Democrats who thought last week couldn't have been worse learned Friday they were mistaken. The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether it is legal for the IRS to subsidize Obamacare policies purchased on Healthcare.gov, the federal exchange. The Obamacare statute restricts payment of subsidies to taxpayers who purchase insurance "through an Exchange established by the State," a three judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled July 22 in Halbig v. Burwell (Sylvia Burwell is secretary of Health and Human Services). That was a drafting error, Democrats said.

While Democrats were being sent to Siberia, Jack Wheeler is traveling in the Middle East, so I'm filling in on the HFR this week. Other stuff was going on in the world, but I'm focusing on you can guess what. All the bad candidates this year were Democrats. Democrat memes lost much of their potency. Democrats sounded like a party out of ideas, that has lost touch with the people, clings to power for no other reason than to use it to line their pockets. Did Democrats lose the Mandate of Heaven Tuesday? * * * * Many races were closer than they should have been because Democrats lavishly funded pseudo "Libertarian" candidates in key races. This tactic didn't work in Georgia or North Carolina, but is why Mark Begich can play Sore Loserman in Alaska, and it cost Ed Gillespie the senate seat in Virginia. If we don't do something about this, we could have big trouble in the purple states in 2016. My preferred solution - to draw and quarter the pseudo Libertarians, then boil them in oil - is, alas, impractical. * * * * Now that the midterms are over, presidential buzz begins in earnest. The first GOP presidential debate will be Sept. 16. Ugh! I have a mild preference for Scott Walker, but the possibility of an all nonwhite ticket intrigues me, if only because it would be so much fun to watch heads explode at CNN and MSNBC. * * * * The lame duck session will be an early, critical gut check for Republicans. They must try to block anything other than housekeeping measures needed to keep the government going until the new Congress convenes, because anything else Democrats try to do will be illegitimate.

Every Republican who took a senate seat from a Democrat Tuesday campaigned hard for repeal of Obamacare. Of the 60 Democrats in the senate who voted to impose Obamacare in 2009, 28 won’t be there in January, noted Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and Democrats and their allies in the news media gotta foment race hatred for political gain. The St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, has been wracked by violence since Aug. 9, when Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, shot Michael Brown, 18, who was black. A mob sought "justice for Mike Brown" by looting area businesses. Many journalists accepted as Gospel the account of the shooting by Mr. Brown's accomplice in a convenience store robbery shortly before it. What they never report is that violent crime is mostly intra-racial. In 2011, 83 percent of white homicide victims were murdered by other whites, 91 percent of black victims were killed by other blacks, according to FBI data. White on black violence is rare. Blacks are 25 to 39 times more like to commit violent crimes against whites than vice versa, according to various studies. When violence is black on black, Democrats and  the news media pay little attention; even less when it is black on white. They paint a misleading - and incendiary - portrait of violence in America.  And they do it on purpose.

Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, an instructor in clinical medicine at Columbia University and a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, returned to New York City Oct. 17 from Guinea, where he'd been treating Ebola patients. He passed "enhanced screening" at Kennedy airport, but last Thursday (10/23), Dr. Spencer tested positive for Ebola. Despite feeling "sluggish" on the previous Tuesday, the next day Dr. Spencer took two subway trains from Manhattan to a bowling alley in Brooklyn, then a taxi back home. In the six days prior to his diagnosis, Dr. Spencer made numerous other excursions around the city. Why didn't Dr. Spencer minimize his contact with others until after the 21 day incubation period had passed? Why especially, on a day he was feeling "sluggish," did he ride subways, eat at restaurants, go bowling? What's most alarming is that neither Dr. Spencer nor nurse Amber Vinson - who took a commercial flight from Cleveland to Dallas despite having a fever -- violated CDC protocols. By contrast, thanks to their strict border controls, Senegal and Nigeria are Ebola free. Given the now obvious inadequacy of airport screening, and the apparent unwillingness of health care professionals to minimize contacts during the incubation period, travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines are musts to prevent the spread of the disease here. The Obama administration strenuously opposes both.

