, dubbed as always the aggressor, whose responses to Hamas terrorism are unjustly considered “disproportionate,” and whose serious efforts to contain civilian casualties are always disregarded or sneered at?

Hamas has broken or refused to extend ceasefires before this conflict. On this occasion, Israel worked with Egypt to bring about a truce, but Hamas rejected all Egypt’s demands and began firing rockets again within hours of the agreement. As a result, Israel was forced to resume air strikes on Gaza.

It appears most everyone today is practicing what Pastor Gil referred to in a recent sermon – “situational ethics” – truth and right get to be bent to fit our agenda, instead of following a Higher Truth that compels us to do what is right, including being honest, even when it is inconvenient.

Perhaps someone might want to send that sermon as a reminder to our elected officials, most notably the hysteria mongers who are claiming women’s movement, freedom of choice, and reproductive rights have been undermined because of the Supreme Court decision freeing Hobby Lobby from a few of the Obamacare mandates that are in contradiction with the company owners’ religious beliefs (abortion).

The truth – the inconvenient truth? Hobby Lobby still covers the majority of contraception options most women select, just not all of them. Hobby Lobby’s owners, on religious grounds, don’t support abortion, certain forms of contraception. That is not the same thing as denying their workers a variety of viable options. It just means that some options are not being paid for by their healthcare benefits.

Stop the presses! Oh my gosh…someone might have to pay out of pocket for something they want. The world is coming to an end!

Who says you have to work for Hobby Lobby? If their benefit package isn’t what you want, you have the option to work for someone else, or pay for what you select. But in the purple dimension of Obama where unicorn ponies take us to the land of wishful thinking, individual responsibility is akin to a four letter word. How unpleasant indeed!

In Obamaland where we are owed something by someone else, and where affinity anarchy is alive and well – using gender and ethnicity issues to rev up the base, anyone in disagreement with the narrative must be challenged.

If we were to believe what the New York Times writes, or what we are supposed to see on CNN or the BBC, there are indeed terrible crimes committed in Gaza by the IDF. In this light, Israel’s response is disproportionate, and the only solution to the carnage is a diplomatic one, a negotiated cease fire and then a truce that somehow returns the situation to what it was prior to the commencement of Protective Edge.

Unfortunately, as a Jew who feels deeply the charges, no matter how outrageous they are and however much they echo classical anti-Semitic tropes, I learned to distrust just about everything said or shown about Israel’s defensive actions by the main news media. Unfortunately because in m y heart of hearts I don’t want to think that the whole of liberal, intellectual elite are liars, self-deluded and maliciously motivated. But that is precisely what the evidence in the printed, electronic and digital media shows.

Let us take the key terms in the title given to this little essay.

That there is a lot of killing going on cannot stand as given, since in many instances all we have to go on are biased statements by so-called Palestinian sources, medical, political and militant, and by emotive terms expressed by well-known leftwing Hamas supporters in the international media, as well as the ever-hostile and prejudiced UN agencies in the region. Some of what is shown as evidence turns out to be: (a) images of death and destruction taken from other conflicts, such as Syria and Iraq, and already used one, two or three years ago; so that we have miracle victims and families who are known to have died several months or years ago, then were resurrected and shown dead on the streets of Gaza, in exactly the same poses and with precisely the same injuries; (b) completely concocted or staged events, so that the same persons keep jumping out of ambulances with the same dead or wounded bodies again and again, in the order of Mohammad Dura, the poor innocent child shot at a check point a few years back, but was never given a funeral, looked distinctly like a different person as a corpse in the morgue and as a cowering child on the street; and (c) some still photos purportedly of recent atrocities but subsequently shown to be grabs from Hollywood horror films. But most callous and grotesque is the way Hamas has used photos of families they massacred in Israel to represent their own dead.

Innocent victims, how is that expression defined? Are the families of Hamas operatives and commanders who do not leave their homes when warned to leave because of an imminent attack completely innocent, or are they victims of their own ideological delusion, or the enforced role as human shields imposed by other family members or political officials? Granted the occasional incidence of collateral damage, should we not also take into account the deliberate booby-trapping of expected targets-as revealed in captured Hamas war policy and plans: so that Israeli precision rocket fire leads to secondary explosions set up to destroy nearby residences and shops?

