The Front Page Cover

 The Front Page Cover 
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
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Featuring:
Can we Stay Honest in a Dishonest World?
Rabbi Yonason Goldson
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"Rise up together as one voice"
"Be careful where you stand"
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 CLASS CLASH: HILLY TRIES TO HEAD OFF WALKER 
Hilly Clinton gave a speech today calling for new regulations and hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending to fight income inequality. The topic was a reaction to the rise of Bernie Sanders, whose socialist platform is catching fire among Democratic activists.
           But the timing is about someone else: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
           Walker, finally having birthed a budget in Wisconsin, is making his candidacy officially-official today with a rally in Waukesha. That location is no accident and neither is the fact that Walker’s announcement video starts with him in dungarees and a Harley t-shirt.
          The message is that Walker is a middle-class guy with a blue collar background. Much as Clinton’s husband endlessly touted his roots in Hope, Ark., Walker is running as the man from Waukesha. Maybe not so poetic, but not every top-tier presidential candidate gets a shout-out on the sign at the McDonalds where they used to work. (Plus, Bubba really grew up in Hot Springs…)
          As Clinton sizes up the Republicans who mean trouble in the general election, she has to account for the name identification and enormous fundraising of Jeb Bush, the generational and historical appeal of Marco Rubio and now, the middle-class message of Scott Walker, the Kohl’s candidate.
          Clinton is looking to bracket Walker’s rollout with an appeal to the frustrations of workers left behind by the changing economy: a federal surge aimed at shoring up the battered middle class. Walker, not surprisingly, is expected to attack Washington elitism and centralization of power.
          Policy particulars do matter, especially as Walker tries to up his credibility quotient with a skeptical GOP intelligentsia. And Walker faces a double challenge as he tries to win the esteem (or at least acceptance) of the GOP elite: that he is ever more open to claims from other conservatives that he is flip-floppish. Advisers dropping blind quotes to National Journal about prospective pivoting to the center will be great fodder for those who call Walker inconstant. It’s not quite “Etch-a-sketch” but it reflects the same kind of lunk-headedness on the part of process-obsessed advisers.
          Biography and attitude, though, generally matter more in politics. Walker’s electability argument is that he as an outside Washington, blue-collar guy can best take on a Democratic candidate seen by many voters as of Washington and-out-of-touch.
          But to do that, he will have to face down a full field of Republicans, many whom have little to lose in their attacks on him. 
 -Fox News  
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 READY TO TAKE FIVE? 
Can the GOP keep the Senate? While most of the talking heads are talking about the presidential race, the contest for control of the Senate is heating up. And we want you to have your say. Democrats need to flip five seats from red to blue (and avoid losses on their own turf) to retake the Senate after the 2014 wave election swept the blue team into the minority. But which ones are the most vulnerable?
          There are 13 Republican seats up for grabs, but several, like the one from bright-red Louisiana look like a long shot for Democrats. Others, like the one from President nObama’s home state of Illinois, look like low-hanging fruit for the minority party. But for the ones in between, it’s hard to tell, especially so early in the cycle.
          That’s why we’re asking for your help.
          Pick the five Republican-held seats you think are the most vulnerable to a Democratic takeover and send them to FOXNEWSFIRST@FOXNEWS.COM – we’ll tally the votes and report back to you this Thursday and every week thereafter. Please send along any analysis you’ve and we will share the best bits with the whole class.
          To get you going, we have an expert opinion from Lara Brown, director of the Political Management program at George Washington University. She joins Chris Stirewalt to deliver her assessment of the five seats are most likely to flip from red to blue. WATCH HERE. 
 -Fox News  
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 GEE, WONDER IF ANYONE WILL MENTION TRUMP? 
Kansas City Star: “Three Democratic presidential candidates — former Secretary of State Hilly Clinton, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — will attend Monday’s conference at Bartle Hall in an attempt to reach Hispanic voters…Outside groups are entering the fray. The Libre Initiative, a group affiliated with the conservative Koch brothers, is actively conducting Hispanic outreach in battleground states…No Republican presidential candidates decided to attend, despite invitations…In a statement to The Star, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said his party’s nominee will compete for Hispanic votes in 2016.”  
