RUTHFULLY YOURS

While the Iran nuclear talks drag on in Vienna past the third missed deadline, spare a thought for the luxurious surroundings in which these talks are taking place.

The venue, where Iran’s chief negotiator Javad Zarif and sundry other negotiators have been bunking down during these talks, is the Palais Coburg, formerly a palace, now an ornate hotel, rich in beautifully restored old stonework, polished wood, plush furnishings, crystal chandeliers, golden bathroom fixtures, gourmet restaurants, and three tiers of magnificent front terraces. Here’s a view of the Palais [1], and here’s a rundown on the rooms and suites [2], which go for anywhere from about $660 to almost $3,000 per night. The Coburg Suite, at the high end of this scale, is a 1,299 square foot duplex, decorated in the Empire style, with kitchenette, terrace, jacuzzi, sauna, plump pillows and fresh flowers.

This week the Colorado Supreme Court dusted off a relic from the state’s anti-Catholic past to strike down a school voucher program. The charming result of this less-than-charitable secularism will be to deny poor children their right to a good education.

Taxpayers for Public Education v. Douglas County challenged the Choice Scholarship Program in the state’s third largest county. Since 2011 the program has offered voucher grants to help students defray the cost of tuition at some 23 private schools that they otherwise could not afford.

The Colorado Supreme Court held 4-3 that because 16 of these schools are “religious in character,” the program violates a section of the state constitution that states no taxpayer funds can be used to “support or sustain” any institution controlled by a “sectarian denomination.” Amid the nativist wave of the 1870s and 1880s, 39 states came to adopt these so-called Blaine Amendments that were meant to target immigrants, religious minorities and Catholic parochial schools.
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By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”John 13:35

As Christians continue to be displaced, tormented, tortured, and killed throughout the Middle East, especially in regions controlled by radical Islamists under the influence of ISIS, Al Qaeda franchisees, and fundamentalists bent on religious purification and/or global Caliphate, it is tempting (and right) to summarily denounce the lack of concern by the West in general, and the current Administration specifically for inaction, and ignoring the ethnic cleansing of Christians from their legitimate homes throughout the Gulf region, as well as Africa, and parts of Asia. Our anger, frustration, sorrow and concern can be magnified recognizing the destruction of historically important churches, and disruption of Christian communities is based upon the crime of prayer and faith, and is largely unprovoked, unless one considers worshipping by conscience in a tradition different from the majority as provocative.

Puerto Rico is a failed welfare state that needs a Detroit-like overhaul.

The Obama Administration is delighted to tell everyone that Greece isn’t America’s problem, but hold the schadenfreude. The U.S. has its own version of Greece in Puerto Rico, and the meltdown could be nearly as ugly when it arrives.

Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla this week admitted the open secret that the territory’s $72 billion debt “is not payable.” Europeans will notice the Greek-like reasons: excessive borrowing, anti-growth policies, human and capital flight, and the refusal of local politicians to address the failure of entitlement state politics. Oh, and don’t forget the policy damage from Washington.

CIA Director John Brennan says America’s top spies are not diverse enough, and he’s doing something about it.
The Central Intelligence Agency is once again mired in crisis. CIA Director John Brennan finds himself “deeply concerned.” The spy agency he runs suffers from an affliction that he says has “persisted despite repeated efforts by Agency leaders to address it.”

What is ailing this vital guardian of national security? The CIA’s upper echelon, Mr. Brennan said on Tuesday, does “not reflect the diversity of the Agency workforce or of the nation.”

Mr. Brennan was commenting on the “Director’s Diversity in Leadership Study,” an unclassified report released that day. The study comes to the “unequivocal conclusion,” he said in a statement, that there has been a major failure at the agency in the “crucial” area of diversity and inclusiveness.

The CIA director commissioned the study last year, convening a panel of experts to perform a comprehensive assessment of diversity in the agency’s workforce. The study is partly based on the results of an “Agency-wide instrument”—in non-spy-speak, “instrument” means questionnaire—developed in conjunction with research psychologists attached to the CIA’s Office of Medical Services. It also draws on hundreds of formal and informal interviews and 28 focus groups, including not only spies based at headquarters in Langley, Va., but also agents working incognito in a dozen undisclosed locations out in the cold.

