RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/mccain-knows-less-about-the-syrian-civil-war-than-you-do/print/

Do you know what’s troubling? A top United States Senator went to Syria, met with Syrian Jihadists and showed that he knows less about the conflict than anyone reading this site.

In an Anderson Cooper interview, Senator McCain claimed, “We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people.” And who does he think the right people are?

McCain said such radical fighters make up only a small part of the rebels forces. For example, he said, Syria’s Islamist al-Nusra Front, identified as an alias of al Qaeda in Iraq, accounts for only about 7,000 of the 100,000 fighters battling the government of Assad.

“Every single day, more and more extremists flow in… “They’re flowing in all the time, these extremists. But they still do not make up a sizeable portion,” the Arizona senator said.

McCain said he was escorted during his visit on Monday by General Salem Idris, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, and that he had a long meeting with Idris and a group of his battalion commanders.

The Al Nusra Front had repeatedly fought alongside with and coordinated operations with the Free Syrian Army. Salem Idris, whom he just met with, is on the record as defending the Al Nusra Front.

“All rebels are fighting to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and before we designate anybody or accuse anyone of being a terrorist we should tell what they have done to terrorize others,” the Free Syrian Army military command’s Brigadier General Salim Idris, told al-Jazeera television. “Not everyone wearing a beard is an extremist.”

“They are not terrorists,” he said of the Nusra Front.

Recently Idris has changed his tune, but it’s safe to say that his original position is the real one. The FSA remains closely aligned with Al Qaeda and even the enthusiastic supporters at the New York Times have bowed to reality and admitted, “Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

That’s not somewhere. That’s nowhere. And if you’re reading this right now, you’re more qualified to be a United States Senator dealing with the question of whether to arm the Syrian militias than John McCain is.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/31/holders-contempt-for-the-truth/ Attempt to hold secret press briefing shows how low the administration has sunk The Associated Press, the New York Times and CNN have turned their backs on one of President Obama’s top Cabinet officials. It’s no surprise to conservatives, but the true meaning of Chicago-style politics is dawning on the news outlets that have […]

N.Y. teen Arvind Mahankali wins the national spelling bee with ‘knaidel’ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/30/spell-ebrities-take-stage-final-day-national-spell/ Maybe it’s the fourth time that’s the charm, perhaps it’s what 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali calls the “German blessing,” or it could just be that the eighth-grader just really knows how to spell. But whatever it was, late Thursday night the teen from Bayside […]

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/barack_obama_george_orwell_and_terror.html George Orwell would have disliked Barack Obama’s big speech on terror, because Orwell hated when politicians used words to hide ugly truths. In 1984, Orwell coined the term “double-speak.” He foresaw how men of state would misstate and mislead to stay in power, using words to distort more than to inform. Orwell knew politicians […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578513610868984032.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond A terrorist attack that is thwarted is quickly overtaken in the news by other events, and that’s why the botched attempt to blow up John F. Kennedy airport in 2007 is barely remembered today. But a 500-page report filed by a diligent prosecutor in Buenos Aires on Wednesday may change that by providing solid […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323855804578511463018969112.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop The stock market is soaring. Yet real median income has fallen 5%, unheard of except during the Great Depression. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday that the Fed should not be asked to “accommodate misguided fiscal policies” and “will inevitably fall […]

Nasrallah’s harangue Hassan Nasrallah’s stirring and impassioned defense of Damascus despot Bashar Assad went far beyond the Hezbollah chief’s by-now expected bravado. This was something intrinsically different. Nasrallah is a proven master at toying with the emotions of both supporters and foes in Lebanon. This time, though, and perhaps for the first time, he displayed […]

http://politicalmavens.com/

If you’re a movie buff of a certain age, you’ll remember a film called The Mouse That Roared, in which a tiny, debt-ridden country declares war against the United States in order to gain all the benefits that would be showered their way as the losers. It was a sharp little satire that unfortunately persists in ringing true to this day. It comes to mind not only with respect to foreign policy, but also with how we deal with criminals and terrorists. In today’s paper we learned that the state of New Jersey continued to pay 23 million dollars of entitlements and benefits to incarcerated people who were not entitled to any of it while in jail. This should aptly be considered “criminal negligence” and heads should roll all the way to the diminishing hulk of the governor. More disturbing in today’s news is the ongoing saga of Nidal Hasan, the Muslim army psychiatrist who shot 45 people at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 12 and severely injuring the rest. It is four years later and though Hasan is incarcerated, he has still not been tried for this heinous act of terrorism. During the past years of legal stalling, he has collected $280,000 of salary, because according to our American system of justice and the vagaries of military protocol, he is entitled to his money until proven guilty. No matter that there is no disputing who pulled the trigger each time during his rampage – the only thing to be determined at trial is what degree of murder this fits and what the appropriate sentence will be. If common sense prevailed, would a terrorist still get paid?

Further adding to the head-scratching wonder of this case, Hasan has won the right to grow and sport a bushy beard though that is against army regulations. Now a hemiplegic and wheelchair-bound, he has petitioned the court to allow him to represent himself in his upcoming trial in July. To determine whether he would be physically competent to handle this, the judge ordered a medical examination. In another questionable accommodation, the judge agreed to Hasan’s request to not be examined by the chief of medicine where he used to work. In short, Hasan first killed and maimed the soldiers of Fort Hood and now demands that his trial not be compromised by the judgment of the medical officer under whom he served. This used to be the classic definition of chutzpah – the murderer who shoots his parents and begs the mercy of the court because he is now an orphan. Does this make sense?

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3739/islamophobia-comes-to-canberra Are we to let our freedoms be shaped by the worst kind of intolerance found in the sharia badlands? How will discrimination among religions based on fear distort human rights? Like student magazines all over the world, Woroni, put out by students at the Australian National University, publishes satire. It did when I attended […]

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Drip, drip, drip. And then the deluge.

After that the roof falls in. The perfect storm dashing Barack Obama’s second term onto the rocks is not the consequence of a sudden squall. This storm has been a long time coming.

The White House still doesn’t get it. Sending the president out to make another speech won’t change anything. Calling in a favored few to listen to more bloviating won’t do it, either. Neither will sacking Eric Holder, which is an idea whose time has come, but that would only buy a little time, with the emphasis on little.

The president may be tempted to cast the perfect storm as a matter of national security. When his speech to the National Defense University, declaring that the war against the terrorists was over because he had vanquished all the bad guys, landed with the thud of a noisy dud, he invited a gaggle of media elites to the White House for a session of the familiar argle-bargle. That didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Mr. Obama’s administration is the enemy “foreign and domestic” the founding documents warned us about.

An invitation to the White House is ordinarily the invitation no good citizen declines without a very good reason. If a president, or one of his deputies, summons a citizen to come to the aid of the government, a good citizen catches the next streetcar to Pennsylvania Avenue, even if the streetcar is a bus. This time it’s fashionable to say thanks, but no thanks. Eric Holder’s invitation to media executives to “air concerns and exchange ideas” is not necessary because if he wants to hear the concerns he can read about them in the morning papers. Meetings to “ensure that First Amendment rights are respected by the Department of Justice” are not necessary, either, nor are conversations with news executives, lawyers and intelligence and investigative ‘experts’.”

The First Amendent needs no explanatory help from politicians, lawyers or anyone else. The language of the amendment, the cornerstone and guarantor of all the other rights of Americans, is as plain as the language of the Gospel, written so that the humblest among us can understand it. Presidents and their administrations have understood the words of the First Amendment for two centuries, with the further understanding that trifling with the words and meanings is always reckless and foolish.