World Religion News recently interviewed Lauren Ell, the founder of REPUBLICAN ATHEISTS.

She makes many interesting points, among them these:

WRN: Is there a historical precedent for this [Republicans being atheists], or would you call this a relatively new thought process?

LE: I don’t think atheist Republicans are new. They are new in the sense of being more outspoken about their atheist views, but they have existed as far back as the Civil War era. My organization, Republican Atheists, is the first organization I know of at this point that is representing atheist Republicans.

WRN: So you’ve mentioned you had this treatment by certain podcasters and writers, could you go into that in more detail?

LE: I started Republican Atheists in February of 2017 as an experimental project. I haven’t been involved with atheist organizations at all in the United States, such as American Atheists, Freedom From Religion Foundation, or Secular Coalition for America. Originally I had assumed these organizations would take some interest in Republican Atheists. I didn’t expect them to embrace our political views, but I thought at least they would maybe mention the existence of Republican Atheists to their base, considering many of these atheist organizations claim they are representing the entire atheist community in the United States. But I found when I contacted groups I did not get much response from them. They did not respond to the idea of mentioning Republican Atheists to their base. I was in contact with the Secular Coalition for America who at first had interest in Republican Atheists and said they would publish a guest article by me. I was in touch with their media coordinator and we discussed a topic to write about, and I wrote an article for them. It ended up being scrapped because they didn’t like my wording in the article, so I wrote it according to what they recommended and did multiple edits over a period of months. Despite all that time and effort of meeting their requests, at the end of the day they did not publish the article and didn’t even mention Republican Atheists to their base. They actually have not been responsive to me ever since. Some organizations haven’t responded to us at all, so I keep chipping away to build our relevance in the atheist community.

WRN: I would be interested in knowing about podcasters because you mentioned that specifically.

LE: I had an experience with one atheist podcast called Cognitive Dissonance. I actually hadn’t listened to them much, but I sent them an email introducing myself and offered to be interviewed on their show. They agreed to do a 45-minute interview. I was pretty excited because they are one of the more known atheist podcasts. I would say they have around 17,000 followers on Facebook. I ended up doing the interview with them, but they hung up on me 15 minutes into the interview because I mentioned something they didn’t agree with. They called it “the dumbest interview they’ve ever done”. I have actually been met with much more interest in gaining understanding by Christian podcasters.

WRN: What was the particular issue they didn’t agree with?

LE: We were talking about prominent movements such as Women’s March and the Occupy Movement which was big back in 2011. We discussed who is behind the movements in terms of people who financed protests, and I mentioned the name George Soros. The hosts didn’t want to continue the conversation after that.

In the course of the interview Lauren was so kind as to make favorable mention of our editor-in-chief, and simple vanity brings that part of the interview to this post:

WRN: So they’ve associated specific views on issues that don’t relate to Christianity directly, but they still associate it with Christianity. You’re saying within the Republican Party base you can reach a similar conclusion but through a different process and different thinking?

LE: Yes, that is what I do when I communicate with Republicans and Christians. I don’t bring up my atheist views up front and instead focus on what we have in common. I actually never really feel the need to talk about my atheist views unless I am trying to make a point about the existence of atheist Republicans. When I talk to people, I try to find what we have in common in terms of political policies and social policies. We’ll talk about education, taxation, freedom of speech, and so forth. I find a commonality with them, and once we have that commonality, they see that even though I’m atheist we have a lot in common. That is the situation I like to be in.

RN: This reminds me of Christopher Hitchens who was both an outspoken atheist and had several politically conservative stances. Is there anyone who you look to as a person who’s advocating besides of course yourself?

LE: There is a woman who is very impressive, and I wish she was mentioned a lot more. Her name is Jillian Becker, and she manages a blog called The Atheist Conservative. One thing I point out about Jillian Becker is she does not promote the Republican Party. Her thing is just conservatism, and there’s a difference. I always have to point out there’s a difference between an atheist conservative and an atheist Republican. I know a lot of people get it intertwined and sometimes conservatives get a little irritated. But Jillian Becker and I get along pretty well because we see eye to eye on a lot of issues. If you look her up you will see she has an impressive resume. She’s on Wikipedia. She has spoken with the British Parliament in regards to terrorism in the past. She’s a published author, has been featured in interviews, and is very outspoken. She is older now, so I wish she was mentioned more often. I also note Heather Mac Donald who is a published author and a conservative atheist. She was recently shut down on college campuses in California, and she has been interviewed about it.

