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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; report</title>
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		<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>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2014 05:40:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[CIA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nixon]]></category>
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		<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>
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		<title>The Senate CIA Report and Democratic Treachery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-senate-cia-report-and-democratic-treachery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-senate-cia-report-and-democratic-treachery</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/the-senate-cia-report-and-democratic-treachery/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:55:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Interrogation]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247157</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Putting American lives on the line for a political payout.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/feinstein.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247160" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/feinstein-432x350.png" alt="feinstein" width="315" height="255" /></a>On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the 500-page executive summary of the report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation of terrorist detainees. Democrats, the media and Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are using it as an opportunity to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/cia-torture-report/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hammer</span></a> the CIA and the Bush administration, while American embassies, military units and other U.S. interests are <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/us-prepares-security-risks-torture-report-080155482--politics.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">preparing</span></a> for possible reprisals. But adding further threats to Americans already in harm&#8217;s way matters not. Beleaguered congressional Democrats are desperate for a political boon and have turned to an old standby: sabotaging national security and sacrificing American lives.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Since their betrayal of the Iraq war, Democrats, particularly in the Senate, have panned the techniques used by the CIA to garner critical information in the days following 9/11 as “torture,” and have claimed that they yielded no useful intel. Though the use of these techniques was long known to Democrats — with virtual indifference toward them at the outset — many Democrats have since claimed they were unaware of what was occurring, which explains their lack of opposition to their government supposedly engaging in “torture.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Leading the way on the latter fabrication was then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Her ongoing denials regarding knowledge of the CIA&#8217;s waterboarding of terrorists were ultimately undone by Pelosi herself in 2009, when she finally <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/pelosi-cia-misled-congress-over-waterboarding/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">admitted</span></a> she had known about the program since 2003. Yet even as she admitted it, she continued to promote the “Bush lied, people died” lie, insisting that &#8220;the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same time the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Those would be the same weapons of mass destruction whose existence was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html?smid=tw-share&amp;_r=3"><span style="color: #1255cc;">acknowledged</span></a> by the <i>New York Times</i> last October.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">As for so-called torture, the report <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?emc=edit_na_20141209&amp;nlid=23627335&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #0433ff;">cited</span></a> sleep deprivation, threatening subjects with death, “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” described by the CIA&#8217;s chief of interrogations as a way to exert “total control over detainees,” and waterboarding, as in simulating near drowning. The report further stated that former CIA directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden hyped the value of those techniques in secret briefings with the White House and Congress.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein admitted that she “could understand the C.I.A.&#8217;s impulse to consider the use of every possible tool to gather intelligence and remove terrorists from the battlefield, and the C.I.A. was encouraged by political leaders and the public to do whatever it could to prevent another attack,” but that “such pressure, fear and expectation of further terrorist plots do not justify, temper or excuse improper actions taken by individuals or organizations in the name of national security. The major lesson of this report is that regardless of the pressures and the need to act, the intelligence community’s actions must always reflect who we are as a nation, and adhere to our laws and standards.