08/6/15

Ernest Moniz, Iran and the Imprimatur of Science

Ernest Moniz

Watching the Obama administration trot out Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on the Sunday shows and in testimony to Congress following the consummation of what I believe will be a nuclear weapon-ensuring deal for not only the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad in Iran, but their Sunni counterparts, it should have been clear to all what a charade it was.

Moniz — an MIT physicist turned Obama administration shill — was there to provide the imprimatur of unimpeachable Science™ to the transparently deceptive deal. And who can fight with science, especially of the kind that is already settled?

In this light, I am reminded of a quote from an expert in financial markets and economic history, Jim Grant, he of the legendary Wall Street newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.

During an address delivered on June 2, 2015 to the Manhattan Institute in connection with his winning of the Hayek Prize, Grant stated:

In the 1960s, John Cowperthwaite, British governor of Hong Kong, refused to allow the collection of economic statistics lest the bureaucrats misappropriate that information in the service of governmental macroeconomic manipulation (the very word “statistics” derives from “the state”).

Such an act would be heresy today in a world in which the state, governing according to scientific principles, is the church for our progressive elites.

Cowperthwaite knew that politicians would conflate science and public policy to justify their agendas and grow their power.

For it is science that legitimates the Iran deal.

It is science that legitimates the disruption of human activity, and with it trillions of dollars in wealth through global climate regulation.

Indeed, it is science that legitimates any number of government intrusions into our daily lives.

Science ought to be celebrated. But politicians can manipulate it towards destructive ends.

Winston Churchill saw this early on when he expressed fears about the power of mass weaponry. Of course it is not the weapons that are the problem in and of themselves, but the prospect of evil people obtaining them and using them towards genocidal ends that ought to keep us awake at night.

Today America is aiding, abetting and enabling just these types of people.

In fact, as an aside, Ernest Moniz, again our Secretary of Energy, when asked about government findings on another mass weapon, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) during Congressional testimony — the use of which Iran has endorsed and for which we have yet to harden our grid — effectively pleaded ignorance.

Ernest Moniz is a fitting living embodiment of the fusion of science and state.

08/6/15

The Progressive Cult of Victomology’s Tears for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio

By: Benjamin Weingarten

Have you noticed that the passive voice — as in “Mistakes were made,” or “The YouTube video caused the attack,” — has become ubiquitous in American political discourse?

Leave aside instances in which its usage reflects an unwillingness or inability for individuals to take responsibility for failure. There is another set of circumstances in which it is used to pernicious effect.

Exhibit A comes to us courtesy of the New York Times, in an article written about the declining popularity of Warren Wilhelm, aka New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Now I will not hold the use of the passive voice in the Times’ headline “New Poll Shows Mayor de Blasio’s Support Has Eroded” against The Grey Lady, but I do take issue with her usage in explaining just why it is that de Blasio’s poll numbers have declined so precipitously.

The Times writes:

Mr. de Blasio has encountered a series of difficulties in recent months, including the tussle with Mr. Cuomo, also a Democrat, over a disappointing legislative session in Albany, and distressing headlines about a rising murder rate — even as city officials have noted that overall crime continues to fall.

The mayor was also recently the subject of negative ads from the car-hailing company Uber, which opposed a proposed cap on its growth that the mayor had promoted. (The city has, for now, backed away from the proposal.)

Administration officials were quick to connect the increase in disapproving voters — a four-point uptick since May — to the Uber campaign, noting that the mayor’s numbers also suffered for a time last year during a public dispute with advocates of charter schools.

You see, for the progressive Times, Mayor de Blasio is a hapless victim. He has “encountered difficulties” through no fault of his own.

Were it not for those damn “distressing headlines about a rising murder rate,” or “negative ads from the car-hailing company Uber” or “a public dispute with advocates of charter schools,” de Blasio would be held in the same esteem as Hizzoner Koch.

(Image Source: New York Post, July 11, 2015).

What the Times fails to note is that headlines about the murder rate — and “the bad old days” returning to New York more generally — are not being written in a vacuum. Mayor de Blasio has opposed his predecessors’ law enforcement policies (and attacked their enforcers), policies that coincided with plummeting crime rates and an infinitely more pleasant and livable city. Had Mayor de Blasio maintained the law enforcement status quo to the same effect of rising murder rates and savage attacks, cop killings and squeegee men, then perhaps the Times would be justified in making de Blasio a victim of sorts. In light of his own words and actions, we cannot.