If Republicans win control of both the House and Senate, "the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class,"  Barack Hussein Obama said at a October 8th $32,500 a plate fund-raiser at the $16 million Greenwich, Connecticut estate of a billionaire named (I'm not making this up) Rich Richman. You can't top that remark for hypocrisy, or the setting for irony.  President Hussein did the same thing last night (10/23), at yet another $32,500 a plate dinner at the home of that ultimate trust fund baby, Jay Rockefeller. It isn't the middle class who write $32,500 checks. Those who do expect something in return. They've been getting it. The Obama administration "protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. And it happened over and over and over," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, told the liberal webzine Salon. Fauxcahontas isn't right about much, but she is about this. The administration's fiscal and monetary policies rewarded Wall Streeters whose reckless lending magnified the subprime mortgage crisis. The "D" in Democrat certainly no longer stands for Democracy as it did for Harry Truman.  Today under Obama it stands for Deceit, Duplicity, and Dishonesty.

Under the "leadership" of Dr. Thomas Frieden, the Centers for Disease Control has fought smoking and obesity, built bike lanes, conducted "Zombie Preparedness Drills," argued gun violence should be treated as a public health issue. When CDC was established in 1946 (as the Communicable Diseases Center), it was created for the explicit purpose of protecting Americans from dangerous epidemics. CDC isn't very good at that. Virtually every assurance Dr. Frieden made about Ebola isn't true. Most alarmingly false was CDC's claim any U.S. hospital with an isolation ward could treat Ebola patients safely. Only four hospitals in the entire country are fully equipped to treat the deadly disease. Most are woefully unprepared. Such ridiculous (and dangerous) ineptitude is not an aberration in our ridiculously vast federal bureaucracy -- it's the norm.  We need a 10th Amendment solution for it.

After a Liberian man brought the deadly disease to America last month, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control, assured us: "We'll stop Ebola in its tracks." CDC has protocols in place to protect against further spread of the disease, he said. File that assurance alongside "you can keep your health plan it you want to," and "ISIS is a jayvee team." Our unpreparedness for an Ebola epidemic makes it all the more imperative to bar entry to people from Ebola-ravaged countries. A quarantine is a must, experts say. But President Barack Hussein Obama won't impose one.  Why not? So far, just one person in America has died from Ebola. At least seven, mostly children, have died from Enterovirus D-68. There are more than 100 enteroviruses, ranging from the common cold to polio. EV D-68 has been very rare here. CDC has offered no explanation for this outbreak. EV D-68 is common in Central America, from whence came the flood of illegal immigrant children. The outbreak was first reported in communities to which they were sent.  CDC refuses to connect the dots.  Why won't it?

Americans should brace themselves for a long and difficult struggle, Barack Hussein Obama said when he announced air strikes on the headquarters of the Islamic State in Syria Sept. 23. We can't defeat Islamic radicals with military force, say others among the self-styled cognoscenti in our political and media elites, because they are motivated by an idea, and "you can't kill an idea." The overall struggle against Islamism will take a long time, because there are so many Islamists, in so many places, in different flavors. That's why when my friend Bill Roggio started the blog that's the best source of news about developments in the struggle, he called it the "Long War Journal." But if we actually tried to win, it wouldn't be difficult, or take very long to reduce the threat posed by the Islamic State from potentially catastrophic to something more like a nuisance. Here's how and why.

Muhammad Hamzah Khan, 19, planned to fly to Turkey, then cross the border into Syria to join the terrorists of the Islamic State. But the FBI arrested him at O'Hare airport Oct. 4. Ankara has "allowed its Syria border to become a two-way ‘jihadist highway,'" said Turkish journalist Kadri Gursel. Most of up to 12,000 foreign fighters got to IS via Turkey, where some wounded jihadis have received free medical care. "Turkey's support was vital for the jihadists in getting in and out of the country," wrote Orhan Kemal Cengiz in the newspaper Zaman. "Turkey paved the way for us," an IS fighter, in Ankara for medical treatment, told the newspaper Aydinlik. The Turks also "provided the bulk of ISIS' funds, logistics, training and arms," said Middle East expert Daniel Pipes.   Turkey supported Jabhat al-Nusra, (the al Qaida affiliate President Barack Obama called "the Khorasan Group"), said Francis Ricciardone, our ambassador there until June. By "Ankara," "Turkey," and "the Turks," they mean the Islamist government of Recep Erdogan, prime minister since 2003, president since July, whose policies are as controversial within Turkey as are Mr. Obama's in ours.

Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, flew to Dallas Sept. 20, five days after he helped an Ebola-stricken woman get to a local hospital in Monrovia, Liberia.  He died of Ebola this morning (10/08) in a Texas hospital after potentially infecting over 100 people. Many countries have restricted air travel from Ebola-ravaged countries. The Obama administration won't. The only way epidemics have ever been contained is by quarantine. Restricting entry of those who've been exposed to Ebola is a must, said Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. Yet Thomas Frieden says a travel ban would "backfire."  He's Obama's director of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. That's ridiculous, said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who before entering elective politics headed the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals, been an assistant secretary in HHS. "How, exactly, would stopping the entry of people potentially carrying the Ebola virus be counterproductive?" he asks.

In the Kaiser Family Foundation's tracking poll for September, 47 percent of registered voters had an unfavorable opinion of Obamacare; 35 percent approved. In a poll for the liberal webzine Politico last month, 44 percent of likely voters said the law should be repealed; 38 percent said it should be "modified." Only 17 percent want to keep it as is. Throughout the summer, dissatisfaction with Obamacare has risen across the political spectrum, among all age, ethnic and income groups, the monthly Kaiser surveys indicate. This is because "more and more people are having personal experience with the law," said Byron York of the Washington Examiner. In September, 44 percent of Kaiser's respondents said Obamacare has affected them personally, up from 38 percent in May. Twice as many said they'd been hurt by the law as said they'd been helped by it. Yet, says Politico, Obamacare has become "background noise" in the midterm elections. It's the "incredible fading issue," says U.S. News & World Report. It's "fizzled," said the Christian Science Monitor. This may be the oddest bit of political spin ever. It's true many Americans tell pollsters they're concerned more about illegal immigration, Islamic terror, the faltering economy. But liberal journalists believe - or expect you to - that it's somehow good for Democrats that other issues now work even better for Republicans than Obamacare does.  Good luck with that.

Climate change is as grave a threat as the Ebola virus or the terrorists of the Islamic State, Secretary of State John Kerry said in anticipation of the UN conference in New York this week. All but a "tiny minority" of "extreme ideologues" in the "Flat Earth Society" think the planet is warming dangerously, he said in speeches in Indonesia and Hawaii. The temperature of the earth has been stable "for literally millions of years," Mr. Kerry said. When the most recent ice age peaked about 20,000 years ago, there was a glacier where Chicago is today. Lake Michigan is the residue from it. Palm trees once grew in Antarctica. During the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods 2,000 and 1,000 years ago, grapes grew in Northern England and Newfoundland. Only a blithering idiot would say the earth's temperature has been stable "for literally millions of years." But it was when Mr. Kerry said greenhouse gases are "a very thin layer of gases - a quarter inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity - way up there at the edge of the atmosphere" that he set a "new standard for utter imbecility," said Mr. Ebell, environmental expert for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Authorities uncovered and disrupted a plot by terrorists of the Islamic State to kidnap some Australians at random, behead them, make videos of the beheadings. In dawn raids Sept. 18, 800 federal and state law enforcement officers made 15 arrests in Sydney and Brisbane. More raids were conducted the next day. There are about 500,000 Moslems in Australia. About 160 are active supporters of the terror group, authorities suspect. At least 20 have returned to Australia after fighting for IS in Syria and Iraq, according to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. We're the "Great Satan" in the Islamic State's demonology. Australia isn't even the "Little Satan." Australia hasn't bombed them. We have. If IS was planning kidnappings and beheadings there, why couldn't - our wouldn't - IS be planning comparable acts of terror here? There are about 2.6 million Moslems living in America today, up from 1 million in 2000, according to the 2010 U.S. Religion Census. At least 100, perhaps as many as 300 "Americans" are fighting with IS in Syria and Iraq, "senior U.S. officials" told the Washington Times. About 40 who fought with IS have returned to the U.S., said Rep. Tim Bishop, D-NY. For every one who went overseas to fight, there could be as many as ten IS supporters here at home. Former colleagues still on the job have told him "with no uncertainty" that IS has established "sleeper" cells in the U.S., former CIA Middle East operative Bob Baer told CNN's Jake Tapper.

I joined the Marines during the war in Vietnam. Veterans of that era think it was lost because of the political constraints President Lyndon Johnson imposed on military operations. We lost because LBJ ordered on again, off again pinprick air attacks on nothingburger targets in North Vietnam to "send a message." The message North Vietnamese leaders got was the Americans wouldn't seriously harm them. Half measures in war end badly.  Politicians decide whether to go to war, set strategic objectives. But political constraints on tactics diminish the effectiveness of military action. To send messages, you use Western Union, not the Air Force. We could have won easily, as I show below.  And now, President Zero is being LBJ Redux in Iraq, fighting a half-fast war more to mollify domestic political critics than to deal with the threat ISIS poses.

