05/10/15

Stand With Pam

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

Great interview with Pam Gellar from Newsweek:

pamela-geller

After organizing the contest for Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Garland, Texas, where two men opened fire, the conservative blogger has drawn scorn from both sides of the aisle and made her way to the top of an ISIS hit list. Geller is promising more controversial events like the one in Texas. While many are calling her an Islamophobic provocateur, Geller calls herself a freedom of speech champion.

Few would argue about your right to draw any cartoons you wish, but isn’t it just bad manners? Why insult a religion? Why not make your point in a way that doesn’t offend people?

The point was not to insult a religion. It was not I, but the jihadis, who made Muhammad cartoons the flashpoint for the defense of the freedom of speech. If they had announced that they were going to kill non-Muslims for not obeying any other element of Shariah law, we would have made our stand on that. They are trying to intimidate free people into submitting to Shariah blasphemy laws by killing over the cartoons, so it was over the cartoons that we had to make a stand.

All cultures have contributed in their own way to making their imprint on America. What, specifically, is wrong with the Islamization of America.

The problem with Islamization in America specifically involves the aspects of Shariah that conflict with principles of human rights and constitutional freedoms. I stand for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of all before the law, and individual rights. I oppose the elements of Shariah that deny the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of women, non-Muslims, and gays, etc.

Do you attribute the violence in the Muslim community to an extremist faction within the religion? Or do you view this as deeper problem involving the core worldview inherent in Islam?

The Islamic jihadists refer to the texts and teachings of Islam—the Koran and the example of Muhammad—to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. Those Muslims who reject that understanding of Islam are not doing anything to combat it. There is, for example, not a single program in any mosque or Islamic school in the U.S. to teach young Muslims to reject the Islamic State’s understanding of Islam. With the Islamic State [ISIS] energetically recruiting young Muslims in the U.S., that is a significant omission.

Since you have been calling out Muslim extremists for violence and intolerance for years, what, if anything, surprised you about the violent reaction to the contest? Or was it expected?

I have been working in defense of freedom since 9/11. I always have security because I understand the threat. This art exhibit was no exception. I was aware that something could happen (something can always happen)—that’s why we spent tens of thousands of dollars on security. People say I was hoping for an attack or trying to provoke one—that’s a repulsive libel. I was standing for the freedom of speech against violent intimidation. In doing so, I knew the risks and took them into account, and our security measures worked: The jihadis were prevented from entering the event and committing mass murder.

Does anyone think that these two jihadists would have lived quiet lives as peaceable and loyal Americans if we hadn’t held the contest? They would have waged jihad elsewhere, on a less-protected target, and killed more people. The jihadists were the end of the line. By drawing them out, we exposed their network. And because we secured the perimeter, we were able to expose the network without getting anyone killed. The FBI can now go after the sources. They are gleaning intel from their computers as we speak. We smoked out a terror structure. This was a watershed.

ISIS has made a clear terrorist threat against your life. What kind of support, or protection, have you received from the federal government? What kind of contact have you had? Are your children protected?

I have no comment on security issues, for obvious reasons.

Could you elaborate on the nature of the death threats you have received from ISIS? Were there others that the public doesn’t know about? If possible, please go into depth and be specific.

I have received many death threats over the years. Some have been made public, and some haven’t. The Islamic State threat is a matter of particular concern because they have made clear their intention to strike in the U.S. and have shown that many Muslims in the U.S. are anxious to heed their call.

If ISIS manages to make good on the threat against your life, will it have been worth it?

Is freedom worth fighting for, worth dying for? I love life, it’s why I do what I do. I do not want to die. But I am not willing to live as a slave. I have fought for freedom for well over a decade now and will continue to do so to my dying breath, with no regrets. There is no other option. Silence is far scarier.

What is next for Pamela Geller? Specifically, do you foresee yourself engaging in future contests or activities to draw cartoons of the prophet?

We have been holding events like this for years. I think that more events like the one in Garland have to be staged, or the jihadis will get the message (again) that terrorism works, violent intimidation works, threats work.

If we surrender on that point and stop drawing Muhammad, we’ve established a precedent of surrendering to violent Shariah enforcement, and once established, we will be made to reinforce it again and again.

Everyone seems so eager to surrender. I never will.

05/8/15

Why They Must Destroy Ben Carson

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Black conservative Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is everything Barack Obama is not. That’s why he has to be destroyed.

