01/26/16

National Review Under Fire

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, a controversy has broken out over whether the conservative magazine National Review is a non-profit entity that violated tax laws by attacking Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a fake conservative.

A libertarian commentator is claiming that National Review is a non-profit entity that violated tax laws with its “Against Trump” editorial and collection of commentaries from various conservative personalities. But Jack Fowler, publisher of the magazine, says the claims are based on misinformation about the magazine’s tax status. He tells AIM that National Review is not tax-exempt itself, but is owned by a tax-exempt institute. Indeed, the “donate” page for the on-line version of the magazine does not promise tax-deductibility for contributions.

At the website of Chronicles, a competing conservative publication, Justin Raimondo cited claims that National Review is tax-exempt and said, “This anti-Trump issue of National Review is, in effect, a campaign pamphlet directed against a political candidate—indeed, the cover proclaims ‘Against Trump’—and, as such, is in clear violation of IRS statutes regulating nonprofit organizations.”

He cited a story last year from Politico, which reported that National Review was becoming a nonprofit organization, which would make it exempt from federal taxes. The article also noted that it was merging with the nonprofit National Review Institute (NRI), its sister organization. The apparent purpose of the change was to save money for the magazine and encourage donations.

Also citing Politico, Eric Wemple of The Washington Post said, “The magazine last year became a nonprofit organization so that its contributors could enjoy the tax benefits of their generosity.”

If true, the publication of the material attacking Trump would represent a potential violation of the IRS tax code. An exemption from federal taxes means the organization is prohibited from endorsing or opposing candidates for office.

On the left side of the political spectrum, The Nation magazine has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), but it remains separate from The Nation Institute, which is non-profit and tax exempt.

The anti-Trump editorial in National Review, signed by the editors, said Trump was “not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries,” in part because his political opinions “have wobbled all over the lot.” Several conservatives wrote their own articles attacking Trump.

Fowler said National Review is the same entity that it has been for 60 years, since it was founded by William F. Buckley, Jr. The difference is that “We are now owned by the National Review Institute,” he said. Fowler said that the two entities have separate boards and separate sources of revenue.

The National Review Institute’s 2015 year-end newsletter called the change “a major institutional transformation.” It said, “On August 1, 2015, NRI and National Review underwent a significant reorganization: the magazine and website—corporately, National Review, Inc.—became a wholly owned subsidiary of National Review Institute. This is good—very good—not only for NRI, but also for National Review. This organizational transition will allow NR to remain consequential for decades to come and allow it to do what it does best—publish hard-hitting, thoughtful, and witty pieces from today’s best conservative writers.”

Some of the confusion may stem from what is said elsewhere on the website of the National Review Institute. It says the magazine and the institute “joined forces so that the entire National Review enterprise,” including the magazine’s editorial activities and the institute’s educational programs, could have a greater impact. Itadds, “All aspects of the National Review family will be combined within one entity.”

Based on this part of the website, which is devoted to opportunities for jobs at the institute, it would appear that the magazine and the institute became one and the same, apparently some time last year.

But that’s not the case, Fowler said. Instead, it appears one is now a subsidiary of the other.

It was not immediately clear how National Review could legally become part of a non-profit, which is supposed to be “educational,” while pursuing partisan and political activities apart from its parent company.

In any case, the overlap between the two entities is significant. The National Review Institute says it “supports” National Review writers, such as the “widely popular and increasingly influential” Charles C.W. Cooke. It was Cooke who made an appearance on MSNBC to lead the National Review charge against Trump, calling the billionaire businessman a “con-man” and “charlatan.”

Commenting on Sarah Palin’s “rotten endorsement” of Trump, Cooke suggested it was all about staying in the spotlight and making money. He declared, “That Palin and Trump are together at last is no accident of ideology or timing; rather, it is the inevitable and rational confluence of two ghastly cults of personality—a fat-cutting, cash-saving merger that will serve to increase overall market share.”

It appears that Cooke is a British citizen who can’t even vote for or against Trump. His personal website says that “He emigrated to the United States in 2011 and lives in Connecticut with his wife, and their dog, a black labrador named Oakley.” He asks for personal donations for his work through PayPal.

While National Review argued that Trump had “wobbled” on conservative matters, Cooke has emerged as a major supporter of same-sex marriage, a position opposed by most conservatives. He argues in his book, The Conservatarian Manifesto, in favor of homosexual marriage, saying, “there is more to be gained by including gays in the institution [of marriage] than by keeping them out.”

For his part, Trump called National Review a failing publication and accused some of those writing articles against him of having asked for his money or wanting him to go on their radio and TV shows. When he refused, he said, they turned against him.

07/27/15

Revelations du Jour

Arlene from Israel

As the news keeps coming with regard to the horrors of the Iran deal – and the horrors of how Obama and Kerry are conducting themselves – I have no choice but to continue to write on the subject.

This issue remains number one in importance for Israel, and for the Western world. It must be taken with dead seriousness, and yet the the unfolding of revelations has become something of a self-parody. One is tempted to respond, “Nah, this cannot be happening…” But it is.

Consider:

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, a mind-boggling issue was raised by Senator James Risch (R-Idaho) and then pursued by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ). The question at hand: Does Iran get to collect its own soil samples from the military site at Parchin for analysis by IAEA? Senator Risch’s understanding was that the IAEA will be monitoring Iran’s soil collection by video.

