06/19/15

Obama-linked Extremist Group Publishes “HIT LIST” of Anti-Sharia Females in the U.S.

Doug Ross @ Journal

By Judicial Watch

The Obama-tied leftist group that helped a gunman commit an act of terrorism against a conservative organization has assembled a starter kit for Islamists to attack American women who refuse to comply with Sharia law, the authoritarian doctrine that inspires Islamists and their jihadism.

It’s the summer special from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an extremist nonprofit that lists conservative organizations that disagree with it on social issues on a catalogue of “hate groups.” A few years ago a gunman received a 25-year prison sentence for carrying out the politically-motivated shooting of the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters after admitting that he learned about the FRC from the SPLC “hate map.” Prosecutors called it an act of terrorism and recommended a 45-year sentence.

Now the SPLC, which has conducted diversity training for the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ), is targeting female bloggers, activists and television personalities who refuse to comply with Sharia law which is rooted in the Quran. The European Court on Human rights has repeatedly ruled that Sharia is “incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy” yet politically-connected radical Muslim groups—such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—keep pushing to implement it in the United States and the movement has gained steam.

Among those resisting this effort publicly are the high-profile women being targeted by the SPLC. Some of them are colleagues or friends of Judicial Watch and now they must fear for their safety simply for practicing their rights under the U.S. Constitution. The new hate list is titled Women Against Islam/The Dirty Dozen and includes illustrations and detailed information on all the women, who are branded “the core of the anti-Muslim radical right.” The new SPLC hate brochure further targets them by claiming that they’re “a dozen of the most hardline anti-Muslim women activists in America.”

Political activist and commentator Pamela Geller is branded the “country’s most flamboyant and visible Muslim-basher” for, among other things “smearing and demonizing Muslims.” Blogger Ann Barnhardt is identified as one of the “most extreme Muslim-bashers in the United States” and radio talk-show host Laura Ingram made the list for saying that hundreds of millions of Muslims were delighted that 12 people were massacred by Islamic terrorists in the Paris headquarters of a satirical magazine. Former CIA agent Clare Lopez, who runs a Washington D.C. think-tank focusing on national security issues, made the list for saying that the Muslim Brotherhood has “infiltrated and suborned the U.S. government to actively assist…the mission of its grand jihad.”

Others appearing on the anti-Sharia docket include television personality and former judge and prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, former chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party Cathie Adams, talk-show host Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, syndicated columnist Diana West, attorney and columnist Debbie Schlussel, blogger Cathy Hinners, ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel and conservative writer and TV personality Ann Coulter. Among her biggest offenses, according to the SPLC, is proclaiming that “not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims—at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America.”

Incredibly, the SPLC is one of a number of leftist special interest groups that has colluded with the DOJ since Obama moved into the White House. A few years ago JW uncovered government records that show the DOJ Civil Rights and Tax divisions engaged in questionable behavior while negotiating for SPLC co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a 2012 “Diversity Training Event.” JW pursued the records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to determine what influence the SPLC’s branding of hate groups has had on government agencies.

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05/30/15

Emergence of a National Police Force

By: Andrew Kopas – Guest Columnist
Stand Up America

With the recent shooting in Ferguson and deaths in New York City and Baltimore of residents there involved in criminal activity at the time of their arrests, there is an outcry from the likes of civil rights activist Al Sharpton and others for nullification of state’s rights and the takeover of local and state police forces nationwide by the Federal Government, specifically by the Executive Branch.

BESTPIX BALTIMORE, MD - APRIL 27:  Demonstrators climb on a destroyed Baltimore Police car in the street near the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues during violent protests following the funeral of Freddie Gray April 27, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. Gray, 25, who was arrested for possessing a switch blade knife April 12 outside the Gilmor Homes housing project on Baltimore's west side. According to his attorney, Gray died a week later in the hospital from a severe spinal cord injury he received while in police custody.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX ***

BESTPIX BALTIMORE, MD – APRIL 27 (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In all of this, keep in mind that Obama has very successfully used “straw man” arguments to advance his objectives. In this particular case, the “straw man” argument being put forward is that all law enforcement agencies across America are inherently racist and that only his takeover of them will fix these racist organizations.