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The hypocrisy is breathtaking. While the Left wrings its collective hands about “torture,” they remain silent to Barack Obama’s <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">drone program</span></a>. One that has not only killed terrorists, but America citizens, Samir Khan, and Anwar al-Awlaki. Both men were traitors, but they were executed without the due process the Left supposedly reveres so much in the case of terrorist detainees. So was Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, as well as innocents who were victims of collateral damage. No one was reported to have been killed by the Bush administration&#8217;s enhanced interrogation techniques, yet somehow Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney are routinely <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Bush+Cheney+war+criminals&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8"><span style="color: #1255cc;">referred</span></a> to as “war criminals” while Obama largely gets a pass.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The <i>Washington Post’s</i> Bill Gerson cuts right through the double-standard, noting intelligence personnel now being excoriated received the same “direction and protection,” consisting of presidential approval, congressional briefing, lawfulness determined by the U.S. Attorney General and target value determined by the CIA Director as those currently participating in the drone program. &#8220;Some may argue a subtle moral distinction between harshly interrogating a terrorist and blowing his limbs apart,” Gerson writes. &#8220;But international human rights groups and legal authorities generally look down on both. The main difference? One is Obama’s favorite program. A few years from now, a new president and new congressional leaders may take a different view.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">This double standard puts the lie to Democrats’ seriousness toward the claim that the Bush administration engaged in “torture,” illegality and human rights abuses in its mission to thwart terrorist attacks against the homeland. In truth, the campaign against tough interrogation is a political cudgel that Democrats have employed to bludgeon their political enemies, no matter the national security cost. It amounts to nothing less than a revisionist effort to turn those entrusted with protecting the country in the immediate aftermath of the worst domestic attack in American history into pariahs, even as the war remains ongoing. As Gerson so rightly notes, the report’s release is an act of &#8220;exceptional congressional recklessness” engineered by Feinstein, whose &#8220;legacy is a massive dump of intelligence details useful to the enemy in a time of war.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Our allies are equally appalled. ”Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, &#8216;You do this, this will cause violence and deaths,&#8221;&#8217; <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/08/house-intelligence-chairman-rogers-report-will-spur-attacks/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">warned</span></a> Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. &#8220;Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged such concerns, but insisted the administration &#8220;strongly supports the release of this declassified summary of the report.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">No doubt. The release neatly coincided with ObamaCare mega-consultant Jonathan Gruber’s Congressional <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/gruber-hearing/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">testimony</span></a> regarding his contempt for the American public, and the deception employed to get the ACA passed. Thus, the administration has once again employed a bait and switch effort to distract the public, despite the fact that distraction imperils Americans and our allies.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">CIA veteran Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who ran the enhanced interrogation program, <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: #1255cc;">destroys</span></a> the contention that Democrats were out of the loop, and that the enhanced interrogation techniques yielded no useful information. &#8220;The leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and of both parties in Congress were briefed on the program more than 40 times between 2002 and 2009,” he reveals, noting those same lawmakers &#8220;urged us to do everything possible to prevent another attack on our soil.” He was equally forthright about the intel that was garnered. &#8220;After extraordinary CIA efforts, aided by information obtained through the enhanced-interrogation program, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan,&#8221; he explains.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">He is especially critical of “hypocritical&#8221; Democrats. He cites Feinstein&#8217;s 2002 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/weekinreview/all-fronts-getting-more-than-one-step-ahead-of-an-attack.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">assertion</span></a> that &#8220;we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves,” as well as an <a href="http://votesmart.org/public-statement/15557/cnn-late-edition-with-wolf-blitzer#.VIdvyifFm3d"><span style="color: #1255cc;">interview</span></a> between CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WVA), then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. In response to Blitzer’s question about whether Khalid Sheik Mohammed might be turned over to friendly countries with no restrictions on torture, the Senator admitted it was possible. “I wouldn’t take anything off the table where he is concerned, because this is the man who has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans over the last 10 years,” he replied.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Rodriguez then adds a dose of devastating perspective to the mix. &#8220;If Feinstein, Rockefeller and other politicians were saying such things in print and on national TV, imagine what they were saying to us in private….Our reward, a decade later, is to hear some of these same politicians expressing outrage for what was done and, even worse, mischaracterizing the actions taken and understating the successes achieved,” he states.