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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; majority</title>
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		<title>The Election Was Fun But Don’t Get Too Happy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/the-election-was-fun-but-dont-get-too-happy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-election-was-fun-but-dont-get-too-happy</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:58:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244637</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The GOP has two years to give voters a real reason to vote for it -- before Dems regroup in 2016. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/election.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244639" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/election-450x346.png" alt="election" width="351" height="270" /></a>Eighteen years ago I met a Democratic consultant who said to me, “David, your side doesn’t give people a reason to vote for them. Republicans only win when Democrats screw up big time.” This year Democrats screwed up big time (along with many pollsters), and Republicans won big time. There’s a lot of good news here, especially the Republican gubernatorial victories in Democratic states like Michigan and Wisconsin, and battleground states like Ohio and Florida. Perhaps the most inexplicable good news of the day was the fact that Sandra Fluke got trounced by a Republican in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. No wonder Democrats are weaker now than at any time since the 1920s.</p>
<p>Looking over this Democratic wreckage, Republican doomsayers should take note. The American people are not “low information” dummies, who will believe anything Democrats tell them. Abe Lincoln had it right: “You can fool some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Republicans should also note that despite all the people on food stamps and all of the voters getting free stuff – 47% by Mitt Romney’s misguided count – they were still independent and savvy enough to return Scott Walker in Wisconsin, to elect Tim Cotton in Arkansas, and to defeat Sandra Fluke in Santa Monica. Finally, Democrats’ racist appeals to minority voters don’t seem to be working as well as they used to. All these Republican whines were in fact excuses for poorly run political campaigns. Normally, you have to defeat your opponents. You can’t count on them to defeat themselves. Normally.</p>
<p>And this raises the big question, which is 2016. Democrats, when they are not over reaching and claiming against all evidence that the party of Joni Ernst and Shelley Moore Capito and Nikki Haley is conducting a war against women, are formidable political opponents. When they regroup after this defeat they will not be so easy beat in 2016. Unless…</p>
<p>Unless Obama, ideologue that he is, determines to stay the course, grants amnesty to 11 million illegals, continues to use fly swatters to combat ISIS, alternately stonewalls and heads for the golf course in the face of major crises, and vetoes Republican bills to restore the economy. There is always this possibility but don’t count on it. And in the absence of such screw-ups, Republicans will need to get their act together and give voters something to vote <i>for</i>.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea. What Republicans should offer voters is a national security program that protects them, and individual freedom. Freedom to choose their healthcare; freedom to run their businesses in an environment where government is not looking over their shoulders at every turn and stifling their incentives to create jobs; freedom to go about their lives without fear of terrorist attacks; freedom to shape their country and its culture within secure borders; freedom from electoral fraud, and IRS intrusion designed to turn their country into a one-party state.</p>
<p>These are not only policy preferences; they are moral themes – calls to action &#8211; that sum up what the Republican Party is about.</p>
<p><em>David Horowitz is the author of the recently published book </em>Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan For Defeating The Left<em> (Regnery 2014).</em></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>Supreme Court Might Kill ObamaCare Before Election</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/larry-elder/supreme-court-might-kill-obamacare-before-election/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=supreme-court-might-kill-obamacare-before-election</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/larry-elder/supreme-court-might-kill-obamacare-before-election/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 04:34:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afternoon Edition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[appellate circuit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[issue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[percent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republican opponent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supreme court decision]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supreme court ruling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[swing vote]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=107070</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If Obama's lucky.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lady-Justice.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107072" title="Lady-Justice" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lady-Justice.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a></p>
<p>Why did the Obama administration, after dragging out the various court challenges to ObamaCare, suddenly step on the gas?</p>
<p>The administration surprised court watchers by passing up a chance to slow down ObamaCare&#8217;s long march to an eventual Supreme Court ruling. In failing to request a hearing by all the appeals court judges of the 11th Circuit — to overturn an anti-ObamaCare decision by three of its members — the administration now puts the matter on a faster track to the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>The court will likely agree to hear the case because two appellate circuit courts, the 11th and 6th, have issued contradictory rulings — one striking down the individual mandate as unconstitutional, and the other upholding it. This confusion practically guarantees a hearing by the top court, probably months before next year&#8217;s election.</p>
<p>What provoked the administration&#8217;s change of heart?</p>
<p>Obama supposedly did not want a Supreme Court decision so soon because, pro or con, the ruling figures to play large as a re-election issue. On the other hand, ObamaCare already <em>is </em>an issue, with the President&#8217;s opponent undoubtedly planning to hammer him with it.</p>
<p>But if the court strikes down ObamaCare — especially with a 5-4 split — Obama can argue that with his re-election, the next opening gets filled with another Sotomayor/Kagan-like liberal who would have supported ObamaCare. If the vacancy comes from the conservative side, Obama can fulfill a liberal dream of switching the court&#8217;s majority from center-right — four conservatives and the Anthony Kennedy &#8220;swing&#8221; vote — to a left-wing majority.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s new faster-track tactic might also turn on this: Obama expects the Supreme Court to side with him. If the President wins in court, his Republican opponent will still argue against the merits of ObamaCare. But he or she could no longer flatly call it &#8220;unconstitutional,&#8221; since the court would have just ruled otherwise.</p>
<p>So how would a Supreme Court defeat make Obama lucky in his bid for a second term?</p>
<p>ObamaCare remains unpopular, with a plurality of Americans wanting it repealed. Unlike major historic safety-net legislation like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, ObamaCare received no opposition party Senate votes — none. A majority of state attorneys general either filed or joined lawsuits to overturn the mandate that requires practically all Americans to purchase health insurance.</p>
<p>Romneycare, used as a model for ObamaCare, at best fails to live up to its promises. True, most residents of Massachusetts support Romneycare, and Gov. Mitt Romney&#8217;s successor praises it.</p>
<p>An AP &#8220;fact-check&#8221; on Romneycare, relying on an MIT economist who helped design Romneycare, pretty much pronounced it a success. But the free-market think tank National Center for Policy Analysis sees the Massachusetts health plan differently. Among its findings:</p>
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		<title>Landslide Islamist Victory in Turkey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/ryan-mauro/landslide-islamist-victory-in-turkey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=landslide-islamist-victory-in-turkey</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:58:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[akp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Pipes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[draft constitution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[landslide victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Party]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prime Minister Erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkish prime minister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=95893</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Champions of Sharia now set to rewrite constitution. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan-005.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95903" title="Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan-005" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan-005.gif" alt="" width="375" height="280" /></a></p>
<p>Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections. The Islamists won half of the vote, leaving them short of the two-thirds majority they sought in the parliament, which would have allowed them to rewrite the constitution unobstructed. However, the AKP’s huge victory means the Islamists will still control Turkey and oversee the writing of a new constitution.</p>
<p>The election actually results in a slight loss for the AKP. The party currently holds 331 of the 550 seats in parliament, and is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/recep-erdogan-turkey-general-election">projected</a> to now only have 325. The Islamists must win the support of only five non-AKP seats to put up a draft constitution for a referendum. The popularity of Prime Minister Erdogan and his party means that such a referendum is very likely to pass. The AKP may not have the two-thirds majority that would have allowed for a unilateral writing of the constitution, or even enough to unilaterally submit a draft for a referendum, but not much stands in its way.</p>
<p>“Elections taking place today are likely to be the last fair and free ones in Turkey. With Turkey&#8217;s leading Islamist party controlling all three branches of the government and the military sidelined, little will stop it from changing the rules to keep power into the indefinite future,” <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2011/06/turkey-last-free-election">wrote</a> Dr. Daniel Pipes of the electoral results.</p>
<p>In September, 58 percent of Turks voted in favor of a referendum that paved the way for a new constitution. Tellingly, Iran <a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail/142389.html">endorsed</a> the referendum. A key objective was to undermine the power of the military that has acted as a vanguard of secularism. It <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/world/europe/16iht-letter.html">asserts</a> civilian control over the military and increased the power of the president and the parliament over the judiciary. Both the presidency and the parliament are controlled by the AKP.</p>
<p>The Erdogan government’s reforms were <a href="http://turkey.usembassy.gov/statements_091310.html">welcomed</a> in the West because they make Turkey more democratic structurally, but these reforms have coincided with disturbing crackdowns on political opponents. The government has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/world/europe/13turkey.html">blocked</a> many websites, including YouTube, without having to explain why. Over 60 journalists have been imprisoned for what they’ve written. Two of them were arrested in March and have still not been informed of the charges against them. As Dr. Barry Rubin <a href="http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/06/turkish-regime-changes-sides">points out</a>, the Erdogan government has “repressed opposition and arrested hundreds of critics, bought up 40 percent of the media, and installed its people in the bureaucracy.”</p>