As Fred Fleitz, “a former intelligence analyst experienced in the collection of environmental samples for investigations of weapons of mass destruction,” explained in National Review (emphasis added):

“The revelation that Iran will collect samples concerning its own nuclear-weapons-related activity makes the whole agreement look like a dangerous farce. This is not just an absurd process; it also goes against years of IAEA practice and established rules about the chain of custody for collected physical samples.”

From where I sit, there could have been only one acceptable response by Kerry to these queries on process: “Of course Iran will not collect its own samples.” But instead Kerry let it be known that this issue was covered in a side agreement and was confidential. Would confidentiality be necessary if it were a straight up process structured with integrity and an eye to keeping Iran accountable?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421550/iran-nuclear-bombshell-Iran-police-itself

~~~~~~~~~~

Kerry then followed up with a statement on Friday at the Council of Foreign Relations in NY that was a pathetic mix of attempted intimidation and postured self-pity (All emphasis following here added):

As to intimidation, he said: “[if Congress rejects the Iran agreement] our friends in Israel could actually wind up being more isolated, and more blamed.”

MK Michael Oren (Kulanu) responded thus:

“If American legislators reject the nuclear deal, they will do so exclusively on the basis of US interests. The threat of the secretary of state who, in the past, warned that Israel was in danger of becoming an apartheid state, cannot deter us from fulfilling our national duty to oppose this dangerous deal.”

While Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) countered that:

“Israel will make its views clear on the Iranian nuclear issue, which is relevant to its security and its existence, and no one has the authority to intimidate us.” What is more, Steinitz pointed out, objections are not coming exclusively from Israel: “Criticism of the agreement in the United States in general and Congress in particular is due to the serious flaws and loopholes displayed in the deal.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-minister-rejects-kerrys-intimidation-on-iran-deal/

I have a strong aversion at this point to having Kerry refer to Israelis as “our friends in Israel.” I think not. His statement is a follow-up to an earlier one – that any military action by Israel would be an “enormous mistake.”

~~~~~~~~~~

But this argument by Kerry as to why Congress had to vote to accept the accord perhaps wins the prize for offensive and ludicrous positions (emphasis added):

“…it would be embarrassing to him and a blow to US credibility on the world stage if Congress rejects the deal.

“It would be a ‘repudiation of President Obama’s initiative and a statement that when the executive department negotiates, it doesn’t mean anything anymore because we have 535 secretaries of state.’

“’I mean please. I would be embarrassed to try to go out. What am I going to say to people after this as secretary of state.’”

~~~~~~~~~~

Tears out your heart, does it not? The prospect that John Kerry might be embarrassed before the ayatollahs.

Credit: atlasinfo

For members of Congress not already angry, this statement should make them furious. Kerry is negating the Congressional role mandated by the Constitution, and claiming unilateral prerogative to make earth-shaking agreements. What would he say to people? That the US is a democracy, and has a due process by which he must abide. That it was understood when he got up from the negotiating table that agreements would not be final until after a Congressional review.

Kerry’s attitude here is a reflection of that of his boss. Obama behaves in an autocratic fashion that is not consistent with the role of the president of a democracy.

~~~~~~~~~~

“A top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed Saturday that the Islamic Republic would deny International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors any access to the country’s military sites, contradicting remarks by US officials following the signing of a nuclear agreement with Tehran last week.

“’The access of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency or from any other body to Iran’s military centers is forbidden,” Ali Akbar Velayati, Khamenei’s adviser for international affairs, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera satellite TV. Velayati further stressed that the directive will be enforced regardless of interpretations by the P5+1 world powers to the contrary.’”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-says-inspectors-to-be-barred-from-military-sites/

Two points to make here: First, and most importantly, this signals the futility of striking an agreement with Iran – for Iran will not adhere by it in any event, as its leaders will do as they please.

And then, the refusal to allow inspectors into Iranian military centers rather confirms the charge that at Parchin Iran will be doing its own soil collection.

~~~~~~~~~~

I want to share here a video of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). The Senator was speaking at a rally against the Iran deal – and for the release of American hostages held by Iran – in front of the White House last week and was harassed by leftists calling themselves “Code Pink.” The senator’s method of handling the hecklers is a pleasure to watch – a class act. But I am sharing this because he responds rationally to their charges, and this is precisely what we need: rational answers when all sorts of off-the-mark charges are leveled against those battling the Iran accord.

There is, to provide one example, the charge that those for the accord, which offers a “diplomatic resolution,” are for “peace,” while those against it are “for war.” The critical point that the Senator makes is that peace comes with strength, and that the accord makes war more likely. (More on this below.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QCbpafD3Pw

~~~~~~~~~~

What was left out of mainstream media coverage of this rally was background on who the Code Pink hecklers are. Code Pink is an NGO led by women, which claims to be “pro-peace.”

Credit: AP

According to Gateway Pundit:

“Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans was an early fundraiser and bundler for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Evans has met with several times over the years with President Obama and his most trusted White House adviser Valerie Jarrett. Code Pink has acted as a messenger between terrorists and Obama.

