GOODBYE U.S. CONSTITUTION, IT WAS NICE KNOWING THEE

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March 2, 2015

Latest News Events Suggest U.S. Constitution a Dead Letter

Stephen M. Krason

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February 2015 did not just feature bitter cold in the eastern half of the U.S., but was a news-laden month that provided a window on a large number of our contemporary social, political, and cultural troubles.
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Heading the list was the continuing saga of big and increasingly threatening government in the Age of Obama. Early in the month, President Obama proposed a budget that would increase spending on social programs and—surprise, surprise—increase taxes on the wealthy. This is in spite of the fact that ever-spiraling federal domestic spending over a half-century has had limited success, caused government dependency to deepen and even expand to the unneedy, and created a more bloated bureaucracy than ever (the major beneficiaries seem to be the legions of federal employees).
Even though Democrats have long cultivated this image of “socking it” too the wealthy, how tight they actually are with them was seen in a news story about how large corporations donated millions to the Clinton family foundation while they were lobbying the State Department during Hilary’s tenure there.
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The Democrats are also usually the first ones to tout integrity in government. Another story about the Clinton foundation last month challenged that, too: the foundation has been accepting big donations from foreign interests and governments who would certainly be dealing with a future Clinton administration.
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Overweening government was a repeated theme of February news stories. Obama’s unilateral action to regularize millions of illegal aliens continued to stir controversy, with a federal judge temporarily halting it and Congressional Republicans taking half-hearted, uncertain steps to try to defund it. Articles I and II of the Constitution hang in the balance, since control over immigration policy comes right from Congress’s enumerated powers and this is hardly something that justifies a Lockean-type of executive prerogative. It was also revealed that as a result of Obama’s amnesty, illegal immigrants would be eligible to receive the earned income tax credit (even retroactively). The problem is that under Article I Congress makes the tax laws.
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Other reports said that the Treasury Department was paying subsidies to health insurers under Obamacare because of steps they have taken to limit out-of-pocket costs by policyholders—even though Congress has never authorized them. Never mind that Article I also says that federal spending requires Congressional appropriation. There was another news report about surveillance overkill. The National Security Agency (NSA) collaborated with Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency to purloin codes so they could spy on mobile phone conversations worldwide, including Americans’. It was another example of how such pesky concerns as privacy and the Fourth Amendment simply wither when there’s an appeal, no mater how tenuous, to national security. Perhaps our current government operatives should remember Federalist 51: while government has to control the governed, we must also “oblige it to control itself.” We’re told that government needs to spread the spy net widely—have universal surveillance—or otherwise we could not protect ourselves from terrorists. Like the U.S. child protective system (CPS) with its universal monitoring of parents, they don’t get it that when everyone is under suspicion the resources are spread thin and the real bad guys slip through the cracks.
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It’s interesting that, at the very time that the Democrats and their media allies were saying it would be a national calamity if Congress holds up Department of Homeland Security funding over the immigration amnesty, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted that his agency couldn’t do a good job in any event. He said it’s simply unable to track every American—which is not even a large number—who goes to join ISIS. Did he at all consider that such things as the universal surveillance regimen and other kinds of bureaucratic bungling (without which the Boston Marathon bombers, the would-be Christmas Day shoe bomber, and 9/11 might have been avoided) could be responsible for this?
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The specter of overreaching government was seen also in the FCC’s vote, at Obama’s behest, to regulate Internet providers—“net neutrality”—supposedly in the name of consumer protection. Besides lacking statutory authorization for such a move—a whole new arena for regulation has to be initiated by Congress—critics have vociferously alleged a threat to free speech. Then, there was the proposal by Obama’s BATF to ban a certain type of bullet used mostly for sport and target-shooting. Again, this would circumvent Congressional prerogatives. The end seems to justify the means. (One wonders what actually is the end of banning sport bullets: satisfying the leftist ideological agenda?) And don’t forget the issuance of the report of the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which called for dessert taxes, worksite “obesity interventionists,” and electronic monitoring of how long people sit in front of the TV. The “food police” are almost a reality and the government will constantly be observing you in your house—despite the Fourth Amendment. In 1984, the party members were the only ones under “big brother’s” constant monitoring; now it will be millions of people.