We too are admirers of Heather Mac Donald, and strongly recommend her books – all of them.

Read the whole interview with Lauren Ell here.

An Imam who wants to reform Islam speaks to Tommy Robinson:

He is self-contradictory on the main issue, saying both that Islam will “never” be reformed, and that preparation should be made now for it’s reformation some centuries hence.

But he says quite a lot that explains why Tommy Robinson and he can discuss Islam amicably with each other. This Shi’a Imam wants the sharia courts of Britain to be abolished. He wants the Saudis and other Arab leaders to stop pouring money into institutions for indoctrination, such as university colleges and professorial chairs. He wants the madrassas to be done away with. He opposes the failed policies of Saddiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, pointing out that London has lost respect among many Arab Muslims for electing the Pakistani. He puts heavy blame on the Left, calling Leftists “the real bigots”. He declares that to be against ISIS is a humanitarian position, not a political one.

Our British associate Chauncey Tinker, editor of The Participator, writes an interesting critique of the interview at Altnewsmedia. We quote it in part: :

About half way through the interview the imam reveals his views on the Koran and the Hadith (he doesn’t mention the Sira but I think we can assume his remarks about the Hadith can probably be taken to include the Sira as well). He says that in order to reform Islam, violent passages should be removed from the Hadith, but not the Koran – the Koran cannot be altered in the imam’s view. From what he says here I infer that he is what is called a Koranist (or Quranist), or at least he is something very similar – he speaks of throwing the Hadiths out of the window. A Koranist is a Muslim who rejects the Hadith and Sira and believes only what is written in the Koran.

Incidentally at one point Tommy and the imam discuss the question of Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha when she was only 6. The imam gives quite an astonishing explanation for this which I have never heard before, Tommy was equally surprised …

Tawhidi maintains that Aisha was actually 21 when Muhammad married her, but it was so important to Islam that Muhammad’s wife be a virgin that they reduced her to infancy to ensure that she could not be suspected of being unchaste. Islam holds virginity to be a much higher virtue, apparently, than refraining from pedophilia. What the Imam seems to have forgotten, is that Muhammad’s first wife (according to all the accepted records of his life such as they are) was a widow!

Unfortunately there is a fundamental problem with the Koranist viewpoint in general, which has been identified by Islamic scholars. According to verse 33:21 of the Koran, Mohammed’s life is a most beautiful example for Muslims to follow, but the Koran contains only a tiny number of fleeting mentions of Mohammed, there is simply not enough information in the Koran for Muslims to learn very much at all about Mohammed’s life. It is only by studying the Hadith and Sira that Muslims can learn much about Mohammed’s life, and thus learn properly about this “beautiful example” that they are supposed to follow. Perhaps it is not surprising then that the Koranist movement is relatively only a tiny movement, because their beliefs simply don’t make sense. As he states in the interview, there are probably only a few million Koranists worldwide. The exact numbers are hard to know as the Koranists are regarded as apostates by many mainstream Muslims and therefore tend not to be open about their beliefs. …

The imam speaks of the existence of many different interpretations of the Koran in the interview …

There are, he says, “hundreds of thousands of interpretations” …

… and asks why he should not be able to reform the religion by making his own interpretation. He suggests that the violent passages (for example verse 8:12 that speaks of striking terror into the hearts of the disbelievers) can be interpreted as only applying in the time and place of Mohammed’s battles. Of course if we only refer to the Koran there is somewhat less certainty about everything, because the Koran is much less explicit than the Hadiths. If we look again at verse 33:21 of the Koran though, this  context interpretation is hard to take seriously – Mohammed waged wars against the disbelievers to propagate his religion, so surely the Koran at the very least condones this kind of behavior. In fact, violent acts of war are one of the few things about Mohammed’s life that actually are mentioned in the Koran. What’s more, verse 33:21 that states that Mohammed’s life is a “beautiful example” comes right in the midst of other verses describing a very violent period, including the reference at verse 33:26 to what is either the Banu Qurayza massacre or a very similar event:

And He brought down those who supported them among the People of the Scripture from their fortresses and cast terror into their hearts [so that] a party you killed, and you took captive a party.

