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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; case</title>
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		<title>Top Obama Lawyer Brings Anti-Israel Bias to High Court</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/top-obama-administration-lawyer-brings-anti-israel-bias-to-the-supreme-court/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=top-obama-administration-lawyer-brings-anti-israel-bias-to-the-supreme-court</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Nov 2014 05:15:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[case]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passport]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Verrilli]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244731</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem is like Russia's control of Crimea? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/zivotofsky_wide-b042c275eff15a2ea95aaee3c6be1b4f4ae3ae51.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244732" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/zivotofsky_wide-b042c275eff15a2ea95aaee3c6be1b4f4ae3ae51-440x350.jpg" alt="zivotofsky" width="342" height="272" /></a>The Obama administration’s anti-Israel bias was on full display at the Supreme Court earlier this week. Its chief lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, offered an incredibly insulting analogy while arguing a case involving whether a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem has the right to require, upon request, that the State Department identify “Israel” as the place of birth on his or her passport. In defending the administration’s position that it has the inherent discretion to deny any such request if it believes that granting the request would undermine the president’s foreign policy objectives, Verrilli raised the bogeyman comparison to “issuing passports to people born in the Crimea tomorrow that identified Russia as the country of birth.” Verrilli said that to do so “would contradict the foreign policy position in a way that could be quite deleterious,” leaving the distinct impression that Israel’s relationship to Jerusalem should be analyzed the same way for the purposes of this case.</p>
<p>The case stemmed from an attempt by the parents of a boy born in Jerusalem, who is a U.S. citizen because both of his parents are U.S. citizens, to file an application for a consular report of birth abroad and a United States passport for their son, Menachem Binyamin, listing his place of birth as “Israel.” The parents were exercising a statutory right explicitly granted by Congress in the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which still remains in effect and requires the State Department to record a Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen’s place of birth as “Israel” if requested to do so by the citizen or his or her legal guardian.</p>
<p>The State Department denied the parents’ request, despite the fact that their son was born in “West&#8221; Jerusalem, which even the Palestinian negotiators are not currently claiming belongs to them. The Palestinians insist that only “East” Jerusalem must become the capital of an independent Palestinian state, but the State Department’s rejection of the passport request thrusts the status of <i>all</i> parts of Jerusalem into the conflict, including the undisputed portion.</p>
<p>Verrilli argued to the Supreme Court that requiring the State Department to identify in a passport, an official government-issued document, Israel as the birthplace of a U.S. citizen, known by the government to have been born in Jerusalem, would impermissibly “interject an issue of recognition policy into the content of passports.” He added that “Congress cannot compel the Executive to issue diplomatic communications that contradict the official position of the United States on a matter of recognition,” in summing up the administration’s position. He also expressed concern about the impact that such implied recognition of Israel’s claims would have on the Palestinians, whom, he noted, declared, “Jerusalem the capital of the Palestinian state.”</p>
<p>Verrilli characterized the Obama administration’s role as “an honest broker who could stand apart from this conflict and help bring it to resolution.” He said that adhering to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act’s passport requirement would undermine this role and “the credibility of the President on this fundamental question of where the United States stands on the status of Jerusalem until the parties work it out.”</p>
<p>In other words, the Obama administration has come before the Supreme Court with self-righteous proclamations about the need to preserve the president’s credibility and even-handedness in his conduct of diplomacy on the Jerusalem issue in order to justify its utter disregard of a law on the books concerning the issuance of passports. True to form, the Obama administration is asserting unbridled executive power. Claiming that Congress cannot interfere with the president’s conduct of foreign diplomacy, the State Department decided to disregard an explicit provision in a congressional statute, which requires the State Department to record a Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen’s place of birth as “Israel” if requested to do so by the citizen or his or her legal guardian. The Foreign Relations Authorization Act’s Jerusalem provision granted no discretion to the executive branch in this regard.  The Act says: “For … a United States citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary shall, upon the request of the citizen or the citizen’s legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel.”</p>
<p>“Shall,” not “may,” is the operative word. Such legal technicalities do not faze the Obama administration, however. Its Solicitor General told the Supreme Court Justices that they “ought to defer to the Executive Branch&#8217;s judgment that the place of birth listing can have significant diplomatic consequences.” Justice Stephen Breyer agreed with this position because, as Justice Breyer so humbly put it, “I&#8217;m a judge. I&#8217;m not a foreign affairs expert.”</p>
<p>Justice Sotomayor, acting as if she were counsel for the Palestinians rather than a Supreme Court Justice, remarked that requiring the State Department to honor a Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen’s request to record his or her place of birth as “Israel” on an official government document would be tantamount to “asking the government to lie.” She reached that bizarre conclusion on the premise that the U.S. government would be identifying Jerusalem with Israel, contrary to the government’s official recognition policy.</p>
<p>The more conservative-leaning Justices expressed some skepticism regarding the argument that issuing the passport as requested would interfere with the president’s diplomatic powers to decide whether or not to recognize the sovereign claims of Israel to Jerusalem. Justice Scalia acknowledged that there could be a constitutional issue if the president’s recognition powers were being directly challenged by legislation, but he questioned whether that was the case here.</p>
<p>Justice Alito said that while he understood “the position of the United States that Israel does not exercise full sovereignty over Jerusalem,” he suspected there were certain attributes of sovereignty exercised by Israel such as Israel’s issuance of birth certificates for births within Jerusalem or Israel’s prosecution of crimes committed within Jerusalem which “the United States recognizes that Israel is lawfully exercising.”</p>
<p>Justice Kennedy proposed an idea he thought might alleviate the State Department’s concerns. He suggested that the State Department could simply include a statement with the passports it issues for Jewish American citizens born in Jerusalem that “This passport does not indicate that the government of the United States and the Secretary of State recognize that Israel has sovereign jurisdiction.”</p>
<p>Justices Kagan and Ginsburg expressed concern about the ramifications of appearing to take sides in the dispute between the Palestinians and Israel over Jerusalem’s status.</p>
<p>“I mean, history suggests that everything is a big deal with respect to the status of Jerusalem,” Justice Kagan said, pointing to the recent spate of violence in Jerusalem to support her point. “And right now Jerusalem is a tinderbox,” she added, “because of issues about the status of and access to a particularly holy site there. And so sort of everything matters, doesn&#8217;t it?”</p>
<p>With all due respect to Justice Kagan’s concerns about not setting off a “tinderbox,” what should matter is not to give the Palestinians a veto power over the implementation of a clear congressional statutory directive because of worries about a violent Palestinian reaction.</p>
<p>Justice Ginsburg questioned the fairness of the statute. “What about Palestinians who were born in Jerusalem and want to have Palestine as their place of birth?” she asked. “American born Palestinians cannot do that. And that suggests that Congress had a view, and the view was that Jerusalem was properly part of Israel.”</p>
<p>Horror of horrors that Congress should dare tilt in the direction of the one true democracy in the Middle East that has traditionally been our closest ally in the region!</p>
<p>In any case, President Obama has tipped the scale in precisely the opposite direction. Solicitor General Verrilli’s argument that the president’s ability to serve as an “honest broker” will be at risk if the Court rules against the State Department’s denial of the passport request rings hollow. Obama forfeited that role when he effectively endorsed the division of Jerusalem, based on Obama’s call for Israel to withdraw essentially to the pre-June 1967 lines as the basis for Palestinian-Israeli final status negotiations on the border between the two states. Obama’s map-drawing would mean that so-called “East” Jerusalem would become a part of a new Palestine state, codifying an artificial division that would reinstate the conditions prevailing during Jordan’s illegal occupation of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the Old City, between 1948 and 1967.</p>
<p>Prior to the Jordanians’ illegal occupation, Jerusalem was an undivided city. Historically, Jews have been living in Jerusalem continuously for more than three millennia. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any sovereign nation except of the Jewish people.</p>
<p>In more recent times, Jews have constituted the largest single group of inhabitants in Jerusalem since at least the mid-1800s. During the Jordanians’ illegal occupation between 1948 and 1967 of the eastern section, including the Old City, which Jordan annexed and ruled from its capital, Amman, Jewish homes and sacred places were destroyed or defaced. Jews were barred from worshipping at their holiest sites. The Palestinians today want to replicate this division and impose an ethnic and religious cleansing of any Jewish residents.</p>
<p>“In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands,” Palestinian Authority President Abbas said last year.</p>
<p>When the Obama administration condemns Israel for planning to expand housing for Israeli Jews living in over-crowded Jewish neighborhoods within the portion of Jerusalem that Jordan had illegally occupied until Israel reunified the city, it is not neutral or acting as an “honest broker.” It is embracing the Palestinians’ bogus claims derived from Jordan’s illegal occupation.</p>
<p>Earlier this week, Abbas sent a letter to the family of the Palestinian jihadist killed by Israeli soldiers after he had seriously wounded Rabbi Glick, an American citizen, who was peacefully seeking more access for Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Abbas called the would-be assassin “a martyr defending the rights of our people and the holy places.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Temple Mount is holy to Jews, as well as to Muslims. It includes but is not limited to the al-Aqsa Mosque. But Muslims, whom have been abusing the administrative responsibilities Israel granted to them in connection with the site,  insist on barring Jews from worshipping anywhere on the Temple Mount site. Defending “the holy places” means, according to Abbas, enforcing such discriminatory exclusion of Jews, whom he previously referred to as “cattle,” by &#8220;all means&#8221; necessary.</p>
<p>Palestinian violence has followed in the wake of Abbas’s incendiary rhetoric. But the Obama administration continues to side with the Palestinian position. When asked to comment last week on Glick’s shooting by a Palestinian jihadist, State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki deplored the shooting but quickly pivoted to expressing the Obama Administration’s “support” for “the long-standing practices regarding non-Muslim visitors to the site, to Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount.” Just by referring to the Temple Mount first by its Arabic name – even before its English designation &#8211; and omitting any reference to its Hebrew name Har haBáyit (or Har haMoria), the State Department spokesperson displayed the Obama administration’s pro-Palestinian bias.</p>
<p>In what should have been a prosaic explanation to the Supreme Court of the Obama administration’s position on the relevant law, its Solicitor General exposed the true animus that the Obama administration has towards the Jewish state of Israel. Solicitor General Verrilli’s reference to Russia and Crimea in an oral argument dealing with the issuance of a passport listing Israel as the place of birth for an American citizen born in Jerusalem was a contemptible distraction intended to place Israel in an unfavorable light in front of the highest court of the land.</p>
<p>It is always difficult to ascertain which way the Supreme Court will rule in a controversial case from the comments made by the various Justices during oral argument. However, what could emerge is a narrowly written majority opinion that sidesteps the constitutional question of separation of powers. The State Department can honor the Jerusalem-born American citizen’s request in accordance with the statute, based simply on the uncontested fact that it was Israel which issued the official birth certificate in the first place upon which the issuers of the passport relied for information. As Justice Kennedy, often a swing vote on the Court, suggested, the administrative action of issuing the passport with such birth information can be accompanied by a clear disclaimer statement that issuing the passport in no way is meant to express the U.S. government’s diplomatic recognition of Israel’s sovereign claims to Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Whatever the outcome, Solicitor General Verrilli’s slanderous Russia-Crimea analogy will remain a shameful episode in the annals of Supreme Court oral arguments.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Hillary Clinton Turns Liberals into &#8216;Rape-Loving Scum&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-clinton-turns-liberals-into-rape-loving-scum/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillary-clinton-turns-liberals-into-rape-loving-scum</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-clinton-turns-liberals-into-rape-loving-scum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2014 04:50:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[case]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Will]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trial]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234297</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A "feminist icon" who agreed to serve the same role for a child rapist as she did for her sex predator husband.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BqRjdFsIMAAEjVQ.jpg-medium.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234298" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BqRjdFsIMAAEjVQ.jpg-medium-450x300.jpg" alt="BqRjdFsIMAAEjVQ.jpg-medium" width="251" height="167" /></a>When the Roman Polanski rape case resurfaced, Whoopi Goldberg coined the term “rape-rape” to describe the difference between the kind of rape she opposed and the kind she was okay with because it had been perpetrated by someone she liked.</p>
<p>In the political world the cases of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton showed how liberals delineated between the sexual harassment of men they approved of and disapproved of. Now the “rape-rape” distinction is back with Bill’s wife.</p>
<p>Last week liberal activists were denouncing George Will for questioning the lack of due process for accused rapists on campus. Then the <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-tapes/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Washington Free Beacon posted a tape</span></a> in which Hillary Clinton had a good laugh discussing how she freed a child rapist she knew was guilty from prison.</p>
<p>Hillary had become the Democratic Party’s official “Role Model for Women” through her willingness to stand by her powerful husband during his affairs, cover up his sexual harassment of other women and even target those women for daring to speak out against her husband.</p>
<p>Now the face of the Democratic Party’s bid to make feminist history in 2016 was caught on tape cheerfully recollecting how she accused a 12-year-old girl, in formal legal language, of being a mentally ill slut. Or as the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conservatives-are-making-hay-out-of-hillary-clintons-defense-of-an-accused-rapist/2014/06/16/7d087efa-f576-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger</span></a> put it, “The ‘little bit nutty, little bit slutty’ defense has a long, ugly history. It’s jarring to see it trotted out against a kid by a future feminist icon.”</p>
<p>Suddenly the social justice warriors who were denouncing due process, such as access to legal counsel for campus rapists being tried by student committees, became big fans of due process for rapists.</p>
<p>As with Whoopi Goldberg, it was all about who was doing the raping and who the rapist’s lawyer was.</p>
<p>Amanda Marcotte, of <i>Slate</i> and <i>The Daily Beast</i>, as well a blogger for John Edwards, another noted defender of women, had called critics of the Duke Lacrosse case “rape-loving scum” and suggested that George Will was a “rape apologist” for questioning some questionable rape cases.</p>
<p>But when Hillary Clinton was outed as a “rape apologist” and “rape-loving scum,” Amanda became a “rape apologist” explaining why being “rape-loving scum” was actually a good thing.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, Amanda explained, might have called a 12-year-old victim of child rape a mentally ill slut, but it wasn’t her fault.</p>
<p>It was society’s fault.</p>
<p>&#8220;While it’s always unpleasant to hear defense attorneys try to sow doubt about an accuser’s trustworthiness, the blame for this should not lay on the shoulders of those who have an obligation to defend their clients. The blame should lay on society for perpetuating the myth that false accusations are common,” she wrote.</p>
<p>Don’t blame Hillary Clinton for her horrible evil lie about a raped little girl. Blame a society that gave Hillary the idea that she could get away with it.</p>
<p>This is a good defense because it can be used for any of the many lies told by Hillary Clinton. Don’t blame her for lying about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire. Blame a patriarchal society which values military heroics over defending child rapists. Don’t blame her for lying about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary. Blame a society which prioritizes climbing large mountains over stealing White House furniture and covering up for your husband’s history of sexual abuses.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton’s defenders claim that she had no choice but to do what she did in support of a “constitutionally mandated right of the accused to an adequate defense.” But the Constitution did not mandate that Hillary had to defend a child rapist. That was her choice.</p>
