Russian Advances in the Ukraine

“Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his country was "close to a point of no return - full scale-war" with Russia.”

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“The crisis in Ukraine began in November last year when pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned a deal with the EU in favour of stronger ties with Russia.”

• Putin talks about ‘statehood’ for eastern Ukraine
• EU set to tighten Russia sanctions 'within a week'
• Ukraine crisis: Obama blames Russia for violence
• Russia’s new tactics of war shouldn’t fool anyone
• Vladimir Putin: Don't mess with nuclear-armed Russia
• WP - War in Europe is not a Hysterical Idea
• Ukraine in Maps: How the Crisis Spread

Lessons for Ferguson From Cincinnati's 2001 Riots

WSJ - Lessons for Ferguson From Cincinnati”s 2001 Riots

• Tell the public everything immediately
• Set the record straight
• Don’t crucify the cops
• The federal government can slow the healing
• Repudiate race-baiters

"Cincinnati went to work repairing race relations. After a year of meetings supervised by a federal judge, representatives of the city, the police department, the ACLU, the Black United Front and the police union imposed the Collaborative Agreement for police reforms. They included less aggressive pursuit guidelines, a citizen complaint board, and communiy-oriented policing."

"Before the riots there was simmering anger at police in the black community. The police were insular and authoritarian. Today they are proactive, transparent, a model of community-oriented policing."

WSJ - Thousands Protest in Staten Island Over Eric Garner's Death

NY Post - Three Cheers for the NYPD

Islamists Militants “kill reporter James Foley on Video”

• BBC -- James Foley: Islamic State militants 'behead reporter'

• Telegraph - James Foley's murder should only stiffen our resolve to destroy Islamic State

“And this, ultimately, is the most important point: terrorist groups have beheaded hostages and prisoners, Westerners and non-Westerners, for many years. What is shocking is not that they are extreme sadists, but that they are extreme sadists with a conventional army and nation-building aspirations. This is what makes them different. By their own admission, their aim is to “drown all of you in blood”. They are incapable of compromise, uninterested in moderation, and hell-bent on territorial expansion.”

Language counts. It is time to define the radical Islamic terrorists as just what they are, radical Islamic terrorists.

A major unacknowledged but obvious important conflict in international affairs is between moderate and radical Muslims, with the radical Muslims being defined as those who are willing to use lethal force based on religion as a means to their ends. This has included stoning women to death for infidelity, honor killings, assassinations for “blasphemy”, executions of farmers and journalists for political control, kidnapping and selling young women, suicide bombings, and terrorist attacks. As usual, the ends are used to justify the means. The means, however, define any group as much as the ends, and the means often come to distort the ends.

It is also time to better define, understand, and convey our own values and to contrast them with those of the radical Islamic terrorists. Have we learned nothing from the tragedies of the 20th Century. Our primary moral concept of equality, understood as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity, at least has the capacity for some accommodation in what is now a pluralist global community.

• Language Counts in Politics.
  “Language and Politics” -- George Orwell

• Ideas Also Count in Politics.
  “Equality as an Affirmation of Personal Dignity and our Common Humanity."

Iraq Isis Conflict in Maps, Photos, and Video

New York Times -- Iraq Isis Conflict in Maps, Photos, and Video

An Observation

Only when pushed to the brink, such as in Supreme Court Cases or in a world humanitarian crisis, do our leaders start to refer to and correctly describe our primary moral concept of equality as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity.

Equality as an Affirmation of Our Common Humanity

The Rapidly Changing Events in the Middle East

BBC -- Could Iraq becomes Obama’s War?

"President Obama once said the US should not be fighting a war in Iraq. Now he has approved air strikes, trying to protect Americans and help minorities under threat from Sunni militants. So will the president find himself entangled in Iraq?"

• Institute for the Study of War
  Situation Updates

• DailyMail
  Barbarians, Genocide, and the Terrifying Lack of Western Leadership

• Huffington Post
  The Final Solution of the Christian Arab Question in the Middle East

• New York Times
  Iraq Airstrikes Seen As Giving Putin Pretext in Ukraine

• New York Times
  Turkish Premier Tries To Keep Power As President

The Senate Races

• New Yorker -- Can the GOP Take the Senate?

  "Just in case you haven’t had enough bad news, here’s a bit more from the domestic-politics desk. With less than a hundred days until the midterm elections, the Republicans now have a very realistic chance of retaking the Senate, which would leave them in over-all control of Capitol Hill for the next two years..."

• RealClearPolitics -- Senate Races
  
  
  
  
  
• Politico -- 2014 Senate Predictions

  "The big change here is in Iowa, which goes from Leans Democratic to Toss-up: This open-seat contest could end up being the key race in the battle for the Senate, and it appears to be pretty much even. As Iowa appears to be getting more competitive, Democratic prospects are brightening in two other states that voted for Barack Obama twice..."

Reconsidering the Death Penalty

• WP -- Arizona excecution last nearly two hours

  "This drawn-out death of Joseph R. Wood III in Arizona prompted the governor to order a review and drew renewed criticism of lethal injection, the main method of execution in the United States, just months after a high-profile botched execution in Oklahoma."