In a desperate move, The Washington Post ran a more than 2,500-word article on Sunday warning Carson to stop criticizing Obama.

What were Carson’s crimes?

  • He offered “a conservative critique of U.S. health-care and spending policies, while standing a few feet from President Obama.”
  • “In the ensuing months and years, Carson’s attacks grew sharper—deriding Obama’s signature health-care law as the ‘worst thing to have happened in this nation since slavery’ and, in the pages of GQ, likening Obama to a ‘psychopath.’ Carson’s 2014 book, ‘One Nation,’ assails a decline of moral values in America and its government.”

Can you imagine anyone having the audacity to talk about moral decline in America under “America’s First Gay President,” as Newsweek described Obama?

The GQ attack on Carson was titled, “What If Sarah Palin Were a Brain Surgeon?” It was an outright smear of the black conservative.

The Post said, “For many young African Americans who grew up seeing Carson as the embodiment of black achievement—a poor inner-city boy who became one of the world’s most accomplished neurosurgeons—his emergence as a conservative hero and unabashed critic of the United States’ first black president has been jarring.”

The paper went on: “Carson’s personal accomplishments—and the work he has done to help black communities—still garner respect and pride among African Americans. Yet, while he has been a conservative for as long as he has been famous, many worry that he risks eroding his legacy in their community and transforming himself into a fringe political figure.”

Who are the “many?” The paper didn’t say. But some of them write for the Post.

We are told that the author of the piece, Robert Samuels, is a national political reporter who focuses on the intersection of politics, policy and people, and who previously covered social issues in the District of Columbia. The young man is quickly learning what it means to be a Post reporter. You have to protect Obama and attack his critics, especially if they’re black.

On the Web, the story ran under the headline, “As Ben Carson bashes Obama, many blacks see a hero’s legacy fade.” The hard copy edition carried the headline, “Admirers of Carson find his criticism of Obama troubling.” It ran in the Idaho Statesman under the headline, “As Obama bashing deepens, Ben Carson sees legacy fade.”

The message is that blacks in general—and Carson in particular—should not criticize Obama if they want favorable coverage from the Post.

The only admirer, Rev. Frank Reid of Bethel AME Church in Baltimore, was quoted as saying he found Carson’s conservatism “astounding.” Reid said, “But before we turn on the brother, we have to hear him out. As shocking as some of the things he’s said are, I would rather have a discussion than attack someone who has done respectful work.”

Rev. Frank Reid has a web page disclosing that as a “community leader,” he had such figures as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and Imam Wallace Dean Muhammad “to speak at or visit the churches he has pastored.” Reid is not shy about appearing in public with these “brothers,” many of whom have reputations as racial agitators.

But Carson will have to be dealt with in private before Reid and the others actually “turn on the brother.”

Carson understands he’s a target. During his presidential announcement, he mentioned that he plays pool with his wife, Candy, and that he usually beats her. He cautioned, “I should be careful. There’s media here and their headline will be, ‘Carson Admits He Beats His Wife.’”

Carson’s legacy includes the Carson Scholars Fund, a program that awards students with high levels of academic excellence and community service with $1,000 college scholarships. In total, more than 6,700 scholarships have been awarded across the country.

Carson’s mother, who divorced Carson’s father because he was a bigamist, required that he turn off the television and read two books a week. In the book, America the Beautiful, Carson said, “I didn’t hate Mother, but in the beginning, I sure hated reading those books. After a while, however, I actually began to look forward to them, because they afforded me escape from our everyday poverty. There in the city, books about nature captivated me. My reading ability increased. I began to imagine myself as a great explorer or scientist or doctor. I learned things no one else around me knew. Every single day my knowledge of our world expanded, which excited me to no end.”

As a result, another part of his legacy is the Ben Carson Reading Project, responsible for over 120 reading rooms in schools across the country. He has explained that “…we work so hard to put our Reading Rooms particularly in inner city schools because I recognize that 70% – 80% of high school dropouts are functionally illiterate. If we can nip that in the bud and can get them interested reading in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade you are going to have a positive effect on that downstream.”

For his success in life, Carson credits his mother and several “mentors, inspirers, and influencers,” that he discusses in a chapter of his book called, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence. Carson openly credits those who helped make him a success. These include:

  • William Jaeck, his fifth grade science teacher
  • Frank McCotter, his high school biology teacher
  • Lemuel Doakes, his band director
  • Aubrey Tompkins, the choir director at the church he attended while going to Yale

Carson describes Tompkins as his mentor, father figure, and teacher of spiritual values.

