RUTHFULLY YOURS

Perhaps you remember when litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees were frowned upon, even by the most ideological candidates. That was when the litmus-testing came from the right on abortion. Hillary Clinton broke through that barrier on the left this week when she announced that support for restrictions on political speech would be make- or-break for her Supreme Court choices.

“The Supreme Court made a grave error with Citizens United,” Mrs. Clinton said of the 2010 case restoring the First Amendment right of businesses and unions to participate in politics. “I will do everything I can to appoint Supreme Court Justices who protect the right to vote and do not protect the right of billionaires to buy elections.”

The agency digs deep for excuses—and not very good ones—to explain its veto of an Alaskan mine project.

Government agencies have a certain descending order of excuses they employ as a scandal grows. When they reach the point of quibbling over semantics and blaming low-level employees, it’s clear they know they’ve got a problem.

The EPA has a problem: its pre-emptive veto of the Pebble Mine, a proposed project in southwest Alaska. The law says that Pebble gets to apply for permits, and the Army Corps of Engineers gets to give thumbs up or down. The EPA, a law unto itself, instead last year blocked the proposal before applications were even filed. The agency claims it got involved because of petitions from Native American tribes in 2010, and that its veto is based on “science”—a watershed assessment that purportedly shows the mine would cause environmental harm.

How the most notorious Clinton flack of them all helped Hillary spin the murder of a U.S. ambassador in Libya.

It’s a scenario too weird and twisted even for one of Christopher Buckley’s satirical novels: Sid Blumenthal, a lifelong political hatchet-man considered too nasty and dishonest to work in the State Department by President Obama’s staff, ended up advising Hillary Clinton on Libya and shaping her public characterization of the Benghazi attack.

Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), who heads up the special committee investigating the Benghazi attacks in the House, intends to subpoena Blumenthal for a private interview. When they became public in the wake of the scandal over Clinton’s private e-mail account earlier this year, Hillary Clinton characterized e-mails she’d received from Blumenthal when she was secretary of state — at least 25 detailed, lengthy memos — as merely “talking to my old friends.” But at the time they were sent, Clinton distributed the e-mails to her staff at Foggy Bottom — and it appears that one of Blumenthal’s memos, sent a day after the Benghazi attack, told her just what she wanted to hear about the attack’s connection to the supposed protest, quickly revealed to be nonexistent, over an anti-Islamic video.

Which is more shocking — that Hillary Clinton used an unsecured, private e-mail system to get alleged “intelligence” about Libya’s political leaders and the Benghazi attack, or that her primary source was the one man the Obama team deemed too dishonest and unethical to work in the State Department?

Hillary Clinton wanted Blumenthal to have an official role at Foggy Bottom, but the Obama team deemed Blumenthal unfit for any administration role, sending Rahm Emanuel to tell her that he was persona non grata in their eyes. In their minds, he crossed the line far too many times during the Clinton–Obama primary fight.

This time, there was no request for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council; no talks with the EU, NATO, Obama or Merkel. Instead, the Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a weak protest note.

President Erdogan’s reaction to an attack on a civilian Turkish vessel by a foreign army was revealing: “Things would have been different had the ship carried a Turkish flag.”

By the way, what flag did the Mavi Marmara carry? Comoros.

For Turkey’s Islamists, “what was done” does not matter much. “Who did it” does.

“This is the first time in history that a foreign army has killed civilian Turks in peacetime!”

This is how government-friendly media justified Turkey’s reaction to Israel when, in May 2010, the Israel Defense Forces raided the “Mavi Marmara,” a ship in a Turkish-led flotilla off the Gazan coast, and killed nine pro-Palestine activists aboard.

Any reader could be tempted to believe that Turkey was preparing to go to war with Israel.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, then foreign minister, insisted that “This is Turkey’s own 9/11.”

Turkey asked the United Nations Security Council to summon an emergency meeting. It knocked on other doors too: NATO, the European Union (EU), the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan called to discuss the Mavi Marmara crisis with U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Could it be that two generations from now our grandchildren are going to be watching a documentary about the consequences of America’s retreat in the Middle East?