 -Fox News  
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 Bernie says White House needs to expand Social Security -  The Hill: “In a letter to be delivered to the White House Monday, the lawmakers say evolving trends surrounding employer retirement packages have put a financial squeeze on the nation’s retirees. They want the president to fill the gap by expanding Social Security…The letter is spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a 2016 presidential contender, and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). They join Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.),Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and 68 other House Democrats in endorsing the letter.”  -Fox News  
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 Muslim Brotherhood Insider, Hillary Clinton Aide Huma Abedin  
{rickwells.us) ~ Hilly Clinton’s gal pal and aide, Huma Abedin, whose positions under Hilly Clinton included that of Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department when she was Secretary of State, has failed to comply with a State Department request... to turn over documents associated with an investigation into the events surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack. Cover-up and obstruction are business as usual for top-level Democrats, particularly the Clintons and anyone affiliated with the nObama regime. Abedin is associated with both and has been a DC insider since the age of 20 when she first became a personal aide to Hilly Clinton during the Bill Clinton presidency. That was an odd sort of development on its surface and one which becomes more ominous the deeper you look. Abedin is a first-generation American citizen who left the United States for Saudi Arabia at the age of two. Her father, Syed Abedin, had been offered a position with an Islamic think tank, “The Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.” That organization was being created by Muslim Brotherhood insider and future al-Qaeda intimate Abdullah Omar Naseef. Ms Abedin lived there for the rest of her developing years, returning to the United States at the age of 18.       http://rickwells.us/muslim-brotherhood-insider-hillary-clinton-aide-huma-abedin-not-releasing-her-state-dept-emails-either/
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 Nike eliminates red, white and blue at World Cup  
{gopthedailydose.com) ~ Rainbow flags are in, our nation’s colors are out. The U.S. team at World Cup was unidentifiable as American, wearing black, white, neon yellow and green... Apparently we’ve become so politically correct that we hate our own country (then why fight to win World Cup for our country, one wonders). If we didn’t know better — or worse — we would have wondered why all those U.S. women’s team fans in Vancouver were wearing red, white and blue, and waving red, white and blue flags. Their team, after all, was dressed in black, white, and neon green and yellow. Yet again, what once would have been out of the question, impossible — a U.S. national team in a uniform other than red, white and blue — was achieved, as the women’s team operates under Nike’s money orders. Still, why would Nike want the U.S. team to wear anything but red, white and blue? Why would the U.S. Soccer Federation not insist that whomever it sells its soul and soles to, the team wear the nation’s colors?        http://gopthedailydose.com/2015/07/12/nike-eliminates-red-white-and-blue-at-world-cup/
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 On Benghazi Subpoena, Hilly Lies and Media Yawns  
{Andrew McCarthy} ~ Commentators are probably right in assessing that Brianna Keilar’s CNN interview with Hilly Clinton was not quite the love-in that many of us anticipated... Still, you have to mourn the media’s lack of self-respect: as Jim pointed out in Wednesday’s Morning Jolt, Mrs. Clinton blatantly lied when she claimed, “I’ve never had a subpoena” from a congressional committee regarding Benghazi. There was nothing subtle about it. Clinton was totally banking on CNN’s inclination to let her slide. Well, they don’t call it the Clinton News Network for nothing. It is the network of Candy Crowley, who in the middle of a presidential candidates’ debate couldn’t restrain herself from inappropriately challenging – and misleadingly correcting – Mitt Romney’s remarks about Benghazi. But somehow, when Benghazi came up in a one-on-one media interview setting, CNN couldn’t bring itself to call Mrs. Clinton on an obvious lie.