<p>The child rapist already had a lawyer. He wanted a female lawyer.</p>
<p>Hillary agreed to serve the same role for the child rapist as she did for her husband by letting a sexual predator use her gender for political cover against the women he had victimized.</p>
<p>Hillary supporters at <i>Correct the Record</i> claimed that the rape tape was distracting from her record. But the rape is very much a part of her record. It shows how far she is willing to go to win and what tactics she is willing to use. It also shows her contempt for the gender that she claims to represent in politics.</p>
<p>&#8220;The desperate attempts to get Clinton’s name in a headline with the word ‘rape’ bespeak of a conservative movement that can’t imagine that rape as anything but a hot button word to try to damn political opponents with,&#8221; Amanda Marcotte writes in a convoluted coda to an article so morally convoluted that it ought to have its own law degree.</p>
<p>As her own behavior demonstrates, the social justice warrior crowd doesn’t really believe rape is wrong. It believes that rape is a useful political weapon. The pass that both Clintons have gotten is proof of that. Not to mention the same pass that another courageous liberal defender of women, Ted Kennedy, got. Marcotte jumps into a Pavlovian frenzy every time some Republican somewhere says something, but when it comes to Democrats who don’t just talk, but who actually abuse women, she defends them.</p>
<p>Like most of the left, she puts her ideology first and sisterhood last. And that was exactly what Hillary Clinton did when she put a child rapist ahead of his victim and her husband ahead of his victims.</p>
<p>&#8220;Feminists don’t criticize conservatives for rape-complacent or ever rape-apologetic statements or policies because they’re trying to score cheap political points. They very sincerely believe that these people stand in the way of justice for rape victims, often for very good reason. There is no reason to think that of Clinton,&#8221; Amanda Marcotte writes.</p>
<p>Aside from the time that Hillary Clinton prevented a child rapist from going to jail for raping a child, there is no reason to think that she stood in the way of justice for rape victims.</p>
<p>How many child rapists do you have to free before you officially stand in the way of justice for rape victims? One.</p>
<p>Marcotte has accused Christians of having beliefs that blame women for rape. It’s not a good description of Christians, but it is a surprisingly good description of Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-papers/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the Blair Papers, also</span></a> turned up by the Free Beacon, Hillary blamed Bill Clinton’s affairs on her failure to be “sensitive enough” to him. She also appeared to believe that Bill’s behavior was the fault of being raised by two women.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton not only didn’t hold her husband responsible for his sexual harassment of other women, she blamed the women, she blamed the women who raised him and finally she blamed herself.  And that wasn’t a sexist worldview that she reserved for Democrats.</p>
<p>When Senator Bob Packwood, a liberal Republican, was accused of sexual harassment, Hillary dismissed the “whiney women” because she needed the famously pro-abortion senator on health care.</p>
<p>In public, Hillary Clinton mouths all the right platitudes about women, girls and sexual assault. In private, another Hillary comes out of the closet.</p>
<p>This is the Hillary who blames women for the abusive actions of powerful men; even when she is one of those women. Not only isn’t the real Hillary any kind of feminist icon, but she is much closer to the stereotype that leftist activists have of Christians and conservatives.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton blames women for being sexually assaulted and raped. Having tethered her career to a serial predator, she can only get ahead by tearing down women in private while talking them up in public. The real Hillary is a neurotic living a lie who hates herself and her own gender.</p>
<p>The real Hillary despises women and identifies with the men who victimize them.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><strong>Don&#8217;t miss Daniel Greenfield on this week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em> discussing &#8220;<em>How Obama Surrendered Iraq&#8221;</em>:</strong></p>
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		<title>A New Court Battle for ObamaCare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/a-new-court-battle-for-obamacare/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-new-court-battle-for-obamacare</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/a-new-court-battle-for-obamacare/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2013 04:35:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=208281</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The killer loophole the Obama administration didn't see coming. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/00_GOV_shutterstock_49894069_gavel_659px.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-208297" alt="00_GOV_shutterstock_49894069_gavel_659px" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/00_GOV_shutterstock_49894069_gavel_659px-443x350.jpg" width="310" height="245" /></a>In a bombshell development that could potentially cripple ObamaCare, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/us-usa-courts-obamacare-idUSBRE99L14E20131022">ruled</a> that the lawsuit aimed at blocking health care subsidies in states not running their own healthcare exchanges could move forward. The judge denied a request by U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to dismiss the suit, but also declined to grant a preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs in the case. Friedman has promised to rule on the overall merits of case by mid-February.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs in <a href="http://cei.org/halbig-v-sebelius">Halbig v. Sebelius</a> contend that the Affordable Healthcare Act offered states a series of &#8220;carrots and sticks&#8221; to encourage them to set up healthcare exchanges. According to the suit, the biggest carrot was the offer of insurance premium subsidies, in the form of refundable tax credits from the U.S. Treasury, to low- and moderate-income resident in states that set up the exchanges. If a state refused, the stick was a federally-established, federally-run exchange with no subsidies at all.</p>
<p>The suit notes that, despite clear statutory language limiting premium assistance to states that set up their own exchanges, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) established its own regulation, the Subsidy Expansion Rule, authorizing subsidies in states with federally-run exchanges. In doing so, the IRS ignored the text of the law, as well as &#8220;the clear limitations Congress imposed on the availability of federal subsidies.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, despite the fact that only <a href="http://obamacarefacts.com/state-health-insurance-exchange.php">16 states</a> and the District of Columbia have set up their own exchanges, the IRS expanded the availability of subsidies to the other 34 states that didn&#8217;t. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/21/federal-judge-to-rule-obamacare-subsidies-quandary/">According</a> to DOJ attorney Joel L. McElvain, they did so because Congress never intended to favor some states over others with regard to ObamaCare. He insisted the Department of Health and Human Services was prepared to “stand in the shoes” of states that decided to let the feds run their exchanges. He further contended the failure to do so would &#8220;extinguish&#8221; the rights of those seeking affordable healthcare in those states.</p>
<p>One of the plaintiffs&#8217; attorneys, Michael A. Carvin, contended the federal government&#8217;s approach amounted to giving each state “an offer you can’t refuse,” tempting them with generous subsidies to get them to set up state-run exchanges. When they refused to do so, the administration chose to ignore the law.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs take their argument one step further. They note that, according to the law, there are individuals who are exempt from buying health insurance if it is determined its purchase is &#8220;unaffordable.&#8221; Without the subsidies engendered only by state-run exchanges, many more people would be exempt from buying insurance. As a tangential result, they would also be exempt from paying the fine associated with failing to do so.</p>
<p>Moreover, if employees in those same states are ineligible for subsidies, employers who would otherwise be on the hook for &#8220;assessable payments&#8221; triggered by the employer mandate part of the bill would also be exempt. For these reasons, the lawsuit contends the Obama administration is attempting to illegally administer ObamaCare, subjecting millions of individuals and businesses to fines who shouldn’t have to pay them.</p>
<p>Section 1311 of the healthcare law <a href="http://docs4patientcare.org/_blog/Blog_and_News/post/IRS_Rewrites_Obamacare_To_Increase_Taxes,_Center_For_Individual_Freedom/">allows</a> tax credits to certain people in state-run exchanges. Section 1321, which regulates federally run exchanges does not. Furthermore, the actual wording contained in <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr3590enr/pdf/BILLS-111hr3590enr.pdf#page=58">Section 1311</a> of the law is clear: &#8220;An Exchange shall be a governmental agency or nonprofit entity that is established by a State,&#8221; <i>not</i> through one set up by the federal government.</p>
<p>An IRS already enmeshed in a burgeoning scandal stayed true to form. On May 23, 2012 the agency <a href="http://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/obamacare-federal-exchange_at-odds-with-the-law">finalized</a> its <i>own</i> rule, completely bypassing Congress in the process, allowing subsidies to be implemented on both exchanges. The IRS insisted that “the relevant legislative history does not demonstrate that Congress intended to limit the premiums tax credit to State Exchanges. Accordingly, the final regulations maintain the rule in the proposed regulations because it is consistent with the language, purpose, and structure of section 36B and the Affordable Care Act as a whole.”</p>
<p>Note the critical difference in the two arguments being presented to Judge Friedman. The plaintiffs are demanding that the law be enforced <i>as written</i>. The Obama administration is arguing about what the law was <i>intended</i> to mean. They argue that Congress intended the online exchanges to be uniform, and that they weren&#8217;t expecting states would fail to set up their own exchanges, or opt out of doing so for political reasons.</p>
<p>That the administration and Democrats couldn&#8217;t imagine passing a massive entitlement without a single Republican vote against the wishes of a majority of the electorate would engender resistance is a testament to the unbridled hubris of the American left. It is a hubris buttressed by the reality that only 16 states of 50 decided to set up their own exchanges.</p>
<p>Ironically, the urgency of the administration&#8217;s fight may be intensified due to the government shutdown. Subsidies, which are available to Americans with <a href="http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-subsidies.php">annual incomes</a> up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $94,200 for a family of four, are a critical component of the healthcare bill. Without them, health insurance becomes unaffordable for many Americans.</p>
<p>Prior to the shutdown, the Obama administration was prepared to follow through with another <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2532747">“tweak”</a> to the law they unilaterally pushed through in July, when they announced the ObamaCare&#8217;s requirement that the exchanges would have to verify the income of each enrollee was no longer operable. Instead, they were prepared to implement an honor system whereby the exchanges could &#8220;accept the applicant’s attestation regarding enrollment in eligible employer-sponsored plan . . . without further verification.” As part of the deal to end the shutdown, the requirement was <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/10/22/breaking-judge-refuses-to-dismiss-case-blocking-irs-enforcement-of-obamacare-n1729818">reinstated.</a></p>
<p>Thus, another effort by the administration to play fast and loose with the law was extinguished. A challenge to yet another administration tweak has ended up in court as well. A Boca Raton orthodontist, characterized by the leftist <i>Palm Beach Post</i> newspaper as a &#8220;conservative activist,&#8221; has filed suit <a href="http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/local/boca-dentist-sues-over-obamas-delay-of-employer-ma/nbCk8/">challenging</a> President Obama&#8217;s unilateral decision to suspend the employer mandate part of ObamaCare until 2015. Larry Kawa, who is being represented by Judicial Watch filing suit on behalf of Kawa Orthodontics, contends that he “expended substantial time and resources, including money spent on legal fees and other costs” preparing his 70-employee practice for a law that was supposed to be implemented beginning Jan. 1, 2014. The plaintiffs contend the delay “exceeded the Obama administration’s statutory authority, is arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to the law, and is otherwise unlawful,” according to Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. The U.S. Treasury, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the IRS and IRS Acting Director Daniel Werfel have been named as defendants.</p>
<p>“I have standing because I have made investments of both time and money, as a law abiding citizen and a local business owner to make sure that my business was in compliance with the law,&#8221; says Kawa. “And as soon as I did that, this president moved the goal posts.” The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://findlaw.com/">findlaw.com</a> website <a href="http://blogs.findlaw.com/free_enterprise/2013/10/employer-sues-over-obamacare-mandate-delay.html">contends</a> the suit is unlikely to succeed because the Obama administration&#8217;s <a href="http://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/rational-basis.html">&#8220;rational basis&#8221;</a> for delaying the law, as in giving employers more time to comply, will be persuasive enough to prevail in court. If that is the case, one is left to wonder when the chaos surrounding the implementation of the <i>individual</i> mandate&#8211;ironically complicated even further by the additional numbers of Americans forced onto the exchanges by the delay in the business mandate&#8211;will be subjected to the same reasoning in a court of law.</p>
<p>In short, the cracks engendered by this hastily written, hastily passed mess of a law are beginning to widen. Yet in keeping with their normal modus operandi, the Obama administration will attempt to strong-arm its way through the legal minefields that await. It is up to the courts to put the brakes on its &#8220;by any means necessary&#8221; implementation of ObamaCare. It is up to Republicans to inform Americans that respect for the rule of law &#8220;as written&#8221; as opposed to what a particular administration from either party contends was &#8220;intended,&#8221; is the only thing that keeps us from becoming a banana republic.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>U.S. Aid Funding Palestinian Terrorism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/u-s-aid-funding-palestinian-terrorism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=u-s-aid-funding-palestinian-terrorism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/u-s-aid-funding-palestinian-terrorism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:22:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=186579</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration tries to dismiss a lawsuit that threatens to expose how  American  taxpayers' money ends up in terrorists' hands.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/hamas.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-186580" alt="hamas" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/hamas.jpg" width="246" height="164" /></a>The Tel Aviv-based Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, representing 24 Americans living in Israel, filed a civil action lawsuit against the State Department last November claiming that the U.S. government is funding Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza.</span></b></p>
<p>The plaintiffs, some of whom have been victims of Palestinian terrorism, &#8220;are fearful that the money that is going to the Palestinian Authority eventually winds up in the hands of the terrorist organizations that can be facilitated to carry out attacks against them,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center and one of the lawyers on the case, told The Daily Caller. “So they find themselves in a very weird situation where their tax money is going actually to attacks against them,” she added.</p>
<p>The Obama administration, not surprisingly, has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.  It argued that the plaintiffs do not have legal standing to bring the suit &#8211; i.e., they did not suffer direct personal injury traceable to the actions alleged to be illegal. The Obama administration also argued that the courts have no business getting involved in foreign policy decisions that are inherently &#8220;political questions.&#8221; These are nothing more than pretextual arguments to prevent discovery of the truth whether the Obama administration is violating express congressional conditions on the granting of aid to the Palestinian Authority and for the West Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs are Americans living in Israel.  Some were physically injured by past Palestinian terrorist attacks. All of them face the daily danger of being the victims of more attacks by Palestinian terrorist organizations. They deserve to have their day in court to hold the Obama administration accountable for allegedly violating laws designed to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money is not diverted to those terrorist organizations.</p>
<p>The lawsuit, <i>Bernstein vs. Clinton</i>, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that the State Department has failed to observe congressional safeguards, transparency, and reporting requirements in its funding of the Palestinian Authority and United Nations Refugee Worker’s Administration (UNRWA). In addition, the plaintiffs claim that the White House has not been complying with the regulations and reporting obligations governing presidential waivers which facilitate emergency funding to the Palestinians. As a result, the suit alleges, American taxpayer money has ended up in the wrong places, directly or indirectly supporting Palestinian terrorist causes.</p>
<p>Since the mid-1990s, the United States has given the Palestinians over $4 billion. During the last four fiscal years alone, average aid has been roughly $600 million per year. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are among the largest per capita recipients of U.S. foreign aid worldwide.</p>
<p>Last month, the U.S. State Department announced that nearly $500 million in aid had been unblocked for transfer to the Palestinian Authority, months after Congress froze the funds in late-2012. But the Obama administration has no way of guaranteeing that at least some of the money it plans to lavish on the Palestinian Authority won&#8217;t find its way from Palestinian Authority coffers to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations. That should be of concern, especially after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said during an interview aired last month on Russian Today TV that there was “no difference between our policies and those of Hamas.” Moreover, according to a report released by Palestinian Media Watch, a portion of the Palestinian Authority’s monthly budget, which the Obama administration is so anxious to fund, is used to provide salaries for Palestinians who have been imprisoned for acts of terrorism.</p>
