RUTHFULLY YOURS

As part of his effort to reduce gun violence, President Obama issued an executive order today that makes it easier to prohibit a small group of the most seriously mentally ill from owning firearms and provides $500 million in additional mental-health funding. The order’s mental-illness–focused gun-control provisions are smart and narrowly tailored to affect only the most seriously ill individuals. But its additional funding won’t go where it could make a difference.

The mental-health industry teaches the public­ that, as President Obama put it, ‘the mentally ill are not more violent than others.’ But that platitude does not apply to the most seriously ill when they are allowed to go untreated. Eighteen percent of the population has some form of “mental-health issue” and is not violent. But 4 percent of the population has serious mental illness, which, left untreated, causes them to be more violent than others. While gun violence is rare, and mass violence by the seriously ill is even rarer, no one outside the NRA and the politically correct mental-health industry believes the seriously mentally ill should have access to weapons.

Tick, tick, tick…the highly suspicious deal that gave Bill Clinton’s billionaire buddy Jeffrey Epstein a slap on the wrist for paying underage girls for sex may finally be subjected to pubic scrutiny and even overturned, bringing with it the possibility of bargaining against real punishment in exchange for testimony against a bigger fish. This development is thanks to a court filing on the last day of 2015 that received only limited local publicity. More on that in a moment.

Shockingly, the deal that handed out token punishment to the statutory rapist has been hidden from the public and from the victims themselves:

Federal prosecutors in Florida intentionally kept underage victims of billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein in the dark about his plea deal, newly unsealed court papers reveal.

The documents also show prosecutors wanted to keep the extent of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes away from a judge reviewing the deal.

“I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention ‘co-conspirators,’ but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana wrote to one Epstein lawyer in September 2007.

Another email shows she agreed to stop sending notifications about the non-prosecution deal to 34 underage girls Epstein allegedly sexually preyed upon after his lawyers complained.

New York is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more.

The flurry of high-rise tower construction now under way in New York will bring about a quantum leap in density, one that will forever change our urban environment. The city is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more. They are a reminder that towers have become the dominant building type in most major cities around the world, increasing congestion as they accumulate.

These developments raise fundamental questions: How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design, be it residential, commercial or mixed use? Are our current planning and zoning regulations adequate in guiding this growth, in mitigating the impact of density? Or do we need new tools for a new era of mega-scale construction? Finally, towers create fundamental questions about the nature and character of the public realm.

Neither the prevailing tower designs nor current planning practice world-wide are able to cope with the new reality. The quality of life within towers is wanting. We still treat them, at best, as sculpture, and at worst, as utilitarian vertical extrusions of space. Many towers are designed from the outside in— elegant forms with decorative skins, hermetically sealed from the outside world. If instead they were designed as living, organic environments—with considerations of orientation, views, light and the capability to connect to the outdoors, creating terraces, gardens and solariums—tower designs would be dramatically transformed. The work space must also be rethought. Natural ventilation, diversity of workspaces and a connection to the exterior are all qualities that would help overcome the oppression of scale and crowding.

Is this House Resolution a prelude? Has Attorney General Lynch seen the potential for someone lifting her “mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric”? And what is “anti-Muslim rhetoric” exactly? Criticizing Islam? Debating Mohammed? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? Who decides the definition of “hate speech” against Muslims?

Of all 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes reported in the United States in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims, according to the FBI. By contrast, over half of all anti-religious hate crimes were directed against Jews – 56.8%.

Why this lopsided, discriminatory House Resolution in favor of a religious group that statistically needs it the least?

Are the Attorney General and the eighty-two House Democrats out to destroy the First Amendment and introduce censorship? A House Resolution could be reintroduced later as binding legislation.

Eighty-two leading Democrats have cosponsored a House Resolution (H.Res. 569) “Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States”.

The Resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives by Democrat Donald S. Beyer (Virginia) on December 17, 2015 — a mere 15 days after Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook gunned down 14 innocent Americans and wounded 23 in an ISIS-inspired terror attack at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California.

The House Resolution states, “the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes and rhetoric have faced physical, verbal, and emotional abuse because they were Muslim or believed to be Muslim,” and the House of Representatives “expresses its condolences for the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes.”

What victims? Of all 1,149 anti-religious hate crimes reported in the United States in 2014, only 16.1% were directed against Muslims, according to the FBI. By contrast, over half of all anti-religious hate crimes were directed against Jews – 56.8%. The fewest, 8.6% of anti-religious hate crimes, were directed against Christians (Protestants and Catholics).

