RUTHFULLY YOURS

I agree with David and Rich that John Hinderaker’s Bundy post is very strong. As a matter of law, Cliven Bundy is in the wrong. He is nevertheless a sympathetic figure, and the concerns raised by the standoff in Nevada transcend the illegality of his conduct.

Rich’s recollection of Lincoln’s exhortation that reverence for the law become “the political religion of the nation” triggered my recollection of a seemingly inconsistent speech Lincoln delivered as president nearly a quarter-century later. As the Civil War raged, the president very controversially suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imposed martial law in states where Confederate operatives and sympathizers were taking seditious action. Addressing Congress on July 4, 1861, Lincoln defended his suspension of the writ:

Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen’s liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?

Now, it was only advisedly that I described this speech as “seemingly” inconsistent with the one Rich excerpted. For one thing, Lincoln did not believe his suspension of the writ violated the law, and he had a very colorable argument. The Constitution provides for the writ’s suspension in cases of rebellion or invasion; it does not say who may suspend it. The Supreme Court’s eventual conclusion (in the 1866 case of Ex Parte Milligan) that Congress must enact a suspension because the relevant clause is in Article I was sensible, but it was not indisputable. Lincoln was not without reason to believe that he had the necessary authority as long as a rebellion or invasion had occurred. Moreover, Lincoln’s passion for the rule of law was evident even in the act of arguably breaking it: He not only vigorously contended that his suspension was lawful; he also urged Congress to affirm the suspension by passing legislation (which Congress did in 1863).

Observers like Caroline Glick, Michael Curtis, and popular blogger Elder of Zion have all noted the strange fact that feminists tend to beat up on Israel while giving the Arab (and larger Muslim) world a free pass.

As Glick points out:

if being a feminist means attacking the only country in the Middle East where women enjoy freedom and equal rights, then feminism…has become at best, a meaningless term…. The deception at the heart of the feminist movement is nowhere more apparent than in the silence with which self-professed feminists and feminist movements ignore the inhumane treatment of women who live under Islamic law…. Leading feminist voices in the US and Europe remain unforgivably silent on the unspeakable oppression of women and girls in Islamic societies….

On December 30, 2010, Moshe Katsav, who had served as president of Israel (a ceremonial but significant post) from 2000 to 2007, was convicted of rape and sexual harassment by a three-judge panel. The judges were two Jewish women, Miriam Sokolow and Judith Shevah, and an Arab man, George Kara.

It was an illuminative moment in several ways:

● Whereas in Israel rape, including marital rape, is a felony, most Arab countries explicitly or tacitly allow marital rape; rape is currently endemic particularly in Egypt, Syria, and Yemen; and in many Arab countries the victim of rape is the one who is charged with an offense.

● There could be no parallel phenomenon of a Jewish judge sentencing an Arab defendant, let alone a former high official, in an Arab country, not least because almost all the Jews who lived in those countries had to flee because of persecution.

● Whereas there are very small percentages of female judges in a minority of Arab countries (and none in the rest), in Israel half of all magistrate and district-court judges are women, and for years the Supreme Court has included at least one woman.

Even if it doesn’t fit the warped view of today’s feminists, the difference between Israel and the Arab world on women’s rights (and human rights generally) is night and day.

Let’s take Israel first. A survey in 2012 ranked Israel 11th among the 59 developed countries for women’s participation in the workplace and 24th for the percentage of women in executive positions. So Israel—smack in the Middle East, a democratic country surrounded on all sides by nondemocracies—not only ranked among the developed countries on these measures but came in well above average and solidly above average.

New York City has roasted a man to death.

Jerome Murdough, like a very large share of New York City’s homeless, was mentally ill. According to his family, he suffered from both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, along with what his mother gently describes as “beer problems.” He was a former Marine who was in and out of homeless shelters, hospitals, and the occasional jail cell, with eleven misdemeanor convictions for trespassing, public drinking, drug possession, and the like.

During what was an unusually bitter winter in New York, Mr. Murdough sought shelter in an unsecured stairwell in a Harlem housing project. He was arrested for trespassing and transported to the infamous New York City lockup at Rikers Island. His bail was set, bizarrely, at $2,500, ensuring that he remained in place. Because of his mental problems, Mr. Murdough was to be kept under close supervision — he was to be checked every 15 minutes, in fact.

