Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

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Netanyahu Echoes Churchill, While Obama Channels Chamberlain Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, March 05 2015
Today, Barack Obama appears curiously frantic to finalize a similarly worthless paper treaty with the malevolent nuclear aspirant Iran. As with Chamberlain, Obama's admirers applaud in fealty.

As they say, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. 

Sixty-nine years ago this week, one august foreign leader widely admired in the United States delivered a historic speech to an American audience, sounding the alarm against a looming malevolent regime. 

This week, another august foreign leader also widely admired in the United States echoed the same wisdom before an American audience. 

The first occurred on March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill delivered his immortal "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. 

In addition to famously naming the Iron Curtain that stretched "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," Churchill warned against complacency and weakness in facing a new global threat that too many preferred at the time to deny.  His admonition then rings no less imperative today: 

"It is because I am sure that our fortunes are still in our own hands, and that we hold the power to save the future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have the occasion and the opportunity to do so...  Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them.  They will not be removed by merely waiting to see what happens.  Nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement.  What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become. 

"From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.  For that reason, the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound.  We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering a temptation to a trial of strength." 

For offering such foresight, Churchill was subjected to disapproval and disrespect from self-appointed sophisticates who considered him excessively crude and belligerent. 

That, however, was nothing new to Churchill.  He had received the same treatment a decade prior, when he warned against the looming threat of Adolf Hitler.  In fact, Churchill noted that experience in his Westminster College speech: 

"Last time I saw it coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention.  Up until the year 1933 or 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her, and we all might have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind.  There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated many areas of the globe." 

In that preceding decade, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously waved a worthless paper treaty to which Hitler's signature was affixed, naively announcing "peace in our time."  The effete classes bestowed their approval.  One year later they were exposed as tragically foolish. 

Today, Barack Obama appears curiously frantic to finalize a similarly worthless paper treaty with the malevolent nuclear aspirant Iran.  As with Chamberlain, Obama's admirers applaud in fealty. 

Never mind that before our very eyes, the worthlessness of such paper accords with snickering tyrants is confirmed in such places as North Korea and Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin disregards decades worth of pledges to peaceably respect that nation's sovereignty.  Or with Iran itself, whose regime continues nearly four decades of oppression, terrorism, aggression and violation of nuclear limitation agreements. 

Enter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who this week delivered a historic speech before Congress raising a cautionary alarm similar to Churchill's. 

Spelling out the ongoing terrorist and expansionist nature of Iran's leaders, Netanyahu dismantled the prospective nuclear agreement that Obama so desperately seeks, and pointed out that succumbing to Iran's negotiating demands would only encourage it to behave worse: 

"Would Iran be less aggressive when sanctions are removed and its economy is stronger?  Why would Iran's radical regime change for the better when it can enjoy the best of both worlds - aggression abroad, prosperity at home?" 

Like Churchill this week in 1946, Netanyahu highlighted the "special relationship" between his country and the United States, and the parallel manner in which our nations confront foreign threats. 

Like Churchill, Netanyahu pleaded that we learn the obvious lessons of history as we go forward facing new but similar challenges.  In the audience sat Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, to whom Netanyahu said, "I wish I could promise you, Elie, that the lessons of history have been learned, but I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past."  

And like Churchill, Netanyahu was immediately met with scorn for daring to speak truth to evil.  Come to think of it, America's greatest post-war president Ronald Reagan was initially excoriated on the same basis. 

Unlike Churchill, however, Netanyahu was also met not with approval from America's sitting president, but with scorn.  Indeed, Obama's visibly perturbed response was disturbingly similar to that of Iran itself. 

But Netanyahu remains focused on far greater concerns than Obama's pique. 

The nation of Israel, and the Jewish people themselves, have been ceaselessly hounded from nation to nation through the millennia, persecuted and prohibited from even entering various trades and targeted for extinction.  In the context of such a sordid parade of genocidal history, trivial and petty diplomatic politesse rightfully remain a background concern. 

Fortunately, the American people appear to agree with Netanyahu.  In addition to approximately 70% approval toward the state of Israel, Americans maintain a net 21-point positive rating toward Netanyahu himself.  Some 84% of Americans surveyed believe that the prospective nuclear accord with Iran is a bad one, while 65% even approve of the use of force if necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capability. 

And while Obama displayed pettiness in refusing to even meet Netanyahu, Americans by more than a two-to-one margin said it was a good thing that he was invited to address Congress. 

While Obama and those who share his worldview may remain willfully blind to the lessons of history, the American people themselves thankfully appear to welcome the wisdom of such men as Churchill and Netanyahu. 

Notable Quote   
 
"Americans do not trust several major U.S. institutions, including the national news media.The recently released Center Square Voters' Voice poll found that 43% of Americans say the media is trustworthy, compared with 54% who said it is not trustworthy.Younger people were more likely to trust the media, with 47% of those ages 18-34 saying they trust it and 46% saying the opposite.The numbers steadily…[more]
 
 
— Casey Harper, The Center Square
 
Liberty Poll   

Do you believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reject the new Biden administration automobile emissions rule as beyond the scope of administrative agency authority?