On Tuesday, nearly eight years after former KGB officer-turned-dissident Alexander V. Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poisoning, the British government announced it was opening a formal investigation into the matter. The decision is likely to further strain already tenuous relations between Russia and Great Britain, who are at odds regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, their support of Bashar Assad in Syria, and their possible complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

The move represents an about-face for Home Secretary Theresa May, following the London High Court’s decision in February rejecting her refusal not to hold a public inquiry. May’s reluctance had stemmed from concerns about what effect it would have on British-Russian relations, which have long been strained by the murder. But despite denials by British Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears the murders of 298 passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists has provided the ultimate impetus for reconsideration.

“I am announcing today the government’s decision to establish an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 to investigate the death of Mr. Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006,” May announced on the uk.gov website. “The inquiry will be established by the Home Office. The inquiry will be chaired by Sir Robert Owen, a senior judge who is the current Coroner in the Inquest into Mr. Litvinenko’s death.”

During the long legal process leading to May’s announcement, Owen insisted the British government possessed documents that “establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.”

A history of bad blood between Litvinenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin goes back to 1998. At the time Putin, a former KGB officer, was appointed to head the FSB, which is what the KGB became after the fall of the Soviet Union. Litvinenko had also been a KGB officer working in counterintelligence before getting a 1997 promotion to senior operational officer in the FSB department investigating organized crime at the new agency. Litvinenko incurred Putin’s wrath when he and four other FSB agents conducted a news conference during which they accused the head of the organized crime directorate of ordering the assassination of Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was a powerful businessman and political operative allied to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

After Litvinenko warned Berezovsky about the plot, he was fired and subsequently arrested three times. After spending a month in jail he was released after promising not to leave Russia. But he acquired a forged passport and fled with his wife and son seeking asylum in Britain on Nov. 1, 2000.

Russian president Vladimir “Teflon” Putin is on a roll—or so we’re led to believe by the media. The Russian president combines the slick machismo of James Bond, the cojones of George Patton and the craftiness of Cardinal Richelieu.

Actually, in his dealings with Cuba, Putin looks more like Barney Fife. We’re not accustomed to seeing Mr Macho-Cool Vladimir Putin made an international jackass. But many Cuba-watchers snickered as the hapless Russian President met with the Castro brothers on July 11th and “wrote off” their $32 billion debt to the Soviet Union.

“That old thing? I never liked it anyway,” Cuba-watchers easily imagine Putin hissing through gritted teeth. “We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba,” is what Putin actually hissed for the record.

Vladimir Putin rose to the rank of Lieut. Colonel in an organization that tortured and murdered at roughly TWICE the rate of the Nazi SS. So his offense at the “illegal” U.S. embargo of a KGB-founded, terror-sponsoring regime should provoke only chortling and snorting. Instead it’s probably causing a fit of the vapors at the State Dept. and in faculty lounges nationwide.

Not that Putin left Cuba completely empty-handed. Instead the Russians reclaimed the Evil Empire’s largest foreign spying base, located in Lourdes just south of Havana. The Soviets built this complex– capable of electronic spying on everything from the U.S. Military’s Central and Southern command to NASA facilities– in 1967 and manned it until 2001. That year financial problems and pressure from the U.S. forced the Russians to close and abandon it. Interestingly it was (then) Russian President Vladimir Putin who felt compelled to lock it up and scurry out.

This re-colonization by the Russians of a spy base on our very borders is obviously important, but surely a true Russian Richelieu could have reclaimed the base for less than $32 billion, especially with an Obama in the White House.

Putin’s visit to the colonial outpost his “old” outfit (the KGB) helped convert from a vibrant capitalist nation swamped with European immigrants into a vast sewer, slum and prison that repels even impoverished Haitians disgusted most Cuban dissidents. The loathing of most Cubans (including many communists) for Che Guevara owed much to Guevara’s groupie-like devotion to the Soviets who infested Cuba and roundly repelled almost all Cubans.