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The states were not to be outdone by the feds last month when it came to oppressive government. Washington State tried to force a family-owned pharmacy to sell abortifacients despite their religious objections. Even though the family prevailed in the trial court on First Amendment grounds in February, the state is stubbornly appealing. A judge in the same state ruled against the elderly florist who refused to provide a flower arrangement for a same-sex “wedding,” saying anti-discrimination laws trump religious liberty. (Or is it that sexual rights override even the First Amendment?) The state attorney general wants to seize all her personal assets. I wonder if he goes after real criminals so relentlessly, or just those who “offend” favored homosexual groups.
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No need to worry about whether all this is compatible with the Constitution, however, since the people on the left tell us that constitutional principles are an evolving phenomenon. Since they long ago stopped talking about natural rights, they probably mean the principles of the Declaration of Independence, as well. Indeed, that seems to be the upshot of CNN correspondent Chris Cuomo’s comments in his February interview with Alabama Chief Justice Ray Moore. Cuomo said squarely that our laws come from man, not from God. I wonder how he squares that with the Declaration’s appeal to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” Also, if man is the sole source of law he’s the sole source of rights, and if he gives rights can’t he, or really those who become powerful enough, take them away—or take them away from groups of men they don’t like? Does Cuomo see the tyrannical, even totalitarian, implications of that (since it all happens through government)? Or maybe he was too busy when in college reading Rousseau to think about such a thing.
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Speaking of favored and disfavored groups, Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in February seemed more concerned about abuses of Christian armies during the Crusades a thousand years ago—buying into the current skewed politically correct version of the Crusades—than about today’s ISIS and other Islamist outrages. In fact, he assiduously avoids even the use of the terms “Islamist” or “Islamic radical” when talking about terrorists (even though most of the current international terrorism comes from that quarter). He decried religious intolerance, but of course never mentioned that it’s especially prevalent in Islamic-majority countries. Obama also went out of his way at the month’s White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism to avoid associating radical Islam with terrorism. This highlighted the question many were already asking: Has Islam become the favored religion of a largely unbelieving left, so much so that even the flood of atrocities committed in its name are just to be ignored?
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On the family front, the February news featured further discussion about the rights of parents to allow their young children—even when they are as old as ten—to walk places alone (now called “free-range parenting”) or—recall the measles stories—to refuse to have them vaccinated. Then, there was the flap that followed from Pope Francis’ saying that spanking of children was acceptable so long as their dignity was preserved. The stories underscored the sorry condition of parental rights and prerogatives today, especially in the Western world: just about everyone other than parents, whether the ubiquitous “experts,” the omnipresent official child “protectors,” or even the anonymous busybody down the street who is quick to call the CPS, is viewed as more qualified to make decisions about children than their parents are.
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On the media front, there were the Brian Williams fabrication revelations. For a long time, surveys have shown a lack of public trust in the media. One wonders why it still seems to play such a big role in shaping public attitudes—or, put differently, why the public is not more critical or discerning about what it says.
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Finally, there were the cultural issues. There was a report of alleged “racism” in a planned community in liberal, sophisticated Austin, Texas because according to reports “people are afraid of black males,” particularly strangers. Is this truly prejudice, or do they possibly react that way because of the high crime rate among that specific demographic group? Remember Jesse’s Jackson’s comment about walking at night and feeling relief when he sees that it’s a Caucasian behind him? Recreational marijuana became legal in Alaska and the District of Columbia—joining Colorado and Washington—because of another federal law that Obama won’t enforce. Notice how this is happening with little political debate or consideration of such basic questions as: morality (a person’s allowing his reasoning faculty to be dulled), the teaching role that legal change plays, or the effects on the culture.
Oklahoma may withhold state funds for AP U.S. history courses in public schools because of insufficient attention to Founding principles, excessive focus on putative gender and racial oppression, and an anti-American tone. The left naturally attacked this as opening the door to intellectual obscurantism. After all, it’s a challenge to its near-monopoly of political indoctrination in public education. Then, a Nature article discussed fossil evidence—which are hardly airtight scientific conclusions—of prehistoric migration from Africa to Europe. In reality, the finding had much less to do with science than with promoting one aspect of socio-political ideology that now permeates the academic scientific community: Afro-centrism.
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So, there it is: February 2015’s news gave us a good snapshot of our current confusion and many of our discontents.
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Tagged as Abuse of Power, civil liberties, Federal Debt, Immigration Reform, Obama Administration, U.S. Constitution