Rikers Island has many problems, from gang riots to widespread rape. There are plenty of criminals on both sides of the bars. It also has some more mundane problems, such as malfunctioning climate-control systems. Mr. Murdough was kept in a six-by-ten cinderblock cell, which effectively became a brick oven when the dysfunctional heating system caused the temperature in the cell to become, in the precisely chosen words of Mark Cranston, the acting commissioner of the city’s corrections department, “unusually high,” which is precisely what you’d have to be to imagine that those words provide an adequate description of the circumstances in question.

Mr. Murdough, trying to keep from freezing to death, was instead baked to death.

Those 15-minute checks never happened; he’d been dead for hours before he was discovered. It was days before Mr. Murdough’s public defender was notified of his death. His family was never notified of his death by the authorities — they learned about it when an Associated Press reporter called to ask about the case.

Elizabeth Warren could face a nightmare on her book tour- Thomas Lifson
I can feel the schadenfreude welling inside me as I read that a group of Cherokee women are preparing to confront Elizabeth Warren as she sets forth on a national book tour to publicize her new book. Sen. Warren matters a lot more than most freshman senators because she must be considered a near-frontrunner for the Democratic 2016 nomination if Hillary Clinton decides that playing with her forthcoming grandchild is better way to occupy her time than going through the meat grinder as a candidate.

William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, Warren’s principal nemesis in the blogosphere, has the details of what awaits Fauxcahontas:

In Elizabeth Warren’s new book, A Fighting Chance, Warren claims to be “hurt and angry” that people criticized her claim to be Native American, specifically Cherokee. Warren blamed the Scott Brown campaign, the local Republican Party, and “some blogger.”

In fact, Warren has no one to blame but herself for her false claim to be Cherokee. ReadElizabeth Warren Wiki, and these posts responding to the claims in her book:

Twila Barnes, No Pity for Warren
Michael Patrick Leahy, Elizabeth Warren Repeats Her False Claims of Native American Ancestry in New Book and Elizabeth Warren History Of ‘Minority Status’ Listings At Odds With New Book’s Claims

Warren will be launching a nationwide book tour. Someone who wants to meet Warren is Twila Barnes.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Breakthrough in colitis research. There is hope for many of the 5 million sufferers of colitis thanks to scientists at Israel’s Bar Ilan University. They have identified that the gene tmf1 controls the production of beneficial probiotic bacteria in the gut, which stop colitis developing.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16709

Trials start for growing bones. Israeli biotech Bonus Biogroup, which has developed a method for producing bone grafts from stem cells, has begun a clinical trial of jawbone grafts. The trial’s interim results are due in four months.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-trial-start-boosts-bonus-biogroup-1000930346

Remove fat with ultrasound. Israel’s Syneron has obtained FDA approval for its non-invasive UltraShape System for fat cell destruction. Pulsed focused ultrasound energy targets subcutaneous fat, while keeping the surrounding tissue intact. The system is already sold in Europe, Canada and Asia Pacific countries.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-syneron-obtains-fda-approval-for-ultrashape-1000932083

New Israeli heart devices successful. Surgeons at Poland’s John Paul II hospital were impressed with the first use of Israel’s Gardia WIRON devices. The devices place filters into the arteries prior to stent insertions, which then protect patients against dangerous blood clots and emboli that develop during these vital operations.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-allium-reports-successful-angiography-procedures-1000931373

This quote from this column is particularly good, especially for those P.R. groupies who harp on the fact that Israel should improve its “image”….rsk

“However, while promoting the numerous positive aspects that Israel has to its credit should indeed play a part in the way it presents itself to the world, this is hardly an effective approach to combating the assault on Israel’s legitimacy and countering the dangers that flow from it. For as the perceptive Dr. Shifftan deftly points out in the introductory excerpt, it is an approach in which the responses do not address the charges – and therefore will be of little avail in rebuffing them.After all, Israel is not maligned in international forums because it is accused of having poor medical care, shoddy irrigation systems, underdeveloped technological achievement, unattractive women, backward agricultural practices or uninviting tourist attractions.Accordingly, focusing on dispelling such assumed “misconceptions” is hardly likely to stem the tide of vicious vilification of Israel and the Zionist vision of a sovereign nation-state for the Jewish people in its ancient homeland.”

