RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Constitution is not a suicide pact—except maybe in Illinois. On Friday the Illinois Supreme Court struck down modest pension reforms as a violation of the state constitution in a decision that tees up state taxpayers for years of tax increases.

The court ruled unanimously that pensions are inviolable under the plain text of the state constitution, which holds that “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

SALINAS, Calif. — Angie Esteban hadn’t heard of Bruce Jenner before the gold medal Olympian’s “coming out” as a transgender woman on national television.

Now she and Jenner, a television celebrity and stepfather of the reality TV Kardashian sisters, have something in common.

Angie has had her own coming out. It’s taken place over the course of the past few years, an arduous, personal journey — a girl shedding her male skin. It began slowly in middle school and gained speed as a freshman at Salinas High School.

“We cannot bivouac, educate, medicate, and translate for thousands of noncitizens from afar. We cannot provide incomes for them. We cannot hire them, at the expense of the ailing economy and our 50-plus million unemployed and underemployed citizenry.”

A couple of days ago, in the wake of the 7.8 magnitude temblor and some 100 aftershocks in Nepal affecting thousands of ancient structures, temples, and homes, senior statesman Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) dropped some happy-talk to listeners.

(NB: We were fortunate to have visited this once-isolated, Buddhist/Hindu/animist civilization well before the current earthquake, and our memories are still firm in evoking its splendors and naïve beauty. We ‘summated’ Base camp Everest, too, before we turned around.)

‘Why don’t we bring a few thousand of these displaced persons over here from Kathmandu, and when their city is up and running again, they can go back…?’ Schumer wanted to know. His amen minions applauded prettily, not querying the deeply ignorant premises of this suggestion.

Hillary Clinton: We knew her as a grim, charmless harridan; a pear-shaped harpy. Now, after reading Peter Schweizer’s new book, Clinton Cash (HarperCollins, New York, May 2015), we see the ultimate Hillary, one of the world’s truly scary women. Think Lady Macbeth, Messalina, Evita. Add Bill to the sordid picture and you have Bonnie and Clyde– elected to high office, and lionized all over the world.

We know about Hillary’s thousands of missing e-mails and unaccountable donors. What may be less known is how the Clinton double-scam works. Take, first of all, the so-called Clinton Foundation, whose stated purpose is “to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence,” whatever that means. Founded in 2001, when Bill had just left office, it boasts a staff of 350, mostly Clinton cronies and insiders.

Once liberated from the White House, Bill hit the lecture circuit, collecting $105.5 million dollars through 2012 and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation. Significantly, his biggest payments came not from sources in the United States but from foreign investors, businesses and governments…hungry for access to the corridors of American power.

The next deadline for an agreement between the P5+1 nations and Iran over its ‎nuclear program is June 30. As with prior deadlines, the next one can be extended ‎a few days to iron out “final” details as occurred with the prior March 31 deadline, ‎or rolled over a few more months if significant gaps remain. This was what ‎occurred with earlier rounds of the talks, and may well describe what occurred ‎after the last round of talks concluded, despite the happy talk from both sides as ‎they left Switzerland. In any case, the actions of the Obama administration, the U.S. ‎Congress, and Iran in the five weeks since the last round of talks ended, make it ‎fairly clear that the dynamic in place since the talks began has not been ‎fundamentally altered.

The term “suspension of disbelief” – coined in 1817 by the philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge – refers to a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrificing reality, common sense, doubt and complexity on the altar of a pretend reality, convenience and oversimplification; infusing a semblance of truth into an untrue narrative.

Suspension of disbelief characterized the 1977-79 President Carter policy toward Iran, energizing Ayatollah Khomeini, ignoring or underestimating his track record and his radical, supremacist and violent worldview. The betrayal of the Shah transformed Teheran from “the US policeman in the Gulf” to the worst enemy of the US.

