RUTHFULLY YOURS

The United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. that if you like your God, you can keep your God, even if you run a business.

The Obama administration tried to require that health plans provided at work cover contraception and morning-after pills, no matter what an employer’s religious convictions.

The Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby craft stores and a chain of Christian bookstores, provide insurance but refuse to cover morning-after pills such as Plan B and Ella, because these drugs violate their religious principles.

The Obama administration insists that saving women $35 for the Ella pill outweighs protecting an employer’s religious liberty.

Democratic politicians hyped this battle as Armageddon for women’s reproductive rights. Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, fanned the flames, accusing employers of “trying to take this right away from women.”

Nineteen U.S. senators and 91 members of the House of Representatives, all Democrats, filed briefs supporting Obama’s legal war against Hobby Lobby. Sens. Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer said the outcome would decide “whether a CEO’s personal beliefs can trump a woman’s right to access free or low-cost contraception under the Affordable Care Act.”

Nonsense. Women have a constitutional right to use birth control, but there is no “right” to get it at work. Nor does the Affordable Care Act guarantee that health plans cover it. ObamaCare would not have passed with such a guarantee.

Section 2713 of ObamaCare requires plans to cover services that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force rates as A or B. Birth control didn’t make the list. The law also gives the Health and Human Services secretary – a presidential appointee – discretion to add other requirements, and then-Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did. (The next administration could undo that.)

Shockingly, Justice Elena Kagan declared during oral arguments on March 25: “Congress has made a judgment and Congress has given a statutory entitlement, and that entitlement is to women and includes contraceptive coverage.”

Wrong, Justice Kagan. Did you forego reading the law, like most members of Congress?

Above all, God bless the boys going up against Hamas and into Gaza by air, land and sea. Bibi said it’s “time to take off the gloves” so once again Israel is at war.

This is not the time to remind Israel’s politicians “we told you so” when you gave up Gaza in 2005.

Nor is this the time to blame successive Israeli governments for letting it get this far, far enough to allow this implacable foe to arm itself to the teeth.

For the moment Israel must deal with the unbearable barrage of rocket fire coming in ceaselessly from Gaza. Now it’s time to stop the bleeding.

Through Operation Protective Edge, the pride of the Jewish State has been mobilized to defuse the bombs and to subdue the enemy. The enemy is Hamas, which has given Israel not a moment’s rest. From the time these violent tribes of Sunni origin took over the Strip in 2007 they have hammered Israel with a million bombs meant to discomfort a million Israelis along the South.

For all those years, life along the South has been treacherous, a nightmare, for Israelis living along the border. In Jewish population centers like Ashdod (215,000) Ashkelon (120,000), Beersheva (197,000), Dimona (33,000), Eilat (47,000), Sderot (21,000) sirens wailed every day and parents huddled with their children in bomb shelters.

They complained to the government – how can this be happening in a Land we call our own? Please make this stop.

My friends in Eilat ask me, “Can you do something from America? Do people know what’s going on? Would any country besides Israel stand for this?”

It hurts to tell them that America and the rest of the world would only demand of Israel that it exercise “restraint.” We heard this again, as recently as yesterday, and again we heard that this “cycle of violence” must stop and that “both sides” should proceed with caution.

The problem with going to war is you really have to win it definitively. If you don’t, it will come back and bite you in the leg — or worse.

The USA should have learned that from World War II when we, and our allies, completely annihilated the Nazis and the Japanese and Germany and Japan became decent modern democracies. We didn’t. Whether you supported them or not, whether they were the right ones or not, we ended up fighting all subsequent wars half-heartedly. The results are obvious.

America has gotten away, so far, barely, with this ambivalent approach to war because it is so powerful and so far away from the field of battle. (The rapid metastasis across Syria and Iraq of the Islamic State — aka ISIS — not to mention our own porous borders, may change that.)

Israel is in a different position. It fights for its survival surrounded by societies that despise it and are, by contemporary standards, hugely primitive and bordering on the insane, misogynistic, homophobic and everything else liberals are supposed to abhor. (I guess supporters of #BDS movement can stop reading here.) Nevertheless, Israel has fought its wars — even the ’67 war — American-style, holding off from finishing the job, because of its own scruples and because it was urged to “exercise restraint” by the U.S., Europe, Russia or the former Soviet Union.

Now things are different. We are in the Age of Obama when the thought of such an incompetent, failed president counseling anything, let alone restraint, is risible. And yet you can be sure he will within minutes of when Israel’s new operation against Hamas in Gaza shows even a glimmer of success.

I write this as sirens wail in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv [1], so let me cut to the chase. This time Israel should finish the job. Forget anything said by Obama and his equally incompetent secretary of State. Shine them on. Do anything you have to, but smash Hamas utterly.

