FIGHT OVER WAR AUTHORIZATION INTENSIFIES: The White House rips “idle chatter” from Congress on war powers.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest chastised lawmakers for failing to act on President Obama’s use of force request, even as ISIS militants make gains in Iraq and Syria.

“Their job requires basically only fulfilling the bare minimum,” Earnest told reporters. “When it comes to our national security, something they say is so important to our country, it’s time for them to not just pay lip service but to actually follow through with some action.”

Lip service on national security?  Pot, meet kettle.  I don’t recall any other situation in which Congress wanted the President to be more aggressive in his use of military force to protect American interests, except for the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, who imposed, through the Reconstruction Acts, military control over former Confederate States, overriding President Andrew Johnson’s veto.

DEMILITARIZATION OF POLICE: MAKE IT PERMANENT:  So argues this commentary in Roll Call:

It just got more difficult for police to arm themselves like soldiers. Recently, President Barack Obama announced a plan to de-militarize law enforcement with an executive order curtailing the federal programs that provide weapons of war to local police. This was a surprisingly bold announcement, given that national consensus post-Ferguson seems to be that the solution to an increasingly militarized police force is more training, or body-worn cameras. The Obama administration ignored that consensus by issuing this executive order. And it was exactly the right thing to do. . . .

To be clear, the administration’s bold action does not let Congress off the hook. To the contrary, it is now more important than ever that Congress pass legislation to codify these changes or even take them further. The next administration could just as easily reverse this policy as this one put it into place. That would be unacceptable, because we have learned far too much in the last year to move backward. Without real efforts to de-militarize police, there will almost certainly be more Fergusons.

The “more Fergusons” comment aside (the riots had no connection to the militarization of police), I agree with this, as I see no legitimate reason for police to have military weaponry, other than perhaps limited riot gear in larger cities. The section 1033 program should be scaled back by Congress. But the militarization of police and excessive use of miiltary-grade force has gone much farther than this, just ask Giggles the Deer, may she rest in peace, or more disturbingly, 75-year-old Roger Hoeppner of Stettin, Wisconsin, or the parents of toddler Bounkham Phonesavanh.

THE OBAMA BETRAYAL OF IRAQIS: Mario Loyola has a terrific oped in today’s WSJ explaining the human cost of Obama’s “hands off” policy toward Iraq:

In September 2007, I was in Ramadi for a gathering of Iraqi and American military commanders, politicians and local tribal leaders who had joined forces with the U.S. to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq. Then-Sen. Joseph Biden was there. “These are difficult days,” he told our Iraqi allies. “But as you are proving, you can forge a future for Iraq that is much brighter than its past. If you continue, we will continue to send you our sons and our daughters, to shed their blood with you and for you.”

It was a noble promise, and Iraqis believed it. . . .

In Ramadi I met an Iraqi police lieutenant who was earnestly pro-American, and who kept talking about the need for “honest leadership” in the local police stations. The police lieutenant (I’ll call him Ismail, for his protection) was hopeful, if also wary. He mistrusted some of his fellow police and was afraid that al Qaeda might return if U.S. forces left too soon.. . .

Then came President Obama, and the end of the fragile reconciliation process in Iraq. At the end of 2011, he withdrew all U.S. forces, ignoring the advice of commanders on the ground and the private pleas of senior Iraqi leaders. . . .

President Obama’s 2011 abandonment of Iraq was a betrayal of America’s promises to millions of Iraqi men, women and children. The ISIS victories, and the horrors that follow them, are a direct result of that betrayal. As Ismail said to me: “They shouldn’t leave us like that.” 

Obama’s abrupt abandonment has just bred resentment among Iraqis who were pro-American. We’ve turned our few friends in the region into enemies, and left them to the brutality of ISIS.

CAN’T BLAME ‘EM:  Poland and Lithuania tell Congress they want the U.S. to host military bases there, to ward off an ever-aggressive Vladimir Putin.