By Stephen M. Krason

Stephen M. Krason's "Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic" column appears monthly (sometimes bi-monthly) in Crisis Magazine. He is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies and associate director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is also co-founder and president of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. He is the author, most recently, of The Transformation of the American Democratic Republic (Transaction Publishers, 2012), and editor of two volumes: Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Child Protective System (Scarecrow Press, 2013) and The Crisis of Religious Liberty (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014).

GEORGE WASHINGTON, THE INDISPENSIBLE MAN

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A bust of George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon. Photo: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

The Making of the (First) President

How a conservative planter became the ‘indispensable man’ in revolution and war.

By

Jack Schwartz

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 

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Feb. 20, 2015 3:34 p.m. ET 

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George Washington, for many Americans, remains locked in Gilbert Stuart’s austere portrait, an image to be venerated, but at a remove. The past decade alone has seen a cottage industry of Washingtonia attempting to transform a man of marble into a creature of flesh. “Washington’s Revolution,” by Robert Middlekauff, is part of this enterprise—a project to which he brings considerable credentials as a Bancroft Prize-winner who has written acclaimed works on colonial intellectual history and the American Revolution. And his contribution is a worthy one.
The conceit of Mr. Middlekauff’s book is to recount the American Revolution as it was experienced by Washington himself. This necessarily leaves out a good deal of the picture. For a panoramic view of the war, we must go elsewhere. A good place to start would be Mr. Middlekauff’s outstanding “The Glorious Cause” (1982). Nor is this biography a complete life, like Ron Chernow ’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Washington: A Life” (2010). Rather, it ends with Washington’s retirement from military service after the British withdrawal. Mr. Middlekauff has something different in mind.