“Code Pink travels to Iran as guests of the regime. Code Pink leaders are regulars on the Iranian government’s PressTV propaganda outlet. Code Pink did Iran’s bidding in an effort to undermine the government of U.S. ally Bahrain in 2012.”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/07/code-pink-ties-to-obama-iran-not-reported-in-ted-cruz-debate-coverage/

This is information that ought be shared.

~~~~~~~~~~

Let me close with this outrageous exchange between a journalist and White House spokesman Josh Earnest, held right after that rally (shared by The Gateway Pundit, with my emphasis added):

“Q Secondly, I wondered if you were aware that, just before the briefing, Senator Cruz was across the street at Lafayette Park. It was a protest against the nuclear deal. Among other things, he was very vocal about how, because of the sanctions being lifted eventually, that there would be so much money flowing into the country that the country would use the money to ‘kill Americans.’ Do you have any thoughts about that?

“MR. EARNEST: Well, Anita, I was aware that Senator Cruz was planning to hold a pro-war rally in front the White House today. I didn’t see actually how many people turned out for the rally, but it doesn’t sound like he said anything there that he hasn’t said anywhere else.

“Q Pro-war rally? Is that what you just called it?

“MR. EARNEST: I did.

“Q You have no other thoughts about it?

“MR. EARNEST: I think that pretty much says it all.”

Really low. It is what happens when there is no good argument for a position one has embraced: Rely on insults and innuendoes. Senator Cruz’s rally was NOT “pro-war.”

~~~~~~~~~~

David Greenfield, writing in FrontPage, described part of the exchange between Cruz and Code Pink – with regard to being “pro-war” – this way:

“One CODEPINK member responded to Cruz by saying that he does not like ‘war mongers’ and asking Cruz, ‘Why are you so aggressively violent?’

“’I recognize that the folks in CODEPINK like to hold up signs saying, “Peace with Iran.” You know who doesn’t reciprocate those views? Iran,’ Cruz said, to cheers.

“’In the midst of this negotiation, the Ayatollah Khamenei led thousands of Iranians in chanting death to America while they burned American flags and Israeli flag,’ Cruz continued to more applause. ‘Iran has stated its objective to murder as many Americans as possible. They are not seeking peace with us.’”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/259572/white-house-code-pink-attack-ted-cruz-rally-us-daniel-greenfield

07/12/15

Maybe Kevin D. Williamson Should be Writing for Politico

Doug Ross @ Journal

UnsavoryAgents

The usually brilliant and stalwart Kevin D. Williamson of National Review appears at last to have fallen victim to the virus known as Beltway Insider-itis. In doing so, he joins the likes of David Brooks and Jen Rubin, so-called “conservatives” who act as the unofficial PR wing of the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and the Republican National Committee.

We fully expect the Left to tar Constitutional Conservatives and Tea Party activists as racists (no matter their love and support of Allen West, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, Israel, et. al.); most recently the progressive sissy-boy (which is the term he prefers, I hear) Damon Linker of The Week labeled the conservative base a bunch of Birchers who hate, among others, “negroes, elites, decadent city folk, Catholics [and] Jews”.

We do not expect the likes of Williamson, however, to channel Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove and Tom Donohue and slam the very group of Americans who handed the Republican Party massive midterm wins at every level of government in 2010 and 2014.

Thus, it was with great surprise that I read Williamson’s latest (“WHINOS: On the Martyrdom of the Holy, Holy Base“), a full-throated attack on you and I, who he terms “WHINOS”.

Never mind the Democrats, economic realities, Putin, ISIS, the geographical facts of the U.S.-Mexico border — all would be well and all manner of things would be well if not for the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their enablers, who apparently can be bribed with small numbers of cocktail weenies. The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans.

Why the vitriol (and patently false vitriol at that)?

Williamson, like many Beltway insiders, has panicked at the latest polls showing Donald Trump (no, not Donald Trump!) atop the current GOP field.

Recall, however, that at this same moment in the prior election cycle, Rudy Giuliani sat in Trump’s position.

Williamson also insists Romney was a wonderful candidate and anyone who couldn’t see the difference between the former Massachusetts governor and Obama was either a “fanatic or extraordinarily ill-informed”. Or perhaps nominating the Godfather of Obamacare made the dominant policy issue of 2012 a moot point?

And why do I call Williamson’s insipid arguments patently false?

He need look no further than his own website to read the sobering wisdom of Andrew C. McCarthy (“Republicans Have Needlessly Undermined their Ability to Resist the Iran Deal”), which effectively shreds every last molecule of Williamson’s diatribe.

In fact, on the most important national security question in possibly all of American history, the Obama-Kerry nuclear Iran agreement (McCarthy terms it “a disastrous deal that would end sanctions against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism while paving its way to a nuclear-weapons arsenal”), John Boehner and Mitch McConnell conspired with Barack Obama to simply cede Congressional oversight of a deal that will reward Iran with $150 billion and allow it (easily) to build nuclear weapons.

That legislation … enacted as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, shifts the burden of persuasion away from President Obama and onto opponents of the Iran deal, thus making the deal virtually impossible to stop or undo…

…Iran, of course, is not just an accused party; it is an incorrigible recidivist. In overt contempt for our nation and president, Tehran is already in flagrant violation of the “Joint Plan of Action” it agreed to with the administration. The mullahs see that, even as they systematically flout this interim deal, Obama is hell-bent on looking the other way. It is therefore certain that they will violate the final deal — which will be so frontloaded with carrots (e.g., a $150 billion signing bonus in the form of immediate sanctions relief) that the sticks can be laughed off…

…Under the Constitution, the president must persuade a two-thirds supermajority of senators to approve an agreement with a foreign power. That is, as I’ve repeatedly contended in connection with the Iran negotiations, the Constitution’s presumption is against legally binding international pacts…

…Under the Constitution’s burden of persuasion, then, the Iran deal did not have a prayer of becoming law … In the final Iran deal, the burden of persuasion is key. Enter the Corker legislation. It undermined the Constitution’s presumption against international agreements by shifting the burden of persuasion: Rather than forcing the president to persuade two-thirds of the Senate to approve the deal, it imposes on opponents the burden of persuading two-thirds of the full Congress to reject it.