TX LEGISLATURE APPROVES OPEN CARRY:  The bill was passed by overwhelming Republican majorities in the state house and senate.  The bill, sponsored by Rep. Larry Phillips (R-Sherman) will allow licensed owners to carry openly in a hip or shoulder holster.  It now heads to Governor Greg Abbott.

SALON: BERNIE SANDERS’ RAPE APOLOGIA JUST A CRITIQUE OF “HETERONORMATIVITY”:  Of course it is.  Katie McDonough at Salon offers this weak defense of Sanders’ odd 1972 fictional piece called “Man and Woman,” in which Sanders says,  “A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.”

These ex post “you just don’t get it” excuses for liberal/progressive actions are so tiring–reminds me of that Goldsmiths, University of London “diversity officer,” Mustafa Bahar, whose racist, sexist anti-white male comments were excused by a Slate writer as “ironic misandry.”

QUID PRO NOTHING:  The Obama Administration today officially removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

State Department officials said they conducted a thorough review to back their recommendation to remove Cuba from the list and received assurances from the Cuban government they wouldn’t support terrorist activity in the future. Officials cited Cuban President Raúl Castro’s condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris earlier this year as an example of the government’s stance against terror operations.

Cuba also harbors fugitives wanted in the U.S., including Joanne Chesimard, who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. Cuba granted her asylum after she escaped from prison in 1979. State Department officials said last month that Cuba had agreed to talk about fugitives as part of a broader dialogue on law enforcement issues.

So Castro condemns the Charlie Hebdo attacks and that’s evidence they aren’t sponsors of terrorism anymore? But of course, Cuba has promised the Obama Administration it won’t support terrorism.  I feel better now.  House Speaker John Boehner was right when he said today, “The Obama administration has handed the Castro regime a significant political win in return for nothing,” 

#AGEISM BY CNBC AGAINST RUBIO: The CNBC Squawk Box crew enjoyed a round of “he’s too young” criticism of GOP contender Marco Rubio today, with one reporter, John Harwood, saying Rubio “looked like a schoolboy.”  Another panelist, co-host Joe Kernen, sarcastically suggested that “Hillary needs to sue…Rubio for age discrimination” since “[h]e keeps bringing up this 23-year difference in age.”  Rubio is 44 years old; Hillary Clinton is 67.

Yeah, well, the “youthfulness” of Obama–inaugurated at age 47–never seemed to be a problem for CNBC or anyone else in the liberal/progressive mainstream media. And the mainstream media had fun suggesting that Mitt Romney (in his mid-60s) was “too old” to be President.  But of course one shouldn’t expect any principled consistency from the likes of CNBC or the mainstream media.

SECULARISTS VS. SUICIDE BOMBERS: Patrick Buchanan has an interesting piece in CSN News today, offering a commonsense explanation why, as Secretary of Defense Ash Carter recently lamented, the Iraqi forces have “no will to fight” ISIS.  Buchanan observes:

Tribe and faith. Those are the causes for which Middle Eastern men will fight. Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists will die for the faith. Persians and Arabs will fight to defend their lands, as will Kurds and Turks.

But who among the tribes of the Middle East will fight and die for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom and marriage equality?

“Expel the Crusaders from our lands!” — there is a cause to die for.

Yep.  If ISIS is going to be defeated, it isn’t going to be by home-grown Iraqi forces.

AT THE CORNER OF EMINENT DOMAIN ABUSE & FREE SPEECH:  The Supreme Court will decide soon whether to grant review in Central Radio Co. v. City of Norfolk, a case in which a small business owner in Norfolk, Virginia displayed a large banner to protest the city’s eminent domain attempt to seize the business’s property.  The banner read: “50 YEARS ON THIS STREET / 78 YEARS IN NORFOLK / 100 WORKERS / THREATENED BY / EMINENT DOMAIN.” The banner also depicted an American flag, Central Radio’s logo, and a red circle with a slash across “Eminent Domain Abuse.”

A local zoning ordinance limited the size of signs, except governmental or religious “flags or emblems” or noncommercial “works of art.  The city issued citations to Central Radio for displaying an over-sized sign and for failing to obtain a sign certificate prior to installation.  Lower federal courts have upheld the actions against Central Radio as content-neutral restrictions on speech.