Washington’s Revolution

By Robert Middlekauff
Knopf, 358 pages, $30

 

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George Washington, for many Americans, remains locked in Gilbert Stuart’s austere portrait, an image to be venerated, but at a remove. The past decade alone has seen a cottage industry of Washingtonia attempting to transform a man of marble into a creature of flesh. “Washington’s Revolution,” by Robert Middlekauff, is part of this enterprise—a project to which he brings considerable credentials as a Bancroft Prize-winner who has written acclaimed works on colonial intellectual history and the American Revolution. And his contribution is a worthy one.
The conceit of Mr. Middlekauff’s book is to recount the American Revolution as it was experienced by Washington himself. This necessarily leaves out a good deal of the picture. For a panoramic view of the war, we must go elsewhere. A good place to start would be Mr. Middlekauff’s outstanding “The Glorious Cause” (1982). Nor is this biography a complete life, like Ron Chernow ’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Washington: A Life” (2010). Rather, it ends with Washington’s retirement from military service after the British withdrawal. Mr. Middlekauff has something different in mind.

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What interests him is how Washington’s formative years molded the later man, how this conservative planter became a revolutionary leader, and how the war itself brought out innate qualities of character, resilience and fortitude in a provincial landowner that made him, in the historian James Thomas Flexner’s words, “the indispensable man” in the struggle for American independence.
While we may have read some of this material previously, it is in the nuances, the telling details and the subtle shadings where Mr. Middlekauff excels. As he relates, in a straightforward chronological account composing the first section of the book, Washington came from a cadet branch of the Virginia patrician class. The death of his father in 1743, when he was 11, put Washington on the margins of this society. It left him an outsider with just enough access to gain admission.
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There is something touching about a callow Washington turning to a book of deportment, “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” to learn lessons in manners that would stand him in good stead with his betters. Young Washington mastered the social graces expected of a patrician: dancing, fencing, riding. More important, he had a helpful patron, his older half-brother, Lawrence, who married into the powerful Fairfax clan.

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Like many ambitious young men, Washington had an eye for the main chance. He became a surveyor for the Fairfaxes, conducting expeditions that made him familiar with wide stretches of the Blue Ridge Mountains and led him to begin acquiring his own stake in western lands. Eventually he came to manage and then acquire his brother’s estate of Mount Vernon. Washington was a military prodigy. He became adjutant of the Virginia militia with the rank of major at the age of 20. Shortly after, he confronted the French in the Ohio Valley in support of Virginia’s claims to that territory. By the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, Washington was a lieutenant colonel of militia. He was all of 22. This conflict served as Washington’s training for the proving ground of the Revolution.
Three seminal events occurred at this time that were to anticipate his tenure as commander of the Continental Army. He was defeated by the French in an ill-considered clash at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania, but he was resolute in defeat and learned from his mistakes. A year later, he fought bravely under Gen. Edward Braddock in the British debacle against a force of French and Indians near Fort Duquesne but saw that British regulars could be beaten. He had won Braddock’s respect, but, given the innate British disdain for colonials, Washington could not gain a commission in the Royal Army, a rebuff that instilled a lifelong resentment against the British. Their failure to make Washington an officer in their military would cost England an empire.
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Mr. Middlekauff paints anew the familiar scenes of Washington’s war: Washington’s driving the British from Boston in 1775, his humiliating defeat in New York, his retreat across the Hudson and through New Jersey while being pursued by the British, his turning the tables on the enemy at Trenton and Princeton, and the inconclusive warfare of the next several years, with Washington losing more battles than he won but keeping the army intact until a reversal of fortune and the final victory over Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.
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As Mr. Middlekauff reminds us, the odds against Washington were overwhelming. He led a recombinant army that flourished in the spring and faded in the winter. Its ranks were riddled with Thomas Paine’s sunshine soldiers and summer patriots, who could not altogether be blamed for their defections because they were ill-paid, ill-clad, ill-fed and poorly armed.
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In attempting to forge a Continental Army, Washington had to compete with state militias that offered better terms to their recruits. His appeals for more support from the feckless Continental Congress fell on deaf ears. The travails of Valley Forge were only a dramatic symbol of the suffering and disarray that affected his ragged troops throughout the war.
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And yet he prevailed. It is here that Mr. Middlekauff comes to the fore, demonstrating Washington’s qualities of toughness, adaptability and endurance. Also audacity, stunning the British and Hessians at Trenton and Princeton with his back to the wall. As Mr. Middlekauff writes: “Washington’s strike at Trenton and Princeton revealed a side of his character not often seen: a willingness to take chances. He had allowed a part of his fierce energy to come out, and the consequences were especially pleasing to him, not simply because his daring paid off, but also because he had thrust himself into the heart of the fighting.” His crossing of the Delaware in December 1776 was as much a political stroke as a military one, since it heartened a dispirited patriot cause and marred British hopes for a quick victory.
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His men adored him; they also respected him and feared his wrath. He lost battles but fought a war of maneuver that ultimately unnerved and wore down the enemy. He was willing to cede ground to keep his forces in the field. He was a skillful manager, holding the army together to enable it to fight another day. He showed amazing forbearance in overlooking the slights of rival generals and second-guessing politicians. And when France entered the war on the American side, he demonstrated diplomatic skill in mobilizing a joint force to trap Cornwallis.
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The American Revolution took more than eight years and was a near-run thing till almost the end. Washington was there for the duration. It was only by sheer will that he outlasted the formidable power of the British Empire. To be sure, he was fortunate in his foes: dilatory British generals who won battles but failed to forcefully pursue and crush a wounded enemy. And he was lucky in battle, appearing almost invincible to the bullets whizzing around him.
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Imposing in stature, Washington faced down mutinies of sergeants in Pennsylvania and officers in Newburgh, N.Y., both over the lack of pay and pensions. It was at Newburgh in March 1783, as the war wound down, where his mastery of the grand gesture was manifested to dramatic effect. Mr. Middlekauff’s rendition is compelling: Washington “feared that if the army moved against the Congress, the Revolution and the new nation might be lost.” In assuring his officers that they would receive just compensation, Washington presented a letter from a congressman. But he had difficulty reading the text, causing him to stumble over the words. “He then stopped and pulled his spectacles from his pocket, saying as he did so, ‘Gentleman, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.’ ” He left his men in tears. The mutiny was over.
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The trajectory from an ambitious young Washington’s studying “The Rules of Civility” to the weary warrior at Newburgh urging his officers to listen to their better angels provides the substance of Mr. Middlekauff’s book. In between we are treated to Washington’s travails, sometimes too often. The space might have been better used to inform the reader of what was going on in the rest of the war, outside Washington’s orbit.
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This being said, Mr. Middlekauff has provided a valuable one-volume account of Washington’s ascendancy. His triumph over the British was a feat that probably no one else could have achieved. Without his inspired leadership, the Declaration of Independence might have been little more than a piece of paper. Mr. Middlekauff concludes by reminding us that the greatest thing Washington accomplished was what he didn’t do. At war’s end in 1783, he handed his commission back to Congress and went home. Washington chose the role of Cincinnatus over Caesar. His insistence on civil supremacy over the military during the war carried through to the peace, providing the cornerstone for the future democratic republic, the glorious cause for which he had fought.
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—Mr. Schwartz formerly supervised the book pages of Newsday and was an editor in the culture section of the New York Times.