• WP -- Everything you need to know about executions in the United States

  "Lethal injection is the primary method of execution in the country, though some other methods are used..."

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See previous blog posts on the Death Penalty:

• China Rethinks the Death Penalty (7/9/14)
• Abolishing the Death Penalty Should be an Issue in the 2016 Elections (6/27/14)
• Reconsidering the Death Penalty (5/3/14)
• Death Sentences in Egypt -- It is beyond time for the U.S. to speak up and take action. (4/28/14)
• The Death Penalty in Egypt -- A Political Tool even as a Threat (4/13/14)
• Reconsidering the Death Penalty In Ohio (1/5/12)

The Persecution of Christians

• NYT -- Christians Forced to Flee Mosul

  "By 1 p.m. on Friday almost every Christian in Mosul had heard the Sunni militants’ message — they had until noon Saturday to leave the city.

• FoxNews -- Mass Exodus of Christians from the Muslim World

  The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.”

A Pattern of the Obama Administration

Fumes from Obama’s Chemical Safety Board -- WSJ

"In the smallest stories we sometimes find the biggest themes. The small story of the past month has been dysfunction at a backwater federal agency known as the Chemical Safety Board. Yet in this tale of obstruction, bullying and lawlessness we find what is now the clear pattern of the Obama administration. The president says openly that neither Congress nor laws will keep him from implementing his agenda. That attitude now seems to reign at every body in Washington, down to the teeny CSB. Blame Mr. Moure-Eraso for dysfunction, but remember that he's just emulating the boss."

Putin and Russian Interests in Eastern Europe

• Moldavia may be an Urgent Matter

  "NATO's Article 5 offers little protection against Vladimir Putin's Russia," Iulian Fota, Romania's presidential national security adviser, told me on a recent visit to Bucharest. "Article 5 protects Romania and other Eastern European countries against a military invasion. But it does not protect them against subversion," that is, intelligence activities, the running of criminal networks, the buying-up of banks and other strategic assets, and indirect control of media organs to undermine public opinion.

• Some Divions in Easter Uklraine Rebels

  "Deep strains emerged Thursday in the ranks of Ukraine's pro-Russia insurgents, as dozens of militiamen turned in their weapons in disgust at Russian inaction and bickering broke out between rebel factions."

• Putin Angling to Restore Ties with the West

  "When he speaks about Ukraine at all these days, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia focuses on worthy subjects like humanitarian aid, distinctly turning down the flame underneath the political speech that erupted with the annexation of Crimea in March."

China Rethinks the Death Penalty

New York Times - China Rethinks the Death Penalty

"Interviews conducted by criminologists suggest that international criticism has had an impact as well. In 1977, a mere 16 countries had abolished the death penalty; today 140 countries — over two-thirds of the world’s nations — have done so in law or practice. Chinese legal scholars and judges are fully aware of their country’s role as the outlier."

"China’s penal practices are far from enlightened. Even if Mr. Liu’s assertion of halving executions is true, China still executes about 3,000 people a year, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, compared with 39 in the United States in 2013."

A Sectarian Middle East

• Islam's Ancient Sectarian Rift

  "Once aroused, however, sectarian wrath can be unpredictable and hard to control, even boomeranging against those who might have sought to exploit it."

• Quarantine the Middle East

  "Amid the chaos, then, we should partner with Muslim communities that are holding together, despite sectarian differences, and where local leaders are open to change. We should seek ways to enlarge their strength and appeal."

• Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire

  "Almost 70 years ago, a new world order was born from the rubble of World War II, built by and around the power of the United States. Today that world order shows signs of cracking, and perhaps even collapsing.

  To understand where America, and the world, may be heading, it is useful to remind ourselves where we have been—of the choices that Americans made decades ago and of the profound, world-changing consequences of those choices."

History of a Rogue State

ISIS Along Two Rivers

Sobering Statistics

• Youth Fail to Qualify for Military Service

  "Approximately 71% of the 34 million 17-to-24-year-olds in the U.S. would not qualify for military service because of reasons related to health, physical appearance and educational background, according to the Pentagon..."

• "Maybe We Don’t Have the Worlds Best Colleges

  America’s schools and colleges are actually far more alike than people believe — and not in a good way. The nation’s deep education problems, the data suggest, don’t magically disappear once students disappear behind ivy-covered walls..."

Abolishing the Death Penalty Should be an Issue in the 2016 Elections

“Last weeks Road to Majority conservative confab had an unlikely exhibitor in the conference hall: opponents of the death penalty.”

The radical Muslim terrorists are continuing to define themselves by their brutality and disregard for human dignity and our common humanity. It is time for the United States to recognize the role of ideas in foreign policy and the court of world opinion.

In 2007, 88% of the executions worldwide occurred in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. This is the company that we keep, and they are quick to point to the United States to justify their use of coercive power and the death penalty.

• Kirsten Powers Conservative Death Penalty Column

  Last weeks Road to Majority conservative confab had an unlikely exhibitor in the conference hall: opponents of the death penalty.