He has essentially painted a bull’s eye on the backs of our local and state law enforcement personnel and endorsed instead the criminal element in America that has responded by assassination style shootings of law enforcement personnel in NYC and most recently in Mississippi as well.

The nationalization of our local and state police forces is indeed a very bad idea and should be adamantly opposed by both the states and the general populace for several reasons.

First and foremost, it would bring ALL organized armed personnel, namely the American Military, Homeland Security, and all local and state police under the direct control of one man, namely Obama and any future Presidents of the United States.

That would in turn allow for tremendous abuses of that power that we have already seen in this Administration, such as use of the IRS and DHS against what he perceives to be his domestic enemies, namely anyone who opposes him and his policies.

Remember the National Police Force Obama Promised in 2008?

Remember the National Police Force Obama Promised in 2008?

Secondly, if he decided to fully seize power and set aside the limitations of the Office of President imposed on him by the Constitution of the United States, which he has already done in a number of particulars such as with illegal immigration, failure to enforce DOMA, bypassing Congress unilaterally in matters of treaty negotiations, etc., there would be no armed force except the American people directly to stop him.

But without organization and leadership, the probability of that successfully happening on a national scale is remote.

In fact, he could use all of the organized armed forces at his disposal, including local and state police who would be under his direct control, to put down any such opposition that the people might undertake.

As reported in The Daily Bell on December 7, 2011, as early as 2009 Obama advocated “a civilian police force to match the size and power of our armed forces.”  One has to ask the question “Why” such national control is required vs. local law enforcement properly trained and equipped to deal with any domestic terrorist threats?

bearcat-2His expansion of the Homeland Security Department has followed that pronouncement, as has his use of the NSA to go far beyond its mandate and monitor the communications of every man, woman and child in America.

And the fact that he is actively promoting and funding illegal immigration on a massive scale in America today without screening for terrorists crossing our borders begs the question of if he indeed wants to see an increase in domestic terrorist attacks like we have seen in many places across the USA such as at Ft. Hood, Oklahoma, Boston and most recently in Garland, Texas with the expressed purpose of forcing the need for such a national police force under his direct control to put down such attacks?

Obama has gone on record on more than one occasion to praise the Chinese Communist form of government and other authoritarian regimes that are essentially dictatorships based on central government control over all aspects of their citizens’ lives including how many children they can have, how they worship, how they communicate with each other over the Internet, and even how they assemble.

Do we want a man with the belief that an authoritarian form of government is preferable to a democratically elected government with clear separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches as set for in our Constitution to have the kind of unlimited power that nationalization of our local and state law enforcement agencies would give him?

God forbid!

05/26/15

The Jihad Caucus

By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

Turban Durbin

Strange Politics

The United States allows 70,000 people from all over the world to obtain legal permanent residence through our Refugee Program–one of the most generous in the world. We also bring in another 40,000 or so through the Asylum program. Then there is the Special Immigrant Visa for people from Iraq and Afghanistan–about 10,000 in FY 2014–and a Cuban/Haitian Entrant program bringing in another 20,000 annually. That adds up to about 140,000.

Many of these “refugees” come from Islamic countries like Somalia, Iraq and Iran, bringing with them at least the potential for terrorism, in many cases a contempt for our country and the almost universal edict among Muslims to dominate. Islamic supremacist Mega Mosques are being erected all over the country, vigorously supported by the Obama Justice Department, which runs interference for them over the objections of local citizenry.

It’s about to get worse. The Syrian civil war–enabled at least partially by Obama’s insane foreign policy–has created a refugee crisis, with approximately 2.9 million Syrians now living in refugee camps in surrounding countries. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees wants the U.S. to accept 130,000 Syrians by the end of 2016. We have only taken 700 so far, but given the FBI’s warning that it cannot guarantee ISIS or other terrorists are not among the refugees, even that is too many.

