RUTHFULLY YOURS

Newt Gingrich has warned that the majority of President Obama’s legacy will soon be wiped out by the Trump administration.

The former House speaker made the remarks on Fox News Wednesday after he was shown a clip of Obama’s recent NPR interview where he advised Trump to go through Congress to pass policies rather than rely on executive powers because, in his words, “it’s harder to undo.”

Gingrich commented by saying, “What you’re watching is a man who realizes all of a sudden that like 90 percent of his legacy’s gonna disappear because he didn’t do the hard work of passing legislation. He didn’t reach out to work with the other side which, by the way, is also a warning to Trump…”

Gingrich then said, “Starting the opening day when Trump begins to repeal all these executive orders, it’s gonna be like one of those balloons that deflates…and down to a core to 10 or 15 percent of what he originally did. The rest is all gonna disappear within a year.”

During a speech he gave in October, Trump, stated, in fact, that one of his first 100-day priorities as president would be to “…cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.”

Will Santa go to Chicago this Christmas? Maybe…but only if he can wear body armor. To be sure, there’s nothing funny about Santa needing to wear Kevlar TM when he goes to certain areas of the Windy City. In fact it is tragic. But for law enforcement and likely some in EMS, body armor is more than a fashion extra in Chicago, and other major cities, it is a potentially life-saving necessity, and way of life. As an aside, one has to wonder would the death count in Chicago among children, young adults, and other innocent bystanders decrease if Santa left kids Kevlar lined backpacks instead of toys, and winter coats had stab-resistant plate inserts?!

Sadly the remedy for the killing fields of Chicago may be more than Santa, or a Christmas truce can pull off. I wonder, do gang truces exist on Christmas morning? Will the bloodshed slow down this Holiday Season in Chicago or Baltimore or Detroit or…..?

Societies like nations die from within….

To be sure, what is going on in Chicago is more than a national embarrassment – assuming you read about it beyond a few sites like FSM or occasionally in the Tribune. Criminal beyond the average level of corruption of Daley and Capone infamy, take a good, long look, because a city near you or me could be next. Communities are dying from within, but poverty is only part of the problem. This is not about race, either, although some try to make it part of the divide. Chicago gun violence primarily is black on black…such bloodshed should no more be tolerated than white on black, or black on white. And more gun laws aren’t the answer; Chicago already has some of the strictest in the nation.

The sad reality folks throughout the city seem ok with the persistent decay amidst a not insignificant section of the metroplex; it is inconceivable that the majority of a community would contribute to or remain culpable in the creation of children condemned to lives of lack or danger or criminality, and incomprehensible that it is politics as usual in those communities. Tolerating such an existence, preferring it would seem to accept subsistence, or adhering to a stance that resists fresh air and help – it boggles the mind.

Ironically Chicago is also full of great universities (think adolescents with energy and ideas and sense of volunteerism), and people of wealth and generosity; people of all races, creeds, faiths, and ethnicities. Could Santa tap into these folks and catalyze greater outreach and collaboration?

Regrettably Santa, in his autobiography, as told to Jeff Guinn, notes that his powers diminish the closer he gets to war and violence. Too bad, because if ever this saintly bishop is needed, it is in the war zone of our inner cities. And make no mistake about it…many of our cities have dangerous areas that are war zones. I guess Santa will need our help!

Is it right to kill on Christmas?

In the book Home and Away by Dean Hughes, one of the characters in the story who is in a fox hole while German artillery shells threaten, asks his fellow soldier “is it right to kill on Christmas?” It is a profound question – and one I have no doubt frequently was asked in real life by many soldiers on both sides of the conflict. But one has to wonder, has that question even come to mind by the folks doing the killings in Chicago, and similar urban war zones? Have we developed citizens who no longer share a common humanity? Have we changed so dramatically since the 1940s when soldiers accustomed to death tugging at them every second could give themselves a humanity check, a morality check, a decency check amidst a bloody battle? What is wrong with society 2016 that our fellow Americans are racking up carnage that all but the most coldhearted Jihadists would denounce; do gang bangers ever wonder “is it right to kill on Christmas?”