On December 29, 2015, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) extended a Christmas greeting to “Our Christian Brothers and Sisters.” ISNA, it must be remembered, was, and still is considered an unindicted co-conspirator in the successfully prosecuted federal terrorism case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. ISNA is also Number One on the list of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “organizations and the organizations of our friends.”

The tone of the greeting was how much in common Muslims have with their Christian brothers and sisters. This should not be surprising because at the bottom of the greeting was: Dr. Sayyid M. Sayeed, ISNA Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances Director.

So, let’s examine some of the claims of commonality in this greeting.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus

The Christmas greeting makes much of the fact that Mary appears to be equally revered by both Muslims and Christians. To show that Muslim reverence, ISNA points out there is an entire chapter of the Koran named after Mary (Chapter 19). But the greeting fails to mention that of the 98 verses in that chapter, only fourteen are actually devoted to Mary (Verses 16-29).

And Islam has an interesting, but different, approach to the virgin birth of Jesus. 21:91 and 66:12 of the Koran state that Mary became pregnant by the Angle Gabriel blowing into an opening of the garment she was wearing. Ibn Kathir explained:

Forget academic boycotts and protesting Israeli oranges in the produce aisle. The new BDS targets are Jewish charities with a special focus on those that provide services and support in ’67 Israel.

Under its new Muslim boss, Amna Farooqi, J Street U has been pressuring Jewish charities not to help Jews living in territory which had been conquered and ethnically cleansed of Jews by the invading Muslim armies during Israel’s War of Independence. Other groups, including T’ruah, which had a prominent role at Obama’s toxic Chanukah party, have also made Jewish charities into their target.

But the BDS campaign against Jewish charities has reached a new level of ugliness with a lawsuit by CAIR’s favorite lawyer which demands that Jewish charities be stripped of non-profit status and that the charities and their donors be potentially listed “as specially designated global terrorists”.

The lawsuit targets a number of pro-Israel groups, including Friends of IDF, an organization that helps wounded Israeli soldiers who have lost arms and legs in the fight against Muslim terrorism learn to live fulfilling lives again. The lawsuit uses claims made by the left-wing anti-Israel group Breaking the Silence as the basis for its hateful campaign against FIDF and Israeli soldiers. It contends that providing “financial, social, and emotional support” to soldiers serving in the Israeli army is a war crime.

What should parents do if their little boy professes an intense desire to be a girl? Or if their daughter comes home from kindergarten and says she wants to be a boy? In recent years the dominant thinking has changed dramatically regarding children’s gender dysphoria. Previously, parents might hope that it would be a passing phase, as it usually is. But now they are under pressure from gender-identity politics, which asserts that children as young as 5 should be supported in wanting to live as the opposite sex. Any attempts to challenge this approach are deemed intolerant and oppressive.

I myself was a gender-dysphoric child who preferred trucks and Meccano sets to Easy-Bake Ovens. I detested being female and all of its trappings. Yet when I was growing up in the 1980s, the concept of helping children transition to another sex was completely unheard of. My parents allowed me to wear boys’ clothing and shave my head, to live as a girl who otherwise looked and behaved like a boy. I outgrew my dysphoria by my late teens. Looking back, I am grateful for my parents’ support, which helped me work things out.

Since then, research has established best-treatment practices for adolescents and adults with gender dysphoria: full transitioning, which includes treatment with hormones to suppress puberty and help the individual develop breasts or facial hair, as well as gender-reassignment surgery.

But prepubescent children who identify with the opposite sex are another matter entirely. How best to deal with them has become so politicized that sexologists, who presumably would be able to determine the healthiest approach, are extremely reluctant to get involved. They have seen what happens when they deviate from orthodoxy.

Some years ago I had a medical procedure that required visiting a few different doctors, and, dysgraphic as I am, I was intensely annoyed by the fact that at every doctor’s office, I was given pencil and paper to fill out what was essentially the same questionnaire, over and over. There being nothing much more pressing at issue than whether I am allergic to penicillin or had been feeling dizzy lately, this seemed to me like the sort of thing that ought to be done electronically and shared among practices. I pointed out to one not-at-all-interested physician that when I received bills, they were produced electronically rather than with pencil and paper.

“What’s your point?” he asked.

“The point is that when it comes to my interests — the timely and efficient transmission of my medical records — you are content to use 17th-century technology, the first mass-produced pencil having been developed in Nuremberg in 1662. When it comes to your interests — getting paid — you use 21st-century technology. It strikes me as odd that we have a very sophisticated electronic system for monitoring credit scores but no such thing for medical data.”