The Institute for Justice, representing the business owners against the city, raises First Amendment claims it hopes the Supreme Court will take up:

We argued that the sign code violated the Constitution because it exempted other types of messages of the same magnitude, such as certain flags, emblems or works of art. In addition, we asserted that requiring someone to receive municipal approval before displaying a sign amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech.

As the banner issue worked its way through the judiciary, Wilson received welcome news in September 2013, when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority did not have the right to seize the properties it was targeting. The decision effectively killed the city’s efforts to take out Central Radio. . . .

[T]he notion that the city’s move to banish the sign had nothing to do with its content doesn’t pass the smell test.

As Post blogger Radley Balko noted in April, “Imagine if another building a few miles down the road put up a banner celebrating the city’s wise and prudent development policies. Does anyone honestly think the owner of that property would need to go to court to keep his banner?”

Balko’s question answers itself.  These sign ordinances are out of control around the country, not just Norfolk.  I once litigated a case in Michigan against a township that wouldn’t let a bakery owner fly an American flag in front of his business because of an ordinance that banned all flags, putatively because they “distracted” drivers.  Presumably the ordinance at issue in Central Radio is grounded in a similar unsupported assertion that large signs are “distracting.”  But once government starts allowing some signs and forbidding others, that rationale becomes patently arbitrary and irrational, and inherently suggests favortism for the content of some speech over others.

BRIBERY EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON HILLARY & CLINTON FOUNDATION:  Two legal experts have told Breitbart that they believe the activities of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, undertaken while Clinton was Secretary of State, violate the federal statute prohibiting bribery of public officials, 18 USC 201.

When asked if the donations to the Clinton Foundation by defense contractors including Boeing (which subsequently received State Department approval of sales of their products to foreign governments) constituted a violation of domestic bribery statues, Law School Professor and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) expert Michael Koehler tells Breitbart News, “I’ll answer that question by quoting a former law professor who was fond of saying ‘if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck chances are it is a duck’”

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andy McCarthy thinks there’s enough evidence for the FBI and DOJ to launch an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton broke federal statutes that prohibit the bribery of public officials.

“There is certainly a reasonable basis for federal agents and prosecutors to investigate whether there was an understanding that Secretary Clinton would be influenced in the performance of her official duties by lavish donations to her family foundation, and, indeed, that the Clinton Foundation was operated as a racketeering enterprise,” McCarthy tells Breitbart News.

“This is the theory on which the Justice Department has proceeded in the prosecution of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — in fact, the main difference between the two cases may be that the staggering sums of money that were poured into the Clinton Foundation by supplicants who benefited from Hillary Clinton’s stewardship of the State Department dwarf the amounts involved in the Menendez indictment,” McCarthy continues.

The statute is broad and, like all criminal statutes, requires proof of a quid pro quo, but this could be (and indeed, generally must be, absent direct video or audio evidence from the horse’s mouth, so to speak) proven by circumstantial evidence. The U.S. Attorney in either D.C. or New York (where the Clinton Foundation is located) would need to initiate an investigation. But I won’t hold my breath that these Obama nominees will do so.

EHRs: ANOTHER OBAMACARE FAILURE: Another provision of Obamacare is proving to be utter nonsense, beyond the Democrat’s lies about keeping your doctor and your health plan if you like them.  This shouldn’t be all that surprising, given that the entire 1,200+ page law was rushed into law without any serious thought as to its consequences. Charles Krauthammer on “Why Doctors Quit“:

I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors’ group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”

You may have zero sympathy for doctors, but think about the extraordinary loss to society — and maybe to you, one day — of driving away 40 years of irreplaceable clinical experience.

And for what? The newly elected Barack Obama told the nation in 2009 that “it just won’t save billions of dollars” — $77 billion a year, promised the administration — “and thousands of jobs, it will save lives.” He then threw a cool $27 billion at going paperless by 2015.