<p>There has also been a concerted effort to decrease the political influence of the military. Over 160 current and former military officers have been <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/turkey-begins-arrest-of-military-officers-linked-to-alleged-2003-coup-attempt-1.342946">charged</a> with involvement in an alleged coup plot in 2003. It has been <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/27/MNQ21C7OKE.DTL&amp;feed=rss.news_world">called</a> the “the largest-ever crackdown on Turkey&#8217;s military.” The government claims that elements of the military sought to carry out attacks, including the bombing of mosques. Those arrested have also been accused of planning to foment conflict by provoking Greece to shoot down a Turkish military aircraft. Top officials including the former commander of the First Army and former leaders of the air force, special forces and navy have been arrested. Erdogan’s opponents allege that the arrests are politically-motivated.</p>
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		<title>Egyptian Christians Under Attack</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/egyptian-christians-under-attack/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=egyptian-christians-under-attack</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rich-trzupek/egyptian-christians-under-attack/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 May 2011 04:45:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assyrian international news agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christians and muslims]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coptic christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coptic church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egyptian christians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[persecution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Salafists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92954</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Muslims attack Coptic Christians in Egypt -- while the new “enlightened” government looks the other way.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/egyptc.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92958" title="Mideast Egypt Sectarian Clashes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/egyptc.jpg" alt="" width="399" height="266" /></a></p>
<p>The assault on Christians living in Muslim nations has reached boiling new levels as members of Egypt’s Coptic Church <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/05/09/egypt-situation-deteriorating-badly-and-rapidly/2/">continue to be the target</a> of increasingly violent attacks from Muslims. According to Coptic Christians living in Cairo, Muslims looted and burned St. Mina’s Church and the Church of the Virgin Mary and attempted to burn St. Mary and St. Abanob Church. Twelve Christians were reported to have been killed, although official government accounts say that the final tally was six Christians and six Muslims dead.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.aina.org/news/20110508144114.html">Assyrian International News Agency</a> (AINA), approximately 3,000 Salafi Muslims participated in the attacks, even as Egyptian troops and police did little or nothing to stop the violence. <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/egypt-s-other-extremists_559363.html?page=2">Salafists</a> are strongly influenced by the ultra-fundamentalist Wahabbi teachings that dominate the mindset of Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorist organizations. In addition to the dozen dead, over 200 Christians were injured in the violence according to AINA.</p>
<p>The Egyptian government downplayed the violence, essentially portraying the incidents as unfortunate misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims and calling on Christians to forgive and reconcile with Muslims. This strategy attempts to divide responsibility for the violence equally among the two religions, while the reality is that the Coptic minority is doing nothing to provoke the Muslim majority &#8212; except refusing to abandon its Christianity.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/eg.html">Approximately ten per cent</a> of Egyptians are Christians (the vast majority of those are Copts), while the overwhelming remainder of the population are Sunni Muslims. This is not, therefore, a squabble between two equally powerful and influential groups. This is bullying, plain and simple. If the new regime in Egypt is not actively encouraging persecution of the Christian community, it’s certainly not doing anything to discourage such outrages either. The Coptic Bishop of Giza, Anba Theodosius, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/266793/persecution-egypt-s-coptic-christians-continues-nina-shea">took the government to task</a> for abandoning Egypt’s Christians. “These things are planned,” he said. “We have no law or security, we are in a jungle. We are in a state of chaos. One rumor burns the whole area. Everyday we have a catastrophe.”</p>
<p>Under Mubarek, the Salafists kept their more violent and extremist tendencies in check for the most part. If and when they crossed the line, Mubarek’s very effective (and yes, often very brutal) security forces came down on the transgressors hard. There is little to hold the fundamentalists in check any longer, so they continue to push the envelope in order to find out how much they can get away with. The early returns suggest that the government isn’t going to do anything to restrain them anytime soon.</p>
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		<title>The Canadian Election: A Chance for Real Hope and Change</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/david-solway/the-canadian-election-a-chance-for-real-hope-and-change-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-canadian-election-a-chance-for-real-hope-and-change-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/david-solway/the-canadian-election-a-chance-for-real-hope-and-change-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 May 2011 04:00:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bloc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conservative prime minister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intellectual giant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NDP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Party]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pierre trudeau]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political pundits]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prime minister stephen harper]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92755</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A tsunami of conservatism sweeps our northern neighbour.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Stephen-Harper.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92757" title="Stephen-Harper" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Stephen-Harper.jpg" alt="" width="470" height="331" /></a></p>
<p>On May 2 of this year, Canadians went to the polls and generated a set of electoral results that defied the collective wisdom of the nation’s pollsters, editors, political pundits and think tankers. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was given the majority government that had eluded him over the previous two election cycles—and a substantial majority it was. The best he could have hoped for, according to the commentariat, was yet another minority government presiding over a fractious, multi-Party House of Commons, with little chance of passing a Conservative budget and implementing Conservative legislation. He was regularly lampooned in Canada’s mainstream left-wing media as cold, unlikeable, domineering and “scary,” apparently harboring a “secret agenda” to turn the country into a far right, semi-police state. Fortunately, ordinary Canadians thought otherwise.</p>
<p>The Liberal Party, which styles itself as the “<a href="http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14469">Natural Governing Party</a>” of Canada and which had been in power for most of the last century, met the worst electoral defeat of its long and epochal—and scandal-plagued—history. It was ignominiously reduced to rump status in parliament, a mere 34 seats to the Conservatives’ 167. The Liberals had pinned their hopes on the intellectual lustre of their leader, acclaimed author and Ivy League prof Michael Ignatieff, who had spent most of his career outside of Canada, teaching in Europe and the U.S. He was, presumably, to play the part of Elisha to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau">Pierre Trudeau</a>’s Elijah, donning the mantle of the “intellectual giant” who was also a university scholar and author and who had gradually snaffled the country to the left during his controversial tenure. Trudeau had captivated the public with his charisma and Gallic charm, his eloquence, his marriage to a beautiful (if unstable) woman, his sandal-wearing hippiness, his pirouette behind the Queen’s back when he succeeded in repatriating the Constitution, and many other feats of derring-do that arguably caused far more harm than good.</p>
<p>But Ignatieff, popularly known as “Iggy,” could never arouse the electorate. He came across as pompous, self-infatuated, rather stodgy, and like a modern version of Shakespeare’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Coriolanus-Signet-Classics-William-Shakespeare/dp/0451528433/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1304610152&amp;sr=1-1">Coriolanus</a>, seemed uncomfortable flipping hamburgers and kissing babies. Worse, he was seen as more American than Canadian, parachuted in to revive the Party’s flagging prospects. This was perhaps his greatest liability. Canadians tend to distrust Americans and to regard them with a mixture of condescension and pity, when they are not denouncing them as cowboys, rubes and warmongers.</p>
<p>No less surprising than the Conservatives’ stunning victory and the Liberal collapse was the unexpected surge of the hard left New Democratic Party, or NDP, led by the opportunistic Jack Layton. Earning hefty salaries, he and his parliamentarian wife, Olivia Chow, lived for years in <a href="http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/36009">subsidized government housing</a>. As well, Layton, a vigorous supporter of mandatory public health care, had no compunction <a href="http://www.anticorruption.ca/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5220&amp;sid=2c9c1378a9ecebfbd787f934e53c376a">jumping the queue</a> and undergoing medical treatment in a private clinic. No matter. A caviar socialist can do no wrong.</p>
<p>Formerly a minor player in the country’s motley parliament, the NDP’s appeal to the programmatic left had ensured it of a gadfly presence in the House, if not of administrative influence. Under Layton’s clever minstrelsy, all this has now changed. Buoyed by its 102 seats, the NDP constitutes the Official Opposition and brandishes considerable clout in upcoming budgetary and policy debates. In many ways, the NDP, given its close affiliation with organized labor, its courting of the <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/04/29/peter-kuitenbrouwer-muslims-supporting-ndp/">Islamic vote</a>, its intention to pass Cap-and-Trade, impose carbon tariffs, raise the corporate tax rate, withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, and steer hundreds of billions of dollars into social welfare programs, resembles the Democratic Party in the U.S. and José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in Spain.</p>
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		<title>Peace at Last: Palestine in 2013</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/steven-plaut/peace-at-last-palestine-in-2013/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=peace-at-last-palestine-in-2013</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/steven-plaut/peace-at-last-palestine-in-2013/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 May 2011 04:01:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[creation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Galilee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[national unity government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian Statehood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rabin square]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[yitzhak rabin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zion square]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=91917</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After Israel gave the Palestinians everything they wanted, the newly formed Palestinian government just wanted a few more things.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/hamassalute.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-91918" title="hamassalute" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/hamassalute.jpg" alt="" width="298" height="195" /></a></p>