HAIL TO THE CHIEF, OUR MUSLIM PRESIDENT

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DO YOU STILL REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A MUSLIM?

Barack Hussein Obama flashes the Muslim shahada to delegates of the US-African Leaders Conference in Washington DC in August 2014.

OBAMA MAKES ISLAMIC STATE FINGER SALUTE TO AFRICAN LEADERS
by Pamela Geller
Here is just a small sampling of Islamic State jihadists making the jihad gesture:
image: http://cdn5.freedomoutpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/16.png

American Muslim Jakeem Nolen, who beheaded co-worker Colleen Hufford in Oklahoma, making the Islamic State finger gesture:
image: http://cdn5.freedomoutpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/25.png

“Obama and the Muslim Gang Sign,” By F. W. Burleigh, American Thinker, February 18, 2015
Is President Obama a Muslim? A lot has been written about this, but if photographs speak louder than words, then a photo taken at last August’s U.S.-African Leaders’ Summit in Washington D.C. might shed considerable light.
It shows Barack Hussein Obama flashing the one-finger affirmation of Islamic faith to dozens of African delegates.
The Associated Press took this astonishing photo as the African dignitaries joined Obama, who hosted the event, in a State Department auditorium for a group photograph. It was published in an article in Britain’s Daily Mail, and it was the only use ever of the photo.
The one-finger display is the distinctive Muslim gang sign: The index finger points straight up while the thumb wraps underneath and presses against the digital phalange of the middle finger. The remaining fingers are squeezed against the palm in order to highlight the extended forefinger. The extended finger is symbolic of the one-God concept of Muhammad and is understood by all believers to be a symbolic shahada, the Muslim affirmation of faith: There is but one God and Muhammad is his messenger.
Thus when believers stick their index finger in the air, they demonstrate they are partisans of Muhammad’s God concept. And they also affirm their belief in Muhammad’s claim he was the interface between God and man. They also demonstrate they are part of the umma, the exclusive transtribal supertribe of believers that Muhammad started 1,400 years ago.
With his forefinger in the air, Obama affirmed his membership in this tribe
ISIS fighter displays the gang sign. To Muslims, the extended forefinger is symbolic of the fundamental belief of Islam: There is but one God and Muhammad is his messenger.
The Daily Mail editors did not understand what they were looking at. They captioned it “finger wagging” by Obama. But the African dignitaries understood, and a range of reactions can be detected among the ones who observed the gesture: amusement, surprise, curiosity, disapproval, contempt. Note the reactions of Abdelilah Berkirane, the prime minister of Morroco pictured just behind Obama’s left shoulder, and Ibrahim Boubacas Keita, the president of Mali in white garb and hat. They are Muslims through and through, and they are all smiles. They knew what Obama’s upright forefinger meant.
The reaction of Togo president Faure Gnassingbe, at the top row second to the left, is less approving. Through his face you can read the mind of this Sorbonne- and George Washington University educated leader. His mind is screaming, “You gotta be kidding!”
Gnassingbe’s country is squeezed between Benin and the Ivory Coast and is not far from Nigeria and its Boko Haram plague — perhaps a two-hour flight in a slow Cessna from Togo’s capital to the Nigerian capital, less than an hour in something faster. At the time of the Washington conference, Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau had just declared Borno State in northeastern Nigeria as the seat of his caliphate. Massacres of entire villages were taking place; only a few months earlier nearly three hundred girls were abducted from a Borno secondary school.
Togo has seven million people, 50 percent animists, 30 percent Christian. The remainder are Muslims, part of the umma. Gnassingbe and all other non-Muslims of Togo have reason to worry about radicalization of some of these members of the transtribal supertribe of Muhammad who reside among them. And so his look of disdain. “You gotta be kidding.”
Maybe it was Obama’s idea of a joke, but that is unlikely. The finger in the air was a position statement brazenly stated. His entire administration has been a promotion of Islam at home and abroad, and just cataloging the evidence would fill a book. He has made this country cozy for Islam, from ordering NASA to make Muslims feel good about themselves to calling ISIS beheading victim Peter Kassig by the Muslim name that he had adopted in the vain hope of saving his life.
If only Obama’s coziness were limited to such gestures, but from the very beginning of his administration, he labored to topple the strongman governments that had kept a lid on Islamic extremism: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen. Overthrowing the Syrian government was also part the program, not yet achieved but still possible. The methodology of each was a tactic from old-school radicalism: stir up domestic trouble that triggers a crackdown, then use the reaction to discredit the government and as a pretext for stirring up greater cycles of trouble until the targeted regime is replaced.
Obama is comfortable with Islam’s extreme. He arms such people throughout the Middle East. He has let them into our government. He supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi as the replacement for Hosni Mubarak, a staunch US ally and enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood, and threatened and bullied Egypt when a massive revolt replaced Morsi with a religious moderate.
The thread of all of these efforts was the reestablishment of the Islamic caliphate, the line of successors of Muhammad that ended nearly a century ago with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. This has always been a Muslim Brotherhood objective. In their grandiose plans, the reestablished caliphate would stretch across the Middle East with Jerusalem as its capital. The glory of Islam resurrected! These people aspire to world domination, and the caliphate would serve as the base for an ever-expanding war on the world until domination is achieved. That was always the goal of their role model. Muhammad ordered his followers to make Islam the only religion — to create a universal umma. As with Obama, they are just following orders.
The caliphate was resurrected last year, only it is not in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood — not yet anyway. However it came about, the caliphate was Obama’s creation, and he has only half-heartedly pushed back against it. Now he has asked the U.S. Congress for authorization for use of military force against what he created. What is Obama up to with this? In everything he does, mischief is the purpose. What mischief does he intend now?
There is nothing in Obama’s head that is American. He is an antithetical American, a polar opposite of its values that he is routinely undermining. He is an unabashed member of the transtribal supertribe that Muhammad created 1,400 years ago; he is of the umma, not of America. His finger in the air at the African Leaders’ Conference is unambiguous evidence.
And it is evidence that you have been had, America. Have you ever been had.

Pamela Geller’s commitment to freedom from jihad and Shariah shines forth in her books
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/02/obama-makes-islamic-state-finger-salute-to-african-leaders/#wmtZQhaYVLQCyfsd.99

Posted in MUSLIMS | Tagged BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, Islamic State, muslim brotherhood, pamela geller, President Obama | Leave a comment | Edit

BIBI NETANYAHU NEEDS TO BE HEARD

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Bibi: Why I’m speaking to Congress