It’s 2015 and what have we achieved? The $27 billion is gone, of course. The $77 billion in savings became a joke. Indeed, reported the Health and Human Services inspector general in 2014, “EHR technology can make it easier to commit fraud,” as in Medicare fraud, the copy-and-paste function allowing the instant filling of vast data fields, facilitating billing inflation.

That’s just the beginning of the losses. Consider the myriad small practices that, facing ruinous transition costs in equipment, software, training and time, have closed shop, gone bankrupt or been swallowed by some larger entity.

This hardly stays the long arm of the health-care police, however. As of Jan. 1, 2015, if you haven’t gone electronic, your Medicare payments will be cut, by 1 percent this year, rising to 3 percent (potentially 5 percent) in subsequent years.

Sounds good: Let’s force doctors to spend a lot of money to become technology dependent and adopt electronic health records when the old way of doing things was working just fine.  And hey–as a bonus, our health information is now more vulnerable to hacking and we can lose some privacy along the way! Electronic health records haven’t saved a single life or a single dollar, but they have created a lot of expense, confusion, and tremendous demoralization for our health care providers.  It wasn’t broken, and it shouldn’t have been “fixed.”  If the Republican Congress was smart, it would repeal this onerous, useless provision of Obamacare.

BECAUSE THEY LIKE HIM!:  FIFA members reelect president Sepp Blatter amid league corruption charges.

Afghanistan kicked off the voting as delegates handed over secret paper ballots in alphabetical order at the meeting Friday. The winner needed a two-thirds majority but Blatter was one vote shy of that, receiving only 133 votes, to Prince Ali’s 73 of the 206 valid votes.

In a second round of voting, Blatter won another four-year term by receiving a simple majority of the votes. Forcing the ballot to a second round represented a victory of sorts for Blatter’s critics, denying the incumbent president an emphatic mandate in his next term.

Yeah, I’m sure that was a fair election.

NJ JETTISONS COMMON CORE: Potential GOP presidential contender New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced yesterday that NJ will pull out of Common Core.

GOOD QUESTION & THE ANSWER IS “NO ONE”: Byron York asks, If Hillary becomes president, who will make her obey the law?

Last year, before Hillary Clinton’s secret email system became publicly known, Congress passed a law to keep presidents from trying the same trick. If Clinton wins the White House, the law could well be put to the test.

The statute is the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. It recognizes that government officials sometimes (or in Clinton’s case, all the time) want to use private email accounts — in the words of the law, “non-official electronic messaging accounts” — to conduct government business. Such communications are still federal records, Congress declared, and must be preserved in accordance with existing laws requiring not just the president but all federal officials to preserve their documents. . . .

Ultimately, the Presidential Records Act depends on the honesty of the president. That’s not Clinton’s strong suit. Recent polls have shown substantial numbers of Americans do not believe she is honest and trustworthy. After the State Department experience, they would have good reason to be suspicious of her in the White House.

Indeed.

DOJ OFFICIAL LINKS BAD POLICING TO JIM CROW LAWS:  The Washington Times reports that Ronald Davis, the Community Oriented Policing Services director at DOJ, asserts that Jim Crow laws are at least partially to blame for excessive policing and force:

“We’re still operating on some system that was used to enforce Jim Crow laws, that were used to oppress people,” Ronald Davis, Community Oriented Policing Services director for the Department of Justice, said at an event at the Center for American Progress. “These are operational systems and policies and practices that exist today.”

. . .

Mr. Davis told The Washington Times that he is concerned that the tensions tied to the Jim Crow era still have an impact on “anything from how we incarcerate to how we sentence to why we police and how we police.”

As a result, good officers are sometimes put in positions where they produce bad outcomes simply because the system ” is disparate to incarceration of young men of color,” Mr. Davis said. Mass incarceration and statistical drops in crime “cannot be the priority of public safety or law enforcement,” he said.