Finally on this question of context, there is nothing in the passages that explicitly states that the violence is only justified in the particular context. The references are for example to “the disbelievers” rather than to “the disbelievers in this particular settlement at this particular time”. For example Koran 8:55 says that:

The disbelievers are the vilest of animals … 

Even if we were to accept this context-driven interpretation of the Koran alone though … there is still a huge and inescapable problem with all attempts at a peaceful reformation of Islam. Let us imagine for a moment that at some point far into the future the majority of Muslims worldwide eventually accepted the imam’s interpretation of the Koran, and rejected the Hadith. As long as there are significant numbers of people in the world who believe that the Koran is the unquestionable word of Allah and that Mohammed was his last prophet, the door will be left ajar for any other interpretations of the Koran to return to prominence – including of course the violent interpretations. This is the reason I say that a peaceful reformation of Islam is not even a desirable goal,  the religion must be rejected altogether.

We strongly agree!

There is simply nothing worth reforming or preserving about this religion, it is a belief system that must be defeated so that freedom of speech can flourish and human thought can progress unhampered by threats of violence.  As the imam rightly points out, the texts cannot be physically destroyed, but there are many means available that should be used to persuade Muslims to reject their religion including reason and debate, economic pressure and social ostracism.

At one point the imam says to Tommy that we will never be able to stop the growth of Islam in the UK.  He cites the demographic trend, which is indeed suggestive of the continuing growth of the Islamic population if all else stays the same.  However, Tommy responds with some perfectly plausible suggestions about government policy changes that would in fact help to slow (and possibly even halt) the growth of Islam in the UK.

In particular he points out that if the British tax-payer were no longer to provide Muslim immigrant families (sometimes consisting of multiple wives and their children) with social security, free schooling, free health care, housing and legal defense, they would be less eager to come to Britain, or to stay in it.

… Beliefs can change, they are not a fixed aspect of a human being.

We are also in a new age of mass communication now, a point that the imam may not have properly considered. Never before has this religion (or any other) been subjected to such an enormous amount of scrutiny all around the world. The internet is enabling a revolution in human thought, and I truly believe we are only just seeing the beginnings of this revolution today. We simply don’t know the full impact that this degree of almost instantaneous around the world communication, exchange and clashing of ideas will have in the longer term.

While it is indeed refreshing to come across an imam who has the courage to so frankly discuss all these issues with an unrestrained critic of Islam such as Tommy Robinson (others could take note), I feel it necessary to point out all these problems with his belief system nonetheless. What we certainly don’t want to do is start moderating our criticisms of Islam for fear of upsetting this and other (probably well-meaning) reform attempts. Let us boldly speak the truth as we see it, and may the best argument win – if the imam’s interpretation cannot stand up to rational scrutiny then it is unlikely to catch on in any case.

… [M]y highest regard will continue to be reserved for those Muslims who, as it were, “go the whole hog” and throw not just the Hadith and Sira but also the Koran out of the window as well, and become EX Muslims.

A preference we echo.

Oh for a god-free world!

President Trump addresses the international press after his meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

He starts at 22.30 minutes.

We enjoy this triumphalist article by James Delingpole at Breitbart – and post it even though the certainty of triumph may be premature:

President Trump just became the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s worst nightmare.

As he didn’t neglect to remind us in his hilarious post North Korea summit press conference, President Trump just saved maybe 30 million people from nuclear annihilation. He did what his predecessors considered impossible and what the liberal media and all the “experts” continue to assure us can never be done: he brought peace to the region which up till now was considered the likeliest ground zero for World War III.

In other words, pretty much, President Trump just saved the world.

Beat that Barack Obama! Suck on this, all you liberal MSM and NeverTrumpers! Who’s the boss now, President Xi Ping of China? Remind me what your name was again, Prime Minister – Bieber, is it? – of Canada. How are you going to wriggle out of this one, all you buttoned up bien-pensants at the Nobel Prize academy?

These were just of the few things President Trump didn’t actually say at his hugely entertaining post-summit press conference in Singapore. But then he didn’t need to. Anyone watching could read the subtext for themselves.

“I’ll do whatever it take to make the world a better place,” said President Trump in the special, soften humble-brag voice he uses to wind up reporters from Time.

What he meant was: “You still think I’m not the greatest president you’re ever likely to see in your life time? Hold my beer…”

Looking bright and alert on virtually no sleep, Trump worked the event like an Olympic sprinter doing a victory lap of the track after smashing the world record. This was his moment – one to cherish with his friends and supporters; one to rub in the noses of his enemies – and he was in no mood to rush his time in the sun. To show us just how much he was enjoying it, he casual-ostentatiously asked his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders if she’d allow him an extension …

Goodness, it must have been annoying for his critics. If this had been Obama, the BBC and CNN would have been running replays 24/7 for months to come: this was a master at the very top of his game, winning new friends, confounding his enemies, reminding the world that he is by some margin its greatest, most charismatic leader.