<p>It  was in the year 2013. The Israelis at long last gave  up their attempts  to resist the pressures of the world. Their newly elected  national  unity government approved the plan.  The Palestinians, led by a  coalition of  the PLO and the Hamas, had already earlier announced the  creation of a  Palestinian state.  Israel’s Left  had been holding  weekly protests in support of Palestinian statehood.  When the UN had  officially and  unanimously called for such a state, even the United  States of Barack Obama  voted in favor.The  national unity government of Israel announced that  Israel was willing  to accept the unanimous UN proposal for peace, supported by  every  single country in the world.   Israel would return to its pre-1967  borders, remove all Jewish  settlements from the territories of the new  state of Palestine, recognize  Palestine, and grant Palestine all of  East Jerusalem, that is, all of the city  located east of a line running  north-south through Zion Square, renamed Martyrs’  Square.</p>
<p>The  world had not seen celebrations like this,  celebrations that greeted  the Israeli decision and the creation of Palestine,  since the fall of  the Berlin Wall or the transfer of power in South Africa to  the black  majority. All-night celebrations were held in every city of the  planet,  but none so enthusiastic as the party held in Tel Aviv in Rabin Square.   Speaker after speaker appeared under a banner &#8220;Liberation at Last&#8221; and  praised  the decision to agree to the terms of the accord as the  ultimate completion of  the work and dreams of Yitzhak Rabin.</p>
<p>The  settlers were marched out of the lands of Palestine  at bayonet point,  with crowds of jeering Israeli leftists pelting them with  garbage as  they moved into their temporary transit camps inside Green-Line  Israel.  Liberal Jews in the United States organized a march in Washington to   celebrate.  &#8220;Peace at Last&#8221; was the  number one pop single everywhere.</p>
<p>The  State Department sent out a message urging Israel and  Palestine to  conduct good-faith negotiations and round-the-clock talks on all   outstanding issues of disagreement still separating the two sovereign  states. At  long last, there were two states for two peoples. Land had  been exchanged for  peace. Peace had at long last broken out in the  world´s most troubled  region.</p>
<p>The  morning after the Palestine Independence  Celebrations, the message  arrived in the Israeli parliament, brought in by  special messenger. The  newly formed government of Palestine had only a small  number of issues  it would like to discuss with Israel. It proposed that peaceful   relations be officially consummated, as soon as Israel turned over the  Galilee  and the Negev to Palestine.</p>
<p>Israeli cabinet ministers were nonplussed. We thought we  had <em>already</em> settled all outstanding territorial issues by giving the  Palestinians  everything, they protested. The spokesman for the Palestine War   Ministry explained: the Galilee was obviously part of the Arab homeland.  It was  filled with many Arabs and in many areas had an Arab population  majority. Israel  was holding 100% of the Galilee territory, while  Palestine held none at all, and  surely that was unfair.  As for the   Negev, it too has large areas with Arab or Bedouin majorities, but is in  fact  also needed by the Palestinians so that Palestine can settle the  many  Palestinian refugees from around the world in lands and new   homes.</p>
<p>Israel´s  government preferred not to give offense and  sour the new relations,  and so offered to take the proposal under consideration.  Within weeks,  endorsements of the Palestinian proposal for stripping Israel of  the  Galilee and the Negev were coming from a variety of sources. The Arab  League  endorsed it.  The EU approved a  French proposal that the  Galilee and Negev be transferred to Palestine in stages  over 3 years.   Within Israel, many  voices were heard in favor of the proposal.  Large  rallies were held on the university  campuses, organized by leftist  faculty members. Sociologists from around the  world produced studies  showing that these Arabs were victims of horrible  discrimination and  that Israel as a state is characterized by institutional  racism.   Israeli poets and novelists  wrote passionate appeals for support of  the Galilee and Negev  &#8216;Others.&#8217;</p>
<p>When  Israel´s cabinet rejected the proposal, the  pressures mounted. A  Galilee and Negev Liberation Organization (GNLO) was  founded and  immediately granted recognition by the UN General Assembly.  It  established representative consulate  facilities in 143 countries.</p>
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		<title>Canada Goes More Conservative</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/arnold-ahlert/canada-goes-more-conservative/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=canada-goes-more-conservative</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/arnold-ahlert/canada-goes-more-conservative/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 May 2011 04:00:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bloc]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[change legislation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[defeat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gilles duceppe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NDP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prime minister stephen harper]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[principle aim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[result]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[russian explorers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92177</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Canadians hand Prime Minister Stephen Harper a decisive majority in Parliament.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/harper12.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92178" title="harper12" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/harper12.jpg" alt="" width="470" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>While  America was busy celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, more good news came from America&#8217;s northern neighbor, Canada. Not only did Prime Minister <a href="http://pm.gc.ca/eng/pm.asp" target="_blank">Stephen Harper</a> win his third election since first taking office in 2006, but his <a href="http://www.conservative.ca/" target="_blank">Conservative Party</a> won a majority of seats in the Parliament, garnering 167 of the 308 electoral districts, earning 40% of the vote, according to <a href="http://www.elections.ca/home.aspx" target="_blank">Elections Canada</a>. The <a href="http://www.ndp.ca/" target="_blank">New Democratic Party (NDP)</a> finished second with 102 seats, while in a shocking upset, the <a href="http://www.liberal.ca/" target="_blank">Liberals</a> took  only 34. How shocking? This is first time in Canadian history that the  Liberals haven&#8217;t finished first or second, as a result of their all-time  worst showing in any election. Mr. Harper will now get four years of  uninterrupted government.</p>
<p>Another big loser in the election was the <a href="http://www.blocquebecois.org/English.aspx" target="_blank">Bloc Quebecois</a>,  the Canadian separatist movement whose principle aim is to create an  independent state in the Quebec province.  The dreams of secession in the predominantly French-speaking region are effectively dead after  the party retained just four of the 47 seats they had held prior to the  election. Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe lost his own seat and resigned.</p>
<p>The  impetus behind Mr. Harper&#8217;s decisive victory was apparently his ability  to get the public to embrace decidedly conservative values. These  included the lowering of sales and corporate taxes, increasing military  spending, and rejecting climate change legislation that would have  harmed Alberta&#8217;s oil sands region. Mr. Harper was also a strong  proponent of Arctic sovereignty, announcing plans in August 2007 to  spend $7.5 billion to build and operate up to eight Arctic patrol ships  to protect it. This was a counter to Russian explorers who planted a  flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole in an attempt to claim the  resource-rich area. The<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2009/02/27/f-arctic-sovereignty.html" target="_blank"> issue</a> will be adjudicated by the U.N. which will make a final decision in 2013.</p>
<p>The  24-seat gain by Conservatives in the current government was greeted  with a big smile by Mr. Harper. &#8220;We are grateful, deeply honored, in  fact humbled by the decisive endorsement of so many Canadians,&#8221; he told  supporters on Monday in Calgary, adding that Canadians &#8220;can now turn the  page from uncertainties&#8221; as a result of his party&#8217;s new majority  status.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ndp.ca/jacklayton" target="_blank">Jack Layton</a><span style="color: #000000;">, leader of the NDP party, was just as jubilant as Stephen Harper after his party&#8217;s 65-seat pickup. </span>&#8220;Spring  is here, my friends, and a new chapter begins,&#8221; Layton told cheering  supporters in Toronto, thrilled that their party was now the official  opposition. Much of the left-of-center NDP&#8217;s success hinged on  demolishing the Bloc Quebecois, which had dominated the French-speaking  province for two decades. Ottawa Citizen political journalist Susan  Riley explained that Mr. Layton&#8217;s political style resonated with  left-leaning Quebecers eager for a change. &#8220;He was the most optimistic,  least negative and the friendliest. A down-home easy-going guy. It may  be a trivial way to choose a leader, but it&#8217;s been a very dark  campaign,&#8221; she said.</p>
<p>In stark contrast to both of his opponents&#8217; elation, downbeat Liberal Party leader <a href="http://www.liberal.ca/michael_ignatieff/" target="_blank">Michael Ignatieff</a> offered  his thoughts on his party&#8217;s 43-seat loss, its most stinging one to  date. &#8220;It&#8217;s tough to lose like this. Defeat is a teacher and now we have  to learn the lesson of defeat and look at ourselves in the mirror,&#8221; he  said. Like Bloc Quebecois leader  Gilles Duceppe, Mr. Ignatieff also lost  his own seat in a Toronto suburb, and on Tuesday, he also announced he  was stepping down as party leader. &#8220;I went through some difficult years,  he said. &#8220;My attachment to the country, my patriotism were questioned,  my motivations were questioned and that had a political effect, there&#8217;s  no doubt about that, but I have to also take my responsibilities.&#8221;</p>
<p>The  election ends seven years of minority governments and puts  Conservatives in charge for the first time since the early &#8217;90s when the  current party&#8217;s precursor, the <a href="http://www.canada.com/Some+celebration+before+parties+down+redrawing+political+priorities/4719866/story.html" target="_blank">Progressive Conservatives</a>, controlled both chambers of Parliament. Harper&#8217;s Conservative majority is the first since <a href="http://canadaonline.about.com/cs/primeminister/p/pmmulroney.htm" target="_blank">Brian Mulroney&#8217;s</a> in  1988. Former colleagues of Harper contend that part of his intention is  to re-write the political narrative in Canada, in which Liberals have  been seen as the &#8220;natural&#8221; ruling party of that nation, hopefully  redefining what it means to be a Canadian in the process. Political  science professor Stephen Clarkson of the University of Toronto  apparently likes his propects, characterizing Harper&#8217;s win as &#8220;a sea  change&#8221; for Canada.</p>
<p>Mr.  Harper may be a sea change for Canada, but his driving principles are  familiarly conservative. His ideas for engendering a Canadian economy  recovery center around giving the electorate additional tax cuts and  erasing the country&#8217;s deficit by curbing government spending. His <a href="http://www.budget.gc.ca/2011/home-accueil-eng.html" target="_blank">2011 budget proposal,</a> faced  with defeat from by a coalition of opposition parties prior to the  election, is now likely to pass, and it includes a five-year plan to cut  the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent. He has announced  plans to balance the country&#8217;s budget by 2014, despite running <a href="http://www.fin.gc.ca/access/budinfo-eng.asp" target="_blank">record deficits</a> during the recession, part of which he attributed to needing help from opposition parties in order to implement his agenda.</p>