It's easy to bamboozle the boobs who comprise the base of the Democrat Party, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid evidently thinks. Hilarity broke out on the Senate floor a week ago Monday (9/8) after 25 Republicans joined 54 Democrats in voting to begin debate on a constitutional amendment proposed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM, to overturn the Supreme Court decision which threw out limits on campaign contributions. By voting with Democrats to advance consideration of a Democrat-sponsored measure, Republicans were "stalling" and "obstructing," charged a flummoxed Sen. Reid.  Yes, he actually claimed that. That's because he knows most of his voting base really are idiots.  He's right and here's why.

"Rand Paul, who will likely run for President as a stay-at-home Republican, went to Guatemala recently and performed eye surgeries as a means of displaying his foreign-policy bona fides," wrote New Yorker Editor and Obama hagiographer David Remnick. "Was Bashar al-Assad, Syria's ophthalmologist-in-chief, impressed?" Since the mid 1990s - long before his election to the Senate in 2010 - Sen. Paul has been going to Guatemala to provide free surgical care to poor people in desperate need of it. He's never claimed his charitable work is a foreign policy credential. It's kosher to criticize Sen. Paul's foreign policy views; to suspect expediency motivated the recent shift in them; to consider his inexperience in foreign affairs a handicap. (I have, I do, and I do.) But to attack him for his charitable work is unspeakably vile. Here are more examples of how disgusting Democrats and their toadies can be.

A Republican "wave" has yet to emerge in the midterm elections, which is causing angst in some conservative circles.  This should shake any Republicans out of their complacency, but isn't a cause for alarm. For as they look out to sea, bigfoot analysts Stu Rothenberg and Charlie Cook think they spot it on the horizon rolling in to wash Democrats out of office on Nov. 4. 36 races for governor and all 435 House seats are up, but far and away the most important are the 36 races for the U.S. Senate, where the GOP needs a net gain of six to take control away from Dirty Harry Reid. Analysts concede GOP pickups in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. What's causing the angst is that every other race in which Republicans expected to be competitive is rated a tossup, or the Democrat has a lead. So let's scan the horizon and see just how big this wave could be.

The first big step President Barack Hussein Obama took to implement the new strategy he outlined in his much ballyhooed speech in Cairo in June of 2009 was the war of dubious legality he waged to oust Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He wouldn't fight Islamists, as George W. Bush had done, Mr. Obama said. He came to Cairo "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect." Islamists seized control of Libya's capital, Tripoli, Aug. 25. The descent of Libya into a bloody civil war Islamists are winning is fraught with symbolic significance, because it was here President Barack Hussein Obama opened Pandora's box. In Greek mythology, the god Zeus gave Pandora, the first woman or Greek Eve, a box (a jar in Hesiod's original story), and a warning never to open it. When Pandora cracked it open, out rushed all the evils that plague mankind. In the modern version, Americans in an act of masochistic naïveté gave such a box to Obama in 2008, who promptly opened it - and then to compound the masochism, they insisted he keep it open in 2012.

America is in crisis because the people responsible for governing the country are looting it instead. Obamacare has sent health insurance premiums and budget deficits soaring, clobbered employment, dragged down economic growth. But it's been a bonanza for big health insurance companies, to whom President Obama plans to hand $8 billion more taxpayer dollars. "Renewable" energy firms produce little electricity at exorbitant cost, but reap billions in taxpayer subsidies. Illegals have committed more than 3,000 murders and 8,000 sexual assaults in Texas since 2008, the governor said. More flood across the border because Democrats see them as future Democrat voters; big business sees cheap labor. More than 500 veterans died or were seriously injured last year due to "inappropriate" care at Veterans Administration hospitals, according to internal documents. The Office of Special Counsel is investigating 67 claims of retaliation against whistleblowers at 45 VA facilities in 28 states. Managers altered records to conceal neglect, and to obtain bonuses they hadn't earned. It's hard to find a government agency anywhere that isn't run mostly for the benefit of those who staff it.