Jamie Walker, Middle East correspondent for The Australian, asked two critical questions in a recent article which discussed the involvement of two Australian citizens, Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, in Islamic State sex slavery. In 2014 Elomar purchased sex slaves, of whom four, all Yazidis, later escaped to a refugee camp where the ABC caught up with them and interviewed them. Elomar had also boasted on Twitter that he had “1 of 7 Yehzidi slave girls for sale” at $2500 each.

Walker’s questions were:

“The uncomfortable questions for the Western world, including Australia, are why this debased appeal seems to be gaining traction with Islamic State’s target audience, which increasingly includes women, and why it’s not challenged more stridently in the public arena.”

Now that we know she edited the emails before turning them over, the entire record is suspect.

Clinton scandals have a way of bumping and rolling along to a point where nobody can remember why there was any outrage to begin with. So in the interest of clarity, let’s take the latest news in the Hillary email escapade, and distill it into its basic pieces:

• Nothing Mrs. Clinton has said so far on the subject is correct. The Democratic presidential aspirant on March 10 held a press conference pitched as her first and last word on the revelation that she’d used a private email server while secretary of state. She told reporters that she’d turned over to the State Department “all my emails that could possibly be work-related.” And she insisted that she “did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”

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Main Street Columnist Bill McGurn discusses the latest revelations about the former Secretary of State’s private emails. Photo credit: Associated Press.Not true and not true. The State Department has now admitted that it is aware of at least 15 work-related emails that Mrs. Clinton fully or partially withheld. We know this only because congressional Republicans, as part of their Benghazi probe, required longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal to turn over his correspondence with her. It revealed work-related emails that had not been disclosed.

FOX News reported Monday evening on Special Report that the FBI is setting up command centers around the country to prepare for possible terror attacks on the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith posted on Twitter about the report:

“FBI tells Fox News it is building command centers around US to monitor terror threats over July 4 holiday”

FOX affiliate WTTG-TV in Washington reported federal agencies have sent out warnings to police departments around the country.

On Tuesday The Gateway Pundit reported that the FBI has canceled all vacations for agents over the 4th of July weekend.

Now this…
ISIS posted a map of July 4th FBI command centers on Wednesday.
The map shows the temporary command posts set up across America for the upcoming Independence Day weekend.

With Israel’s peaceful interception early on Monday about 100 nautical miles off Gaza of the Marianne of Gothenburg, lead vessel of the anti-Israel stunt called Freedom Flotilla III, now expected to be taken into Ashdod, the skipper of the vessel, like several sailing mates, has issued a prerecorded SOS.

The true state of affairs has been well articulated by Bibi Netanyahu: “If you were truly concerned about human rights, you would not be sailing in support of a terrorist regime which summarily executes citizens in the Gaza Strip, and uses children as human shields.”

“I would like to commend the sailors and commanders of the Israel Navy for their determined and efficient action in detaining the passengers on the ship that tried to reach the Gaza coast in contravention of the law. This flotilla is nothing but a demonstration of hypocrisy and lies that is only assisting the Hamas terrorist organization and ignores all of the horrors in our region. Preventing entry by sea was done in accordance with international law and even received backing from a committee of the UN Secretary General.

Israel is the only democracy that defends itself in accordance with international law. We are not prepared to accept the entry of war materiel to the terrorist organizations in Gaza as has been done by sea in the past. Just last year we foiled an attempt to smuggle by sea hundreds of weapons that were destined for use in attacks against Israel’s citizens.

In Saturday’s column, I suggested that, somewhat improbably from the late Sam Huntington’s point of view, the clash of civilizations is dwindling down to the dar al Islam vs the dar al Gay. The good news is that the dar al Gay now has a national flag.

This weekend, the gate-delay channel CNN had an “exclusive” revealing that the black flag of ISIS had been spotted at London’s Gay Pride parade, and so they quickly rustled up Peter Berger and other crack national-security analysts to provide insight on this unexpected convergence of the jihad and the gayhad.

Unfortunately for CNN, the black flag of ISIS turned out to be a black flag showing various sex aids. The CNN reporter had assumed that the attractive arrangements of, er, dildos and, um, butt plugs was, in fact, Arabic script – an easy mistake to make, no doubt, but not one you’d want to have to explain to the Cultural Sensitivity Disciplinary Committee.