In other words, the Corker bill (and, remember, Bob Corker is simply a puppet of Mitch McConnell in this and many other matters) surrendered full control of the most dangerous deal imaginable — handing cash and nuclear weapons to a terror state whose unofficial slogan is “Death to America” — to Barack Hussein Obama.

I don’t know whether McCarthy wrote his piece as a direct assault on Williamson, but suffice it to say that it appears purpose-built.

Williamson must also ignore the fact that, in order to get elected, men like Boehner and McConnell pledged fiscal responsibility, a full repeal of Obamacare, and investigations of Barack Obama’s high crimes and misdemeanors.

In fact, a Republican Congress has aided and abetted the most massive expansion of government since World War II; an act of fiscal irresponsibility so unhinged and detrimental to society that Mark Levin’s new book on the topic (Plunder and Deceit) is already a #1 bestseller weeks before it hits the shelves.

In fact, a Republican Congress has done nothing of import to repeal the disastrous Obamacare law, even as the Supreme Court and the Department of Health and Human Services rewrites it at will.

In fact, a Republican Congress has failed to name a Select Committee to investigate the weaponization of the IRS (the mere suggestion of which was outlined in Richard Nixon’s prospective articles of impeachment); it has permitted Hillary Clinton to destroy her government records that were under subpoena with virtually no repercussions; and it has failed to diligently pursue any one of dozens of other scandals (e.g., Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the UAW bailout, the violation of the War Powers Act, etc.) that should be front and center every single day.

Is it any wonder that the conservative base is frothing at the mouth?

Williamson concludes with the pithy phrase “[w]hining is no substitute for winning”; unfortunately his beloved Establishment has done very little winning, whether in general elections or on the most important policy questions of the day.

In order to win, Kevin, you have to fight.

Feckless, cowardly boobs like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have surrendered at every opportunity without even considering a fight, insisting before the battle is even joined, for instance, that they’ll never shut down the government.

The American people need a Presidential candidate who will fight. Whether that man is Donald Trump or, more realistically, someone like Ted Cruz, Americans want a candidate who will not hesitate to face our enemies, whether they be foreign or domestic.

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
Purchase this book

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.

06/3/15

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?

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.

05/20/15

Hillary Clinton’s Hypocritical and Totalitarian War on Free Speech

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has suggested that a key litmus test in evaluating prospective Supreme Court appointees would be their willingness to challenge “the right of billionaires to buy elections.”

Presumably, a suitable judge would indicate a desire to overturn the Citizens United decision that struck down a ban on political expenditures by corporations and unions ruled to violate the First Amendment protection of free speech – a case coincidentally centered on Citizen United’s attempt to advertise for and air a film critical of none other than Clinton.

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters,
Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

In light of recent allegations swirling around the presidential favorite, Clinton’s support of such a position is highly ironic.

For while the former secretary of State may oppose the rights of the wealthy to spend money on politics, she seems to have no such concern with the wealthy spending money on the Clinton Foundation and her husband Bill – all while Hillary served in the Obama administration.

Would Clinton seek a Supreme Court justice who would protect the rights of the likes of Carlos Slim and James Murdoch to contribute to the favored cause of a politician and shower the politician’s spouse with millions for speaking engagements?

If so, this apparent hypocrisy can be read in one of two ways:

Clinton believes that money does not have a corrupting influence so long as it is funneled through “indirect” channels
Clinton believes that the wealthy and powerful ought to bypass funding elections and simply pay politicians outright.

Appearances of impropriety aside, there are a few substantive questions around political speech that Clinton should be required to address.

Why does Clinton believe that the government has a compelling interest in stifling the political speech of any American, rich or poor?

How does Clinton square her supposed advocacy of human rights with her belief in inhibiting the right to free speech — which facilitates the robust and vigorous debate essential to a liberal society?

More generally, given a system in which millions of dollars are spent on losing causes each election cycle on both the left and right, what have Americans to fear about spending so long as laws are enforced equally and impartially regarding “pay-to-play” schemes and other politically corrupt activity?

Spending is a symptom of our system, and an all-intrusive government its proximate cause.

This is well known to Clinton, who seeks to raise a record $2.5 billion for her own campaign.

She is aware that people spend money on politics because there is the perception that there is something to be bought.

This perception becomes a reality when government creeps into every aspect of our lives, creating an unfortunate two-way street: Individuals and businesses spend money in order to maintain competitive advantages. Politicians in effect extort individuals and businesses by threatening to take away said competitive advantages, or threatening to mitigate them.

If we want money out of politics, the answer is not to stifle speech, but to shrink government.

***

While Hillary Clinton’s aversion to political speech is well-documented, less scrutinized is her support of limitations on speech of an entirely different kind: Religious speech.