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 Hilly Clinton is lying about State Department emails  
{S.A. Miller} ~ House Speaker backstabber John Boehner on Sunday accused former Secretary of State Hilly Rodham Clinton of lying about the email scandal that is hounding her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination... “She is not telling the truth. She had an obligation to turn these e-mails over,” Mr. backstabber Boehner, Ohio Republican, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Our committees asked for her emails going back to 2012, and we’ve been rolled and rolled and held off and held off now for over three years,” he said. “The emails need to come forward.”       http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/12/john-boehner-house-speaker-hillary-clinton-is-lyin/
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 Iran's Fars News: Nuke Deal Includes All Iran's Key Demands  
{clarionproject.org} ~ An agreement has been reached between Iran and the six world powers over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency... The agreement, which ends a 12-year dispute over Iran’s alleged race to acquire a nuclear weapon, meets all of Iran’s demands including a complete lifting of all economic sanctions as well as a termination of the UN-imposed arms embargo on the Islamic Republic, Fars reported. "According to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, all sanctions against Iran are terminated and Iran will no more be recognized as a sanctioned nation," said a source privy to the talks and quoted by Fars. "The JCPA only envisages a set of temporary restrictions that will be removed after a limited and logical period of time, as stated earlier by the Iranian Supreme Leader." This is the darkest day in American history.       http://www.clarionproject.org/news/agreement-reached-meeting-irans-demands-fars-agency
Take a look at this short movie to see how Iran has seemingly duped the West.        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUJ-1Ih0wXc
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 'Death to America,' Massive Protests Held in Iranian Cities  
{clarionproject.org} ~ Tens of thousands of protesters in Tehran and cities across Iran Friday chanted “Death to America” in the Islamic republic’s annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day demonstration... Even in stifling heat approaching 100 degrees (38 Celcius), the crowds were undeterred. Participants in the demonstrations included President Hasan Rouhani, his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, his brother Sadeq, head of the judiciary branch of the government, General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, commander of the ground forces of the Iranian army and General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Saudi Arabia was added to the equation this year, as entire families joined the protest and screamed “Down with U.S., Israel and the House of Saud.”       http://www.clarionproject.org/news/death-america-massive-protests-held-iranian-cities
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 Battle to Thwart Iran Nuke Deal is not over Yet  
{Raphael Ahren} ~ Israel won’t be shy about making its views on the Iran deal heard on Capitol Hill, Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold indicated, in his first major interview since taking up the post last month... While Israel needs to express its concerns with civility, he stressed, the government is gearing up to firmly advocate its position in discussions with all the relevant players in the US government. “We’ll do it respectfully, but we have to tell the truth,” he said. Speaking to The Times of Israel Sunday, as the Iran nuclear deal, bitterly opposed by Israel, was reportedly being finalized in Vienna, Gold framed the imperative to thwart Iran’s ambitions in global terms, and invoked the Cold War. “Imagine you could stop the Soviet Union in 1945 from getting nuclear weapons. Imagine you had no Cold War. That would have been a much safer and better world,” he noted. “It’s understandable how it happened, how the Cold War emerged from World War II. But here, with Iran, you have the chance to prevent it. And if you don’t prevent it, you’re setting the stage for the next global struggle.” nObama won't listen to Israel, maybe congress will.         http://www.timesofisrael.com/battle-to-thwart-the-iran-nuke-deal-is-not-over-foreign-ministry-chief-vows/
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 Sixteen Attorneys General File Suit to Block EPA Waters Rule  
{Fuzzy Slipper} ~ The nObama EPA’s “Waters of the U. S.” power grab has come under a lot of scrutiny and resistance, and rightly so... In addition to citizen outrage and push back from Congress, the EPA is now facing two lawsuits filed by the Attorneys General of 16 states. nObama EPA administrator Gina McCarthy says the states’ Attorneys General are “wrong” and . . . Climate Change! Now that we’re looking at the coming “mini” Ice Age, we probably needn’t worry about all of these changes associated with warmer temperatures.  Not that we worried in the first place. Actually, none of the 50 states need the EPA anymore.  Maybe it’s time to do something about that.     http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/07/sixteen-attorneys-general-file-suit-to-block-epa-waters-rule/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
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 The Sellout To Iran Is Done-Announcement On Monday or Tuesday  
{Jeff Dunetz} ~ Multiple sources are reporting that that negotiators at the Iran nuclear talks will reach a provisional agreement Sunday on a deal which supposedly will curb the country's atomic program in return for sanctions relief... Two diplomats at the talks told The Associated Press the accord will be sent to capitals for review today, but my contacts say it will be either today or early tomorrow and, barring last-minute objections, will be announced either Monday or Tuesday. The reason an announcement cannot be immediate is there has to be time for foreign ministers to return home. This follows the rumors yesterday that R&D issues have been solved, that the Americans have collapsed on inspections, and that the Iranians have agreed to drop their new demand for ending the United Nations arms embargo. Israel's channel two reports, "US negotiators have reportedly given in to an Iranian demand that military inspections be "prearranged", that is to say that inspections would only be carried out following approval by the Iranian regime." In other words the U.S. has agreed that Iran will have time to "clean up" any site before inspectors arrive. This is only slightly better than no inspections.