Putin’s fleecing by the Castro brothers provides more proof (if we actually needed any) that rarely in modern history has any item of U.S. foreign policy triumphed as patently (or hilariously) as the so-called U.S. embargo of Castro’s Stalinist kleptocracy. Here’s a glittering gem amidst the rubble of so much recent U.S. foreign policy.

As the Israeli-Hamas conflict rages, a familiar pattern asserts itself: Israel bends over backward to demonstrate her moral innocence to the world, and the world heaps condemnation on her anyway. Israel always feels compelled to restrain her military superiority because victory in that arena means losing the battle in the arena of public opinion despite extraordinary efforts. It’s worth questioning whether the moral victory Israel is striving for accomplishes anything except to perpetuate the hostilities and ensure more Israeli deaths at the hands of Arab terrorists.

Forced to defend herself, but under the microscope of worldwide scrutiny, Israel has gone to extreme lengths to avoid civilian deaths. Business Insider calculated that Israel has taken such unprecedented measures that she is “raising the standards of what can be expected in warfare.” The IDF issues warnings to civilians prior to neighborhood incursions. Israeli doctors treat wounded Gazans. Israel agrees to a ceasefire only to have Hamas break it. In one instance, Israel even spared the lives of fourteen Hamas operatives in order not to incur civilian casualties. And yet she is still decried for a “disproportionate response” against the craven Hamas, who hide behind women and children, store weapons in hospitals, and happily press their own citizens into martyrdom to wage a very effective propaganda war.

“Disproportionate response” is a completely idiotic complaint that has never before been raised in wartime except to punish Israel, itself surrounded by a massively disproportionate Arab population. No one ever won a war by countering an aggressor with carefully measured, tit-for-tat responses. Conflicts are won by striking back so disproportionately that the enemy’s military forces are devastated and, more importantly, its will to fight is crushed so thoroughly that the threat is extinguished.

Defense Minister and former chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon recently accused Netanyahu of not combating terrorism with a strong enough hand: “Why are we, a sovereign nation with a strong army, begging a terror organization to give us calm? We need to recover the deterrence in a way that they are the ones begging for calm. What are we teaching our enemies all over the world? That they can do anything to us and we’ll turn the other cheek.”

It is worth reminding ourselves what sort of enemy Israel is dealing with, and what kicked off this most recent warfare: the murder of three Jewish teenagers – one an American citizen – kidnapped by Hamas and left in a shallow grave last month, which left the world – or at least the civilized world – heartsick and angry. The boys had been shot shortly after they went missing, “killed in cold blood by human animals,” as Prime Minister Netanyahu said. So Israel and decent people everywhere mourned, because we love life; meanwhile our nihilistic enemy, who boasts that they love death more, celebrated.

On Thursday evening, Reuven Rivlin was sworn in as Israel’s 10th president. Due to incessant rocket fire into Israel and the war going on in Gaza, the event was held without the customary fanfare. A somber, modest ceremony took place at the Knesset, in the presence of the upper echelons of Israeli society from across the political spectrum.

Conspicuously absent from the proceedings were the Arab members of Knesset. As they have shown in word and deed, the sympathies of these particular democratically elected officials do not lie with the country of their citizenship. And their boycott of the changing of the guard of the presidency was a statement of their identification with the enemies of their state.

Someone else who expressed solidarity with the terrorists in Gaza this week was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On Wednesday, the chief mullah, whose government funds and arms the terrorists in Gaza, called on the Palestinians to remain steadfast in their fight to destroy Israel.

“The only way to deal with this savage regime is to continue resistance and armed struggle,” he said in an address to students in Tehran. “We believe that the West Bank should also be armed like Gaza and those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should act in this regard.”

It wasn’t mere lip service: On Thursday, the Bazaaris’ Basij (a militia connected to the Revolutionary Guards) opened a bank account precisely for this purpose, inviting donations for the cause of supplying West Bank terrorists with weapons.

Khamenei has good reason to be optimistic well beyond the violent Palestinian protests at the Qalandiya checkpoint Thursday night. Such incidents are small fry compared to the global goings-on that are working in his favor.

This week, Iran received an extension from the P5+1 countries (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) to reach an agreement that would curb its nuclear program. The original deadline was July 20. Now the Islamic Republic has until Nov. 24 to continue pulling the wool over the eyes of West, while its centrifuges spin unhindered.