During her time as secretary of State, Clinton championed the Organization of Islamic Conference-backed United Nations Human Rights Commission Resolution 16/18, which calls for “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”

Retired Maj. Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon’s leading adviser on Islamic law as it relates to national security, makes a compelling case in his book “Catastrophic Failure” that the resolution is actually a Shariah-based Trojan Horse meant to stifle all criticism of Islam.

Coughlin writes that the Islamic Conference, through the resolution, seeks to criminalize incitement to violence by imposing a “legal standard designed to facilitate the “shut up before I hit you again” standard associated with the battered wife syndrome.”

He convincingly argues that the Islamic Conference desires that…

the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and all other non-Muslim countries pass laws criminalizing Islamophobia. This is a direct extraterritorial demand that non-Muslim jurisdictions submit to Islamic law and implement shariah-based punishment over time. In other words, the OIC is set on making it an enforceable crime for non-Muslim people anywhere in the world—including the United States—to say anything about Islam that Islam does not permit.

For believers in the sanctity of the First Amendment, Clinton’s support of this policy as secretary of State should be disqualifying.

This is made crystal clear when we consider that Clinton has shown her support for the resolution in practice.

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, then-Secretary of State Clinton and President Barack Obama felt compelled to film an address for the Muslim world. In the video, Clinton and Obama disavowed any link between the U.S. government and the “Innocence of Muslims” movie that critically depicted Muhammad, which the Obama administration infamously argued prompted the jihadist attack.

Hillary Clinton delivers a message to the Arab world disavowing any ties between the U.S. government
and the “Innocence of Muslims” video following the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack.
(Image Source: YouTube screengrab)

That address we may chalk up to political correctness.

But a related fact we cannot.

In spite of Judicial Watch’s bombshell report indicating that the Obama administration knew about the Benghazi attack 10 days in advance – and knew that it had nothing to do with “Innocence of Muslims” — as revealed in an October 2012 interview with Glenn Beck, Charles Woods, father of slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, told Beck that Clinton had personally vowed to “make sure that the person who made that film [“Innocence of Muslims”] is arrested and prosecuted.”

The “Innocence of Muslims” filmmaker and former bank fraudster Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was later arrested and charged with violating the terms of his probation, spending one year in prison.

Consequently, the U.S. government — as promised by Clinton — in effect enforced Shariah compliance concerning blasphemy consistent with the Islamic Conference-backed resolution, and did so knowing that the film had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack.

Of course, even if a jihadist declared explicitly that he killed Americans because of a film, or a Muhammad cartoon or a burned Koran, it is the jihadist and the jihadist alone responsible for such actions. This point is apparently lost on the U.N.’s policy advocates, who in their victomology fail to realize that they are exhibiting the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to Muslims.

Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be an ardent opponent of free speech, notably with respect to politics and religion.

Her positions are anathema to an America founded on the basis of protecting political and religious dissent, which requires free expression.

Absent such protections, an America under Clinton will look increasingly like the totalitarian Islamic world that she seeks to protect, rather than the Liberal Judeo-Christian America with which we have been so blessed.

Feature Image: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

05/18/15

Stephanopoulos Fiasco is Par for the Course

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

What is surprising about the latest George Stephanopoulos controversy is that most of the media are treating it as something unusual rather than an acknowledgement of a problem that’s been plaguing the media for decades. We at Accuracy in Media are happy to see this issue receive the scrutiny it deserves. However, anyone convinced that Stephanopoulos’s ongoing political conflict of interest and failure to disclose it to his viewers is the exception, not the rule, hasn’t been paying attention to a long history of media corruption.

Stephanopoulos interviewed Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on April 26. But the ABC host, formerly a Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy, and unofficial hatchet-man, for President Bill Clinton, treated his broadcast as more of an interrogation than an interview in an effort to discredit Schweizer and defend, in turn, the Clintons. A real interview would have endeavored to understand Schweizer’s critique of the Clintons, not demand to see a “smoking gun” or “evidence” of a crime.

Stephanopoulos’s conflict of interest was blown wide open by an excellent outfit, The Washington Free Beacon, which started the ball rolling when it contacted ABC News about Stephanopoulos’s donations to the Clinton Foundation. ABC’s spokeswoman, Heather Riley, said that they would respond, but then turned first to a friendly ally—Politico—to spin the story favorably for the network and its golden boy.

“I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record,” said Stephanopoulos in his apology. “However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation.”

ABC News initially incorrectly stated that he had given only $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation—an amount he later amended to $75,000 over three years.

But there’s more, much more.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles reported that Ms. Riley “worked in the White House press office from 1997 to 2000,” including serving “as a press contact for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.”

But beyond that, Schweizer followed up on the week’s revelations, and found that Stephanopoulos’s ties with the Clinton Foundation were much closer than just cutting checks to the foundation. Schweizer called it “the sort of ‘hidden hand journalism’ that has contributed to America’s news media’s crisis of credibility in particular, and Americans’ distrust of the news media more broadly.”

He pointed out that Stephanopoulos “did not disclose that in 2006 he was a featured attendee and panel moderator at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).” Nor did he “disclose that in 2007, he was a featured attendee at the CGI annual meeting, a gathering also attended by several individuals I report on in Clinton Cash, including mega Clinton Foundation donors Lucas Lundin, Frank Giustra, Frank Holmes, and Carlos Slim—individuals whose involvement with the Clintons I assumed he had invited me on his program to discuss.” And on it goes.