So why focus on Santa and the killing fields of Chicago? Because I, like you, care about children. Having run programs and a free clinic for underserved kids, it becomes abundantly clear children need protection, role models, and to believe in something affirming, like the kindness manifest by an older man in a red costume. Clearly a father figure is needed in many inner cities – not a judgment, but a medical and public health assessment.

Former Red Sox star pitcher Kurt Schilling posted the following on Facebook this past April: “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the pe*is, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

He followed this with a re-post of an item by someone else that showed an image of a man dressed as a woman, accompanied by the following: “Let him in! To the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!!!” Mr. Schilling was fired as a sports commentator by ESPN for the posting.

I first heard of Mr. Schilling’s remarks while listening to ESPN on my car radio. I was struck by the moral certitude of the announcer, who said he would not dignify Schilling’s comments by repeating them. I wondered how he had arrived at such a high degree of certainty that anyone who chooses not to reorder his life to accommodate the men who think they are women must be morally depraved.

Surely it is reasonable to question the psychological health of any man who thinks he is a woman, or vice versa. We have believed that a person’s “gender,” as we say now, is determined by his sex for the entire history of the human race. So recently has this view been called into question that there is little, if any, science available to support the new, alternative view. And surely it is reasonable for a person to require some very persuasive science before abandoning the common sense view that no psychologically healthy man thinks he is a woman.

But persons like that sports announcer do not require science, precisely because they are not reasonable. In their readiness to accept newly-popular notions that contradict what their own minds tell them, and to do so without any supporting evidence, they are beyond the reach of reason.

They are not bothered by the illogic that transgender boys should be allowed into girls’ bath and locker rooms because they are uncomfortable around other boys, but that the girls who must accommodate them in their bath and locker rooms will just have to get over their discomfort.

And they are not bothered that Mr. Obama enacted his bathroom edict without any public discussion of the matter, and without consulting Congress, two things that any reasonable person would have insisted upon.

Indeed, in requiring its adherents to ignore their own minds-American cities have a police problem, not a black crime problem; Islam is a religion of peace, not the source of most of the world’s terrorism; social convention alone dictates that we treat men and women differently, not fundamental differences in their natures-political correctness leaves them no choice but to embrace irrationality as a principle of action. No need to think for yourself, just follow the party line.

“You may not be in a religious war with me, but I’m in a religious war with you,” recalled former CIA interrogator James Mitchell the views of al-Qaeda (AQ) mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). Interviewed on December 6 at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) before an audience of about 70, Mitchell provided chilling, essential insight into the jihadist worldview currently threatening the globe.

AEI Resident Fellow Marc A. Thiessen introduced Mitchell as someone who “has spent thousands of hours with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and other senior al-Qaeda operatives” and “looked directly into the face of evil.” Mitchell concurred that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, considered the leading technical genius behind AQ’s devastating September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was “devil and diva,” whom Mitchell and other interrogators called “muq” after the Arabic word for brain, muqtar. Comparing him to a Star Wars “Jedi master” recruiting jihadist “Jedi warriors,” Mitchell found him “immensely charming. He reminded me of Yoda,” yet “that is often how evil looks.”

Mitchell recalled that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad “thought he was a Sufi” and “likes to sit there and talk…to tell you about his religion,” yet he appeared to Mitchell as no mere blusterer. Mitchell compared his AEI audience to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, stating “I haven’t seen this much raw brain power in one place since the last time I sat in his cell with just him.” He “is probably the brightest person I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen some pretty bright people.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s evil genius came to life in Mitchell’s recounting of his description of his 2002 murder of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter and jihadist hostage in Pakistan. He remembered that he “had sharp knives. The toughest part was getting through the neck bone.” For him, this killing showed God’s “glory, shows how much his influence is. It’s almost like an act of worship to him.”

While “not attacking all of Islam,” Mitchell saw in Khalid Sheikh Mohammad how “these Islamists, who want to destroy our way of life, have a set of beliefs that make them incredibly dangerous.” For Islamists, “how we’re supposed to live was established 1,400 years ago in the Koran and in the perfect words and deeds” of Islam’s prophet Muhammad. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad considered Islam a “religion of peace. The world will be at peace when sharia law is imposed on the whole world.”