<p>During  the election campaign, Harper pleaded with Canadians to give him a  majority government in order to end a string of elections that were  hampering the country&#8217;s ability to emerge from recession. It should be  noted that Canada outperformed all the other major industrialized  democracies through the financial crisis, and the country has also  recovered almost all the jobs lost during the recession. Far more  importantly, its banking sector remains intact, having largely avoided  the sub-prime crisis that brought that sector to it knees worldwide in  2008.</p>
<p>Another factor in Harper&#8217;s victory has a decidedly familiar ring. The province of <a href="http://alberta.ca/home/" target="_blank">Alberta</a> is  home to one of the largest pools of oil reserves outside the Middle  East. Much like the Democrats in America, both the Liberals and the NDP,  animated by their own environmentalist factions, were more than willing  to thwart development there. Mr. Harper, who has touted Canada as an  &#8220;energy superpower,&#8221; is not.</p>
<p>Mr. Harper&#8217;s  success is also attributable to his ability to connect with working  class Canadians, dubbed &#8220;Tim Hortons crowd&#8221; in reference to a chain of  doughnut shops popular with that demographic, as well as his success at  making inroads into Canada&#8217;s immigrant communities, especially Chinese  and South Asians. Ezra Levant, conservative commentator for the <span style="color: #1a09fd;"><a href="http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/" target="_blank">Sun News Network</a>,</span> offered  a partial explanation as to why the election results were  surprising &#8220;There&#8217;s this whole other media in Canada, ethnic newspapers,  TV and radio stations in other languages that our parliamentary media  is just not plugged into. In those media battlefields, the conservative  brand is dominant,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>NDP leader Jack  Layton has promised to hold Mr. Harper accountable, and there is  speculation that his party and the Liberals will merge in order to unite  the non-conservative vote. Perhaps anticipating such a development, Mr.  Harper has promised that he will not move his government to the hard  right. &#8220;One thing I&#8217;ve learned in this business is that surprises are  generally not well-received by the public, so we intend to move forward  with what Canadians understand about us and I think what they&#8217;re more  and more comfortable with,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We got that mandate because of the  way we have governed, because of our record, and Canadians expect us to  continue to move forward in the same way, to be true to the platform  we&#8217;ve run on, to be true to the kind of values and policies that we&#8217;ve  laid out before them. That&#8217;s what we will do,&#8221; he added. He also  promised not to open debate on socially contentious issues like  abortion.</p>
<p>Are there any implications with  respect to America&#8217;s election in 2012? It is too soon to tell, but it is  rather interesting that the Washington Post, a decidedly left-of-center  American newspaper contended that, as a result of Mr. Harper&#8217;s victory,  &#8220;Canadians will face an unusually polarized political landscape for at  least the next four years,&#8221; even as they characterized the thoroughly  defeated Liberals as the country&#8217;s &#8220;natural governing party.&#8221; One  suspects that such characterizations say more about the sensibilities of  the Washington Post than the Canadian electorate.</p>
<p>Yet  given the remarkable similarity of issues that animated this election  and those currently being debated in America, it is not inconceivable to  imagine a similar outcome. The 2010 election was a referendum largely  about <a href="http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/570867/201105030910/ObamaCare-Subsidies-Wont-Keep-Up-With-Premiums.htm" target="_blank">Obamacare</a> and  runaway federal spending, and Democrats were &#8220;shellacked&#8221; last  November. Both issues remain unresolved. Mr. Obama will undoubtedly  benefit for a while from the killing of Osama bin Laden, but soon the  attention will return to the economy, which remains the number one issue  for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Canadians opted to let  Conservatives deal with theirs. That can&#8217;t be reassuring for Democrats.  Osama bin Laden may be dead&#8211;but gas at four dollars-plus per gallon,  $14 trillion of national debt and an unemployment rate hovering near  nine percent remain very much alive.</p>
<p><strong>Arnold Ahlert is a contributor to the conservative website JewishWorldReview.com.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Donald: Doing the Job the Media Won&#8217;t Do</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/larry-elder/the-donald-doing-the-job-the-media-wont-do/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-donald-doing-the-job-the-media-wont-do</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/larry-elder/the-donald-doing-the-job-the-media-wont-do/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 04:29:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afternoon Edition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[birther]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[presidential aspirant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[putting out fires]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[rosie o donnell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Universal Health Care]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=90939</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Trump's popularity has little to do with his viability as a presidential candidate. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2010-12-23-10-08-47-7-donald-trump.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-90945" title="2010-12-23-10-08-47-7-donald-trump" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2010-12-23-10-08-47-7-donald-trump.gif" alt="" width="375" height="306" /></a></p>
<p>Donald Trump isn&#8217;t going to run for president.</p>
<p>He is rich, enjoys himself, says bold and often stupid things, trades his wife in for a younger model every few years, and calls Rosie O&#8217;Donnell a &#8220;big fat pig.&#8221; What&#8217;s not to like?</p>
<p>But <em>President </em>The Donald Trump? Really?!</p>
<p>He couldn&#8217;t take the scrutiny. Given his swashbuckling life and the media&#8217;s heightened scrutiny of things Republican, Trump would spend his entire campaign putting out fires. Whether it be shady-side-of-the-line business deals, &#8220;bimbo eruptions,&#8221; tax shenanigans, enemies looking to get even, or Lord knows what else, he&#8217;d barely have time to round up enough B-listers to keep &#8220;Celebrity Apprentice&#8221; afloat.</p>
<p>Then there is the matter of his ideology — as in, what exactly is it? Trump has alternately called Jimmy Carter the worst president ever, then George W. Bush the worst president ever, and now Barack Obama the worst president ever. This nouveau &#8220;conservative Republican&#8221; supported &#8220;universal health care&#8221;; advocated a tax on the rich; stood pro-choice on abortion; supported Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; called George W. Bush &#8220;evil&#8221;; proposed a 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports; and has contributed more money to Democrats than to Republicans. Whew!</p>
<p>Like Ross Perot — an earlier rich, thin-skinned businessman-turned-presidential-aspirant — Trump barks out orders, says jump and expects people to do so. Doesn&#8217;t work that way in politics. Try jabbing an index finger at an obnoxious New York Times reporter or a pesky rival Republican and saying, &#8220;You&#8217;re fired!&#8221;</p>
<p>Nor will he run as an independent — as he once threatened and then un-threatened to do. An indie candidacy would siphon votes away from the Republican candidate, requiring Trump to spend the rest of his life deflecting the blame for Obama&#8217;s re-election. No fun being the next Ralph Nader, who, after costing Al Gore Florida and the presidency in &#8217;00, can&#8217;t get a table at Chuck E. Cheese&#8217;s.</p>
<p>This brings us to the only reason to pay attention to The Donald. He&#8217;s turning over rocks the media can&#8217;t even locate with a guide dog and a treasure map.</p>
<p>Take the &#8220;wacky&#8221; birther issue. Polls show that most Republicans question whether Obama was born in America. The Supreme Court calls this a &#8220;political question&#8221; and, therefore, outside of its power of judicial review. So legally, the birther issue is deader than Elvis. Besides, Obama&#8217;s principal 2008 primary opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, couldn&#8217;t nail him on the issue.</p>
<p>If there were something there, the hounds of the Clintons would have found it.</p>
<p>But are the &#8220;birther&#8221; folks wackier than the majority of Democrats who believe George W. Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11 or are unsure that he did?</p>
<p>Are the &#8220;birther&#8221; folks wackier than the majority of Democrats who believe that &#8220;Bush Lied, People Died&#8221; our way into the Iraq War or are unsure that he did?</p>
<p>Are they wackier than the majority of Democrats who, in 2008, held Bush responsible when gas prices hit $4 a gallon?</p>
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		<title>UNITE HERE!</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-perazzo/unite-here/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=unite-here</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-perazzo/unite-here/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:00:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[DTN Profiles]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[UNITE]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[On July 9, 2004, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) to form the politically progressive UNITE HERE. This union has given millions of dollars in “hard” and “soft” money contributions to political candidates; the vast majority of these funds have gone to Democrats. In 2008, UNITE HERE supported Barack [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Unite-image.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-57600" title="Unite image" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Unite-image.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>On July 9, 2004, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) to form the politically progressive UNITE HERE. This union <a href="http://www.unionfacts.com/unions/unionProfile.cfm?id=511#PoliticalMoney">has given</a> millions of dollars in “hard” and “soft” money contributions to political candidates; the vast majority of these funds have gone to <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6214">Democrats</a>. In 2008, UNITE HERE supported <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511">Barack Obama</a> during the Democratic presidential primaries, <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/01/unite-here-divi.html">running</a> <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/UniteHERE_ad_Hillary_Clinton_does_not_respect_our_people.html">attack ads</a> against <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/individualProfile.asp?indid=18">Hillary Clinton</a> that injected racial politics into the election. The union is also a part of the pro-amnesty lobby on immigration reform and helped to organize major &#8220;immigrant-rights&#8221; rallies in <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Illegal%20Immigrants%20Unite.html">2006</a> and <a href="http://reformimmigrationforamerica.org/blog/whose-march/">2010</a>.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7510">To view the full UNITE HERE profile, click here.</a></strong></p>
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		<title>Fox Turns On Wilders</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/fox-turns-on-wilders/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fox-turns-on-wilders</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/fox-turns-on-wilders/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:06:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[the Netherlands]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55695</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why is the network joining the attack against the Dutch politician?