Stephanopoulos inadvertently revealed in another setting what donations such as his are all about. “But everybody also knows when those donors give that money—and President Clinton or someone, they get a picture with him—there’s a hope that it’s going to lead to something. And that’s what you have to be careful of,” Stephanopoulos said to Jon Stewart about Schweizer’s theory on April 28. “Even if you don’t get an action, what you get is access and you get the influence that comes with access and that’s got to shape the thinking of politicians. That’s what’s so pernicious about it.”

“Could Stephanopoulos, who is also ABC News’s chief anchor and political correspondent, be hoping for access to and exclusives from Bill and Hillary, giving him a competitive edge during the 2016 presidential campaign?” asks Lloyd Grove for The Daily Beast.

On the May 15 broadcast of Good Morning America Stephanopoulos “apologized” again—while patting himself on the back for supporting children, the environment, and efforts to stop the spread of AIDS. “Those donations were a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on air when I covered the foundation, and I now believe that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake,” he said. “Even though I made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help children, and protect the environment in poor countries, I should have gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict.”

The extra mile?

This is, basically, the same argument the Clintons and their Foundation have put forth to explain their conflicts of interest or “errors,” after having taken millions of dollars from companies and countries that had business with the U.S. government while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State. Their failure to disclose many of these donations resulted in them refiling their tax returns for five years, once the obvious conflicts of interest came to light.

In reality the Clinton Foundation gives about 10% of what it collects to direct charitable grants, according to a study by The Federalist, as reported in National Review. “It looks like the Foundation—which once did a large amount of direct charitable work—now exists mainly to fund salaries, travel, and conferences,” writes David French. The study pointed out that “Between 2011 and 2013, the organization spent only 9.9 percent of the $252 million it collected on direct charitable grants.” In other words, less than $10,000 of the money that Stephanopoulos paid as tribute to the Clintons went to the causes he claims to care about.

Stephanopoulos has removed himself from the ABC-sponsored Republican presidential primary debate next February. Yet he simultaneously claimed, “I think I’ve shown that I can moderate debates fairly.” His decision to not participate ignores the bigger picture.

As we have pointed out, the incestuous relationships between the Democrats and media are almost endless. It’s not just ABC’s Sunday show, but the two other main broadcast networks that also feature highly partisan Democrats as hosts. NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd “served as a staffer on Democratic Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 presidential bid,” according to Politico. John Dickerson, the new host of CBS’s Face the Nation gave the following advice to President Barack Obama in 2013: “The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.”

Stephanopoulos says he should have announced his conflict of interest. If such announcements become commonplace, which they should, where exactly will that end? Should CBS News announce each and every time it broadcasts news about President Obama’s foreign policy or national security issues that the president of CBS News is actually the brother of White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes? Or should ABC News have regularly disclosed that its former ABC News President Ben Sherwood had a sister with the Obama White House? She still works with the Obama administration. And, NBC? That’s the network of Al Sharpton, Brian Williams, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow. Need I say more?

Chris Harper, formerly of ABC News, has posted his views, along with those of other mostly liberal former ABC News people, as cited by Kevin Williamson of National Review: “During the 15 years we worked for ABC News,” wrote Harper, “we remember that we had to sign a yearly disclosure of gifts worth more than $25 and contributions. Perhaps these documents no longer exist in the muddled world of TV news.”

Added Harper: “Mr. Stephanopoulos has few defenders among his former colleagues. According to a Facebook page, ABCeniors, the rather liberal bunch of former network staffers discussed the problems with his contributions. ‘That shows either indifference or arrogance. Or a nice cocktail of both,’ wrote one former ABC hand. A former producer noted: ‘He knew what he was doing, and he didn’t want us to know. That’s deceit.’”

Geraldo Rivera recalled that he had been fired from ABC back in 1985 because of a $200 political donation. At least that was the reason given at the time. Rivera wondered why Stephanopoulos was being treated differently: “The point is ABC treated my undisclosed $200 donation harshly because the network wanted me out for that unrelated reason,” Rivera continued. “Now ABC is bending over backward to minimize and forgive George Stephanopoulos’s $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation because he is central to the network’s recent success.”

Former ABC News reporter Carole Simpson said Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources that she “was dumbfounded.”

“But I wanted to just take him by the neck and say, George, what were you thinking?

“And clearly, he was not thinking. I thought it was outrageous, and I am sorry that, again, the public’s trust in the media is being challenged and frayed because of the actions of some of the top people in the business.”

She added that “there’s a coziness that George cannot escape the association. He was press secretary for President Clinton. That’s pretty close. And while he did try to separate himself from his political background to become a journalist, he really is not a journalist. Yet, ABC has made him the face of ABC News, the chief anchor. And I think they’re really caught in a quandary here.” She believes that ABC, despite their public support for Stephanopoulos, is “hopping mad” at him.

When the left has conflicts of interest involving money, the media allow the perpetrators—including themselves—to portray this as charity and supporting good causes. “[NBC’s Brian] Willams wrapped himself in the flag; Stephanopoulos cloaked himself in charity,” writes Grove. MSNBC identified 143 journalists making political donations between 2004 and the start of the 2008 campaign. “Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes,” according to NBC News.

