I have said repeatedly that the IRS scandal is the most dangerous scandal in U.S. history for one simple reason: in the past, when the IRS had been abused for political reasons, it was always elites vs. elites. That is, it was the Kennedys using the IRS as a political weapon against Richard Nixon, or Lyndon Johnson using it the same way against Nixon, or Nixon’s mere suggestion of using it to go after a certain political opponent (which he never did, by the way, and yet it was enough for the Democrats to make it the second Article of Impeachment against him). It had always been elites using the IRS as a political chainsaw against other elites whom they perceived as political enemies.

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This is your time-honored image of a Parisian dinner party: Elegantly clad guests carrying on a sparkling conversation.

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The kids from Brooklyn were unquestionably the greatest husband and wife songwriting team in American history, and he had top billing. Yet when Gerry Goffin, first husband and lyricist for Carole King, died recently, the Washington Post noted, “King became a household name as a solo star while Mr. Goffin receded into the background.” It was part of his personal tragedy.

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Viewing today’s news through the prism of Jewish history, things aren’t looking so good.
For instance, what is likely the biggest thing going on in Israel right now — the fact that someone (presumably Hamas) has kidnapped three kids and the army is out in force searching for them in the Palestinian-occupied areas — did not make it onto the agenda for a conversation Wednesday between President Barack Obama and outgoing Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Despite the U.S. President and first lady each having weighed in on the unconscionable abduction of some 200 school girls, some weeks ago by some other Islamist thugs in Nigeria, the silence on the missing Jewish boys, one of whom is American, is conspicuous by in absence.
So, the whole state of Israel and Jews worldwide are praying for these boys’ safe return even as the Boko Haram barbarians reportedly kidnapped some 90 more Nigerian children, some as young as 3. This is what the world is dealing with — a mindset in which kidnapping children is a cause for celebration.
An Associated Press story notes that Obama and Peres discussed Iraq, Iran and Mideast peace, but not a word about the missing teens.
Meanwhile, even as Jews are reportedly fleeing France in droves, that country’s true colors came shining through on Wednesday with an A.P. report that government officials are “warning companies trading with Israeli settlers in the West Bank of the legal risks stemming from doing business in the settlements that it says are ‘illegal under international law.’”
A boycott no less odious than the ones with which the Nazis began their reign of anti-Semitic terror or the one the Presbyterian Church recently adopted hoping, obviously, to spark a similar episode. Why else would they follow the Nazi path?
A statement posted on the French foreign ministry website this week also urges anyone considering doing business in the settlements — areas that would be described as neighborhoods anywhere else — to “obtain appropriate legal advice before proceeding,” according to the story.
And, even as Francestan makes clear its position vis-a-vis Israel and the Jews, and the country careens toward Judenfree-ness, the Arab/Muslim world toward which it’s tilting also made its position clear, also on Wednesday, when A.P. reported an attack near Iran’s western border with Iraq killed three Iranian border guards. Also Wednesday, four near-simultaneous explosions went off in subway stations and outside a court building in Cairo, wounding three people and an explosion blamed on Islamic extremists rocked a shopping mall in Nigeria’s capital, killing at least 21, A.P. reported.
At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Mideast nations against “taking new military action in Iraq that might heighten sectarian divisions, after Syria launched airstrikes across the border and Iran flew surveillance drones over the neighboring country,” A.P. reported.
A senior Iraqi military official confirmed that Syrian warplanes bombed militants’ positions and that Iraq’s other neighbors — “Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — were all bolstering flights just inside their airspace to monitor the situation.”
This comes just days after fire from Syria killed an Israeli Arab teenager inside Israel and Israel responded with tank shells and airstrikes.
American officials said the more resent strikes appeared to be the work of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, A.P. reports, saying the target is believed to be this uber-nuts Islamist group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is trying to “carve out a purist Islamic enclave across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border,” which is clearly what the world needs now (like a hole in the head).
Meanwhile, “Afghan security forces fought back against a fierce Taliban onslaught by about 800 militants in a key southern province Wednesday as clashes that have killed dozens of people, including at least 35 civilians, stretched into a fourth day,” and “a suicide bomber blew himself up in his room at a Beirut hotel Wednesday as Lebanese security forces raided the premises,…” A.P. reported.
Does anyone else detect a pattern, here?
The blood-thirsty insanity is not limited to the Arab world and the parts of Europe in transition into Muslim countries.
A.P. also reports that the wife of Greece’s far-right leader was placed under house arrest pending trial for allegedly running a criminal organization.
This Greek lawmaker and her husband are part of a scary shift to the Nazi-like right that country appears to be taking.
Their “Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn party” — once marginal — is “now Greece’s third most popular.”
The story doesn’t say this, but my guess this is another example of humanity’s age-old progression from terrible financial crises to searching for someone to blame, to finding a convenient scapegoat in “the Jews,” even if no actual Jewish people are living anywhere near by.
By my count that’s a lot of extra weight on the Nazi/Islamo-Fascist side of the international ledger.
My passport is current; is yours?

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I almost feel sorry for the actor Gary Oldman, who came out in a Playboy interview in defense of Mel Gibson and Alex Baldwin for making remarks that offended millions of people.

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Mr. President: You authorized and led a military operation in Libya that led to the overthrow and death of that country’s leader, Moammar Qaddafi, based on the possibility of a murderous rampage by Qaddafi’s crew and a resulting humanitarian crisis…that never materialized. And yet, you chose not to act when the Iranian government killed scores of its own people in 2009 or when the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad began killing scores of his own people, in some cases with chemical weapons, which you had described as a “red line” which, if crossed, would prompt U.S. action. You did nothing. Those slaughters and humanitarian disasters are very real, unlike the one Qaddafi never launched—and you didn’t lift a finger.

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As Israeli soldiers desperately search Hebron for the three Jewish teenage boys assumed kidnapped by terrorists, Palestinians protested after weekly Muslim prayers, using the popular new three-finger gesture — one for each missing teen — “in a sign of their support for the abduction,” according to the Associated Press.

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Palestinian barbarians have kidnapped an American boy and President Obama is making every American an accomplice.

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I’ve heard so many people–on the left and the right—say that Obama’s goal has been to “end” the wars in which the United States has been engaged since the Islamic terror attacks against us on September 11, 2001. I think they believe that that is a sensible use of the word “end.” But a one-sided end is…surrender. The enemy gets a vote as to whether a war has “ended.” They get a veto over that concept. And unless and until they are thoroughly vanquished, the war—from their side—is not over. When they vote to continue the war, and we vote to “end” it, it’s a surrender.

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Bottom line? The threat is getting worse.

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Hillary Clinton, bathing in the glow of her new “memoir,” told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she and Bill were “dead broke” upon leaving the White House. It’s funny: the evil 1% have a different definition of “dead broke” than the rest of us.

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The most effective indicator of the wrongness of the Bowe Bergdahl release is the collision of our natural emotional instincts with the deeply unsettling facts.

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A couple of interesting new wrinkles in the Islamists’ War Against the World this week.

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