Iran’s Shopping Spree

Advocates of the nuclear treaty with Iran, including President Obama, have repeatedly claimed that the agreement strengthens moderates and will change Iran’s behavior. They are wrong.

[Monday], Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, chief of Tehran’s top clerical body, said that the United States remains Iran’s “number one enemy” and that the nuclear treaty changes nothing.

Meanwhile, Tehran is on a shopping spree, anticipating a massive windfall, perhaps as much as $100 billion in sanctions relief, from the treaty. Contrary to Obama’s hope, the regime is not building roads, bridges or hospitals or buying food for its people. It is using the money to buy weapons from Moscow, determined to emerge as the Middle East’s new superpower.

Act Of Love

The Republican presidential primary is heating up. Donald Trump and Jeb Bush are exchanging fire over illegal immigration.

Last year, as he was considering whether to run for president, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush called illegal immigration an “act of love.” To the extent that someone is coming to this country to provide for their family, it is an act of love for that family.

But breaking our laws it is not an act of love for America. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 80% of voters believe illegal immigration is a serious problem and that they want the border secured.

Those words are coming back to haunt Bush in the form of a tough new ad unveiled [Monday] by the Trump campaign. The ad juxtaposes Bush’s remarks with the mugshots of illegal immigrants who have been charged with murder. Watch it here.

Many are calling it the Willie Horton ad of 2016. That ad destroyed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988, portraying him as soft on crime. It is worth noting that the issue — furloughs for convicted murderers — was first raised during the Democratic primary by then-Tennessee Senator Al Gore.

Bashing Boehner

The latest release of Clinton emails from the State Department contained a fascinating nugget. As returns were coming in during the historic 2010 elections, Sidney Blumenthal, who was also giving Mrs. Clinton a lot of foreign policy advice, attempted to cheer her up by bashing the incoming speaker of the House, John Boehner.

Here is the “intel” on Boehner that Blumenthal provided to Hillary: “Boehner is despised by the younger, more conservative members of the House… He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle… He is not Gingrich, the natural leader of a ‘revolution,’ riding the crest into power. He is careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow…”

I don’t know how John Boehner will react to this blistering attack on his character. But if I were Boehner, I would get up every morning from now until the day I left office determined to prove Blumenthal wrong.

I would make the left fully appreciate just how energetic and committed I was to advancing a conservative “revolution” of government reform by doubling down on the investigations of Benghazi, the IRS and the VA, and demanding criminal prosecutions.

I would be scheduling votes on commonsense legislation every week, forcing tough votes time and again. And, yes, I would be willing to shut down the government to fight repeated abuses of power by the executive branch until our system of checks and balances was fully restored.

But that’s me.

Forgotten Already

Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Their names have been seared into our memories by the non-stop coverage of the “main stream” media. But some people in our left-wing dominated culture may as well have no names because they are forgotten so quickly.

For example, do you know who Kate Steinle was? How about Christopher Lane? Do you know the names Alison Parker and Adam Ward?

I’m not surprised if you don’t. There is no media narrative about their deaths. No one is saying their lives mattered because there was something symptomatic about their murders.

Even some people who do great things and are still alive are quickly forgotten. Do you know the names Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler?

They are the three Americans who saved scores of lives on a high-speed train in Europe from a radical Islamist. They were immediately recognized in Paris for their valor, invited to the presidential palace and awarded medals from President Hollande.

Has President Obama invited them to the White House? Before this morning, I wasn’t sure if he had even called them. He did. But I had to search hard for that information.

Yet when the president is really proud of someone, the White House makes sure that everyone knows it like when he called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student who demanded that the Catholic school pay for her birth control, or when he congratulated gay NFL player Michael Sam. That was big news and a big sign that our cultural priorities are misplaced.