There are definitely over-criminalization issues, and yes, the criminal justice system does prosecute a large number of minorities arrested for crimes. But the inflammatory “Jim Crow” label is just a dog-whistle for the same old tired racism charge that permeates everything DOJ does under the Obama Administration. Can we please just address the real issues without resorting to the overplayed racism accusation? Liberals/progressives hurl “racism” so often now, it just sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and I tune it out.

HOUSE WAYS & MEANS ASKS DOJ TO INVESTIGATE IRS TARGETING:  All Republicans on the House Ways & Means Committee, chaired by Paul Ryan, sent a letter Thursday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking her to answer the committee’s 2014 request for criminal prosecution of IRS officials involved in the targeting of conservative groups.  Writes Kimberley Strassel:

It’s now been two full years since a little-known IRS bureaucrat named Lois Lerner admitted that her agency systematically collected the names of conservative groups, harassed them, and denied their right to participate in elections. It’s been two full years since the Justice Department opened an investigation. And it’s been two full years of crickets. . . .

Specifically, the committee provided documents that show three acts by Ms. Lerner that may have violated criminal statutes. One, she helped to target only conservative organizations, thereby robbing them of equal protection and due process. Two, she may have impeded the Treasury inspector general’s investigation of the matter by giving misleading statements. Three, she risked exposing (and may have exposed) confidential taxpayer information by using her personal email address to conduct official business.

And that’s only what we know so far. Congress’s problem is that the IRS has stonewalled it at every turn. The Treasury inspector general, J. Russell George, has become tentative after all the Democratic criticism of his probe. It seems the Justice Department is the only body with the powers to shake loose some answers about what happened.

The Ryan letter asks Ms. Lynch to tell him the status of that referral, and Speaker Boehner chimed in with a statement calling for the new attorney general to prove to Americans that “justice will be served.”

I won’t hold my breath for “justice” coming out of Obama’s DOJ, even now that Eric Holder has departed.  But at least the Republicans in the House are following up.

IT’S NOT JUST SCARY, IT’S GROSS:  A female Liverpool University student proudly touts not shaving. Her motto: “Being hairy isn’t scary.” I beg to differ.

FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER HASTERT INDICTED:  Dennis Hastert was a Republican Speaker of the House from 1999-2006.

Hastert was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges related to bank withdrawals of large sums of money that he allegedly paid to keep someone quiet about “prior misconduct.”

Mr. Hastert is charged with intentionally withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid federal reporting requirements designed to prevent money laundering. The Republican also is charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the withdrawals, telling agents he was taking the money out because he didn’t feel safe using the banking system.

The indictment alleges the money was going to someone identified only as “Individual A,” who had known Mr. Hastert for most of the person’s life. In 2010, Mr. Hastert agreed to pay this person $3.5 million “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A,” the indictment said.

That’s potentially salacious.

BELIEVE ME, I WOULDN’T:  From Gateway Pundit: Detroit Police Chief: I wouldn’t gas up in the city late at night unless I had to.  Yeah, Detroit is truly a model of progressive governing.

HOUSE LAWSUIT VS. OBAMA GETS HEARING:  Federal district judge Rosemary Collyer appeared skeptical about the Obama Administration’s arguments urging dismissal of the House lawsuit against the executive branch, challenging its rewriting of Obamacare’s employer mandate and its spending of funds not appropriated by Congress.

Despite initial liberal/progressive dismissal of the lawsuit as “frivolous,” attorney David Rivkin and I have long argued that legal precedent suggests otherwise, and the serious separation of powers arguments deserve consideration on the merits.  Judge Collyer appears to understand this. Stay tuned.

I HOPE THEY READ, AND LISTEN:  Michael Doran: “A Letter to My Liberal Jewish Friends.”

On Friday, May 22, President Obama, calling himself “an honorary member of the tribe,” addressed you not just as the president of the United States but also as an explicit adherent of the “tikkun olam” tradition: a Jewish viewpoint for “repairing the world” that, in his reading, promotes universal progressive ideals like fighting bigotry and working for social justice everywhere. Thus, for him, the same “shared values” that underlay the civil-rights movement in the United States were what led him to identify himself with the cause of Israel—and also with the cause of Palestinian nationalism. . . .