<p>Additionally, the United States is the largest single-state donor to UNRWA, to which it gives more than $200 million each year.  UNRWA was originally set up as a temporary relief agency for the original refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.  It has morphed into a bottomless money pit to support their descendants, several generations removed—now comprising approximately 5 million Palestinians in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza.</p>
<p>In 2011, UNRWA’s total budget for its core programs, emergency activities and special projects was $1.2 billion. U.S. contributions in 2011 constituted approximately 25% of the total budget. Aggregate contributions from the Muslim world constituted approximately 15% of the total budget. U.S. contributions totaled $233.3 million for fiscal year 2012 ($125.4 million for the general fund, $103.8 million for emergency funds and special projects).</p>
<p>UNRWA claims that it screens its staff and contractors every six months for terrorist ties, but its terrorist screening list does not include Hamas, Hezbollah, or most other militant groups that operate in UNRWA’s surroundings. A former UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen admitted, without any show of concern, “Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime.”</p>
<p>A group affiliated with Hamas, known as the Islamic Bloc, has controlled the teachers’ section of the UNRWA union in Gaza, enabling the Islamic Bloc to run its indoctrination programs in the UNRWA schools that U.S. taxpayers may be helping to fund.  UNRWA schools use classroom materials that glorify terrorists, and which contain maps in which Israel has been erased.</p>
<p>Against this murky background, the complaint alleges that the defendants in the Obama administration have &#8220;authorized, sanctioned, encouraged, and/or facilitated funding to the Palestinian Authority without imposing the controls and oversight mandated by federal statute&#8230; and allowed the Palestinian Authority to evade transparency safeguards mandated by American law.&#8221;</p>
<p>The result, the plaintiffs claim in their complaint, is to allow &#8220;federal dollars into the hands of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (both recognized foreign terrorist organizations), the Palestinian Liberation Organization (a terrorist organization), employees of the Palestinian Authority who are barred access to federal funds pursuant to federal statute, and other supporters of terrorism against civilians who live in Israel.&#8221;</p>
<p>The plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction requiring the defendants to comply with federal anti-terrorism laws and cease all funding to the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, and others in the West Bank and Gaza, until they can be sure that federal funds will not be diverted to support terrorism.</p>
<p>&#8220;Rather than defend the government&#8217;s foreign aid policy on its merits and provide proof that it truly knows where taxpayer money to the PA [Palestinian Authority] is going, the government&#8217;s lawyers are trying to dismiss the lawsuit on legal technicalities. They are saying that it is pure speculation that Americans can be injured by terrorism in Israel and that the issue of funding is a foreign policy power reserved to the US President and cannot be reviewed by the courts,&#8221; Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center&#8217;s director, said. &#8220;This lawsuit does not challenge the President and the State Dept&#8217;s right to conduct foreign policy nor fund the Palestinians. These plaintiffs simply object to the executive branch&#8217;s funding of the PA without oversight. It is a legitimate objection by two dozen Americans, who are the class of individuals Congress sought to protect through their safeguards.&#8221;</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the Obama administration will probably prevail in court because the judicial branch is generally reluctant to second guess executive branch foreign policy decisions and assumes that Congress&#8217;s oversight and appropriation powers will provide a sufficient political check.</p>
<p>Whatever happens to the lawsuit, Congress needs to step up immediately and investigate the Obama administration&#8217;s handling of U.S. aid to the Palestinians through bilateral and United Nations channels. It should hold hearings on whether its current oversight, vetting, monitoring, and evaluation requirements are being met or whether they need to be further tightened. It should assess whether it is time to scale back or end those Palestinian aid programs that are most vulnerable to abuse. Even one dollar of U.S. taxpayers&#8217; money that is allowed to be diverted to pay for support of Palestinian terrorists because of lax oversight is one dollar too much.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Another Phony “Veteran”</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/another-phony-%e2%80%9cveteran%e2%80%9d/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=another-phony-%25e2%2580%259cveteran%25e2%2580%259d</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:04:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Illinois’ Phil Hare is the latest Democratic candidate to embellish his military service record.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/HarePhil070508.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62318" title="HarePhil070508" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/HarePhil070508-300x202.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="202" /></a></p>
<p>There’s nothing quite so arrogant as an arrogant liberal occupying a position of power. Connecticut senate candidate Richard Blumenthal’s non-apologetic apology over his false claims to have served in Vietnam was a case point. Last week, another liberal Democrat, Illinois congressman <a href="http://hare.house.gov/">Phil Hare</a> (D -17) was in the news again, this time for <a href="http://biggovernment.com/bmccarty/2010/06/05/congressman-phil-hare-fails-with-vets-and-threats/#more-129074">allegedly threatening a constituent</a> who called the congressman out over his fatuous claims of being a veteran.</p>
<p>You may remember Phil Hare. He was filmed telling a constituent that he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2iiirr5KI8">doesn’t worry about the Constitution</a>. It was a stupid thing to say, but I’m inclined to give Hare the benefit of the doubt regarding the Constitution. In the context the question he was being asked – where in the Constitution does it say that Americans have the right to health care? – he probably meant that he felt that the healthcare bill would survive a constitutional challenge, rather than thumbing his nose at that hallowed document itself. Not that many a Democrat doesn’t <em>think</em> in the latter terms, but they surely know better than to express such an opinion.</p>
<p>What was more troubling in that video was the sneering arrogance that seemed to seethe through congressman Hare’s very pores. Hare sounded more like a feudal lord putting an annoying peasant in his rightful place for daring to question his master’s wisdom than he did an elected representative addressing the legitimate inquiries of an obviously upset and concerned constituent. But, perhaps Phil Hare was just having a bad day? It seems not. The latest accusations leveled against the congressman are enough to make one question not just his qualifications to serve in the United States Congress, but whether he would be fit to lead a Boy Scout troop.</p>
<p>Hare has repeatedly called himself a “veteran.” In fact, he joined the reserves during the Vietnam era and was never called to active service. By most legal definitions of the word, and most importantly to most real veterans themselves, a former reservist is not entitled to call himself a veteran. When a former reservist uses their honored word, real veterans get touchy, and understandably so. If such a deception doesn’t qualify as a case of full-blown stolen honor, it’s certainly matter of taking out an extended, zero-interest loan against the honor of those men and women who earned the title.</p>
<p>Ken Moffett, a constituent of Hare’s from Moline, Illinois and an actual veteran, asked the congressman to stop describing himself using the term to which – in Moffett’s and many a veteran’s view – Hare is not entitled. The congressman’s reaction was so offensive that Moffett was moved to <a href="http://bobmccarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Phil-Hare-Intimidates-Veteran.pdf">pen a letter to Blake Chisam</a>, committee staff director and chief counsel of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics). The following excerpt from that letter, dated June 2, 2010, describes what Moffett says happened during his encounter with Hare:</p>
<blockquote><p>“After I pointed out that according to the law he is not a veteran, he became very upset and demanded to know my name. I refused to tell him my name, saying that this was about his claim of being a veteran and not about me.</p>
<p>Mr. Hare then told one of his aides who was with him, to follow me to my car and get my license plate number so he could find out who I was. I have since been told that Mr. Hare’s daughter works for the DMV.</p>
<p>I then asked Mr. Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran. Mr. Hare again demanded to know my name, and again told his aide to get my name or to follow me to get me license number so he could find out who I was, so he could tell the former reservists what I said.</p>
<p>I asked Mr. Hare if he as a public official was going to use his official office to run name checks on private citizens, in order to intimidate them into not asking questions he did not want to answer.</p>
<p>As Mr. Hare was turning to walk away from me he paused, and turning back to my direction, he glared at me intently, and while leaning forward pointed his finger at me, and in a threatening and intimidating manner said, “I’ll find out who you are!”</p></blockquote>
<p>Aside from tossing in the obligatory “and your little dog too!” Hare sounds a lot more like the Wicked Witch of the West than a reasoned and sober representative of the people according to Moffett’s account. The arrogance and veiled threats that Moffett describes in his letter are consistent with the persona Hare revealed in the “what, me worry about the Constitution?” video.</p>
<p>Will there be outrage over these allegations? Will there be a full-blown investigation to find out if Phil Hare has threatened to misuse, or has actually misused, his power to intimidate voters? There ought to be, on all counts. “I’ll find out who you are!” sounds a hell of a lot more scary than all of the rights that we supposedly lost when George W. Bush flushed the Constitution down the toilet so the NSA could snoop around in search of terrorist e-mails.</p>
<p>When it comes to the media and progressives, the “good intentions test” (good intentions, being of course defined solely by them) is the only thing that matters. I suspect Phil Hare, like Jesse Jackson and so many others before him, will get a free pass. Whether Illinois voters will let him off the hook so easily remains to be seen.</p>
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		<title>Symposium: When Does a Religion Become an Ideology?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/symposium-when-does-a-religion-become-an-ideology/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=symposium-when-does-a-religion-become-an-ideology</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:08:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Is it significant that, in Islam, the pillars of faith are rituals rather than moral values? ]]></description>
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<p>In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we have invited two distinguished guests to discuss the question: When does a religion become an ideology? Our guests today are:</p>
<p><strong>Tawfik Hamid</strong>, an Islamic thinker and reformer who is the author of <em>Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam. </em>A one-time Islamic extremist from Egypt, he was a member of <em>Jemaah Islamiya,</em> a terrorist Islamic organization, with Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who later became the second in command of al-Qaeda. He is currently a senior fellow and chairman of the study of Islamic radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.<em> </em></p>
<p>and</p>
<p><strong>David Satter,</strong> a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He was Moscow correspondent of the <em>Financial Times </em>of London from 1976 to 1982, during the height of the Soviet totalitarian period and he is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Age-Delirium-Decline-Soviet-Union/dp/0300087055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1256004140&amp;sr=1-1"><em>Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union</em>,</a> which is being made into a documentary film. His most recent work is <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Dawn-Russian-Criminal-State/dp/0300098928">Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State.</a></em></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Tawfik Hamid and David Satter, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.</p>
<p>Mr. Hamid, let us begin with you. Make an introductory statement for us to get our discussion started: When does a religion become an ideology?</p>
<p><strong>Hamid: </strong>A religion becomes an ideology when the followers of this religion cannot tolerate the existence of those who have different views or beliefs, and when they understand their religious text literally and refuse to accept any way of understanding the religion other than their own way of understanding.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Thank you.</p>
<p>Dr. Satter how would you now build on Mr. Hamid’s statement?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Satter: </strong>I think another way of putting it is that a religion becomes an ideology when man-made dogma is treated as infallible truth.</p>
<p>Although there are adherents of all three major monotheistic faiths who believe that every word of the sacred texts is to be taken literally, for the post-Enlightenment rationalist mind, there is a distinction between transcendent moral truths, exemplified in the case of Judaism and Christianity in the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments and the dogmatic contents of the religions expressed in their historical accounts and ritual requirements.</p>
<p>This distinction is important to bear in mind because transcendent moral truths are never the content of an ideology. An ideology contains an assertion about society that is treated as ultimate truth and applied indiscriminately to explain all aspects of political reality. Since transcendent moral truths owe their character to the fact that they are “over and above” society, they cannot contribute to the content of an ideology. In fact, the effect of an ideology is always to destroy true moral transcendence.</p>
<p>The ritual requirements or dogmatic assertions about history of a religion, however, are perfectly suitable for the construction of an ideology. The obligation in Islam to wage jihad, properly interpreted, can be made the basis of an ideology which treats waging war on unbelievers as the highest obligation of a Moslem and evaluates all actions in terms of the extent to which they support this sacred obligation. Other religions too have aspects that could become the material of an ideology. One example is the doctrine of the Jews as the “Chosen People.” Although this doctrine has never been used to justify the oppression of others, it could be.</p>
<p>A religion becomes an ideology when its man-made elements become an idée fixe and are seized upon as an idea that can be imposed on all political and social institutions in the interests of power. The temptation was explained best in Dostoevsky’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor where the inquisitor explains to Jesus the essence of an ideology’s appeal:</p>
<p><em>Instead of the strict ancient law, man had in future to decide for himself with a free heart what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him for guidance. But did it never occur to you that he would at last reject and call in question even your image and your truth, if he were weighed down by as fearful a burden as freedom of choice. </em></p>
<p>Laying down that burden may be easiest of all if the mental prison thereby created is constructed with the materials of supposedly sacred religious teachings.</p>
<p><strong>Hamid: </strong>In general, I agree with many of the above views. I would like to add that, based on David’s analysis, I see that having an ideology is not by itself the problem. For example, the ideology of the chosen people &#8212; as he mentioned &#8212; was not used to oppress others.  It is the part of ideology that is used to oppress others, such as ‘violent Jihad’ in Islam that is actually causing the problem.</p>
<p>A good distinction that David made was the distinction between true moral transcendence and ideology. It is important to mention that one of the main problems in traditional Islam is that the pillars of the religion [to say Non G-d other than Allah and Mohamed is the prophet of Allah, the 5 prayers, the obligatory tax (Zakkat), the fasting of Ramadan and the pilgrimage (Haj)] are rituals rather than moral values. In other words, based on the traditional views within Islam, Bin Laden can be a good Muslim because he follows the 5 pillars of Islam. On the contrary, if the pillars of Islam include ‘you shall not commit murder’ or other moral values, Muslims would not have seen people like Bin Laden and the terrorists as real Muslims. The ideology and the religious dogma of the 5 pillars made many Muslims unable to use the transcendent moral truth to judge people like Bin Laden.</p>
<p>Regarding the view that ‘man had in future to decide for himself with a free heart what is good and what is evil,’ I agree with this but I will add that the inspired moral values from religion such as ‘you shall not commit murder and ‘you shall not steal’ should remain as the back bone for future moral values. We may change some practical applications for these values but the pillars for such values will remain &#8212; at least in the view of many &#8212; as inspired values via the creator (i.e. not man-made).</p>
<p>Regarding the statement that “Laying down that burden may be easiest of all if the mental prison thereby created is constructed with the materials of supposedly sacred religious teachings.” I have seen the practical application for this in our Islamic society when many in the Muslim world adopt Islam as an ideology as a reaction to the moral relativism concepts that flourished in the Muslim world in the 1950s and 60s partially due to the work of liberal movements. The Islamic societies could not tolerate the lack of clear borders or ‘prison’ for their mind and it was much easier for many in these societies to follow an ‘ideology’ with clear borders rather than having the burden of freedom of choice.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Satter:</strong> Muslims, of course, are not the only ones who seek “clear borders.” Very few people have the confidence to identify their fundamental moral values and apply them to the myriad of complicated situations with which life confronts us. Even the most educated people fall back on mental borders that are the product of past habit and unchallenged assumptions. The problem becomes much greater when the mental borders are ubiquitous and the product of a false universal theory – as in Nazism or communism – or the dogmatic contents of a religion as in the case of radical Islam.</p>
