<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Nixon</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/nixon/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:20:06 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Back in Saigon: The Senate Intelligence Committee Report</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/back-in-saigon-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=back-in-saigon-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/back-in-saigon-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2014 05:40:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CIA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vietnam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247269</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left revives an old tradition of besmirching the CIA in a time of crisis abroad. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/o-CIA-SYRIAN-REBELS-facebook.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247270" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/o-CIA-SYRIAN-REBELS-facebook-450x322.jpg" alt="A man crosses the Central Intelligence A" width="362" height="259" /></a>The Senate’s misleadingly dubbed “torture report,” an executive summary of which was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a shameless and dangerous act of political grandstanding and moral preening. The investigative report of the CIA’s long-suspended interrogation program reflects nothing more than just how firmly the progressive mind is stuck in the old Vietnam War paradigm, their master narrative of American crime and left-wing righteousness. Once more, we see how reactionary is the ideology of the left, their minds unable to accommodate historical change, new ideas, or even coherent thinking.</p>
<p style="color: #313131;"><span style="color: #000000;">Jose Rodriguez, a 31-year veteran of the CIA who ran the interrogation program, has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/todays-cia-critics-once-urged-the-agency-to-do-anything-to-fight-al-qaeda/2014/12/05/ac418da2-7bda-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">detailed</span></a> the hypocrisy and untruths of the report. He reminds us that in the aftermath of 9/11, lawmakers demanded that the intelligence agencies do everything possible to stop another attack. Indeed, Feinstein in May 2002 told the <i>New York Times </i>that “</span><span style="color: #272727;">we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.” In her comments on the Report’s release, however, Feinstein referred to the Geneva Convention and said, </span>“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, (including what I just read) whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” Twelve years later, the political advantages of moral preening have trumped the recognition that hard choices have to be made sometimes to fulfill the federal government’s highest duty, which is to keep the citizens safe.</p>
<p>Rodriguez also explodes the report’s canard that the enhanced interrogation techniques were not legally sanctioned. They were in fact reviewed in 2002 and 2005 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, and in 2009 were investigated by Eric Holder’s DOJ, which did not file charges. Rodriguez also debunks the claim that the CIA withheld information concerning their use from government officials. Rodriguez should know, since he was there when the CIA briefed Senator Feinstein and House Representative Nancy Pelosi on the techniques. And he exposes the lie that EITs did not yield vital information, an assessment also contradicted by ex-CIA chief Michael Hayden, who said of the charge that it “is so untrue” that it “actually defies human comprehension. We detained about 100 people, we had a Home Depot-like warehouse of information from those people.” Former CIA chiefs James Woolsey, Porter Goss, George Tenet, and, with shrewd equivocation, Leon Panetta, along with ex-Attorney General Mike Mukasey and current CIA chief John Brennan, have confirmed that EITs did provide valuable intelligence.</p>
<p>Yet the central fallacy of the report is that the EITs  “amount[ed] to torture,” as Feinstein announced on the report’s release. But government policy follows the law as written and established by Congress, not what “amounts” to the law in someone’s subjective estimation. Such sophistic language compromises the report’s description of EITs. The techniques cited––threats, sleep deprivation, “physical assault,” stripping detainees naked, putting them in “stress positions”––are all obviously frightening and painful. But they are not “torture” under U.S. law. Nor is waterboarding, Exhibit A in the left’s indictment of U.S. heinous behavior. That’s why Feinstein slyly says that EITs “amount” to torture rather than explicitly calling them torture, and why she cites international conventions on torture rather than the U.S. law.</p>
<p>Just consult the <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002340----000-.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">statute</span></a> covering torture in the U.S. Code, which defines it as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control,” and further clarifies “severe mental pain or suffering” as “the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from . . . the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.” The key words are “intended” and “severe.” As Marc Thiessen concluded in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Courting-Disaster-America-Barack-Inviting/dp/1596986034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1418248906&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=marc+thiessen"><span style="color: #0433ff;">analysis</span></a> of the EITs and their legality, “The fact is, <i>none</i> of the techniques used by the CIA meet the standard of torture in U.S. law. This is for two reasons: because the CIA interrogators did not <i>specifically intend</i> to inflict severe pain and suffering; second, because they did not <i>in fact</i> inflict severe pain and suffering.” And in 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder agreed, when he testified before Congress that waterboarding U.S. military personnel as part of their training was not torture: “It’s not torture in the legal sense because you’re not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally.”</p>
<p>This simple legal reality is why Feinstein in her statement depends on imprecise adjectives like “visceral,” “ugly,” “brutal,” and “harsh”––to create a cloud of emotion that hides the fact that EITs were not illegal and were not torture. Furthermore, if Feinstein and other critics think this point is a sophistic evasion and that these techniques <i>are</i> torture, then they should call on Congress to change the law rather than rewriting history to suggest that the CIA did something illegal.</p>
<p style="color: #313131;"><span style="color: #000000;">But fact and reality are not as important as politics and the leftist melodrama of America’s historical crimes. Thus Feinstein said her report reveals behavior that is “</span>a stain on our values and on our history,” and Senator John McCain said they are violations of our “ideals.” So just how is attempting to keep America safe by interrogating terrorists according to the law, with doctors and psychologists present to monitor the terrorist’s well being, a “stain”? In the real world beyond our borders, genuine torture is used daily without the sort of legal limits or oversight imposed on our interrogators. And most of the time, the torture is not used to gain life-saving information, but to punish political enemies, terrorize political opponents, or just indulge sadistic cruelty. That is a real “stain.”</p>
<p style="color: #313131;">As for our “ideals,” such a low bar for indictment as waterboarding––which killed no one, and which several journalists volunteered to undergo––means, <span style="color: #000000;">as Max Boot has suggested, </span>that the Allied strategic bombing of Germany and Japan, which killed 650,000 to a million civilians with high explosives, nuclear bombs, and incendiaries, was an even grosser and more heinous “stain” on our “ideals” than sleep deprivation and scary threats. Where was the investigation of strategic bombing after World War II, or the pontifications on the Senate floor of how we Americans were “better” than such practices? Are we now just morally superior to those Americans who accepted the “awful arithmetic” and defeated 2 racist, brutal, totalitarian regimes? Or how about Obama’s droning to death over 3600 terrorists, including nearly 500 civilians, actions not subject to the legal review the EITs were? Dead terrorists are bad sources of intelligence of the sort gleaned by using EITs. Will we see a future investigation that condemns these drone executions as a “stain on our values and history” and “ideals”? It seems that “values” and “history” are defined by which party is in control of the government and stands to benefit politically by pointing out how they’ve been defiled.</p>
<p><span style="color: #313131;">But apart from politics, this report and its rollout </span>are just another act in the progressive melodrama of America’s sin and guilt for crimes committed when morally superior liberals aren’t running the show. And exhibit number 1 for progressives of a certain age is the Vietnam War. That’s why the conflict in Iraq was shoehorned into the Vietnam paradigm as soon as ambitious Democrats like Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and John Kerry, who had all voted for the war, began noticing the traction Howard Dean was gaining from opposing the war.</p>
<p>Thus the 1964 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Gulf of Tonkin</span></a> resolution authorizing the escalation of the war in Vietnam found its parallel in Bush’s alleged “lies” and “false intelligence” about Hussein’s WMDs (“Bush lied, millions died!”). The charge that Vietnam was benefitting the “military-industrial complex” and its lust for profits and resources was duplicated in allegations that the Halliburton Corporation and Dick Cheney were really after Iraq’s oil (“No blood for oil!”). Anti-war critics like I.F. Stone and the Berrigan brothers were reincarnated as the buffoonish Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. The anti-war movement of the Vietnam era reappeared as International ANSWER, Code Pink, and various other outfits protesting the war in Iraq. Clichés like “escalation” and “quagmire” resurfaced in media commentary, and atrocities like My Lai were searched for in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.</p>
<p>And don’t forget the investigative assault on the CIA by Senator Frank Church’s committee following the 1975 North Vietnamese victory in Vietnam, a report that weakened the CIA and compromised its effectiveness in ways that helped pave the way for the 9/11 attacks. Now it finds a new iteration in the Senate Intelligence Committee report and the dishonest media coverage besmirching the CIA. The immediate result has been to endanger our agents and intelligence assets abroad.  It still waits to be seen how much damage will ensue to the morale and future practice of the brave men and women who try to keep us safe.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/back-in-saigon-the-senate-intelligence-committee-report-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Cuban Missile Crisis: Kennedy’s “Victory”?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-cuban-missile-crisis-kennedys-victory/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-cuban-missile-crisis-kennedys-victory</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-cuban-missile-crisis-kennedys-victory/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Oct 2013 04:05:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuban Missile Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[defeat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kennedy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=208424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's attempts to rewrite history. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1015-Cuban-Missile-Crisis-JFK-and-Khrushchev-meet_full_380.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-208443" alt="1015-Cuban-Missile-Crisis-JFK-and-Khrushchev-meet_full_380" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1015-Cuban-Missile-Crisis-JFK-and-Khrushchev-meet_full_380.jpg" width="266" height="177" /></a>That Khrushchev swept the floor with Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis was mainstream conservative conclusion throughout much of the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, for instance, represented opposite poles of the Republican establishment of their time.</p>
<p>&#8220;We locked Castro&#8217;s communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal,&#8221; growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.”</p>
<p>&#8220;Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,”  complained Richard Nixon. &#8220;Then gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard.&#8221;</p>
<p>Generals Curtis Le May and Maxwell Taylor represented opposite poles of the military establishment.</p>
<p>&#8220;The biggest defeat in our nation&#8217;s history!&#8221; bellowed Air Force chief Curtis Lemay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal.</p>
<p>&#8220;We missed the big boat,&#8221; complained Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning of same.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been had!&#8221; yelled then Navy chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK &#8220;solved&#8221; the missile crisis. Adm. Anderson was the man in charge of the very &#8220;blockade&#8221; against Cuba.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a public relations fable that Khrushchev quailed before Kennedy,&#8221; wrote Alexander Haig. &#8220;The legend of the eyeball to eyeball confrontation invented by Kennedy&#8217;s men paid a handsome political dividend. But the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal was a deplorable error resulting in political havoc and human suffering through the Americas.&#8221;</p>
<p>William Buckley&#8217;s National Review devoted several issues to exposing and denouncing Kennedy&#8217;s appeasement. The magazine&#8217;s popular &#8220;The Third World War&#8221; column by James Burnham roundly condemned Kennedy&#8217;s Missile Crisis solution as &#8220;America&#8217;s Defeat.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even Democratic luminary Dean Acheson despaired: &#8220;This nation lacks leadership,&#8221; he grumbled about the famous “Ex-Comm meetings” so glorified in the movie Thirteen Days. &#8220;The meetings were repetitive and without direction. Most members of Kennedy&#8217;s team had no military or diplomatic experience whatsoever. The sessions were a waste of time.&#8221;</p>
<p>But not for the Soviets. &#8220;We ended up getting exactly what we&#8217;d wanted all along,&#8221; snickered Nikita Khrushchev in his diaries, “security for Fidel Castro’s regime and American missiles removed from Turkey and Italy. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro <i>and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro</i>. After Kennedy&#8217;s death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba.&#8221;</p>
<p>In fact Khrushchev prepared to yank the missiles before any “bullying” by Kennedy. “What!” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28th 1962, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he [Fidel Castro] proposing that we start a nuclear war? But that is insane!&#8230;<i>Remove them</i> [our missiles] <i>as soon as possible!</i> Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">commanded the Soviet premier.</a></p>
<p>So much for the gallant Knights of Camelot forcing the Russians’ retreat. In fact, the Castro brothers and Che Guevara’s genocidal lust is what prompted the Butcher of Budapest to yank the missiles from their reach.</p>
<p>Considering the U.S. nuclear superiority over the Soviets at the time of the (so-called) Missile Crisis (five thousand nuclear warheads for us, three hundred for them) it&#8217;s hard to imagine a President Nixon — much less Reagan — quaking in front of Khrushchev&#8217;s transparent ruse à la Kennedy.</p>
<p>The genuine threat came &#8211;not from Moscow—but from the Castros and Che. “If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/">(Che Guevara to Sam Russell of The London Daily Worker, November 1962.)</a></p>
<p>“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely <i>why</i> I urged Khrushchev to launch them. And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.”</p>
<p>Castro&#8217;s regime&#8217;s was granted new status. Let&#8217;s call it MAP, or Mutually-Assured-Protection. Cuban freedom-fighters working from south Florida were suddenly rounded up for &#8220;violating U.S. neutrality laws.&#8221; Some of these bewildered men were jailed, others &#8220;quarantined,&#8221; prevented from leaving Dade County. The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro remained unmolested.</p>