This was a masterclass on how to be Leader of the Free World in the era of social media, reality TV and a global populist revolt against the staid, dishonest, sclerotic political class.

You bypass the media – treating them with a mix of jocular affection and amused contempt – and speak directly to the people in language they can understand.

There were so many choice moments that it sometimes felt more like a comedy set by an experienced stand up than the President of the USA. Trump has the same skill set: quick-witted, funny, thinks on his feet, even better on the ad libs than he is on the pre-prepared material.

I loved his line when asked about North Korea’s possible political and economic future. After explaining that it was really Kim Jong Un’s decision, not his, he couldn’t resist adding a helpful suggestion.

“They have great beaches. (You see that when they’re firing off their cannon). Think of that from a real estate perspective.”

See what he did there?

I’ll explain because I don’t want to sound like some David L Brooks character from the Obama era, hailing every presidential fart like it was the heavenly ambrosia which precedes the Second Coming.

No, Trump is not just impressive, but demonstrably brilliant at what he does.

So in those sentences I just quoted, he manages in the space of less than 30 seconds to move from economic policy outline to humorous mockery to self-aggrandising self-reference to his skills as a big swinging dick real estate player. Apart from being varied, interesting – keeping his listeners on their toes because they just never know what he’s going to say next – it also very clearly delineates US foreign policy objectives for North Korea. “Sure, you could go back to being a comedy, no-hope war-zone hell hole waiting to explode, like you were before,” Trump is telling Kim Jong-Un. “But don’t you think it would make so much sense, for all of us, if you became the hot new tourist resort for the enormous South Korean and Chinese markets instead?”

People who don’t get this – which of course still means the entirety of the liberal MSM and the Davos-going global elite  – don’t get it because they don’t want to get it.

They’ll continue to pontificate that President Trump is a vulgar, stupid, undignified, egotistical, hamfisted, troublemaking, divisive, dangerous braggart because that’s the only way they’re ever going to be able to deal with fact that he is so obviously #winning. Sure he might get the odd thing right, probably by accident – or, in the case of North Korea, because of all the amazing groundwork done by the genius Obama and by the arch deal-maker Dennis Rodman – but it’s all OK because in their heads they just know that Trump is the bad guy while they are all vastly his superior.

Meanwhile, every day, Trump is going to keep on reminding us that he is the greatest US president since Reagan, maybe even of our lifetimes. His second term is assured. As is his place in the pantheon.

Nice job, the Donald!

… of the G7 summit and his meeting with the dictator of North Korea:

https://youtu.be/bcXgLqFZ47c

… and how they are getting away with their crimes, helped by traitorous House Democrats led by the unconscionable Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and ignored by the Department of Justice.

On April 3, 2018, we posted the story: House Democrats put complete trust in a gang of Pakistani crooks.

We ended with this  –

To sum up: These Pakistani crooks were engaged by Democratic members of Congress, without any enquiry into their background, to “look after” their computers which contained highly confidential information concerned with the protection of Americans. The Democrats never apparently considered the possibility that their data was being stolen and sent to Pakistani authorities. When their hardware was stolen by the crooks – and they knew it was the Awan gang who had stolen it – they did not go to the police. When the FBI did finally arrest Imran Awan on charges of fraud in a car-dealership – and denied that the gang “had any connection with a foreign government” – Imran Awan continued to be on the payroll of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The Democrats were putty in the hands of the foreign criminal gang. Helpless as babies. They feared to offend them by reporting them to the police or firing them.

Yet these people, for whom large numbers of Americans voted to represent them in the federal government, want, yearn, ache to rule the country. To conduct US relations with foreign powers. To be in charge of the world’s mightiest military force …

Now (June 7, 2018) Creeping Sharia deplores the inaction of the DOJ:

What the Democrats did here was treason. …

The DOJ under Jeff Sessions is covering up a scandal. … It is in[Attorney General] Jeff Sessions’s power to … charge the Pakistanis with hacking Congress and exposing Democrats’ hypocrisy and negligence. He has a list of witnesses and his FBI is refusing to interview them… They have all the goods. It’s in the server logs. This case is open-and-shut. And Jeff Sessions is refusing to bring the charges.

The question is, why?

Whatever his reasons, Jeff Sessions is failing President Trump and the nation.

The Dutch hero of freedom Geert Wilders went to London in support of the English hero of freedom Tommy Robinson who has been imprisoned on lame excuses (“breaching the peace”, “contempt of court”) but in truth for opposing the Islamization of Britain and Europe.