Currently, the suspension of disbelief undermines the US posture of deterrence and vital US national security and commercial interests. It was demonstrated by President Obama, who – irrespective of Middle East reality – referred to the brutally-intolerant, terror-driven, anti-US, anti-infidel, repressive, tumultuous Arab Tsunami as the Arab Spring “casting off the burdens of the past,” “a story of self determination,” “a democratic upheaval,” “a peaceful opposition,” “rejection of political violence” and “a transition toward (multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic) democracy.”

YATIR FOREST, Israel — As Californians struggle with an ever-worsening water shortage caused by a historic drought, they might look east for a solution — to the Middle East.

Israel, subject to intermittent droughts for decades, has pioneered a number of water-saving techniques. It long ago figured out how to grow crops in the desert and for decades has advised the developing world on how to manage scarce water resources.

Now, Israel is eager to share its latest know-how with drought-ridden states like California. These helpful techniques include water quotas, desalination plants and the reuse of household wastewater.

Six years ago when Israel was in the grips of its own dire drought, the government actually considered shipping in water from Turkey — more than 1,000 nautical miles away. Instead, the country embarked on a coordinated effort of recycling used water, desalination and education.

The notion that a rape victim deserved to be raped because she was wearing a tight outfit lights up all our red lights.This is the case first and foremost because it absolves the rapist of responsibility for his crime.

We are also disgusted by attempts to blame the victim for her victimization because they are substantively false. If men are more likely to rape women in tight clothing then rape should be all but non-existent in traditional Islamic societies. Yet the opposite is the case. Rape and sexual abuse are endemic to such societies. According to the UN, a whopping 99.3 percent of Egyptian women report having suffered sexual abuse.
There is a third, more general reason that we recoil from the thought of blaming rape victims for their suffering. One of the foundations of liberal societies has always been that victims of aggression are not to blame for their attackers’ behavior.

Over the past few days, we have witnessed a dangerous erosion of this principle among American elites.
Last Sunday two Islamic terrorists armed with assault rifles tried to massacre participants at a Muhammed cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.

The circle of men whirls around the fire, hand in hand, hand catching hand, drawing in newcomers into the ring that races around and around in the growing darkness. A melody thumps through the speakers teetering unevenly with the bass, the sound is both old and new, a mix of the past and the present, like the participants in the dance, the traditional garments mixing with jeans and t-shirts until it is all a blur.

It is Lag BaOmer, an obscure holiday to most, even to those who come to the fires. The remnants of the Jewish Revolt against the might of the Roman Empire are remembered as days of deprivation in memory of the thousands of students dying in the war, until the thirty-third day of the Biblical Omer, part of the way between Passover and Shavuot, the day when Jerusalem was liberated.

Deprived of music for weeks, it rolls back in waves through speakers, from horns blown by children and a makeshift drum echoing an ancient celebration when men danced around fires and shot arrows into the air. The fires and bows have remained a part of Lag BaOmer, even when hardly anyone remembers the true reason for them.

On May 8, German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms and surrendered. The Holocaust was over. President Harry S. Truman announced:

“A Proclamation—The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God’s help, have wrung from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men. They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted their children, and murdered their loved ones. Our Armies of Liberation have restored freedom to these suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressors could never enslave.
“Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the East. The whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world has been freed. United, the peace-loving nations have demonstrated in the West that their arms are stronger by far than the might of the dictators or the tyranny of military cliques that once called us soft and weak. The power of our peoples to defend themselves against all enemies will be proved in the Pacific war as it has been proved in Europe.
“For the triumph of spirit and of arms which we have won, and for its promise to the peoples everywhere who join us in the love of freedom, it is fitting that we, as a nation, give thanks to Almighty God, who has strengthened us and given us the victory.
“Now, therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby appoint Sunday, May 13, 1945, to be a day of prayer.
“I call upon the people of the United States, whatever their faith, to unite in offering joyful thanks to God for the victory we have won, and to pray that He will support us to the end of our present struggle and guide us into the ways of peace.
“I also call upon my countrymen to dedicate this day of prayer to the memory of those who have given their lives to make possible our victory.”
Alas, much of Europe was enslaved and oppressed by the Soviet Union…..and it would be the last time that America waged a war and demanded and got unconditional and total surrender…..rsk