<p>We are also confronted with the problem of group dynamics. Ethical judgment is the property of an individual. Dogmatic rules guide the behavior of a group. They eliminate differences and mobilize people for common action. So to the difficulty of thinking for oneself is added in an ideological situation the emotional trauma of confronting the group. Under the circumstances, it is small wonder that fanaticism in power has such terrible force. It operates on the difficulty that people have, when challenged, of defending what is truly human in each of them, their ultimate moral sense.</p>
<p>So what can reinforce the moral sense of the individual in the face of religious or secular fanaticism? If I understand him correctly, Tawfik provides the answer with his reference to the five pillars of Islam, none of which deal with ethical values. I think we need to be very clear in distinguishing between dogma and genuinely transcendent values. In the case of Nazism and communism, the task was easier because there were no transcendent values. Communism prided itself on its rejection of metaphysics. But in the case of radical Islam, the fanatics can draw on an authoritative religious tradition. Every word of the Koran is treated as divine truth and the authoritative interpretation of the Koran is or, at least, can be seen as being implicitly terroristic.</p>
<p>It seems to me that, under these circumstances, we must insist on our ability to define terms. To be truly religious, values must be transcendent. They cannot be derived from a political objective, for example, creating a classless society or a restored Caliphate. They can’t be based on the hatred of outsiders whether capitalists or infidels because the tensions that these hatreds reflect owe their origin to society which higher values necessarily transcend. Where the measure of right or wrong is the interests of a group, whether the proletariat, Aryans or the ummah, we are dealing with man made dogma regardless of any pretended religious justification. Its absolutization creates an ideology not a religion and it should be treated as an ideology and not granted the legitimacy of a religion with which it actually shares nothing. In the case of Islam, this does not mean an attack on Islamic practices as such but only their use in the service of terror under which circumstances, the issue of transcendence becomes relevant. To search for meaning is only human but it can lead to barbaric conclusions if it proceeds without ethical guidance. In a nuclear world, we need to defend the distinction between higher values and dogma as a matter of fundamental self defense.</p>
<p><strong>Hamid: </strong>I agree with the points that David mentioned and would like to add more applied points that relate to Radical Islam.</p>
<p>David raised the point of “Difficulty to think for oneself”. This is exactly what happened to me and to many members in the Radical organizations. We felt that we are like sheep that just need to follow the leader. Individual thinking was lost especially when the radical leaders discouraged us from ‘thinking’.</p>
<p>David considered the ummah concept as “a man made dogma regardless of any pretended religious justification”. This could be true however; Muslims see the ummah concept as a religious based one. It is vital to understand how Muslims see such a concept in order to be able to approach the problem and deal with it correctly. In this regard, it is also important to emphasize that Communism and Nazism were seen by most of their followers as manmade ideology. In Islam, the situation is completely different as most Muslims see the ideological component as a religious revelation from Allah. In the former situation (i.e. manmade ideology) it is much easier to change the ideology as you can prove it wrong. When the ideology, as in case of Islam, is processed at the subconscious and emotional levels of the brain (as a religion) rather than the high cortical levels (as the case of communism and Nazism) it is much more difficult to change it.</p>
<p>I completely agree with David about the need to have a clear distinction between religion</p>
<p>and Ideology. Islam that only works inside a mosque as a form of individual worship can be considered a religion. However, Islam that is used as a political power and a controlling system for the society must be treated as an Ideology. The West need to be clear about this issue, as giving the Ideological part of Islam (that promotes violence and control of others) the protection and privileges that are given to a religion can be catastrophic. This ideological part of Islam has to be fought as the case with fighting communism and Nazism. If we failed to make such a separation between Islam as personal type of worship and Islam (or its interpretations) as a political and driving force to dominate others we will not be able to control radical Islamic ideology in the future. In fact we may be actually giving support to the radical ideology if we gave it the advantages of a religion. Allowing the ideological part of Islam to flourish under the banner of religious freedom weakens the spiritual part of the religion itself and makes things more complicated.</p>
<p><strong>Satter: </strong>Politics dominates our lives and there is always a temptation to make a religion out of politics. If a political objective has divine significance, it is worth dying for and, of course, worth killing for. Those obsessed with a political mission are fearless and resourceful. Relieved of the need to exercise individual moral judgment, they become ruthless spies, talented strategists and remorseless killers. This is why it is so important to show a political ideology in all its man made artificiality. Only in this way can an ideological movement be discredited.  One hopes that it will be harder to organize mass crimes on behalf of a system that has been shown to be not divinely inspired but man made. In any case, the effort offers some hope for the future.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Tawfik Hamid and David Satter, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.</p>
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		<title>Judicial Power Grabs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/judicial-power-grabs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=judicial-power-grabs</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 May 2010 04:00:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[When Supreme Court justices aren't satisfied with their role.]]></description>
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<p>You might think that being a Supreme Court justice would be the top of the line job for someone in the legal profession. But, many Supreme Court decisions suggest that too many justices are not satisfied with their role, and seek more sweeping powers as supreme policy-makers, grand second-guessers or philosopher-kings.</p>
<p>The latest example of this is the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Graham versus Florida. The issue was whether the Constitution permitted a state to impose a sentence of life without the possibility of parole when the criminal was a youthful offender. The Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 that this was a violation of the Constitution.</p>
<p>If your copy of the Constitution doesn&#8217;t say anything about youthful offenders, do not worry that you have a defective copy. There is no such statement in the Constitution. What the justices cited as the alleged basis for their decision was the Eighth Amendment&#8217;s prohibition against &#8220;cruel and unusual punishments.&#8221;</p>
<p>Since 37 out of the 50 states permit sentences of life without the possibility of parole, such a sentence is not unusual. How about cruel? If it is cruel, then why is it OK to impose that sentence on people who are not youthful?</p>
<p>The case of Graham versus Florida involved a 16-year-old repeat offender, who was convicted of a home invasion robbery while on probation from a previous felony. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Court then over-ruled that decision.</p>
<p>The role of an appellate court is not to simply second-guess the decision of the trial judge and jury, much less usurp the responsibility of legislatures to make social policy. But the pretense of applying the Constitution gives appellate judges the power to do both.</p>
<p>The bolder justices go further, citing practices in other countries as supporting their decisions that are supposedly based on the Constitution of the United States. If justices can pick and choose which legal principles and practices they will follow, from the many widely varying principles and practices in countries around the world, then they can find a basis for doing just about anything they feel like doing.</p>
<p>This too goes counter to the very basis of American government, as a system in which &#8220;We the people&#8221; ultimately govern ourselves through representatives of our own choosing and the officials appointed by them.</p>
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<p>Once appellate judges are free to base their rulings on what people do in India, Egypt or Germany, Americans are no longer a self-governing people.</p>
<p>As if to add a touch of farce to lighten the tragedy of the dismantling of the Constitution, Supreme Court justices on opposing sides of the case of Graham versus Florida cited statistics seeking to show that there was national consensus for or against life sentences without the possibility of parole.</p>
<p>Appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, are not institutions equipped to make policy judgments like that. Legislatures exist to make policy judgments— and to be voted out of office if these policy judgments turn out to produce results that the electorate do not want. But there are no such corrective mechanisms in place if Supreme Court justices misjudge.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the old, moth-eaten argument cited by Justice John Paul Stevens, that the society is evolving and therefore the interpretation of the Constitution must evolve with it.</p>
<p>Nobody— from the moment that the Constitution was adopted in the 18th century to the present— has ever denied that societies evolve, and that their laws must evolve to meet changing circumstances. But, unless Justice Stevens is either stupid or dishonest, he cannot leap from a need for laws to change to the conclusion that it is judges who must be the ones to make those changes.</p>
<p>Just saying the magic word &#8220;change&#8221; does not justify judges grabbing the power to make whatever changes they please in the law. There are, after all, two other branches of the federal government, specifically charged with legislative and executive responsibilities and powers, not to mention the Constitutional Amendment process.</p>
<p><em>Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.</em></p>
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		<title>Is the U.S. Too Big to Fail?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/is-the-u-s-too-big-to-fail/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=is-the-u-s-too-big-to-fail</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:04:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The warning signs are all around us.]]></description>
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<p>We have heard from the Obama administration that companies like General Motors or various major banks are simply “too big to fail”—a mantra whose meaning is ambiguous. On one interpretation, the sense is that such enormous enterprises, owing to the fallout attendant upon their collapse, <em>should not be allowed to fail</em> and need to be propped up by vast infusions of cash. At the same time, the implication is that what we might call “maximal structures” generate their own survival momentum, and while some tweaking here and there may prove beneficial they will continue to lumber on regardless. We must, it seems, have confidence in the incommensurably large. We must believe that what is “too big to fail” will either not fail or will not be permitted to fail</p>
<p>Analogously, we have been instructed that countries, unlike individuals and certain corporations, are too big to go bankrupt. Walter Wriston, former director of Citibank, is a <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/2002/011802.htm">firm believer</a> in the fiscal resilience of nations. This is no consolation, however, to the people of Zimbabwe today or the citizens of Argentina between1999-2002 during the great economic meltdown. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7575673/Dont-let-the-voters-know-we-face-bankruptcy.html">Christopher Booker</a> and <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/04/12/i-want-my-mtv/">Richard Fernandez</a> warn that Britain is on the verge of crashing: the accumulating debt to GDP ratio is frankly unsustainable. When the welfare cheques stop coming, when inflation goes through the roof, when banks invest in padlocks, when essential services are no longer provided and salaries are a fond reminiscence, a nation is effectively in bankruptcy—which is merely another term for failure. The French word for bankruptcy says it all: <em>faillite</em>.</p>
<p>There are, of course, many ways for a nation to approach the tipping point of potentially irreversible miscarriage. Economic implosion, as we have seen, is one; defenseless borders in times of conflict are another; unchecked immigration leading to ballooning social costs and a dilution of civic sentiment, as well as internal subversion, is a third; a flaccid, poorly educated and self-indulgent public unwilling to embrace austerity when necessary or bestir itself to the preservation of the polity is yet a fourth. Taken together, these factors amount to a perfect storm that will bring even a colossus to its knees.</p>
<p>Size in itself has nothing to do with viability. In fact, some things may be too big <em>not</em> to fail. The Roman Empire was pretty big and so was the Muslim imperium, but their long and undoubted success was the precondition for their inevitable collapse. Such dromocratic constructs tend to grow topheavy or the lines of communication between center and periphery weaken and fray. They peter out from misrule, debauch, apathy or torpor, or succumb to invasions and repeated military defeats, their scope and volume notwithstanding. This is also the case for more coherent entities. Classical Athens was a political and civic triumph until it began to expand far in excess of the optimal polis census of 5000 freeborn citizens.</p>
<p>But why stop there? By all accounts, the universe is a rather big place, but cosmology informs us that it will either dilate toward inescapable death by entropy or will reach a point when it begins to reverse its expansion, leading to a “big crunch.” “Either way,” as the Greek tragedian wrote in the <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Oresteia-Agamemnon-Libation-Eumenides-Classics/dp/0140443339/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1271433995&amp;sr=1-1">Oresteia</a></em>, “ruin.” If the universe can “fail,” then, presumably, anything can, irrespective of magnitude.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the United States of America, considerably smaller than the universe but large enough to inspire assurances of invulnerability among those inured to the lessons of history or given to intellectual complacency. The Bridge Mix of social, political and economic programs—redistribution of wealth, a bloated bureaucracy, reduction of military power, amnesty for illegals, toleration of inimical communities, government takeover of the marketplace, ideology supplanting pragmatics—adopted by the American liberal-left and rapidly being put in place by the current administration are hurtling the nation toward its moment of truth when it will have to decide whether it survives as the <em>United</em> States of America or devolves into something that, until just a few years ago, would have been almost unimaginable.</p>
<p>Often what seems to be inconceivable is only the prelude to what may well become unavoidable. And in the case of America such a scenario is all too possible. For America has only three options looming before it in a rapidly foreclosing future. The best case scenario is that, assuming a concerned citizenry, the growing Tea Party movement, a return to strict budgetary rectitude and a revival of the wisdom of the Constitution and the Founders, the United States may weather the storm of social and political dismemberment it is presently undergoing and recover its essence as a constitutional republic. To accomplish this aim, however, the policies of the Obama administration must be resisted at every turn. What Henry David Thoreau wrote in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Duty-Civil-Disobedience-Thoreaus-Classic/dp/1604500417/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1271420968&amp;sr=1-5">On the Duty of Civil Disobedience</a></em> in 1848 has a proleptic ring to it and is truer today than it ever was: “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”</p>
<p>On the other hand the calamity of disintegration, as happened to the Soviet Union not so long ago, is a deeply troubling likelihood. The drive toward secession or what is called “<a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/83348/">disunion</a>” along red state/blue state lines appears to be acquiring strength by the day. It is in the air. The threat of dissolution cannot be wished away or conveniently ignored. Whether such a <a href="http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2010/04/07/speaking-of-secession/">parting of ways</a> can be achieved peaceably and rationally or would entail violence and bloodshed remains an open question. But what resembles a bitter marriage between cultural incompatibles, the statist Left and the conservative Right, who have nothing to say to one another and disagree on just about everything, makes an eventual divorce by no means unthinkable. The clash between a pervasive scavenger mentality of collective entitlement and the ancestral belief in the values of personal initiative and individual responsibility cannot, it increasingly appears, be resolved amicably.</p>
<p>The third possibility is that America under the stewardship of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will become an impoverished, socialist, Muslim-friendly country, much like the United Kingdom today or Sweden tomorrow, with devastating consequences for the majority of its citizens. As <a href="http://newsrealblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/from-the-pen-of-david-horowitz-september-19-2009/">David Horowitz remarks</a> of the U.S., “its constitutional order is threatened by a political left whose values remain socialist and whose agendas are subversive.” Such is the <em>fundamental transformation</em> promised by the Democratic candidate five days before his election: the intent to legislate outcome at the expense of input, to ensure a syndicalist homogeneity of status among the population while installing a privileged managerial class in the seats of power, and ultimately to transform America’s most industrious entrepreneurial sector into over-taxed and over-regulated obsolescence. Where have we seen this before?</p>
<p>These, then, are the three alternatives between which America will have to choose: recovery, dissolution, socialism. Regarding the latter two, to cite Aeschylus once more, it’s “either way, ruin.” Clearly, the moment of decision is not far down the road. Even a one-term administration for Barack Obama and his cohorts may be sufficient to wreak irreparable damage; a two-term presidency would probably spell the end of the noble and unique American experiment in republican democracy. For there can be little question that Barack Obama and the Democratic ascendancy together form the single greatest disaster to befall the United States in the modern era. If the country does not right itself sooner rather than later, it will find itself broken down the middle or wake up one day to discover that it is now nothing more than another socialist or quasi-Marxist Republic, which is a republic in name only.</p>