Breitbart reports what Geert Wilders said to a huge crowd assembled to hear him.

Massive crowds turned out in London on Saturday [June 9, 2018] to rally for free speech and hear Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders demand the release of Tommy Robinson from prison.

“It’s so good to see so many of you here today, you are all heroes for being here today,” said the Freedom Party leader, an outspoken critic of radical Islam who rose to second place in the Dutch national elections last year.

Wilders told the crowd he had come to Britain to tell Robinson’s supporters they “will never walk alone” and to “tell the world, and the UK government in particular: Free Tommy Robinson!”

“At this very moment, thousands of people all over the world are demonstrating in front of British embassies, from LA to Sydney, and over half a million people have already signed the petition for Tommy,” he told the crowd.

“And all with the one important message: Free Tommy!

“So, Downing Street is just around the corner, so maybe once again, as loud as possible as we can, let them hear our message: Free Tommy Robinson!” he cried, prompting extended chants of “Oh, Tommy Tommy, Tommy Tommy Tommy Tommy Robinson!” and “We want Tommy out!”

“Listen to us Theresa May, listen to us Sajid Javid, listen to us Sadiq Khan,” he continued, each name provoking passionate boos.

“Listen to us, all you in power: we want the release of Tommy Robinson!

“Tommy Robinson is the greatest freedom fighter of Britain today. Tommy Robinson is a freedom fighter. He says what no-one dares to say. He has guts. He has courage.

“And that is more than we can say for all those people that govern us. Because our governors sold us out with mass immigration, with Islamisation, with open borders. We are almost foreigners in our own land,” he declared.

“And if we complain about it, they call us racists or ‘Islamophobes’ — but I say, no more. And what do you say?” Wilders asked the assembled crowds.

“No more!” they shouted back.

“That’s right. Enough is enough. We will not be gagged anymore. No more tyranny.

“My friends, 75 years ago, your fathers and grandfathers liberated my country from tyranny,” he continued.

“My country, the Netherlands, is a free country today, because the British brave boys and men, people like you, liberated us.

“And do you know how we used to call these British soldiers? We called them Tommies!” he exclaimed.

“But today your government has put a Tommy in jail. Freedom is behind bars. Tommy is behind bars.

“And that is totally unacceptable, and that is why we say: Set him free!” Wilders shouted.

“Tommy is in jail while the British state looked the other way for years, when thousands — thousands — of English children and girls were brutally raped by those grooming gangs.

“They were your daughters. The daughters of the brave Tommies. The daughters of the hard-working, decent people of Britain, who made this beautiful country so great.

“But for years, and years, the police, the politicians, the prosecutors did nothing, and looked the other way.

“They refused to listen to the victims. They arrested fathers who tried to liberate their daughters. They left children in the hands of those gangs.

“But Tommy, my friends, Tommy acted. Tommy didn’t look in the other direction. He refused to ignore the problem. He gave voice to millions of Britons who were abandoned by the authorities.

“And when Tommy protested, the same authorities could not be fast enough to jail him and to gag the media.

“And I tell you: that is not democracy. That is not freedom. That is what they do in Saudi Arabia.

“So I ask you: Do you want to be Britain, or Saudi Arabia?

“My friends, it was not Tommy who was breaching the peace, it was your government who was breaching the peace!” he declared.

“And we cannot, and we will not, accept it any longer. We want freedom, and it is our duty to speak out against rape, against grooming gangs, against Sharia law, against barbarism — and we demand the release of Tommy Robinson.

“So here we stand in full solidarity with Tommy, because, like him, we are sick and tired of being silenced.

“And I tell you, today we have a message for all the governments of the world, and our message is: We will not be silenced! We will not be intimidated! And we tell the government, we are not afraid of you!

“We will never surrender! We will stand strong and do our duty, we will defend our civilization, and we will protect our people.

“And I tell you, to the governments, you can throw us in jail, but you will never defeat us.

“Because, my friends, for every Tommy whom you imprison, thousands will rise up.

“So take notice Theresa May, take notice Dutch prime minister Rutte, take notice, Mrs Merkel and President Macron.

“Take notice: The future is ours, and not yours. We will defeat you politically — because we, my friends, we are the people.

“And every day, more people are joining our cause. The cause of freedom. Every day our members grow, and our demands are right and just.

“This is what we want. First, and most important: Free Tommy Robinson!

“But we also want you to give our countries back to us. Stop selling us out. Stop the mass immigration. Protect your own people. Stop gagging us. Restore the freedom of speech.