If the 2014 Conference can spur public brisk discussion on how to remedy the some of the policy deficiencies it exposed it will have made an enormous contribution to the long-term strategic well-being of the nation.
Dear Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and the entire Netanyahu government, I asked you, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, a question this Sunday at the Jerusalem Post’s Annual Conference… Your response was nothing but loaded rhetoric downplaying the existential BDS threat and the attacks against me on my campus for being a Zionist. Perhaps worst of all, you downplayed the anti-Semitic attacks on students across the United States, Europe and soon the world.

– Justin Hayet, “An open letter to Foreign Minister Liberman” – The Jerusalem Post, April 10

It is… time for Israel, as a collective, as a nation, to begin a long-term celebration of our assets.

– Ido Aharoni, Israel’s consul-general in New York, Jerusalem Post Conference, April 6.

Imagine a man accused of murder, rape and robbery, who in his defense claims that he is a good scientist, loves classical music and has a beautiful wife.

– Dr. Yoram Shifftan, an insightful E-correspondent, on trying to rebuff criticism of Israel by “positive branding.”

It probably would have been more timely to have written this column last week, but my sense of outrage, aroused by the asinine attempt by Tom Friedman to draw a parallel between the Judeophilic magnate Sheldon Adelson and Judeophobic mullah Ali Khamenei, dictated otherwise.

In light of his absurd allegation that the two men pose equal danger to the future of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, I felt compelled to use the public platform available to me to repudiate as robustly as possible his unfounded and unfair comparison.

Still sufficiently newsworthy

Much of what I had to say on the recent 2014 Jerusalem Post Conference remains newsworthy for discussion this week – particularly with regard to the fundamental policy implications (read “grave policy deficiencies”) that came to light during its proceedings.

Although I have no intention of confining myself to mere ex-post reportage of the conference program, or to presenting readers little more than a descriptive synopsis of addresses made and discussions held, some reference to them cannot be avoided.

So before moving on to a more substantive interpretation of what took place, allow me the briefest tour d’horizon of the event.

By any objective criterion, the 2014 Jerusalem Post Conference was a success.

The venue, the towering Marriott Marquis at Times Square on Broadway, was eminently prestigious. The organization seemed immaculate and the attendance impressive (reportedly up to 1,000) – despite the competition from other high-profile pro-Israel attractions on the same day.

Indeed, apart from expressions of disagreement/annoyance on specific matters with some speaker or other, nearly all the reactions I encountered from the audience seemed to indicate that the overall sentiment was that the experience had been interesting and worthwhile.

Cliven Bundy’s Justifiable Defiance: Part IOn a morning In April, 1775, the British army, based in Boston, Massachusetts, set out to seize and/or destroy caches of arms and powder stockpiled by colonists in anticipation of trouble with the Crown. Along the way, this “search and destroy” army, between 600 and 700 strong, encountered a tiny band of armed American colonists, about 40 in number, on Lexington Green. There was a confrontation. The commanding officer ordered the colonists, the “damned rebels” – who weren’t even blocking the path of the army – to lay down their arms. The colonists refused.

A shot was fired – from which side? That’s always been a subject of speculation, and it hardly matters. A “violent” confrontation was bound to happen, later if not sooner, and if not on Lexington Green, then elsewhere, as the Crown arrogantly pushed its weight around in an attempt to subdue resistance by the colonists to Crown rule and regulations.

The British fired a volley into the colonists. Some colonists returned fire before dispersing in the face of the superior force. The survivors of the volley faded into the woods.

The pattern was repeated on a far greater scale on Bunker or Breed’s Hill in June.

In April, 2014, in Nevada, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), together with the U.S. Park Service, sent in about 200 officers prepared for war against other Americans to seize the cattle of Cliven Bundy, a recalcitrant rancher who refused to pay “grazing fees” on federal land. This force was augmented with military-style communications, tasers, attack dogs, snipers in the hills, and the best weaponry money could buy. In response, hundreds of Americans, many of them armed and ready to defend Bundy, his family, and his ranch, arrived on the scene. On Saturday, April 12th, the BLM “backed off” from what promised to be a clash of arms between its hired guns and the impromptu American militia. Some cattle it had collected were released. It promised to pursue Bundy “administratively and judicially” in court.

The rapidity with which events unfolded in Nevada caused no little amount of confusion, two or three baker’s dozens of rumors and allegations, and muddled coverage of what Cliven Bundy did or didn’t do, what actually happened on April 12th, and what may happen next. This column is an attempt to sort the calves from the heifers.