Israel will be doing the world a favor, showing them how Islamic terrorists should be treated. The only horse they recognize, as Lee Smith [2] pointed out a while ago, is the strong one. That’s the unfortunate truth. Anyone who sees it otherwise at this point is lying to himself or others. How many more years of this do we need? How many more Gaza wars, Iraq wars, Syrian civil wars, Iranian (potential) nuclear wars, Sunni vs. Shiite wars, back-to-the-Middle Ages wars can civilization abide? Sooner or later, someone is going to have to yell “Ya, basta!”

Benjamin Netanyahu — over to you.

Israel keeps the peace? That may seem jarring since when Israel gets in the news—as in the current operation against Hamas terror in Gaza—it’s usually in connection to violence.

But in reality, as a democratic, Western-aligned country and the Middle East’s preeminent military power, Israel has done much over the decades to keep the region from being worse than it is. Israel has used its might—sometimes openly, sometimes discreetly—not only to safeguard its own interests but also those of the West and the more moderate Arab states.
1. Preventing a nuclear Iraq.

When Iraq came to the verge of going nuclear, it was Israel that stopped it.

In the 1970s, France—heavily pro-Arab and dependent on Arab oil—started helping Iraq build the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. By 1981, with Saddam Hussein in power, Israeli intelligence conveyed its grim findings to Jerusalem: Iraq, a sworn enemy of Israel, was aiming to build nuclear weapons at Osirak and was within a year of doing so.

Israel tried diplomacy with France and the U.S. With the former, it was no-go; Iraq was France’s main customer for weaponry, paying mainly in oil. As for the U.S., it agreed with Israel’s assessments but declined to act, possibly because Iraq was then fighting Iran [1].

So on June 7, 1981, under orders from Prime Minister Menachem Begin [2], the Israeli air force dispatched 14 F-15s and F-16s to Osirak. The planes flew low so that Iraq never detected them, and they reduced the reactor to ruins in a minute and 20 seconds.

The attack, of course, was universally condemned at the time. The U.S. suspended a shipment of planes to Israel. But in June 1991, visiting Israel after the Gulf War, then-Defense Secretary Richard Cheney gave General David Ivry, chief of the Israeli air force ten years earlier, his “thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981, which made our job much easier in Desert Storm.”

Desert Storm was a success, pushing Iraq out of Kuwait and maintaining relative order in the Middle East. Although further U.S. measures in Iraq are more debatable, at least they didn’t have to be carried out against a nuclear Iraq.
2. Preventing a nuclear Syria.

Syria is another Middle Eastern country you wouldn’t want to see with nuclear bombs. That, too, came close to happening and was prevented by Israel [3].

In late 2006 and early 2007, Israeli intelligence found out that North Korea was building a plutonium reactor for the Assad regime in northern Syria. The aim: to put together a nuclear bomb.

In April, Israel conveyed that finding to Washington. President Bush ordered an inquiry; U.S. intelligence said Israel was right.

The then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, tried to convince the U.S. to attack, but Washington—already embroiled in Iraq—declined. Olmert told Bush that, in that case, Israel would do it. Olmert interpreted Bush’s reaction as a green light.

Shortly after midnight on September 6, 2007, Israeli planes dropped 17 tons of bombs on the reactor, putting an end to it. This time Israel kept mum, not officially acknowledging the operation (it hasn’t to this day), and criticism was more muted. Considering that, a few years later, the Assad regime showed itself quite capable of using chemical weapons against civilians, Israel again did the world a great favor.

After another bloody weekend in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel branded the shootings unacceptable and the city’s top cop demanded more gun control laws. Chicago’s murder rate has actually dropped since concealed carry became legal. Emanuel’s lawsuits over his illegal gun control laws have left the already struggling city deep in the hole and forced to cover the NRA’s million dollars in legal bills.

Concealed carry paid off over the bloody weekend when a vet carrying a gun returned fire stopping a massacre before it happened. The original shooter ended up in the hospital, but nobody ended up in the morgue, which kept the death toll for the weekend down to fourteen.

Fourteen isn’t pretty, but it’s better than twenty or thirty.

Chicago’s murder rate in 1992 was double what it is today. The death rate was at 33.7 out of 100,000 which meant that you had a pretty good chance of being shot in Chicago. Today it’s down to 15 out of 100,000, which is small comfort to those ending up in the morgue, but it gives everyone else much better odds of surviving to see what ingenious ways the next corrupt mayoral administration will use to rip off the city.

Back in 1992, the cops also blamed guns for the murder rate. But it wasn’t the guns that were killing people. It was the gangs.

Now the murder rate is down, but the number of shootings is up. To Chicago’s police boss, that’s a problem, as if it makes a difference to the deceased whether he’s shot, stabbed or dropped in the water wearing cement overshoes. But fighting guns is easier than fighting crime.