By Benjamin Netanyahu

February 18, 2015 | 7:38pm

Modal Trigger

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Photo: EPA

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Excerpted from the Israeli prime minister’s remarks Monday in Jerusalem to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
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Why am I going to Washington? Because, as prime minister of Israel, it’s my obligation to do everything in my power to prevent the conclusion of a bad deal that could threaten the survival of the State of Israel.
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The current proposal to Iran would endanger Israel. It would enable Iran to build its first nuclear device within an unacceptably short time. And it would allow Iran to build an industrial capability to enrich uranium that could provide the fuel for many bombs in the coming years.
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A regime that openly calls for Israel’s destruction would thus have finally the means to realize its genocidal aims.
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Now mind you, I’m not opposed to any deal with Iran. I’m opposed to a bad deal with Iran. And I believe this is a very bad deal.
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I’m certainly not opposed to negotiations. On the contrary: No country has a greater stake in the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear question than does Israel.
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But the current proposal won’t solve the problem. It will perpetuate and aggravate the problem. It would provide a path for Iran to become a nuclear power. And so it’s very important that I speak about this in Washington.
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Why am I going to Congress? Because Israel has been offered the chance to make its case on this crucial issue before the world’s most important parliament; because a speech before Congress allows Israel to present its position to the elected representatives of the American people and to a worldwide audience; because Congress has played a critical role in applying pressure to the Iranian regime — the very pressure that brought the ayatollahs to the negotiating table in the first place, and because Congress may well have a say on any final deal.
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I think the real question is: How could any responsible Israeli prime minister refuse to speak to Congress on a matter so important to Israel’s survival?
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How could anyone refuse an invitation to speak on a matter that could affect our very existence when such an invitation is offered?
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Why go now? The deadline for reaching an agreement with Iran is March 24. That date drives the speech. Now is the time for Israel to make its case — before it’s too late.
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Would it be better to complain about a deal that threatens the security of Israel after it’s signed? It’s more responsible to speak out now to try to influence the negotiations while they’re still ongoing.
The whole point of Zionism is that the Jewish people would no longer be spectators to the decision-making that determines our fate. We were once powerless. We were once voiceless. We couldn’t even speak on our own behalf. Well, now we can and we do.
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The answer to all three questions is the same. Why Congress? Why Washington? Why now? Because of the grave dangers posed by the deal on the table right now.
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I don’t see this in partisan terms. The survival of Israel is not a partisan issue. It concerns everyone, all supporters of Israel of every political stripe.
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The fight against militant Islamic terrorism is not a partisan issue. The battle against the Islamic State, which just beheaded 21 Christians, is not. And the effort to prevent the Islamic Republic from building nuclear weapons, that’s not a partisan issue either.
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The pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran is the most urgent security challenge facing the world. The greatest danger facing humanity is the possibility that any movement or any regime of militant Islam will arm itself with weapons of mass destruction.
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Everything that we see in our region now will pale by comparison. Everything that we see in Europe will pale by comparison.
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When a militant Islamic regime that is rampaging through the region right now — that’s what Iran is doing, it’s conducting a rampage through the region — when such a regime has nuclear weapons, the whole world will be in peril.
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Look at what Iran is doing now without nuclear weapons. States are collapsing — and Iran is plunging forward. It already controls four capitals.
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It’s trying to envelope Israel with three terrorist tentacles — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and now it’s trying to build with its Hezbollah proxies a third front in the Golan.
With nuclear weapons, such a regime would be infinitely more dangerous to everyone, not only to Israel.
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Can I guarantee that my speech in Congress will prevent a dangerous deal with Iran from being signed? Honestly, I don’t know. No one knows.
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But I do know this — it’s my sacred duty as prime minister of Israel to make Israel’s case. On March 3, I’ll fulfill that duty, representing all the citizens of Israel before the two houses of Congress.
And I’ll make the best case for Israel that I can, knowing that our case is just, that our case is sound and that our case offers the best hope to resolve this issue peacefully.
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Filed under Benjamin Netanyahu ,  Congress ,  Iran ,  Israel

PORK ON THE MENU IS WHAT MAKES THE U.S. & CANADA FREE

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Let's hear it for a Quebec mayor...

Or as the commercial promoting pork says
“put some pork on your fork”

WAY TO GO QUEBEC.......

MAYOR REFUSES TO REMOVE PORK FROM SCHOOL CANTEEN MENU... EXPLAINS WHY

Muslim parents demanded the abolition of pork in all the school canteens of a Montreal suburb.

The mayor of the Montreal suburb of Dorval,has refused, and the town clerk sent a note to all parents to explain why...

“Muslims must understand that they have to adapt to Canada and Quebec, its customs, its traditions, its way of life, because that's where they chose to immigrate.

“They must understand that they have to integrate and learn to live in Quebec.

“They must understand that it is for them to change their lifestyle, not the Canadians who so generously welcomed them.

“They must understand that Canadians are neither racist nor xenophobic, they accepted many immigrants before Muslims (whereas the reverse is not true, in that Muslim states do not accept non-Muslim immigrants).

“That no more than other nations, Canadians are not willing to give up their identity, their culture.

“And if Canada is a land of welcome, it's not the Mayor of Dorval who welcomes foreigners, but the Canadian-Quebecois people as a whole.

“Finally, they must understand that in Canada (Quebec) with its Judeo-Christian roots, Christmas trees, churches and religious festivals, religion must remain in the private domain.

The municipality of Dorval was right to refuse any concessions to Islam and Sharia.

“For Muslims who disagree with secularism and do not feel comfortable in Canada, there are 57 beautiful Muslim countries in the world, most of them under-populated and ready to receive them with open halal arms in accordance with Shariah.

“If you left your country for Canada, and not for other Muslim countries, it is because you have considered that life is better in Canada than elsewhere.

“Ask yourself the question, just once, “Why is it better here in Canada than where you come from?”

“A canteen with pork is part of the answer.”

WHY DIDN'T BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA GO TO PARIS AND MARCH WITH THE OTHER WORLD LEADERS?

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OBAMA WAS NEVER A SLAVE OR A DESCENDENT OF SLAVES, HE IS A DESCENDENT OF BLACK MUSLIMS WHO ARE SLAVERS

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Best description of Barack Obama ever written.

First paragraph of Mr. Wheeler's statement is perfect.