Not to be dissuaded from such silly national security concerns, a group of 14 U.S. senators, led by the indefatigable Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, have written a letter to Obama urging him to allow 65,000 Syrians in as refugees. This would require a dramatic expansion of the refugee program, and virtually guarantee that a sizable number of ISIS fighters would slip in among them. Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy has given them the moniker “Jihad Caucus” because practically speaking, Jihad is what this request will bring.

The 14 senators demanding this massive influx of Syrians are:

Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)

Al Franken (D-MN)

Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Patty Murray (D-WA)

Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Christopher Coons (D-DE)

Tim Kaine (D-VA)

Edward Markey (D-MA)

Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

Mazie Hirono (D-HI)

These same 14 sent another letter in April Demanding action on the Syrians. These senators have truly earned the name Jihad Caucus. A few years back, Dick “Turban” Durbin, as he has been called, said U.S. troops guarding Guantanamo Bay prisoners, were Nazis. Sounds like a bit of projection to me.

05/6/15

Liberal Media Work With Jihadists

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

It’s strange that the liberals in the media who always complain about Joe McCarthy once having a list of communists in government are so quick to cite the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of so-called right-wing extremists or “haters.”

With the help of the media, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is setting people up for terrorist attacks inside the United States. Pamela Geller is the latest on the list of the SPLC that has now been targeted for death by the jihadists. ISIS says “…we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.”

ISIS is angry that Geller, an opponent of jihad, has defended the First Amendment right of free speech against Islamic Sharia law.

In response, ISIS tried to massacre people at Geller’s Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas on Sunday. Two terrorists were killed and an unarmed security guard protecting the event was shot in the leg.

It’s an open secret that ISIS can get locations for its targets from the SPLC website. That’s how homosexual militant Floyd Corkins discovered the location of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. and showed up at its headquarters, opening fire on a security guard. He had hoped to conduct a massacre of FRC staff.

Indeed, Corkins told the FBI after the shooting that he intended to “kill as many as possible” and smear the 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches he was carrying in the victims’ faces. Chick-fil-A had been in the news because its CEO had defended traditional marriage.

As we noted in a previous column, “The SPLC targets its critics by name…labeling them ‘hate groups’ and running photographs of officers and employees so they can more easily be identified.”

The SPLC sends its “intelligence reports” around the country, listing people and groups by name with their locations. This puts the leaders of these groups and their families at risk of terrorist attack.

Rather than express disgust with this tactic, the media regard the SPLC as somehow a credible source of information.

This brings a human face to the slogan “if it bleeds, it leads,” and makes the media complicit in the planned jihad on American soil and its victims.

The SPLC exercises what journalist James Simpson calls “partisan tolerance,” which means conservatives and Christians must be demonized and destroyed. On the other hand, anyone on the left is acceptable. That’s why the SPLC hailed the “educational” work of Weather Underground terrorist bomber Bill Ayers.

As the leading spear-carrier in the cultural Marxist war on America, the SPLC is one of the most despicable groups on the political scene these days, and yet it is accepted by the media as somehow authoritative and respectable.

No matter how many times the group is exposed for sloppy research and money-making scams, it is still considered a source of legitimate information by some in the media.

That’s why its apparent role in the targeting for death of Pamela Geller has to be highlighted and exposed. News organizations are helping terrorist groups by giving the SPLC unwarranted sympathy and publicity.

ISIS has figured out that all it has to do in order to identify their critics is go to the SPLC website and search its “hate map” and various “lists” of so-called extremists. The SPLC makes it easy for terrorists to wage jihad on American soil.

Yet, for a time, the Obama/Holder Justice Department and its FBI openly collaborated with the SPLC. For example, Judicial Watch discovered that SPLC head Morris Dees had appeared as the featured speaker at a “Diversity Training Event” on July 31, 2012, at the Department of Justice. The FBI has even listed the SPLC as a credible source of information on “hate crimes.”

The SPLC tends to focus its critical attention on opponents of radical Islam and critics of the homosexual agenda.