Obama’s father was absent from his life as well. However, we have known since 2008, when he was running for his first term as president, that Obama grew up under the influence of communist Frank Marshall Davis, picked by his grandfather to be a father figure. Obama never disavowed Davis and in fact covered up this person’s involvement in his life, describing him merely as “Frank.” That way, people would not find out that he had been influenced by a black communist who was so extreme he even faulted “European shoes” for making his feet hurt.

In contrast to Tompkins, Davis was an atheist. Davis was also a pedophile and pornographer.

The chapter of Carson’s book on mentors is preceded by a quotation from historian Henry Brooke Adams: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

America’s survival may depend on ending Obama’s influence on this nation sooner rather than later. We know the story. After being mentored by Davis, Obama went off to college and, by his own admission, associated with the Marxist professors and went to socialist conferences. This was not surprising. After all, he had been “schooled” by Davis on the horrors of white racism and the need to fight the oppressors. Davis had told young Obama that black people “have reason to hate.”

Obama has performed as he was taught, leaving a legacy of strife and division. Nevertheless, he is the hero to the liberal media and Carson is the villain.

The American people would never have voted for Obama if the media had told the truth about the influences on his life.

By contrast, we know the truth about how Carson, as a medical doctor, saved lives and how he has saved many others through his humanitarian work. He truly did “Think Big” and by doing so has made a tremendous positive difference.

In his own way, Obama was also a big thinker. The irony is that he has clearly made things worse for the blacks he purports to be concerned about. It is another indication that Obama is truly not a “brother” to his people. Instead, he has made them into cannon fodder for the revolution.

04/17/15

Judith Miller Opens Old Iraq War Wounds, and Sheds Some New Light

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Judith Miller, formerly of The New York Times, has sparked a fierce reaction from a mainstream media intent on continuing to blame George W. Bush’s “lies” for the Iraq War with her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey. The book has produced a general disgust from a media intent on ignoring important revelations she’s made in this book. Instead the mainstream media have chosen to focus on her alleged agenda-driven reporting leading up to the invasion of Iraq, while for the most part ignoring additional details about how weak the prosecution was against Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Miller now says that not only was she wrong when she testified that Libby had outed CIA operations officer Valerie Plame to her, but that the federal prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was on a vendetta designed to implicate former Vice President Dick Cheney himself in the conspiracy to expose Plame, with Libby as a convenient victim sacrificed in pursuit of Fitzgerald’s agenda.

Ms. Miller’s testimony was vital to the trial. She was “the only reporter who asserted that Mr. Libby volunteered information about Mr. Wilson’s wife,” writes Peter Berkowitz of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, in a long piece for The Wall Street Journal, entitled “The False Evidence Against Scooter Libby.” Now she says her memory is unclear, and that Libby probably hadn’t “talked about Plame with me that day.”

Her testimony at the trial interpreted notes from a conversation years past. Not knowing that Plame had worked for the State Department, Miller interpreted those notes to support the premise that Libby had told her about Plame’s position at the CIA.

“If Libby, a seasoned bureaucrat, had been trying to plant her employer with me at our first meeting in June, he would not have used the word Bureau to describe where Plame worked,” writes Miller in The Story. That’s because, she writes, “The CIA is organized by offices within divisions” whereas the “State Department is divided into functional offices and regional and other ‘bureaus’…”

“Reading Plame’s book had put my reference to that word—in parentheses and with a question mark—in a new light,” she writes. “Libby probably hadn’t used it, or talked about Plame with me that day.”

“Had Fitzgerald’s questions about whether my use of the word Bureau meant the FBI steered me in the wrong direction?” she wonders in her book. “Had I helped convict an innocent man?”

Such an error would prove troubling for any reporter, and probably for anyone who might have accidentally testified falsely. It was courageous of Miller to acknowledge that she had been misled given her already controversial reputation.

Her after-the-fact explanation actually fits with contemporaneous accounts “She was confused about that at first, she said,” the Associated Press reported back in 2007. “‘Through the context of the discussion, I quickly determined it to be the CIA,’ she testified.”

