Here's what the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 means: Russia, with Vladimir Putin at the wheel, just drove off the edge of a cliff. The moment Flight 17 exploded was the moment that Putin's foreign policy officially went over the ledge, and with it his dreams of restored Russian greatness. Putin is deflecting blame, of course. He has no choice: he armed, paid, and unleashed a ragtag army of goons in eastern Ukraine, under the command of a Russian intelligence officer who was supposed to provide some adult supervision. Now they've betrayed the Kremlin and screwed up. Putin, a typical and mediocre product of Andropov's KGB, will never again be able to portray himself as a savvy, cool broker in international affairs, nor Russia as just another great power. Now, he's just another Soviet-era thug, a perception that was already growing before the Malaysian airliner plunged out of the sky. No matter how the current crisis ends, Putin's name will forever be tied to this outrage, and his personal bid to create a more respected Russia through violence and intimidation is permanently defunct.

The greatest conspiracy in world history is being carried out by the real-life "Manchurian Candidate": President Barack Hussein Obama. My definition of a "Manchurian Candidate" is a person who hates everything America stands for and whose goal is to win the presidency for the express purpose of destroying the greatest nation, the greatest economic system, and the greatest middle class in world history. That, my friends, describes Obama. I'm not basing it on rumors or innuendo. I'm basing it on the facts. I know liberals hate facts, but bear with me. So here are a few, which I lay out more fully in my new book, The Murder of the Middle Class: For the first time in American history more businesses are closing each day than they are starting. More Americans now receive entitlements than work full-time. There are now 70 percent more Americans collecting entitlement checks than working in the private sector (148 million "takers" vs. 86 million "makers"). The average full-time male employee now earns less (adjusted for inflation) than he did forty years ago. Twenty percent of U.S. families don't have a single member who is employed.

An Open Letter to the President Dear Mr. President: My apologies for missing your commencement address at the University of California at Irvine on June 14, honoring the 50th anniversary of one of our fine academic institutions. Meetings with my constituents just seemed more pressing, and, of course, we can meet back in Washington whenever it's convenient for you. In any case, between fundraisers and enjoying the "Zot! Zot! Zot!" chants of the graduating Anteaters, the questions I have raised about your "green" agenda clearly were on your mind. You evidently determined that ridiculing those, like me, who question your "settled" science would be the best way to make your case. To the laughing grads, you said: "And today's Congress is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence about climate change. They will tell you it is a hoax, or a fad. There was one member of Congress who mentioned a theory involving ‘dinosaur flatulence' - which I won't get into." Mr. President, we both know I have referred to the theory of man-made global warming as a "hoax," and, yes, I once used the phrase "dinosaur flatulence" as lighthearted ridicule at what I considered to be climate alarmism. What I have learned is never to underestimate humorless zealots, especially those cloaked in the pretensions of "science." One of the traits of a fanatic is the willingness to conduct personal attacks, to limit debate, to use questionable facts and to seek government to impose policy on others. Sir, my congressional colleagues and I cannot ignore costs when making decisions. Simply put, no matter how apocalyptic the theory behind it, we cannot make this crony-capitalist concoction of yours into a policy priority.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has come up with an exciting new theory as to why the world's economies are still proving reluctant to bomb themselves back to the dark ages in order to "combat climate change." Apparently, it's all the fault of a certain uncompromising Jewish Russian emigree:

Well, think about global warming from the point of view of someone who grew up taking Ayn Rand seriously, believing that the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest is always good and that government is always the problem, never the solution. Along come some scientists declaring that unrestricted pursuit of self-interest will destroy the world, and that government intervention is the only answer. It doesn't matter how market-friendly you make the proposed intervention; this is a direct challenge to the libertarian worldview. And the natural reaction is denial - angry denial. Read or watch any extended debate over climate policy and you'll be struck by the venom, the sheer rage, of the denialists.