In his own words: Barack Obama on Christianity and Islam Thomas Lifson

A website called Now The End Begins has compiled 40 comments by Barack Obama on Christianity and Islam. Collectively, they create quite an interesting picture. I admit that there may be instances of the president speaking as favorably of Christianity as he does of Islam, but I am not aware of them. I do remember in the 2008 campaign that he said he had accepted Jesus Christ as his savior, and that was in response to public awareness of his attendance at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church, Trinity United. What the president left unsaid is the nature of Jesus as understood in Black Liberation Theology. But that is a discussion for another time.

The list has been reprinted here and here. (hat tip: iOwnTheWorld.com). See what you think:

1. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”

2. “The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer”

3. “We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.”

4. “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”

5. “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”

6. “Islam has always been part of America”

7. “we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities”

8. “These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

9. “America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

10. “I made it clear that America is not – and will never be – at war with Islam.”

11. “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”

12. “So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed”

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/corrupt-democrat-machine-calls-voter-id-racist

“Vote early and often for Curley,” was a lyric from one of Democrat Mayor, Congressman, and Governor James Michael Curley’s campaign songs I heard often while growing up a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat in the 1950s. Democrat voter fraud was not only winked at, it was celebrated from the early 20th century onward. Sticking it to Yankee Republicans was a way of life when you grew up Irish in Massachusetts. Oppressed in the 19th century, the Irish ruled Boston and the state during the 20th and the spoils system became a way of life. By the time I was growing up, it was who you knew or who you were related to, and there was nothing wrong with that in the Boston-Irish-Democrat code of ethics. It’s the way things were done, and it swept the Kennedy dynasty into power during its heyday.

Kennedys are gone from the scene now. The Democrat coalition today comprises unions, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, feminists, single women, and aging Irish pols like Richard Daley, John Kerry, and Joe Biden. Election fraud committed by people in any of those groups is winked at and publicly denied by Democrats and the mainstream media, which look the other way. They don’t sing songs about it anymore the way Curley’s people did. They celebrate it privately now.

Into a similar, but Texan Democrat political arena waded small business person and political neophyte Catherine Englebrecht. Starting in their garage, she and her husband Bryan had built a small manufacturing business outside of Houston which, after two decades employed thirty people. Then she started volunteering at the polls where, according to national review.com, she became “appalled and dismayed to witness everything from administrative snafus to outright voter fraud.” She started attending local Tea Party meetings, eventually founding “True the Vote,” an organization that aimed to clean up voter fraud. Then she filed for 501.C.4 status with the IRS.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
FRAZIER GLENN MILLER AND MAX BLUMENTHAL

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which spent a great deal of time monitoring Miller, would never have thought to watch an institute whose board of trustees include a former New York Times editor, a music industry executive and a president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

When Miller ranted about “Bush and his Zionist bosses” or “The Zionist Jews and their gentile prostitute government managers”; his hate meshed with the hateful material that Blumenthal was putting out.

Blumenthal is mentioned over 300 times at VNN; mostly for his attacks on Jews and Israel. VNN members eagerly ate up Blumenthal’s conspiracy theories about Israel and every bit of negative reporting about Jews. One Blumenthal video even suggested that Rabbis were plotting to kill non-Jewish children.

The Nation Institute’s book arm, in partnership with the Perseus Book Group, published Goliath; Blumenthal’s furious attack on the Jewish State. The book, with chapters such as “How To Kill Goyim And Influence People” and “The Concentration Camp” was described by The Nation’s own reviewer as “The ‘I Hate Israel’ Handbook” and a potential selection of the “Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club.”

A POST-AMERICAN MEDIA

CBS does not want Middle America to watch. Chasing away older and conservative viewers by picking Colbert is not a bug, it’s a feature. CBS would like Colbert to ‘upscale’ its brand by turning its dying late night show into a low rated program watched by wealthy liberal urbanites whom advertisers will pay much more, per person, to reach.

Television networks aren’t being foolish by driving away older viewers. They’re working closely with ad agencies that want the same thing.

The Olympics multicultural Coca Cola ad and the gay rights cereal ads have courted controversy as an advertising strategy. That used to be something that marginal dot com brands did by firing a gerbil out of a cannon during the Super Bowl.

Now deliberately setting out to offend mainstream audiences is something that established brands do in a desperate race to show how youthful, how postmodern and how liberal they are.