As for Uber, the company’s highly effective anti-de Blasio ads came in direct response to a policy the mayor pushed that would have impaired Uber’s ability to grow. Again, these ads did not occur in a vacuum. And what made them particularly bruising was that they illustrated the hypocrisy inherent in a “progressive,” “inequality”-busting mayor siding with entrenched interests against an upstart competitor providing opportunity for thousands of New Yorkers and convenience for hundreds of thousands if not millions more.

On those “charter school disputes,” again disputes are not the proximate cause of de Blasio’s waining political support. In fact, the public loves a spat when a politician is perceived to be looking out for them. Rather, de Blasio’s opposition to school choice in favor of public schools and the politically powerful public teachers’ union — and apparent unwillingness to expend political capital in support of charter schools in the rare instance when he does champion one — reflects a controversial position. Rightly, many in progressive New York are able to set aside their ideology when it means a better education for their children. The “dispute” is not the issue for Mayor de Blasio. The issue is the issue for Mayor de Blasio.

Bill de Blasio has not “encountered difficulties.” He has created them through his own policies. He is not a victim of chance. He is merely paying a political price for the disastrous outcomes of his own progressive agenda.

The real victims are New Yorkers who must live with him. Next time they ought to choose their mayor more wisely.

Featured Image: YouTube screengrab/Uber.

06/24/15

10 years later, here’s what happened to the land seized and sold to developers in a controversial Supreme Court case

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

As eminent legal scholar and takings expert Richard Epstein notes at National Review, June 23, 2015 marks the 10 year anniversary of one of the Supreme Court’s most controversial cases relating to private property, in Kelo v. City of New London.

For those unfamiliar with the case, in a five-to-four decision the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo that New London, Connecticut could use the power of eminent domain to seize private property from its owners and sell it to developers as part of a broader economic development plan.

The property seized from Susette Kelo as of May 2014. (Image Source: Ilya Somin)

Specifically, the Court ruled that the development of the property would qualify as a “public purpose,” constituting a “public use,” thereby representing a Constitutional taking pursuant to the Fifth Amendment, given the public benefits to be gained through the developer’s use of the seized land.

While government has a right to take private property for public use if it provides just compensation, the case proved highly controversial because the government was taking private property — specifically homes — from several parties, and not using it for say a public school or public transportation, but rather selling it to another private party that claimed it could generate greater economic activity from the property.

In particular, the homes seized by New London in a neighborhood known as Fort Trumbull were razed to make way for a development project that included among other things a $300 million research center for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, along with a hotel, residential and office space.

Ilya Somin, Professor Law at George Mason University School of Law, adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, and blogger at the essential Volokh Conspiracy has recently published the literal book on the Kelo case titled “The Grasping Hand: “Kelo v. City of New London” and the Limits of Eminent Domain.”

On this tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling, it bears noting what has happened to the property seized by the City of New London. Somin writes in his book:

As of early 2015, almost ten years after the Supreme Court upheld the Kelo condemnations, the properties that were the focus of an epic legal battle remain empty and undeveloped. Several plans to redevelop these lots have fallen through. The only creatures making regular use of them in the intervening years have been a colony of feral cats.

Featured Book
Title: The Grasping Hand: “Kelo v. City of New London” and the Limits of Eminent Domain
Author: Ilya Somin
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These failures were not simply caused by adverse publicity resulting from the public backlash against the Supreme Court ruling or by the recession and financial crisis that began in 2008. As a 2005 New York Times article noted, the failure was a result of “contract disputes and financial uncertainty” and the unwillingness of investors to commit to a flawed project. As early as 2002, Pfizer had begun to lose interest in utilizing the new facilities expected to be built in the development area. In 2009, the firm announced plans to close down its New London facility and began to transfer the employees working there elsewhere. With Pfizer’s departure, the city lost 1,400 jobs that state officials had attracted to the area by committing to redevelop Fort Trumbull in a way that suited the firms’s needs.

The city has managed to successfully redevelop the portion of the Fort Trumbull land that was previously part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center closed in 1995. It is now a leased research and development center. But that property already belonged to the city after the center had closed, and there was no need to use eminent domain to redevelop it.