<p>Thoreau is on the mark again. Deploring the effects of a “wordy” and ever-compliant Congress which had “not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and freedom” and which was devoid of “talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures,” he argues that without the “seasonable experience…of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.” And we remember, too, that the United   States was a much smaller political entity in 1848 than it is in 2010.</p>
<p>Now is not the time to take refuge in the smug conviction of indestructibility. America is not too big to fail and it may well be too big not to fail. But one thing is undeniable. As it approaches the eleventh hour, its survival depends on a determined and informed citizen “army” of genuine patriots capable of restoring the practical ideal of limited government and of conserving the proper balance between the state and the nation, the governors and the people, the collective and the individual, equality and liberty. Should that come to pass, America may recoup its forfeitures and at least partially retrieve the grandeur of its heritage.</p>
<p>And this, it goes almost without saying, is the real meaning of hope and change.</p>
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		<title>Legacy of a Judicial Activist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-perazzo/legacy-of-a-judicial-activist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=legacy-of-a-judicial-activist</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:12:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[John Paul Stevens prepares to retire after 35 years on the Supreme Court.]]></description>
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		<title>Dennis Ross and Dual Loyalties</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/dennis-ross-and-dual-loyalties/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dennis-ross-and-dual-loyalties</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:10:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Obama’s Middle East advisor is singled out for a pernicious smear. ]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/d2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57803" title="d2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/d2.jpg" alt="" width="466" height="367" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/">Pajamas Media</a></strong></p>
<p>Last week, Laura Rozen at the <em>Politico </em><a rel="external" href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0310/Fierce_debate_on_Israel_underway_inside_Obama_administration.html">gave space</a> to an anonymous Obama administration official to smear Dennis Ross, the White House’s Middle East strategist. Ross’s grave offense, apparently, was to evince some understanding of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position, which also happens to be the mainstream Israeli position, that Israel has a legitimate right to construct new housing in Jerusalem. That earned Ross the smear that he “seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” a crude implication of dual loyalties and a classic anti-Semitic slander. Now Harvard professor Stephen Walt has <a rel="external" href="http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/02/on_dual_loyalty">emerged</a> to defend the charge under the guise of rejecting it.</p>
<p>Walt, it will be recalled, is co-author of <em>The Israel Lobby</em>, and thus an unlikely voice to come to the defense of someone who shows any empathy for Israel’s position. Indeed, although Walt curiously does not mention it, that book counted Ross as a prominent member of “the Israel lobby” — a term with ominously dark connotations — because he has the temerity to believe, as the authors put it, that the United States should support Israel even when the two countries disagree. (Presumably the “realist” position, which Walt is said to represent, would be that the United States should break all support for countries with which it fails on occasion to see eye to eye.) And sure enough, after some <em>pro-forma</em> hand-wringing about anti-Semitism by which he seems untroubled in other contexts and a few banalities about the nature of political attachments, Walt comes to the conclusion that the real problem with the dual loyalty smear, at least in Ross’s case, is the phrasing. He suggests that it should be called a more sanitary-sounding “conflict of interest.”</p>
<p>Walt no doubt imagines this to be the pragmatic position. He is as usual mistaken. For one thing, what is the conflict of interest in Ross’s case? That he shows some appreciation of Israeli public opinion and understands Israeli domestic politics? Note that Ross has not come out and said that the United States should accept Israel’s position on Jerusalem, which would be eminently reasonable counsel. He has only advised the administration to show more understanding of Israel’s position on that issue. The only way this could be interpreted as a “conflict of interest” is if one believes, as Walt apparently does, that any willingness to listen seriously to Israeli concerns represents the elevation of Israeli interests over American ones. This in fact happens to be an extreme position.</p>
<p><strong>To continue reading this article, <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/dennis-ross-and-dual-loyalties/">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>More Than a Hero</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/more-than-a-hero/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=more-than-a-hero</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:02:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Chris Gaubatz put his life on the line in an age of surrender and cowardice. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ChrisGaubatz.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51780" title="ChrisGaubatz" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ChrisGaubatz.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" /></a></p>
<p>I said it at the Geert Wilders event at CPAC 2009, and it is still an accurate observation: we live in such a cheap and tawdry age that all one needs to do to be a hero is tell the truth &#8212; and yet there are so few heroes.</p>
<p>That is indeed the case, and it means that Chris Gaubatz is something much greater than a hero. In our day when cowardice positively defines our political and media elites, Chris Gaubatz put his life on the line for the defense of free people and free societies against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. As detailed in the breathtaking book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935071106?ie=UTF8&amp;seller=AFYG8QLDDI5CM&amp;sn=kate_ramsay87">Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America</a></em>, Chris assumed the identity of a convert to Islam. Posing as a new convert to Islam named David “Dawud” Marshall, he secured a position as an intern in the Washington, DC, office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Hamas-linked pressure group that uses legal intimidation and a marionette mainstream media to dominate the discourse about Islam in the U.S., manipulate clueless government and law enforcement officials, obfuscate the role of Islamic doctrine in recruiting and motivating jihad terrorists, and resist anti-terror efforts.</p>
<p>Chris was in extreme danger. If he had been caught, there is no telling what might have happened &#8212; and as the book detailed, he had some extremely close calls, such as when CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, “Honest Ibe” himself, told him to watch out for&#8230;Chris Gaubatz!</p>
<p><em>Muslim Mafia,</em> by Chris’s father Dave Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, shows the fruits of Chris’s risky labors. He was able to carry out of CAIR headquarters 12,000 pages of documents and even audiotapes of CAIR officials. These showed the group’s unsavory associations, connections to corrupt politicians (see the list of top recipients of Muslim cash on page 195), and more.</p>
<p>All this made CAIR so nervous that the group went to court to get the documents back. When <em>Muslim Mafia</em> hit bookstore shelves, CAIR did not deny any of its allegations, resorting instead to its tried-and-true tactic of shooting the messenger, defaming the Gaubatzes and Sperry as “hatemongers” and suing to recover the documents, claiming that the material had been stolen and even that Chris Gaubatz had trespassed on CAIR property.</p>
<p>A court ruled in CAIR’s favor, but just as CAIR was about to regain control of the documents, the FBI stepped in with a subpoena, taking the documents for its own hitherto unknown investigation of CAIR.</p>
<p>There had been no public indication that CAIR was under investigation at all until December, when the controversy over the <em>Muslim Mafia</em> documents precipitated the revelation. But now it has been revealed that the FBI is indeed finally investigating CAIR, after years of working with the organization and ignoring its ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>For <em>Muslim Mafia</em> confirms what veteran CAIR-watchers have long suspected: that CAIR is an integral part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s apparatus in the U.S. The Brotherhood is an international Islamic organization, the parent group of both Hamas and Al-Qaeda, that is in its own words dedicated in America to “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” In line with this, <em>Muslim Mafia </em>contains details of how CAIR has tried to block anti-terror investigations &#8212; and has meanwhile insinuated itself into the highest levels of power in Washington.</p>
<p>As a result of the revelations in <em>Muslim Mafia</em>, last fall Representatives Sue Myrick (R-NC) Trent Franks (R-AZ) Paul Broun (R-GA) and John Shadegg (R-AZ) wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder, requesting that he “provide each Member of Congress a summary of the evidence and findings by the DOJ and FBI which led them to name CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism trial.” To date, Holder has not publicly complied, but CAIR is by no means out of the woods yet.</p>
<p>Buttressed with never-before-seen documentation, <em>Muslim Mafia</em> lays out the whole truth about the thugs and Islamic supremacists of CAIR, detailing how it has obstructed anti-terror efforts under the rubric of cooperating with authorities, co-opted Congressmen with cash, enabled the infiltration of Muslim Brotherhood operatives into high levels of government, and much more. It should be essential reading for every FBI agent and anti-terror analyst in the United States &#8212; and the fact that it isn’t only shows again how successful CAIR and its ilk have been in blunting the force of our defense against the global jihad.</p>
<p>Free citizens owe Chris Gaubatz an immense debt of gratitude. If we get through all this, he will stand as one of the heroes of the age &#8212; and as much more than a hero.</p>
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		<title>A Tale of Two Books</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/leon-de-winter/a-tale-of-two-books/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-tale-of-two-books</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:01:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Leon de Winter]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51783</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Dutch court is forced to compare Mein Kampf and the Quran in the Wilders trial. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/books.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51785" title="books" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/books.jpg" alt="" width="475" height="218" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://online.wsj.com/home-page">Wall Street Journal</a></strong></p>
<p>What started as a trial against Geert Wilders for alleged Islamophobia has nearly turned into its opposite: a historical case about the message of the Quran. The Amsterdam court trying the controversial Dutch politician is now preoccupied with the question of whether this book, sacred to more than a billion believers, can be compared to one of the most vile publications in the history of Western civilization—Hitler&#8217;s &#8220;Mein Kampf.&#8221; What could possibly go wrong?</p>
<p>In his writing and speeches, Mr. Wilders has found these two works to be similar in terms of their anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred, and has thus called for a publishing ban on the Quran similar to the one in place for &#8220;Mein Kampf.&#8221; This is what triggered Mr. Wilders&#8217;s prosecution for discriminatory and insulting remarks against Muslims and Islam. The Dutch politician, though, denies having insulted Muslims. He insists his focus is on radical Islam and the Quran, which he considers to be not only a religious text but also a political pamphlet encouraging Muslims to discriminate against and, if necessary, kill Jews, Christians, apostates and other unbelievers. That&#8217;s why Mr. Wilders claims the right to criticize and condemn Islam.</p>
<p>Following complaints brought by mostly Muslim and radical leftist activists, Amsterdam&#8217;s district attorney in 2008 at first found no legal basis for prosecuting Mr. Wilders. Prosecutors were forced to change course only after an activist appeals court last year ordered Mr. Wilders&#8217;s prosecution—basically condemning the politician before any trial could even begin and before Mr. Wilders had a chance to defend himself. The court&#8217;s unusual intervention illustrates the Dutch confusion about the conflict between two essential rights: the right to free speech and the right to protection from discrimination.</p>
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<p>According to polls, Mr. Wilders&#8217;s Freedom Party, a libertarian-conservative movement with populist tendencies, is currently the most popular political party in the Netherlands. If elections were held today, Mr. Wilders would be a serious contender for the position of prime minister. Mr. Wilders&#8217;s detractors are mistaken if they think a conviction would hurt him politically. The trial is a win-win situation for him: If the court rules to restrict Mr. Wilders&#8217;s right to free speech, many Dutchmen will interpret this as an effort by the politically correct establishment to limit the growing strength of the Freedom Party, which would widen its appeal to many voters. If, on the other hand, the prosecution fails to prove that Mr. Wilders has purposely insulted Muslims because of their religion, Mr. Wilders&#8217;s views will be seen as vindicated. Again, he will gain politically.</p>
<p><strong>To continue reading this article, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703906204575026532718536518.html">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama’s OIC Envoy Didn’t Just Defend Al-Arian</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/justin-elizabeth-tabler/obama%e2%80%99s-oic-envoy-didn%e2%80%99t-just-defend-al-arian-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-oic-envoy-didn%25e2%2580%2599t-just-defend-al-arian-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:05:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Justin Elizabeth Tabler]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51547</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Rashad Hussain's disturbing stances on U.S. terrorist prosecutions.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/alarian.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51551" title="alarian" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/alarian.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="484" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/">Newsreal</a></strong></p>
<p>He condemned the United States for prosecuting just about everyone who was under indictment on terror charges at the time.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511" target="_blank">Obama</a>’s newly-named Special Envoy to the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7453" target="_blank">Organization of the Islamic Conference</a>, <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/?s=rashad+hussain" target="_blank">Rashad Hussain</a>, came under fire last week for statements he made in defense of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6448" target="_blank">Palestinian Islamic Jihad</a>’s leader in the US, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=671" target="_blank">Sami al-Arian</a>, as well as for having initially lied about making them. Hussain had said that al-Arian, who pled guilty to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization, was a victim of “politically motivated persecutions,” then claimed that Laila, Sami’s daughter had made the statements, not him.</p>
<p>The <a href="../2010/02/17/rashad-hussain%E2%80%99s-samigate/" target="_blank">cover-up</a> itself is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, it was large.  The <em>Washington Report on Middle East Affairs</em> deleted two paragraphs from a 2004 article – the two paragraphs quoting Hussain – and then claimed that Archive.org was lying and implied that anyone who wonders what happened to the article is a bigot. The White House then erroneously echoed Hussain’s claim that Laila al-Arian had made the statements. Then, last Friday, Hussain <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/02/obamas-envoy-to-oic-admits-he-defended-jihad-terror-leader.html" target="_blank">came clean</a> and admitted to having said it all, while the White House admits nothing.</p>
<p>Second, the cover-up is intriguing because the reason why Hussain admitted to making the statements was not out of  some sense of duty or honor, especially after having shifted the blame to another person, but because he got caught red-handed. Josh Gerstein of the <em>Politico</em> <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33210.html" target="_blank">obtained audio</a> from the 2004 <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6175" target="_blank">Muslim Students Association</a> conference at which he made the remarks.  (Hat tip: <a href="http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/obamas-special-envoy-spoke-out-for-more-terrorists-audio/" target="_blank">Creeping Sharia</a>.)</p>
<p>Gerstein’s article also reveals (although the audio above does not) that Hussain’s defense of al-Arian was part of a much broader condemnation of U.S. terrorist prosecutions, which should not be surprising since his speech took place at a conference for Muslim Brotherhood front group and he was a law student at the time. What <em>is</em> surprising is that he stuck up for just about every individual under indictment on terrorism charges at the time.</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33210_Page3.html" target="_blank">Hussain cited:</a></p>
<p>— The court martial of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2349" target="_blank">Capt. James Yee</a>, a Guantanamo chaplain initially  suspected of treason and later charged with adultery. All charges were  eventually dropped.</p>
<p>— The case of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=703" target="_blank">Jose Padilla</a>, who was held without charge for more than three years as an enemy combatant on suspicions of trying to detonate a radiation-laced “dirty bomb” in the U.S. In 2006, more than a year after Hussain spoke, Padilla was charged in a terrorist plot unrelated to the dirty bomb allegations. He was convicted by a jury in 2007 and sentenced to 17 years in prison.</p>