<p>JFK&#8217;s Missile Crisis “solution” also pledged that he immediately <a href="http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/1925088826001">pull the rug out from under Cuba&#8217;s in-house freedom fighters.</a> Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different &#8220;bands of bandits&#8221; as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba&#8217;s countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.</p>
<p>Kennedy&#8217;s deal with Khrushchev cut this lifeline. This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America&#8217;s shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you&#8217;ll read about it in the mainstream media and all you&#8217;ll learn about it from Kennedy’s court scribes, who scribbled Kennedy’s Missile-Crisis “victory.” To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed Cuban rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of &#8220;Scarface.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-cuban-missile-crisis-kennedys-victory/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>53</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama Demonstrates the Evil of Big Government</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-elder/obama-demonstrates-the-evil-of-big-government/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-demonstrates-the-evil-of-big-government</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-elder/obama-demonstrates-the-evil-of-big-government/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:04:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Big Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IRS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[limit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=193195</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the only way to limit corruption in the state is to limit the state. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/obama1-420x215.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-193197" alt="obama1-420x215" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/obama1-420x215.jpg" width="302" height="214" /></a>The scandals surrounding the Obama administration come down to one common theme — that the ever-growing size and scope of our federal government gives it enormous power over virtually every aspect of our lives, power that in the wrong hands can be used to reward supporters, exact revenge and punish enemies. In education, health care, transportation, energy, disaster relief, welfare, commerce, work and salary rules, and on and on, the federal government plays an outsized role completely inconsistent with the Founding Fathers&#8217; notion of a limited government that allows maximum personal liberty.</p>
<p>In 1900, government at all three levels — federal, state and local — took about 10 percent of the people&#8217;s money. It now takes nearly 50 percent.</p>
<p>On what basis should Americans — especially those who did not vote for Barack Obama — feel that the President will guard their interests, especially when apparently vindictive actions have been taken under his watch?</p>
<p>The IRS admits to, and has apologized for, targeting conservative groups. The second article of impeachment against Richard Nixon accused him of using the IRS to go after political enemies. Incredibly, the IRS commissioner of the office in charge of tax-exempt organizations from 2009 to 2012 — when the conservative groups were targeted — is now the director of the IRS Affordable Care Act office, responsible for ObamaCare tax compliance.</p>
<p>The Justice Department, in apparent violation of policy, subpoenaed the phone records of as many as 100 reporters without notifying their employer, The Associated Press. And the DOJ subpoenaed the phone records of a Fox reporter, as well as the phone records of his parents.</p>
<p>Now every president fights with the media, whose job description supposedly requires them to serve as watchdog over government. It is why the First Amendment protects &#8220;freedom of the press.&#8221; But how many administrations have openly and repeatedly stated contempt for a particular news channel, the way Obama and his aides have publicly attacked the Fox News Channel?</p>
<p>Early in his administration, Obama complained, &#8220;I&#8217;ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.&#8221; He told Rolling Stone: &#8220;The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like (William Randolph) Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It&#8217;s a point of view that I disagree with.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>Fox News is &#8220;ultimately destructive&#8221;?</p>
<p>Then-White House senior adviser David Axelrod said that the Fox News Channel was &#8220;not really a news station&#8221; and that much of the programming is &#8220;not really news.&#8221; Similarly, former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said about Fox: &#8220;We don&#8217;t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.&#8221;</p>
<p>A few days later, calling Fox &#8220;a wing of the Republican Party,&#8221; Dunn said: &#8220;They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that&#8217;s fine. But let&#8217;s not pretend they&#8217;re a news network the way CNN is.&#8221; Dunn also said, &#8220;I mean the reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,&#8221; and told Time Magazine: &#8220;It&#8217;s opinion journalism masquerading as news. They are boosting their audience, but that doesn&#8217;t mean we are going to sit back.&#8221;</p>
<p>How despicable do Democrats find Republicans? A recent CNN poll found 76 percent of Democrats <i>still </i>believe President Bush &#8220;deliberately misled&#8221; the country into the Iraq War. And Obama defenders say Bush &#8220;used&#8221; the IRS to &#8220;target&#8221; the NAACP. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., even offered up this Bush/Hurricane Katrina conspiracy: The President, you see, dragged his feet during Katrina so that black New Orleanians would leave the state and take their Democratic votes with them. Frank called this alleged Bush scheme &#8220;ethnic cleansing by inaction.&#8221;</p>
<p>What&#8217;s the answer? Tone down the rhetoric? Elect morally superior human beings? Vote for &#8220;common sense&#8221; moderates?</p>
<p>No. Let&#8217;s agree that neither side trusts &#8220;the other side.&#8221; Let&#8217;s agree that neither side thinks much of the goals and motives of their political opponents. Let&#8217;s agree that the bigger the government, the more money and power it takes from its citizens. So where does this leave us? It takes us back to a founding principle of this country: limited government. By reducing the size of government, we limit the amount of damage &#8220;the other side&#8221; can do when in charge.</p>
<p>It isn&#8217;t that smaller government is more trustworthy or transparent. Among other attributes, a smaller government allows the commander in chief to focus on job one — that of protecting the American people against enemies. For both Obama-haters and Bush-haters, a smaller government reduces the amount of influence and control the &#8220;wrong side&#8221; has over the other. A win-win.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-elder/obama-demonstrates-the-evil-of-big-government/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>What Did Nixon Do?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/what-did-nixon-do/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-did-nixon-do</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/what-did-nixon-do/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 04:27:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enemies list]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Impeachment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IRS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[power]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=191071</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Reflecting on a Republican president oversold as a villain -- and Obama's vastly more scandalous misdeeds.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NixonObama_ReutersAP_0513_660.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191073" alt="NixonObama_ReutersAP_0513_660" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NixonObama_ReutersAP_0513_660-450x273.jpg" width="270" height="164" /></a>Although Richard Nixon left office under a cloud for trying to subvert the democratic process for his own political advantage, Barack Obama&#8217;s behavior has been far more serious in its corruption and blatant attempts to manipulate the electoral process by unethical and unconstitutional means.</p>
<p>Nixon, bad as he may have been, has been oversold as a villain. He serves as a convenient bogeyman for left-wing historians and journalists to spew self-serving narratives in which they paint him as a devil and themselves as victims. It would, therefore, do well to review some of the facts of what really transpired in the Nixon presidency and how they stack up against Obama&#8217;s unprecedented malfeasance:</p>
<p>First, the much-vaunted &#8220;enemies list&#8221; that was maintained by Nixon is more the stuff of myth than underhanded politics. In his 1979 book, <em>Blind Ambition</em>, Nixon White House counsel John Dean explained that the list consisted merely of names of individuals not welcome at White House functions. White House chief of staff H.R. &#8220;Bob&#8221; Haldeman singled out about 20 people on the list for IRS audits and other official torments, “but no action had been taken as far as I knew,” Dean wrote.</p>
<p>So what did President Nixon actually do?</p>
<p>In his final report as chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) concluded that the purpose of the series of acts that collectively constituted Watergate was “[t]o destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the President of the United States is nominated and elected.”</p>
<p>As Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the original Watergate story, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/woodward-and-bernstein-40-years-after-watergate-nixon-was-far-worse-than-we-thought/2012/06/08/gJQAlsi0NV_story.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> last year, &#8220;At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nixon and his aides, Ervin said, had “a lust for political power” that “blinded them to ethical considerations and legal requirements; to Aristotle’s aphorism that the good of man must be the end of politics.”</p>
<p>The three articles of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 <a href="http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment" target="_blank">accused</a> Nixon of violating &#8220;his oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p>The first article of impeachment referenced the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters then located in the Watergate office complex in the nation’s capital. Ahead of the approaching November election, the five burglars&#8217; purpose was &#8220;securing political intelligence.&#8221;</p>
<p>After the break-in, Nixon used</p>
<blockquote><p>the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Nixon had apparently not been aware of or authorized the DNC break-in before it was carried out, audio tapes made by the president&#8217;s secret recording system revealed that he attempted to cover up the incident and other illegal activities that had taken place during his administration. After extensive litigation the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president had to produce the recordings for investigators. He complied.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-irs-gate/" target="_blank">second article of impeachment</a> against Nixon detailed how he allegedly used the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies and their employees against those he perceived as his political enemies.</p>
<p>According to the impeachment resolution, Nixon used the IRS to obtain</p>
<blockquote><p>confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Nixon reportedly <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/14/anger-over-irs-audits-of-conservatives-anchored-in-long-history-of-abuse/#ixzz2USjzufuf" target="_blank">encouraged</a> a clandestine IRS program called the “Special Services Staff” to probe his political adversaries and plague them with audits, the tax-collection agency&#8217;s bark at the time was apparently worse than its bite insofar as Democrats were concerned.</p>
<p>Nixon endorsed but then quickly <a href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=tom_charles_huston_1" target="_blank">backed away</a> from an ambitious crackdown on left-wing organizations urged by his aide, Tom Charles Huston. Nixon approved Huston&#8217;s plan on July 14, 1970 but by July 27 he had changed his mind and rescinded approval for it after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover voiced objections.</p>
<p>Huston later lamented that dealing with the IRS was fraught with peril. “Making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS is about as safe a procedure as trusting a whore,” since the Nixon administration at the time had no “reliable political friends at IRS.”</p>
<p>Later in September 1971 Nixon ordered White House aide John Ehrlichman to direct the IRS to look into the tax returns of all those thought to be seeking the 1972 Democratic presidential nod, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).</p>
<p>“Are we going after their tax returns?” Nixon said. “You know what I mean? There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills.”</p>
<p>Nominated as IRS commissioner by Nixon, Johnnie Mac Walters headed the IRS from Aug. 6, 1971, to April 30, 1973. Nixon White House counsel John Dean gave Walters an envelope containing the names of about 200 prominent Democrats to harass.</p>
<p>Walters refused to target the individuals. “The story is interesting because the IRS wouldn’t do it,” <a href="http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130526/NEWS/305260011/Defying-president?gcheck=1" target="_blank">said</a> Tim Naftali, former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “It didn’t happen, not because the White House didn’t want it to happen, but because people like Johnnie Walters said ‘no.’”</p>
<p>Contrast Walters with left-wing bureaucrat Lois Lerner, head of the tax exempt organizations division at the IRS, who apparently did the Obama administration&#8217;s bidding, harassing conservative groups and funders. Lerner testified before Congress last week and after ostentatiously protesting her innocence invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to continue testifying.</p>
<p>Returning to Nixon, even if he had used the IRS in the way described in the second article of impeachment, he was simply doing what presidents had done for the previous 40 years. This is not to excuse Nixon&#8217;s behavior, but it hardly seems fair to single him out for doing what had long been the norm in Washington.</p>
<p>The first known instance of an administration snooping around in its enemies&#8217; tax records for intelligence purposes happened during the presidency of Republican Herbert Hoover (1929-33). FBI director J. Edgar Hoover tried to dig up dirt on a conservative group called the Navy League. He found nothing.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, even if the FBI chief had found anything, his actions were apparently not unlawful. The &#8220;confused drafting&#8221; of a section in a 1910 appropriations act &#8220;actually authorized presidents to use tax records any way they saw fit,&#8221; writes author David Burnham. The law stated tax records &#8220;were to be open for inspection &#8216;only upon the order of the President under rules and regulations to be prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury and approved by the president.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>The loophole was closed only after the Watergate scandal. &#8220;Partly because of the curious wording of what really was an open records law, few Americans have understood that, from 1910 until 1976, the IRS routinely made tax information available to almost any federal or state agency that requested it.&#8221; (A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS, by David Burnham, Random House, 1989, p.228)</p>
<p>What may have been unethical in Nixon&#8217;s day, is clearly illegal in the Obama era. Presumably Obama, conversant as he is in the law, knows this.</p>
<p>The third article of impeachment accused Nixon of obstructing the congressional investigation into his administration&#8217;s conduct. It stated that he &#8220;failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued&#8221; by the House Judiciary Committee and &#8220;willfully disobeyed such subpoenas.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nixon did in fact refuse to comply with congressional demands and went out of his way to hinder investigations into his misconduct. Facing seemingly certain impeachment in the House and removal from office after a trial by the Senate, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.</p>
<p>Now what has President Obama done?</p>
<p>Obama may not stand accused of breaking into his enemies&#8217; offices to gain an unfair electoral advantage, but he has engaged in tactics aimed at unfairly suppressing the Republican vote.</p>
<p>Under Obama, the Department of Justice gave free rein to ACORN and similar left-wing voter fraud factories, refusing to investigate their many wrongdoings. DoJ let the New Black Panther Party off scot-free for physically intimidating Philadelphia voters.</p>
<p>The Obama administration appeared to violate the civil rights of nearly 200,000 U.S. soldiers around the world by deliberately <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/obama’s-military-voter-suppression-campaign/" target="_blank">disenfranchising</a> them because they tend to vote Republican. Although the administration has moved with lightning speed to attack desperately needed state voter identification laws, last year it seemed barely aware of its obligations under the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.</p>
<p>The law was created to help deployed soldiers, many of whom are constantly on the move, to exercise the right to vote that they fight to protect. The law requires the Pentagon to create an “installation voting assistance office,” or IVAO, for every military base close to a combat zone.</p>
<p>IVAOs are supposed to help military personnel navigate the labyrinth of often confusing voting rules of the nation’s 55 states and territories. But IVAOs can’t help anybody vote if they don’t exist. As of September last year, in half of the 229 overseas military installations Obama&#8217;s Department of Defense hadn’t even bothered to set up the IVAO facilities that the law mandated.</p>
<p>Obama’s IRS targeted conservative “social welfare” nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status under section 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code. Evidence establishes that hundreds of groups affiliated with the Tea Party movement were bullied and intimidated from engaging in constitutionally protected political activism. Some conservative groups were made to wait years for a tax-exempt status determination while the Barack H. Obama Foundation and various liberal groups sailed through the process at breakneck speed.</p>
<p>Who knows how many people failed to donate or become active in those right-leaning groups and what impact this IRS skulduggery had on Republican voter turnout last November.</p>
<p>As commentator Michael Barone observes, the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal “were both about winning elections under false pretenses.”</p>
<p>With Benghazi, “[a] deliberate effort to mislead the voters was launched,” Barone writes. “Clinton, White House press secretary Jay Carney, and the president himself talked about a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video — even though no evidence of that came from Benghazi.” The CIA’s talking points on Benghazi were manipulated by the White House and the Department of State, and Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was wheeled out to peddle the lies on television.</p>
<p>“This attempt to mislead the electorate worked,” Barone concludes. “It seems a stretch to say that it determined the outcome of the election. But it certainly helped the Obama campaign.”</p>
<p>Obama created a grotesque system of unaccountable federal &#8220;czars&#8221; overseeing vast swaths of U.S. government policy without being confirmed by the Senate, as the Constitution requires.</p>
<p>Obama invaded Libya without congressional authorization and on a flimsy pretext. He unconstitutionally recess-appointed Richard Cordray as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He refused to enforce the provisions of the presumptively constitutional Defense of Marriage Act.</p>
<p>In the Fast and Furious scandal, Obama supplied Mexican drug cartels with guns to encourage a wave of violence that would create a public clamor for tougher gun regulations. Hundreds of Mexicans and a U.S. border patrolman died as a result. Attorney General Eric Holder has been cited with contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with the congressional investigation of the scandal.</p>
<p>Obama has used executive fiat to illegally gut a workfare law and give certain illegal immigrants blanket amnesty. The president also rigged the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings to unfairly enrich his friends in the United Auto Workers at the expense of higher-priority creditors such as bondholders and suppliers.</p>
<p>Then there is the still-developing scandal surrounding the surreptitious confiscation of telephone records from the Associated Press, a direct assault on the First Amendment. The U.S. Department of Justice secretly procured two months’ worth of telephone logs for journalists at AP, the world’s largest news-gathering organization. Apparently the records were seized as part of an investigation into national security-related leaks.</p>
<p>The administration is also investigating Fox News reporter James Rosen for daring to report what intelligence sources told him about North Korea.</p>
<p>Obama has also done many things that are at least arguably impeachable and are definitely radically un-presidential.</p>
<p>Obama has been particularly aggressive on the propaganda front. His White House asked Americans to report their neighbors who were opposed to Obamacare to the email address of <a href="mailto:flag@whitehouse.gov" target="_blank">flag@whitehouse.gov</a>. In the National Endowment for the Arts <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/85512/" target="_blank">scandal</a>, Obama used federal taxpayer resources to press artists to create art to advance his political agenda.</p>
<p>Obama has undermined trust in the justice system by trying to intervene on behalf of his personal friend, Harvard law professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 2009 after admitting he didn&#8217;t know all the facts of the case, Obama said the Cambridge, Mass., &#8220;police acted stupidly&#8221; in arresting Gates when they investigated a reported break-in at his home. Obama injected race into the situation by offering that &#8220;separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-American and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.&#8221;</p>
<p>After the <em>Citizens United</em> decision opened the door to corporate campaign contributions, Obama gave speeches belittling and browbeating the Supreme Court. He even did so in the presence of Supreme Court members.</p>
<p>President Obama may yet live to regret these remarks. If he is impeached in the House and tried in the Senate, the trial will be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/what-did-nixon-do/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>91</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obama Scandals vs. Watergate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-scandals-far-worse-than-watergate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-scandals-far-worse-than-watergate</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-scandals-far-worse-than-watergate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 04:55:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IRS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scandal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Watergate]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189709</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Obama administration's wrongdoings stack up against Nixon's legacy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/nixon_obama.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189711" alt="nixon_obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/nixon_obama-450x341.jpg" width="315" height="239" /></a>How does President Barack Obama compare to Richard Nixon who was nearly impeached in 1974 for corruption and egregious abuses of power?</p>
<p>The short answer? Not well.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s serial acts of malfeasance have cost hundreds of lives while Nixon&#8217;s caused no loss of life. Both attacked their political enemies using taxpayer resources and tried to rig the system to favor their side.</p>
<p>But Nixon, unlike Obama, didn&#8217;t come from what bestselling author Michelle Malkin termed a &#8220;culture of corruption.&#8221; Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to Democrat John F. Kennedy probably because Democrats committed massive vote fraud. In a move some consider noble or patriotic, he refused to put the country through a drawn out fight over the election result. Nixon was not a so-called people person. He was a political outsider who fought hard and bitterly for whatever political victories he achieved. He wasn&#8217;t regarded as much of a dirty trickster, at least he wasn&#8217;t until he ascended to the presidency.</p>
<p>Obama, on the other hand, might as well have been heir to Chicago crime boss Al Capone. Obama was a community organizer who taught left-wing activists how to blackmail and pressure governments and corporations into doing their bidding. He preached class warfare and hatred against productive members of society. Obama specialized in having his political opponents knocked off the ballot. He unsealed court records to embarrass his adversaries. He launched his career in electoral politics in the home of unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.</p>
<p>When Obama does something noble or on the straight-and-narrow it&#8217;s probably a mistake on his part.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s recall the bad things that Richard Milhous Nixon actually did while in the White House:</p>
<p>The Watergate scandal began in June 1972 when five men connected to the Nixon reelection campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters then located in the Watergate office complex in the nation&#8217;s capital. With Nixon battling Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.), in advance of the approaching November election, their goal was to spy on the Democratic Party&#8217;s political operations.</p>
<p>Of course, Nixon didn&#8217;t need to spy on McGovern. McGovern was a terrible, radically left-wing, out-of-touch candidate, and the Nixon campaign had no difficulty painting him as such. Any information illegally obtained from the DNC office wasn&#8217;t needed to help Nixon go on to one of the most impressive election victories in American history.</p>
<p>But in July 1973 a congressional committee discovered that President Nixon had a tape-recording system throughout his offices. Although Nixon had apparently not been aware of or authorized the DNC break-in before it was carried out, recordings revealed that he attempted to cover up the incident and other illegal activities that had taken place during his administration. After extensive litigation the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president had to produce the recordings for investigators. He complied. As the saying goes, it wasn&#8217;t the burglary that sealed Nixon&#8217;s fate; it was the cover-up in which he participated.</p>
<p>The Watergate break-in wasn&#8217;t the only thing President Nixon did that rankled lawmakers on both sides of the partisan divide.</p>
<p>With bipartisan support, in late July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment that accused Nixon of obstructing the congressional inquiry into the Watergate scandal, misusing law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political advantage (including using the IRS to harass his political adversaries), and refusing to comply with subpoenas that had been issued by the committee.</p>
<p>Facing seemingly certain impeachment in the House and removal from office after a trial by the Senate, Nixon <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/timeline.html">resigned</a> on August 9, 1974.</p>
<p>To briefly summarize, Nixon was guilty of lying, covering up wrongdoing and obstructing justice, and using government agencies against rivals.</p>
<p>How does Nixon compare to Obama?</p>
<p>First off, no one died as a result of Nixon&#8217;s misdeeds. With Obama, the dead bodies keep piling up. Obama lies habitually to the American people, pretending to be an innocent by-stander who is never responsible for any bad things done in his name. Even some of Obama&#8217;s most ardent supporters are beginning to realize that Obama is more Hugo Chavez than Bobby Kennedy.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s IRS targeted conservative “social welfare” nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status under section 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code. Evidence establishes that hundreds of groups affiliated with the Tea Party movement were bullied and intimidated from engaging in constitutionally protected political activism.</p>
<p>Even now Obama, the thuggish Chicago-trained politician who employs the brutal in-your-face techniques of <i>Rules for Radicals</i> author and neo-communist Saul Alinsky, is feigning ignorance about the nasty political harassment dished out on his behalf.</p>
<p>He seems to have just realized his presidency is in jeopardy, so Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/15/statement-president">made</a> a dinner-hour appearance on television last night. His speech was replete with tedious damage-control boilerplate and empty promises to do the right thing.</p>
<p>The conduct of the IRS is &#8220;inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,&#8221; Obama said, pretending to be angry.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives. And as I said earlier, it should not matter what political stripe you’re from &#8212; the fact of the matter is, is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity. The government generally has to conduct itself in a way that is true to the public trust. That’s especially true for the IRS.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>The president vowed to</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again by holding the responsible parties accountable, by putting in place new checks and new safeguards, and going forward, by making sure that the law is applied as it should be &#8212; in a fair and impartial way.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Now House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is being uncharacteristically blunt in commenting on the IRS saga. &#8220;Who&#8217;s going to jail over this scandal?&#8221; he asked reporters.</p>
<p>&#8220;There are laws in place to prevent this type of abuse. Someone made a conscious decision to harass and to hold up these requests for tax exempt status,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I think we need to know who they are and whether they violated the law. Clearly someone violated the law.&#8221;</p>
<p>The <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/what-did-obama-know-and-when-did-he-knew-it/">scandal</a> over the Islamic terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 last year, which was the 11th anniversary of the original 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, isn&#8217;t going away.</p>
<p>The impeachment of President Obama over the Benghazi saga remains a possibility, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told CNN. “I would say yes — I’m not willing to take it off, to take it off the table.&#8221;</p>
<p>Four Americans, including a sitting U.S. ambassador, were allowed to perish at the hands of Islamofascist terrorists while the U.S. military did nothing.</p>
<p>Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hopes to succeed Obama as president, knew from the beginning that the Benghazi consulate was under attack but lied about what happened there. They blamed a goofy YouTube video nobody saw that lampooned the Prophet Mohammed for inflaming Libyans and causing them to launch violent protests that led to American deaths.</p>
<p>The incurious Obama-worshiping media largely ignored the scandal to ensure their favorite candidate won reelection.</p>
<p>Both the IRS targeting of opposition figures and the Benghazi saga are worthy of dictators in Third World banana republics, not the president of the United States of America.</p>
<p>As commentator Michael Barone <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/michael-barone-benghazi-irs-scandals-constitute-politics-by-other-means/article/2529702">observes</a>, the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal &#8220;were both about winning elections under false pretenses.&#8221;</p>
<p>With Benghazi, &#8220;[a] deliberate effort to mislead the voters was launched,&#8221; Barone writes. &#8220;Clinton, White House press secretary Jay Carney, and the president himself talked about a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video — even though no evidence of that came from Benghazi.&#8221;</p>
<p>The CIA&#8217;s talking points on Benghazi were manipulated by the White House and the Department of State and Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was wheeled out to peddle the lies on television.</p>