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Current and former CIA leaders <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/defense/226465-spies-push-back-on-senate-report"><span style="color: #1255cc;">bitterly contested</span></a> the report. Bush-era CIA Director George Tenet labeled it &#8220;biased, inaccurate, and destructive,” adding that it &#8220;does damage to U.S. national security, to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency, and most of all to the truth.” CIA Director John Brennan said the agency made mistakes, but insisted &#8220;the record does not support the study’s inference that the agency systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program.” A <a href="http://ciasavedlives.com/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">website</span></a> launched by a number of intelligence officials blasted the report:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;"><i>The recently released Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Majority report on the CIA&#8217;s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program is marred by errors of facts and interpretation and is completely at odds with the reality that the leaders and officers of the Central Intelligence Agency lived through. It represents the single worst example of Congressional oversight in our many years of government service.</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Cheney also remains <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/politics/white-house-and-gop-clash-over-torture-report.html?emc=edit_th_20141209&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;nlid=62431058&amp;_r=1"><span style="color: #1255cc;">resolute</span></a> about the necessity and legality of the program. “What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation, and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it,” he said in a telephone interview with the <i>New York Times</i>. “I think that’s all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program.” Cheney also had nothing but praise for those who participated. “As far as I’m concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized,” he added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The alternative viewpoint? &#8220;Showing respect even for ones enemies. Trying to understand and in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view,” <a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2014/12/212850-hillary-remarks-beat-enemies-may-just-killed-chances-presidency/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> Secretary of State and likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Americans have a choice to make between competing worldviews. The wrong choice will have deadly consequences.</p>
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		<title>Issa Report Slams Dem Collaboration with the IRS</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/issa-report-slams-dem-collaboration-with-the-irs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=issa-report-slams-dem-collaboration-with-the-irs</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2014 04:56:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[contempt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Darrell Issa]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Lois Lerner]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222929</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How leftist lawmakers are helping the corrupt government agency evade justice. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/darrell-issa-furious-after-democrat-releases-irs-transcript-that-blows-up-his-investigation.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222945" alt="darrell-issa-furious-after-democrat-releases-irs-transcript-that-blows-up-his-investigation" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/darrell-issa-furious-after-democrat-releases-irs-transcript-that-blows-up-his-investigation-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>A bombshell </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/4-7-2014-IRS-Staff-Report-w-appendix.pdf">report</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> released by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) completely refutes Democratic Party talking points that the IRS scandal involved unwarranted targeting of both liberal and conservative groups. &#8220;Time and again, (Democrats) have claimed that the IRS targeted liberal- and progressive-oriented groups as well—and that, therefore, there was no political animus to the IRS’s actions” the report states. “These Democratic claims are flat-out wrong and have no basis in any thorough examination of the fact. Yet the Administration’s chief defenders continue to make these assertions in a concerted effort to deflate and distract from the truth about the IRS’s targeting of tax-exempt applicants.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report reveals </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/04/07/gop-report-on-irs-only-tea-party-groups-received-systematic-scrutiny/">far more</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> about the early stages of Tea Party targeting conducted by the tax collection agency, identifying the initial three cases sent to Washington, D.C. for additional scrutiny in 2010. Two of the three abandoned their applications rather than face additional IRS questioning. The third group is </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">still</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> waiting for its case to be resolved.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Several other key findings of the report are equally troubling. Perhaps the most troubling of all was that the IRS itself  “selectively prioritized and produced” documents for the Committee to support the narrative that their targeting had been bipartisan. It noted that on June 24, 2013, Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel asserted during a press conference that the agency misconduct was “broader” that conservative applicants, even as he refused to discuss the criteria that led him to that conclusion. Nonetheless, the IRS subsequently produced &#8220;hundreds of pages of self-selected documents that supported his assertion,” even as they had only provided the Committee with less than 2000 total pages of IRS material. &#8220;Congressional Democrats had no qualms in putting these self-selected documents to use,” the report states.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Those Democrats included Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) , and Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA), all of whom made “misleading statements that the IRS targeted liberal groups based on the selectively produced documents.&#8221; </span></p>
<p>Furthermore, the IRS &#8220;was not an unwilling participant” in promoting this charade. When it came time to produce these selective documents, they &#8220;suddenly reversed” their previous interpretation of a law that had prevented them from releasing confidential taxpayer information to the American public. The reinterpretation allowed the IRS to release info on three leftist groups, ACORN, Successors and Emerge.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet IRS agents who </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/07/committee-staff-report-no-progressive-groups-were-targeted-by-irs/">testified</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> before the Committee noted that these groups were scrutinized because the IRS believed they were old organizations attempting to apply as new ones. The report itself notes that unlike the Tea Party, such groups were not subjected to a “case sensitive report” or reviewed by the IRS’s Chief Council. And while IRS documents showed that some liberal groups were being scrutinized, “only Tea Party applicants received systematic scrutiny because of their political beliefs,” and “public and nonpublic analyses of IRS data show that the IRS routinely approved liberal applications while holding and scrutinizing conservative applications.”  </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The report further states that the IRS&#8217;s efforts to make their subsequent scrutiny more neutral </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/04/07/gop-report-on-irs-only-tea-party-groups-received-systematic-scrutiny/">amounted</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to little more than “cosmetic changes,” while the focus on conservative organizations continued. “Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word ‘progressive,’ all of which were then approved by the IRS, while Tea Party groups received unprecedented review and experienced years-long delays,” it states. </span></p>
<p>This reality aligns with <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2014/04/07/house-gop-report-the-irs-did-not-target-progressive-groups/">testimony</a> given by IRS officials Elizabeth Hofacre and her successor, Ron Bell. Both explicitly stated that only Tea Party groups had been targeted through the summer of 2011. They were equally explicit in rejecting the notion that progressive groups were held to anything remotely resembling the same standard. Hofacre revealed that she was on the project until October of 2011 and was “only instructed to work “Tea Party/‘Patriot’/9/12 organizations.” Bell echoed that assertion, further noting that he inherited 50-100 cases from Hofacre, all of which were Tea Party cases.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Even when the BOLO (be on the lookout for) criteria were changed by Lois Lerner, and term the “Tea Party” became “advocacy organizations,” the IRS &#8220;still intended to identify and single out Tea Party applications for scrutiny.” In further testimony, Bell noted that the change amounted to nothing significant as non-Tea Party cases were either moved to closure or further development, while Tea Party cases remained on hold—for an entire year&#8211;pending guidance from Washington. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What about offsetting testimony? &#8220;Unlike Tea Party cases, the Oversight Committee’s review has received no testimony from IRS employees that any progressive groups were scrutinized because of their organization’s expressed political beliefs,” the report states.</span></p>
<p>One of the more devastating takedowns of Democratic contentions concerns Lerner’s initial revelation about the IRS’s nefarious efforts. The report resorts to pure logic, noting that when Lerner &#8220;publicly apologized for the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party applicants, she offered no such apology for its targeting of any liberal groups. When asked if the IRS had treated liberal groups inappropriately, Lerner responded: &#8216;I don’t have any information on that.&#8217; This admission severely undercuts Democratic ex post allegations of bipartisan targeting.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A series of emails between IRS officials are included in the report, with one especially damning one penned by Lois Lerner. “Tea Party matter very dangerous,” it states. “this could be the vehicle to go to court on the issue of whether Citizen’s United overturning the ban on corporate spending applies to tax exempt rules.” In addition to the obvious bias directed towards the Tea Party, this email suggests that Lerner was sympathetic, if not outright supportive, of the Americans left’s determination to undermine the Supreme Court’s </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission/">decision</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> disallowing government restrictions on political advocacy spending by corporations, associations and unions.</span></p>
<p>Lerner made her position clearer <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/08/06/Lois-Lerner-Discusses-Political-Pressure-on-the-IRS-in-2010">during</a> a speech at Duke University in October of 2010, when she insisted that Citizens United “dealt a huge blow, overturning a 100-year-old precedent that basically corporations couldn’t give directly to political campaigns.” Lerner went on to reveal the pressure under which the IRS was operating as a result. &#8220;The FEC can’t do anything about it. They want the IRS to fix the problem,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Everybody is screaming at us right now: ‘Fix it now before the election. Can’t you see how much these people are spending?’&#8221;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Who “they” are remains a mystery. Lerner has appeared before the Committee on two occasions. Both times she asserted her Fifth Amendment right, protecting her from self-incrimination. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">What happens next remains to be seen. Last Thursday, the House Oversight Committee indicated they would be </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/374983/oversight-committee-will-move-hold-lerner-contempt-eliana-johnson">holding a vote</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> this week on whether to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress. During a June hearing, a party-line vote by the Committee panel determined that Lerner had waived her Fifth Amendment rights when she made an opening statement during her first appearance last May. When she reiterated that right during her second appearance, she left herself vulnerable to a charge of obstruction. The process moves to the House, where John Boehner (R-OH) has indicated he will allow a vote on the contempt of Congress charge. If Lerner is found guilty, the matter is directed to a grand jury, where she could receive a prison sentence between a month and a year or a fine between $100 and $1,000.</span></p>
<p>The report makes it clear why Lerner’s testimony is critical. &#8220;The committee will never be able to fully understand the IRS’s actions,” it states. &#8220;Lerner has unique, firsthand knowledge of how and why” the IRS targeted conservative organizations for unwarranted scrutiny.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the meantime, the political fault lines have been clearly illuminated. &#8220;For months, the Administration and congressional Democrats have attempted to downplay the IRS’s misconduct,” the report states in final paragraph of its executive summary. &#8220;First, the Administration sought to minimize the fallout by preemptively acknowledging the misconduct in response to a planted question at an obscure Friday morning tax-law conference. When that strategy failed, the Administration shifted to blaming &#8216;rogue agents&#8217; and &#8216;line-level&#8217; employees for the targeting. When those assertions proved false, congressional Democrats baselessly attacked the character and integrity of the inspector general. Their attempt to allege bipartisan targeting is just another effort to distract from the fact that the Obama IRS systematically targeted and delayed conservative tax-exempt applicants.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Prescott Arizona Tea Party is the poster child for those delays. Despite being one of the first three groups targeted, they have yet to be notified about the status of their application—more than 51 months later. “I don’t see much equality under the law there,” said spokesman Rick Harbaugh. That’s because there is none.</span></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Illegal Immigration Free-For-All</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/obamas-illegal-immigration-free-for-all/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-illegal-immigration-free-for-all</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Mar 2014 04:54:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Criminal record? Repeat offenses? "Welcome to America," says the president. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/large_ICE.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222120" alt="large_ICE" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/large_ICE.jpg" width="263" height="202" /></a>The Obama administration is barely enforcing immigration laws against illegal immigrants now and intends to do even less in the future, according to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).</p>
<p>“The evidence reveals that the Administration has carried out a dramatic nullification of federal law,” Sessions <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/25/Sessions-Report-Demolishes-Obama-Deporter-In-Chief-Myth">told</a> Breitbart News.</p>
<p>“Under the guise of setting ‘priorities,’ the Administration has determined that almost anyone in the world who can enter the United States is free to illegally live, work and claim benefits here as long as they are not caught committing a felony or other serious crime.&#8221;</p>
<p>Sessions&#8217;s comments came after his office released a three-page <a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/9b44654f-04ed-4de5-8326-8f0caff2a868/critical-alert---dhs-enforcement-data.pdf">&#8220;Critical Alert&#8221;</a> prepared by the senator&#8217;s staffers. The report asserts that the Obama administration is currently blocking the enforcement of immigration laws in the overwhelming majority of violations and is planning to turn down the heat on illegals even more by further expanding the various <i>de facto</i> presidential amnesties now in effect.</p>
<p>President Obama has taken three separate, legally and constitutionally dubious actions that when considered collectively guarantee that almost no individuals illegally present in the country will be deported if their sole act of lawbreaking consists of being in the country.</p>
<p>Obama has provided executive amnesty and work permits for illegal immigrants covered by the proposed &#8220;DREAM Act&#8221; that Congress has repeatedly rejected. That legislation, if enacted, would cover individuals who claim to have entered the U.S. as minors under their parents&#8217; guidance.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also issued a directive in August 2013 expanding that amnesty to illegal immigrant relatives of &#8220;DREAM Act&#8221; beneficiaries. DHS issued another directive in December 2012 reinforcing the existing policy under which almost all immigration offenses were deemed unenforceable absent a separate criminal conviction.</p>
<p>The Sessions report undermines the claim by some left-wing pressure groups that President Obama is tough on illegal immigrants and is deporting them in record numbers. Some radical activists have mocked Obama, labeling him the &#8220;Deporter in Chief,&#8221; in what now appears to have been contrived criticism calculated to give the president political cover to move even further to the left on immigration policy.</p>
<p>Left-wing lawmakers are calling on Obama to scale back deportations. After Latino Democrats met with the president at the White House recently, DHS announced it was considering how to deport illegal immigrants in a more &#8220;humane&#8221; way.</p>
<p>Except for the occasional convicted criminal, hardly any illegal aliens at all are being deported under Obama, Sessions discovered.</p>
<p>According to official Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) statistics on 2013 removals, 98 percent of all removals met one of the agency’s “enforcement priorities.&#8221; Those priorities consist of: individuals convicted of a serious criminal offense; those apprehended in the act of crossing the border; those who have been previously deported; and fugitives from the law.</p>
<p>The first two categories —235,000 border apprehensions (which are not deportations as commonly understood) and 110,000 removals of convicted criminals— taken together account for 94 percent of the 368,000 removals last year.</p>
<p>Under 0.2 percent, or under two tenths of 1 percent, of the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants and visa overstayers in the U.S. were placed into removal proceedings who did not have serious criminal convictions on their record.</p>
<p>Under 0.08 percent  &#8211;that&#8217;s less than eight one-hundredths of 1 percent&#8211; of the 12 million were placed into removal proceedings who were neither convicted of a serious crime nor a repeat immigration violator.</p>
<p>This means that at least 99.92 percent of illegal immigrants and visa overstayers without known crimes on their records did not face removal.</p>
<p>Illegals are routinely taken into custody and released back into the community soon afterward. Those garden-variety illegal economic migrants not targeted for removal &#8220;are free to illegally work in the United States and to receive taxpayer benefits, regardless of whether or not they come into contact with immigration enforcement,&#8221; the report notes.</p>
<p>In a particularly disturbing incident described in the report, ICE management cautioned an ICE officer in 2011 that he would be subject to disciplinary action if he followed through and enforced the law by issuing a Notice to Appear in court to an illegal immigrant “driving the vehicle of a known fugitive without a license.”</p>
<p>“The suspect, who had multiple misdemeanor offenses on his record, was released while the ICE officer was threatened with suspension,” the report stated.</p>
<p>Amnesty opponents in the House of Representatives reacted strongly to the Sessions report.</p>
<p>“The Obama administration’s subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law make enforcement of our immigration laws virtually impossible,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said. “The law-abiding and taxpaying Americans who oppose this executive amnesty policy are paying the price with lower wages and fewer job opportunities.”</p>
<p>Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) thundered that while &#8220;President Obama hypocritically tells people he is for income equality, [at the same time] he violates federal immigration law, floods the labor market with wage-suppressing illegal aliens, and destroys the chance millions of hard-working Americans have of attaining self-sufficiency and the American dream.”</p>
<p>“It is clear that President Obama believes it is more important to pander to voters based on race than it is to enforce immigration laws that protect American workers’ ability to earn a living wage.”</p>
<p>Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said, “This is another clear warning to anyone who thinks immigration reform is possible under President Obama. He has repeatedly shown a willingness to enforce the law selectively, while looking the other way when it doesn&#8217;t fit his agenda.”</p>
<p>Obama and generations of leftist politicians before him have been using immigration to subvert the American system. In the 1960s the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) shepherded reform of that era’s immigration laws through Congress. The concept is simple: Flood America with people who don’t share Americans’ traditional philosophical commitment to the rule of law, limited government, and markets, in order to force changes in society.</p>
<p>So far the plan is working.</p>