[This speech was delivered at the Israeli Embassy in Prague on May 26 in celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, by Milos Zemin, President of the Czech Republic] Ladies and gentlemen, Let me thank you for the invitation to celebrate Israel's Independence Day. There are dozens of days of independence being celebrated every year in the Czech Republic. Some I may attend, others I cannot. There is one I can never miss, however: it's the Israeli Independence Day. There are states with whom we share the same values, such as the political horizon of free elections or a free market economy. However, no one threatens these states with wiping them off the map. No one fires at their border towns; no one wishes that their citizens would leave their country. There is a term, political correctness. This term I consider to be a euphemism for political cowardice. Therefore, let me not be cowardly. It is necessary to clearly name the enemy of human civilization.

"Feeding the masses on unicorn ribs". That was how Walter Russell Mead once poured scorn on Obama's misbegotten attempts to revive the US economy by creating five million "green jobs." Mead was quite right, of course. And there was plenty of evidence to back him up, such as the 2009 report by a Madrid university professor Gabriel Calzada Alvarez that for every expensive "green job" created by government subsidy, 2.2 jobs were destroyed in the real economy. The Obama administration responded as only the Obama administration knows how: by calling in its left-wing attack dogs. Friendly organizations including George Soros's Center for American Progress and various well-funded wind industry lobbyists were recruited to monster this unhelpful evidence, which was dismissed for its "lack of rigor." It's in this context we need to view the Environmental Protection Agency's dispiriting announcement of its latest assault on US industry - disingenuously billed as a "commonsense plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants." Because here's the bottom line:  The more "clean energy" you develop, the more scum-sucking corporatist parasites you attract, the more eagles you slice and dice, and the greater the burden you place on both the taxpayer and the economy - all to no discernible practical purpose whatsoever.

[This commencement address was originally published in 2005. We rerun it at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.] Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends: It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line:  college, goodbye, we're outta here.  Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end. But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things.  So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies.  If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago.  His most famous movie was Gone With The Wind. He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy.  It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost.  Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs.  Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget. Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it.  Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:

On May 12, the Washington Times revealed the latest impeachable outrage by President Barack Hussein Obama. In 2013, ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) released 36,000 criminal illegal aliens from custody, putting them back on American streets instead of deporting them. The 36,000 illegals had more than 87,000 criminal convictions between them, many for murder, assault, drunk driving and the like. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) calls this "the worst jailbreak in American history," and obviously impeachable as it was "sanctioned by the president." Yet it is merely the latest in what would have been in pre-Obama America an unimaginably long list of impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors" by the current Oval Office occupant.  They are the focus of Andy McCarthy's book, to be released next month, Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment. The case can be made, of course, but there is a much faster and easier way to eject Zero from office.  It is the law that can put him in jail.

When it comes to fanatical Islam, we're entranced by the symptoms but refuse to name the disease. The extremes to which Western elites will go to avoid blaming radical Islam for terrorism cripples our efforts to protect innocent Moslems. Terrified of offending butchers, we insist that we're the bigots, not them. We make excuses for monsters. Boko Haram, whose name means "Western learning is forbidden," kidnaps 200 schoolgirls, and the world rightly takes notice. But what about the thousands of peaceful civilians, both Christian and Moslem, Boko Haram has killed, purportedly to install an Islamist state? What about the medical workers, pious volunteers, who are murdered in a faith's name? Hollywood suddenly woke up to Islamic fundamentalism last week in the strangest possible way, boycotting the Beverly Hills Hotel because it's owned by the Sultan of Brunei, who plans to impose the cruelest provisions of Sharia law on his fiefdom's women. Hey, I'm all for the boycott (can't afford the joint, anyway), but this is a combination fashion-statement and NIMBYism par excellence. On vacation, those same stars will stay happily at the Four Seasons, even though a Saudi prince has owned nearly half of its shares. How are women's rights going in Saudi Arabia?

Hi, my name is Tal Fortgang, and I'm a freshman at Princeton University.  I'd like to tell you about a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. "Check your privilege," the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. "Check your privilege," they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world. I do not accuse those who "check" me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.