Fitzgerald had a transparent agenda, according to her 2014 interview with Joe Tate, Libby’s lawyer until the criminal trial, writes Miller. Tate told her that Fitzgerald told him, “Unless you can deliver someone higher up—the vice president—I’m going forth with the indictment,” a bargain Fitzgerald offered him twice, according to Miller’s book.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) has reported extensively on the flaws in the way Libby’s prosecution was conducted. Yet years later ABC News was still including this “scandal” in its top ten political scandals of the 21st century, and reporting the facts from Plame’s and her husband, Joe Wilson’s biased perspectives. “It’s unfortunate that this story has to be re-litigated time and again,” I wrote in 2013.

The story of Libby’s trial will not be re-litigated again here, but my numerous accounts of the myths surrounding this story outline essential details on how this trial has become one of the most misreported stories in recent history.

Miller’s account validates AIM’s consistent reporting on the subject: “I wrote or co-wrote with Cliff Kincaid a series of articles during and after the Libby trial that showed he was wrongly accused, wrongly convicted, and that Bush did a disservice to Libby and his own legacy by not having the courage of his conviction to pardon Libby rather than just commute his sentence.”

“Indeed, the prosecution presented no hard evidence that Libby had lied,” I wrote. “Instead, the prosecution asked the jury to infer that Libby had (with no motive) lied, based simply on the jury’s experience of the accuracy of memory.”

And now Miller says her memory was likely not accurate at all.

Miller apparently discovered her error upon reading Plame’s book, Fair Game; Libby himself had suggested to her she might find “something of interest” in it.

According to her account in The Story, Miller has been treated very harshly by the Times, and considers herself a scapegoat for the Times’ and news media’s overall discontent with the war coverage. “Other news outlets had followed my lead,” she writes. “That made me Azazel, the biblical goat upon which the community heaped its many sins.”

“‘Judy’s stories about WMD,’ wrote the Times’ Maureen Dowd, ‘fit too closely with the White House’s case for war,’” I noted back in 2005. “That was the bottom line of the anger and venom, some of it very personal, aimed at Miller by the likes of Dowd and Frank Rich.” I also pointed out how Miller was far from being the only reporter, or editorial writer, at the Times to have written about Saddam’s possession and pursuit of WMD, some of which turned out to be wrong, but by no means all of it.

Recall that it was then-President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 signed the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change official U.S. policy, and he ordered the sustained bombing of Baghdad in December of that year. As the bombs began to fall, Clinton told the nation, “Earlier today, I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.”

The animosity between Miller and the Times remains palpable. “To Ms. Miller’s credit, this is not a score-settling book, although Bill Keller, the executive editor who she says forced her out of The Times, gets walked around the block naked a couple of times and competing reporters receive just-for-old-times’-sake elbows to their rib cages,” writes Terry McDermott for the Times.

“Cast out of the journalistic temple, she says she felt ‘stateless,’ and from the evidence here she remains a bit lost,” he writes in the book review—ending it with a pointed, unnecessary jab. “This sad and flawed book won’t help her be found.”

Similarly, Erik Wemple of The Washington Post calls the book “depressing,” “desperate,” and written with a “tedious grand design.” And while Wemple cites Libby early in his review for his criminal conviction, he never touches on the points made by Miller that pointed to his persecution by Fitzgerald and exoneration as it related to Miller.

“A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying…to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and…to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD,” wrote Miller for The Wall Street Journal in an op-ed published on April 3. “Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted.”

Miller’s account is the more accurate, if less politically correct, one, despite the media’s ongoing animosity toward any evidence or argument that may absolve Bush from the accusation that he lied—and misled us into the Iraq War.

“Neighboring Kuwait and Iran also thought Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction,” notes Berkowitz for Real Clear Politics. “So did some of Saddam’s field commanders.” So did the British government, the French, and many of the other countries in the coalition that went to war with us in Iraq. Last year, The New York Times, of all places, revealed in a major series of articles titled “The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons,” that “American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs” during the Iraq War, but the Bush administration chose to keep it quiet. Clearly, the stockpiles of WMD that they expected to find once Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein were not found. The debate over that issue, and the significance of the Times’ findings, continues. But it is wrong to argue that no WMD were found in Iraq.

Berkowitz, in his Wall Street Journal analysis, took a deeper look at the actions of Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby, and it wasn’t pretty: “Mr. Fitzgerald’s conduct warrants revisiting not only to set the record straight about Mr. Libby, but also to illustrate the damage that can be done to national security by a special counsel who, discovering no crime, generates through his investigations the alleged offenses he seeks to prosecute.”