 

 

Jack Wheeler is a brilliant man who was the author of Reagan's strategy to break the back of the Soviet Union with the star wars race and expose their inner weakness. For years he wrote a weekly intelligence update that wasextremely interesting and well structured and informative.

He consults(ed) with several mega corporations on global trends and the future, etc. He is in semi-retirement now.

He is a true patriot with a no-nonsense approach to everything.

He is also a somewhat well-known mountain climber and adventurer.

 

Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

 

The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract, empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.

 

He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.

 

What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.

 

Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners.

Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.

 

It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.

 

Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it, no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it. The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed In Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him:

Credo quia absurdum, I believe it because it is absurd.

 

Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.

 

He is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.

 

And yet he got elected, not once but twice. Thanks to those that did not think it was important to vote for freedom and those that were willing to give up their freedoms for entitlements.

 

Remember you don't have to be on a southern plantation to be a slave, if you are dependent on government entitlements you just have a different slave owner.

 

PASS THIS ON TO EVERY THINKING AMERICAN YOU KNOW!

OUR MUSLIM PRESIDENT CANNOT BRING HIMSELF TO USE THE WORD "TERRORIST"

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January 31, 2015 4:00 AM

Why Obama Needs to Pretend the Taliban Aren’t Terrorists
The administration makes a desperate and indefensible claim.

By Andrew C. McCarthy 
THE NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

Andrew C. McCarthy

No doubt because of my background investigating, prosecuting, and studying terrorism, the cynical claim by White House spokesmen that the Taliban is not a terrorist organization has annoyed me even more than the Obama administration’s nonstop lying usually does. No surprise then that I could be found railing about it on The Kelly File Thursday night.
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In that spirit, ten thoughts for the weekend:
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1. Under federal law, there are only three requirements for a group to qualify as a “foreign terrorist organization”: It has to be (a) foreign, (b) engaged in “terrorist activity” (bombings, assassinations, etc., carried out to intimidate people and change policy), and (c) a national-security threat to the United States. The law that covers this is Sec. 1189(a) of Title 8, U.S. Code, from the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. It’s here, and it’s just the first few lines — even a president who routinely ignores the laws he is sworn to execute faithfully should be able to make some time for it, maybe on the plane ride between the golf course and the Saudi palace.

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2. Obviously, even if it were true, as posited by Messrs. Schultz and Earnest (speaking for President Obama), that the Taliban is concerned only with Afghanistan, not with the global jihad, that would be irrelevant. They easily fit the definition of a foreign terrorist organization.
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3. Of course, it is not true that the Taliban is concerned only with Afghanistan. The administration’s risible claim to the contrary is part of its campaign to bleach the Islam out of radical Islam. Islamic supremacism, the ideology that fuels jihadist terror, is a global conquest ideology. Obama wants you to believe that there is just a dizzying array of small, disconnected, strange-sounding, indigenous “insurgent” groups that are not joined by any unifying ideology — the Afghan Taliban (not to be confused with the Pakistani Taliban), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Haqqani Network, Boko Haram, al-Nusra, Ansar al-Sharia, the sundry jihadist franchises that invoke al-Qaeda’s name (in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Islamic Maghreb, in the Indian subcontinent . . . ), and so on. You are not to see them as a united front against the West, but instead as animated by strictly parochial political and territorial disputes. The strategy, a disingenuous elevation of semantics over substance, is designed to minimize the global jihadist threat to the West that has intensified on Obama’s watch and has undeniable roots in a supremacist interpretation of Islam.
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4. You need not take my word for it when it comes to the Taliban’s ideological connection to the global jihad. Instead, just look at what they do. What did the Taliban do when they ruled Afghanistan? They willfully allowed their territory to be used as a launch pad for attacks against the United States (the 1998 embassy bombings in eastern Africa, the 2000 bombing of the Cole, and the 9/11 atrocities). And after 9/11, when, by simply handing bin Laden & Co. over to the United States, they could have stayed in power and avoided an invasion of the Afghanistan they are said to be preoccupied with, what did they do? At enormous cost to themselves, they tried to shelter al-Qaeda. In the 14 years since, they have continued to abet the global jihadist campaign, and have reveled in making war against the United States — a war they now understandably think they will win.
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5. The Taliban’s continued alliance with al-Qaeda’s global jihad is of a piece with Hamas’s self-proclaimed incorporation in the Muslim Brotherhood’s global ambitions, and with the forward-militia role Hezbollah plays for Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary state that exports its Shiite version of jihad. All of these actors perceive themselves as enmeshed in a civilizational struggle against the West. We can’t erase that by pretending there is no animating ideology, pretending that they can be pacified if we satisfy their local grievances.
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6. This business of distinguishing “insurgents” from “terrorists” is nonsense. An insurgency is just a domestic uprising (in the sense that the insurgent is from the country in which he is rebelling). When insurgents use terrorist tactics they are domestic terrorists. It may make Obama feel better to say that his pal Bill Ayers was an “insurgent,” but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a terrorist.
7. The most disturbing facet of the “insurgent” canard is that Obama is buying the logic of such Islamic supremacists as the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They claim that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist organizations (as American law designates them to be) but domestic political organizations that engage not in terrorism but in “resistance” — a righteous fight against “injustice” and “occupation” in their homelands.