<p>— The imprisonment of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Free%20to%20Dissent.html" target="_blank">Yaser Hamdi</a>, who was captured in Afghanistan, held  as an enemy combatant and released to Saudi Arabia weeks after Hussain  spoke.</p>
<p>— The prosecution of an imam and a pizzeria owner in Albany, N.Y., for conspiring with an informant in a fictitious plot to use a missile launcher to attack a Pakistani diplomat. The men were convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, though their lawyers claimed the pair were entrapped.</p>
<p>— The prosecution of a Somali man, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6368" target="_blank">Nuradin Abdi</a>, in 2004 for plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio. He pled guilty in 2007 to conspiring to support terrorism and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.</p>
<p>— The imprisonment of an Oregon lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was jailed for more than two weeks in 2004 as a material witness on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings that year. He was never charged with a crime, received an apology from the FBI, which said it misidentified his fingerprints, and brought a lawsuit that led to a reported $2 million settlement from the government in 2006.</p>
<p>— The prosecution of four men as alleged members of a Detroit-based Al Qaeda “sleeper cell” plotting an attack. Two of the men were convicted on terror charges in 2003 but the convictions were thrown out at the government’s request after evidence emerged of prosecutorial misconduct and an unreliable informant. The prosecutor was charged criminally with concealing exculpatory evidence but later acquitted.</p></blockquote>
<p>He then backtracked, calling his remarks about al-Arian “ill conceived.” He did not, however, retreat in his condemnation of the prosecution (or his perceived motivations for prosecution) of nearly every individual indicted on terrorism charges between September of 2001 and September of 2004, when he made the statements, nor has he repudiated any of his <a href="../2010/02/18/rashad-hussains-troubling-ties/" target="_blank">many troubling ties</a> to the Muslim Brotherhood, a <a href="http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/mbhood_en.html" target="_blank">genocidal</a> organization whose <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=22415" target="_blank">stated purpose</a> in the U.S. is to undermine our government and replace it with Sharia law. He spoke at a leadership summit hosted by a roll call of <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6181" target="_blank">Holy Land Foundation</a> unindicted co-conspirators as recently as <a href="http://globalmbreport.com/?p=2173" target="_blank">last May</a>.</p>
<p>The case of Rashad Hussain is disturbing on too many levels. One should not surprised that Obama appointed someone like Hussain as Special Envoy to the OIC, which seeks to outlaw free and honest discussion of Islam and undermine the national sovereignty of free nations. His <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/%7E/media/Files/rc/papers/2008/08_counterterrorism_hussain/08_counterterrorism_hussain.pdf" target="_blank">counterrorism approach</a> (why are lawyers crafting approaches to combating terrorism?) is one which essentially bends over backward to avoid dealing with the Islamic texts and tenets which call for violence, and which is pacifistic and appeasing in response to violent jihad both at home and abroad.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2406" target="_blank">Van Jones</a> may be a 9/11 Truther who defended a Marxist cop killer, but he never defended any leaders of explicitly genocidal international terror organizations or attempted mass murderers like Jose Padilla, and <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7491" target="_blank">Jones’ ties</a> to terror organizations pale in comparison to Hussain’s. Jones seems as innocuous as Opie from the Andy Griffith Show next to Rashad Hussain, yet, given the extent of the Obama administration’s dealings with <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/17/napolitano-meets-with-muslim-brotherhood-leaders/" target="_blank">individuals</a> and <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/18/hamas-linked-isna-facilitated-brennans-nyu-speech/" target="_blank">entities</a> affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and given the fact that Obama appointed an envoy to the fascist murderers of the OIC at all, I do not expect Rashad Hussain to quietly resign in the middle of the night any time soon.</p>
<p><strong>The author writes for <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/author/jetabler/" target="_blank">NewsReal Blog</a>. She also runs <a href="http://theforceofreason.com/" target="_blank">The Force of Reason</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Times Finds A Lone Crazed Assassin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/peter-collier/the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/peter-collier/the-times-finds-a-lone-crazed-assassin-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:05:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Peter Collier]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51395</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the Grey Lady won't tell you about professor Amy Bishop.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bishop1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51443" title="bishop" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bishop1.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="347" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/">Newsreal</a></strong><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html" target="_blank"><em></em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html" target="_blank"><em>The New York Times</em>’ front page profile</a> on Saturday of professor Amy Bishop, who allegedly executed three University of Alabama Biology Department colleagues after being denied tenure, appears to be an exhaustively reported piece based on “numerous interviews with colleagues and others who knew her.” It portrays Bishop as violent and unpredictable, rejected by Harvard because of mediocre work and shunned by a series of neighbors and co-workers scared off by the suppressed rage that kept bubbling up to the surfaces of her social life, and also someone who may already have gotten away with the murder of her brother years earlier possibly because of her mother’s political connections in her home town of Braintree, Mass.</p>
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<p>“Between brilliance and rage” is the caption of the photo of Bishop used by the<em> Times</em> for the story, although the piece makes no case for the former.  But is this all the news that is fit to print about the perpetrator of this murder spree in academe?  What about the “family source” who told the Boston Herald that Bishop was,</p>
<blockquote><p>“<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=144&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">a far left</a> political activist who was ‘obsessed’ with <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511" target="_blank">President Obama</a> to the point of being off putting”?</p></blockquote>
<p>What about the student who called her a <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=115&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">“socialist”</a>? What about one report that Bishop complained about a rule issued by University  of Alabama administrators regarding underclassmen living on campus because she believed it was destructive of “diversity.”  And what about the crowning irony of this case, whether or not she made this complaint: that two of the colleagues she allegedly killed were black and one was South Asian, and that Bishop thus wiped out the 14 person Biology department’s entire diversity in one burst of gunfire?</p>
<p>Considering the politics of Bishop’s <em>ressentiment</em> might have helped fill out the Times’ portrait of a psychopathic time bomb who had already gone off several times in her disordered life on her way to the Big Explosion on February 12 in Huntsville. There is no doubt, as the blogosphere has already noted, that the paper would have pursued even the vaguest hint that Bishop had been a fan of Glenn Beck or was a Tea Party fellow traveler as a major story line. For the Grey Lady, only the politics of the Right is personal.</p>
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		<title>When Free Speech Died</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/richard-l-cravatts/the-death-of-academic-discourse/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-death-of-academic-discourse</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:02:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Richard L. Cravatts]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51152</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Leftist and Muslim thugs shut down discourse on campus.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/free-speech2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51154" title="free-speech2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/free-speech2.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="363" /></a></p>
<p>Of the many intellectual perversions currently taking root on college campuses, perhaps none is more contradictory to what should be one of higher education’s core values than the suppression of free speech. With alarming regularity, speakers are shouted down, booed, jeered, and barrage with vitriol, all at the hands of groups who give lip service the notion of academic free speech, and who demand it when their speech is at issue, but have no interest in listening to, or letting others listen to, ideas that contradict their own world view.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, just recently two Israeli officials, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon and ambassador to the United States Michael Oren had the unpleasant experience of confronting virulent anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Muslim students whose ideology on academic debate seems to be “free speech for me, but not for thee.”</p>
<p>Ayalon, who spoke at Oxford University, had his speech interrupted by several audience members, including one who yelled incessantly and called Ayalon a “racist” and “a war criminal” while waving a Palestinian flag, another student who loudly read passages of the incendiary Goldstone Report, calls from one charming scholar to “slaughter the Jews,” the intrusion of a third student who remained standing for the entire balance of the lecture while she hurled anti-Israel invective, and another radical brat who threatened to Ayalon that “we will do to you what we did to Milosevic.”</p>
<p>The genteel, soft-spoken Ambassador Oren did not fare much better during his visit to the University of California at Irvine, a notorious hotbed of radical anti-Israelism by Muslim students. During the aborted speech to some 500 people about U.S.-Israeli relations, which was loudly interrupted ten times, boorish hecklers screamed over Oren’s talk such profound observations as “Michael Oren, propagating murder is not an expression of free speech,” “I accuse you of murder,”  “How many Palestinians have you killed?” and “Israel is a murderer.” Even after he took a 20-minute recess to let the crowd cool off and regain its collective composure, he returned to the podium with more volleys of invective, shouting, and speech-stopping bombast from the Muslim students, eleven of whom―eight from UC-Irvine (including the Muslim Student Union’s president) and three from UC Riverside—were eventually escorted out of the hall and arrested.</p>
<p>The fact that UC-I’s habitually craven administrators, led by feckless Chancellor Michael Drake, were even motivated enough by the students’ errant behavior to have them ejected from the event is a promising sign. While the University has always claimed to be dedicated to encouraging debate and scholarly inquiry by letting the Muslim Student Union mount annual hate-fests to demonize and vilify Israel and Jews, the MSU has effectively hijacked all discussion of the Middle East on campus, and their odious events are not platforms at which opposing views are aired and discussed. In fact, these so-called pro-Palestinians seem to care very little about the actual self-determination and state building of the hapless Palestinians. As is frequently the case when speaking about the Israeli/Arab conflict, the discussion often glosses over the real problems of Palestinian culture, politics, and society (including its cult of death), and targets all criticism on the perceived defects of Israel, Zionism, and Jewish power.</p>
<p>Ambassador Oren is hardly what even his staunchest critics could consider an Islamophobe or even a rabid Zionist, perfectly willing to trample the Palestinian’s aspirations for their putative state. A Columbia and Princeton graduate, former Georgetown professor and fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem Center, the American-born Oren is also the author of two seminal books on the Middle East, <em>Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East</em> and <em>Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present</em>, all of which clearly make him at least as qualified to speak about the Israeli/Palestinian situation as the raucous, boorish students who had decided, in advance of his UC-I appearance, that Oren was morally unfit to even appear on their campus.</p>
<p>This notion—that pro-Israel speakers and scholars do not even deserve, on a moral or intellectual basis, an opportunity to participate in scholarly debate is a very dangerous one, even if it comes from tendentious students. It starts with the assumption that Israel, because of its perceived moral defects and its oppression of the hapless Palestinians and the theft of their lands, does not even have the right to participate in intellectual debate, that academic free speech in Israel’s case can be modified and is not absolute. And while Muslim students and other campus radicals have, both at UC-I and other college campuses, seen to it that speech that they do not approve of, spoken by people with whom they disagree, is shut down with the “heckler’s veto,” they have never missed an opportunity to invite their own stable of slimy, anti-Israel, anti-American speakers. What is more, these speakers have never been shouted down, chased away, or jeered by those students and professors who might well have found their views to be repellant.</p>
<p>A closer look at the ideas tossed about by some of the MSU’s invited guests suggests both the moral incoherence and intellectual debasement that characterizes the human output of these events. Amir-Abdel Malik-Ali, for instance, former Nation of Islam member, convert to Islam, and cheerleader for Hamas and Hezbollah, has been a ubiquitous, poisonous presence on the Irvine campus who never hesitates to castigate Israel, Zionists, Jewish power, and Jews themselves as he weaves incoherent, hallucinatory conspiracies about the Middle East and the West.  Speaking from a podium with an execrable banner reading “Israel, the 4th Reich” in May 2006, Malik-Ali referred to Jews as “new Nazis” and “a bunch of straight-up punks.”  “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered,” he admonished Jews everywhere. “We will fight you. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.”</p>
<p>At a 2008 event, dubbed “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust,” Malik-Ali was at his hateful best once again, standing behind a banner that read “Death to Apartheid“ while he wildly contended that “The Islamic revival should only be feared by those who support imperialism, colonialism, racism, occupation . . . Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah” are not the real terrorists at all, he proclaimed. No, the actual “terrorists are the United States; the terrorists are Israel!”</p>
<p>Another odious guest speaker who regularly makes appearances on the hate-fest circuit is Muhammad al-Asi, an anti-Semitic, anti-America Muslim activist from Washington, DC who has written, among other notorious ideas, that “The Israeli Zionist are [sic] the true and legitimate object of liquidation.” At a MSU-sponsored event in February 2008, “From Auschwitz to Gaza: The Politics of Genocide,” which repulsively tried to draw parallels between the Holocaust and Hamas-controlled Gaza, al-Asi was a featured speaker. In his speech, he repeated the canard of Jewish control of world politics, suggesting that “Zionists or what some people call the Jewish lobby” had reduced the United States to playing “second fiddle to the Israeli government.”</p>
<p>Just months after 9/11, al-Asi had similar invective to utter towards Jews, in the context of Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Using his favorite image of the ghetto when describing Jews, he observed that “We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly [sic] with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you can&#8217;t take the ghetto out of the Jew, and this has been demonstrated time and time again in Occupied Palestine.”</p>
<p>If ever there were utterances which deserved to be shouted down and drowned out with reason and fact, al-Asi’s hallucinatory ravings probably would qualify. But despite continual complaints from the Orange County Task Force on Anti-Semitism and other concerned UC-I stakeholders, the tenor and frequency of speakers at the MSU’s lurid hate-fests continue unabated, seemingly with the tacit approval of the university administration. The same Muslim students who could not abide even the presence of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, listen rapturously to the loathsome bloviating of Malik Ali, al-Asi, Norman Finkelstein, Ward Churchill, and any other ideological thug who have come to UC-I’s campus with the purpose of vilifying Israel and defaming Jews.</p>
<p>It is, of course, the MSU’s choice to hear whatever opinions they wish from whichever speakers to whom they choose to listen. What is not their choice, however, is to be able to prevent other views from being heard on campus, particularly the complex and thorny Israeli/Palestinian conversation, merely because pro-Palestinian students have decided that they will not recognize the very existence or legitimacy of a sovereign nation, Israel, nor hear that ideas of individuals who are able to defend it and explain the Israeli side of the argument. University officials must repeatedly make clear that campuses must allow many different views and perspectives, and should not try to exclude unpopular thought from being heard in the proverbial marketplace of ideas.</p>
<p>Concern for the long-suffering Palestinians may be a commendable effort, but the exclusion and demonization of Israeli speakers and government officials from the academic community as a tool for seeking social justice for that one group “represents a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavor,” observed commentator Melanie Phillips, “which is freedom of speech and debate,” something universities should never stop diligently defending. And they should certainly never abandon that pursuit to the baleful whining of ideological bullies intent on suppressing the views of others.</p>
<p><em>Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., director of Boston University’s Program in Publishing, just finished a book about the world-wide assault on Israel taking place on college campuses, &#8220;Genocidal Liberalism: The University’s Jihad Against Israel.&#8221;</em></p>
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		<title>Censorship at UC Irvine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/censorship-at-uc-irvine-3/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=censorship-at-uc-irvine-3</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/censorship-at-uc-irvine-3/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50956</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The rights of the speaker vs. the “rights” of disruptors.