And this, which detailed how Fitzgerald withheld exculpatory evidence from Libby’s lawyers that could have absolutely made a difference in the final outcome of the trial: “Mr. Fitzgerald, who had the classified file of Ms. Plame’s service, withheld her State Department cover from Ms. Miller—and from Mr. Libby’s lawyers, who had requested Ms. Plame’s employment history,” wrote Berkowitz. “Despite his constitutional and ethical obligation to provide exculpatory evidence, Mr. Fitzgerald encouraged Ms. Miller to misinterpret her ambiguous notes as showing that Mr. Libby brought up Ms. Plame.”

Berkowitz also made the most salient point regarding this whole prosecution. The idea, when the investigation began in late summer of 2003, was to find out who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and identity to reporters, specifically to Robert Novak, who first reported it in a July 2003 column. By October, the FBI knew where the leak came from. It was Richard Armitage, from the State Department, who unlike some at the White House was opposed to going to war against Saddam. But that was kept quiet, and when Fitzgerald was appointed special prosecutor in December of that year, the case should have been closed. But Fitzgerald chose to seek a conviction against Libby by arguing that he was lying, rather than that his memory was confused when he spoke months later following his July 2003 conversation with Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Libby’s team wanted to have memory experts testify, but Fitzgerald refused to allow it, allowing him to stack the deck by manipulating witnesses.

Miller now makes clear that Libby did not tell her about Valerie Plame.

I sat through parts of the trial, including the day that Evan Thomas of Newsweek, David Sanger of The New York Times, Bob Woodward, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and Robert Novak testifiedall of whom spoke with Libby during the period in which he was supposedly outing Plameand each one said that didn’t happen in their conversation.

The idea that neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post, nor others in the media, regularly and deliberately push an agenda when the facts are limited, only available from the administration’s perspective, or conveniently fit preconceived narratives about reality is laughable. Accuracy in Media exists to document many such cases, including: the coverage of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting; the Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus;” Obamacare, and illegal immigration. Meanwhile, stories about Benghazi, Fast & Furious, and the IRS scandal, among others, are largely ignored by the mainstream media because they don’t fit the established progressive agenda and might damage the current administration.

In the end, this is one of those books that each party takes from it that which conveniently suits their own narrative. And by doing so, many in the media are ignoring the important revelations to be found in Miller’s new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey.

02/23/15

The Mysterious “Frank” Returns

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Yesterday’s news became big news on the Fox News Channel on Thursday when former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani brought up the name of President Barack Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. It was almost seven years to the day when we published our seminal piece about Davis, “Obama’s Communist Mentor.”

Davis was a member of the Communist Party and a suspected Soviet espionage agent. He was included in the FBI’s security index, meaning that Davis could be arrested or detained in the event of a national emergency. The FBI file on Davis documents his anti-white and pro-Soviet views, infiltration of the Hawaii Democratic Party, and other activities.

Davis also wrote an autobiographical and pornographic sex novel, Sex Rebel, disclosing that he had sex with a young girl and engaged in shocking and bizarre sexual activities.

Giuliani’s public identification of Davis and discussion of his role in grooming a young Barack Obama marks the first time, in my memory, that a top Republican has ever mentioned the Davis-Obama relationship. It was done in the context of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly of questioning how Giuliani could dare ask whether Obama loves America.

If the Republicans had brought this up during the 2008 campaign, Obama might have been defeated and the country could have been spared the last six years of “progressive” hope and change. The Davis-Obama relationship is something so damaging and corrupt that its public airing would have raised questions about the Democratic Party’s vetting of Obama and the direction of the Democratic Party itself.

However, Republican operative Karl Rove was warning Republicans not to accuse Obama of being a socialist. He said such a charge would generate a negative backlash. The result in 2012 was another Obama victory.

Now that it has become apparent to more and more people that Obama is not a traditional liberal Democrat and is, in fact, a Marxist with Muslim sympathies, a figure such as Giuliani feels compelled to speak out. So let’s take a look at what Giuliani said.

“I don’t feel it. I don’t feel this love of America,” Giuliani said, talking about Obama. “I’m talking about a man who grew up under the influence of Frank Marshall Davis who was a member of the Communist Party, who he refers to over and over in his book, who was a tremendous critic of the United States.”