Since he began hammering her on illegal immigration, Republican Scott Brown has moved into a statistical tie with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, according to the WMUR Granite State poll Aug. 22. Sen. Shaheen now leads, 46-44. In July she'd led, 50 to 38. But if President Obama issues an executive order to grant legal status to millions more illegal immigrants, it isn't just the WMUR poll that signals doom for Sen. Shaheen and many other Dems running this year. Mr. Obama plans to issue another executive order to grant legal status to 5 million more illegals, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill, said he was told by White House aides. That'll make most Americans seriously unhappy.  Unhappiest of all will be any and all Dems trying to get elected on November 4.  Is Mr. Obama about to throw the entire Democrat Party under his bus?

The grotesque terrorists of the Islamic State or ISIS beheaded American journalist James Foley last Wednesday (8/20). (The Islamic State) has no place in the 21st Century," Mr. Obama said in response, before he went back to playing golf.   "People like (the Islamic State) ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy." That may be so, said the editors of the Washington Post, who endorsed Mr. Obama in 2008 and 2012. But "history provides too many examples of destroyers who hold power for long stretches of time and do not lose it until they are dislodged by ‘builders' who are finally roused to action." "No American president can survive if he lets Americans be beheaded on international television with impunity," said MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews, who once got "tingles" when Mr. Obama spoke. "He has to strike back." If the journalists belatedly beginning to realize there's no there there regarding Mr. Obama had been paying attention back when it mattered, we'd have been spared a lot of pain. Most of our pain may be yet to come. ISIS vows to attack the United States. They're already here.

"We love him for the enemies he has made," said Edward S. Bragg in his speech seconding the nomination of New York Gov. Grover Cleveland to be the Democrat candidate for president in 1884. Republicans are saying that about Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He's not the first Republican to be victimized by Democrat efforts to criminalize policy differences. But he could be the last. Democrats make bogus criminal charges against Republicans to hurt them with voters who read only the headline "so and so was indicted." But there must be some ambiguity for "lawfare" to work, and the news media must be complicit. Yet so flimsy are the charges against Gov. Perry that even liberals described them as "B.S.," "fishy," "sketchy," "far-fetched," "unbelievably ridiculous," the "stupidest thing I've seen in my entire career." Stupid enough to be denounced by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Backfire City.

The Obamas and the Clintons detest each other, insiders say. Which isn't surprising. Aside from Bill - who's a scoundrel, but an affable one - they aren't very likeable. Even if Barack Hussein Obama were as swell a guy as Barack Hussein Obama thinks he is, he snatched from Hillary the prize she's lusted for most of her life. A better person than she is would harbor some resentment. So when Hillary and Barack "hugged it out" at a party in Martha's Vineyard a few days after she'd criticized his conduct of foreign policy in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine, a new world record for a public display of insincerity was set. Hillary has just begun to hammer Barack, thinks New York Post columnist John Podhoretz. He'll get more unpopular as the tragic consequences of his policies pile up, so she thinks she must run  "as his sadder but wiser replacement - the one who saw it go wrong." Journalists shielding the president now will join the critics after the midterm elections. Preserving the viability of the next Democrat candidate for president will matter more then than whitewashing the record of this one.https://forums.tothepointnews.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=76860&p=78304#p78304

U.S. air strikes have permitted thousands of Yazidi refugees surrounded by the brutal terrorists of the Islamic State (previously known as ISIS or ISIL) to flee, the Pentagon announced late last night (8/13). But military experts say the limited military actions President Barack Hussein Obama has authorized won't stop the relentless advance of IS, which in the last two weeks has seized from the Kurds many towns, two oilfields, the Mosul dam. IS controls "a volume of resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations," said Janine Davidson of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr.  Obama likened the IS terrorists to a "jayvee team" in an interview in January. He blames his Mother of All Miscalculations on bad intelligence. That's not true, said the head of the DIA. Underestimating IS was a policy failure, not an intelligence failure, said former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell. "The intelligence community has been trying to warn him about this for well over a year - about the blitzkrieg in Iraq for months - and the White House just shut down," said retired Army LtCol. Ralph Peters, a former intelligence officer. We may not be interested in war, but war may be interested in us. IS says it's planning attacks in America. IS can hurt us much more than al Qaida ever could, says Iraq war vet David French.  The IS is a metastasizing cancer for which Mr. Obama bears considerable responsibility.

