RUTHFULLY YOURS

Key homeland security priorities to watch in 2016

Charles (Chuck) Brooks serves as the vice president for government relations & marketing for Sutherland Government Solutions. He served at the Department of Homeland Security as the first director of legislative affairs for the Science & Technology Directorate.

2015 was a year that brought homeland security back into the limelight, with increased terror threats both domestic and globally, and alarmingly sophisticated cyberattacks against government, its workforce and citizens. Readiness levels are again paralleling the post 9/11 environment.

So where shall the Department of Homeland Security focus its efforts in 2016?

Counterterrorism

A top priority of DHS, along with law enforcement, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community, will be to preempt and monitor potential terrorists. The change in risk environments necessitates greater DHS collaboration with these agencies, and will include more outreach to the private sector stakeholders who owns most of the nation’s vital infrastructure.

Secretary Jeh Johnson already announced that DHS will unveil a new situational awareness terror alert system that will reflect the current security environment when “not having a specific credible piece of intelligence specifying a plot isn’t the end of the story.” All areas of transportation, including maritime, rails, and aviation will received increased monitoring.

The self-appointed P5+1, elected by no one but themselves, should be embarrassed to find that they have made a deal with no one but themselves.

The media’s emphasis on the JCPOA has sadly neglected any in-depth coverage of Iran’s own comprehensive plan of action, which seems to consist of developing nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and related systems to deliver them.

The IAEA cannot even confirm with certainty that Iran does not already possess a nuclear bomb, and yet is not expected to challenge Tehran’s assertion that it ceased nuclear weapons development more than a decade ago.

Although the U.S. also cannot be certain of Iran’s intentions, it would be advisable to assume that Iran means what it says: “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Iran is cheating already — or is it? Iran has not signed anything, so presumably it cannot be cheating on something it never agreed to – as predicted on these pages half a year ago. The self-appointed P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany), elected by no one but themselves, should be embarrassed to find that they have made a deal with no one but themselves.

‘Playing into the hands of ISIS” is the new Beltway mantra. The finger-shaking by the administration and its supporters warns Americans not to give in to their supposedly natural biases against Muslims.

Never mind that FBI statistics show that Jews in this country are the objects of hate crimes at nearly four times the rate of Muslims. It is mysteriously never reported who are the main perpetrators of hate crimes against Jews. In any case, when the administration alleges Islamophobia, it assumes that if it did not, ISIS might announce to Muslims worldwide, “We told you so,” to confirm its suspicions of American prejudices toward Islam.

But according to Obama’s own logic, his constant suggestions that Americans are prejudiced against Islam would themselves strengthen ISIS by providing them a rationale or justification for their anti-American terrorism. Would they not think, “If President Obama himself is constantly worried that his own people are anti-Muslim, then surely they must be — even though statistics do not support that charge”?

Or are we to think that ISIS reasons along the following lines: “Even after 9/11, Americans let in hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and yet hate crimes against them are far rarer than against Jews. Therefore Americans are our friends, and we will refrain from attacking them”?

Not long after signing the nuclear deal, the ruling clerics of the Islamist state of Iran have clearly breached the agreement and several of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions. What is the Obama administration’s response? He is turning a blind eye to this vital issue. The administration is ignoring these blatant violations and continuing with its efforts to lift sanctions on the Ayatollah’s regime.

The Joint Plan of Action Agreement (JCPOA), which was reached between the six world powers and Iran, clearly mentions “addressing UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions” regarding the Islamic Republic. Specifically, the JCPOA (UNSCR 2231 Annex II, paragraph three) states that Iran should not undertake any ballistic missiles activity “until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.”

Despite agreeing to the nuclear deal, Iran has repeatedly test-fired long-range ballistic missiles and laser-guided surface-to-surface missiles. In fact, last week, the Islamic Republic tested a new ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple warheads. This is in direct breach of two UN Security Council resolutions and the JCPOA.

In the spring of 1790, as the members of the First Congress, meeting in New York City, discarded one proposed location after another, it seemed almost certain that the nation’s permanent capital would end up somewhere in Pennsylvania. Few expected it to wind up sandwiched between the slave states of Maryland and Virginia—except President George Washington and his leading acolyte in Congress, James Madison. How the capital got there is just one of the many stories that Tom Lewis recounts in “Washington: A History of Our National City,” an engagingly written, panoramic chronicle of the nation’s capital, from its unlikely founding to the era of the city’s notorious crack-smoking mayor Marion Barry.
Washington: A History of Our National City

By Tom Lewis
Basic, 521 pages, $40

Madison, brilliantly playing a weak political hand, derailed the overconfident Pennsylvanians and their allies and concluded the first great back-room deal in American political history. Over dinner at Thomas Jefferson’s rented house on Maiden Lane, he agreed to provide enough (grudging) Southern votes to ensure the passage of Alexander Hamilton’s ambitious financial plans, in return for the Treasury secretary’s agreement not to block the establishment of the federal city on the Potomac River.