“My friends: long live Great Britain,” he concluded.

“Allow me, long live the Netherlands.

“Long live freedom.

“But most of all, long live Tommy Robinson!”

” The truth is to be discovered by contention.”

“Libertarianism is an excellent and irreplaceable critique of conservatism, but is too poor and limited to be a governing philosophy.”

“You decide your own ends – but in an ordered universe underpinned by liberty.”

Charles Krauthammer talks about his university education and the formation of his political philosophy, stressing the important influence on him of  John Stuart Mill, in conversation with Charles R. Kesler:

This is very sad news.

Fox News reports:

Charles Krauthammer, the beloved and brilliant Fox News Channel personality who gave up a pioneering career in psychiatry to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning political analyst, on Friday revealed the heartbreaking news that he is in the final stages of a losing battle with cancer.

The 68-year-old’s incisive takes on politics of the day have been missing from Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” for nearly a year as he battled an abdominal tumor and subsequent complications, but colleagues and viewers alike had held out hope that he would return to the evening show he helped establish as must-viewing. But in an eloquent, yet unblinking letter to co-workers, friends and Fox News Channel viewers, Krauthammer disclosed that he has just weeks to live.

“I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months,” the letter began. “I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me.”

Krauthammer, who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1975 despite a first-year diving accident that left him a quadriplegic, explained that he had a malignant tumor removed from his abdomen last August. Although a series of setbacks left him in  the hospital in the ensuing months, he believed until recently that he was on the road to recovery.

“However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned,” Krauthammer wrote. “There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”

Fox News viewers will undoubtedly miss Krauthammer’s formidable intellect and ability to analyze politics and politicians with a cerebral wit and keen charm. As the dean of “The Fox News All Stars,” the panel of pundits who break down headlines and events nightly on Fox News Channel’s top-rated “Special Report,” Krauthammer could be counted on to make viewers think, question and even chuckle. Krauthammer was on his way to greatness in the medical field when he veered first into policy, and then into journalism. After medical school, he became chief psychiatry resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied depression and published ground-breaking findings in top medical journals. But in 1978, he took a job in the Carter administration directing planning in psychiatric research and later served as a speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale.

It was in the nation’s capital that Krauthammer trained his mind and talents on political analysis and began penning columns for The New Republic, Time magazine and finally the Washington Post. In 1985, he won journalism’s top prize for his weekly political commentary. In his sobering farewell, Krauthammer said he is “grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny”.

“I leave this life with no regrets,” Krauthammer wrote. “It was a wonderful life – full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

Always a realist, always courageous, he is apparently accepting the approach of his death calmly. As he accepted his paralysis the moment it was caused in his youth.

We have much admired him for many decades. His eloquence, erudition, profundity, wisdom, and his wry, benevolent – often self-deprecating – sense of humor, displayed in his columns and on TV, have been for us among the joys and enrichments of life.

He is a great man.

Obama deceived and betrayed the nation he was elected to lead.

The Weekly Standard reports:

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), led by Senator Rob Portman, [has] released a majority report reviewing the Obama administration’s communications and financial maneuverings with Iranian officials at the time of the Iran nuclear deal. The report, Review of U.S. Treasury Department’s License to Convert Iranian Assets Using the U.S. Financial System, reveals in fuller detail the duplicitous ways in which Obama administration sold the agreement.

As part of the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), according to the testimony of several Obama-era officials including its Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Iran was to be denied access to the U.S. dollar and the U.S. banking system. The administration’s message was clear, both before and after the deal’s signing: Iran would not be given access to the U.S. financial system. Yet the administration circumvented its own stated policy.

On February 24, 2016, the report reveals, the Treasury Department issued a license permitting Iran to convert $5.7 billion it held in Oman from Omani rials to U.S. dollars and then into euros. This would have directly violated the sanctions law then in place as well as the terms of the JCPOA. The only reason the transaction never took place is that American banks, despite pressure from the Obama administration, refused to go along, citing “compliance, reputational, and legal risks.” To put it plainly: Obama officials asked U.S. banks to break the law, and the banks said no.

Not only that. When Obama-era officials were questioned by lawmakers about whether Iran would have access to the U.S. banking system, those administration officials failed to disclose that, in fact, they had already actively facilitated Iran’s access.

The PSI report also sheds light on the “roadshows” in which Treasury officials advised foreign companies and foreign subsidiaries of American companies on how to do business with Iran without incurring penalties. U.S. government officials had conducted “roadshows” to advise foreign companies and foreign subsidiaries of American companies on how to avoid penalties in doing business with Iran. In these seminars, the report explains, Treasury officials “downplayed any potential future penalties or fines, stating that 95% of the time, [Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control] sends a warning letter or takes no action.”