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/20080128GeertWildersFox.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55702" title="20080128GeertWildersFox" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/20080128GeertWildersFox.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>If there is one major news outlet that would be expected to leap to the defense of free speech when that vital linchpin of liberty is under attack, one would expect that Fox News would be the one organization to do so. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that the Obama administration tried to cut Fox out of access to the White House. To their credit, Fox’s competitors leapt to defend – not Fox, whom the rest of the mainstream networks despise – but free speech. That episode makes the way that all the networks, and Fox in particular, are ignoring the Geert Wilders trial so troubling and, in the case of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., rather mystifying, at least until one scratches the surface a bit.</p>
<p>Nobody expects CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. to cover the Wilders trial because those networks have established beyond any reasonable doubt that they are not going to cover issues related to Islam if the story in question doesn’t fit neatly within their “Islam isn’t the problem, it’s just a few explosive bad apples” narrative. Journalists who bend over backward to disconnect Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan from his jihadist inspirations aren’t likely to care about a political leader living across the pond who is <em>obviously</em> nothing more than a fringe, right-wing Islamophobe. But Fox? We’ve come to expect more from Fox. Perhaps it’s time to start expecting less, at least when issues involving Islam are involved.</p>
<p>What’s ironic about <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?&amp;q=geert%20wilders&amp;sort=docdatetime">Fox ignoring the Wilders’ story</a> is that the most important part of the attack on this Dutch politician doesn’t involve Islam at all, not really. If Fox editors and pundits honestly believe that Wilders is a fringe politician, spouting paranoid nonsense, fine. They’re wrong, but their opinion of Wilders and his ideas are irrelevant. What’s at stake here is a principle that is vital to western civilization: the basic right of free peoples to formulate and express their ideas, even when one finds those ideas abhorrent.</p>
<p>In addition to ignoring the fact that free speech is on trial in the Netherlands, some Fox commentators have recently attacked Wilders and his ideas, the implication being that even if a viewer is astute enough to realize that this Dutch politician is on trial for what he has said, Wilders is merely a nut job who’s not worth worrying about anyway. On <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/11/another-look-at-foxnews-hatchet-job-on-geert-wilders/">March 9 Glenn Beck</a> characterized Wilders as a “far right” politician, then when on to ominously observe that “the left – in Europe – is communism; the right is fascism – <em>in Europe.</em>” A first grader could connect those particular dots, as Beck intended. This is the same Glenn Beck who, a year ago, welcomed Wilders on his show and was downright sympathetic to the attacks on Wilders’ right to free speech that the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party had endured. Wilders experience, Beck declared, was a warning to America: “If you want to see what our future looks like, all you need to is look to Europe.”</p>
<p>Beck has apparently forgotten what he said, or has decided that free speech isn’t really that important a principle after all. Ironically, Wilders is hardly “far right” in his political views. Rather, his politics defy any sort of easy categorization. What Wilders understands is that an Islamic state has no use for the kind of healthy debate that makes democracy work. When Sharia Law is implemented, it’s the Quran’s way or the highway. Wilders’ political goal is to put measures in place that will ensure that the Netherlands remains a free, democratic nation. Wilders’ legal fight is about the freedom to work toward that goal.</p>
<p>Wilders criticizes Islam, not Muslims, because he believes that Islam is ultimately employed as a totalitarian system of governance, whatever it’s attributes or flaws as a religion. Otherwise sensible conservatives, like Charles Krauthammer, <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA0YWU2NjQzZTM3YjRmNDA4ZDk2NWNjNzQyYjlmYTY=">dismissed Wilders’ concerns out of hand</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“What he (Wilders) says is extreme, radical, and wrong. He basically is arguing that Islam is the same as Islamism. Islamism is an ideology of a small minority which holds that the essence of Islam is jihad, conquest, forcing people into accepting a certain very narrow interpretation [of Islam]. The untruth of that is obvious. If you look at the United  States, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. are not Islamists. So, it&#8217;s <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTA0YWU2NjQzZTM3YjRmNDA4ZDk2NWNjNzQyYjlmYTY=" target="_blank">simply</a> incorrect. Now, in Europe, there is probably a slightly larger minority but, nonetheless, the overwhelming majority are not.”</p></blockquote>
<p>But what Wilders is saying and what pundits like Krauthammer <em>think</em> Wilders is saying are two different things. Of course most Muslims living in the United States are not Islamists. Of course the majority of the Muslims living in Europe are not Islamists. It’s safe to wager that the majority of Muslims living in Iran are not Islamists either. That’s not the point. Wilders, and any rational thinker, can’t help but observe that Muslim nations are overwhelmingly ruled by governments that are, in effect if not in name, theocracies. Sometimes those theocracies are dangerous, hostile tyrannies, as in the case of Iran, and sometimes they are indifferent, if occasionally useful, friends of the west like Saudi Arabia. At either end of the spectrum, no Muslim-ruled nation respects western traditions and values like freedom of speech, the equality of peoples and the right of dissent. Wilders hasn’t been trying to demonize individual Muslims, he’s been trying to keep the Netherlands from turning into an Islamic state. One may disagree with his methods, but to say that he doesn’t have the right to employ those methods because the theocratic system he opposes is so violently hyper-sensitive is patently ridiculous and downright cowardly.</p>
<p>So, why is Fox following its brethren in the media by ignoring the Wilders trial, a story that is full of so many themes that might otherwise attract Fox’s attention? Could it have anything to with Saudi Arabian prince Prince Alwaleed bin Talal&#8217;s <a href="http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1261/Should-Fox-News-Register-as-a-Saudi-Agent.aspx">stake in News Corp</a>.? Might Murdoch’s increasingly <a href="http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&amp;sid=1895261">cozy relationship</a> with Arabic media giant Rotana Group have something to do with it? Murdoch’s maverick news organization appears to playing a subtle, yet dangerous game.</p>
<p>Unlike its fellow networks, Fox is ready and willing to denounce radical jihadists who threaten not only the west, but who – if left unchecked – will upset delicate power structures in Muslim theocracies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that lean toward the west. But, for Fox, calling out the religious system of governance that empowers and enriches the princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE seems to be out of bounds. Free speech, it would appear, has it limits – even at Fox News.</p>
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		<title>ObamaCare On the March</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/obamacare-on-the-march/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-on-the-march</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/obamacare-on-the-march/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:30:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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Congress]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55386</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bad bill is passed by even worse means. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/f3bc80e69629408aa924ec70d1a3cd20.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55390" title="APTOPIX Health Care Overhaul" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/f3bc80e69629408aa924ec70d1a3cd20.jpg" alt="" width="410" height="398" /></a></p>
<p>It took a seedy campaign of intimidation, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/30/the-300-million-louisiana-purchase/">bribery</a>, and back-room deal-making worthy of Tammany Hall, but Democrats have nearly pulled off the radical transformation of the American health care system that they – if not the rest of America – so desperately desire.</p>
<p>With yesterday’s <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703775504575135440191025592.html">219-to-212 party-line House vote</a>, made possible by the last-minute collapse of a holdout block of anti-abortion Democrats led by Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, the federal government’s intrusion into one-sixth of the economy is one step closer to becoming a reality. All it cost the Democratic majority was the prospect of fiscal responsibility, the pretense of bipartisanship, and any remaining confidence that the American public may have had in its elected representatives.</p>
<p>Sunday’s legislative “victory” was achieved despite the flaws of the House health care bill, which are by now well-documented. Of these the most notable is the staggering ten-year price tag for the legislation: $940 billion, complete with tax increases totaling $400 billion. Even in its enormity, that figure does not factor in the expensive new federal bureaucracy that the bill would create. For instance, some 16,500 new IRS workers will be <a href="http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=12179683">needed</a> to collect, examine and audit the new tax information that families and small businesses will have to provide to comply with the bill’s provisions. Nor does it include the penalties – up to $700 in some cases – that Americans will be forced to pay lest they fail to purchase insurance.</p>
<p>Billions in new entitlement spending may seem troubling, especially during an economic recession, but Democrats have sought to dismiss any anxiety about the health care bill’s effect on the deficit. To that end, Democrats spent the week gleefully touting the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the House bill would reduce the deficit by $138 billion over ten years. If CBO projections could be taken at face value, that would be encouraging news. But as the <em>Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/18/AR2010031805445.html">reported</a>, the real budget outlook is far more dire, since the CBO’s estimates are based on the expectation of savings and cuts that may not come to pass. Medicare is a prime example. While CBO estimates factor in cuts in Medicare reimbursements, such cuts are politically unlikely and, indeed, no Congress in recent history has dared to make them. Assuming that those cuts will take place this time around is little more than wishful thinking. As it stands, the health care overhaul seems more likely to confirm another of the CBO’s projections: that public debt will rise to 90 percent of GDP by 2020 under President Obama’s budget.</p>
<p>As awful as the substance of the House bill is, the process by which it was passed may be even worse. By embracing a series of shady procedural stratagems – from the dubiously constitutional “deem and pass,” in which the Senate version of the health care bill would be deemed to have passed without the formality of an actual vote, to “reconciliation,” usually reserved for budgets of bills that are already law – Democrats sowed widespread distrust and even alienated some media allies. At the height of the health care subterfuge, even the <em>Washington Post</em> was stirred to editorialize against the Democrats’ “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503156.html">unseemly</a>” tactics. If last night’s vote was, as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34767.html">suggested</a>, the conclusion of “a national conversation” on health care, it was a conversation carried on largely without the nation.</p>
<p>This go-it-alone arrogance, magnified with unprecedented media coverage, sheds light on the profound cynicism that has set in with the American public. A new NBC News/<em>Wall Street</em><em> Journal </em>survey finds that <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/wsjnbcpoll03162010.pdf#page=14">76 percent</a> of Americans do not trust the U.S. Congress. That distrust extends to health care. Polls show that the plurality of the American public opposes the health care reform efforts in Congress – a striking statistic when one considers that the need for the reform was one of the few original points of consensus in the health care debate. With their scorched-earth campaign to pass the bill, Democrats have almost singlehandedly destroyed a once-promising political landscape. The Tea Party protestors who flocked to Capitol Hill yesterday to voice their opposition were only the most visible sign of the public’s sour mood.</p>