In addition, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a Palestinian-drafted resolution against Israel, strongly condemning “the failure of Israel, the occupying power, to end its prolonged occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including east Jerusalem; and condemns in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 13 June 2014 that may amount to international crimes.”

There’s something darkly coincidental in the fact that the latest weapon to be deployed against the survival instinct of both Israel and the United States is an alleged “heartlessness” when it comes to children.

The people of Israel are castigated in news media, social media and the “international community” (read: the scoundrel United Nations, of whose budget U.S. taxpayers pay 22 percent) as lacking in “humanity” itself. Why? Because as the IDF fights to end Gaza’s endless rocket barrages against Israel, many children under the age of 18 number among the civilian dead. This London Telegraph headline is not untypical: “Israel’s offensive in Gaza has ‘killed more children than fighters,’ say human rights groups. Israel has been accused of waging ‘war on the children’ of Gaza …”

No mention in the article, however, of Gaza’s purposeful, strategic use of “human shields,” which leads to such civilian casualties. No mention of the directive from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of the Interior instructing civilians to remain in their homes on receipt of advance warnings from Israel to vacate before a military attack, as the Washington Free Beacon first reported. No mention that despite building networks of military tunnels, Gaza authorities neglected to build any bomb shelters for civilians! No mention of Gaza’s use of schools and other civilian sites to store rockets and other military material, and of its use of hospitals as Hamas command centers.

No, the story is tightly focused on Israel’s supposed “war on children.” This libel is tweeted, screamed and news-anchor-intoned into poisonous propaganda designed to sap the life from Israel’s survival instinct, or at least alienate her supporters. In the stage-managed furor, the pressure on the Jews of Israel builds: Stop defending your borders, your people and your nation. Stop everything and “save the children of Gaza.”

Only emotion to the point of frenzy bursts into such agitprop, but it is vital to note that the emotion showing through is hatred for Jews, not love for children. If it were the latter, we would see rage directed at the society that steeps its young in the Jew-hatred of jihad and then turns them into “martyrs” – not at the Jewish society seeking to protect its people, young and old, and, at far too much risk, Gaza’s as well.

Admittedly, there are great differences between Israel’s plight and our own. For one thing, the Israelis are more fortunate in having a government that actually wants to protect its people from invaders. Israel enforces its own border, having fortified it with a fence. Now, it fights for its inviolability. Our government, meanwhile, has left our border effectively open, even after 9/11, and has demonstrated no interest in re-establishing national sovereignty.

That said, there are similarities to note in the political attacks on Americans who hope to repulse what they see as deathblows to our remnant republic coming out of the “border crisis.” Anyone worried about the nullification of the southern border; the accelerating usurpation of dictatorial powers by the president; the perils to national security and public safety of open borders; the perils, also, to the survival of our English-speaking culture rooted mainly in Europe, is excoriated in the public square for having no “humanity.” Just like Israelis, such “mean-spirited” Americans must hate children, too, because this is all about “immigrant kids” in need, right? No – but that’s the dominant narrative.

One million bigots to march against Israel in London
The anti-Israel march planned for Saturday in London is being called by a horror movie-level gallery of hateful, totalitarian groups. They’re aiming for the one million bigot rally

This could make the Guinness Book of Records. The largest collection of bigots ever in one place and at one time. The plan is for a million people — every single one a bigot by definition — to join a rally in London on Saturday to abuse and defame the Jewish state for having the temerity to defend itself against terror, and even to exist.

The list of groups who are calling for this obnoxious event tells its own story. Here is the breakdown from the Stop the War Coalition:

“Demonstration called by: Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of Al Aqsa, British Muslim Initiative, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain.”

Crikey. The moral weight of such groups! The only one missing is the Adolf Hitler revival band.

Obviously, they won’t get a million people on the march. If they get 10,000 that will be a big deal for them. But let’s be open minded. If they do get a million people, we really should send this in as a world record.

To be clear. Anti-Zionism is the most widely-held, and most dangerous form of bigotry in the world today. We can’t stop the bigots from marching; but we can call them out for what they are.

Shall we do it?