The media’s reliance on this organization was disclosed publicly by the hapless Bob Schieffer on a recent “Face the Nation” episode when he interviewed Tony Perkins of the FRC and began by noting, “You and your group have been so strong in coming out…against gay marriage that the Southern Poverty Law Center has branded the Family Research Council an anti-gay hate group. We have been inundated by people who say we should not even let you appear because they, in their view, quote, ‘You don’t speak for Christians.’ Do you think you have taken this too far?”

This comment proves that Schieffer has lost it as a newsman. Did he even bother to investigate the SPLC? Was he aware of the terrorist attack on the FRC offices inspired by the SPLC?

Simply because the homosexuals inundated the CBS switchboard, Schieffer felt compelled to take their objections seriously. This is not the usual way journalism is done. But it’s the way liberals in the media operate. Their ignorance is astounding.

Geller understands what is happening and frames the issue this way: “Truth is the new hate speech.”

The media need to educate themselves quickly about how they are playing into the hands of not only the SPLC but the terrorists who are targeting enemies on American soil.

This assumes, of course, that the media do not want to inspire more violence in America.

Typically, the liberal media describe the SPLC as a “civil rights organization.”

For those in the media who want to avoid violence and report the facts, for a change, Jim Simpson’s recent talk on “cultural Marxism” is required viewing.

In a report, Simpson defines partisan tolerance as expressing “partisan hatred for everything non-leftist,” noting that it “seeks to actively muzzle the views of the majority.” This lies behind the labeling of conservatives and Christians as extremists or “haters.”

He notes that the concept of partisan tolerance is associated with cultural Marxist Herbert Marcuse and is based on “an extreme arrogance that assumes they are infallible in their utopian fantasies, and have the right to impose their will on us no matter what we think.” The notion that all positions incompatible with leftist designs can and must be suppressed is at “the heart” of their worldview, Simpson points out.

He adds, “The idea was further developed in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, especially rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Alinsky popularized the tactic, but Marcuse invented the concept.”

In the ISIS message targeting Geller for death, the group said, “The next six months will be interesting…May Allah send his peace and blessings upon our prophet Muhammad and all those who follow until the last Day.”

It’s time for the media to stop encouraging the bloodshed.

04/30/15

Black Mom Changes Leftist Narrative on Violence

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The reaction among responsible black and white law-abiding citizens to the black thugs rioting in Baltimore was captured by Toya Graham, the black mother who smacked her son around when she found him on the streets joining the attacks on police. Even liberals in the major media applauded her efforts.

“I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” she told CBS News, referring to her son and the black youth who died under mysterious circumstances while in police custody.

CBS reported, “Graham, a single mom with six children, denounced the vandalism and violence against police officers. She said rioting in Baltimore is no way to go about getting justice for Freddie Gray and that she doesn’t want that life for her son.”

Graham then appeared on the CBS This Morning Show to discuss the incident and the struggle to raise her children.

The important teaching moment represented by this dramatic incident, a brief moment of sanity in the media, undercut the left-wing effort to somehow blame the police for the riots. As a result, the “progressives” had to go on the attack against the black mother.

Over at Think Progress, the blog of the pro-Obama Center for American Progress, Graham was attacked as a “misguided” mother who exercised bad judgment in holding her son accountable.  Writer Kira Lerner said the issue was alleged police violence, not rioting in the streets by black youth.

She quoted a woman with a group opposed to “police brutality” as saying that “While she doesn’t condone the looting that was highlighted by the media in Baltimore Monday night, she said she understands where the violent protesters are coming from.”

Meanwhile, over at Hot Air, a piece by Noah Rothman ran under the headline, “Don’t let urban unrest derail conservative criminal justice reform.” While the riots were underway, he insisted that “a consensus opinion” had emerged on both the left and the right in favor of getting soft on criminals and letting more of them out of prison.

In the wake of what has happened in Baltimore and Ferguson, the Republican primary electorate might be tempted to embrace a “tough on crime” candidate, but “That would be a mistake,” Rothman informed Hot Air readers.