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8. Obama, of course, is not approving of the Taliban’s tactics and goals. But he wants you to see them as domestic insurgents because progressives believe insurgents should be negotiated with and brought into a political settlement — and to the extent insurgents go overboard in their aggression, progressives believe they should be prosecuted in the civilian justice system, not fought militarily like wartime enemies.

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9. In the United States, Obama is operating in a political environment where the public — based on longstanding prudential American policy — believes we should not negotiate with terrorists because that encourages and legitimizes their savage methods. Similarly, the public strongly believes international terrorists are enemies who must be defeated, not defendants who must be indicted. Obama knows he is negotiating with, intends to settle with, and eventually will leave Afghanistan to the tender mercies of, the Taliban. Therefore, the administration is desperate that you not look at the Taliban as terrorists
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10. But they are terrorists.

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— Andrew C. McCarthy is a policy fellow at the National Review Institute. His latest book is Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.

KAGAN AND GINSBURG MUST, I REPEAT, MUST RECUSE THEMSELVES

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Take Action: Two justices should recuse themselves from ‘gay’ marriage cases Monday, January 19, 2015 Dear Supporter, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse themselves from any cases involving the homosexual marriage issue on the basis that they have conducted same-sex marriage ceremonies. The justices announced last Friday they will review an appellate ruling that upheld bans on same-sex unions in four states. The case will be argued in April and a decision is expected by late June. Justice Kagan performed a September 21 same-sex marriage for her former law clerk and his partner Patrick Pearsall in Maryland. Justice Ginsburg performed a same-sex marriage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC in August 2013. Both of these justices' personal and private actions actively endorsing gay marriage clearly indicate how they would vote on same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court. Congress has directed that federal judicial officers must disqualify themselves from hearing cases in specified circumstances. Title 28, Section 455 of the United States Code states "any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." Both Kagan and Ginsburg have not only been partial to same-sex marriage, they have proven themselves to be activists in favor of it! In order to ensure the Court's integrity and impartiality, Justices Kagan and Ginsburg must recuse themselves from same-sex marriage cases. TAKE ACTION Congress has an obligation to Americans that members of the Supreme Court are held to the highest standard of integrity. The law demands it and the people deserve it. Urge your members of Congress to privately and publicly call on Justices Kagan and Ginsburg to properly and legally recuse themselves from cases involving same-sex marriage. TAKE ACTION NOW! Share This Alert with Your Friends and Family: Connect With Us: Facebook Twitter Unsubscribe  |  Update Profile  |  Full Version  |  Contact Us American Family Association P O Drawer 2440  |  Tupelo, MS 38803  |  1-662-844-5036 Copyright ©2015 American Family Association. All Rights Reserved

THE MOST DIFFICULT CONUNDRUM FOR LIBERALS: LOVE MUSLIMS, HATE CHRISTIANS

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A Liberal Conundrum Weekly Update from Dinesh D'Souza Dear Friends, In the wake of terror in Paris, we find that Europe is now home to both radical secularism and radical Islam, a toxic combination. This clash of cultures presents a real problem for modern progressives. If a Muslim barber refuses on religious grounds to cut the hair of a lesbian, whose side does a liberal take? This problem stems from a double standard. Muslims, even radical Muslims that trample on the rights of women and threaten violence against civilization, are a protected class by Western progressives, whereas even nominal Christians have become the object of progressive disdain. If progressives were to be consistent, they would need to reject Islam as fervently as they reject Christianity, something very few progressives seem to be willing to acknowledge. Bill Maher is a notable exception. In my last appearance on his show, he expressed outrage that liberals are inconsistent in their condemnation of Islam. The irony of the whole situation, though, is that the liberal, while he can, kowtows to the radical Muslim, but the radical Muslim, if he could, would behead the liberal! New articles this week indicate that Holder and Obama's justice department may seek an indictment for General Petraeus. I'll let you decide who is the patriot and who is the scoundrel. Petraeus' real crime was to lead a troop surge in Iraq that worked, frustrating Obama's plans for U.S. withdrawal and defeat. It appears as though Patraeus and the Navy SEAL who shot bin Laden have now joined me on Obama's target list! On a lighter note, I want to take this opportunity to wish my daughter Danielle the very best—she turned 20 yesterday! How quickly they grow older (and how fortunate that we don't)! Happy Birthday, Danielle! Have you shared America the movie with your friends and family yet? Join me in the fight to restore America—let's spread the true story of our history. Click here to watch America instantly online or order on DVD. And remember, for each DVD purchased this year, I will donate an Educational Edition to a school to help the youngest Americans hear the story of our great nation. Sincerely, Dinesh D'Souza

THE DONKEY WHISPERER

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/F6etfJgZQ7A?feature=player_detailpage

CARTOON OF THE WEEK - WHERE IS OBAMA?

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CARTOON OF THE WEEK
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  Pssst ... Where's Obama?
  Illustration by Michael Ramirez for Creators Syndicate