One of the most stirring moments in Western cinema is the lighting of the beaconsin Peter Jackson’s film version of “The Return of the King,” summoning the riders of Rohan to the aid of the beleaguered city of Minas Tirith. The fire is kindled from mountaintop to mountaintop as the long vigil of lonely watchmen ends with a signal across distance and darkness, giving the free peoples of the West the courage to rise together against the evil gathering in Mordor. The blood surges and the heart pounds as the tiny points of light become visible across far-off mountain ranges.

Tonight Jews around the world complete the eight days of the Feast of Hanukkah, lighting eight candles in the windows of their homes. To the Jewish people, dispersed across the world for two millennia before the founding of the State of, the flames of the Hanukkah menorah beckon to us like Tolkien’s signal fires, but across time rather than space.

Hanukkah(“Dedication”) remembers the cleansing of the Temple at Jerusalem after a Jewish army expelled the invaders of the Greek Seleucid dynasty in 165 B.C.E. But it is more than remembrance: the candles we light in Jewish homes during the eight days of the festival rekindle the Eternal Flame of the Temple itself, the symbol of the Shekhinah, God’s indwelling on earth. We are grateful for the military victory against the Seleucid invaders and mention it in our holiday prayers, but it was short-lived. The Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Israel for the next century degenerated and Israel became a de facto Roman protectorate in 65 B.C.E. Our revolt against Roman oppression ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and our long exile. The Temple was destroyed, and the rabbis of antiquity declared that the Sekhinah went into exile with the Jewish people. The eternal flame of the Temple was extinguished by the Romans but rekindled in every Jewish home. In the poverty, persecution and humiliation of exile, Jewish families became a Temple in exile, and the rededication of the Temple’s light of 165 B.C.E. became an act of rededication in every home.

There will be no postings until Monday December 14th,2015

For good and for ill, fighting from the air has been perhaps the defining aspect of America’s warmaking. We invented “precision” daylight bombing against Germany in WWII. We pioneered firebombing and nuclear bombing against Japan in that same conflict. We developed laser-guided munitions for use against high-priority targets while fighting North Vietnam, and even more precise GPS-guided munitions for our 21st century wars.

We build the best bombers, the best fighters, and the smartest bombs. We invented stealth so that “America, f*** yeah!” you won’t even see us coming.

Our pilots are perhaps the best trained in the world, and even if our Air Force has become too small for today’s needs, it’s still the biggest and by far the most powerful in the world.

And don’t even get me started on drones. Big drones give Air Force colonels capabilities once reserved to jillion-dollar spy satellites, and tiny drones turn a muddy-boot Army grunt into an aerial reconnaissance asset. Even cooler, a president sorting through “assassination cards” in the Oval Office can have his order relayed to a drone pilot in Nevada who gives a command via satellite to an armed drone over Syria — and then a few seconds later a Hellfire missile sends a jihadi commander to Paradise.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/nebraska-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=must_read
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2014/05/30/nebraska-congressional-elections-2014/
Ben Sasse (R) Challenger

FP: Nick Adams, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Adams: Thank you, Jamie, great to be with you.

FP: Congratulations on your new book. Let’s begin with this question: Why does an Australian care what happens in America?

Adams: Jamie, what’s good for America is good for the world. A weak America is a weak world. A strong America is a strong world. That’s not a theory. That’s reality. We can see it happening right now. Cast your eye over the world: Islamists are openly working to establish a Caliphate. There is a catastrophic humanitarian disaster. Russia is attempting to re-establish the Soviet empire. China is aggressively expanding in the South China Sea. There are vast refugee flows. This is no coincidence. Frankly, this is what the world looks like when American influence is in decline. We are all paying a heavy price for the Obama administration’s politically correct decisions. Western intellectuals have long believed that America is not a force for good in the world, and should take a backseat in world affairs. They now have egg on their face.

FP: Tell us about your new book and why people should read it.

Adams: Let me put it this way: if you love America, and you hate political correctness, then you need to read this book. It’s as simple as that. Nothing is more anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-truth, and anti-reality than political correctness. It is a noose around America’s neck, growing tighter each day. From identity politics and secularism to the all-powerful welfare state and the war against national identity, every problem in America today is either rooted in, or compounded by political correctness. It is destroying America, and if it destroys America, it destroys Western civilization. So, we have to crush it, and only America can.