ActRight

Failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lamented that the demise of traditional media is empowering Republican “insurgents” and preventing establishment Republicans from compromising more with Democrats.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National, stands trial in Lyon for likening Muslim prayers in French streets to a foreign "occupation" but prosecutor calls for acquittal, citing "freedom of expression".

One of two things is true: either Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) doesn’t want the job of Speaker of the House, or he’s got a rather inflated opinion of himself.

Paul Ryan's conditional run for speaker fell flat with at least one key conservative Tuesday night, who said his choice is still Rep. Daniel Webster, a member who is pledging to end the top down leadership approach. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., head of the House Tea Party Caucus, called Ryan's conditions for becoming the next speaker entirely unreasonable. Those conditions include a request that the House eliminate a rule that allows a member to seek a vote to oust the speaker. That provision is part of the original rules of the House, authored by Thomas Jefferson. No other speaker I know of would ever have as much power as Paul Ryan asked for himself, Huelskamp said following a meeting among Republican lawmakers. Is he serious? Ryan outlined his conditions in the meeting but took no questions, Huelskamp said. Webster, who is now the only other official candidate for speaker, was not allowed time to address the conference.

RUSH: Some people think Cruz would be the natural heir to the Trump constituency if Trump ever got out.

Vice President Joe Biden announced he will not pursue a third run at the presidency on Wednesday afternoon from the White House Rose Garden with his wife Dr. Jill Biden and President Barack Obama by his side.