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ucirvine1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-50958" title="ucirvine" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ucirvine1.jpg" alt="" width="360" height="229" /></a></p>
<p>Recently Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, who is an academic historian and a political moderate, was invited to speak at the University  of California at Irvine.  I know Michael well and have heard him speak many times.  He is one of Israel’s most effective advocates, particularly on university campuses.  He speaks about peace, about the two-state solution and he brings a historical perspective to his analysis.  Because he is so effective, anti-Israel zealots try to prevent him from speaking and his audience from hearing his views.</p>
<p>That’s exactly what happened at the University  of California at Irvine when Oren began to speak.  This tactic of censorship will be tried at other universities as well, if it is permitted to succeed.</p>
<p>Let there be no doubt about it, these radical anti-Israel zealots are trying to censor Michael Oren.  After repeatedly disrupting his speech and making it impossible for him to continue, eleven of them were arrested and now face possible disciplinary action from the University  of California, a public institution.</p>
<p>They and their supporters now claim that the eleven disruptors whose right of free speech is being violated.  They are threatening legal action to defend their right to prevent a speaker from expressing his views and an audience from hearing those views.  This is a topsy-turvy view of the First Amendment.</p>
<p>It is true that an individual heckler may have the right to shout in opposition to a speaker, so long as his shouted words are brief and non-recurrent.  But any fair viewing of the videotape, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w96UR79TBw">available on YouTube</a>, proves beyond any doubt that this was a concerted effort to silence Michael Oren and to prevent his audience from hearing his point of view.  The university was correctly embarrassed at this attempt at censorship.</p>
<p>I too speak on college campuses, trying to make the moderate, two-state solution case on behalf of Israel.  My speeches have been greeted with shouts of disapproval and efforts to silence me.  When I spoke last year at the University  of Massachusetts, a similar effort was made to prevent me from expressing my view.  I refused to remain silent and I simply shouted over the ruckus.  Eventually the University had to end the event.  When I spoke at the University of California at Irvine several years earlier, there was also some heckling, but there was no coordinated effort to stop me from speaking.  Similar groups have succeeded in preventing other pro-Israel speakers, including Israel’s former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, and its current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from speaking.</p>
<p>These attempts to prevent college audiences from hearing pro-Israel speakers must be taken very seriously by universities.  As Michael Oren explained in the beginning of his talk, universities are places where full and complete freedom of speech must be given a high priority.  Freedom of speech does permit the right of audience members to express views different from a speaker, so long as they obey reasonable rules and do not prevent the speaker from expressing his or her views.  Reasonable rules include permitting the holding of signs, so long as they do not block anyone’s view, the handing out of leaflets, an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the talk and sporadic and non-recurrent booing or shouting of brief comments</p>
<p>I have defended students who have been subjected to discipline for shouting a single word, for holding a sign or for making an obscene gesture.  But I would not defend a so-called right of a group of students to act in a coordinated manner in an effort to prevent a speaker from expressing views that the audience is entitled to hear.</p>
<p>There are several rights at stake in any such case.  First is the right of the speaker, who has been invited by the university to present his point of view.  Second is the right of the audience to hear his point of view.  Third is the right of audience members who disagree with his point of view to express opposition.  These rights need not be in conflict, so long as there is no effort to prevent the speaker from conveying his point of view to the audience.</p>
<p>From what I saw on the videotape, it seemed clear that there was a coordinated effort of censorship, and not merely an exercise of free speech by audience members who disagreed with what Oren was saying.  If such a coordinated effort at censorship is established by the evidence, then discipline is warranted.</p>
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		<title>The Science Is Not Settled</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/the-science-is-not-settled/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-science-is-not-settled</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/the-science-is-not-settled/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:04:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50650</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Phil Jones, a leading global warming advocate, makes a stunning admission.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PhilJones_1530199c.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-50649 alignnone" title="PhilJones_1530199c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PhilJones_1530199c.jpg" alt="" width="460" height="288" /></a></p>
<p>Last Saturday’s <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html">BBC interview of Phil Jones</a>, the former head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) has been portrayed by some as a “retreat”; that, in effect, Jones is backing off his claim that human activities are catastrophically effecting the climate. That’s putting too strong a face on it. The interview was remarkable, but don’t believe for a second that Jones is trading in his alarmist badge for skeptical credentials. He’s simply engaged in damage control, but this interview was still something of an epiphany.</p>
<p>Jones was the central figure involved in “<a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/">Climategate</a>,” the release of e-mails and data files from the CRU last November that showed that leading climate scientists had been playing questionable games with data, attempting to suppress contrary opinions, and generally trying to steer their research towards desirable results, rather than allowing results to flow naturally out of their research. He is currently on leave from his position of director of the CRU and his work has been roundly criticized, not only by skeptics, but by many scientists who agree with his position on global warming.</p>
<p>It should be emphasized that, during his interview with the BBC, Jones said he remains confident that human activity is and has been causing global warming that can not be explained by natural causes. Nothing new there. What was stunning was that Jones admitted, in the sum total of his statements, that there is legitimate scientific disagreement about the evidence that supposedly proves the alarmist case. The science, it would seem, is not settled.</p>
<p>It’s a sad commentary on the state of the world when a scientist’s declaration that there is indeed room for reasoned scientific debate counts as a victory, but there you have it. The mantra “the science is settled” traces its roots back to the <a href="http://www.sepp.org/key%20issues/glwarm/nap-wtms.html">Clinton administration</a>, when President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore declared that the certainty of the case for global warming, the “fact” that scientists were sure disaster lurked just around the corner, along with the magnitude of the supposed danger, meant that we must stop arguing and start acting. The mainstream media quickly fell into line, as did many respected technical publications like <em>Scientific American</em> and C&amp;E News. The editor of the latter, the signature publication of the American Chemical Society, <a href="http://www.junkscience.com/news/baum2.html">Rudy Baum</a>, went so far as to declare that C&amp;E News had little interest in publishing papers that might tend to undermine global warming alarmism. That policy led many chemists, including myself, to resign from the American Chemical Society.</p>
<p>Anyone who said that the science was not settled was reviled in the mainstream media, by politicians of both parties, by environmental groups and by ordinary citizens who could not imagine that the media and so many policy makers could possibly have gotten it so wrong for so long. At best, skeptics were portrayed as paid <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/exxon-secrets">minions of Exxon-Mobil</a>, dangerous right-wing eccentrics or both. At worst, pointing out all of the unsettled science earned skeptics death threats.</p>
<p>And now, along comes one of the world’s foremost climatologists, who has been leading the charge among alarmists for years, finally admitting that:</p>
<ul>
<li> The Medieval Warm Period <em>might</em> have happened and that it <em>might</em> have been a global phenomenon and that – <em>if</em></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> it was a global phenomenon – the existence of the Medieval Warm Period would make recent temperature trends much less worrisome.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> There have been other significant periods of warming in recent times, such as the period 1910 through 1940, that were not caused by human activities. (Jones hastened to add that the recent trend can not be explained away by natural causes, a position with which most skeptics disagree.)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> There has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995. For Jones, the lack of recent warming is but an aberration within a larger, more sinister long term trend. For skeptics, this fifteen year stabilization is further proof that alarmist predictions are terribly flawed.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> It’s not possible to verify the famous “hockey stick” graph, which purports to prove that recent temperature trends are unique and therefore must be caused by human activity, because Jones can not put his hands on the raw data.</li>
</ul>
<p>These are all points that skeptics have made, time and time again, over the course of this suddenly resurgent debate. Alarmists, the mainstream media and most policy-makers dismissed such arguments out of hand. Who cares? The science, after all, was settled. But science is never settled. Science, when it’s done right, is an evolutionary process, constantly refined and always scrutinized. Two thousand years ago, the great thinkers of the day explained natural phenomena in the most rudimentary of terms. Three hundred years ago, a deeply-religious British mathematician discovered the principles of physics that govern much of the natural world. One hundred years ago, an obscure Swiss physicist figured out a way to explain nuances of nature that Sir Isaac Newton could not account for. Today, a new generation of scientists are hard at work filling in the gaps in Einstein’s theories and wondering what he might have gotten wrong.</p>
<p>That’s science. It’s a dynamic, ever-evolving process that demands skepticism if it hopes to arrive at the truth, or at least approximate the truth. Among the vast amount of collateral damage that has been inflicted by global warming alarmists during the course of a debate they have heretofore refused to acknowledge even existed is this: The public’s faith in scientists and the scientific process has been grievously undermined. As Lord Christopher Monckton has observed, these days many scientists appear to be nothing more than politicians wearing lab coats.</p>
<p>Last Saturday Phil Jones took a tentative step towards repairing that damage. Despite all of his previous efforts to derail the scientific process, he should applauded for that. Here’s hoping that more and more of his colleagues follow his lead.</p>
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		<title>Black Opportunity Destruction</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/walter-williams/black-opportunity-destruction/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=black-opportunity-destruction</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/walter-williams/black-opportunity-destruction/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:00:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49687</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How political correctness is holding black students back. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/black-students-on-steps.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49690" title="Studying" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/black-students-on-steps-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p>&#8220;Do you mean he is taller than me am?&#8221; sarcastically barked Dr. Martin Rosenberg, my high <a href="http://www.creators.com/conservative/walter-williams/black-opportunity-destruction.html#" target="_blank">school</a> English teacher, to one of the students in our class. The student actually said, &#8220;He is taller than me,&#8221; but Rosenberg was ridiculing the student&#8217;s grammar. The subject of the elliptical (or understood) verb &#8220;am&#8221; must be in the subjective case. Thus, the correct form of the sentence is: He is taller than I.</p>
<p>This correction/dressing down of a student, that occasionally included me, occurred during my attendance at North Philadelphia&#8217;s Benjamin Franklin High School in the early &#8217;50s. Franklin was predominantly black; its students were poor or low middle class. On top of that, Franklin had just about the lowest academic standing in the city. All of our teachers, except two or three, were white. Despite the fact that we were poor, most of Franklin&#8217;s teachers held fairly high standards and expectations.</p>
<p>Today, high standards and expectations, at some <a href="http://www.creators.com/conservative/walter-williams/black-opportunity-destruction.html#" target="_blank">schools</a>, would mean trouble for a teacher. Teachers, as pointed out in one teaching program, are encouraged to &#8220;Recognize and understand the cultural differences among students from diverse backgrounds, and treat such differences with respect. Intervene immediately, should a fellow student disparage a Black student&#8217;s culture or language.&#8221; That means if a black student says, &#8220;I be wiff him&#8221; or &#8220;He axed me a question,&#8221; teachers shouldn&#8217;t bother to correct the student&#8217;s language. What&#8217;s more, should anyone disparage or laugh at the way the student speaks, the teacher should intervene in his defense. Correcting the student&#8217;s speech might be deemed as insensitive to diversity at best and racism at worst, leading possibly to a teacher&#8217;s reprimand, termination and possibly assault.</p>
<p>A teacher&#8217;s job is to teach and failure to correct a student&#8217;s speech, just as failure to correct a math error, is a dereliction of duty. You might say, &#8220;Williams, Ebonics or black English is part of the cultural roots of black people and to disparage it is racism.&#8221; That&#8217;s utter nonsense.</p>
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<p>During the 1940s and 1950s, I lived in North Philadelphia&#8217;s Richard Allen housing project, along with its most famous resident, Bill Cosby. We all were poor or low middle class but no one spoke black English. My wife was the youngest of 10 children. Listening to her brothers and sisters speak, compared to many of her nieces and nephews, you wouldn&#8217;t believe they were in the same family. The difference has nothing to do with cultural roots of black people. The difference is that <a href="http://www.creators.com/conservative/walter-williams/black-opportunity-destruction.html#" target="_blank">parents</a>, teachers and others in authority over youngsters have become less judgmental, politically correct and lazy; therefore, speaking poorly is accepted.</p>
<p>Language is our tool of communication. If a person has poor oral language skills, he&#8217;s likely to have poor writing, reading and comprehension skills. To my knowledge, there are no books in any field of study written in Ebonics or black English. It is very likely that a person with poor language skills will suffer significant deficits in other areas of academic competence such as mathematics and the sciences. It doesn&#8217;t mean that the person is unintelligent; it means that he doesn&#8217;t have all the tools of intelligence. That is what&#8217;s so insidious about the state of black <a href="http://www.creators.com/conservative/walter-williams/black-opportunity-destruction.html#" target="_blank">education</a> today; so many blacks do not have a chance to develop the tools of intelligence. Many might have high native intelligence but come off sounding like a moron.</p>