I can't imagine how a father could contemplate killing his ten year old daughter because a mullah had raped her in a mosque, but I know it is evil. It is evil, too, to behead or bury alive helpless people because they are of a different faith; to blow up little girls because they went to school. But many prominent liberals have criticized Islamists only when making false and invidious comparisons between them and Christians, or Republicans. Liberals tend to conflate Islamists with Moslems generally, which is like conflating Germans with Nazis, Italians with the Mafia. It's as puzzling as it is appalling so many liberals - who trumpet their support for women's rights and gay rights - are unable or unwilling to distinguish between the majority and the Islamists. "Islamist" is a racist term, according to "media critic" Kay Sokolowski. Which is preposterous, because Islam is a religion with adherents in virtually every ethnic group. Ignorance goes a long way toward explaining why liberals believe such nonsense. But ignorance alone can't explain the willful blindness of so many to the evil proudly displayed by ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas and other Islamist groups.

The United States is once again at war in Iraq - sort of. President Barack Obama authorized last night humanitarian air drops to the up to 40,000 Yazidi refugees trapped on Mt. Sinjar, and "limited" air strikes on the ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) terrorists who want to exterminate them. The belated American intervention comes at the 11th hour for Iraq, where it is rapidly approaching midnight. It remains to be seen whether the "narrow," defensive, heavily conditioned air strikes the president approved will be enough to avert catastrophe, or if they'll just make a terrible situation worse.  * * * * In Afghanistan Tuesday, Army Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was killed and 15 others wounded by an Afghan soldier turned terrorist. Gen. Greene was the highest-ranking American service member to be killed since the war on terror began, the 2,340th to die in Afghanistan. More than 73 percent have died since Barack Obama became president. * * * * Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kan, and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, won their primaries this week, giving conservative insurgents bupkes for the year in their challenges to incumbent GOP senators. The one clear cut victory for the Tea Party this week came in Michigan, where young libertarian Rep. Justin Amash turned back handily a very well funded, very nasty campaign to oust him.  * * * * The Santa Barbara Masters, the water polo team on which Joel Wade plays, won the gold medal in the 55 and older category in the World Championships in Montreal last week. * * * * The Obamunists may be having second thoughts about issuing new executive orders to gut what little remains of enforcement of immigration law and protection of our southern border.

It was 100 years ago this week that the "Guns of August" sounded at the beginning of what almost certainly was the most pointless war in the history of humankind. And until World War II, of which it was the primary cause, the "Great War," as it was known at the time, was the bloodiest in history. About 9 million soldiers and 7 million civilians were killed between Aug. 4, 1914 and Nov. 8, 1918. The world in August, 1914 was very different from the one we live in. There were just 62 sovereign states  then, compared to 196 today. Most of Africa and Asia were divided up among European empires, of which the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian were ruled by kings. Virtually all of the Middle East was ruled by a Turkish caliph in Istanbul. Nearly all of our geopolitical troubles today stem from the Great War and its immediate aftermath. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (1859-1941) was the grandson of Queen Victoria (1819-1901), first cousin to King George V, second cousin to Czar Nicholas II of Russia (1868-1918), first cousin to his wife, Czarina Alix of Hesse. More of German than of Russian descent, Czar Nicholas was also a first cousin of King George V, and of the kings of Norway and Greece. Their relationships didn't prevent these monarchs from blundering into a war none of them wanted, or from continuing it to the ruin of their countries after the expectations each had for a quick victory were dashed.

The children streaming across our border are refugees fleeing violence in their home countries, Democrats say. That isn't true. The primary reason they came to the U.S. was because they think they'll be allowed to stay, said 219 of 230 illegal immigrant children and adult family members interviewed by the Border Patrol in May, according to a report by the El Paso Intelligence Center. Illegals have said the same to journalists who've interviewed them. Nearly 90 percent of unaccompanied minors stopped at the border last year and this are teenagers, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicates.In the Rio Grande Valley, adults and children crossing as part of a family unit outnumber "unaccompanied minor children" by nearly five to one. About 25 percent of illegals apprehended in Texas, 20 percent in Arizona have criminal records in their home countries, local authorities say. Some of the "children" sport tattoos indicating membership in MS-13, the vicious Salvadoran street gang.