The most interesting thing about Henry Kissinger's analysis and rescue plan for American foreign policy, A Path Out of the Middle East Collapse, is the how little hope and optimism it excited.  Few appear to regard the article's recommendations as feasible, and it has been received with the passivity air of a beaten boxer hoping only for a rematch.This fatalism is especially depressing in the light of Kissinger's diagnosis that Obama has basically unwound every foreign policy achievement of the last 40 years.   His considered belief that an outside chance of survival of the American position is still possible have struck not a spark.  The atmosphere is as funereal as the locker room of a team down 40 points at halftime after the failed pep talk of a former winning coach that has only served to remind the players of what an invidious contrast there is to their present one.The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity. Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the region.That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) as an unrelenting foe of established world order. It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law.Kissinger noted that Obama has achieved something truly remarkable. 'The U.S. is now opposed to, or at odds in some way or another with, all parties in the region'.  That is actually the good news.  The bad news is that unless the administration turns things around it will become much worse. 'As competing regional powers strive for comparable threshold capacity, the nonproliferation regime in the Middle East may crumble. If nuclear weapons become established, a catastrophic outcome is nearly inevitable.'A glimpse out of that deep hole alone should ignite a kind of desperate enthusiasm.  Instead of which the idea of 'nearly inevitable' is driving people to hunker down hoping survive, on the chance that luck may change by and by.  What other course is left to America's hapless Syrian rebels, now reeling and taking heavy casualties under Russian air attack?  The president, who has singularly failed to draw a Red Line around his enemies, has actually drawn one around himself, as Ken Dilanian of the AP reports in 'US draws a line on protecting CIA-backed rebels in Syria'.WASHINGTON (AP) — The Russian military intervention to prop up Syria's government has brought new scrutiny of the CIA's secret support to Syrian rebels fighting Bashar Assad. But how far is the U.S. willing to go to empower its proxies to take on Vladimir Putin's allies?The answer seems to be: Not very far. ...U.S. officials and outside experts say the Obama administration is unlikely to protect CIA-backed rebels from Russian air strikes — by providing them with surface-to-air missiles, for example — for fear they could fall into the wrong hands and be used against passenger jets in a terrorist attack. There is also little appetite in the White House for a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone in Syria, officials say.And just to make sure everybody understands policy CNN says 'U.S. pilots told not to react to aggressive Russian jets in Syria'  With leadership like that it's probably best not to get too excited about any recovery of US stature.For the moment it's a waiting game -- at least until January, 2017. The New York Times says, 'the Army general in charge of the Pentagon’s failed $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels is leaving his job in the next few weeks, but is likely to be promoted and assigned a senior counterterrorism position here, American officials said on Monday.' Bloomberg adds:Nagata was not only the head of the Syrian program, which Congress voted to finance last September to the tune of $500 million at Obama's request, but the face of it as well. He was the one who explained it Congress, foreign governments and the Syrian opposition. Congressional leaders were shocked to learn of his exit.“I don’t recall a time when a mission was entrusted to a senior officer, that that officer didn’t see that mission through to completion. We need to know why this change is taking place,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain told me Tuesday. “Whoever is replacing him will take time to get up to speed on a process that has already been significantly delayed.”...For many in Congress, the general's departure is one more sign that the administration is not serious about a program it lobbied so hard for only a few months ago. “The immediate loss is that Nagata commands a tremendous amount of respect on the Hill, within the government, and with the Syrians,” said Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It’s hard to have someone leaving when this is just getting off the ground.”Tabler also pointed out that Nagata the latest in a string of senior U.S. military and diplomatic officials working on Syria to leave the government recently. These include Daniel Rubinstein, the State Department’s special envoy for Syria, who will soon be appointed the next ambassador to Tunisia. “They just don’t see the president doing much, so people tend to do that in a bureaucracy, they abandon ship,” Tabler said.Lots of people have got better things to do than run their heads against a brick wall. Kissinger's advice is useless because there's no one at the White House to take it. As Michael Crowley noted in Politico the staff is outvoted by the surpassingly brilliant incumbent.  'Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Syria is creating new rifts inside an exhausted and in some cases demoralized Obama national security team.'Sources familiar with administration deliberations said that Obama’s West Wing inner circle serves as a brick wall against dissenting views. ...Obama’s refusal to take firmer action against Moscow has increasingly isolated several of his administration’s Russia specialists, who almost uniformly take a harder line toward Putin than does the president himself. They include Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs; Celeste Wallander, the National Security Council’s senior director for Russia and Eurasia; and Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. Farkas’ recent announcement that she will exit the Obama administration this fall raised eyebrows among officials aware of her frustration that Obama hasn’t responded more forcefully to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his support for pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east. ...Obama did face a public challenge in the form of an interview on CBS' “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, in which the president grew visibly annoyed as interviewer Steve Kroft pressed him on the modest results of his campaign against the Islamic State and on whether Putin was successfully “challenging your leadership.”Standing his ground, Obama repeated his argument that it would be a mistake to overreact to Putin, who he says is acting out of weakness, and that the Syria morass defies the kind of “silver bullet” solution sought by his critics.American strategy, as formulated by president Obama, is as fixed as a pair of feet in concrete buckets. The most depressing thing about Dr. Kissinger's pep talk is it assumes that the taxi's going somewhere else besides the East River.Follow Wretchard on TwitterRecently purchased by readers:Friend & Foe, When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both Hardcover by Adam Galinsky (Author), Maurice SchweitzerFrom Dawn to Decadence, 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1st Edition by Jacques BarzunThe Clintons' War on Women, by Roger Stone, Robert MorrowMonetary Central Planning and the State Kindle Edition by Richard EbelingPossibly worth buying:Great Myths of the Great Depression, Kindle Edition by Lawrence W. ReedCrippled America, How to Make America Great Again Hardcover by Donald J. TrumpSee Me, Hardcover by Nicholas Sparks'A Disgrace to the Profession', Kindle Edition by Mark SteynThe Complete Book of the SR-71 Blackbird, Hardcover by Richard Graham, The Story of U.S. Marine Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan Kindle Edition by Michael GolembeskyTreason By The Book, Traitors, Conspirators and Guardians of an Emperor Kindle Edition by Jonathan SpenceDid you know that you can purchase some of these books and pamphlets by Richard Fernandez and share them with you friends? They will receive a link in their email and it will automatically give them access to a Kindle reader on their smartphone, computer or even as a web-readable document.The War of the Words for $3.99, Understanding the crisis of the early 21st century in terms of information corruption in the financial, security and political spheresRebranding Christianity for $3.99, or why the truth shall make you freeThe Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99, reflections on terrorism and the nuclear ageStorming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99, why government should get smallNo Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99. Fiction. A flight into peril, flashbacks to underground action.Storm Over the South China Sea $0.99, how China is restarting history in the PacificTip Jar or Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the Belmont Club

"Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to reporters: ‘I'm a Paul Ryan fan.’ Says he ‘appears to be’ someone ‘who could be reasonable.’”