Eventually, the condemned land will almost certainly be used for some productive purpose or other. In the meantime, however, it will have stood empty for a decade or even longer, depriving the community of economic benefits of a productive use of the land and the city of potential property tax revenue. Even from the standpoint of economic development, without reference to the constitutional considerations or the intrinsic value of property rights, the Fort Trumbull condemnations have done a lot more harm than good. Governor Rowland was right to predict that Pfizer’s move would “change the landscape of this community,” even if it is not yet clear whether he was also right to predict that the effects will really last “for the next 100 years.” So far, at least, the effects have been very different from those supporters of the project had hoped for.

For the definitive account of Kelo and its aftermath, be sure to check out Somin’s new book.

Note: The link to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.

06/17/15

Brad Thor’s message for Pamela Geller’s critics: You are pansies

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Author Brad Thor is not one to mince words when it comes to defending free speech and challenging jihadists.

So it should come as no surprise that during an in-depth interview in connection with his forthcoming “Code of Conduct,” when the topic of Islamic supremacism versus the West came up — and in particular the Garland, TX shooting — sparks were going to fly.

Listen to what Brad had to say below, and for a sneak peek at the creepy enviro-globalist agenda at the heart of “Code of Conduct,” Brad’s assessment of the threats to the homeland and how to take it to Islamic supremacists and his endorsement for president in 2016, you can skip to the full interview here.

The First Amendment exists to protect speech you don’t agree with. It actually is there — if all that was worthy of protection was speech everybody agreed with, we wouldn’t need the First Amendment. OK.

So you don’t have to agree with what Pamela Geller is doing, but my G-d, Pamela Geller is doing more to help reform Islam than any pansy on the left or right who is criticizing her.

And I don’t care who criticized her. I don’t care who it is: You are weak, and you’re a pansy for not standing behind her.

It makes no sense to me that you would not support someone who is trying to bring about reform in one of the most dangerous ideologies since Nazism. And it actually predates Nazism, so I can’t say it’s since Nazism.

Featured Book
Title: Code of Conduct
Author: Brad Thor
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This idea that Pamela Geller somehow deserved what they got — and she’s making it worse for people. You know I heard people say “Well why provoke all Muslims?” She’s not trying to provoke all Muslims. She’s trying to provoke a discussion.

And moderate Muslims should not be offended by the depiction of their Prophet Muhammad. They can say it’s in their book … Islam is the only major world religion that has not had a reformation. Judaism has. Christianity has. Islam has not.

And … I would encourage you to please link to probably one of the best articles ever written about the West and how we are pandering to fundamentalist Islam. It was actually — I don’t know that you do a lot of links to the Huffington Post — but it was on the Huffington Post and it was written by Sam Harris, who is on Bill Maher a lot. And Sam’s an agnostic.

And Sam wrote a great article called “Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks.” And he talks about the fact that we have allowed a protected space to be carved out in the public square where every other group is expected to debate rationally on the playing field of ideas, except for Islam.

We can go ahead and talk about Catholicism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Hinduism, but we can’t critique and discuss the tenets of Islam. And that’s because we are hamstringing ourselves.

And Islam needs more attention, more criticism, not less. If we don’t criticize Islam and put pressure on Islam, how do you expect reformers and again moderates to have the wind at their backs, the wind in their sails to have them do the work that needs to be done? Because we as non-Muslims can’t affect any change.

All we do, like I said, we get our civil liberties eroded.

It’s longer lines at TSA for those of us who can’t reform Islam.

We need to do everything we can to help reform it. And reforming Islam means we have to draw attention to all its failings.

It’s only when people are shown “Hey, the house is full of termites,” that maybe they’re gonna stop spending money on cable and tons of beer, and start applying the money to fixing their own house.

Full Interview

Sneak Peek at “Code of Conduct”

Taking it to Islamic Supremacists

XXX? in 2016?

06/9/15

America’s See-No-Islam Problem Exposed With Boston Jihadism

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

The Boston Globe published a column in the wake of the shooting of an Islamic State-linked jihadist from Rosindale, Massachusetts that is a quintessential example of why the West is losing to Islamic supremacists.