What’s more, he lectured them, the war on drugs has “failed” and there is no alternative to letting “non-violent offenders” out of prison.

In fact, the war on drugs did not fail. David Evans, a special advisor to the Drug Free America Foundation, notes that marijuana use went down among young people by 25 percent from the advent of the Reagan administration’s “Just Say No” campaign to the inauguration of President Obama. “If we had had a reduction in any other health problem in the U.S. of 25 percent, we would consider it an outstanding success,” he said.

Being “tough on crime” is precisely what many observers, including that courageous Baltimore mom, have concluded needs to be done in the inner cities.

Going soft was precisely what the Baltimore mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, had done, accounting for the weak police response to the riots. Former police officer Michael Tremoglie points out that the Baltimore police knew that the mayor had said she wanted “protesters” protected and room furnished for them to “destroy,” and that “They knew that the DOJ [Department of Justice] was ‘monitoring’ what was occurring during the riots.”

Before he came to Hot Air, a site owned by Salem Communications, a Christian firm, Rothman had sung the praises of the pro-marijuana voices in the media such as MSNBC’s Touré. On another occasion, he had highlighted how comedian Kevin Hart and rapper Ice Cube had attacked commentator Nancy Grace’s anti-marijuana comments.

Hot Air, which claims to be the most heavily-trafficked conservative blog on the Internet, has emerged as a forum for pro-marijuana and soft-on-crime viewpoints, most of them articulated by Rothman, a former libertarian writer for Mediaite.

It is certainly true that the Rothman perspective on “criminal justice reform” has been embraced on the left.

As Accuracy in Media noted recently, in an article about a “criminal justice reform” conference held in Washington, D.C., there is a White House-directed effort to enlist conservatives to join with various progressive organizations to weaken laws against a series of violent and non-violent crimes.

Hillary Clinton joined the campaign on Wednesday, saying that “It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration.”

Some readers at Hot Air were astounded by the advice given by Rothman, who cited the Obama Justice Department as a reliable source of information on criminal justice issues, including alleged police violence.

One said, “Isn’t it great when we can come to Hot Air to read some halfwit ‘conservative’ columnist agree with Eric Holder about root causes?”

Another said, “I don’t think this is a very timely post. At least not whilst the animals are burning, looting, robbing, raping, killing each other and forming alliances with opposing gang bangers to destabilize the structure of society.”

Still another called attention to Heather MacDonald’s piece in the New York Post, “The Perilous New Push to Excuse Lawlessness,” as being “a hundred times better than Noah’s.” The writer said, “She’s an actual conservative who lived through the times when ‘law and order’ were questionable values, and conservatives had to fight hard to implement them.”

MacDonald had referred to “a wide-ranging movement [which] is already under way to transform the criminal justice system in order to avoid a disparate impact on blacks.” But since blacks commit a disproportionate amount of the crime, she said that fulfilling this promise “would require gutting murder statutes, and most other criminal laws,” and that the country’s two-decade-long crime drop would be in jeopardy.

Despite cities like Ferguson and Baltimore going up in flames and the rare story of a mother like Toya Graham making a plea for law-and-order, the liberal media are going to make sure that the movement for criminals’ rights that now operates under the goal of achieving “criminal justice reform” will get the lion’s share of the publicity.

Indeed, Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” just ran a favorable story about the “Coalition for Public Safety,” which is trying to make the ACLU sound like a reasonable organization conservatives can work with. Based on what was reported, it looks like some conservative groups are taking the bait.

04/26/15

Gay Marriage: A Trojan Horse Movement

By: James Simpson
American Thinker

The Left doesn’t care about gay rights, any more than they care about civil rights, welfare rights, minority rights, animal rights or any other “rights.” According to the Left, “the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” The various “rights” the Left has aggressively promoted over the years are merely vehicles to advance the Left’s power.