<p>&#8220;This attempt to mislead the electorate worked,&#8221; Barone concludes. &#8220;It seems a stretch to say that it determined the outcome of the election. But it certainly helped the Obama campaign.&#8221;</p>
<p>Barone notes that IRS targeting of conservative nonprofit organizations began in March 2010 when it &#8220;questioned the tax-free status of one group after another with &#8216;tea party&#8217; or &#8216;patriot&#8217; in their names.&#8221; That is reminiscent of the notorious Department of Homeland Security memo that warned &#8220;of the potential of such groups to engage in terrorist-type violence — which of course hasn’t happened.&#8221;</p>
<p>The targeting, Barone adds, &#8220;continued into 2012, when the criteria were changed to &#8216;political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Then there is the scandal surrounding the surreptitious confiscation of telephone records from the Associated Press, which does not appear to be related to Obama&#8217;s 2012 reelection effort.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Justice secretly procured two months’ worth of telephone logs for journalists at AP, the world’s largest news-gathering organization. Apparently the records were seized as part of an investigation into national security-related leaks.</p>
<p>During a House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), an Obama ally, appeared to urge embattled U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute AP for publishing classified information.</p>
<p>“I would argue that the Espionage Act of 1917 would authorize the prosecution of anyone who disclosed classified information and perhaps that’s another area that we may need to take action on here in this Congress,” said Johnson.</p>
<p>President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat whose aggressive use of government power against domestic dissenters was admired by European fascists such as Benito Mussolini, used the Espionage Act to imprison his political opponents.</p>
<p>If nothing else, these scandals are performing a valuable function. by allowing the public to see the totalitarian face of the modern Democratic Party. Nothing matters to them but power.</p>
<p>Quite apart from the IRS, Benghazi, and AP scandals, Obama has a long record of abusing government power to harass those he perceives as political enemies and reward his allies. He lives and breathes corruption.</p>
<p>In 2011, he sent armed federal agents to raid Gibson Guitars in Memphis, Tenn., over specious environmental infractions. Obama’s National Labor Relations Board targeted Boeing for daring to open a facility in right-to-work state South Carolina. Obama rigged the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings to unfairly enrich his friends in the United Auto Workers at the expense of higher-priority creditors such as bondholders and suppliers.</p>
<p>Obama invaded Libya without congressional authorization and on a flimsy pretext. He unconstitutionally recess-appointed Richard Cordray as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He refused to enforce the provisions of the presumptively constitutional Defense of Marriage Act. In the Fast and Furious scandal, Obama supplied Mexican drug cartels with guns to encourage a wave of violence that would create a public clamor for tougher gun regulations. Hundreds of Mexicans and a U.S. border patrolman died as a result.</p>
<p>This is not an exhaustive list of Obama&#8217;s abuses and more are certain to be uncovered.</p>
<p>Earlier this month during a commencement address Obama mocked those who question government:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>As interest in his impeachment grows in Congress, Obama may live to regret his remarks.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-scandals-far-worse-than-watergate/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>95</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A President’s Enemies List?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-irs-gate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-irs-gate</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-irs-gate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 04:59:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conservative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IRS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[targetting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189411</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Add IRS-Gate to a scandal-ridden administration.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/obamairs.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-189418" alt="President Obama And UK PM David Cameron Meet At The White House" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/obamairs.jpg" width="311" height="208" /></a>President Obama&#8217;s use of the Internal Revenue Service to vex and harass his political opposition is yet more proof that he is far more interested in hunting down his domestic adversaries than Islamic terrorists.</p>
<p>Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said revelations the Obama IRS singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny ought to “send a chill” up Americans&#8217; spines.</p>
<p>The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee told Fox News that the tax-collection agency&#8217;s recently revealed strong-arming of political organizations “is as dangerous a problem the government can have.”</p>
<p>&#8220;This is something that we cannot let stand. It needs to have a full investigation.&#8221;</p>
<p>News that President Obama has been playing Chicago-style Saul Alinsky hardball with political activists on the Right provides more fodder to Obama&#8217;s critics in Congress &#8212; some of whom are now taking a hard look at impeaching the president and removing him from office.</p>
<p>Some commentators draw parallels with President Richard Nixon, noting he came dangerously close to impeachment for unleashing the IRS on his enemies.</p>
<p>On July 27, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment">approved</a></span> on a vote of 28 to 10 an article of impeachment that accused Nixon of using the nation&#8217;s tax-collection agency to punish his enemies. Facing seemingly certain impeachment in the House and removal from office by the Senate, Nixon resigned two weeks later.</p>
<p>On Friday, Lois G. Lerner, director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS, confirmed the IRS abuses. IRS employees in the agency&#8217;s Cincinnati office targeted conservative &#8220;social welfare&#8221; nonprofits seeking recognition under section 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code, she said. Lerner admitted that groups that included the words &#8220;tea party&#8221; or &#8220;patriot&#8221; in their documents were singled out for heightened scrutiny.</p>
<p>Lerner denied that orders had come from on high in Washington to make conservative activists&#8217; lives difficult, but not too many people seem to believe her, especially given President Obama&#8217;s frequent promises to dole out punishment to his opponents.</p>
<p>Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a former tax lawyer, said she couldn&#8217;t believe that junior IRS employees took it upon themselves to challenge conservative groups.</p>
<p>“A low-level functionary in Ohio would have zero jurisdictional authority to intimidate an applicant from New Mexico, or California or Georgia,” Bachmann told <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://wnd.com/">WND.com</a></span>. Such an order had to come from the top, she said.</p>
<p>“We learned to our horror in Benghazi it appears that every move that was made was based on politics,” Bachmann said. “Now it appears the president was willing to use the most feared agency in the U.S. for his own political purposes.”</p>
<p>Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice told <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/why-obama-released-embarrassing-irs-bombshell">WND.com</a></span>, that he too didn&#8217;t buy the administration&#8217;s line. “We knew from the very start that this intimidation tactic was coordinated and focused directly on specific organizations,” he said.</p>
<p>The Obama IRS tried to intimidate conservative groups by demanding &#8220;the identification of members, how they are selected, who they associate with, and even what they discuss,” Sekulow said.</p>
<p>Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the good-government group True the Vote, which fights for electoral integrity, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/13/IRS-Scandal-Facts-Suggest-Other-Gov-Agencies-Involved">said</a></span> she began experiencing troubling problems with the Obama administration back in 2010.</p>
<p>When True the Vote, based in Houston, Texas, sought 501c3 nonprofit status under the federal tax code, multiple federal agencies began investigating the group, along with Engelbrecht&#8217;s family businesses.</p>
<p>&#8220;We applied for nonprofit C-3 status early in 2010. Since that time the IRS has run us through a gauntlet of analysts and hundreds of questions over and over again. They’ve requested to see each and every tweet I’ve ever tweeted or Facebook post I’ve ever posted. They also asked to know every place I’ve ever spoken since our inception and to whom, and everywhere I intend to speak in the future.&#8221;</p>
<p>“This is what the beginning of tyranny looks like,&#8221; Engelbrecht said. &#8220;My family and I have lived with great concern that we would be subject to even greater government abuses if we were vocal about what they were doing to us because of our political views and our efforts to increase governmental accountability.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama played dumb at yesterday&#8217;s White House press conference, claiming he had first learned of the scandal from news reports Friday:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that&#8217;s outrageous and there&#8217;s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable, because the IRS as an independent agency requires absolute integrity, and people have to have confidence that they&#8217;re applying it in a non-partisan way &#8212; applying the laws in a non-partisan way.</p>
<p>And you should feel that way regardless of party. I don&#8217;t care whether you&#8217;re a Democrat, Independent, or a Republican. At some point, there are going to be Republican administrations. At some point, there are going to be Democratic ones. Either way, you don&#8217;t want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate. So this is something that I think people are properly concerned about.</p>
<p>The [Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury Department] is conducting its investigation. And I am not going to comment on their specific findings prematurely, but I can tell you that if you&#8217;ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions. And people have to be held accountable, and it&#8217;s got to be fixed. So we&#8217;ll wait and see what exactly all the details and the facts are. But I&#8217;ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it. And we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Americans who are still waiting for government officials to be held accountable for their handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal, Pigford, and a growing list of Obama-era scandals, would be wise not to hold their breath waiting for the president to make good on his promise.</p>
<p>Under Obama, we now know the IRS <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/the-irs-admits-to-targeting-conservative-groups-but-were-they-also-leaking/">may also have leaked</a></span> confidential donor information that showed Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC gave $10,000 to the National Organization for Marriage in 2008. Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights organization, used the information in the 2012 election cycle to smear Romney as anti-gay.</p>
<p>“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” NOM president Brian Brow said. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign.”</p>
<p>For perhaps the first time in the Obama presidency, left-wing journalists seem divided.</p>
<p>The ethically compromised Ezra Klein, ringleader of the infamous <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupprofile.asp?grpid=7567">Journolist</a></span>, a group of left-wing reporters who conspired to kill multiple stories unfavorable to President Obama, continues lying in order to protect the Obama administration. Klein has been spinning furiously ever since the scandal broke late last week.</p>
<p>On Friday, he blamed the campaign finance system and nonprofit law first and President Obama second. Klein <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/10/the-irs-was-wrong-to-target-the-tea-party-they-shouldve-gone-after-all-501c4s/">rationalized</a></span> that &#8220;none of the tea party groups scrutinized by the agency actually lost the 501(c)(4) designation,&#8221; and that even at its &#8220;most attentive, &#8220;the IRS is treating these groups with kid gloves.&#8221;</p>
<p>On Monday Klein <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/13/wonkbook-the-good-reasons-for-the-irss-dumb-mistake">continued blaming</a></span> everyone but Obama for the IRS crackdown  &#8212; which he termed a &#8220;dumb mistake&#8221; &#8212; on conservative groups. He laid responsibility for the administration&#8217;s breathtaking assault on the First Amendment on supposedly under-supervised rogue employees in the IRS office in Cincinnati.</p>
<p>Apparently still taking cues from Klein, on Monday former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://p.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/may/13/pelosi-irs-problem-stems-court-ruling/">blamed</a></span> the campaign finance system for the IRS scandal.</p>
<p>Like Klein, Pelosi acted as if Obama&#8217;s IRS had merely made a mistake, as opposed to launching a full-fledged witch-hunt against the president&#8217;s conservative foes. She said that there should be “more clarity in the law regarding the activities of tax-exempt organizations along with greater disclosure and transparency,&#8221; and urged the reversal of the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision in <i>Citizens United v. FEC</i>, which she said &#8220;has exacerbated the challenges posed by some of these so-called ‘social welfare’ organizations.”</p>
<p>To his credit, Klein&#8217;s left-wing <i>Washington Post</i> colleague Greg Sargent, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/10/conservatives-have-themselves-a-real-scandal-on-their-hands/">admits</a></span> the IRS story is a really big deal.</p>
<p>“In purely political terms, this is right in the conservative sweet spot — the IRS, bullying, intimidation, political thuggery, etc.,&#8221; Sargent writes. &#8220;We hear that stuff regularly from the conservative media, of course, and the thundering about this one will be epic. But this time, it seems entirely justified. There should be an investigation – a real one – and we should all want to follow it wherever it goes.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, egregious over-reaches by Obama are becoming the norm now that the president is safely ensconced in the White House for a second term ending January 2017.</p>
<p>Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/us/politics/health-secretary-raises-funds-for-health-care-law.html?ref=robertpear">shaking down</a></span> businesses and charitable groups ACORN-style for large donations. Businesses may be reluctant not to fork over cash to Sebelius out of a justifiable fear of offending the powerful cabinet member who is overseeing the implementation of Obamacare.</p>
<p>HHS, which initially denied the existence of what amounts to an extortion racket, says it needs the money because Congress appropriated far less than the administration requested for Obamacare enrollment efforts. HHS is planning to pay potentially billions of dollars to members of radical Saul Alinsky-inspired groups to educate the public about the wonders of Obamacare and get them to sign up.</p>
<p>Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the fund-raising “may be illegal.” He compared it to Reagan-era efforts to raise funds for rebels fighting the Marxist junta in Nicaragua in the 1980s after Congress curtailed federal funding. Alexander aides said the senator plans to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate the propriety of the Obama administration’s fund-raising efforts. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&amp;R Block are expected to contribute $10 million and $500,000 respectively.</p>
<p>The Associated Press (AP) reported yesterday that the U.S. Department of Justice secretly procured two months&#8217; worth of telephone logs for journalists at AP, the world&#8217;s largest news-gathering organization. The Obama administration has refused to say why it seized the records which covered 20-plus telephone lines used by AP in April and May of last year.</p>
<p>Attorneys for AP, whose reporters have been fairly reliable allies of the Obama administration in most cases, said the records listed &#8220;outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery.&#8221;</p>
<p>AP&#8217;s CEO Gary Pruitt sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the return of the records which he said might &#8220;reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP&#8217;s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP&#8217;s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.&#8221;</p>
<p>Perhaps the employees of AP should have considered Obama&#8217;s authoritarian inclinations before they helped to put him in the White House.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-irs-gate/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>59</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Naked Liar</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bosch-fawstin/naked-liar/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=naked-liar</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bosch-fawstin/naked-liar/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 04:19:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bosch Fawstin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cartoon Corner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sequester]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Woodward]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179419</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The empty suit has no clothes.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Forty years after helping bring down Nixon, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/02/27/Obama-media-gang-tackles-Woodward">Bob Woodward is now having to defend himself against Obama for calling him a liar</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/naked-liar/naked-liar/" rel="attachment wp-att-179420"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-179420" title="Naked-Liar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Naked-Liar.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="716" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <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">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bosch-fawstin/naked-liar/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>25</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>McGovern&#8217;s Legacy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/mcgoverns-legacy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mcgoverns-legacy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/mcgoverns-legacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:25:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1968]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[1972]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[death]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democratic Convention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George McGovern]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=159959</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Democratic icon nurtured a leftism that polarized America.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/mcgoverns-legacy/mcgovern11/" rel="attachment wp-att-159964"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-159964" title="mcgovern11" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/mcgovern11.gif" alt="" width="315" height="238" /></a>On Sunday, Democratic icon George McGovern, who served the state of South Dakota for more than twenty years in the House and Senate, passed away at the age of 90. Despite an accomplished <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/21/us/george-mcgovern-dead/index.html">record of service</a> during WWll that included 35 combat missions as a B-24 bomber pilot in Europe earning him the Distinguished Flying Cross, McGovern was best known for his anti-war stance with regard to Vietnam, and his overwhelming defeat in the 1972 presidential election. Since his passing, McGovern has been rightly eulogized for his personal affability and agreeableness, but what must not be airbrushed over is the true nature of his influence on the political landscape. As unfortunate as it is, McGovern helped lead the transformation of the Democratic Party into a coalition of leftists distinct from the previous generation of liberals in the Kennedy mold. As a result, the country has never been the same.</p>
<p>It was McGovern himself who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/george-mcgovern-a-democratic-presidential-nominee-and-liberal-stalwart-dies-at-90.html?pagewanted=all">planted the seeds</a> of that divisiveness. As the <em>New York Times</em> notes in its obituary, McGovern &#8220;became the chairman of a Democratic Party commission on delegate selection, created after the fractious 1968 national convention to give the rank and file more say in picking a presidential nominee.&#8221; As a result, the McGovern-Fraser Commission &#8220;rewrote party rules to ensure that more women, young people and members of minorities were included in delegations. The influence of party leaders was curtailed. More states began choosing delegates on the basis of primary elections. And the party’s center of gravity shifted decidedly leftward.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Leftward&#8221; is somewhat inaccurate. Democrats established a de facto quota system informed by identity politics, where people were encouraged to first think of themselves as members of sub-groups identified by race, class, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Nothing has changed to this day, as California&#8217;s 2012 <a href="http://www.cadem.org/admin/miscdocs/files/Final-2012-Delegate-Selection-Plan-11.3.11.pdf">Delegate Selection Plan</a>, for example, reveals. Goals for representation at the Charlotte convention included dividing Californians into six subgroups with the &#8220;proper&#8221; percentages relative to the general population&#8211;as in 16 percent African-American, 29 percent Latino, 1 percent Native American, 10 percent Asian/Pacific Islanders, 12 percent LGBT, 10 percent Disabled Persons, and 18 percent Youth-Under 30.</p>
<p>In 1972, the Democrat convention in Miami turned into a circus. When party activists <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/how-mcgovern%E2%80%99s-radical-party-polarized-america/2/">offered</a> up selections such as migrant-worker organizer Cesar Chavez, Yippee Jerry Rubin, anti-corporate crusader Ralph Nader, Communist dictator Mao Zedong, and sitcom character Archie Bunker for Vice President, all the shenanigans did was push McGovern&#8217;s acceptance speech well into the next morning. Furthermore, the party platform with which Democrats emerged was anathema to middle America. Aside from the staunch anti-war position, they advocated amnesty for war resisters, the abolition of the draft, deep cuts to the military, a $1,000 grant to every American, a guaranteed family income well above the poverty line, prisoners’ rights, federal funding for local food cooperatives, the adoption of an Ethnic Studies curriculum bill, and a host of other leftist initiatives.</p>
<p>Yet it was McGovern&#8217;s opposition to Vietnam that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/21/us/george-mcgovern-dead/index.html">resonated</a> the most with his supporters. &#8220;Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad,&#8221; he said at the convention.</p>
<p>The convention turned out to be the high point of McGovern&#8217;s campaign. Soon after, it was revealed that McGovern&#8217;s running mate, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton (D-MO), had been hospitalized for nervous exhaustion and undergone electroshock therapy. Despite McGovern&#8217;s promise to back Eagleton &#8220;1000 percent,&#8221; he was replaced by Kennedy in-law R. Sargent Shriver. The election was a rout. McGovern carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, earning 17 electoral votes, while Nixon carried 49 states and won 520 electoral votes.</p>
<p>McGovern reflected on that defeat as recently as a month before he died in a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-mcgovern-on-his-1972-presidential-defeat/2012/09/28/dded48fc-f78c-11e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_story.html">piece</a> for the <em>Washington Post.</em> &#8220;The loss is there, an old wound never fully healed,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;My disappointment was certainly personal, made deeper by the awareness that many thousands of young Americans, and far more Vietnamese and other Asian citizens, were going to and did lose their lives with the Nixon administration’s continuation of the war.&#8221;</p>
<p>For McGovern, like so many liberals, the war in Vietnam remains a one-sided telling of history to this day. It was another liberal icon, JFK, who <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/kennedy_vietnam.htm">escalated</a> America&#8217;s presence in Vietnam, because he believed in the Domino Theory: if Vietnam fell to Communism, the entire Southeast Asian Peninsula would follow. In fact, that&#8217;s exactly what happened, and 2-3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were slaughtered in the ensuing bloodbath. It was a bloodbath caused not only by our troop withdrawal, but the <a href="http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/vietnamwar/a/VietnamEnd.htm">passage</a> of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974 by a Democratically controlled Congress, cutting off all aid to Saigon. One year later, Communists gained control of the entire country. That leftists calculatingly omit these details when trumpeting the success of the anti-war movement is nothing short of appalling.</p>
<p>That 1974 vote arguably marked the point where the New Left effectively took control of the Democrat Party. The classical centrist Democrat liberals who had vigorously opposed Communist totalitarianism would thereafter become rarer and rarer within the party. Add the emergence of identity politics to the mix, and the resultant party was no longer &#8220;liberal,&#8221; but leftist.</p>
<p>It is a leftism that has polarized America. That polarization is best explained by the <em>Wall Street Journal&#8217;s</em> James Taranto. While conceding the prevailing meme promoted by leftist obituaries that McGovern was above all else a &#8220;decent man,&#8221; he challenges New Republic writer Rick Perlstein, who <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/108938/george-mcgovern-decent-and-doomed-liberal-icon">laments</a> that McGovern&#8217;s death reminds us of  &#8220;this space between the longing for unapologetic good-government liberalism and its decimation in a fallen political world&#8211;in which the decent and honorable simply get crushed.&#8221; Taranto contends that leftists labor under the delusion &#8220;that left-wing politics and decency are one and the same thing.&#8221; &#8220;This moral vanity leads the left to excuse, or even not to notice, indecent behavior on the part of their own. It is the reason Obama&#8217;s re-election campaign has been less McGovernite than McCarthyite (and we don&#8217;t mean Gene),&#8221; Taranto concludes.</p>
<p>That vanity also explains the evolution of Democrats since 1972, and why that evolution is so detrimental to bipartisanship: there is a great deal of difference between challenging conservative ideology on the basis of political or intellectual differences, and completely dismissing it as fundamentally indecent&#8211;as well as unworthy of serious rebuttal. It is telling that a substantial portion of leftist rebuttal can be reduced to single words like &#8220;racist,&#8221; &#8220;misogynistic,&#8221; &#8220;nativist,&#8221; and &#8220;homophobic&#8221; or simple catch-alls, such as &#8220;cruel&#8221; and &#8220;uncaring.&#8221;</p>
<p>All of this plays into president Obama&#8217;s current campaign, where the focus has been far more on demonizing his opponent than laying out a vision for America. Yet even when Obama lays out a vision, it is marinated in a stew of &#8220;us against them&#8221; grievances that can be traced back to the radicalism that has been mainstreamed into the Democratic Party of today.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/mcgoverns-legacy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>19</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>An Unintended Tribute to Chuck Colson from the Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/an-unintended-tribute-to-chuck-colson-from-the-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-unintended-tribute-to-chuck-colson-from-the-left</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/an-unintended-tribute-to-chuck-colson-from-the-left/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:07:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles Colson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian Right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dead]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Evangelist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Franky Schaeffer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Watergate]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=129687</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A diatribe against the late evangelist highlights his virtues. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/chuck-colson.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-129803" title="chuck-colson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/chuck-colson.gif" alt="" width="375" height="240" /></a></p>
<p>Voices across the religious and political spectrum have hailed the legacy of Charles Colson, the former Nixon White House staffer who, after his Watergate-related imprisonment, founded a global evangelical ministry for prison inmates.</p>
<p>One exception is Franky Schaeffer, a self-described regretful founder of the Religious Right and son of the late great evangelical theologian, who rejected his father’s legacy and now spits venom at seriously religious people, on his blog, in his books, and sometimes for <em>The Huffington Post</em>.</p>
<p>“Wherever Nixon is today he must be welcoming a true son of far right dirty politics to eternity with a ‘Job well done,’” Schaeffer snarked.  An earlier draft of his diatribe headlined that Colson had “gone to his reward,” implying an eternity other than Heaven.  But even in his reposted new draft, Schaeffer was churlish:  “Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most beloved and bigoted homophobic and misogynistic voices with the death of Charles W. ‘Chuck’ Colson, a Watergate felon who converted to ‘evangelicalism’ but never lost his taste for dirty political tricks against opponents.”</p>
<p>Bitter towards his devout parents and most of his old allies and friends, Schaeffer conspiratorially claims that conservative religious activists target abortion and same sex marriage primarily to trick working class traditionalists into voting Republican.  Or as he elegantly claims of Colson:  “Few men have done more to trade (betray?) the gospel of love for the gospel of empowering corporate America and greed through the misuse of the so-called culture war issues to get lower middle class whites to vote against their own economic interests in the name of ‘family values.’”</p>
<p>Himself now cynical and unmoored from any transcendent moral tradition, Schaeffer assumes that his targets, including Colson, are similarly jaded.</p>
<p>But if Colson’s conversion and over 35-year evangelical ministry were other than genuine, he was a master performer.  Across 4 decades, Colson’s “Prison Fellowship” touched hundreds of thousands of lives around the world.  Prison inmates neither vote nor typically are potential contributors.  But Colson made his life’s work offering otherwise hopeless and forgotten people the hope of transformation that he found in the Gospel as he faced incarceration. He cheerfully proclaimed himself a former miscreant who was delivered solely by God’s grace.  As driven and focused in ministry as he was as Nixon’s ostensible “hatchet man,” Colson was a joyful warrior.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/an-unintended-tribute-to-chuck-colson-from-the-left/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>22</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Remembering a Dissident</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/remembering-a-dissident/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remembering-a-dissident</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/remembering-a-dissident/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:04:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Academy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Armando Valladares]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clenched fists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elena]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[father]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[germany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kgb headquarters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moral clarity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Moscow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moscow state university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuremberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oriental languages]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Party]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sacred values]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[siberia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slave camp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slave masters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soviet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soviet academy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tamil areas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[today]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Union]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USSR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vladimir Bukovsky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vladimir Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yuri Andropov]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=54027</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My father, Yuri Glazov, risked his life standing up against the Soviet regime. Was his battle in vain?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dad.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54032" title="dad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dad.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="421" /></a></p>
<p>One day, when I was nine years old, my father and I were on our way to Church. As we neared the entrance, I spat on the ground. Reflexively, my dad’s arm shot out across my chest like a railway barrier, blocking my motion forward. We stood there, frozen in time, for some three seconds until my father uttered, in a very serious but patient way: &#8220;It is ok to spit outside of KGB headquarters, but never in front of a place such as this.&#8221; I registered the message and indicated my understanding &#8212; and we proceeded on our way.</p>
<p>That was my dad’s moral clarity and sharp, quick-witted way with words; and the sacred values that spawned those words made a profound impression on me from the moment of my birth. I was born into a family of Russian dissidents &#8212; a father and a mother, Yuri and Marina Glazov, who put their clenched fists up and went toe-to-toe with the Evil Empire.</p>
<p>Throughout my youth, my dad shared many stories with me, which included how he had always been aware, even in his youth, that he existed in a slave camp masquerading as a country and that he perpetually dreamed of escaping it. He spent his young years studying maps, trying to decipher which body of water he could swim across to escape the communist paradise he languished in. But his life ended up going a different way: he confronted the slave masters, rather than escaping the prison they had built.</p>
<p>My father was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State  University. His main field of study concerned<strong> </strong>Oriental languages and cultures, with a specialty in the Chinese, Sanskrit and Tamil areas. Despite his rewarding career, my dad put everything on the line and began to attend human rights demonstrations in Moscow on behalf of political prisoners. He also started to sign letters of protest against the political repressions that were heightening in the country in the 1960s<strong>, </strong>connected as they were to the re-Stalinization of the Soviet Union after the Khrushchev thaw. The activities my dad engaged in could land a Soviet citizen in the gulag or a psychiatric hospital for decades.</p>
<p>On February 24,  1968, my father signed the <em>Letter of Twelve</em>, a letter written and signed by twelve Soviet dissidents to the Supreme Congress of Communist Parties in Budapest denouncing Soviet human rights abuses. He was immediately fired from his work for being “unprofessional” in his scholarly studies (even though he previously had received high praise for his academic studies).</p>
<p>The picture of my dad, shown above<strong>,</strong> was taken by a friend who had come to visit him the evening of the day he was expelled from the Academy. My father had been at a meeting at the closed section of the Supreme Soviet of Scholars. Before the committee announced his expulsion, he had delivered a strong speech about political repressions in the country and finished by talking about his hope that the days of freedom would one day come to his beloved Russia.</p>
<p>After his expulsion, my father received a labor card with a special secret code that meant that he was blacklisted and could not receive employment anywhere in the country. He even tried to get a job cleaning streets, but was refused once an employer saw the poisoned markings. In a Soviet Catch-22, because of his “unemployment,” the KGB began to persecute my father for “parasitism” &#8212; a law in the Soviet Union that criminalized unemployed people and subsequently shipped them off to labor camps in Siberia.</p>
<p>Under these circumstances, my dad’s health broke down. He became very sick and was hospitalized. The Communist Party was as cold and unforgiving as the Siberian winter, and the KGB sharks waited for him to arrive home from his sickbed. But my dad’s sickness and several other developments threw the unfolding narrative down a different path:</p>
<p>During this time, a friend of our family’s told my dad that, under vicious harassment by the KGB (they had discovered an affair she was having and threatened to tell her husband), she had agreed to be a witness for them in a trial against my father that would charge (and convict) him of selling foreign currency and drugs on the black market (which she would place in our apartment). Upon hearing this, my dad knew the KGB was going for the jugular and that he only had one hand left to play. He immediately sent a letter to the Department for Exit Visas in which he said: give me a job or let me out of the country. Shortly afterwards, in April 1972, before Nixon’s visit to Moscow — and perhaps because of that visit — my father received the Exit Visa to emigrate from the Soviet Union. In escaping the Soviet hell, he was able to bring his family (my mom, my sister Elena, my brother Grisha and me) to the West.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dacha.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54037" title="dacha" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dacha.jpg" alt="" width="325" height="412" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[My family, after my father was expelled from the Academy. My mom is on the left and my older sister, Elena, is on the right. I''m the youngest, with my older brother Grisha behind me.]</strong></p>
<p>My father never stopped fighting the Soviet system and the murderous, anti-human ideology that spawned it. He never fell into silence about the genocide and monstrous oppression communism engendered everywhere it set foot. He was always outspoken on behalf of political prisoners that languished in communist gulags around the world. I grew up in this spirit that my dad (and mom) nurtured in our family, and my heart and mind, from a young age, were preoccupied with the fate and sufferings of heroes like Russia&#8217;s Vladimir Bukovsky and Cuba&#8217;s Armando Valladares.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/buk.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54046" title="buk" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/buk.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="211" /></a></p>
<p>I am eternally grateful to my father, and to my mother, for having instilled in me one of the highest values in life, which we find in Hebrews 13:3: <em>Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering</em>. And that is precisely that value that explains why I am at <em>Frontpage Magazine</em> today, fighting on the front lines alongside a noble warrior like David Horowitz on behalf of freedom fighters everywhere, and in particular the brave Muslim dissidents, Christians, Jews, Muslim women, and all other minorities and peoples, who are being viciously persecuted under Islamist tyranny.</p>
<p>When my dad arrived in the U.S. via Italy, he first taught at Boston College as Professor of Russian Studies. He then moved to Canada in 1975 to teach at the Department of Russian Studies at Dalhousie  University. He loved to teach Fyodor Dostoevsky and the history of Russian ideas.</p>
<p>In 1992, the Soviet Academy of Sciences apologized to my father for persecuting him earlier, and now invited him to re-establish scholarly contacts. In the mid-1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, my father received a document from the Sakharov Archives located in Boston. Dated February 19, 1971, it was a top secret letter written by Yuri Andropov, leader of the KGB at the time, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Filled with obscene lies and clear self-induced lies, it accused my dad of terrorism and espionage, indicating the kind of trial the KGB was preparing for my dad in those horrifying years. This document proves how much the KGB hated dissidents and spread the most vicious lies about them (being CIA agents etc.).</p>
<p>Bugging the regular conversations of my father with Sakharov, mostly in Sakharov’s apartment, the KGB deliberately distorted the discussions, parts of which dealt with the history of terrorism in Russia. The so-called “espionage” of my father was based on his correspondence with international scholars in his field, which my father dared to conduct in those dangerous years. Naturally, his letters were perlustrated and listed in the KGB files.</p>
<p>My father published numerous books and articles in both Russian and English. The two books that became best known were, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Since-Stalins-Death-Sovietica/dp/9027719691" target="_blank"><strong><em>The Russian Mind Since Stalin’s Death</em></strong><em> </em></a>and <strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Not-Party-Communist-Membership-Sovietica/dp/9027727163/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1267772244&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank"><em>To Be or Not to Be in the Party: Communist Party Membership in the USSR</em></a></strong><em>.</em></p>
<p>My dad died of cancer on March 15, 1998. It was before the Vladimir Putin period, but my father already gauged, with great disappointment, what was happening in his beloved homeland. He understood the disaster and tragedy concerning the future moral health of his country when Nuremberg-style trials did not follow the collapse of the Soviet Union. The crimes and atrocities of Soviet communism – and the ideology that engendered the mass murder of 60 million people – were all supposed to be revealed and condemned. The secret KGB archives were supposed to be opened. The exposure and punishment of high ranking KGB officers and communist officials were supposed to take place in front of the whole world. Instead, these criminals and mafia figures remained in power &#8212; just in new clothing and using new language.</p>
<p>New school textbooks were supposed to be introduced – like those in post-war Germany that dealt honestly with the crimes of the Nazi era. It is impossible to imagine Hitler being praised in today’s German school texts or his glorified portrait being hung high in the streets of Germany. But in Russia, the mirror image of that horror happened and still continues today.</p>
<p>So, today, with Putin and his KGB thugs and murderers in power, we are now witnessing the preparation for the 65<sup>th</sup> anniversary celebration of the Soviet victory in WWII; it will be marked with portraits of Joseph Stalin as the country’s victorious war-time leader. This is no surprise, of course, since Putin has overseen a strong pining for Stalin in Russia, which now manifests itself in a beverage plant in Volgograd releasing a series of soft drinks picturing the dictator on its labels and a new textbook in schools speaking of the mass murderer as, among other things, an &#8220;effective manager.&#8221;</p>
<p>What would my father have thought of all of these developments if he were alive today? So many dissidents sacrificed their lives fighting for freedom in the Soviet Union. For what? Russia was given the window of opportunity to choose freedom in the early 1990s, but it chose to turn its back on this historic opportunity. My father shared the same fate as many of his friends and other dissidents: if you avoided being murdered, you passed away early from cancer or other illnesses. One can only imagine what terrible stress these freedom fighters endured for the sake of bringing liberty to their nation. Was it all in vain?</p>
<p>I don’t think it was. What my father and the other courageous warriors did was meaningful in its own right. Moreover, the struggle my father’s life valiantly represented lives on. And today, each of us can help keep the flame alive.</p>
<p>My father’s career at Dalhousie lasted twenty years – until his retirement in 1995. To honor his memory, a memorial award was established in his name. But funding for this award has been scarce and now the possibility has emerged that it will be shut down. This memorial fund is really the only marker in existence that publicly keeps alive who my dad was, what he did, and what he represented. It symbolizes the struggle of all dissidents for truth and for freedom. If some funds begin to materialize, the memorial award for my father can remain in existence. I would like to put a request to all of you who care and who can help, to kindly click on this site at Dalhousie to read about the <strong><a href="http://russianstudies.dal.ca/Awards/index.php" target="_blank">Yuri Glazov Memorial Award</a></strong> and to contribute in any way you can – and even the smallest contribution will count a lot.</p>
<p>Thank you, I am most grateful to all of you who will help to make sure that my dad’s battle – and the battle of so many freedom fighters and martyrs who rose and fell fighting Soviet communism – will not be forgotten.</p>
<p><strong>To read about the Yuri Glazov Memorial Award, <a href="http://russianstudies.dal.ca/Awards/index.php">click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/remembering-a-dissident/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>34</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Politicizing Smog &#8211; by Rich Trzupek</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/politicizing-smog-by-rich-trzupek/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=politicizing-smog-by-rich-trzupek</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/politicizing-smog-by-rich-trzupek/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:03:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administrator Lisa Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Advisory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[air]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alá]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[best science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush Administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CASAC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clean air act]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton administration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[clinton era]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Committee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compliance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dr. Jonathan Samet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eco systems]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[environmental protection agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hobson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[I.O.U]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[independent board]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[industry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[last thursday]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lisa jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[manufacturing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[modelers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public interest groups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reduction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scientific]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scientific advisory committee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sector]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[standard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[systems analyst]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united states environmental protection agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urban ozone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USEPA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vested interest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=45877</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration’s new smog standards will mean higher costs for millions of Americans. 
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45878" title="smog-infinite-wilderness_1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/smog-infinite-wilderness_1.jpg" alt="smog-infinite-wilderness_1" width="500" height="324" /></p>
<p>Last Thursday, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-smog-pollution-08-jan08,0,3711459.story">plans </a>to lower its standard for urban ozone, popularly known as smog, to a level between 60 and 70 parts per billion. This would be the fourth such reduction since the implementation of the Clean Air Act in the 1970s.</p>
<p>The original standard was 120 parts per billion, a goal that was reduced under the Clinton administration to 80 parts per billion in 1997 and further reduced under the Bush administration to 75 parts per billion in 2008. The Clinton-era reduction in the smog standard was widely-hailed among environmental groups, while the further reduction during the Bush administration was roundly criticized by those same groups.</p>
<p>“Using the best science to strengthen these standards is a long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier,” USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/D70B9C433C46FAA3852576A40058B1D4">said in a press release</a>. The “best science” refers to the advice of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) a purportedly independent board of scientists who participate in the process of setting increasingly more stringent definitions of clean air.</p>
<p>However, USEPA is not supposed to base its decisions solely on CASAC’s recommendations. <a href="http://www.epa.gov/groundlevelozone/standards.html">According to the EPA</a>, the “scientific community, industry, public interest groups, the general public and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC)” all get to play a role whenever the Agency sets new standards. That formula, which every president from Nixon through Bush has employed, has been effectively tossed out the window by the Obama administration, which has chosen to defer to CASAC.</p>
<p>The fact that CASAC picked the lowest proposed standard as the best proposed standard should come as no surprise. Of <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/sab/sabpeople.nsf/WebExternalCommitteeRosters?OpenView&amp;committee=CASAC&amp;secondname=Clean%20Air%20Scientific%20Advisory%20Committee">the seven CASAC members</a> four are engineers, modelers and one eco-systems analyst, all of whom are wholly unqualified to opine on issues regarding public health. The remaining three have a vested interest in seeing lower smog standards promulgated, since all are academics whose research funding depends on air pollution alarmism. CASAC chair Dr. Jonathan Samet, for example, has spent a great deal of his professional career decrying secondhand smoke and is also an advisor to the American Lung Association (ALA), an organization that spends a great deal of time and money lobbying for more restrictive smog standards. Another CASAC member, Dr. Helen Suh MacIntosh, was once <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/introducing_ask_1.php">the answer lady at treehugger.com</a>.</p>
<p>EPA estimates the costs of implementing new smog standards at $19 to $90 billion, but the Agency hastens to add that the benefits will total $13 to $100 billion. The benefits consider only avoided costs, in terms of reduced medical care, worker productivity (due to a reduction in sick days) and the like. Factors like increased unemployment, due to reduced profit margins in the manufacturing sector, and the increased cost of goods and services associated with a tighter standard are not part of the analysis. Further, when estimating the cost of compliance, the EPA acknowledges that it factors is the unknown cost of installing controls that haven’t yet been invented yet.</p>
<p>One of the biggest reasons that EPA and organizations like ALA say that this new, drastically more stringent, standard is necessary is to prevent childhood and other forms of asthma. In the last thirty years, data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics indicate that childhood asthma as increased by over 150%. However, in that same period, <a href="http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/ozone.html">according to USEPA monitoring data</a>, smog concentrations have decreased by 25% nationwide.</p>
<p>If adopted, the new smog standards will significantly increase the cost of living for millions of Americans. They will be forced to purchase low-vapor pressure, and therefore more expensive, special formulations of gasoline. Vehicle inspection programs, ubiquitous to large metropolitan areas, will spread to mid-sized metropolises. Remotely-located power generation facilities, heretofore untouched by smog rules, will have to install and maintain expensive new control systems and will pass that cost along to consumers. Perhaps most distressing of all, the beleaguered American manufacturing sector, which has so far managed to escape the most painfully expensive parts of clean air regulation, will face new mandates that will make it even more difficult to compete against plants overseas that are not similarly constrained.</p>
<p>But, for the Obama administration, there is nothing to lose. At the absolute earliest, the new smog standard will require industry compliance in 2014. Given the inevitable legal challenges and regulatory inertia that accompany any rule making of this type, the full effects won’t likely be felt until 2016 or beyond. Thus, the president has once again written another I.O.U., one that he won’t have to cash, but will be rather deferred to another generation that will be faced with the Hobson’s choice of paying the bill or of rejecting the “consensus” that Obama has embraced.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/politicizing-smog-by-rich-trzupek/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Reid, Race and Private Speech &#8211; by Dennis Prager</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dennis-prager/reid-race-and-private-speech-by-dennis-prager/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=reid-race-and-private-speech-by-dennis-prager</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dennis-prager/reid-race-and-private-speech-by-dennis-prager/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anything]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[belief]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[colleague]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[communist countries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[east german]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Allen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[harm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Harry Reid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Harry Truman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ideologue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[issue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jimmy Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liberal democrat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[majority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mr. Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mr. Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mr. Reid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nothing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[person]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[petard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private conversations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private lives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private moments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republican colleague]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republican conservatives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rhett Butler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[richard nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scarlett O'Hara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secret police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Semite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[senate majority leader]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snitch]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soviet kgb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stasi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[totalitarian states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trent lott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[truth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[utter inability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=45688</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The danger of attributing significance to what Reid said in private. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45690" title="reid" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/reid.jpg" alt="reid" width="450" height="307" /></p>
<p>I think that Harry Reid is a left-wing ideologue who is doing serious  harm to a great country.</p>
<p>I think that Harry Reid would charge any Republican colleague with racism  and ask for that person&#8217;s resignation if he or she said what Reid is reported to  have said about Barack Obama&#8217;s color and accent.</p>
<p>I think that every liberal Democrat deserves to be hoisted on his own  petard and stung by the race card that liberals invented and have used for  decades against Republican conservatives. Given what Democrats and their allies  in the media did to Sens. Trent Lott and George Allen &#8212; taking innocuous  comments and declaring them racist &#8212; Republicans have every right to demand  that Mr. Reid resign as Senate majority leader.</p>
<p>But to the extent that truth still matters in   America , what  Reid is reputed to have said is not racist, let alone renders him a racist. It  seems to be nothing more than a private opinion about what type of black  American had the best chance to be elected  president.</p>
<p>But all this is not the issue. Here are the issues that  matter:</p>
<p>The belief that the public has a right to know what people say privately.</p>
<p>The belief that one knows the &#8220;true nature&#8221; of people if one knows what  they said in private.</p>
<p>The utter inability of Americans to speak with any honesty about anything  to do with race.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s deal with each.</p>
<p>The unearthing of the private lives and thoughts of public figures has  become so normal as to be expected. What the media have done, however, is to  render private conversations of anyone in public life almost as guarded as those  of citizens in Communist countries. The news media have become a nonviolent form  of the East German Stasi or the Soviet KGB. Just as citizens in those former  totalitarian states needed to guard their speech in private, lest secret police  informers snitch on them and ruin their lives, so, too, American public figures  &#8212; from politics to entertainment &#8212; now need to guard their most private  moments, lest a member of the media snitch on them and ruin their  lives.</p>
<p>As Rhett Butler finally said to Scarlett O&#8217;Hara, I say to the media about  the private speech of public figures, &#8220;Frankly, I don&#8217;t give a  damn.&#8221;</p>
<p>Which brings us to the second point &#8212; the belief among many Americans  that one knows &#8220;the real person&#8221; (public or private) if one knows what the  person says in private, and therefore, we should know as much as possible about  the private conversations of public figures.</p>
<p>This is as dangerous as it is nonsensical.</p>
<p>There is no truth to this belief.</p>
<p>We all say all sorts of things in private that reveal nothing about our  true selves. The very nature of private speech is that it enables us to be free  to say anything. It is what we do that tells the world who we are. And as  regards the speech of public figures, it is what public figures say of  significance in public that matters.</p>
<p>It is, to my mind, another of the many examples of the lack of wisdom in  the liberal world that liberals think that private speech reveals who people  are, and that we therefore have a right, even a duty, to know as much about it  as possible. Thus, liberals repeatedly speak of Richard Nixon&#8217;s private  anti-Jewish remarks to make their case that the former president was an  anti-Semite. Of course, this &#8220;anti-Semite&#8221; appointed the first Jewish secretary  of state and saved  Israel &#8216;s life during the Yom Kippur  War. But to the foolish who believe that private speech is the real thing,  little of that matters in assessing Nixon&#8217;s character insofar as it related to  Jews.</p>
<p>To sharpen this point, contrast Nixon with another recent president,  Jimmy Carter. I would be willing to wager that Mr. Carter has never said  anything in private as derogatory about Jews as Nixon did. But to the vast  majority of Jews and non-Jews who understand that the security of the Jewish  state is the most pressing Jewish issue, Mr. Carter has been the Jews&#8217; problem,  not Mr. Nixon. Likewise, Harry Truman sometimes used the term &#8220;kike&#8221; in private  conversation, but it was he who went against the advice of his entire State  Department and recognized  Israel &#8216;s existence as soon as  Israel was  declared a state.</p>
<p>Finally, we again come to  the falsehood that Democrats and liberals regularly offer when they ask  Americans to have honest dialogue on the race issue. Thanks to liberals, one can  sooner swear in public or declare the world is flat than say the most  innocuously valid things about racial matters. One cannot even oppose race-based  affirmative action without liberals labeling the person  &#8220;racist.&#8221;</p>
<p>Because I prize private speech and truth more than I prize humiliating  Harry Reid &#8212; who, again, would not be nearly so decent to any Republican &#8212; I  find the revelation of his private speech and especially the attention paid to  it as if it signifies anything important about him to reflect only one more  example of a downward moral spiral in my beloved  country.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dennis-prager/reid-race-and-private-speech-by-dennis-prager/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>33</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Politicization of Middle Eastern Studies &#8211; by Brendan Goldman</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/politicization-of-middle-eastern-studies-by-brendan-goldman/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=politicization-of-middle-eastern-studies-by-brendan-goldman</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/politicization-of-middle-eastern-studies-by-brendan-goldman/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:00:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aaron Burr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abrahamian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american foreign policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arizona state university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[audience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ayatollah Khomeini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[baruch college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bayat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bennington college]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CIA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Columbia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[columbia professors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eastern]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Farhang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[field]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gary Sick]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George W. Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamid Dabashi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iranian Elections]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iranian opposition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iranian president mahmoud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamic  Republic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic republic of iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judith Yaphe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lee Bollinger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[leiden university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[member]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moderator]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim faith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opposition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opposition movement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overthrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[panel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Jimmy Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president lee bollinger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president mahmoud ahmadinejad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republic of iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Bulliet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Talebi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas Jefferson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[totalitarian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42180</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On blatant display at Columbia U. Iran conference]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42290" title="Khomeini" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Khomeini.jpg" alt="Khomeini" width="400" height="315" /></p>
<p>“We overthrew a dictatorship only to go from bad to worse,” said <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=Mansour+Farhang&amp;sa=Search#472">Mansour Farhang</a>, a prominent figure in the early Islamic Republic of Iran who now serves as a professor at Bennington College.</p>
<p>Farhang was speaking at a Columbia University conference held on December 12<sup>th</sup> entitled, <a href="http://www.payvand.com/news/09/nov/1069.html">“Iran After the Election”</a>. Green shirts and scarves, symbols of <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/12/07/Protests-sign-of-sea-change-Mousavi-says/UPI-87671260210120/">the Iranian opposition</a>, permeated the audience of some 250 people that filled the sterile Altshul auditorium. Attendees included Iranian expatriates, prominent experts of the field, students, and members of the general public.</p>
<p>The conference served to highlight the leftist politicization of Middle Eastern studies. With a few notable exceptions, the panels’ academics drew moral parallels between the Islamic Republic’s policies and those of the Bush and Obama administrations and encouraged an acquiescent American foreign policy in the face of Iran’s nuclear program.</p>
<p>Columbia professors <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=bulliet&amp;sa=Search#922">Richard Bulliet</a> and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=dabashi&amp;sa=Search#922">Hamid Dabashi</a> made it clear from the onset that there would be no attempt at academic objectivity. They opened the conference by criticizing Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, as “incredibly irresponsible” for having had the audacity <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tACSopIZVdk">to publicly chastise Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he came to Columbia two years ago</a>.</p>
<p>Dabashi oversaw the conference’s first panel entitled, “The Aftermath of the Election.”  It included Asef Bayat of Leiden University, <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=Ervand+Abrahamian+&amp;sa=Search#564">Ervand Abrahamian</a> of Baruch College, and Shalha Talebi of Arizona State  University. Bayat and Abrahamian, to their credit, chose to focus on the Iranian elections and not on foreign policy.</p>
<p>Bayat recalled how the expectations of many of the 1979 revolutionaries were dashed as they watched the government they had fought for go through a “spring of freedom” only to become an authoritarian theocracy. He argued that the “Post-Islamist” Green opposition movement seeks to “rescue [Shi’a Muslim] faith from the pollution of the Islamic state.”</p>
<p>Arabrahamian, whom Dabashi introduced as “perhaps the most distinguished scholar in our field,” compared the intimidation tactics of the current Iranian government to those of the worst dictatorial regimes in history, saying, “the [Iranian] horror stories here dwarf those of the Stalinist and Maoist periods.”</p>
<p>Talebi addressed her remarks to disjointed societal and political issues in Iran. She criticized Abrahamian and Bayat for “only talking about [the crimes of] Stalin and Mao and forgetting about our country, and the Western countries.” She then asked rhetorically, “What about Hitler? What about Nixon?&#8230;What about Palestine?”</p>
<p>When a member of the audience voiced his frustration over Talebi’s refusal to stay on subject, Dabashi attacked him.</p>
<p>“I’m the moderator,” Dabashi said.</p>
<p>“Then moderate,” the audience member replied.</p>
<p>Dabashi then went on a long tirade, ending with, “I won’t be the last oriental boy to be told [what to do] by a white guy!”</p>
<p>The following panel was supposed to address Iran’s “International Challenges”, but soon descended into an attack on America’s Middle Eastern policy under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Panel moderator <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=gary+sick&amp;sa=Search#903">Gary Sick</a>, a former advisor to President Jimmy Carter, offered a contemporary version of the same docile Carter-era policies that provided a major catalyst for the fall of the pro-American Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>Professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=Farideh+Farhi+&amp;sa=Search#640">Farideh Farhi</a> of the University of Hawaii suggested that all that America has done in the region has been detrimental to the Iranian people and that the US should “take a few months off [from its involvement in the Middle  East] and see what happens.”</p>
<p>Former CIA Agent Judith Yaphe attempted to appease her peers by criticizing the Bush Administration even more forcefully than her co-panelists had. It is indicative that Sick, as the panel’s moderator, felt obligated to tell Yaphe that serving as a CIA agent is “not something to be ashamed of.”</p>
<p>The final panel, entitled “Appraising the Life of the Republic”, was the most engaging and informative of the day, though it still had its share of unsubstantiated claims.</p>
<p>Panel members included Farhang, the Islamic Republic’s first ambassador to the United States, who resigned because of Ayatollah Khomeini’s intransigence during the hostage crisis.</p>
<p>Bulliet of Columbia, another member of the panel, drew parallels between the Islamic and American Revolutions and argued that in its Khomeini-era manifestation the Islamic Republic may have been truly democratic.</p>
<p>“In all fairness, one has to recognize the first three decades of any regime leaving a totalitarian system are fraught with all sorts of problems,” Bulliet said, subsequently comparing <a href="http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/burr/burraccount.html">Thomas Jefferson’s attempts to try his Vice President, Aaron Burr, as a traitor</a> to <a href="http://www.shabakeh.de/en/archives/individual/001816.html">the leaders of the Islamic Republic and their Revolutionary Courts</a> conspiring to execute thousands of Iranian dissidents.</p>
<p>Even Farhang could not stomach Bulliet’s statement that Khomeini’s Iran was not totalitarian, responding that “Khomeini was an absolutist,” a “tyrant,” and “more of a Communist than a Shi’a [Muslim].”</p>
<p>Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet of the University  of Pennsylvania offered a thoughtful, dispassionate speech, addressing the historic roots of the Islamic Republic and the opposition movement.</p>
<p>Houchang Chehabi of Boston  University gave a thought-provoking, humorous assessment of the place of ethnic and religious minorities in the Islamic Republic. Talking directly to his largely Iranian audience, he mocked the notion that Iranians are innately tolerant people because, “Cyrus [the Great] freed the Jews 2,500 years ago.”</p>
<p>Chehabi spoke bluntly about <a href="http://iran.bahai.us/">the persecution of Iran’s Baha’i minority</a>, giving examples of crimes, including murders, which have never gone to trial because the victims were Baha’i. He then addressed the biases of “leftist academics” who are “apologists” for the Islamic regime. He chastised these academics’ hypocrisy in ignoring “the deep contacts that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has with fascists in Europe,” and said that “perhaps prejudice [runs] as deep among the leftists as among the Islamists.” Chehabi’s remark about “leftist academics” was perhaps the most pertinent of the conference, because it challenged many of his co-panelists’ overriding assumption that the policies they espouse are in the best interest of the Iranian people.</p>
<p>Dabashi’s outburst and many of the panelists’ condescension towards America’s role in the region are indicative of the increasing politicization of the field of Middle Eastern studies. This trend threatens to undermine open discourse in university classrooms and to confound government policymakers who would seek out academics for objective information on a complex region.</p>
<p><em>Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the </em><em>Middle  East</em><em> Forum. This essay was sponsored by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the </em><em>Middle  East</em><em> Forum.</em></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/politicization-of-middle-eastern-studies-by-brendan-goldman/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Lessons of Tiger Woods &#8211; by Larry Elder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:12:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assessment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contempt of court]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[course]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Frost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Define]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[diminishing returns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dishonor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[family man]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[football game]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[former president bill clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friend]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[golf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ground]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[guy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[image]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Impeachment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inner demons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lying under oath]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[man]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mistresses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mr. Woods]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[new revelations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oath]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[obstruction of justice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Office]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[percent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[person]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[place]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Bill Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President George W]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Richard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professional football]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public humiliation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recklessness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[response]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rev. Jesse Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self loathing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shock value]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sick guy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supernova]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[term]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tiger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tiger Woods]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[value]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wife]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[window shades]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=41403</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Does Bill Clinton draw down the window shades, only to venture out under cover of night to go to the ATM? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-41411" title="woods" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/woods.jpg" alt="woods" width="450" height="478" /></p>
<p>&#8220;Tiger&#8217;s finished.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Define &#8216;finished,&#8217;&#8221; I said to a friend in response to her assessment. Will Tiger Woods lose endorsements? Yes. How many and for how long remain open questions. Has the carefully groomed image of the contented family man who &#8220;has it all&#8221; gone supernova? Absolutely. Will he lose his wife, given her public humiliation and her shattered trust in her husband? Strong possibility.</p>
<p>But the history books are full of Act Twos.</p>
<p>Woods is a golfer. He is neither politician nor pastor. As he struggles to deal with his apparent inner demons/self-loathing/shame/embarrassment/dishonor, he can still golf. The curiosity factor alone means stratospheric ratings for his next tournament, especially if he&#8217;s still contending on the final day. People unable to spell &#8220;golf&#8221; will tune in for his next event.</p>
<p>As bad as all of this is — especially for his wife — Woods hasn&#8217;t killed anybody, at least that we know of. The more bizarre things become — the growing number of alleged mistresses, his mother-in-law&#8217;s hospitalization, the recklessness of his behavior — new revelations may start producing diminishing returns in shock value. People will wonder whether he&#8217;s a really rotten guy with a phony stage-managed image or a really sick guy who &#8220;needs help.&#8221;</p>
<p>A friend and I recently watched a professional football game. The announcer mentioned a stellar player. My friend said, &#8220;I like him. He&#8217;s amazing.&#8221; I said, &#8220;Still standing, after being tried for murder.&#8221; She thought I was joking. &#8220;And,&#8221; I said, &#8220;he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to the police.&#8221; We Googled it. He not only lied to the police but told others to do so, as well.</p>
<p>Former President Bill Clinton is the only elected president ever to be impeached. He pleaded guilty to contempt of court for lying under oath and temporarily lost his law license. Does Clinton draw down the window shades, only to venture out under cover of night to go to the ATM? Please. He blamed the Republicans, who wanted to &#8220;overturn elections.&#8221; Defenders said, &#8220;Everybody lies about sex.&#8221; Had the Constitution permitted it, Clinton could have won a third term.</p>
<p>When Clinton first ran for president, he admitted on &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; having had &#8220;problems with his marriage.&#8221; People interpreted this to mean an acknowledgment of previous cheating with a promise to sin no more.</p>
<p>But he did. He lied to the country about it. He lied about it under oath. Today he strolls around the globe, an elder statesman whose opinions are sought out and somberly considered.</p>
<p>The Rev. Jesse Jackson, in the midst of Clinton&#8217;s crisis, went to the White House to serve as a presidential &#8220;mentor.&#8221; Jackson brought his visibly pregnant mistress, and both later posed for a group photograph in the Oval Office. When Jackson&#8217;s scandal broke, he briefly closed shop. But he soon said, &#8220;The ground is no place for a champion. The ground is no place that I will wallow on.&#8221; Back in business.</p>
<p>As to former President Richard Nixon, few have fallen from so high to so low so quickly. He went from the most powerful person on earth to a guy ACORN wouldn&#8217;t hire. The only U.S. president to resign, Nixon did so just ahead of an impeachment posse, with a conviction in the Senate a near certainty. After leaving office, he got paid for an interview with David Frost, wrote a bunch of books and gave speeches on foreign policy. He sufficiently redeemed himself, to the point that by former President George W. Bush&#8217;s second term, many Democrats thought Bush&#8217;s &#8220;crimes&#8221; worthier of impeachment than those of Nixon.</p>
<p>As for Woods, he once had a favorable rating of nearly 85 percent. A recent poll still gave him a favorable rating of 60 percent. And Woods conceivably could even turn public opinion in his favor if he continues to excel on the golf course. &#8220;My, what an ability to focus!&#8221; etc.</p>
<p>There are many lessons here. There is the silliness of considering celebrities, about whom we really know very little, to be &#8220;role models.&#8221; There is the envy, sometimes, of the lives of others when very little is as it seems.</p>
<p>Fortunate is the person who can look back at his or her life and say, &#8220;I would do it all again, the same way.&#8221; My dad once said that to me. Most of us mortals have made mistakes, sometimes too many to count. Some mistakes have to do with career. Some have to do with money. Some have to do with other poor decisions and poor choices — reconsidered, of course, with the benefit of hindsight.</p>
<p>But the ones that cause the most regret and the most pain have to do with the treatment of other people — especially those who loved and trusted us. We finally discover the value and worth of what we once had and failed to appreciate. And now it&#8217;s too late. Good luck, Mr. Woods.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>43</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 1649/1908 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 13:51:15 by W3 Total Cache -->