In “Are Boston terrorism cases a trend?” two Globe authors reach out to several “antiterrorism specialists” and ask why it is that Boston appears to be so “vulnerable to violent extremism.”

Some submit that Boston’s “emergence as an international hub may leave it exposed to strains of radicalized behavior.”

Others find the existence of Boston-based jihadists curious given these jihadists “cannot be traced to one network, and individuals and groups do not appear to be connected.”

One such expert who has written on the Islamic State, J.M. Berger, acknowledges that “There is some degree of social network here that seems to be involved in radical thought.”

Halfway through the Globe article, the reader is left utterly unaware of any link between Boston jihadists and…jihadism. In fact, readers will not find the word “jihadist” in the column.

What readers do see is the lexicon of our see-no-Islam national security establishment, including euphemisms such as “violent extremism,” “homegrown terrorist,” and “radical presence.”

Somewhat closer to the mark are comments of James Forest, director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, who says: “The ideology that motivates these kind of attacks, there are no geographical boundaries.”

What this “ideology” is, the reader is left to guess.

Usamma Rahim was wielding a knife when he was shot by Boston police. Rahim had planned to attack “boys in blue” according to his intercepted communications. (Source: WCVB-TV)

Next quoted in the piece is Farah Pandith, the first special representative to Muslim communities in then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Pandith asserts that Muslim millennials are “asking questions that parents aren’t answering. The loudest voices seducing these kids are extremists.”

Pandith notes that “extremism” is not so much a matter of geography as “what’s happening in virtual space around the world.”

As for the “seductive” “extremist” voices and the impact of social networks, of course the young and impressionable can be brainwashed, but what are they being brainwashed in, and who is doing the brainwashing? Should not these millennials and their parents be both rejecting as well as rooting out this ideology from their communities altogether?

Some experts seem to recognize an ideological component to what we have seen in Boston – an Islamic supremacist ideology that can proliferate wherever computers or cell phones are found, that thrives especially in tight-knit Muslim communities in free Western countries — yet they cannot bring themselves to define this ideology.

Credit: Steven Coughlin

Juliette Kayyem, another Obama administration official who served as Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs in the Department of Homeland Security, is next given the floor.

Kayyem believes that Boston — which the columnists describe as a “global city that is diverse, tolerant, and welcomes immigrants and students” – is “a breeding ground for the disaffected to either radicalize or hide.”

Kayyem asserts that “We are going to see this kind of radicalization in any urban area globally.”

But do global cities become “breeding grounds[s] for the disaffected to either radicalize or hide” in a vacuum?

Throughout world history, international locales have been free of the scourge of “violent extremism,” a politically correct term used to avoid offending Muslims while simultaneously drawing moral equivalence with and thereby smearing “right-wing” Americans.

One would think that modern, cosmopolitan, liberal urban areas by their very nature would consist of modern, cosmopolitan, liberal people.

Only to the degree to which these global cities invite in people with retrograde views antithetical to these ideals does their diversity and tolerance make them “breeding grounds” for jihadism.

It is hard to fault the piece’s authors for quoting “mainstream” “antiterror experts.” Yet these “experts” all seem to subscribe to the very see-no-Islam philosophy that paralyzes our national security establishment more broadly, rendering us unable to defeat our enemy.

Parenthetically, the idea of an “antiterror” expert should itself draw our ire, given that terror is a tactic, not the name of an ideologically-driven enemy. After all, during the Second World War we didn’t call upon anti-Blitzkrieg experts to define our enemies. We understood and were able to articulate that we were at war with a foe, not a fighting method.

Meanwhile, today there is nary a mention of Islamic religious tenets like jihad, abrogation and taqqiya, nor a discussion of Islam’s ultimate goal to create a global Ummah under which all submit to Shariah law.

This is not an issue of semantics. If we fail to be precise in how we describe our enemy and its ideology, it will defeat us.

How did we get to a point over a decade after Sept. 11, 2001 when columnists writing about Boston jihadists dance on egg shells around the Islamic supremacist ideology that by the jihadists’ own admission animates them?

While Nazism and Communism were political ideologies, jihadists subscribe to a theo-political ideology based in Islam’s core texts and modeled on the behaviors of Muhammad.

This offends the sensibilities of Americans either ignorant of Islam or uncomfortable with the idea that religion could be used to justify the slow motion worldwide slaughter of Jews, Christians, Hindus, infidel Muslims, gays, women, apostates, cartoonists and others.

In the case of the recently killed would-be jihadist Usamma Rahim, a simple set of Google searches regarding Rahim and the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) might have provided the Globe columnists and the antiterror experts they quote an illuminating fact pattern worth investigating in response to their question, “Is Boston more vulnerable to violent extremism than other parts of the country?”

Below are some of those relevant data points:

Usamma Rahim had been a security guard at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury, Massachusetts, an affiliate of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB)
The ISB’s executive director pulled the ISBCC out of President Barack Obama’s own Countering Violent Extremism Summit, essentially deeming the program Islamaphobic
Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev prayed at the ISB’s Cambridge, Massachusetts mosque
Notwithstanding ISB denials, Tsarnaev had been the latest in a long line of jihadists linked to the organization:
The ISB was founded by Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah currently serving a 23 year prison sentence on terrorism charges
ISB’s Cambridge mosque is operated by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Muslim American Society
According to Discover the Networks, among other revelations:
“FBI surveillance documents show that two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Suhaib Webb, Imam of ISB’s Boston mosque, joined al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki in headlining a fundraiser on behalf of the Atlanta-based Muslim extremist Jamil al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), who had recently murdered two police officers in Georgia.”
“Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at ISB’s Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans to carry out a chemical attack in New York City. Siddiqui subsequently tried to gun down some U.S. military officers and FBI agents, and is now serving an 86-year prison sentence for that offense.”
“Tarek Mehanna, who worshipped at ISB’s Cambridge mosque, received terrorist training in Yemen and plotted to use automatic weapons to inflict mass casualties in a suburban shopping mall just outside of Boston. In 2012 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid Al Qaeda.”
“Yasir Qadhi, who lectured at ISB’s Boston mosque in 2009 and again in 2012, advocates replacing American democracy with Sharia Law; characterizes Christians as “filthy” polytheists whose “life and prosperity … holds no value in the state of Jihad”; and accuses Jews of plotting to destroy Muslim peoples and societies. Further, Qadhi is an acolyte of Ali al-Timimi, a Virginia-based Imam who is currently serving life in prison for inciting jihad against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”

The Boston Globe article is instructive because it represents the very line of thinking and questioning that is mandated in the halls of America’s national security institutions.

It is also instructive — in light of the facts about the ISB — that a see-no-Islam national security stance leads us to ignore the threats hiding in plain sight, to America’s great detriment.

Those who ignore the nature of the Islamic supremacist threat we face are doomed to submit to it.

06/5/15

The Global Warming Jihadists Seek to Silence the Dissenters

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

“The world must not belong to those who slander the prophets of Global Warming, Climate Change, or Climate Disruption.”

So said Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in a fatwa issued in the Washington Post.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivers a speech on the Senate floor on May 18, 2015. (Image Source: YouTube screengrab)

OK — perhaps that was not what he said verbatim, but it might as well have been.

Whitehouse intimated that racketeering charges be considered regarding Big Oil’s support of research challenging the supposed climate change consensus.

Without a hint of irony given the nature and activities of the climate change movement, Whitehouse compared the oil industry – which after the American people will be most harmed by regulations putatively relating to climate — to the RICO-violating tobacco business:

The Big Tobacco playbook looked something like this: (1) pay scientists to produce studies defending your product; (2) develop an intricate web of PR experts and front groups to spread doubt about the real science; (3) relentlessly attack your opponents.

In a point almost beyond parody, Whitehouse relies on a report by a Drexel University professor whose “environmental justice” work has been funded by federal grants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. A nakedly partisan voice, the “Culture and Communication” department professor lists as areas of research and teaching “Critical Theory,” “Social Movements” and “Social Change,” to go along with the more relevant “Environmental Sociology.”

The professor writes that the “climate denial network”

span[s] a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts that aim at undermining climate science.

None of these activities are illegal, or even unethical – though if Whitehouse gets his way the thought crime of challenging global warming may soon be.

All of these activities one can ascribe to the very environmentalist cause to which the professor is a part, except that academics like himself and other global warming proponents are also again showered with government support to the tune of $2.5 billion in research funding annually.

Is government money in the hands of policy advocates any more or less corrupting than private money? Should not private enterprise be allowed to dispense with its funds as it wishes?