Don’t worry about doing business with Iran, in other words. Nobody’s going to punish you.

… When Obama administration officials couldn’t persuade Congress and the public of their outlook, they simply lied about it. … The previous administration, it seems, perpetrated deliberate untruths with calamitous consequences for U.S. policy in the Middle East. We look forward to seeing that administration’s officials held accountable.

But will that ever happen?

We wrote in our post The highest treason (October 12, 2016):

Is there any precedent in history for this?

Has any other head of state ever done what President Obama is doing to help empower an enemy?

Far from preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, as he and Hillary Clinton glibly claim to the nation, Obama goes to extreme lengths to make sure that Iran WILL BE ARMED WITH NUCLEAR WARHEADS AND THE MISSILES TO DELIVER THEM. 

What motive can Obama possibly have?

The only way to to guess the answer to is to look at what Iran is likely to do when it has its nukes.

Will Iran use them against America? The threat has been made.

Is Iran likely to use them against Israel? Iranian leaders have said repeatedly that they want to destroy Israel. (See here and here.)

So the harming of America and the destruction of Israel are Obama’s objectives?!

Is there any other possible explanation?

Now Robert Spencer writes at Front Page:

In a sane political environment, Barack Obama would be tried for treason.

Barack Hussein Obama has planted seeds that will be bearing bitter fruit for years, and probably decades, to come.

He is, without any doubt, the worst President in American history.

Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan? Yes, the doughface Presidents made the Civil War inevitable, but worse came later.

Grant? Blind to corruption and out of his depth, but there have been worse than he as well.

Wilson? That black-hearted Presbyterian bigot arguably gave the world Hitler and World War II, so he is definitely in the Final Four.

Harding? Nah: his tax cuts and return to “normalcy” got the American economy, and the Twenties, roaring.

Yes! Precisely for that, Harding was one of the best presidents.

FDR and LBJ gave us the modern welfare state and dependent classes automatically voting Democrat; the full bill on the damage they did hasn’t yet been presented.

Nixon? A crook and an economic Leftist, who betrayed Taiwan for the People’s Republic; his record certainly isn’t good.

Carter? Nothing good can be said about his four years of sanctimony and incompetence.

But there is one thing Barack Obama has on all competitors: treason.

He showered hundreds of billions of dollars on the Islamic Republic of Iran. There are those who say, “It was their money. It belonged to the Iranian government but was frozen and not paid since 1979.” Indeed, and there was a reason for that: not even Jimmy Carter, who made the Islamic Republic of Iran possible, thought that money, which had been paid by the Shah’s government in a canceled arms deal, belonged to the mullahs who overthrew the Shah. Likewise Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush all thought that the Islamic Republic was not due money that was owed to the Shah.

Only Barack Obama did.

The definition of treason is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran order their people to chant “Death to America” in mosques every Friday, and repeatedly vow that they will ultimately destroy the United States of America and the state of Israel. How was giving them billions and helping them skirt sanctions applied by the U.S. government not treason?

Other Presidents have been incompetent, corrupt, dishonest, but which has committed treason on a scale to rival the treason of Barack Obama?

The Iranians also operate a global network of jihad terror organizations, one of which, Hizballah, is quite active in Mexico now, with the obvious ultimate intention of crossing the border and committing jihad massacres of Americans. Obama has given a tremendous boost to these initiatives, as well as to Iran’s nuclear program, with his nuclear deal that has given the Iranians hundreds of billions of dollars and essentially a green light to manufacture nuclear weapons, in exchange for absolutely nothing.

There is no telling when the worst consequences of Obama’s aid and comfort to the Islamic Republic of Iran will be felt. But they likely will be felt in one way or another. Even as President Trump moves swiftly to restore sanctions and put Iran on notice that its nuclear activity and global adventurism will not be tolerated, those billions cannot be recovered, and the Iranians have already spent a great deal for their jihad cause.

However this catastrophe plays out, there is one man who will suffer no consequences whatsoever: Barack Obama. That’s Leftist Privilege. It’s good to be a powerful Leftist in Washington nowadays. Laws? Pah! Laws are for conservatives.

Sadly, we think he is right. Obama is unlikely to be punished for his crimes – which include treason.

Will he at least stand condemned in the court of public opinion?

They’ve been the jewel in the crown of New York City’s public school system: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech (here’s a longer list). They provided a chance for any of New York’s students, regardless of finances or race or creed or religion, to pass the qualifying test and get a fabulous education among their peers. 

So Neo-Neocon reports and comments.

But that opportunity has met the diversity police in the form of Mayor De Blasio, who has proposed an end to all that …

Mayor de Blasio of New York has a plan to “do away with the single entrance test, instead offering admission to the top 7 percent of graduates from all middle schools. That would make up 90 to 95 percent of admissions, with the remainder coming from a lottery”.

If this plan is implemented, either the failure rate will go up or the curriculum will be dumbed down, or both.

Michael Goodwin writes at the New York Post:

Under Mayor de Blasio, New Yorkers watch as their City Hall becomes a font of bad ideas. Day in, day out, the dumb and the dumber tumble forth with a common flaw: little bang for big bucks.

But de Blasio tops himself with his plan to impose a virtual racial quota on the city’s top high schools. In a single move, he surrenders the effort to improve hundreds of failing schools while simultaneously aiming to undermine the truly excellent ones.

Without doubt, this is his Worst Idea Ever. …

The plan would throw objective, proven test standards out the window, and thus qualifies as educational malpractice. The mayor inadvertently admits as much by saying his new chancellor, Richard Carranza, “is focused on social justice”.

The mission of the Social Justice movement is to ensure that the stupid, the mad, and the criminal (of all races, nationalities, ethnicities, ages, and “genders”, except “cis-heteronormative” white males, and Asian scholars because they are not stupid, mad, or criminal anyway) inherit the earth. (No matter that the criminals will then despatch the stupid and the insane.)

Not so long ago, chancellors were hired to run schools and promote educational excellence for all students. Now they’re hired to engineer outcomes based on race, ethnicity and family income.

The lower the family income the more virtuous and worthy the appointee.

This is justice only if you believe identity trumps all other human attributes, including effort, character and achievement. Sadly, de Blasio and Carranza worship that false god.

It follows that they aim to make the student body at the top high schools more closely reflect the citywide student population, which is 70 percent black and Latino. As it stands, black and Latino students make up about 10 percent of the 15,000 enrolled at the most selective public schools.

That is a serious and longstanding concern, but a fundamental problem with the argument that the schools are not diverse is that Asian students are the single-largest group at most of the schools. They constitute 73.5 percent at Stuyvesant, 65.6 percent at Bronx Science and 61.3 percent at Brooklyn Tech. Overall, Asians of all backgrounds comprise less than 20 percent of students.

Their extraordinary presence in the top schools belies de Blasio’s claim that the schools are exclusionary because many Asian students belong to poor immigrant families where English is not spoken in the home.

If the mayor wanted an honest answer to the imbalance, he would order educrats to study why so many Asian students excel and try to duplicate their work habits among all students. Instead, Asian success is now being treated as a problem that must be overcome, just as several generations ago, high-achieving Jewish students were restricted by quotas at Harvard and other Ivy League institutions.

De Blasio’s plan would be phased in over three years and do away with the single entrance test, instead offering admission to the top 7 percent of graduates from all middle schools. That would make up 90 to 95 percent of admissions, with the remainder coming from a lottery.

The change would be a case of fixing what isn’t broken. For generations, the vast bulk of the students admitted under the current system succeeded, making those high schools prime feeders for the best colleges in America.

But those facts are ignored by de Blasio because they reveal the real problem — too many elementary and middle schools in black and Latino neighborhoods are perennial failure factories. He talks a good game about fixing them and is throwing a ton of taxpayer money at them, but has little to show for it.

He, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg before him, is making it easier to take the selective school test and offer free prep courses. None of it has made much of a difference in part because de Blasio has turned the schools over to the teachers union and has given up trying to get rid of the teachers who can’t teach.

The mayor is also a big fan of dumbed-down tests and graduation requirements, always with an eye toward engineering a phony racial and ethnic balance in results.

But if those results were real, he wouldn’t need a quota to gain more balance in the top schools.

He even made it next to impossible to suspend unruly and violent students because of a racial tilt, with principals complaining that many classrooms are now chaotic.

The only silver lining is that eliminating the test for some of the schools requires state legislation, and there is little chance of that happening now. Gov. Cuomo, thankfully, doesn’t appear interested, so opponents, including Asian parents’ groups, have an opportunity to organize and stop the quota travesty in its tracks.

They shouldn’t assume common sense will prevail. Not in Albany, and certainly not with de Blasio at City Hall.

(Hat-tip Robert Kantor)