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		<title>ObamaCare and Drug Poverty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/obamacare-and-drug-poverty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-and-drug-poverty</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2014 04:31:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why life-saving medicine prices are about to skyrocket. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/prescription-drugs.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221684" alt="prescription-drugs" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/prescription-drugs-450x341.jpg" width="315" height="239" /></a>Hard as it is to believe, there is yet another price spike coming courtesy of ObamaCare. Avalere Health, a market and healthcare research firm, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/obamacare-plans-bring-hefty-fees-drugs-23018345">estimates</a> that some consumers will pay as much as half the cost of so-called &#8220;specialty drugs&#8221; under health overhaul-related plans. By comparison, consumers in private plans typically pay no more than a third of those costs. &#8220;There’s a significant percentage of plans who are using coinsurance of 50 percent or higher,&#8221; said Caroline Pearson, who tracks the health care overhaul for Avalere Health. &#8220;It is generally a lot higher than what we see in private insurance.&#8221;</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A study by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) revealed that while only 1 percent of drug prescriptions written in 2012 were for specialty drugs such as Avastin, a cancer drug, or Letairis, used to medicate hypertension, they accounted for 25 percent of the total costs associated with prescription drugs. It&#8217;s not hard to see why. The average cost per patient for Avasitn is $11,000 per year. Letairis costs a whopping $32,000 per patient per annum. &#8220;Spending on specialty drugs is growing rapidly. It&#8217;s unsustainable,&#8221; said Clare Krusing, spokeswoman for AHIP.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is not news. Specialty drugs have long represented the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://eba.benefitnews.com/health-insurance-exchange/news/studies-show-high-cost-sharing-on-specialty-drugs-2740126-1.html">fastest</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> growing category of medical prescription and overall healthcare expenses, yet ObamaCare put no cost-controls in place to either stop or slow that momentum. As a result, health insurers can charge more money for drugs that control chronic illnesses. Avalere&#8217;s study of 19 states found that nearly 60 percent of ObamaCare’s Silver plans, and 38 percent of Platinum plans, charged coinsurance rates for specialty drugs, and 60 percent of bronze plans charged coinsurance rates of more than 30 percent.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;In the past, we&#8217;ve seen 10 or 20 percent coinsurance rates. Now we&#8217;re seeing 30, 40 and 50 percent,&#8221; </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/28/us-usa-healthcare-costs-idUSBREA1R08420140228">said</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Brian Rosen, senior vice president for public policy at the Leukemia &amp; Lymphoma Society, which commissioned actuarial firm Milliman Inc. to study the new plans. &#8220;So patients are being asked to bear more of the cost.&#8221; Milliman’s study of California, Texas, Florida and New York confirmed coinsurance rates as high as 40 and 50 percent for specialty drugs in those states. Drugs that can cost $8000 or more per month. Rosen addressed the inevitable result. &#8220;Patients are going to spend their entire out-of-pocket cap before they ever see a dime from the insurance company,&#8221; he explained.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obamacare caps out-of-pocket expenses at $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for families. Thus it is relatively easy for patients with serious illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, leukemia, or diabetes to reach those caps within a few months. Pearson notes that once patients pay more than several hundred dollars for their medications, they begin abandoning them altogether.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As of now, insurers are generally free to put whatever drugs they want into the specialty tier of a healthcare plan. Some patient advocates believe insurers are doing this to discourage chronically ill patients from enrolling in their plans. Yet insurers began replacing fixed-dollar co-payments for specialty drugs with coinsurance rates long before ObamaCare became law. Unfortunately, ObamaCare apparently exacerbates that reality: experts note that patients often spend more for their prescriptions under ObamaCare plans because of the coinsurance.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And despite the contentions of advocates, insurers had little choice regarding the change because some drug costs can reach astounding levels. For example, the average annual cost of treating severe lupus can can reach $63,000, according to a 2011 study published in the journal Arthritis Care and Research. Approximately 1.5 million Americans have the disease. Other drug costs can run more than $100,000 per year for a single patient. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obviously some percentage of cost-sharing is designed to discourage usage, &#8220;especially the avoidable kind,&#8221; notes Bruce Pyenson, a principal and consulting actuary at Milliman who isn&#8217;t surprised by the increased cost levels. “That’s a significant issue that more and more people are going to be facing, whether on the exchange, off the exchange, or in their employer-sponsored plans through large organizations,” he contends. He envisions another challenge for health insurance exchange (HIX) patients, who will also find it difficult to determine what is and isn&#8217;t covered.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Largely obscured in the discussion of these increases in coinsurance is the reality that they are often being used to keep premium costs low in order to attract the so-called &#8220;young invincibles&#8221; insurers need to maintain financially viability. It&#8217;s not working. The coveted 18 to 35 year old demographic the Obama administration predicted would account for 40 percent of enrollment has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-18/young-invincibles-are-killing-obamacare">reached</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> only 25 percent. Even that&#8217;s a rosy assumption because administration officials have this pathetically deceptive habit of making </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/03/18/carney_we_dont_have_specific_data_for_people_who_have_paid_obamacare_premiums.html">no distinction</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> between those who signed up for ObamaCare and those who actually paid for coverage.