The gun obsession is one of the few things that cops and leftists have in common. It’s the last politically acceptable form of prohibitionism in a society that enthusiastically legalizes drugs, even if possessing crack cocaine is statistically much more likely to lead you to kill a man, than possessing a gun will.

Every shooting spree bypasses the obvious problem with calls for more gun laws and something for the youth to do over the weekend that doesn’t involve shooting up the local housing project. This weekend, Rahm Emanuel took on the problem of funding more teen centers while Chicago’s top cop blustered about more gun laws. And then having successfully talked around the issue, they all went home.

The left loves root causes more than it loves red shirts and black bandanas, a fashion choice that it shares with some of the gangs responsible for most of the shootings.

As the orchestrated chaos at America’s southern border remains unrelenting, President Obama is doing what he does best: ignoring another crisis in favor of fundraising. And despite that fundraising taking place in Texas, the state hardest hit by the onslaught of illegal alien children, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest insisted Monday that Obama had no intention of visiting the border. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was incensed. “President Obama needs a wakeup call — and visiting the border and seeing firsthand the severity of this ongoing crisis is that wakeup call,” he said in remarks prepared for airing on Senate floor.

It’s not going to happen, and even Democrats are beginning to get exasperated. On Sunday, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), whose congressional district sits on the U.S.-Mexican border, accused the White House of being late to the game. “With all due respect to the administration, they’re one step behind. They should have seen this coming a long time ago,” Cuellar told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.”

Actually they did, and not just recently. On January 29, 2014 an ad placed at the FedBizOpps.Gov website was looking to procure escort services for 65,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs). Contained in the same ad was a far greater indicator of the Obama administration’s ultimate intentions once that crisis developed. Whoever provided the escort services was also expected to transport “these juveniles to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters located throughout the continental United States.” That would be the ORR whose mission is to “provide people in need with critical resources to assist them in becoming integrated members of American society.”

In other the words, the administration was not only anticipating a crisis before one developed, it had seemingly decided that the massive influx of illegals would be categorized as “refugees.” Yesterday the United Nations got into the act, urging the administration to embrace that definition as a means of making thousands of illegals eligible for asylum, rather than sending them home. When asked whether the administration considered the current border assault a refugee crisis, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was “a humanitarian situation that requires urgent attention.”

Yet urgent attention is exactly what is lacking, and the administration is citing the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 as the reason. Enacted by a Democratically-controlled Congress and signed by President Bush, the law offers additional protections to UACs who are not from Canada or Mexico. Those protections include an opportunity to appear at an immigration hearing, consult with an advocate, possibly retain counsel, and receive placement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is tasked with placing the child “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”

Unfortunately for Obama, another Democrat has challenged his interpretation of the statute. “That law already provides the administration with flexibility to accelerate the judicial process in times of crisis,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who helped craft the Act. “The administration should use that flexibility to speed up the system while still treating these children humanely, with compassion and respect.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/video-jamie-glazov-on-the-unholy-alliances-blame-game/

In this special episode of The Glazov Gang, Ann-Marie Murrell interviews Frontpage Editor Jamie Glazov about The Unholy Alliance’s Blame Game, in which Jamie dissects Islam’s and the Left’s sociopathic tactic of inflicting wounds — and then making the victims apologize.

The dialogue occurred within the context of Jamie’s discussion about his recent battle on Hannity against Jihad-Deniers, in which he called out progressives’ willful blindness in the face of the Islamic threat:

Years ago, probably in the mid to late 1950s, Grand Union opened a grocery store on the outskirts of Peterborough, New Hampshire, thereby ringing the death knell for the two or three small, independent grocery stores in the village. It was my first experience with Joseph Schumpeter’s dictum of creative destruction. For a few months, my mother hung to her principles and refused to enter what she called, the “grand onion.” But eventually, lower prices and dwindling products on the shelves of the financially-strapped independents forced her to change.

What prompted this subject was an article in the business section of Monday’s New York Times, headlined, “Principles Are No Match for Europe’s Love of U.S. Titans.” The article discusses how tech behemoths, like Amazon, Google and Facebook create a love-hate relationship, with consumers. Many feel principled when independent stores are placed in jeopardy or by the perceived ill-treatment by “Big-box” companies of warehouse employees. But for Guillaume Rosquin of Lyon, in the Times article, a $200 savings on a Blackberry was enough to put his “issues with working conditions aside.” Seven of the ten most visited websites in Europe are operated by American companies. Google has an 85% market share for search in Europe, compared to 65% in the U.S. Facebook, the target of several investigations for its tax practices in Europe, continues to add users – now numbering 150 million Europeans, or roughly one in three.