One wonders whether Whitehouse has considered the conflict of interest or free enterprise considerations at hand.

Moreover, while Whitehouse questions Big Oil’s motives and actions, he ignores the dubious track record of those on his side of the climate debate.

Specifically, Whitehouse’s recent diatribe was silent with respect to Climategate, the inaccurate models on which the global warming crowd relies and the significant flaws in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Is the senator aware that the science is decidedly not settled — even according to President Barack Obama’s former undersecretary of science in the Department of Energy?

More broadly, Whitehouse’s irresponsible op-ed — which raises the prospect of civil discovery — represents a chilling threat to those who dissent from the orthodoxy of the political elite.

Coincidentally, this chill has already crossed the pond, sending a shiver down the spine of European oil companies.

Just last week, the heads of BP, Royal Dutch Shell and several other executives issued a public letter in which they effectively raised the white flag in the face of governments hell-bent on further regulating their activities in the name of global warming.

Resigned to this fate, the companies called for a rational, clear and consistent set of rules governing carbon credits, and asked for a spot at the table in discussions with the U.N. and other political bodies in order to protect themselves.

It is unclear whether U.S. companies will go the way of their European counterparts. But what Whitehouse’s comments indicate is that our government is at least willing to explore using legal coercion if American enterprises do not submit to the environmentalist party line.

We have seen this “process as punishment” in the private sector, through actions such as climate scientist Michael Mann’s targeting of conservative commentator Mark Steyn and others, but the federal government’s threat to Big Oil would be of an entirely different size, scope and character.

Lost in all this is the fact that the global warming crusade against so-called “denialists” represents another area in which liberal illiberality threatens critical areas of speech.

Recent challenges to free speech whether as a means of enforcing de facto or de jure Shariah slander and blasphemy laws, stifling political messages or now crushing scientific dissent reveal a totalitarian impulse to end debate.

It is particularly galling in this instance because scientific discovery requires constantly questioning assumptions and testing hypotheses. Especially when science is being used as a basis for determining public policy that affects the lives of billions of people and concerns trillions of dollars worth of resources, the burden of proof must be immense.

Proponents of climate change should be providing an unprecedented amount of transparency and welcoming all scrutiny – indeed encouraging competition in the marketplace of ideas — if they really care about getting the science right.

While we can never know the true motivations of a politician, it stands to reason that Whitehouse and many of his colleagues may view environmentalism as as good a justification as any for seizing wealth from one of America’s few remaining booming industries.

If that is the case, all advocates of truth should prefer that he show the same candor as Rep. Maxine Waters, who called for “socializ—,” sorry, “taking over … [with] government running all … [of Shell’s] oil companies.”

While Waters may support violating the Fifth Amendment, it appears Whitehouse would rather challenge the First.

The consequences of the latter would be far more dire than the former.

For if the First Amendment falls, all of the rest shall soon follow.

06/5/15

An In-Depth Interview With Michelle Malkin on The Virtues of Capitalism and “Who Built That”

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze Books

Purchase at Amazon.com…

06/3/15

AUDIO: How does a free society that values religious liberty handle Islamic supremacism that seeks to destroy it? A former fed prosecutor responds.

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Former federal prosecutor and current National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy has published a slender but substantive new book coincidentally released eerily close to the recent Garland jihadist attack titled “Islam and Free Speech.”

We had the chance to sit down with McCarthy to discuss a variety of topics relating to his new book including a broader question that America has been grappling with for over a decade since Sept. 11, 2001: How can a free and pluralistic society built on protecting liberty including specifically religious liberty adequately counter a theopolitical Islamic supremacist ideology that seeks to use our freedoms and tolerance to undermine us.

Here is how McCarthy responded to the question:

The doctrine of Soviet Communism was … ultimately not just the complete and extensive undermining of [the U.S.], but when and if or if and when finally necessary, the violent overthrow of the United States, or the United States government.

So it’s not like this is the first time that we’ve dealt with a conquest ideology that seeks … to supplant the West with its own vision of what society should be. We’ve had this kind of a problem before.

The difference is, Soviet ideology never traveled under the banner of religious liberty, and there was never the kind of squeamishness about examining it that we have now. And … the best way to combat it is to get over that squeamishness.