Some parents want to know which teachers have concealed weapons permits and may have guns in class. But Utah law prohibits districts from asking who has a permit.

Alastair Campbell, Prime Minister Tony Blair's former Chief of Staff, has give his verdict on Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.

Safe-spacers pressure Williams College group to cancel Suzanne Venker

A memo on bypassing restrictions on work visas.

The Department of Homeland Security is readying a plan to expand a program that pays U.S. employers to hire foreign STEM students taught in America, a move that could end up punishing American college grads and even the elderly, according to an immigration think tank. In pushing to allow more foreign students into the so-called optional practical training program, DHS said that it will help businesses and colleges by keeping those foreign students in the U.S. following their American-taught science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, curriculum. But the Center for Immigration Studies said it will punish American STEM students competing for those same jobs. And, they added, in adjusting how the foreign students are categorized as employees, they get out of paying payroll taxes used to help fund programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Teenage student, who was arrested in Texas after taking a homemade clock to school, accepts scholarship offer in Doha.

Showdown.

FacebookTwitterGoogleEmailMany politicians like to mince words, but Netanyahu does not and has apparently caused an uproar by linking the Palestinians to the Holocaust. Netanyahu told the 37th Worl…

Report: George W. Bush Says Ted Cruz 'Hijacked' the GOP, Admits He Would Be 'Formidable' Competition to Jeb

  Jeb Was Doomed From The Start When the history of the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination is written, it will be clear that the candidacy of Jeb Bush never had a chance. He was doomed from the start. About a year ago the Bush mach

In a democracy, citizens must be able to criticize their leaders. It's a reason America's founders put free speech in the Bill of Rights. I assumed that right is safe in the United States. So I was shocked to learn what happened in Wisconsin.

Sen. Ted Cruz: Democrats Responsible For Murders If They Block 'Sanctuary Cities' Bill

Neurotically ignoring the fact that Donald Trump’s position on immigration has catapulted him to the lead for the Republican presidential nomination, the media diminish his soaring poll numbers with a scrolling series of rationalizations. 

FacebookTwitterGoogleEmailMark Levin opened his show tonight explaining how the establishment types always come out and trash candidates like Ted Cruz who believe in fighting to win and always supp…

We haven’t heard much from President George W. Bush during the past seven years. After leaving office with approval numbers in the high 20s, he made a conscious decision to keep a respectful distance from Washington, to refrain from becoming the Pundit-in-Chief criticizing his successor’s every move. ?He deserves my silence,? Bush said of the newly elected Barack Obama. ?I think it is essential that he be helped in office.? Indeed, when the left was going wild in Obama’s first term, all the Bushes went mum. George W. was suddenly applauded by elites in both parties as a gallant statesman when he announced that he wouldn’t criticize his successor. Thankfully, grassroots Republicans didn’t agree. And when the Tea Party upstarts helped the Republican Party roar back in the 2010 midterms, the Bushes knew they were revolting not only against Obama, but against Bushism. President Bush broke his self-imposed silence in January 2011, in a speech at Southern Methodist University. The only problem was, he wasn’t attacking Obama, but conservatives. Addressing the immigration debate, he said: “(I)f you study history, there are some ?isms? that occasionally pop up ? One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism.” These were potent insults directed at millions of hard-working patriots who helped elect him twice to the White House. Elites in both parties gleefully gobbled it up. Now, with his younger brother Jeb’s presidential campaign sputtering, George W. is officially silent no more. Now, with his younger brother Jeb’s presidential campaign sputtering, George W.

Wow, look what the State Department just found -- only two days before Hillary Clinton's scheduled testimony!

Jim Webb has dropped out of the primary race, leaving a field of candidates so extreme that none could have gotten the Democratic nomination as recently as 2000.