Amazon is the most visited website in Europe and the world. In June, they had a total of 282.2 million visitors, 35% of which were Americans and 31.8% were Europeans. Twenty years ago, the company did not exist. Principle versus price/convenience is an issue with which we all struggle. But it is also “creative destruction” that is at work. I have a brother who owns what some people claim is the best independent bookstore in the United States, the Toadstool in Peterborough, NH. In full disclosure, I own one share, or four percent of the business. Yet, on a Sunday morning, reading the New York Times book review section, I often – shamelessly – log onto Amazon.

Creative and aspirant individuals have always led innovation. When they live within a democratic capitalistic society they thrive. It is no surprise that American companies dominate web-based businesses in Europe rather than European, because America’s culture has allowed and encouraged the creative forces to be unleashed that provide for a dynamic society. However, a natural consequence of unleashing the creative spirit is inequality in terms of outcomes. For those who are bright, creative and aspirant will do best. However consumers benefit as well. Two principal benefits of creative destruction are reduced prices and greater availability of goods and services.

In the film Obvious Child, Jenny Slate plays Donna Stern, a stand-up comedian who specializes in making jokes about her private parts, with the occasional foray into fart humor. She is about to go onstage. Her friend offers her some encouragement: “You are going to kill it out there!”

Donna replies: “I actually have an appointment to do that tomorrow.”

Donna’s talking about her abortion appointment.

Get it? It’s funny because it’s true. Or if you’re like me, you think it’s not funny because it’s true.

Many critics think it’s funny. One dubbed it “far and away the most winning abortion-themed comedy ever made.” Of course, as an artistic genre, that’s setting the bar pretty low, like serving the best gas-station sushi in the state of Oklahoma.

Since it opened last month, the film has grossed less than $2 million. Compare that to 2007’s Juno, a brilliant film widely seen as pro-life (at least among pro-lifers), or Knocked Up, a raunchier romantic comedy also hailed by abortion foes, both of which grossed more than $140 million domestically. Obvious Child, then, seems less like the cultural watershed its friends and foes make it out to be and more like a barely successful art-house flick.

That’s worth noting given that the film’s writer and director, Gillian Robespierre, was motivated in part because films such as Juno and Knocked Up “rubbed [her] the wrong way.”

Dinesh D’Souza had a similar motivation in making America: Imagine the World Without Her, a new documentary love letter to his adopted country. He’s often described as the Right’s Michael Moore, but he’s aiming higher, hoping to contend one day with Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone in the feature-film business. He tells National Review that “the Left knows the power of telling a story.” Stone and Spielberg are “much bigger than Michael Moore. They don’t make liberal films — they just make films, and they have a point of view. I want to make films with a different point of view.”

D’Souza’s absolutely right about Spielberg (though too kind to Stone). One of my biggest complaints about contemporary conservatism — in and out of politics — is that it has lost sight of the importance of storytelling.

My late friend Andrew Breitbart liked to say that politics is downstream of culture, meaning that any truly successful political turnaround needs to start by changing popular attitudes. Adam Bellow, a storied editor of conservative books, has a similar conviction and is trying to launch a conservative revolt in the world of fiction.

Mr. Obama may imagine his red lines are still credible, but our enemies know otherwise. They get what the dwindling number of the president’s courtiers—namely, Tom Friedman and some New Republic editorial assistants—don’t: There’s no spine in this president’s speech.

Ours is still an American world, but it is presided over by a president who doesn’t believe in American power. The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity—and a sense that the moment is theirs to seize. We know how that story ended.”

In 2008 Fareed Zakaria wrote an influential book titled “The Post-American World.” It was, mercifully, not another lament about American decline. Instead, the book described “the rise of the rest”—China, Brazil, Turkey and other supposedly emerging powers—and made the case that the U.S. had to learn how to accommodate itself to a world in which its primacy was no longer incontestable.

I admire the book, but the title was missing a word. It turns out that we are not in a post-American world of diminishing U.S. influence. We are in a post-Pax Americana world of collapsing U.S. will. Britain, it was once said, gained her empire “in a fit of absence of mind.” Now Barack Obama is relinquishing U.S. dominance with about the same degree of mindfulness, and Americans seem content to go along with it.

Remember Crimea? Remember Syria’s Bashar Assad, and how he had to “step aside”? Remember Afghanistan, which Mr. Obama once called “the war that has to be won”? Remember him talking about core al Qaeda being “on a path to defeat”? Remember him celebrating Iraq as “stable and self-reliant”?

Whatever. All this seems to blow past Mr. Obama’s field of vision like some infomercial in Bulgarian—it means little in its own language and even less in ours. “The world is less violent than it has ever been,” the president told Tumblr users last month, a day or so after Mosul fell into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. “Terrible things happen around the world every single day, but the trend lines of progress are unmistakable.”

Who needs a foreign policy when the arc of history is bending your way?