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 In Iran, a picture’s worth 1,000 words  
{Michael Rubin} ~ So what does Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei think about the idea of peace and reconciliation that a new nuclear deal might herald, if senior regime officials like Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani are to be believed?... Not much, if this photo just posted on his website is to be believed. The caption reads, “The Zionist Regime is Condemned to Vanish.” It continues: “The Zionist regime is a regime with very shaky pillars. The Zionist regime is doomed. The Zionist regime is an imposed regime and was created with intimidation. Nothing created with intimidation can last long and this one will not last long either.”
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Can we Stay Honest in a Dishonest World?
Rabbi Yonason Goldson
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     {jewishworldreview.com} ~ The biggest tragedy of the Supreme Court decisions on nObamacare and gay marriage was not the decisions themselves. It was the perception, by both winners and losers, that these decisions were not reached based on legal principle but upon political ideology and personal bias.
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Which means that, regardless of which side won, the country as a whole lost.
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     Not that this was anything new. But it may be the most noticeable example since the watershed moment of 2000 — the case of Bush v. Gore that determined the outcome of a presidential election.
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     After the Democrat-controlled Florida Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 in favor of Al Gore, the Republican-controlled U. S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling in favor of George Bush by a vote of 5 to 4. A constitutional crisis was avoided. But trust in the rule of law was gone forever.
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     No one believed that the case had been decided on its merits. In Florida, a Democrat majority sided with the Democrat. In Washington D.C., a Republican majority sided with the Republican. As far as the public was concerned, it was politics as usual.
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     The recent decisions on nObamacare and gay marriage are more of the same. And with the presidential primary campaign shifting into gear, the public will inevitably become more entrenched in its conviction that politicians and their appointees routinely trade integrity for ideology.
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     When that happens, the very ideal of integrity becomes threatened by extinction both inside and outside the political arena.
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Guilt by association
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     Honesty has seen its market value tumble over the years with countless reports of plagiarism, factual carelessness, and blatant fabrication. Last year, Rolling Stone Magazine made headlines with the "Rape on Campus" story that never happened. The "dozens" of people interviewed seem not to have included some of the most crucial witnesses.
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     And if venerable news anchor Brian Williams can misremember being shot down in a helicopter by an RPG, then whose memory can we trust?
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     It's bad enough when such prevarication comes from the media. But what's really cause for alarm when it becomes the norm among our political leaders.
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Alas, if only it were so.
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     Gone are the days of "Honest Abe." Gone are the days of Grover Cleveland, who was endorsed by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World for four reasons: "1. He is an honest man. 2. He is an honest man. 3. He is an honest man. 4. He is an honest man." Gone are the days of Harry Truman, who could declare that "The Buck Stops Here," and mean it.
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     Last September, Senator Rand Paul claimed that John McCain had met with ISIS leaders in Syria. The Washington Post regretted not having more than 4 Pinocchios to award Senator Paul for perpetuating the absurd rumor.
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     Then we have Barack nObama's ever-famous, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." And, of course, Hilly Clinton's missing emails, only the latest deception from the woman condemned by the late New York Times columnist William Safire as a "congenital liar."
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     The sad truth is that truth from our politicians has become far more the exception than the rule. But the brazenness with which they conjure up easily verifiable falsehoods grows ever more astonishing. Indeed, scant attention was paid when former Senate Majority Leader dinky Harry Reid defiantly refused to apologize for his outright slander of presidential nominee Mitt Romney; after all, said Mr. dinky Reid, "Romney didn't win, did he?"
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It's hard to argue with that kind of reasoning.
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     Once integrity disappears, the only motive not to lie is fear of not getting away with it — and get away with they have, in a society that has grown indifferent to lying.
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     We may not be able to stop the lying in politics. But here are ten ways we can prevent the erosion of our own integrity.
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Don't exaggerate.
.      This past May, Congressman Pete Sessions claimed that nObamacare would cost the taxpayers $5 million per newly-insured person. The real figure is between $4000 and $9000 per person, depending on the data used. Either way, the congressman exaggerated the numbers by at least 50,000%.
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     You always say that! I'll kill him. He's done that a million times. These types of remarks are so common we don't even think about them. They may seem harmless, but every exaggeration subtly impresses upon us a disregard for accuracy and authenticity. Disciplining ourselves to speak accurately reinforces respect for the truth, both in ourselves and in those who hear us.
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Don't embellish.
.      Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno included anecdotes in his memoir that actually happened to other people. But Mr. Leno defended himself, explaining that he had paid one friend to use his story.
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     How many popular motion pictures "based on" or "inspired by" true stories are guilty of wild embellishments that distort fact into Hollywood fiction? And how often do we ourselves add details to make a good story "better?" But consider what it says about us -- and what it teaches our children -- when the truth isn't good enough.