Speaking of jihadists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Mitchell emphasized the “depth of their belief. I don’t think most Americans understand that they, no kidding, believe what they believe.” Jihadists “really do believe they’re going to end up with 72 spiritual beings that become virgins every time you have sex with them.” “It sounds ridiculous to me,” but “they really do believe they’re going to be treated like rock stars up there.”

Mitchell’s interrogations of another captured AQ jihadist, Abu Zubaydah, revealed that “Al Qaeda dreams of bringing down America with catastrophic attacks, but that’s not particularly practical.” For him, the “real way to bring down America was with low-tech, ‘lone-wolf’ attacks because the target is not our military capabilities. It’s not our buildings. It’s not our roads. It’s the minds of the Americans.” “We don’t have to defeat you. We only have to persist long enough for you to defeat yourself.”

Similarly, Mitchell noted that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad “got fascinated by the Beltway sniper” who killed numerous individuals outside of Washington, DC, in 2002; He “would spend hours to me talking about that” and its “economy of scale.” Accordingly, he fantasized about multiple “single martyrs, shahids, who would go into the American culture and pull off low-tech attacks…with enough of those low-tech attacks, like happened with the Beltway shooter, it would cripple America.” Thus he “bought a gas station in Pakistan so he could figure out how to build a bomb that they could slide down into the gas tanks at gas stations.”

In his enviro-extremism, President Obama is attempting to tie President-elect Trump’s hands by blocking vast swaths of the Arctic Ocean and stretches of the Atlantic from oil and natural-gas drilling. The gambit, announced by the administration on Tuesday, is part of an eleventh-hour wave by which Obama is flooding the regulatory zone: Promulgating so many rules – of the unpopular, hard-left variety that Democrats dare not unveil before Election Days – that he hopes the Trump administration will find it too cumbersome to undo all of them.

The incoming president should not let his predecessor get away with it. Obama’s lawyers apparently believe they’ve found a loophole that could make the anti-drilling ban stick. President Trump, however, will have the power to rescind it, and should do so promptly.

Obama will set an all-time record for pages added to the Federal Register this year. Actually, make that another all-time record, since he will (yet again) be breaking records he has set, and broken, repeatedly over the last eight years. In fact, the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes that on a single day in mid-November, Obama added an unprecedented 572 pages to the Federal Register.

Concededly, counting pages can be an imprecise or even misleading measure of presidential law-making. The Federal Register includes reams of documents besides rules and regulations. Plus, even rules that had the effect of rolling back rules would thicken the rule book. But let’s face it, Washington is rarely in the business of reining in its intrusions. The last eight years have been all about extending them – to the Arctic Ocean and beyond.

Trump will find it easy to cancel rules imposed in the late stages of the incumbent administration. Any rules that have not yet gone into effect can simply be suspended. And rules that have just gone into effect may be undone under the 1996 Congressional Review Act. The CRA empowers Congress, within 60 session-days of a rule’s implementation, to enact a resolution disapproving it. Such a resolution is not subject to Senate filibuster (i.e., it can be passed by a simple majority because the usual requirement of 60 votes to end debate does not apply).

For the most part, the CRA has been an illusory check on executive agencies run wild. A disapproval resolution, like any other congressional act, does not become law unless the president signs it (or unless the president’s veto is overridden). Obviously, a president is not going to sign a resolution that cancels rules promulgated by his own administration in furtherance of his agenda.

Still, the CRA has been successfully invoked once, in 2001. That example mirrors our current transitional circumstances: It happened at the start of the new Bush (43) administration, when Congress voted to revoke a rule implemented toward the end of the Clinton administration.

With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House, it will be possible to enact resolutions of disapproval, as long as it is done quickly. While the GOP margin in the Senate is thin, Republicans have been united in opposition, at least rhetorically, to Obama’s despotic style of governance. Now that they can easily do something about it, expect them to pass, and Trump to sign, resolutions that rescind brand new Obama rules.