<p>To be sure, ObamaCare is not yet the law of the land. The companion legislation to the House bill still needs approval in the Senate. There, the Democrats’ majority is far more tenuous, thanks to the recent of Massachusetts’s Scott Brown on the campaign pledge of opposing ObamaCare. But if the House vote sets any kind of precedent, it is that Democrats will stop at nothing to force through their signature legislation.</p>
<p>Whatever the ultimate outcome of the health care battle, the democratic process has clearly become a casualty. The American public is more cynical about its government that at any time in recent history. Next fall’s elections may yet bring a measure of retribution for the Democrats’ overreach. But by then the damage – all $940 billion of it – may be irreparably done.</p>
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		<title>The Jewish Paradox</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/the-jewish-paradox/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-jewish-paradox</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/the-jewish-paradox/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:03:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55372</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The mystery of Jews who turn against their own.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em> </em></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/jstreet.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55373" title="jstreet" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/jstreet.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="360" /></a></p>
<p>Although I am not an observant Jew and may have little in common with such well-known online commentators as Dennis Prager and Shmuley Boteach, I am nevertheless strongly pro-Zionist, recognize Israel as the legitimate and historic Jewish homeland built on solid moral foundations, and am always aware that, should the antisemitic fever in the world ever rise to epidemic proportions, Israel through the Law of Return represents the only asylum available to those like myself. As historian Robert Wistrich <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-longest-hatred-part-two/">writes</a>, “the current rise [of antisemitism] is a herald of a catastrophe already in the making.” For Jews not to pay heed to what is erupting all around them, and even to abet it by one or another form of complicity, is as tragic as it is imbecilic.</p>
<p>I am fully persuaded that Israel must survive as a sovereign Jewish nation regardless of the world’s growing animosity, which expresses itself in any number of different ways: the demand that Israel make endless concessions to the Palestinians, that it must not respond effectively to rocket attacks from Gaza, that it shrink its borders to indefensible limits, that it allow itself to be dissolved in a so-called “binational state,” and that it remain dormant before the threat of a nuclear Iran. And then, of course, there are the manifold libels and flagrant canards to which it is constantly exposed: apartheid policies, organ harvesting, gratuitous violence, the targeting of civilians, and all the rest of the fictive and absurd vilifications hurled its way.</p>
<p>My concern, however, is not only with antisemites and anti-Zionists. It is also with diaspora Jews living comfortably assimilated lives in North America, who unfailingly cast their ballots for the so-called “progressive” parties that tend to put the interests of Israel’s enemies over Israel’s well-being. In Canada, for example, the vast majority of Jews are captive to the Liberal Party which regularly voted pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian on UN resolutions, regarded itself as an “honest broker” in the region which in practice meant favoring the anti-Israeli side of the Middle East controversy, and also depended—and still depends—heavily on the large Muslim voting bloc in the province of Ontario to promote electoral success. Although the Conservatives, who are currently in power, have reversed all these Liberal trends, they still cannot rely on the Jewish vote.</p>
<p>The same counter-intuitive situation prevails in the U.S., where nearly 80% of the Jewish community gathers dust in the pockets of the Democrats and indeed voted enthusiastically for Barack Obama. The main reason for this electoral deformity is that Jews consider themselves “liberal” in their politics, that is, as pro-welfare, pro-abortion on demand, pro-big government, and pro all the other planks that constitute the Democratic platform. Some have also distanced themselves both from their cultural and religious heritage and from the existential concerns of the Jewish state.</p>
<p>Yet many continue to identify with Israel’s needs and problems and are involved in various programs and organizations that contribute to the defense, solvency and social improvement of the beleaguered state. At the same time, they eschew the Republican Party which, like the Conservatives in Canada, stands firmly behind Israel. Most Jews would never vote for someone like Mike Huckabee, who has fully embraced the Israeli position in the ongoing conflict and seen through the Palestinian propaganda smokescreen, and are openly contemptuous of Sarah Palin, who installed an Israeli flag in her office and has come out in staunch support of the country. No matter. The ordinary run of American Jews remains unmoved. Fifty four congressmen have recently signed a <a href="http://minnesotaindependent.com/54474/ellison-oberstar-and-mccollum-urge-lifting-of-gaza-blockade">letter</a> taking issue with Israel’s “current blockade” of the terrorist statelet in Gaza. That all fifty-four were Democrats should come as no surprise. Nor is it in any way remarkable that the letter was backed by the Jewish advocacy group, J Street.</p>
<p>An exemplary case in point is furnished by Alan Dershowitz, who has written book after book and article after article defending Israel against its enemies, but still throws in his lot with Obama and the Democrats, unwilling to realize that perhaps Israel’s most determined adversary in the world today, after Iran’s Ahmadinejad, is Barack Obama himself. It is as if Dershowitz, like the majority of his nominal co-religionists in the U.S., has simply refused to acknowledge the personal history and political behavior of the American president and his loyal minions—some of whom happen to be Jewish, put in place to protect an anti-Israeli president, as Moshe Dann <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-israel-ambush-backfires/">suggests</a>, “from charges of anti-Semitism.” But some American Jews may be capable of learning, apparently. Marty Peretz, editor in chief of <em>The New Republic</em>, who once campaigned for Barack Obama, is now singing <a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/obamas-rage-and-the-palestinians-day-rage">a very different tune</a> with a different set of lyrics—“Obama’s real rage against Israel.” But this is still the exception.</p>
<p>Anyone who has followed the president’s social and political itinerary, his background, his contacts, his actions, should have instantly understood he would be, at best, an unreliable ally to Israel, at worst, a clever and unscrupulous antagonist. As I’ve had occasion to point out before, as have many others, this is the man who spent twenty years’ worth of Sundays sitting beneath pastor <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2307">Jeremiah Wright</a>’s antisemitic pulpit. This is the man who chummed around with former PLO spokesman and rabid anti-Zionist <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1347">Rashid Khalidi</a>. The rambling, unctuous and insincere drivel of his unteleprompted <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/politics/23text-obama.html">speech</a> to the residents of rocket-battered Sderot should have given his game away even before he had finished orating.</p>
<p>Once in power he appointed manifestly anti-Israeli figures like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Rice">Susan Rice</a> and <a href="http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275414.html">Samantha Power</a> to positions of official eminence. One of his advisers was the old antisemite <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/09/brezinski-calls-for-obama-to-shoot-down-israeli-jets-a-liberty-in-reverse.html">Zbigniew Brzezinski</a>, the same who recommended that the American air force should engage Israeli fighter jets should Israel have the temerity to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. It was the President’s administration that reneged on the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/04/AR2009060403811.html">settlement consensus</a> worked out between Israel and the former American administration. Obama’s shallow and ignorant <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026426.php">Cairo address</a> equated the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering and tellingly ignored the historical and continued presence of the Jewish people in the Holy Land. Though he has visited a slew of Muslim states, he studiously avoided Israel during his many presidential junkets, sending his subalterns instead.</p>
<p>Then we had his sly choreographing of <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&amp;cid=1246443799474">meetings with Jewish organizations</a> to exclude critics of his policies, his awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Israel-hater and secretary-general of the infamous Durban I conference on racism <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com../blog/the-trouble-with-mary-robinson/">Mary Robinson</a>, his backing of the <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/16/obama-will-back-saudi-peace-plan/">Saudi peace plan</a> (which envisages Israel’s retreat to indefensible borders, the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens from their homes, and the “return” of millions of manufactured Arab “refugees” to Israeli territory, thus putting paid to the Jewish state), and more recently his attempt to humiliate Israel by legislating down to it, requiring it to make ever more concessions to a Palestinian negotiating team that refuses to negotiate and forbidding Israel from building in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem—which just happens to be its capital. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Obama deliberately provoked a crisis to weaken Israel’s bargaining position and bring it into even greater disrepute among the wider public. Yossi Klein Halevi, <a href="http://www.tnr.com/articles/world">writing</a> in <em>The New Republic</em>, has no doubt that “Obama’s one-sided public pressure against Israel could intensify the atmosphere of ‘open season’ against Israel internationally” and that Obama is intent on launching a “political intifada” that could well turn into a Palestinian third intifada. Obama’s malice toward Israel is quite frankly undeniable.</p>
<p>Anyone who says that this president is a friend to Israel is lying to himself or is living in some alternate universe. Anyone who cannot see what <em>National Post</em> columnist George Jonas <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/08/15/george-jonas-beware-the-eggheads-not-the-skinheads.aspx">calls</a> the “anti-Semitism, and Arabist agenda that emanates from the Obama administration” should be treated for cataracts. As peremptory and unnuanced as this may sound, any Jew who approves of Obama or continues to invest his fealty in the Democratic Party works insidiously against the well-being and even the survival of the Jewish state as we know it. According to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/percent-israelis-think-obama-pro-israel/">recent polls</a>, 96% of Jewish Israelis have recognized this indubitable fact, yet Canadian and American Jews foolishly persist in massively endorsing the very political parties that, whether subtly or overtly, would diminish Israel’s ability to defend itself against its sworn aggressors.</p>
<p>Of course, Jews have a long history of turning against their own, from Korah, Dathan and Abiram who revolted against Moses to those who helped further the Medieval blood libels to the <em>Yevsektsiya</em> (the Jewish section of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union) to the despicable Richard Goldstone today—and the uncountable numbers in between. This is not—repeat, not—to suggest that the ordinary run of American and Canadian Jews are quislings and delators of the same perfidious stamp; nevertheless, there is something almost inexplicable in their political loyalties that calls their collective acuity into question. According to the old cliché, Jews are supposed to be smart, but sometimes the facts seem to argue otherwise.</p>
<p>In any case, as we survey the North American diaspora, there can be little question that something is seriously amiss in the Jewish community.</p>