Jack Wheeler is on a boat to Russia, so I'm filling in for him on the HFR on what's been a truly eventful week. If a documentary were made about John Kerry's performance as Secretary of State, it ought to be entitled: "The Putz." In an administration in which the most common characteristics of senior officials are arrogance and incompetence, Kerry sticks out. It isn't often we can be grateful our president and his secretary of state are international laughingstocks, but in this instance we can. Some suspect Kerry was made secretary of state in order to make Hillary Clinton's performance seem better. Here, here and here are reminders it wasn't. * * * * Democrats were gleeful last night after House Republicans failed to pass a bill to address the border crisis. But their joy was short-lived. * * * * Zero's downsizing of the military leaves America too weak to counter rising global threats, said an independent panel appointed by DoD and Congress. * * * * If you weren't fretting about the Ebola virus before, you will be after reading this. * * * * House and Senate negotiators have agreed on a VA "reform" bill that does a little to relieve the plight of veterans; more to reward the bureaucrats who've neglected and abused them * * * * New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo could be in really big trouble. With the law, not the voters. Watergate type trouble, thinks the very left wing Nation magazine. * * * * The administration's argument Congress intended for those who sign up for Obamacare on the federal exchange should get subsidies too has been torpedoed by a video of remarks made in January of 2012 by one of Obamacare's leading architects.

Starvation has claimed the lives of 128 people - 18 of them children or babies - in the Palestinian refugee camp since the conflict began. But the Yarmouk camp is in Syria, where images of atrocities go viral only when misrepresented as coming from Gaza, so the world has paid little attention to their suffering. "My Twitter and Facebook feeds would have me believe that the only noteworthy military conflict in the world today is that between Israel and Hamas," said Jonathan Messing of the Stanford Business School. "Either many of you care about war only when it involves a Jew holding a gun, or you are woefully unaware of what else is going on in the world," Mr. Messing said. At the time he wrote, about 170,000 had died in ongoing violence in Syria; 600 in Gaza. "It must be so awkward having to check whether the dead child is from Gaza or Syria before deciding whether to be morally outraged," tweeted Marc Lynch, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University. The sequence of events triggered by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers reminds Clarice Feldman that "Providence isn't just a city in Rhode Island."

CNN's Drew Griffin, whose reporting on secret waiting lists at the medical center in Phoenix led to the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, concluded that VA dysfunction and corruption are so widespread and deeply ingrained that just making a change at the top won't change much.   "I don't know how you fix this...other than I would throw out every senior manager in the VA," Mr. Griffin told CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin June 23. When he made that remark, the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency set up to protect whistleblowers, was investigating 10 cases where VA employees said they were punished after reporting abuses to management. OSC now is investigating 67 charges of retaliation at 45 VA facilities in 28 states, its chief told the House Veterans Affairs Committee July 12. After she told Congress data was being falsified to hide long delays and errors in processing veterans' claims, she was retaliated against, Kristen Ruell, a quality review specialist in Philadelphia, told the House Veterans Affairs Committee July 14. "The VA's problems are the result of morally bankrupt managers that through time and grade have moved up into powerful positions where they have the power to, and continue to, ruin people's lives," Ms. Ruell said.

"The border is secure," say both the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as thousands of illegal aliens swarm across it.   Barack Hussein Obama is "absolutely" the most transparent president in history, claims White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, as the administration was flying illegals to secret locations without informing the governors of the states or the mayors of the communities in which they would be housed. As Syria, Iraq and Libya all fall into chaos; Russians blow commercial airliners out of the sky in Ukraine; full war breaks out between Israel and Hamas; Egypt and Saudi Arabia turn away from the U.S.; and intelligence officials warn al Qaida is stronger than ever, Press Secretary Earnest said President Obama has "substantially improved the tranquility of the global community."  We understand why politicians stretch, trim, hedge, massage or ignore the truth when it's difficult for us to learn it. But why do they lie so blatantly when the truth is smacking us in the face? Do they think we're so stupid we'll believe them, rather than our lying eyes? Evidently, many of us are. The Reason Foundation completed recently a survey of "Millennials" (18 to 29 year olds).

Political change can be forced through orchestrated crises, wrote Richard Cloward, a Columbia University sociology professor, and Frances Fox Piven, then his research assistant, in May of 1966 in an article in The Nation magazine entitled: "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty." Only about half the Americans technically eligible for benefits were on welfare rolls, they noted. If "cadres of aggressive organizers," who "create a climate of militancy" through threats of violence, could sign up everyone who was eligible, the welfare bureaucracy would be overwhelmed, would collapse, producing political and economic chaos. To restore order, political leaders would be forced to provide everyone with a guaranteed annual income, they predicted. The Nation sold 30,000 reprints. The "Cloward-Piven strategy" was born.  And under Zero, it's being born anew.