<p>Black Americans should thank God that non-judgmental, politically correct people weren&#8217;t around during the early civil rights movement when blacks began breaking discriminatory barriers. Discriminatory employers would have had ready-made excuses not to hire a black as a trolley car motorman, cashier or department store sales clerk.</p>
<p>There are some significant challenges to being judgmental and politically incorrect and insisting on proper language. A professor or teacher can get cursed out by students or parents. A black student who speaks well, carries books and studies can be accused of &#8220;acting white&#8221; and find himself shunned and assaulted by other students.</p>
<p>I would be interested in hearing the teaching establishment&#8217;s defense of permitting poor language.</p>
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		<title>The Railroading of Geert Wilders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/the-railroading-of-geert-wilders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-railroading-of-geert-wilders</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/the-railroading-of-geert-wilders/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:20:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Geert Wilders']]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49295</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Netherlands leaves justice behind.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/geert-wilders.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49297" title="geert-wilders" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/geert-wilders-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>The Stalinist-show-trial aspect of the Geert Wilders “hate speech” trial in the Netherlands was thrown into sharp relief last week when the Amsterdam District Court refused to allow Wilders to call fifteen of the eighteen witnesses he had hoped to bring forward in his defense. Wilders in response was characteristically direct: “This Court is not interested in the truth. This Court doesn’t want me to have a fair trial. I can’t have any respect for this. This Court would not be out of place in a dictatorship.”</p>
<p>The three witnesses the court allowed Wilders are the Dutch Islamic scholars Hans Jansen and Simon Admiraal, along with the Wafa Sultan. Hans Jansen’s work on Islam is superb and groundbreaking, and he will be an excellent witness, as will Admiraal and the exemplary freedom fighter Wafa Sultan.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, this decision indicates the hollowness of Dutch justice and the court’s bias against Wilders. For some who would have been Wilders’s most effective witnesses were disallowed. He had wanted to call Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo Van Gogh.</p>
<p>Why Bouyeri? Wilders, in the bizarre inquisition that has replaced justice in the Dutch courts, is accused of offending Muslims by pointing out that Muslims invoke the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example to justify violence. However, Bouyeri quoted the Qur’an in the note threatening Wilders and others that he stabbed into Van Gogh’s body, and invoked the Qur’an repeatedly during his trial as well. “Kill them, and Allah will help you and guide your hand,” he said. “There’s no room there for doubt or interpretation there.”</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Bouyeri would have proven Wilders’ point immediately: he is simply telling the truth about how Islamic teachings incite all too many Muslims to violence – and if telling the truth is now illegal in the Netherlands, so much the worse for the Netherlands. By disallowing Wilders from calling Bouyeri and others, the court has hindered Wilders’ ability to make this case – suggesting (and by no means for the first time) that the Dutch authorities are determined to convict Wilders, and are not going to let any inconvenient facts get in the way of their doing so.</p>
<p>It is not exaggerating to say that the Geert Wilders trial is a defining moment in the history of Western civilization. One would have to go back centuries to find a court case with as much significance for the future course of the free world. If the farrago of “hate” charges against Wilders stick, and he is convicted, it will herald the end of the freedom of speech in the West, as a precedent will have been set that other Western nations (urged on by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is the organization most responsible for the global assault on free speech) will be certain to follow. The era of enlightenment and the understanding that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights will be definitively drawing to a close, and a new darkness will descend over Europe and the free world in general. For once the precedent is established that a man can be jailed and destroyed for offending a privileged class, the idea that every human being has rights that cannot be infringed will be damaged beyond repair.</p>
<p>And even if Wilders prevails, enough damage has been done already. The Dutch law (and there are others like it in other Western countries) that stipulates that someone can actually be tried and jailed for offending another person will remain on the books. Other trials will follow. The law will be used by the governing elites who developed it in order to maintain their power and silence independent and dissenting voices.</p>
<p>For that is, of course, the point of all this. The Dutch authorities stand arrayed on one side, with Wilders standing alone on the other. Yet despite the fact that he has nothing like their numbers, wealth, or resources, he threatens to topple their entire multicultural house of cards – for he has on his side a weapon that all of their power cannot defeat, the weapon of truth. And so they are desperate to silence him, and end forever his truth-telling about jihad and Islamic supremacism.</p>
<p>Yet even if they do silence him, the truth will still be the truth. They will not be able to obliterate it forever. But will they be able to help initiate a long, perhaps centuries long, period of darkness and oppression in Europe and its civilizational children?</p>
<p>Certainly.</p>
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		<title>The Buffalo Interfaith Bluff</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ilya-feoktistov/the-buffalo-interfaith-bluff/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-buffalo-interfaith-bluff</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ilya-feoktistov/the-buffalo-interfaith-bluff/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:04:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ilya Feoktistov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How the Jews taking part in Buffalo "interfaith efforts" were so easily bamboozled. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/muslimrrally3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49164" title="muslimrrally3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/muslimrrally3-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" /></a></p>
<p>Rabbi Marc Schneier is a leading exponent of Jewish-Muslim dialogue. As founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, he recently <a href="http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/jews_muslims_can_defeat_common_enemies.html">described in Newsweek</a> the successes of his second annual “Weekend of Twinning of Synagogues and Mosques.” This interfaith initiative brings together “100 synagogues and 100 mosques” for a weekend of interfaith programming. Unfortunately for the Rabbi, he used, as a local example of mosque-synagogue twinning the case in Buffalo, NY – a case which shows just how easily Jews can be deceived by radical Muslims posing as “moderates.”</p>
<p>“…Coming just days after the horror of extremist violence at Fort Hood ,” wrote Rabbi Schneier, “the Weekend of Twinning was heartening evidence that most Muslims are moderates, and that majorities in both the Muslim and Jewish communities seek better relations…”</p>
<p>It may well be true that most American Muslims are moderate, but the Jews in Buffalo seem to have got themselves snookered.</p>
<p>As the Research Director of an organization that investigates and scrutinizes radical Islamic groups, I was approached last fall by concerned members of the Buffalo Jewish community who asked us to help them understand the recent local efforts to forge Muslim-Jewish interfaith relationships. We were told that some of the groups and individuals behind this initiative are known for being sources of viciously anti-Israel activity and rhetoric. Together, we began a long effort to collect information on the Twinning. What we found was that the entities behind the Buffalo interfaith effort are anything but moderate.</p>
<p>As Rabbi Schneier describes in his Newsweek article, the event was conceived and coordinated by Robert Stall and Othman Shibly – a Jewish geriatrician and a Muslim dentist who worked to provide free health screenings to people in the community without health insurance. The doctors became close after jointly attending a medical conference in Damascus, Syria. During a break in the conference, Dr. Shibly took Dr. Stall to a Damascus mosque and introduced him to a respected Syrian cleric, Sheikh Rajab Deeb. Sheikh Deeb had been the top disciple of Dr. Shibly’s own spiritual mentor, the recently deceased Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro.</p>
<p>In his efforts to convince Buffalo Jewish leaders to join the Twinning, Dr. Stall has characterized Dr. Shibly and his Syrian spiritual leaders as moderate and peace-loving men of faith. Writing to a concerned community member, Dr. Stall said that, “Dr. Shibly’s efforts to improve the world by having different faiths work together, side by side, competing to outdo one another in good works, is to a large extent based in [sic] the teachings of Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, a Syrian imam who was in many ways ahead of his time.”</p>
<p>As proof of Kuftaro’s progressiveness, Dr. Stall provided links to Kuftaro’s English language articles with titles like “Spirituality in the 21st Century.” Jewish leaders who participated in the Twinning Weekend must have been convinced – Kuftaro’s disciple, Rajab Deeb, was linked in via Skype to address the interfaith event participants through an interpreter.</p>
<p>It is unfortunate that Dr. Stall and the Jewish participants didn’t consult an interpreter earlier, for while the Sheikhs’ English-language websites are full of new-age fluff about interfaith spirituality, the Arab-language sections contained something different.</p>
<p>A video recording of Kuftaro’s August 18, 2003 sermon on “Islam and Terrorism” posted on his website began with a section on, “The control of the Jewish lobby on world opinion,” where he insisted that American claims of Syrian support for terrorism were, “suggested to them by the Jewish lobby, who are the killers of prophets.” Kuftaro has also said that “ Israel is a dagger in the heart of the Muslim nation” and in a meeting with Hamas leaders insisted that “all Muslims are obligated to do jihad upon the Zionists.”</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoiIzPpwzc">video taped on July 5, 2002</a>, Kuftaro turned over his pulpit to Luis Farrakhan, who was visiting his mosque as an honored guest. On November 8, 2002, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ5IO8-GYQ0">he gave the same honor</a> to the neo-Nazi preacher William Baker. In online video of both events, Kuftaro looks on from the dais while both anti-Semites give lectures denouncing America and Israel in front of his congregation.</p>
<p>On the personal website of Sheikh Rajab Deeb, together with the audio of the sermon he gave at the Buffalo event, is a May 15, 2005 sermon titled, “Jerusalem is Ours.” In the sermon, Deeb claimed that the Holy Land is undergoing a so-called, “process of desecration through the delirious allegations of the presence there of the Jewish Temple .” About Jews, he said: “They want to remove and destroy every trace except for their footsteps and pollute every creed except their faith, and eradicate every race except their race, and they claim to be God’s Chosen People…”</p>
<p>In a position statement on Syria’s army, Deeb said:</p>
<p>“You must set up sophisticated weapons, which are appropriate to the times. The saber and spear were good predecessor weapons, which then evolved into the catapult. This development is still ongoing to the present age, where the weapons became firearms, then artillery, missile and aircraft, and then, with increased development, came the atomic and hydrogen bombs… His eminence [Sheikh Deeb] encourages the development of the national weapons industry; when the State possesses the secrets of these weapons, no enemy can resist it.”</p>
<p>Deeb’s support for Syria ’s national weapons industry is not surprising – in fact both he and Kuftaro have served as top clerics in Bashar Assad’s totalitarian government, known for spreading virulent Jew-hatred. Until Kuftaro’s death in 2003, he was the Grand Mufti of Syria and Deeb is currently the Chief Scholar in the Syrian Ministry of Religion. Considering that Syria has expelled all its Jews, hosts the top leadership of Palestinian terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and arms Hizbullah, the tenor of Deeb and Kuftaro’s sermons about Jews is also not surprising.</p>
<p>The Shibly family has promoted a similar pro-terror ideology in Buffalo . Dr. Shibly’s son Hassan Shibly is a prolific blogger who has written that Hizbullah should not be considered a terrorist organization. In a high-profile incident at the Rainbow  Bridge in 2004, Hassan and Dr. Shibly’s wife Sawsan Tabbaa, were detained at the border after returning from the controversial “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” annual conference in Toronto . Responding to a discrimination lawsuit filed by the Shiblys against it, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6225-2005Apr20.html">the Department of Homeland Security said</a> that: “In this instance, we had credible intelligence that conferences similar to the one from which these individuals were leaving were being used by terrorist organizations to fundraise and to hide the travel of terrorists themselves.” In 2007, <a href="http://nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/Tabaa_v_Chertoff_Opinion.pdf">the courts rejected the Shibly family’s claims of discrimination</a> and judged that the terror threat associated with the conference justified their detention.</p>
<p>What’s stunning here is that finding this information was not that hard. How is it possible that the Jews taking part in Buffalo interfaith efforts were so easily bamboozled? Surely, no one involved in this “twinning” business would have signed a contract to renovate his bathroom without such minimal due diligence. The answer is the deep obsession with politically correct ideology that pervades many liberal Jewish communities: “It just can’t be true that Islamic radicals would try to take advantage of our good will. If anyone even thinks of this as a possibility, he must be a “racist!”</p>
<p>And why would Islamic radicals pretend to be moderate in order to establish interfaith relationships with Jewish community? I believe that this and many other similar “Twinning Initiatives” around the country have an ulterior purpose. Already, the interfaith relationship as it currently exists in Buffalo is being exploited to intimidate local Jewish groups into forfeiting their freedom to vigorously advocate for Jews everywhere, including Israel . Shortly after the twinning, Dr. Shibly denounced a lecture by Israeli General Effie Eitam at the University of Buffalo . Writing to the event organizers, Dr. Shibly said: “It is so sad as we are trying to bring our communities together and make a historical step to join the national efforts of twinning mosques and Synagogues projects for common good, we get a slap in our face.” Likewise, when the Jewish community wanted to screen “Farewell Israel ,” a thoroughly-researched film about the dangers Israel faces, Shibly again invoked the interfaith threat: “This movie and other programs presented before were misleading and promote islamophobia. They destroy all the bridges and dialogues that we are building to promote peace, love and understanding.”</p>
<p>This type of disingenuous interfaith dialogue with Jewish leaders is also a strategic force-multiplier for extremists. The rest of American society tends to look to Jews on the topic of extremist bigotry and intolerance as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. By embracing radical Islamists in an official interfaith relationship, Jewish leaders give them a ticket into American institutions.</p>
<p>Interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims can be valuable. Yet dialogue is only productive when it occurs with partners who are honest about their true intentions. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Dr. Shibly and his Syrian government clerics. Instead of promoting peace and tolerance, legitimizing such entities through interfaith partnerships will only promote the hatred they preach when they think the Jews aren’t paying attention. Rabbi Marc Schneier and Dr. Richard Stall should be apologizing to the Buffalo Jewish community instead of congratulating themselves on a job well done.</p>
<p><strong>Ilya Feoktistov is Research Director of <a href="http://www.peaceandtolerance.org/">Americans for Peace and Tolerance</a>.</strong></p>
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