But when conservatives are shown to have financial conflicts of interest, or even to have accepted legitimate campaign donations, they are generally portrayed as serving the interests of evil, greedy businessmen or lobbyists who are paying off politicians to allow them to pollute, destroy the environment, fatten up defense contractors and avoid paying taxes.

“As you know, the Democrats have said this is—this is an indication of your partisan interest. They say… you used to work for …President Bush as a speechwriter. You’re funded by the Koch brothers,” Stephanopoulos told Schweizer during the interview, casting the author as biased. Stephanopoulos, however, they want us to believe, is just an impartial journalist inquiring after the truth.

This is what happens when you have a corrupt media that don’t play fair, but instead put their thumb on the fairness scale to tilt it towards their partisan interests.

04/22/15

Obama and the Media Still Hiding Immigration Agenda

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Once again, the Obama administration is deceiving the courts, and the American people, about its plans for amnesty for millions of current and future illegal aliens. And to make things worse, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, for which President Obama is seeking fast-track authority, would, according to Dick Morris, writing in The Hill, “override national immigration restrictions in the name of facilitating the free flow of labor.” And in this instance, whether wittingly or otherwise, Republicans are lining up to support the President in the name of free trade.

The proposed free trade agreement would undermine Congressional oversight over immigration, adding more power to the presidency, Morris argues. Pair this development with President Obama’s push to legalize illegal immigrants as U.S. residents, and this could become a dangerous policy combination.

Immigration reform is often presented by the media in terms of the human cost, and the alleged inhumanity in not allowing these persons to stay in the United States. The liberal media therefore, delight in pointing to any evidence they can find suggesting hypocrisy on the right on this issue and ignore the blatant abuses by the Obama administration in pursuit of his amnesty agenda.

News coverage of the recent hearing before the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ignores the fact that the Obama administration misled a lower court judge, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, about the implementation of the Department of Homeland Security’s, and therefore President Obama’s offer of “temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, along with an indefinite reprieve from deportation.” The administration claims it is acting with prosecutorial discretion, and that it should be able to prioritize the removal of illegal immigrant criminal elements.

The reality is that illegal immigrant rapists and murderers are being released by this administration, and that arrests and deportations of that group have declined, as well.

The administration has acted deceptively. “For three months while the lawsuit was pending and Judge Hanen was reviewing briefs and holding hearings and conference calls with the parties, [Department of Justice] lawyers were telling him that none of the president’s announced new policies were being implemented,” wrote Hans A. Von Spakovsky for National Review on March 20. “However, on March 3, Justice suddenly filed an ‘Advisory’ notifying the court that the administration had, in fact, issued three-year deferrals to more than 100,000 aliens.”

The Department of Justice apparently “knew all along that the administration had started issuing three-year terms of deferred action and work permits” in November 2014, even though “it knew the states’ lawsuit challenged the entirety of the DHS Directive,” he reports.

When Judge Hanen realized what he had been told was false, he told Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Hartnett: “When I asked you what would happen and you said nothing, I took it to heart. I was made to look like an idiot,” He added, “I believed your word that nothing would happen. . . . Like an idiot, I believed that.”

During the April 17 hearing, Benjamin C. Mizer, Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, argued that “For an employer to employ an individual who does not have work authorization, that employer has engaged in a crime. So giving the deferred action and giving the employment authorization actually reduces crime by reducing the third party employer crime.”

In other words, the administration wants to ignore the alleged illegal acts of one favored group in order to reduce crime by another less favored one.

On April 16, the day before this Fifth Circuit hearing, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue characterized illegal immigrants as the victims of political forces. She reported that President Obama’s unilateral executive policies were “announced with great fanfare” and would “shield” up to “5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.”

Similarly, Politico’s Josh Gerstein, the day of the hearing, expressed his concern that “If the administration can’t get its new moves underway sometime this year it may have difficulty getting them done before Obama leaves office” and called Obama’s plan a “legacy agenda item.”

Clearly, the media are more interested in the success of programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) than holding the administration accountable.

“It will be an uphill climb for the programs’ supporters, made worse by the fact that two of the judges are Republican appointees who may be hostile to their position,” wrote De Vogue in advance of the hearing—revealing her transparent concern for the administration’s success.

Pundits in the Hispanic media community also continue to mislead their audience by running segments which promote a culture of fear.

MSNBC’s biography of Jose Diaz-Balart lists him as “one of the most respected voices in Hispanic journalism in the United States.” During his April 16 show, he brought on two Democratic Congressmen and asked them softball leading questions all about the climate of fear and uncertainty for those “waiting” in “legal limbo.”

Diaz-Balart asked, “What do you tell them when there’s so much uncertainty about these programs?”

“That fear is not going to go anywhere while this legal limbo continues, and really nothing is being done in Washington as far as immigration reform,” he said.

“But you know there are a lot of families that are being separated that do qualify right now under DACA or DAPA and nothing’s being done,” he commented. In other words, President Obama should act more, not less, to shield illegal immigrants from the consequences of breaking U.S. laws.

An El Paso Intelligence Center report using Obama administration data released last year indicated that “Of the 230 total migrants interviewed, 219 cited the primary reason for migrating to the United States was the perception of U.S. immigration laws granting free passes or permisos…”

Diaz-Balart’s Congressional guests spoke about how illegal immigrants can protect themselves and that lawyers will be provided to them, and the show featured pictures of people rallying to the cause.

One must ask, however, whether lawyers, rallies, and endless sympathetic media coverage will also be provided for the potential victims of the dangerous criminals who are currently being released by the administration.