"Inconsistencies" have been found in the data supplied by 2.9 million of the 5.45 million people (53 percent) who enrolled in Obamacare via Healthcare.gov, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services reported in June. About 1.3 million concerned whether the applicant was a U.S. citizen, a million more whether the applicant qualified for a subsidy. About 2.6 million (89 percent) were unresolved as of the May 27. The IG report covers only applicants through Feb. 23, doesn't cover the 2.57 million (47 percent) who enrolled on state exchanges. A chart presented to the House Energy and Commerce Committee by SERCO, a contractor which handles Obamacare paperwork, showed 4.099 million "inconsistencies." It will be many months, if ever, before these can be resolved, because HHS launched Healthcare.gov without establishing a system to verify eligibility, SERCO said. People who got subsidies to which they weren't entitled will have to repay them. Up to a million could get a nasty surprise at tax time next year.  This is only one of a multitude of reasons why Obamacare -- better named Zerocare -- is in an irreversible death spiral.

Children and teenagers chiefly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have been crossing into Texas at a rate of 35,000 a month, the Los Angeles Times reported in June. About 240,000 illegals - 52,000  unaccompanied minors - have crossed into the Rio Grande Valley in recent months. Up to 300,000 more are on their way, WOAI Radio in San Antonio reported Monday (7/7). Many come with infectious diseases such as scabies and tuberculosis, which appear to be spreading into the local population. Doctors and nurses caring for illegal alien children at Lackland AFB in San Antonio have been threatened with arrest if they divulge information about contagion. The refugee camp is like "a giant emergency room," said a psychiatric counselor who talked to Fox News despite the threat.  "We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness," said a nurse, who told Fox News she was "horrified" by what she saw. The administration knew they were coming, did nothing to stop them, prepared inadequately for their arrival. The border crisis is President Obama's "Katrina moment," said USA Today reporter Susan Page.  I have a modest proposal on how to get Zero to put an end to this. 

At the start of his political career, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, was a man of modest means. After a lifetime in "public service," he has a net worth of up to $12 million. Sen. Reid often sponsors legislation that benefits firms represented by lobbyist sons Rory and Key, said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute. In just four years between 1998 and 2002, firms connected to the Reid family earned more than $2 million "from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington," the Los Angeles Times reported. Corruption in Washington is driven more by extortion than bribery, Mr. Schweizer said. Bills have been introduced, "crises" manufactured primarily to extort contributions. "We need to somehow break the back of the ability of politicians to leverage their position to extract donations," Mr. Schweizer told CNN.  Yes, indeed, it's time to put an end to Washington's Oligarchy of Corruption.

There was an "audible gasp" from spectators when Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Ways & Means Committee the hard drive on Lois Lerner's computer had been destroyed. The IRS broke the law when it targeted conservative groups; broke it again when it leaked confidential tax information; broke it a third time when it destroyed evidence. Mr. Koskinen wouldn't apologize for the lost emails; for not informing Congress for months afterward; for giving misleading testimony in March. He was "arrogant," did "a terrible job," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. He is "as smug and imperious as any bureaucrat you will meet," said the New York Post. "It's all there - the arrogance, the wealth, the air of privilege," said Rosslyn Smith, who blogs at the American Thinker. "He has the makings of a great Bond villain." The federal bureaucracy has a face.  And it's really repulsive.  How are we going to wipe the smug smile off it?

What aggravates me most about my fellow conservatives is how few are willing to let a constitutional crisis get in the way of promoting their hobby horses, or taking potshots at other conservatives with whom they have petty grievances. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, announced plans last Wednesday (6/25) to sue the president, on behalf of the House of Representatives, for "failing to faithfully execute the laws." The idea for the suit originated with David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer, and Elizabeth Price Foley, who teaches constitutional law at Florida International University. Conservative columnist George Will likes it. The Speaker has a strong case, says Jonathan Turley, a liberal who teaches constitutional law at George Washington University. Yet the Boehner suit is "feckless" and "frivolous," says Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the ringleader of the first World Trade Center bombing. Impeachment is the only solution," he said. Mr. McCarthy, you see, is promoting a book, "Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment."  Would he rather have people buy his book than see Mr. Boehner succeed?