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		<title>Harry Reid: Out of Work Men Become Abusive &#8211; The Hill</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-swindle/harry-reid-out-of-work-men-become-abusive-the-hill/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=harry-reid-out-of-work-men-become-abusive-the-hill</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:50:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Swindle]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51669</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[by Michael O’Brien Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) suggested Monday that domestic violence by men has increased due to U.S. joblessness. Reid, speaking in the midst of a Senate debate over whether to pass a $15 billion package meant to spur job creation, appeared to argue that joblessness would lead to more domestic violence. [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>by Michael O’Brien</strong></p>
<p>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) suggested Monday that domestic violence by men has increased due to U.S. joblessness.</p>
<p>Reid, speaking in the midst of a Senate debate over whether to pass a $15 billion package meant to spur job creation, appeared to argue that joblessness would lead to more domestic violence.</p>
<p>&#8220;I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand,&#8221; Reid said on the Senate floor. &#8220;Why? Men don&#8217;t have jobs.&#8221;</p>
<p>Reid said that the effects of joblessness on domestic violence were especially pronounced among men, because, Reid said, women tend to be less abusive.</p>
<p>&#8220;Women don&#8217;t have jobs either, but women aren’t abusive, most of the time,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/82803-reid-men-when-theyre-out-of-work-tend-to-become-abusive" target="_blank">Read the full article.</a></strong></em></p>
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		<title>The New Israel Fund&#8217;s View of a &#8220;New Israel&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jacob-shrybman/the-new-israel-funds-view-of-a-new-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-new-israel-funds-view-of-a-new-israel</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:02:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Shrybman]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50375</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The anti-Israel organization shares Hamas' dream for Israel's future.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nif.gif"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50380" title="nif" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/nif.gif" alt="" width="470" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>When it was reported that the New Israel Fund (NIF) was paying around $8 million to organizations that provided the Goldstone Report with all of its condemnations of Israel, it became clear that the “New Israel” desired by the New Israel Fund is one with more than 9 years of consistent rocket fire.</p>
<p>Our organization, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">Sderot Media Center</a> (SMC), with a yearly budget of close to $200,000, worked tirelessly on a formal report that was requested by the Goldstone Commission itself, which encompassed the impact of the rocket fire on the residents of the Sderot region. We sent this <a rel="nofollow" href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=484&amp;q=3,6" target="_blank">formal report</a> accompanied by photographs and videos to depict to this UN committee, which did not visit Sderot, what it is like to live under either daily rocket fire or the threat of daily rocket fire over the course of then eight years. The Goldstone Committee then flew our director, Noam Bedein, to the UN Headquarters in Geneva to give a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=489&amp;q=2,3,6" target="_blank">30-minute presentation/testimony</a> in front of the committee on this daily reality lived in Sderot.</p>
<p>The New Israel Fund paid around $8 million to organizations that provided information to the Goldstone Report. As a cited provider of information for the Goldstone Report, I guess our New Israel Fund check got lost in the mail.</p>
<p>As the only organization providing the human story of the near decade of rocket fire on Israeli men, women and children, the NIF clearly had no intention of helping sponsor our work.</p>
<p>A clear majority of the organizations mentioned in the Goldstone Report, 77%, are organizations that were paid by the NIF. Amongst those organizations, an overwhelming majority of the ones that were in favor of the report, 92%, are organizations that were paid by the NIF.</p>
<p>The New Israel Fund, an organization that supposedly prides itself on democracy and human rights, <em>“We fight inequality, injustice and extremism because we understand that justice is the precondition for a successful democracy</em>,” as defined in their “<em>About Us</em>” &#8212; strategically and financially ignores the human rights of Sderot men, women, and children that have endured this rocket lifestyle since 2001. The one organization located in Sderot that was paid by the NIF was an organization called the Other Voice &#8212; that led a bike ride from Sderot to the Gaza border. Apparently, organizations in Sderot are only worth NIF money if they are speaking out for Gaza residents and riding a bike.</p>
<p>The head of the NIF, Naomi Chazan, has led the response to this Im Tirtzu report by touting terms like “democracy” to describe what she is supporting, and <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149056.html" target="_blank">“fascists”</a> is what she has called those who criticize the NIF. A well educated professor like herself should know that democracy is not achieved by Hamas viciously controlling a prisoner population and using them as shields from a sovereign army and paying the UN to enable Hamas to further persevere doesn’t help. A democracy does not put over 100,000 Gaza children through summer military training camps. So, in attempting to bring down the only democracy in the world with international war crimes, Chazan hopes to create her “New Israel” democracy where Hamas can cause the death of more of their children, train more of them to fight Jews, and freely fire rockets at neighboring Israeli children.</p>
<p>A well educated professor like herself, Chazan should know that calling people and organizations that criticize the NIF “fascists” is embarrassingly hypocritical &#8212; while she pays and supports the ongoing actions of terrorists who use their own civilians to target other civilians. The Sderot Media Center criticizes the NIF and Naomi Chazan. So are we that risk our lives day-in and day-out to show the world that rockets are targeting civilians, and whom the popular liberal newspaper <em><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1135894.html" target="_blank">Haaretz described as a</a></em> “tiny organization that fights to make Sderot’s voice heard” &#8212; are we fascists? Our center runs a therapeutic drama program, in which traumatized high school girls share and express themselves with psychology professionals. Are these traumatized Sderot girls fascists?</p>
<p>If one reads the report put out by Im Tirtzu about the NIF paying for 77% of the Israeli condemning UN Goldstone Report, one will see how NIF paid more than half a million dollars to Physicians For Human Rights-Israel to send an Israeli condemning report to the Goldstone Committee that completely ignored the over 9,000 psychological patients in Sderot. This is just one example of the strategic financing of biased information that shaped the Goldstone Report.</p>
<p>If the public and donors of the New Israel Fund allow this organization to continue, it will be an upside-down “New Israel” where girls expressing  their trauma are considered fascists and a democracy is where children are put through terrorist training and used as human shields.</p>
<p>I guess, along with an invitation to last week’s Islamic Revolution anniversary rally in Teheran, our New Israel Fund check got lost in the mail.</p>
<p><em>Jacob Shrybman is a writer for the Sderot Media Center <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">(SderotMedia.org.il).</a></em></p>
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		<title>A New Era of Responsibility?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/vasko-kohlmayer/a-new-era-of-responsibility/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-new-era-of-responsibility</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:00:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vasko Kohlmayer]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[President's proposed 2011 budget is a fiscal sham.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obamaj.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49453" title="obamaj" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obamaj-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>“We will continue to go through the budget, line by line, page by page, to eliminate programs that we can&#8217;t afford and don&#8217;t work,” declared President Obama in his State of the Union address on January 27.</p>
<p>Five days later the president delivered his Fiscal 2011 budget to the US Congress. This he did to much fanfare, seeking to cast it as a product of fiscal prudence. In the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/budget/03_Presidents_Message.pdf">message</a> that accompanied the document, he stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The Budget includes more than 120 programs for termination, reduction, or other savings for a total of approximately $23 billion in 2011, as well as an aggressive effort to reduce the tens of billions of dollars in improper Government payments made each year.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>At first sight this may look like the work of an earnest waste cutter. It is, however, nothing of the sort. The $23 billion of “savings” is actually only about one half of one percent of the $3.84 trillion total.</p>
<p>A question for the president: Is one half of one percent all the waste you can find in the federal government? After all, it is an institution whose financial profligacy is legendary. Should we assume, Mr. President, that all of the remaining 99.5 percent is spent wisely and un-wastefully?</p>
<p>It goes without saying that most of the meagre $23 billion will never be cut. Those involved with the agencies and programs slatted for reductions will make sure of that. Claiming that their work is indispensable for the well-being of the nation, they will make a hysterical run on Capitol Hill where their cause will receive much sympathy. When all is said and done most of their budgets will not only be restored, but many will walk away with increases.</p>
<p>But here is the larger point. By calling the proposed $23 billion of cuts “savings,” the administration makes it sound as if the government&#8217;s expenditures would go down by this amount vis-à-vis last year&#8217;s levels.  This, however, is not the case. The proposed $3.84 trillion budget represents a three percent plus increase over the 2010 total. So even as ordinary Americans are forced to cut back on their consumption, the federal government&#8217;s voracious appetite for spending continues to grow unabated. Needless to say, we can ill afford it. As a consequence, the government will post a deficit of $1.25 trillion, which will represent more than 8 percent of the nation&#8217;s GDP. These abysmal figures, however, have done nothing to detract from the president&#8217;s sense of humor. He chose to unveil his budget under the motto “a new era of responsibility.”</p>
<p>But all this is still apparently not enough for some of the president&#8217;s friends on Capitol Hill. Shortly after he introduced his 2011 budget proposal, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the House majority whip, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/79039-clyburn-weve-got-to-spend-our-way-out-of-this-recession">opined</a> that looking for any more savings would only make things worse. “We&#8217;re not going to save our way out of this recession. We&#8217;ve got to spend our way out of this recession,” he said.</p>
<p>The insanity of this should be obvious to all. It is simply impossible to spend our way out of trouble when we are so deeply in debt already. Spending more will only make things worse. Having incurred astronomical debts, we are still able to borrow at low rates because of the dollar&#8217;s status as the world&#8217;s reserve currency. But this situation will sooner or later come to an end. In another sign that the day of fiscal reckoning is approach fast, Moody&#8217;s Investor Services <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a82cfe04-10f5-11df-9a9e-00144feab49a.html">warned</a> that at some point it may be forced to lower America&#8217;s triple A credit rating. The reason for this? The unrestrained spending of the federal government. Steven Hess, senior credit officer at Moody’s, told the <em>Financial Times</em> that the budget outlook submitted by the Obama administration last week “did not stabilise debt levels in relation to gross domestic product.” It would be interesting to hear the spend-happy James Clyburn comment on that one.</p>
<p>Needless to say, losing the triple A rating would have a devastating effect on this nation&#8217;s finances as it would make servicing the national debt far more expensive. The only way to avert this outcome is by slashing spending and cutting deficits. Unfortunately, those in charge lack the political will to do so. Instead of offering real solutions, the president tries to posture as a fiscal hawk while proposing laughable savings of one half of one percent. As if this was not bad enough, the third most powerful Democrat in the House of Representatives thinks that cutting further would be outright harmful.</p>