“…both arrests and deportations of criminal aliens are down about 30 percent through the first six months of fiscal year 2015, signaling that agents, who have been told to stop focusing on rank-and-file illegal immigrants, have not been able to refocus on criminal illegal immigrants instead,” wrote Stephen Dinan for The Washington Times on April 14.

A hearing with “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana, also showed that the 30,558 criminal aliens ICE knowingly released back into the community in 2014 had amassed nearly 80,000 convictions, including 250 homicides, 186 kidnappings and 373 sexual assaults,” reports Dinan.

These predators released back into the American community are very likely to strike again.

But the media are not concerned about reporting on the facts which might sully the administration’s reputation or harm the left’s illegal immigration agenda.

04/8/15

Obama’s “Potemkin Village”

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

Historians would recognize the term “Potemkin village” as it’s used to describe “any attempt to make others believe we are better than we really are”. I first heard the unusual sounding combination of words this past Saturday evening as used by Dieter F. Uchtdorf in his General Conference talk, On Being Genuine, when he addressed the Priesthood Session.

He intended to emphasize the importance of actually being who you claim to be publicly as he explained the origins of this interesting terminology.

“In the late 18th century, Catherine the Great of Russia announced she would tour the southern part of her empire, accompanied by several foreign ambassadors. The governor of the area, Grigory Potemkin, desperately wanted to impress these visitors. And so he went to remarkable lengths to showcase the country’s accomplishments.

For part of the journey, Catherine floated down the Dnieper River, proudly pointing out to the ambassadors the thriving hamlets along the shore, filled with industrious and happy townspeople. There was only one problem: it was all for show. It is said that Potemkin had assembled pasteboard facades of shops and homes. He had even positioned busy-looking peasants to create the impression of a prosperous economy.”

As I listened my first thoughts turned immediately to Barrack Obama and his administration; lie after lie covered by smoke and mirrors, deception and stone walling to keep the public in the dark until such time as the truth didn’t matter anymore.

The health and safety of our nation has taken a back seat to how Obama and his administration appear in public; but I fear it is much worse than Grigory Potemkin’s slight of hand trick to make himself look good, Obama’s implementation of Marxist communism seems to be the driving force behind all this fakery.

An example of Obama’s questionable use of the presidency, and I’m being far too kind in calling it questionable; some might prefer treasonous…would be his entering into nuclear treaty talks with Iran.

Thomas Sowell wrote an article for the National Review, Obama’s Iran ‘Agreement’ Is a Charade, in which he outlines the incredulity of forming any alliance with Iran and believing this band of terrorists might keep their word. (I suppose the folks in Iran are saying the same thing about Obama and his administration; none are men of integrity.)

“By abandoning virtually all its demands for serious restrictions on Iran’s nuclear-bomb program, the Obama administration has apparently achieved the semblance of a preliminary introduction to the beginning of a tentative framework for a possible hope of an eventual agreement with Iran.

{…}

Why then all these negotiations? Because these charades protect Barack Obama politically, no matter how much danger they create for America and the world. The latest public-opinion polls show Obama’s approval rating rising. In political terms — the only terms that matter to him — his foreign policy has been a success.”

Sowell goes on to give a history lesson on Neville Chamberlain’s handling of a treaty made with NAZI Germany in an attempt to stave off war. At no time did it appear that Chamberlain intended to set Great Britain up for the nasty ramifications of such poor judgment; but at the same time his actions did “throw a small country to the Nazi wolves in order to get a worthless agreement with Hitler”.

On the other hand, as Sowell points out, Obama’s worthless treaty giving Iran the ability to expand its nuclear program may well be throwing Israel to the wolves “for the sake of another worthless agreement”.

“If anyone examines the hard, cold facts about the Obama administration’s actions and inactions in the Middle East from the beginning, it is far more difficult to reconcile those actions and inactions with a belief that Obama was trying to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons than it is to reconcile those facts with his trying to stop Israel from stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

If you consider the folks Obama has for his inner circle then his intentions become more troubling.

His senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and openly stated she looks forward to using America’s ignorance and tolerance of all religions via the First Amendment to further advance Islam into our society in order to bring about an eventual Transformation to Islam here.

Obama has been steadily weakening our military while at the same time placing ‘questionable’ individuals who happen to be Muslim, not only Muslim… but individuals who have ties to radical jihadist groups in key positions of government.

“In 2002 Mohamed Elibiary founded the Freedom and Justice Foundation in Plano, Texas. Freedom and Justice is the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He was appointed a member of the Homeland Security advisory council which meant Elibiary had access to security documents. In October of 2011, it was reported he took sensitive reports from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”

I almost wish I wasn’t aware of the loose ends, the shady deals, the outright lies and deception Obama and his administration have foisted off on the public, all the while claiming to be working for a better America. It would seem the America Obama wants our constitutional republic Transformed into is under the flag of Islam.

America’s economic recovery… It’s all for show and major media outlets refuse to report the truth, instead they prefer building up Obama’s image as America’s first and greatest Black president.

I haven’t brought up job reports, unemployment or the disturbing fact that 63 million potential members of the workforce don’t have a job, some of them having quit looking long ago so they aren’t considered unemployed. How’s that for another of Obama’s Potemkin Villages?

This article has been cross posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government, & The American Constitution”.