Kelly countered that Obama “was raised in part by his grandparents. His grandfather served in World War II, his grandmother worked in a munitions plant to help the nation during World War II. I mean, to suggest he was raised by people who don’t love America or didn’t help him learn to love America.”

Giuliani argued that “his grandfather introduced him to Frank Marshall Davis, who was a communist.” He added, “You can fight in World War II, and then you introduce someone to a Communist and the young boy gets…”

After Kelly interjected that “it’s a political world view. It’s not a hatred for the country,” Giuliani responded, “Communism wasn’t hatred for America?”

Giuliani is correct about the Davis influence over Obama and the role that the grandfather played in picking Davis as a mentor.

But when Giuliani notes that Obama refers to Davis “over and over in his book,” Dreams from My Father, it’s important to point out that Davis was not identified as Frank Marshall Davis in that book. Instead, Obama identified him merely as “Frank.” The rest of the story was put together by anti-communist researcher Trevor Loudon, and we confirmed the identification with another source in Hawaii who was a close friend of Davis.

Even more of the story was put together by Paul Kengor in his authoritative book on Davis, The Communist. It appears that Davis was an influence over Obama for about nine full years, until Obama was 18 and went off to college. Obama went off to college and, by his own admission, would attend socialist conferences and pick Marxist professors as his friends.

This relationship alone would have disqualified Obama from getting low-level federal employment. The loophole in our system is that background checks are not required for federal elected officials. Our founders counted on a free press to review the fitness of those running for office.

When former Obama adviser David Axelrod talks about Obama being free from major scandals, he is ignoring the biggest scandal of all—how Obama concealed his Marxist upbringing and relationship with Davis. Axelrod of course was part of the cover-up. When “Frank” was identified as Davis, the Obama campaign insisted he was just a civil rights activist.

As we reported at the time, news organizations such as the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Newsweek and even Fox News ignored or downplayed Davis’s communist sympathies.

As Giuliani indicated, there are other influences on Obama that help explain his anti-Americanism. These include the “community organizing” philosophy of Saul Alinsky, his pastor Jeremiah Wright and the communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

Giuliani clearly feels, at this stage in Obama’s presidency, that some things have to be said openly for the sake of the country. A former crime-busting U.S. Attorney who was mayor of New York City at the time of 9/11, Giuliani fears for the future of our country. But it’s not just the fate of America that is at stake. It is clear that Obama has no love for America’s traditional allies, such as Israel. Hence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to America to plead his case personally. He is afraid that Obama wants to make a deal that will allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Now that Giuliani has publicly raised some inconvenient truths about Obama, the “progressives” and their media allies will naturally scream and cry “McCarthyism.”  Strangely taking this tack, Fox News’ Kelly wondered if Giuliani’s comments about Obama had damaged “the Republican brand.” The Republican brand will only be damaged by an inability to face facts and confront and expose anti-Americanism at the highest levels of the United States government. It is shocking that it has taken this long for the evidence to emerge publicly on a national basis on Fox News and other channels.

This controversy will help determine what direction the Republicans will take. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who has made it his job to protect Obama from the fallout from major scandals, was quick to label Giuliani’s remarks about Obama as “stupid.” He also attacked Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker as “spineless” for saying Giuliani “can speak for himself,” and not directly challenging what the former mayor had said

“What Scott Walker did ought to disqualify him as a serious presidential contender,” wrote Milbank.

This is a signal from one of Obama’s best friends in the media that the information unearthed by Giuliani is of the blockbuster variety. Giuliani went for the jugular and hit a gusher.

The first thing Republicans can do is simply challenge the media to report on the Davis FBI file. They have been avoiding it for over six years.

Congress could also investigate Obama’s communist connections, which stretch from Hawaii to Chicago, and question the FBI about what they knew, if anything, about the Obama-Davis relationship. The reestablishment of House and Senate internal security committees, including a loyalty program for U.S. officials to eliminate security risks, should be considered.

Republicans could remind people that it was anti-communist Democratic President Harry Truman who started the first loyalty program. He issued executive order 9835 establishing the program in 1947.

The executive order said that “each employee of the Government of the United States is endowed with a measure of trusteeship over the democratic processes which are at the heart and sinew of the United States,” and declared that “the presence within the Government service of any disloyal or subversive person constitutes a threat to our democratic processes…”

It is time for a background check on the President of the United States. Does he pass the loyalty test?