<p>Even as Obama and Clyburn were talking up the proposed budget, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer worked quietly behind the scenes to line up votes to raise the <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hEkfx_bpGC-zVoeKNR38gWLcjXdw">debt ceiling</a> by another $1.9 trillion. The effort to pass the record hike was triggered by the Treasury&#8217;s warning that the national debt is on the track to hit $14.3 by the end of this month. If the Treasury&#8217;s estimate is correct, the national debt will have grown by more than one third in less than thirteen months of Obama&#8217;s term. This expansion of national indebtedness is as astounding as it is unprecedented. But if this should frighten you there is no need to worry, because we have just entered “a new era of responsibility.”</p>
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		<title>Justice Thomas Defends Campaign Finance Ruling &#8211; NYTimes.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/justice-thomas-defends-campaign-finance-ruling-nytimes-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=justice-thomas-defends-campaign-finance-ruling-nytimes-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:35:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48830</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON — In expansive remarks at a law school in Florida, Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday vigorously defended the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decision. And Justice Thomas explained that he did not attend State of the Union addresses — he missed the dust-up when President Obama used the occasion last week to criticize the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>WASHINGTON — In expansive remarks at a law school in Florida, Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday vigorously defended the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decision.</p>
<p>And Justice Thomas explained that he did not attend State of the Union addresses — he missed the dust-up when <a title="More articles about Barack Obama." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per">President Obama</a> used the occasion last week to criticize the court’s decision — because the gatherings had turned so partisan.</p>
<p>Justice Thomas responded to several questions from students at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., concerning the campaign finance case, <a href="http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf">Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</a>. By a 5-to-4 vote, with Justice Thomas in the majority, the court ruled last month that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend money to support or oppose political candidates.</p>
<p>“I found it fascinating that the people who were editorializing against it were The New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company,” Justice Thomas said. “These are corporations.”</p>
<p>The part of the McCain-Feingold law struck down in Citizens United contained an exemption for news reports, commentaries and editorials. But Justice Thomas said that reflected a legislative choice rather than a constitutional principle.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/politics/04scotus.html?hp">Justice Thomas Defends Campaign Finance Ruling &#8211; NYTimes.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>State of the Union: “Woe to the People Whose Leader Has No Teacher”</title>
		<link>http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/28/state-of-the-union-%E2%80%9Cwoe-to-the-people-whose-leader-has-no-teacher%E2%80%9D/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=state-of-the-union-%25e2%2580%259cwoe-to-the-people-whose-leader-has-no-teacher%25e2%2580%259d</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:23:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47973</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Historically, State of the Union speeches leave no trace. Their impact on presidential approval ratings is nil. Their utility, therefore, is in what they reflect about the presidential character and the presidential course. Last night President Obama gave a speech that was at times quite eloquent, and on occasion rhetorically empty. But at all times [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/obama-state-of-union-2009.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-27474" title="obama-state-of-union-2009" src="http://www.newsrealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/obama-state-of-union-2009-300x190.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="190" /></a></p>
<p>Historically, State of  the Union speeches leave no trace. Their impact on presidential approval ratings  is nil. Their utility, therefore,  is in what they reflect about the  presidential character and the presidential course. Last night President Obama  gave a speech that was at times quite eloquent, and on occasion rhetorically  empty. But at all times it was the speech of a man who is deeply partisan and  dangerously arrogant and is determined to stay a course which has already  damaged his party, weakened his country at home and exposed it to attack from abroad.</p>
<p>Over and over again the President demonstrated a troubling disconnect  from reality, striking in the leader of a political democracy, and indicative of  a narcissism that appears to be greater than President Clinton’s. “I have never  been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight,” he said at the  outset of his speech. This in a country with 17 million unemployed, a political  majority that is unable to govern, and a national security apparatus that  couldn’t identify a terrorist whose own father had turned him in.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/28/state-of-the-union-%E2%80%9Cwoe-to-the-people-whose-leader-has-no-teacher%E2%80%9D/" target="_blank"><strong>Read the Rest at NewsReal Blog.</strong></a></p>
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		<title>Anger all around for Democratic leaders &#8211; POLITICO.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/anger-all-around-for-democratic-leaders-politico-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anger-all-around-for-democratic-leaders-politico-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:58:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47831</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be all smiles as the president arrives at the Capitol for his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, but the happy faces can’t hide relationships that are fraying and fraught. The anger is most palpable in the House, where Pelosi [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32053.html"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/100126_pelosi_reuters_289.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be all smiles as the president arrives at the Capitol for his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, but the happy faces can’t hide relationships that are fraying and fraught.</p>
<p>The anger is most palpable in the House, where Pelosi and her allies believe Obama’s reluctance to stake his political capital on health care reform in mid-2009 contributed to the near collapse of negotiations now.</p>
<p>But sources say there’s also bad blood between Reid and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and relations between Democrats in the House and Democrats in the Senate are hovering between thinly veiled disdain and outright hostility.</p>
<p>In a display of contempt unfathomable in the feel-good days after Obama’s Inauguration, freshman Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) stood up at a meeting with Pelosi last week to declare: “Reid is done; he’s going to lose” in November, according to three people who were in the room.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32053.html">Anger all around for Democratic leaders &#8211; Glenn Thrush and John Bresnahan &#8211; POLITICO.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Dems lack workable plan and retreat on health care &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/dems-lack-workable-plan-and-retreat-on-health-care-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dems-lack-workable-plan-and-retreat-on-health-care-ap</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:51:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47823</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON – Democrats retreated Tuesday from a quick push to pass President Barack Obama&#8217;s health care overhaul, lacking a workable strategy to salvage the sweeping legislation that has consumed Congress for more than a year.&#8221;There is no rush,&#8221; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after a meeting of Senate Democrats. His comments came as [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100127/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul;_ylt=AlloOTIlbiW4Bvj5XU9E8kOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNuMGF1bzgyBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTI3L3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX292ZXJoYXVsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMgRwb3MDNQRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDZGVtc2xhY2t3b3Jr"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/143aa7edfd96d51c91c7029e655e048b.jpeg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>WASHINGTON – Democrats retreated Tuesday from a quick push to pass President Barack Obama&#8217;s health care overhaul, lacking a workable strategy to salvage the sweeping legislation that has consumed Congress for more than a year.&#8221;There is no rush,&#8221; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after a meeting of Senate Democrats. His comments came as two centrists said they would oppose the plan Democratic leaders were considering to reconcile differences between the House and Senate bills and put comprehensive legislation on Obama&#8217;s desk.A week after the loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat — their 60th vote — cost Democrats undisputed control of the congressional agenda, leaders are still casting about for a way forward. Given the congressional schedule, it could be weeks — the end of February at the earliest — before they act.&#8221;There are no easy choices,&#8221; acknowledged House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md, insisting that the goal remains the same: to pass far-reaching legislation that would expand coverage, reduce costs and improve quality.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100127/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul;_ylt=AlloOTIlbiW4Bvj5XU9E8kOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNuMGF1bzgyBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTI3L3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX292ZXJoYXVsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMgRwb3MDNQRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDZGVtc2xhY2t3b3Jr">Dems lack workable plan and retreat on health care &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>Supreme Court Overturns Limits on Election Spending &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/supreme-court-overturns-limits-on-election-spending-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=supreme-court-overturns-limits-on-election-spending-wsj-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:28:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[anthony kennedy]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Freedom has had its best week in many years. On Tuesday, Massachusetts put a Senate check on a reckless Congress, and yesterday the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech by overturning some of Congress&#8217;s more intrusive limits on election spending. In a season of marauding government, the Constitution rides to the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016843479815072.html"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/OB-FI505_citize_D_20100121174224.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>Freedom has had its best week in many years. On Tuesday, Massachusetts put a Senate check on a reckless Congress, and yesterday the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech by overturning some of Congress&#8217;s more intrusive limits on election spending.</p>
<p>In a season of marauding government, the Constitution rides to the rescue one more time.</p>
<p>Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote yesterday&#8217;s 5-4 majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which considered whether the government could ban a 90-minute documentary called &#8220;Hillary: the Movie&#8221; that was set to run on cable channels during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Because it was funded by an incorporated group and was less than complimentary of then-Senator Hillary Clinton, the film became a target of campaign-finance limits.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016843479815072.html">Supreme Court Overturns Limits on Election Spending &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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