Featured Book
Title: Islam and Free Speech (Encounter Broadside)
Author: Andrew C McCarthy
Purchase this book

What we have to understand is that there is a difference between what we ought to regard as Islam the religion … which is something that is adhered to by, you know, many many many patriotic American Muslims, who have no desire whatsoever to have a United States that’s structured like the totalitarian societies that a lot of them either left or reject for their own reasons.

So we have to distinguish that from this political Islamist ideology that is rooted in Islamic doctrine, and a very literal interpretation of it, and that rejects a division between church and state, or between mosque and state.

That ideology is — it has a religious component — but it’s a political ideology overwhelmingly. And it ought to be dealt with as one. And we should stop — you know our public officials should stop trying to label it as something it isn’t. It’s a political, totalitarian conquest ideology that has certain religious elements to it.

But the important thing from our perspective is it’s like every other political ideology that competes and has animus towards the west. And we have to see ourselves as in competition with it and needing to defeat it, rather than trying to figure out how we can accommodate it under the auspices of our commitment to religious liberty, because overwhelmingly it’s not a religious doctrine. The political element of it is overwhelmingly a totalitarian political doctrine. And we shouldn’t, just because it has a few religious elements to it, lose sight of the bigger picture.

You can listen to our interview in full below, or keep scrolling to listen to select clips on topics ranging from the ignored totalitarian nature of Shariah speech prohibitions to McCarthy’s defense of Section 215 of the Patriot Act and why McCarthy believes that conservative Americans frightened of a government that has targeted them through the IRS should be trusted with such powers.

Full Interview

The Clash of Civilizations Between Islam and the West

The Ignored Totalitarian Nature of Shariah Speech Prohibitions

McCarthy’s Defense of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and Why We Should Trust Our Government With Such Power

What is In America’s National Interest in the Middle East, and How Should We Pursue It?

06/3/15

LISTEN: Ann Coulter exposes a gruesome but neglected double standard in the immigration debate

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Ann Coulter’s new book “Adios, America” has created significant buzz over Coulter’s political correctness-free belief that mass immigration legal and illegal from Third World nations represents a conscious plot by the left to fundamentally transform the country.

An overlooked element of Coulter’s book however is her argument that given some of the surprising statistics and anecdotes she came upon in researching the subject, women, minorities and the environment represent the biggest casualties of mass immigration since 1970.

Most shocking and egregious of all in Coulter’s own view are the disproportionate amount of brutal sex crimes committed by immigrants, and the media’s double standard on this issue. She explained during our explosive in-depth interview:

The massive amount of child rape [was most outrageous to Coulter]. Child rape, gang rape, incest rape, and particularly for an American. I mean American women are about to realize American men were the best they ever had it. As I say in the book, even continental Europeans can’t compete. In de Tocqueville, writing about America, he commented on how women are treated with such respect and honor, and no crime is visited with greater severity of sanction then rape in this new country of America — contrasting America’s treatment of rape so severely unfavorable with that in France.

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Title: Adios, America
Author: Ann Coulter
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Meanwhile, I mean part of the reason I concentrated on it is they’re just kind of arresting, keep you up all night stories … but also we have just lived through the last four or five years of the media trying to put on this conceptual art piece trying to persuade Americans that “white American men: huge gang-rapists, fraternities, lacrosse teams, the military.” And one after another all of them turn out to be hoaxes. But at the very same time, this same media is hiding shocking case of gang rape, child rape, incest rape, concubinage.

That Indian in San Francisco Lakireddy Bali Reddy importing the twelve year old girls from Indian whom he had bought from their parents for sex. And that story — I mean it’s the one thing when I came across — it wasn’t broken by the media, it was broken by a high school journalism class … It’s, I think quite a breathtaking story. And I asked a lot of my friends about it who follow the news pretty closely, some of them more closely than I do. The fact that none of them knew about that case, that tells you, that story by itself tells you how the media is in overdrive to hide the downside of mass immigration from the Third World. We will hear about every immigrant who wins a spelling bee, but we will not hear about the massive uptick in child rape, gang rape, incest rape, drunk driving, the trashing of our national parks, pesticides being dumped within a few miles of the world’s tallest tree. Peasant cultures don’t have a lot of respect for the environment — they have no concept of litter … Mexico is farther along then many of the peasant cultures we’re bringing in, and Mexico is still in the slash and burn stage of capitalism. [Link ours]

During our interview, the full version of which you can listen to below, we also had the chance to discuss a series of other topics including:

Teddy Kennedy’s deceitful subversion of our immigration system
How a footnote in a Supreme Court opinion created “anchor babies”
Why Coulter considers H-1B visas “indentured servitude”
Coulter’s plan to fix America’s immigration system and preserve the Republic
Why Coulter still wants Mitt Romney to run in 2016
And much more!

