RUTHFULLY YOURS

Modern American universities used to assume four goals. First, their general education core taught students how to reason inductively and imparted an aesthetic sense through acquiring knowledge of Michelangelo, the Battle of Gettysburg, “Medea” and “King Lear,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and astronomy and Euclidean geometry.

From cost to employment prospects, the state of American higher education is dismal for students.

Second, campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression — and exposure to all sorts of weird ideas and mostly unpopular thoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodox pieties.

Third, four years of college trained students for productive careers. Implicit was the university’s assurance that its degree was a wise career investment.

Finally, universities were not monopolistic price gougers. They sought affordability to allow access to a broad middle class that had neither federal subsidies nor lots of money. The American undergraduate university is now failing on all four counts.

California’s drought provides a useful lesson. I am glad California is having a drought. Not because I hate California (I love California) or Californians (I hate them only a little, for what they’ve done to California) or Central Valley farmers (some of my best friends . . .) or even Governor Jerry Brown, droll disco-era anachronism that he is, but because the episode presents an excellent illustration of the one fundamental social reality that cannot be legislated away or buried under an avalanche of government-accounting shenanigans and loan guarantees or brought to heel by politicians no matter how hard the ladies and gentlemen in Sacramento and Washington stamp their little feet: scarcity.

Federal district court judge Andrew Hanen slammed the Obama administration with a solid one-two punch late last night. In one order, he refused to lift the preliminary injunction barring implementation of the president’s immigration amnesty plan. In a second order, Hanen said that the “attorneys for the Government misrepresented the facts” about the implementation to the court. On February 23, the Justice Department filed a “Motion to Stay” the injunction pending an appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Hanen denied that motion, saying not only that his original ruling was correct, but that subsequent events had “reinforced” the correctness of his original decision. Hanen cited President Barack Obama’s own words as part of this reinforcement. Speaking at a town hall after the injunction order had been issued, the president said that any government official who did not halt the deportation of anyone who qualifies under his new plan would suffer the “consequences.”

Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), a United Kingdom-based radical Islamist front organization, is openly bragging about its close relationship with both the Tory and Labour political parties, the UK’s Telegraph reports. The group’s chief executive, Sufyan Islamil, characterizes MEND as “kingmaker” in the May election, claiming to influence up to 30 seats.

In a speech at Bolton’s Zakariyya Central Mosque, Ismail compared British Jews fighting for the Israeli military with British Muslims fighting for Syrian rebels, including the Islamic State.

“…British Muslims going to Syria fighting against Assad…will definitely face interrogation. Now do you think that if we landed those 20 seats or 30 seats he [Prime Minister Cameron] would have the audacity to say that (foreign fighters should be prosecuted] to the Muslim community? Not a chance!”

According to the Arab News, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter recently participated in an official Carter Center delegation to Saudi Arabia, where he met with Saudi billionaire and prolific funder of Middle East studies in the U.S, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. The prince’s largesse has resulted in the Islamist apologist-dominated Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (headed by chief apologist John Esposito) and Harvard University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program, whose faculty, although less controversial, is equally tendentious.

Any time the name Netanyahu comes up, the bell rings and somebody has to take a shot; this time it is Sen. Diane Feinstein.
Any time the name Netanyahu comes up, the bell rings and somebody has to take a shot; this time it is Sen. Diane Feinstein.

This is like a contest. Everybody gets to throw a dart to see who will be first to make Bibi buckle and drop.

The topic, naturally, is Iran, and the deal Bibi won’t buy because what’s good for Iran cannot be good for Israel.

Iran gets to keep its ICBM program, according to a framework that had John Kerry pleased with himself as he left Tehran with the ayatollahs laughing behind his back. All that remains is for Bibi to join the celebration in what is surely the dumbest gamble of the century.

On a recent trip to Germany I took a day off to visit Sigmaringen, on the upper Danube some 20 miles north of Lake Constance. This town of ten thousand with a massive castle towering over it – or, more precisely, this castle with a town attached – interested me as the site of a little known, eight-month long melodrama at the end of Second World War.
It was here that Marshal Philippe Pétain, Chef de l’État Français, and several hundred Vichy government officials and prominent German sympathizers and collaborators of different hues, were brought by the Wehrmacht on 8 September 1944, as the Allies advanced across France. The leaders were installed in the castle, other ranks in the town below. They were followed by their wives, hangers-on, and mistresses. By the end of September a veritable French enclave was in place, some two thousand strong, which survived until the long-dreaded arrival of de Gaulle’s First French Army on 24 April 1945.

As Passover 2015 ends this coming weekend….another reminder of the importance of this wonderful holiday:
Millions, perhaps billions, of the world’s population still do not know the meaning of the towering festival of freedom and liberty known as Passover; a festival recognizing an event that has blessed the world for some 3,300 years.

The festival begins always on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Nissan. Jews and Christians know from the Bible the story of the Exodus and of the salvation of the Jewish people from centuries of slavery under the Egyptian pharaohs: This creation and deliverance of an entire nation.

Such a seminal event in humanity’s history became the foundation for freedom and liberty – created many centuries before democracy was first enunciated by Greek philosophers who nevertheless lived within a polytheistic society.

Many people know in varying degrees the Passover story and of the creation and birth of the Jewish people and of their undying faith in the One and Only God; invisible and indivisible.

Judaism has given the world monotheism in its purest and most undiluted nature. The Unity of God is what Jews have defended against all who attempted to suggest a plurality: even to enduring martyrdom.

The long suffering Jews under Egyptian bondage were led to freedom by the Jewish prophet, Moses, who brought them to their own very special and promised Land of Israel.

At a so-called Easter “prayer breakfast”, President Obama, as is his wont, took another swipe at Christians:

“On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that, as a Christian, I am supposed to love. And I have to say that sometimes, when I listen to less than loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.”

Each to his own. I get concerned that, as the President was lecturing those Christians less perfect than him, some 150 students were slaughtered at Garissa University in Kenya for no other reason than that they were Christian. Had I been at that prayer breakfast, I would have walked out in protest.

Oh, wait, you can’t do that with the President of the United States. The joint’s in lockdown. So, okay, I’d be stuck in there until the 40-car motorcade had left and it’s safe to reopen the public thoroughfares. But I would have booed. Is it too much to expect freeborn Americans occasionally to show a little irritation at both the President’s condescension and, given that some of the oldest Christian communities on earth are currently being exterminated, his ghastly bad taste?

THIS COLUMN IS WORTH REVISITING. HOWARD JACOBSON’S NEW BOOK IS ENTITLED “J”…AND IT IS EXCELLENT.
It’s official: thanks to Stephen Hawking’s Israel boycott, anti-Semitism is no more.

Why is Israel alone of all offending countries to be boycotted? Perhaps because it’s that offending country which also just happens to be Jewish?

Gather round, everybody. I bear important news. Anti-Semitism no longer exists! Ring out, ye bells, the longest hatred has ceased to be. It’s kaput, kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. It’s a stiff, ladies and gentlemen. An EX-PREJUDICE!

I first heard the news in a motion passed by the University and College Union declaring that criticism of Israel can “never” be anti-Semitic which, if “never” means “never”, is a guarantee that Jew-hating is over, because … Well, because it’s impossible to believe that an active anti-Semite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like. Of course, you don’t have to hate Jews to hate Israel, but tell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs, then it follows that there’s no Jew-hating left.