RUTHFULLY YOURS

On addressing Congress: Netanyahu shouldn’t go – but he must.

Over the past few days, jotting notes on paper napkins, I had it figured why Benjamin Netanyahu shouldn’t go.

By the time I got to the computer and then started reading what others were saying, I completely changed my mind.

When even momentarily I find myself on the same side as Haaretz and The New York Times, on anything, I know something’s wrong.

They’re against Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Congress and bypassing the White House on the perils of a nuclear Iran.

Israel’s Prime Minister, they say, ought to terminate the trip that was extended by Speaker of the House John Boehner. Netanyahu says he’s going.

Watch out, they say. There will be hell to pay for antagonizing President Barack Obama. Better to heed Democrat Obama who is willing to give Iran all the time it needs to act sensibly, rather than heed Republican Boehner who, like Netanyahu, favors heavier sanctions to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Boehner and Obama are at odds on practically everything, and now that Republicans run the show in the House and Senate, it’s each man to his corner.

In a vote along party lines, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved what amounts to a government takeover of the Internet. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and his fellow Democrats, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, approved placing the Internet under Title II regulations. They will reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, and regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like utility companies, or “common carriers,” rather than “information services” that remain outside the agency’s regulatory power. Republican commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly dissented, with Pai explaining that net neutrality is “a solution that won’t work to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
The arrogance of Wheeler and his allies has been evident for some time. The 332-page proposal they approved was never made available to the public or Congress prior to the vote, even as Wheeler ignored pleas by Pai and O’Rielly to do so. “We respectfully request that FCC leadership immediately release the 332-page Internet regulation plan publicly and allow the American people a reasonable period of not less than 30 days to carefully study it,” they said in a statement released Monday.

Reform Judaism: Is It a Bad Thing? — on The Glazov Gang

Three Jewish thinkers ponder what reform Jews contribute to Jewish identity and to the defense of Israel.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/reform-judaism-is-it-a-bad-thing-on-the-glazov-gang/This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Aaron Shuster (Writer/Producer), Ari David (Host, The Ari David Show Podcast) and Barak Lurie (Host, Barak Lurie Show).

The guests gathered to discuss Reform Judaism: Is It a Bad Thing?, pondering what reform Jews contribute to Jewish identity and to the defense of Israel. (The dialogue was an extension of last week’s show, The Psychology of Left-Wing Jews.)

Whilst the American-led coalition continues its largely ineffectual air strikes in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State has spread its barbaric tentacles into Libya with alarming rapidity.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for:

1. Attacking Tripoli’s downtown luxury hotel in January – the Corinthian – which left 11 dead

2. The brutal mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian Copts

3. A multi-pronged suicide attack that killed at least 45 people in the town al Qubbah in Libya’s east.

4. Seizing the university in Sirte – deposed dictator Muammar Gadaffi’s hometown.

Egypt’s President – Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi – has called for intervention by the United Nations:

A man seen in multiple ISIS propaganda videos speaking with a British accent and beheading Western hostages had his identity revealed in the Washington Post this morning, and yet again the suspect is another case of what I have termed “known wolf” syndrome since he was already known to authorities before engaging in acts of terrorism.

The Washington Post reports:

The world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online.

But his real name, according to friends and others familiar with his case, is Mohammed Emwazi, a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. He is believed to have traveled to Syria around 2012 and to have later joined the Islamic State, the group whose barbarity he has come to symbolize.

But the article goes on to reveal that Emwazi had been detained by authorities not once, but twice:

Embattled presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is taking some rhetorical sniper fire for her charitable foundation, which received large contributions from several nations while she was secretary of State.

The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others have hinted at impropriety on two levels…

1) A potential presidential candidate becomes beholden to certain foreign nations.
2) A Secretary of State whose private foundation grows in prestige from foreign donations, while those same nations lobby the State Department for special treatment on human rights.

Both questions merit vigorous exploration, but for two of the Clinton Foundation’s “donor nations” there’s a third, perhaps more troubling, specter: taxpayer money laundering.

Defying leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus who are boycotting Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on March 3, claiming that the invitation from Speaker of the House John Boehner bypassed and showed disrespect to their leader, President Obama, some black ministers, along with Star Parker, the founder and president of The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a public policy think tank, plan to welcome Netanyahu to Congress.

Parker blasted the CBC on CURE‘s website, asserting: “While the Congressional Black Caucus claims it has ‘consistently been the voice for people of color,’ it seems this brazenly political move couldn’t be further from the voice of black Christians in America.”

FREEDOM of speech. What is it worth? Without it we can lose everything including our lives. Imagine what life would be like if radical Islam eliminates free speech. You will not be able to express your opinion.

According to Wikipeda the Pakistan Penal Code (295 and 298) prohibits blasphemy against any recognized religion. This includes defaming the Muslims’ prophet Muhammad. The penalty ranges from a fine to death.

Danish Palestinian poet, Vahya Hassan, said, “Muslims love to take advantage of free speech. As soon as there is someone saying something critical against Islam, they want to restrict it.”

The Charlie Hebdo magazine published a series of satirical cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Most, if not all, Muslims consider a picture or cartoon of Muhammad forbidden. An Islamic response to the cartoons was a sentence (fatwa) issued on the lives of the cartoonists and the magazine. Years later, Islamic gunmen executed the fatwa killing twelve Hedbo cartoonists and its publisher.

Three young Muslim men who reside in Brooklyn (two native of Uzbekistan, one Kazakhstan) were arrested yesterday in connection with a plot to join the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIL or ISIS) and carry out violent jihadist attacks either in ISIS-controlled territory overseas or in the United States. In the course of the investigation, as detailed in the complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, the FBI used a confidential informant, who pretended to be an ISIS sympathizer, in order to gather evidence. So, as night follows day, the cable news commentary is filled with talk of “entrapment.”

The gist is that the three men were ne’er-do-wells who may have aspired to jihadi combat and martyrdom but who lacked the skills and the means; the FBI, the story goes, managed to infiltrate a slick informant into their circle, and he skillfully steered them into a bunch of crazy talk about killing infidels – which he recorded, enabling the government to file charges and appear to be doing something meaningful about terrorism when, in fact, there was no serious threat. The entrapment commentary is frivolous. Those spouting it either do not know the federal law of entrapment or have not read the allegations in the complaint (which is here).

America has traditionally been a place of refuge for the downtrodden of the world. That was the message in Emma Lazarus’ famous poem, fastened to the base of the Statue of Liberty, and serves as the basis for our beliefs as Americans.

Of all of the countries on the face of the earth, the United States has come to be seen as the country that most embodies compassion. As the grandson of a woman who was slaughtered in Poland during the Holocaust I certainly understand the nearly instinctive urge most Americans have to provide a safe haven for people from around the world who are at risk.

However, we live in historically difficult and perilous times. Because the United States is a superpower, those who would attack us understand that they cannot mount a full frontal assault on our nation. Our enemies and their proxies, terrorist organizations, know that they must engage in asymmetrical warfare which is, in fact, how terrorism is defined.