05/28/15

The Ironic Tie Between Elizabeth Warren’s Hypocritical Home Flipping and Mitt Romney

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Massachusetts political roots aside, you might think that the comparison of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former governor and failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is absurd.

Warren, the progressive populist who in both rhetoric and regulation has sought to shackle “predatory” financial institutions as a means of supposedly protecting “the little guy,” and Romney, the patrician and wealthy denizen of the financial establishment of 47 percent infamy, would appear to be polar opposites.

Elizabeth Warren delivers her famous “You didn’t build that” speech.
(Image Source: YouTube screengrab)

But alas, as is so often is the case in politics, Warren’s public face is contradicted by her private actions – actions that we will soon see are similar in nature to those that made Romney a millionaire.

Warren, like Romney, profited by buying assets at low prices and through either improving said assets or waiting for the market to strengthen, selling them at higher prices.

As Jillian Kay Melchior and Eliana Johnson lay out in a recent National Review exposé, Warren “bought and sold at least five [residential] properties for profit,” generating at least $240,500 before accounting for remodeling costs.

Several of the homes Warren purchased and then flipped had been foreclosed upon.

The focus of the piece is the rank hypocrisy that Warren would execute such profit-seeking transactions, given that she has called the idea of buying and selling properties quickly for profit a “myth” that contributed to our economic woes, and decried the banks that foreclosed on the homes of working class Americans.

Rightfully, the column closes with the following flourish:

In her 2014 autobiography, Warren wrote of the events that precipitated the financial crisis that “everyone seemed to have a story about someone they knew who was getting rich by flipping houses.”

She omitted a crucial one.

But it ought to be pointed out that not only were Warren’s actions counter to her stated principles – they mimicked those of the private equity companies and other financial institutions that she has spent her entire public life railing against.

What private equity professionals like Mitt Romney, and investors in general seek to do is “buy low and sell high.”

Firms like Romney’s Bain Capital scour the market for businesses they believe are undervalued and/or have significant growth potential. They seek to buy these businesses at a low price, and grow them while making them more profitable and efficient by cutting costs, closing non-core operations while strengthening core ones and implementing new and improved strategies and practices to better their business models.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

By improving the companies in which they invest, the end goal is to sell them for many times the price at which they were bought.

What Romney did at the macro level in investing in businesses worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, Warren did at the micro level in investing in homes worth thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The difference however is that Romney’s investing in many cases led to the creation of ever-better goods and services at ever-lower prices, with the benefits accruing to not only Romney, Bain’s investors, and the employees of the strengthened companies, but all consumers – that is, you and me.

Certainly Warren’s investments in home remodeling may have created work for construction companies and home suppliers, but those benefits pale in size and scope to the benefits to the public of successful private equity investments.

Too, many progressives are queasy about the idea of gentrification, which they argue prices poorer people out of their neighborhoods, replacing them with the more “privileged,” all supposedly to the detriment of the character of said communities. Warren supported this process by improving several of the homes she purchased that had been in disrepair, and selling them at a significant premium.

No one should begrudge Elizabeth Warren for her apparent investing acumen.

And one suspects that no one on the left will begrudge her for her home-flipping hypocrisy, given that the truly ill-gotten riches of the Clintons who partnered with all manner of tinpot dictators and civil rights squelchers do not seem to offend the left’s sensibilities.

But all should recognize that the very business for which Romney was castigated by large swaths of the public is in essence the same business in which Warren was an active participant, only at a smaller scale and with far more modest benefits.

This is not an indictment, but a compliment, even if Warren herself would not like to hear it.

More broadly, we should be celebrating those who create wealth, and crucifying those who destroy it — namely government bureaucrats whose resources only exist because they bilk the individuals and businesses that did build that.