Here’s my question. As Obama donned his yarmulke and embraced your community, did you also catch the hint of a warning? If you did, it was because the president was raising, very subtly, the specter of dual loyalty: the hoary allegation that Jews pursue their tribal interests to the detriment of the wider community or nation. . . .  And so the warning was faint, but unmistakable: if Jews wish to avoid being branded as bigots, then they—you—must line up with him against Netanyahu. . . .

On June 30, Obama will likely conclude a nuclear deal with Iran. This will spark a faceoff with Congress, which has already declared its opposition to the deal. Congress will inevitably pass a vote of disapproval, which Obama will inevitably veto. In order to defend that veto from a congressional override, however, he must line up 34 Senators—all Democrats. This calls in turn for a preemptive ideological campaign to foster liberal solidarity—for which your support is key. If the president can convince the liberal Jewish community, on the basis of “shared values,” to shun any suspicion of alignment with congressional Republicans or Benjamin Netanyahu, he will have an easier time batting down Congress’s opposition to the deal with Iran.

Progressive values have nothing to do with what is truly at stake in this moment of decision. Only one final question really matters: in your considered view, should the Islamic Republic of Iran be the dominant power in the Middle East, and should we be helping it to become that power? If your answer is yes, then, by all means, continue to applaud the president—loudly and enthusiastically—as he purports to repair the world.

Obama’s a master at making liberals feel guilty with insinuations of bigotry. The American Jewish community is being played.

ANOTHER BREATHTAKING EPA POWER GRAB:  First, it was the Obama Administration’s rewrite of the Clean Air Act.  Now, it’s rewriting the Clean Water Act.

The Clean Water Act limits the federal government to regulating the “navigable waters of the United States” like the Colorado River or Lake Michigan. In 1986 the EPA expanded that definition to seize jurisdiction over tributaries and adjacent wetlands. Now it is extending federal control over just about any creek, pond, prairie pothole or muddy farm field that EPA says has a “significant nexus” to a navigable waterway.

The agency defines waters as “significant” if they are “located in whole or in part within 100 feet of the ordinary high water mark,” or, alternatively, within the 100-year floodplain and 1,500 feet of the high water mark of waters already under the government’s jurisdiction. That’s already a lot of water, but there’s more.

The EPA acknowledges that the “science available today does not establish that waters beyond those defined as ‘adjacent’” to these “significant” waters should be regulated. But forget science. The agency says its “experience and expertise” show there are “many” other waters that could have a significant downstream effect. Thus the EPA establishes an additional standard for significance that covers just about anything that’s wet.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

LABOR LITMUS TEST: AFL-CIO leader warns Hillary Clinton that labor may not endorse her if she supports the fast-track trade deal.

BECAUSE #OPPORTUNITY, NOT #HANDOUTS: Joel Kotkin on “The Changing Geography of Racial Opportunity“:

In the aftermath of the Baltimore riots, there is increased concern with issues of race and opportunity. Yet most of the discussion focuses on such things as police brutality, perceptions of racism and other issues that are dear to the hearts of today’s progressive chattering classes. Together they are creating what talk show host Tavis Smiley, writing in Time, has labeled “an American catastrophe.”

Yet what has not been looked at nearly as much are the underlying conditions that either restrict or enhance upward mobility among racial minorities, including African-Americans, Latinos and Asians. In order to determine this, my colleague at Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism  Wendell Cox and I developed a ranking system that included four critical factors: migration patterns, home ownership, self-employment and income.

We found, for all three major minority groups, that the best places were neither the most liberal in their attitudes nor had the most generous welfare programs. Instead they were located primarily in regions that have experienced broad-based economic growth, have low housing costs, and limited regulation. In other words, no matter how much people like Bill de Blasio talk about the commitment to racial and class justice, the realities on the ground turn out to be quite different than he might imagine.

Even the Democratic base doesn’t want to live in deep blue territory, since progressive policies lead to higher costs, higher crime and reduced economic opportunity.