RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary has a size-of-government fight on her hands.

Republican activists strapping on body armor for the impending presidential campaign may get what they’ve been itching for—the Battle of Washington. That would be the long struggle between Big Government and whatever remnants of individual liberty haven’t disappeared inside the federal maw of rules, laws, programs or prosecutions.

To conservatives this is the Leviathan state, an opponent normally thrashed in 400-page books. In real life, the federal Leviathan simply expands annually. This election could be different, with the fight over the size of government finally ending up in the streets. Several reasons why:

Among many careerists and politicians, tweaking one’s ethnic identity is becoming increasingly widespread.
Not long ago, the New York Times uncovered the artifact that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush had once listed himself as “Hispanic” on a Florida voter-registration form. Bush is married to a Mexican American. He lived for a number of years in South America and speaks Spanish fluently. Maybe he has consciously assumed a Hispanic identity. Or perhaps he did not think there was much of a difference between “white” and “Hispanic.” Or, as he said, he simply checked the wrong box by accident.

Which presidential candidate is most likely to be tripped up by their position on the Common Core?

Jeb Bush comes to mind, of course. Yet the candidate whose support for Common Core could be most personally perilous—and most consequential for the larger 2016 race—is Hillary Clinton. Yesterday, Clinton effectively endorsed the Common Core.

Yes, she threw a bone to liberal opponents of Common Core by calling on teachers to “lead the way” in further developing these national standards. It’s obvious from Clinton’s overall remarks, however, that she supports Common Core.

Senator Jeff Sessions comes under fire for his reasonable proposal. It’s hard to take New York Times editorials seriously, given their parodic parochialism and cluelessness.

Rebutting one feels almost like writing a non-ironic letter to the editor of The Onion. Its commentary on immigration is probably worse than on other topics, and arguably more harmful. In an analysis of “How Arthur Sulzberger Radicalized the New York Times Editorial Page on Immigration,” my colleague (and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter) Jerry Kammer wrote: “But the Times has carried its good intentions to a destructive extreme.

Its editorials have poisoned the national discussion of a complex and emotional issue.” And the venom continues to flow. It’s no surprise that the Times’ latest hiss on immigration attacks Senator Jeff Sessions. Specifically, Sessions penned a sober op-ed in the Washington Post the other day arguing that “America needs to curb immigration flows,” meaning not just better controls at the borders but also lower levels of future legal immigration: What we need now is immigration moderation: slowing the pace of new arrivals so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together. I happen to agree, but one could certainly offer a thoughtful rebuttal. Not the Times, though. In Times World, Sessions “worries darkly” about the effects of immigration, choosing “to echo an uglier time in our history” by making “a case for yanking America’s welcome mat.” I assume an editor removed the references to Hitler.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of ignoring the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. Cavusoglu did not say why Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other faiths and other nations.

Such political controversies as the Pope’s speech always offer golden opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope for a brighter career.

It seems as if Turkey’s ruling politicians are in a race to look less and less convincing to an already suspicious international audience. How they defended their ancestors’ sins a century ago earned them new points in the race, and made them look even more odd than before.

Russia and China have also agreed to build nuclear plants for Iran. And North Korea has also been supplying Iran with technology, a “minor detail” hidden from the UN by U.S. President Barack Obama. And the U.S. thinks that if Iran is caught cheating, sanctions can be re-imposed?

Other countries in the region have already started scheduling delivery for their nuclear weapons. They have made it clear they will not sit idly by while Iran goes nuclear.

Iran has already bragged that it will sell “enriched uranium” on the open market, and will be “hopefully making some money” from it, said Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

No agreement was signed between Iran and the P5+1 group[1] on April 2; no agreement will be signed on June 30.

It’s become habitual for movies to pair ordinary (Ben Stiller) or geeky (Adam Driver) comedic men with unusually beautiful women like Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried. Of course we would accept this if these men were playing the movie stars they actually are but that type of unbalanced casting starts us off being incredulous when the males are playing losers (Ben Stiller) or wannabes (Adam Driver). The latter is more than a foot taller than Stiller yet there’s a scene where Ben dons Adam’s jacket and roller-blades – both of which fit perfectly. It’s a minor moment but another peg for the incredulity board which is disconcerting in a movie that purports to poke fun in the mores of contemporary urban twenty and forty-somethings. If the object of the poke isn’t recognizably authentic, there’s no stuffing in the satire.

They are what David Mamet called “The Wicked Son(s)”…a pox on them and their ilk….rsk
Members of a group of Jewish supporters of the Democratic Party who met with President Barack Obama this week urged him to remove the long-standing American veto protection of Israel at the United Nations. The group, affiliated with the left-wing lobby group J Street, pledged to support the president within the Jewish community in the event of a Security Council resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian State.

The exchange took place in the second of two meetings Obama held with American Jewish leaders to discuss the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, as well as other regional issues. According to a source who was in the room, one J Street supporter told the president that if he decided to back a Palestinian state resolution over Israeli objections, “let us know first, and we’ll do the legwork for you, in the community… so you’re not going to come in cold.” Among the J Street supporters who were part of the delegation meeting with Obama were Alexandra Stanton, Lou Susman and Victor Kovner.

I know the (Aussie) ABC are a bunch of doctrinaire lefties for the most part, but I always enjoy my appearances thereon and Tony Jones is a not un-agreeable host, all things considered. Still, it’s sad to see them providing a platform for serial litigant and Clime Syndicate warmano Michael E Mann.

As you know, Mann is suing me for describing his famous scary “hockey stick” graph as “fraudulent”, which it is. The graph shows a straight-line “shaft” of the stick representing 900 years of stable global temperature, followed by a sharp upturned blade representing the 20th century temperature rocketing up and out the top right-hand corner. The “message” (which Mann and his colleagues were concerned not to “dilute” with any subtleties or qualifications) was simple: We’re all outta graph paper. This thing’s off the charts with nowhere to go but up through the ceiling at an unprecedented rate. Give us all your money or the planet’s gonna fry.

Instead, from the very moment Mann joined the global-warming A-listers, the actual, real-world temperature flatlined and his hockey stick got the worst case of brewer’s droop since records began. As I’ve said before, if you graduated from college last summer, there’s been no “global warming” since you were in kindergarten; if you graduated from high school, there’s been none since you were born. For the generation that had Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth (heavily reliant on the hockey stick) shoved down its throat from K through 12, it doesn’t feel like that, but nevertheless it’s a fact: The “pause” in global warming is about to enter its third decade, and simply being a climate-pause denier (to coin a phrase) is no longer tenable.

Mrs Clinton continues her tour of her future subjects, in which selected pre-screened “everyday Americans” are graciously permitted into the van to commune with the ultimate non-everyday American. The effusions of the US media’s court eunuchs over Mrs Clinton’s ability to pass as an “everyday American” and actually visit a Chipotle suggest this is going to be a very long 18 months.

The last time a Clinton was in the White House it was what he was doing outside the White House that dominated the press coverage. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton celebrated beating the rap at his impeachment trial with what appeared to be some desultory bombing of the Serbs, but boy, it was a big bang for Bill and Hill. This was my Sunday Telegraph column of August 1999: