08/18/15

New Agers Back Socialist Sanders as Messiah

The huge crowds greeting socialist Bernie Sanders in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination cannot just be attributed to large numbers of left-wingers. There is a hard-core left-wing element to the Sanders candidacy, of course. But Sanders has tapped into what used to be one of Hillary Clinton’s key constituencies, the New Age Movement. A top Sanders adviser is the influential “spiritual teacher” Marianne Williamson, whose self-help books have been heavily promoted by Oprah Winfrey and sold millions.

The New Age Movement is a growing group of people in America who have broken with the Judeo-Christian tradition to instead endorse the notion of God as a mystical force inhabiting humans, the earth, or spiritual “masters.” Oprah’s website describes it somewhat differently: “For 20 years, Marianne Williamson has been a pioneer on the front lines of a worldwide spiritual movement aimed at creating a global shift in collective consciousness.”

Taking this perspective into the political realm, Williamson has advocated a Department of Peacebuilding and has created a group called the Peace Alliance to bring this about.

Constance Cumbey has written two books on the New Age Movement and says its “toolbox is mysticism,” or “altered states of consciousness,” which are said to draw people into a relationship with spiritual forces in the world that are part of a “New World Order” and global religion to be headed by an anticipated “messianic figure” of some kind.

Whatever this mean for the world as a whole, it appears that Williamson sees Sanders as the savior of the American political system.

Williamson, who writes on the Sanders-for-president website about the need for “revolutionary power,” has used her vast influence to mobilize her followers on behalf of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. She says the Marxist presidency of Barack Obama hasn’t been radical enough. “Having invested so much hope in 2008 in a candidate who turned out in many ways to disappoint, it’s not easy to summon our internal forces for another big wave of revolutionary fervor,” she says. But Sanders, the “independent” socialist senator from Vermont, is a true revolutionary, she says. “If we all show up and exercise our power as citizens, Senator Sanders can win the presidency in 2016,” she adds.

Analyst Trevor Loudon has documented that Sanders, the only Senate member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is actually a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization that backed Obama’s political career and works with openly communist groups. “DSA works very closely with three of America’s leading communist groups—the Maoist leaning Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the ‘old guard’ Communist Party USA, and the CPUSA spin-off Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism,” notes Loudon. “The four groups have even seriously considered merging in recent years.”

We have noted Sanders’ history of involvement with Communist Party-controlled groups such as the U.S. Peace Council. In the 1980s, he was part of the Soviets’ “nuclear freeze” campaign to undercut President Ronald Reagan’s military build-up.

A former nightclub singer, Williamson herself ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2014 on a platform that included abortion rights, gay rights, socialized medicine, and the need to combat what she perceives as man-made global warming, nowadays called climate change. “While a lifelong Democrat herself, Marianne ran the congressional race as an Independent, making the statement that she was not beholden to either party,” noted writer Tabby Biddle.

“While America has some serious enemies—and it’s certainly our responsibility to protect our country and our children—I believe our country’s way of dealing with security issues is increasingly obsolete,” Williamson declared. “We cannot simply rely on brute force to rid ourselves of enemies. In so doing, we overburden our military by asking them to compensate for the work that we ourselves are not doing. The only way to make peace with your neighbors is to make peace with your neighbors.”

She added that, if she won, she would co-sponsor the bill to establish a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding that would examine “non-violent problem-solving options” to global conflict. The department was to be paid for out of the defense budget.

Labeled by The Hollywood Reporter as “Hollywood’s favorite New Age Guru” because of her influence with movie producers, directors, and actors, Williamson hosted Sanders at her own feminist-oriented “Sister Giant” conference earlier this year. Described personally as a “radical feminist mother,” Williamson has a daughter whose father is not known and whom she refuses to name.

While some of the New Age rhetoric and books can be dismissed as expensive but harmless fun, it’s when these “spiritual teachers” exert political influence and address global issues that we can see a tendency that seems even more radical than the usual Marxist drivel emanating from Democratic Party politicians such as Obama.

However, there is overlap. Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding, which was to be headed by a Secretary of Peacebuilding, was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), one of Fidel Castro’s closest friends in the U.S. Congress.

Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who also works with Williamson, had introduced a similar bill. “The intention is to develop an organized approach, tapping the intellectual and spiritual power of America to develop programs that would include teaching children the principles of peace: teaching them peace giving, peace sharing, mutuality, seeing the other person as an aspect of oneself, of teaching the inner equality of all people,” Kucinich said in a post on Williamson’s Peace Alliance website.

Like Sanders, Williamson is considered by some to be pro-Israel. But in her book,The Healing of America, she discussed how Egypt’s highest Muslim cleric had once approached her “to make sure you understand that Islam is a religion of peace.” She didn’t say whether the Muslim leader condemned and rejected the passages in the Koran that call for killing the “Infidels” who resist Islam.

She also wrote, “The creative challenge of spiritual life is to know enough about God to be hopeful. From Jesus to Buddha to Moses to Mohammed, wayshowers have risen out of the timeline of history to draw maps and pave roads to a more perfect world.” The comparison of Jesus—who led a perfect life and preached love—to the Muslim Prophet Mohammad, is offensive on its face. Islam began in violence and Mohammad himself was a violent warrior.

The term “wayshowers” is common in New Age circles and refers to spiritual beings supposedly leading us into a new world of community and harmony.

When Keith Ellison became the first Congressman to take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran, Williamson commented, “Fantastic story.” Ellison, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, endorsed Williamson in her run for Congress.

For a time, Williamson and her associate Jean Houston of the Foundation for Mind Research were considered to be in Hillary Clinton’s political camp. Houston had tried to help Mrs. Clinton, when she was First Lady, “communicate” with Eleanor Roosevelt during a mystical “channeling” session. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote about these sessions in a book on the 1996 presidential election.

At some point, however, Cumbey says Houston and Williamson abandoned Hillary. Williamson said in 2008 that she was supporting Barack Obama and not Hillary because “I am not going to vote with my vagina.”

This was a dramatic turnaround, since Mrs. Clinton in her memoir Living Historyhad discussed hosting Williamson and Houston and other New Agers at Camp David. “You were wonderful to me back in 1994 when you invited me to the White House. It’s a memory I will treasure always, and you gave it to me,” Williamsonwrote back to Hillary in a Huffington Post article.

But the 2014 Williamson article, “An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton,” was actually prompted by Williamson’s revelation that the former First Lady was getting too close to powerful interests in society. Williamson pleaded with Clinton to, “Stop cozying up to the banks, to the chemical companies, to the military-industrial complex, to the party machine, and to all the various financiers who make up the plutocracy now ruining this country.”

The pleas apparently went unheeded, since Williamson eventually broke completely with Hillary and now promotes Sanders for president and writes for his website. Through Sanders and other such candidates, she insists, America can experience a revolution “of light, of consciousness, and love” and “break out of this ridiculous corporate straightjacket that imperils us the way it does now.”

Whatever this means, it has occurred to some on the far-left that while Sanders is taking on “corporate power and oligarchy” and calling for vast federal spending increases for social welfare programs, the “issues” section of his presidential website says absolutely nothing about foreign policy. The group called RootsAction complains that his stump speech hardly mentions the “huge military budget” and says he must challenge “militarism and ongoing war.”

Perhaps Williamson’s proposed Department of Peacebuilding will be the focus of one of Sanders’ next speeches, a development that will make the socialist senator not only look like a pawn of Williamson and the New Age Movement, but the true leader of the Loony Left.

06/23/15

Obama Talks DNA-based Racism on Comedy Show

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Our pro-cross dressing President apparently doesn’t think people have DNA that makes them male or female. But he has just told an interviewer that white people and others have DNA that makes them racist and that American institutions are racist, too. These claims are described by our media as “bold” rather than bizarre racial slurs.

CNN reported that Obama, during an appearance on a comedy show, said “the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination” exists in institutions and casts “a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.” The host, comedian Marc Maron, has been a guest on MSNBC, the failing left-wing cable channel.

Was Obama being serious? Where is the scientific evidence that racism is passed on to others through their DNA?

Obama “did not mince words” in the interview, Politico reported, as he said, “Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public.”

“Obama Uses N-Word In Honest Conversation About Racism,” proclaimed the always politically correct Huffington Post. Other outlets decided to “bleep” or censor the word.

But what does this have to do with a President, who opposes conversion therapy for gays, expressing the view that there may be a potential “cure” for racism that is not learned through bad examples but through biology and DNA?

It’s tempting to say this was just a figure of speech. Indeed, rather than propose some form of shock treatment for people with this bad DNA, Obama seems to be depending on the politically correct media and education establishment to “cure” people of these bad thoughts.

But we are also being led to believe, as a result of one mentally unstable young man who abused drugs and committed a horrible crime, that white racism permeates our society, and that anyone who appreciates southern heritage is a secret racist who wants to kill black people.

It’s highly ironic that Obama would lecture others about racism, since he was admittedly “schooled” in anti-white racism by communist atheist Frank Marshall Davis. One Davis poem, “Christ is a Dixie Nigger,” dismissed Jesus Christ as “another New White Hope.”

Another Davis poem, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” mocks the Christian hymn by the same name and talks of Africans being killed with a “Christian gun” instead of a spear by the missionaries following “the religion of Sweet Jesus.”

So is Christianity one of the institutions that Obama says is saturated with racism? That surely can’t be the case since mass murderer Dylann Roof, a deranged drug abuser, opened fire in a black Christian church. The response from the families of those killed has mostly been Christian forgiveness and mercy.

We see in the Obama interview with comedian Marc Maron the same kind of anger and bitterness that was drilled into him at a young age by Frank Marshall Davis in Hawaii. The enemy, from the point of view of Marxist community organizers, is white supremacy. This is what has to be emphasized, over and over again, in order to get more black people agitated.

Roof targeted black Christians and said in his alleged manifesto that he became upset over the evidence of black-on-white crime he found on a website. That was no excuse for mass murder, but the fact is that crime of that nature is a terrible reality, as Colin Flaherty has documented in two books. The failure by the liberal media to even cover this problem is a source of frustration to those who seriously seek answers to criminal behavior in modern society and want to restore law and order in our major cities. The answer must be found, if the inner cities of America are to be saved.

Instead, our media act as if such crime doesn’t exist.

As investigative journalist Jim Simpson wrote in an AIM special report, “The media have relentlessly fanned the flames of racial hatred, while engaging in a systematic pattern of misinformation and blatant suppression of facts surrounding the perpetrators and victims of crime.” The media, blinded by political correctness, refuse to face reality.

So who was this white man named Dylann Roof? He committed mass murder, in an act that can be accurately described as terroristic in nature, and wanted to ignite a race war. He was photographed holding a Confederate flag and had sympathy for white-ruled nations. But he was also a drug abuser who came from a dysfunctional family. Significantly, he was also photographed with his feet planted on and burning an American flag. He hated what America had become in fighting a civil war to overcome the confederacy.

So while he hated America for what it is, the agitators on the left still complain about what America used to be. These extremists are strange bedfellows who need one another to make sure racial progress can be frustrated and that racial divisions can be exploited for political purposes.

Not surprisingly, the Confederate flag has now become the center of media preoccupation, when we have had six years of an administration in Washington, D.C. that has faulted white people, “gun violence,” or the police for the systematic problems in the black community. Public interest lawyer Larry Klayman noted, “Barack Obama and Eric Holder created much of this atmosphere of anger, bitterness and bile with their disdain of whites and not too transparent belief and actions that we must now pay what are in effect reparations to the black community, even though this generation does not practice or advocate slavery.”

After Roof killed the black people in the church, CNN highlighted the fact that Holder, the former attorney general, had tweeted, “Hate and gun violence. How often? How long? My heart breaks—again. Condolences to victims, survivors and families at Mother Emanuel” church.

CNN didn’t mention it, but several responded by reminding Holder and his followers that in the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal:

You essentially armed the Mexican cartels. How many lives have they destroyed?
Did your heart break for Brian Terry’s family? Hell, you supplied the haters’ guns on that one.

AIM editor Roger Aronoff reminds us that Fast and Furious involved the Obama Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the transfer of some 1,500 guns, about 1,000 of which ended up in Mexico. Border agent Brian Terry was murdered with weapons found near the scene of the crime in Arizona. Those weapons were among 57 linked to Fast and Furious which have been tied to at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., including the Terry murder, Aronoff notes.

Hence, Obama’s initial comments after the massacre about gun violence constitute political posturing for the cameras. We know we can’t depend on the liberal media to remind us of the “gun violence” caused by this same administration.

Another response to Holder included, “You never say anything about the genocide of blacks killing other blacks daily in cities across nation. That’s tragic too.”

But talking about black-on-black violence, and black-on-white violence, does not pay left-wing political dividends. So Obama talks about racist DNA and institutional racism and gets hailed for his boldness and honesty.

Another tragic aspect of the mass murders in South Carolina is the media’s use of the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an organization that has expertise on “hate” groups in the U.S. Both CBS and NBC have given the group unwarranted publicity and credibility.

It was the SPLC which inspired the terrorist attack on the conservative Christian Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. The SPLC has also hailed former communist terrorist bomber Bill Ayers for his “educational” work in a series on “Teaching tolerance.” It’s amazing but true.

Jim Simpson points out that the SPLC is one of the main practitioners of the tactic known as “partisan tolerance”—that is, partisan hatred for everything non-leftist. While the group is occasionally correct about hate groups on the right, it has a warped tendency to lump mainstream conservatives into categories of alleged extremists, making anybody on the conservative side into some kind of hater, “homophobe” or “Islamophobe.” The group has perfected the art of the smear into a “science” that the media shamefully buy into.

The SPLC should be dismissed as a political and money-grubbing outfit that has no interest in solving any racial problems. Extremism is a problem that could and should be examined by a new House Internal Security Committee, modeled after the old House Committee on Un-American Activities, which conducted masterful investigations into such entities as the Ku Klux Klan and the Communist Party USA.

With a panel such as this conducting official probes and investigations, the SPLC could be pressured to refund the remainder of its $245.3 million financial endowment to donors who thought their money was buying racial justice.

As for Obama, when a U.S. president speaks of “cures” for DNA-based racism on a comedy show, you know there is a lack of seriousness in Washington, D.C., and that the acceleration of a race war is the plan that is unfolding as extremists prepare to exploit the tragedy and increase racial tensions. The Marxist community organizers will take this to the next level and the media will be there to cover it.

04/1/15

Unholy Assault on the Hoosier State

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

I was watching CNBC on Monday for updates on the markets and economic affairs when I suddenly found technology “journalist” Kara Swisher of “Re/code” being “interviewed” by the “Squawk Alley” team about Indiana’s new religious freedom law. She compared opponents of the homosexual agenda to racists and said that Indiana Governor Mike Pence (R), who signed the law, is “shameless.” The interview went on and on, with no opposing views presented.

Although shocked at first by her blatant hostility toward Christian America, a little digging discovered that Swisher is a major player in the gay community and CNBC is a major outlet for homosexual propaganda.

Swisher, who has interviewed President Obama and Hillary Clinton, had been a featured speaker at the “Lesbians Who Tech” summit, where she used the “F” word quite liberally and declared: “I’m often confrontational, so F— you.”

The group “Lesbians Who Tech” describes itself as “a Community of Queer Women in or around tech.” The American people might be interested to know that the sponsors of the “Lesbians Who Tech” event included Google, ebay, Wells Fargo, Intel, Walmart, Target and Amazon, among other corporations.

Not surprisingly, the pro-homosexual Huffington Post ran a glowing profile of the summit by its own correspondent, a self-described “Lesbian-Feminist, Public Intellectual PhD” by the name of Marcie Bianco. This appeared in the on-line publication’s “Gay Voices” section, which has also featured a video of full frontal male nudity.

When I pointed this out recently, I was attacked by the “conservative” Daily Caller for somehow exaggerating what The Huffington Post had done. It’s a sign of the times that even a “conservative” outlet is reluctant to expose the shameless promotion of homosexuality in the media. One of the main funders of The Daily Caller is a Christian by the name of Foster Friess.

At the risk of promoting this kind of repulsive “journalism,” it is important to note that The Huffington Post item, Male Full-Frontal Nudity Supercut: Which Stars Have Bared It All?, which appeared in the “gay voices” section, was exactly as I described it—a form of gay porn.

But when Christians get repulsed by this kind of thing and seek to protect their families and children from it, they are singled out as bigots.

With Google in the news because of its clout and influence with the Obama administration, it is important to note that Swisher has announced on her website that Megan Smith, a former vice president at Google and Swisher’s “longtime spouse from whom I am now separated and have two children,” is now the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, working for President Obama.

Smith’s White House bio also discloses that she previously served as CEO of PlanetOut, a company that targeted lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. It was then acquired by Here Media Inc., which owns the Alyson Books publishing division.

Do you remember the “children’s books” which carried the titles Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy’s New Roommate? Those were published by Alyson. Some of its more recent titles include the “S/M classics” Coming to Power and Leatherfolk. The latter is described as a book about a “distinct subculture” known as “the gay and lesbian leather underground.”

But don’t expect any coverage of this “lifestyle” by the major media, except perhaps to promote it.

Swisher’s softball interview was not a surprise. She has a CNBC “profile” on the channel’s website, demonstrating that she is a regular. Indeed, her online “news” service “Re/code” is owned by Revere Digital, whose minority investors and strategic partners include the NBCUniversal News Group. This guarantees Swisher access to such media properties as CNBC, MSNBC, “Today,” and the “NBC Nightly News.”

This helps explain some of the homosexual movement’s clout in the major media.

CNBC won’t advertise the fact, but the channel is itself a big backer of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA). Mandy Drury, Simon Hobbs and Carl Quintanilla of CNBC have appeared at NLGJA fundraisers.

At one NLGJA event, Natalie Morales of the NBC “Today” show described how “Many of us here in this room—the media—we are responsible for opening the world’s eyes to these issues and the stories that have brought about such change.”

Now that they’re on the verge of getting the Supreme Court to declare gay marriage the law of the land in all 50 states, the homosexuals in the media are identifying and demonizing their enemies in the heartland of America. That’s what Indiana is all about.

Swisher and her lesbian and gay allies are saying “F— You” to traditional American values.

02/13/15

Media’s Lack of Curiosity About Killer of Muslims in North Carolina

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Was the brutal murder of three Muslims in North Carolina this week a case of “random violence,” or were the three targeted because of their Muslim faith? And why, of all the murders committed across the country this week, did these three grab so much national media attention? The FBI has now joined the investigation.

Perhaps the lessons learned from Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011 could inform the answers to these questions, and serve as a reminder of the dangers of biased reporting on murder cases. But, unfortunately, the mainstream media continue to perpetuate a confusing double standard when it comes to reporting on the deaths of innocents.

Why, for example, did the deaths of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina gain traction at The Washington Post, Reuters, and many other media outlets which speculated that it was a possible hate crime, while this black teen murdering a white classmate and taking a selfie with the corpse didn’t receive anywhere near the same treatment? And what about the murders occurring in Chicago every day? Don’t those deserve headlines, and candlelight vigils too?

“However, I do think it’s fair to say that attributing political motives to individual killings is much more of a phenomenon on the left than on the right,” argues Mark Hemingway for The Weekly Standard in a column regarding the recent execution-style shootings of Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.

The alleged shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, liked the “Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Freedom from Religion Foundation, Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy,’ Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gay Marriage groups and similar progressive pages” on Facebook, notes Hemingway. Maddow didn’t mention any of that on her show when talking about the incident.

Hicks displayed a habit of posting snarky pictures with slogans like, “Democrats aren’t perfect but at least they haven’t been shoving poor Jesus up my c—ch and Ronald Reagan down my throat.” Another picture he promoted reads, “So Rick Santorum thinks that when people get educated they stop believing in God? Best advertisement for Atheism I’ve ever heard.”

And Hicks commented on Ground Zero: “Seems an overwhelming majority of Christians in this country feel that the Muslims are using the Ground Zero Mosque plans to’mark their conquest’ [sic] Bunch of hypocrites, everywhere I’ve been in this country there are churches marking the Christian conquest of this country from the Native Americans. Funny thing is the Christians did that while defying our Constitution, and got away with it!!”

“It was logical for some people to hear about the shootings and wonder if recent news involving the Islamic State—including the deaths of a Jordanian pilot and an American hostage—could lead to some sort of reprisal against Muslims, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” reported the Post regarding the three deaths on February 11.

In 2011 the SPLC’s Richard Cohen blamed the shooting of Rep. Giffords on Sarah Palin’s political rhetoric, citing the work of staffer Potok. The Discovery Channel plans to air a documentary, “Hate in America,” this month with the SPLC as a partner helping “examine the current realities of intolerance in America.”

The SPLC runs a hate crimes racket, and the media—desperate to promote headlines that fit their pre-existing left-wing narratives about race, inequality and religion—are quick to swallow their propaganda.