Consider: the welfare “rights” movement, founded by the notorious socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, was not established to guarantee welfare to the poor. As they said, their purpose was to pack the welfare rolls with so many beneficiaries that the government would collapse of its own weight. In the ensuing riots, they hoped policy makers would be driven to accept their socialist solution. In short, they sought anarchy, using a militant poor as their foot soldiers. They couldn’t care less what happened to the poor in prosecuting this agenda, and they said so. Doubt me? Just look at the status of the poor today. There are more people on welfare than at any time in history. And the crime and degeneracy that accompany it are epidemic.

Look at our country today. With manufactured crisis Strategist-in-Chief Obama, we are almost there, and Cloward and Piven’s intellectual descendants were out in force in Ferguson. The communist agitators seeking “social justice” for Michael Brown burned down much of the neighborhood. Do black lives matter to them? Apparently not. And they have even said so. The issue is not the issue.

Occupy Wall Street’s black anarchist organizer Nelini Stamp’s new group, Dream Defenders, popularized the slogan “Hands Up Don’t Shoot!” But prior to Ferguson there was Trayvon Martin. Working with Eric Holder’s DOJ, Stamp’s group was responsible for getting Sanford, Florida police chief Bill Lee fired. This despite the fact the FBI agreed with Lee’s assessment that there was no case against Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Did Stamp care about “Justice for Trayvon?” Not according to Stamp. “We are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today, because it’s not working for any of us,” she said.

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.

The agenda is never the agenda for the Left. And this is especially true for gay marriage. Homosexual marriage is a Trojan horse tactic. The true agenda is to establish the primacy of homosexual rights over the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded on this principle, and the gay marriage movement seeks to destroy it.

Consider that Annise Parker, the lesbian mayor of Houston, Texas, demanded to review pastors’ church sermons before public outrage forced her to back off. We have already seen how small businesses have been singled out and attacked for refusing to provide certain services to gays.

What is less known is that these gay couples are frequently part of the movement. They deliberately seek out businesses known for their Christian owners. They deliberately demand a service they know in advance will be refused. When the inevitable happens they use it as pretext to destroy the business and savage its owners. Doesn’t it amaze you how quickly legal groups immediately materialize to assist in the attack? The fact that they got unexpected push back through a spontaneous crowd sourcing campaign to support one pizza shop will not dissuade them from future efforts. If gay marriage is adopted, their current bullying behavior will look like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

This is a highly organized, nationwide campaign of vilification against Christians. But even Christians are not the ultimate target. If the First Amendment can be challenged this way; if a certain group’s “rights” can trump the U.S. Constitution, and if the Supreme Court can actually issue an edict making it so, then the entire Constitution has become meaningless. This is the Left’s true agenda and it always has been. This is the Cultural Marxists’ endgame. The issue is not the issue. The issue for them has always been destroying our country to impose socialism — with them in charge, of course. In order to do that they have to strip America of its culture, its traditions, and most importantly, the most important law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.

We are almost there. Well-meaning liberals and even some conservatives who support the gay marriage agenda are unknowingly committing an act of betrayal against their own country. If the gay marriage agenda wins, those other rights guaranteed by the Constitution will immediately be at risk. Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America will be complete. Everyone in our country, including gays, will find all our rights summarily stripped. And if the gay lobby wants to see what that looks like for them, they should turn to Cuba, Russia or North Korea for their inspiration. It will not go well for them. The Left does not care about your rights. They care about one thing and one thing only: their power.

Jim SimpsonI recently gave a presentation on cultural Marxism at the National Press Club. You can watch it on YouTube, here. It’s about 35 minutes long. It was part of the latest Cliff Kincaid press conference. I have attended and reported on many of them on these pages over the years. Keynote speaker was former presidential and senatorial candidate, Ambassador Alan Keyes, a brilliant orator and Harvard-trained intellectual powerhouse who clearly explained what is at stake. His logic and legal reasoning was flawless and irrefutable. Following his act was quite a challenge. Also in attendance were Matt Barber of Barbwire, and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth. But together we painted a picture of what the true gay rights agenda looks like.