That’s the question I am pondering this week on the 40th anniversary of the communist conquest of Indochina.

The event is being marked by the broadcast on PBS of Rory Kennedy’s documentary “Last Days in Vietnam.” It is a stunning scoop that recounts the desperate scramble — by our GIs, spies and diplomats — to save our Vietnamese friends as a communist army descended on our ally.

Kennedy has come up with film clippings and interviews that are unbelievably harrowing.

They show Vietnamese clambering to get into the American embassy compound in Saigon and onto helicopters, to be ferried out to American warships standing off shore.

Napoleon Bonaparte purportedly said “Let China sleep, for when China wakes, she will shake the world.”

As Thomas J. Christensen, the author of his recently published “The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power”, reminds us, “For millennia China was arguably the greatest civilization on the planet and for many previous centuries its most powerful empire.”

China is no longer an empire, but it remains a huge nation geographically and huge in terms of its population.

President Obama delivered the keynote address at the United States Coast Guard Academy commencement Wednesday in New London, Connecticut. In his commencement speech, Obama warned graduates climate change is one of the largest threats they will have to face as they defend the United States and our nation’s interests abroad.

Unlike the other service academies, admission to the academy does not require a congressional nomination. Students are officers-in-training and many go to flight school. Tuition for cadets is fully funded by the Coast Guard in exchange for an obligation of five years active duty service upon graduation. The motto of the academy is: “Who lives here reveres honor, honors duty”

In his speech, Obama said denying climate change or refusing to deal with it is negligence and “dereliction of duty.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Climate change is one of those most severe threats. This is not just a problem for countries on the coasts or for certain regions of the world. Climate change will impact every country on the planet. No nation is immune. So I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act and we need to act now.

After all, isn’t that the true hallmark of leadership? When you’re on deck, standing your watch, you stay vigilant, you plan for every contingency. If you see storm clouds gathering or dangerous shoals ahead you don’t just sit back and do nothing. You take action to protect your ship, to keep your crew safe. Anything less is negligence. It is a dereliction of duty. So to with climate change. Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security. It undermines the readiness of our forces.”

Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal. That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools. The only thing it has achieved is the opposition of parents, teachers unions, and entire states.

In the April edition of The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, one could find headlines that included “Arizona House Votes to Repeal and Replace Common Core”, “Arizona House Votes to Repeal Common Core”, ”West Virginia House Passes Common Core Repeal Bill”, and “Ohio Bill Would Protect Students Opting Out of Common Core Tests.” In March, some 19 states had introduced legislation to either halt or replace Common Core. Do you see a trend here?

The off-duty, undercover cop who watched while members of a bike gang hauled the driver out of an SUV on New York’s West Side Highway last year and beat him was asked why he did nothing. His response: “If I knew what was going to happen, I would not have gotten out of bed”.

The question currently being asked of candidates – knowing what we know now, would you have invaded Iraq in 2003? – does little to reveal the judgment, temperament or character of the one being asked. It serves no purpose, other than to fill the questioner with supercilious indignation, and to make the interrogatee, no matter the response, look foolish.

The current uproar began when Megyn Kelly of Fox News asked Jeb Bush, “knowing what we now know,” would he have authorized the invasion of Iraq? Governor Bush answered what he thought was the question, but ignored the hypothetical introductory phrase. From a political perspective, it was a mistake on Mr. Bush’s part, but it was the question that was absurd. How does one answer such a hypothetical question? Ms. Kelly was surely trying to trap Jeb Bush and, unfortunately for him, she succeeded. But did her audience learn anything of importance? Was it newsworthy, or did she and the question become the news? On Sunday evening, Chris Wallace asked the same question of Senator Marco Rubio. When Mr. Rubio pushed back, Mr. Wallace became exasperated; so the Senator gave the answer Mr. Wallace wanted. The audience learned nothing, other than that Chris Wallace, whom I generally admire, can be an ass.