“I think it’s perfectly natural to guess that this is anti-Islamic,” Potok told the Post in the interview regarding the triple murder. “Not just because the three victims are Muslim, but because there has been so much terrible news in recent days about extremist Muslims.” Potok also appeared on MSNBC on the morning of February 13 with the news anchor Tamron Hall, and there was no mention of Hicks’ political leanings, which appear to be consistent with their own.

It is ironic that Hicks, himself, may have, at least in part, allowed the SPLC to fuel his own brand of hate—if it was hate, and not a longtime dispute over parking—that caused Hicks to allegedly kill three innocent people.

“We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was…But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers,” wrote Paul Krugman of The New York Times after the Loughner shooting.

“Keith Olbermann had a special edition of his ‘Countdown’ show on MSNBC the night of the shooting, in which he had a series of guests on who all speculated that Loughner was influenced by ‘right-wing extremists’ and that the Right was far more guilty of violent and hateful speech than the Left, creating a climate conducive for this sort of action,” I reported back in 2011.

Have the media learned from their past attempts to politicize violent shootings, or does the marked omission of similar rhetoric regarding the Hicks case simply indicate that the mainstream media hope that the progressive ideology of this alleged killer will not actually be used against them?

If Hicks was a champion of liberal causes such as gay rights and abortion, and one’s ideological background has any bearing on the decision to brutally murder someone, then why isn’t the media likewise exploring in depth Hicks’ motivations—his likes, dislikes, ideology, inspiration, etc.—as they did when they erroneously blamed the right for Loughner’s shooting of Giffords? Instead, the Post published a story on the “particular tensions between Islam and atheism” which allowed atheist groups to denounce and separate themselves from the killer. If Hicks had any deeper motivation rooted in progressivism, you wouldn’t find it there.

On February 11 The Washington Post authors quoted from the SPLC, then linked to Hicks’ Facebook page, and failed to inform their readers of Hicks’ admiration for this group.

And the motivation of the attack remains in dispute, despite the hate crime allegations. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime,” said the victims’ father Mohammed Abu-Salha. His evidence: “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt.”

More recent news reporting by the Associated Press indicates that when Hicks “talked with them with his gun in his belt,” as the father described, it was likely during a dispute over a visitor’s parking space. According to the AP, a resident of that condo “said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a visitor’s space as well as their assigned spot.”

It continued: “He would come over to the door, knock on the door and then have a gun on his hip saying ‘you guys need to not park here,’ said Ahmad, a graduate student in chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill. ‘He did it again after they got married.’”

The victims in the most recent case appear to be the type of Muslims whom many in America would embrace as fellow patriots, rather than as radical fundamentalists who prompt what some term “Islamophobia.” The murdered couple was active in charity efforts. “Barakat had recently posted about providing free dental supplies and food to dozens of homeless people in Durham, something he had done twice in recent months, buying toothpaste, brushes, floss and mouthwash that he put into individual bags for each homeless person,” reported the Post. And his wife had traveled to the Turkish border last year, not to join the Islamic State but to “deliver dental supplies to a Turkish town…”

But then again, Barakat and his wife met while helping to run North Carolina State’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapter. Perhaps they weren’t aware of the origins of that organization. The MSA is a Muslim Brotherhood front group, and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is the group that spawned al Qaeda and Hamas. President Obama has embraced the MB at home and abroad, and this is a subject that the media should thoroughly explore, while there is still a chance to diminish their influence. Unfortunately, very few in our media are willing to investigate the MB—or even acknowledge their influence—instead they treat them like some benign, charitable group such as the Kiwanis International.

While it would be convenient for the media, and its allies on the left, to proffer evidence of a violent Muslim backlash when speaking about the culture of hate in a world full of news reports about Islamic State militants beheading their captives, or the Charlie Hebdo murders, not every murder’s newsworthiness should be coldly calculated based on the race, faith, or the known ideology of its participants—or perpetrators. There is an average of about 40 murders a day in this country, most of which we never hear about until the media find one that fits a narrative for them. Or at least they think it does. And then it takes on a life of its own.

02/1/15

Will New AG Support Civil Forfeiture Reform?

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

The Wednesday hearings on the confirmation of a new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, lasted hours because members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were often called away to vote. In the wake of the scandals surrounding the manner in which Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has functioned, the hearing, led now by Republicans, could have been harsh, but it was not. The Wall Street Journal characterized the mood in the hearing room as “cordial.” Watching it on CSPAN, I can confirm that.

In early November the Wall Street Journal, in an opinion titled “The Next Attorney General: One area to question Loretta Lynch is civil asset forfeiture”, it noted that “As a prosecutor Ms. Lynch had also been aggressive in pursuing civil asset forfeiture, which has become a form of politicking for profit.”

“She recently announced that her office had collected more than $904 million in criminal and civil actions in fiscal 2013, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Liberals and conservatives have begun to question forfeiture as an abuse of due process that can punish the innocent.”

That caught my eye because the last thing America needs is an Attorney General who wants to use this abuse of the right to be judged innocent until proven guilty. Civil forfeiture puts no limits on the seizure of anyone’s private property and financial holdings. It is a law that permits this to occur even if based on little more than conjecture. It struck me then and now as a bizarre and distinctly un-American law.

Writing in the Huffington Post in late 2014, Bob Barr, a former Congressman and the principal in Liberty Strategies, told of the passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) in 2000 “as a milestone in the difficult—almost impossible—task of protecting individual rights against constant incursions by law-and-order officials.” The problem is that civil forfeiture was and is being used to seize millions.

“The staggering dollar amounts reflected in these statistics, however,” wrote Barr, “does not pinpoint the real problem of how law enforcement agencies at all levels of government employ the power of asset forfeiture as a means of harming, and in many instances, destroying the livelihood of individuals and small businesses.”

“In pursuing civil assets, the government need never charge the individuals with violations of criminal laws; therefore never having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty of having committed any crimes.”

As noted above, as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Ms. Lynch’s office had raked in millions from civil forfeiture. Forbes magazine reports that she has used it in more than 120 cases and, prior to the hearing to confirm her as the next Attorney General US News & World Report noted on January 26 that Ms. Lynch’s office had quietly dropped a $450,000 civil forfeiture case a week before the hearings. She clearly did not want to answer questions on this or any other comparable case.

Just one example tells you why there is legitimate concern regarding this issue and it appeared in a January 3^rd edition of Townhall.com. I recommend you read the account written by Amy Herrig, the vice president of Gas Pipe, Inc, a Texas company that an editor’s note reported as “faced with extinction of a civil asset forfeiture to the federal government of more than $16 million. Neither Herrig nor her father, Jerry Shults, have been charged with any criminal offense.”

Jerry Shults is a classic example of an American entrepreneur. After having served in the Air Force and serving in Vietnam where he earned a Bronze Star, Shults moved to Dallas where he began selling novelty items at pop festivals throughout Texas. Since the first store that he opened had gas pipes exposed in the ceiling, he dubbed it Gas Pipe, Inc. Suffice to say his hard work paid off for him. By the late 1990s, he had seven stores, a distribution company, a five-star lodge in Alaska, and was an American success story. By 2014 the company had grown to fourteen stores and other notable properties.

By then he had been in business for nearly 45 years and employed nearly two hundred people. And then someone in the northern district of Texas, Dallas division, initiated a civil forfeiture seizure against him. I was so appalled by his daughter’s description of events I secured a copy of the September 15 complaint that was filed. I am no attorney, but it looked to me as spurious as one could have imagined, except for the details of Gas Pipe’s assets. On 88 single-spaced pages, those were spelled out meticulously and all were subject to seizure despite the fact that not a single instance of criminality had been proven in a court of law. Imagine having 45 years of success erased by one’s own government in this fashion. It is appalling.

Assuming Ms. Lynch will be approved for confirmation as our next Attorney General, civil forfeiture is the largely hidden or unknown issue that could spell disaster for countless American businesses, large and small, in the remaining two years of the Obama administration. She has a record of pursuing it. The upside of this is that the current AG, Eric Holder, in early January announced that the DOJ would no longer acquire assets seized as part of a state law violation.

On the same day of Ms. Lynch’s hearing, January 28, writing in The Hill’s Congress Blog, former Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) was joined by Bruce Mehlman, a former Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration, to raise a note of warning. “The topic of civil asset forfeiture should be an important part of the discussion with Lynch. As U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Lynch was the top official in a hotbed of civil asset forfeiture—helping to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars under the program in recent years.”

Ms. Lynch was not asked about civil forfeiture by either the Republican or Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was a lost opportunity and, if the new Attorney General applies her enthusiasm for it to the entire nation, it will be yet another Obama administration nightmare.