  The activists were in the right place because their opposition stems from conservative principles.

• Reconsidering the Death Penalty in Ohio

  A major unacknowledged but obvious important conflict in international affairs, for example, is between moderate and radical Muslims, with the radical Muslims being defined as those who are willing to use lethal force based on religion as a means to their ends. This has included stoning women to death for infidelity, honor killings, assassinations for “blasphemy”, executions by the Taliban and al-Qaeda of farmers and journalists for political control, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. As usual, the ends are used to justify the means. The means, however, define any group as much as the ends, and the means often come to distort the ends. We should do everything we can to focus world opinion on such issues. Abolishing the death penalty in Ohio and then our nation would help to do so. It would also help us understand and convey that the primary moral values in our constitutional democracy include equality understood as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity in addition to freedom.

“Who would rid me of this turbulent priest?”

- King Henry II referring to Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was subsequently murdered (1170)

It is unlikely that President Obama ordered the targeting of tea party groups by the IRS or that Governor Christie ordered the closing of lanes on the George Washington bridge, but they both set the tone for those things to happen. The IRS is now acting in an arrogant way that it would not tolerate from any of the taxpayers that it audits, and thus they are rapidly losing credibility.

• WSJ - Bradley A. Smith
  “Connecting the Dots in the Irs Scandal”

  "The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to..."

• “The High Price of Obama Fatigue”

  "The IRS tea-party audit story isn't Watergate; it's worse than Watergate.

  The Watergate break-in was the professionals of the party in power going after the party professionals of the party out of power. The IRS scandal is the party in power going after the most average Americans imaginable."

This from the International New York Times on Hillary

When will Hillary let it go?

“You know, your natural tendency is how do you bring people together so that you can better communicate? I’m done with that. I mean, I’m just done.” She continued: “I am over it, over it. I think I have changed; not worried so much about what other people are thinking.” She vowed to now “say what I know, what I believe, and let the chips fall.”

“ There isn’t one surprising or scintillating or provocative word in the whole book. “Hard Choices” is inert, a big yawn.”
    -- Maureen Dowd

History and Struggle for Iraq in Maps

• History of Iraq
  
  "Three provinces from the old Ottoman Empire were combined by the British after WWI to form modern Iraq..."
  
  
  
  
• Current Struggle for Iraq
  
  "The areas where ISIS is operating largely match areas where al-Qaeda was active during the height of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq between 2004-06..."
  
  

Different views on Iraq

• While Obama Fidels

  "The fall of Mosul, Iraq, to al Qaeda terrorists this week is as big in its implications as Russia's annexation of Crimea. But from the Obama presidency, barely a peep..."

• Slate -- After Mosul

  "As the U.S. pullout began under the terms of a treaty signed in 2008 by then-President George W. Bush, Maliki, the leader of a Shiite political party, promised to run a more inclusive government..."

• Six Things that went wrong for Iraq

  "The borders of the modern Middle East are in large part a legacy of World War One. They were established by the colonial powers after the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire..."

Kids take on Teacher’s union

• Vargara ruling allows California a chance to change a broken system

  "California's extraordinary protections for public school teachers were dealt a heavy blow Tuesday when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that the state's tenure laws unconstitutionally deprive students of an adequate education..."

• Historic victory for America’s kids

  "Sweeping and unambiguous, the outcome of Vergara v. California is more than one decision in one big state, although even that much is significant given the shudders it will cause. It is an indictment of laws in any state that protect inferior teachers at the expense of students — and a powerful inspiration for other families nationwide who will turn to the courts out of desperation..."

How The Recession Reshaped the Economy

The New York Times produced a fascinating chart that shows how the Great Recession that began in 2007 changed the economy.

How the Recession Reshaped the Economy, in 255 Charts

From Time Magazine:

The Single Most Depressing Thing About the Recession Has Just Been Put Out of Its Misery

Immigrant Minors

• Immigrant Minors Present Crisis

  "Tens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents or relatives are flooding across the southern U.S. border illegally, forcing the Obama administration and Congress to grapple with both a humanitarian crisis and a budget dilemma."

• Feds Shipping Hundreds of Kids to Arizona

  "Three hundred more unaccompanied migrant children — with more on the way — were transported Saturday from southern Texas into a makeshift way station set up in a Border Patrol detention facility in Nogales, Ariz., as government agencies took additional steps to improve the living conditions there."

• California Counties Ignoring ICE Detainer Requests For Illegal Aliens

  "Officials in over a dozen counties in Southern California recently declared that detainer requests from federal immigration agents will be ignored--specifically, illegal immigrants eligible for deportation will no longer be held past the length of their jail times."

Primary Day and Election 2014

• Washington Post -- Election Lab 2014

  "Like most forecasting models, Election Lab uses the past to predict the future. To predict House and Senate elections in 2014, we draw on the elections from 1980-2012. We first look at how well key factors were related to outcomes in those past elections..."

• US Today -- 2014 Senate Landscape Tilts

  "Contests are set in nearly half the states for November's elections, and with few contested primary elections remaining on the calendar, Republicans are enjoying clear advantages in their quest for a Senate takeover."