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     If you don't know -- or can't remember -- the details of a story, don't make them up. Again, it might seem irrelevant; it might even be irrelevant. But fabricating information to make the story sound better compromises the venerable institution of Truth for little benefit. So what if the details are fuzzy? If the main point of the story is worth telling, then that should be enough. If not, don't bother telling it at all. Presenting uncertainty as fact only adds fuel to the spreading wildfire of moral confusion.
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Don't look for loopholes.
.      n Isaac Asimov's short story "Truth to Tell," a young employee is suspected of stealing from the company safe. His only defense is his reputation for impeccable honesty, and his repeated insistence that he did not take either "the cash or the bonds." In the end he is discovered to have stolen "the cash and the bonds."
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     When the truth is employed as a means of deception, it becomes an even more perverse form of falsehood. Remember the presidential defense of perjury that rested on what the definition of is is? The letter of the law becomes irrelevant when the spirit of the law is no longer valued.
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Be a skeptic.
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     Last March, Congressman Paul Ryan told over the poignant story of a little boy who didn't want a free school lunch but his own brown-bag lunch like the other kids. Just one problem -- it never happened.
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     Have you heard some interesting news? What's the source? A forwarded email? Conservative talk radio? MSNBC? NPR? Most outlets have some bias or agenda. And some are outright fraudulent. Before repeating a story, do some research. Over time, it's possible to determine which publications and which reporters are credible. And remember that there are two sides to almost every story.
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Admit ignorance.
.      It's okay not to know something. But to claim knowledge when you know you don't know is irresponsible -- and usually comes back to bite you. There's no shame in admitting a lack of knowledge, especially when followed up with a sincere promise to find the information and fill in the gaps.
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     Remember what Aristophanes said: The ignorant can be educated, but stupid is forever.
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     And remember what Mark Twain said: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
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Admit guilt.
.      Just this April, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake defended the way she handled her city's riots with the assertion, "I never said nor would I ever say that we are giving people space to destroy our city, so my words should not be twisted." Except that's exactly what she said.
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     We all make mistakes. Acknowledging error promptly and attempting to correct damage swiftly is one of the surest signs of integrity. How many personal and political crises blossomed out of momentary lapses that grew into scandalous cover-ups? When we admit guilt, we teach character and responsibility. We also help our own cause: by acknowledging guilt when we are guilty, we earn others' trust when we declare our innocence.
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Avoid Liars.
.      Behavior is contagious. The more we associate with people who don't care about the truth, the more likely we are to stop caring about it ourselves.
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Avoid Political Correctness.
.      This doesn't mean we shouldn't be civil. Good manners are always in order, and most people find profanity offensive.
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     But resorting to ludicrous euphemisms because someone somewhere might take offense is just another way of obfuscating truth. A janitor should be treated with respect because he's providing an essential service, not because he's a "sanitation engineer." There's no insult in calling things what they are.
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     When we reach the point where government workers in Seattle are instructed not to use the terms "citizen" and "brown bag," fear of calling things what they are has become an Orwellian exercise in the distortion of reality and collective mind-control.
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Avoid Self-Deception.
.      We all recognize that it's wrong to lie to other people. But it can be even more dangerous to lie to ourselves. Once we start deceiving ourselves through selective memory and rationalization, there's no end to how far we can stray from the truth.
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Look for the good.
.      The Talmud teaches that one should always say the bride is beautiful. Does that mean we should lie if she is homely? Well, she is certainly beautiful in the eyes of the groom. And there's a deeper beauty more precious and more enduring than external appearance.
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     Honesty doesn't require us to say everything we know or whatever we think. Sometimes, honesty is definitely the wrong policy, as in the case of malicious gossip or hurtful remarks.
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     However, with a little creativity we can avoid conflicts between truth and etiquette. Consider the case of the woman who thrust her newborn in front of her rabbi and gushed, "Look at my baby. Isn't he beautiful?"
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     The rabbi's eyes bugged out as he beheld the ugliest baby he had ever seen in his life. But he rallied quickly and declared, "Now that's a baby!"
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True: it was a baby. And everyone went home happy.
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     A bit more caution with our own words might leave us less suspicious about those stories of little miracles and inspirational irony that make our eyes sparkle and our hearts swell. And if a more profound commitment to honesty helps us become less cynical and more easily inspired, then what do we really have to lose?
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