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Thus, Avalere Health made an equally unsurprising prediction. &#8220;There is extensive concern about rate increases next year,&#8221; </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://money.msn.com/health-and-life-insurance/article.aspx?post=9d4c8bdb-7bee-4ccc-80d9-f0d09b1bc0f3">warned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Vice President Pearson. &#8220;Particularly since early exchange enrollment is skewed toward older enrollees, some are concerned that plans will need to raise prices in 2015.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And as surely as night follows day, the Obama administration surreptitiously and illegally </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://nypost.com/2014/03/21/obamas-ever-growing-insurance-company-bailout/">enlarged</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the insurer bailout contained in the law to cope with those rising prices.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Section 1342 in the Affordable Care Act had already provided insurance companies with a bailout. It was engendered by the reality that insurers would have to cover the costs associated with caring for seriously ill people for the same price as healthy people, underwriting the plan&#8217;s mandatory benefits, paying $100 billion in taxes over a decade and, later on, coping with the illegal changes President Obama made to the law &#8212; all while keeping premium prices affordable. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Prior to Friday March 14, many insurance companies were faced with either jacking premiums through the roof, or abandoning the exchanges. With the &#8220;enhanced&#8221; bailout that increases permissible profit margins from 3 percent to 5 percent, and the amount of money companies can spend on non-patient-related expenses from from 20 percent to 22 percent, companies can continue to sell policies with artificially low premium prices &#8212; secure in the knowledge that billions of taxpayer dollars are readily available to underwrite their losses.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Adding insult to injury, the administration is also talking about </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/19/pipes-obamas-risk-corridors-to-a-bailout/">extending</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> those &#8220;risk corridors&#8221; an additional three years past their current 2016 expiration date. If there is a clearer indication this entire plan is fiscally unsustainable, one is hard-pressed to imagine what it is.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Many Americans have become acquainted with the phrase &#8220;kicking the can down the road&#8221; as it relates to our national debt, even as only a relative handful of them really understand the grotesque consequences associated with that unprecedented irresponsibility. ObamaCare is a far more potent time bomb. It affects people on a far deeper personal level in an area of their lives where they already feel highly vulnerable. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet there is something far larger going on here. Because ObamaCare is wholly owned by the American left, its failure represents an existential threat to their ideology. Thus Americans should expect even more changes to the law, courtesy of people who believe the ends justify the means, even if the rule of law must be tossed aside in the process. ObamaCare represents the epitome of such lawlessness &#8212; along with the bankruptcy of progressive ideology.</span></p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with ObamaCare expert <strong>Monty Morton</strong>, who gives a report card for president&#8217;s &#8220;Affordable Care Act&#8221;:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QV8MNkFpG60" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Islamist State of Iran: Leader in Human Rights Violation</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/islamist-state-of-iran-leader-in-human-rights-violation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islamist-state-of-iran-leader-in-human-rights-violation</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/majid-rafizadeh/islamist-state-of-iran-leader-in-human-rights-violation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2014 05:27:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abuse]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Responding to the Mullahs' phony human rights indictment of the U.S.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/iran-hangings-from-cranes.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217644" alt="iran-hangings-from-cranes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/iran-hangings-from-cranes-450x301.jpg" width="270" height="181" /></a>The Iranian military published a flimsy and unsubstantiated 28-page report this week criticizing human rights in the United States. Intriguingly, the report was supported by the Basij, a militia governmental group that is a leader in human rights violations, according to numerous international organizations. Several of its leaders have been convicted of crimes against humanity, and cannot leave the Islamic Republic of Iran.</span></p>
<p>Ahmed Esfandiyari, the lieutenant commander of the Basij force, was quoted by the semi-official Fars News Agency as saying that similar reports on the human rights situation about other Western countries would be released on a regular and quarterly basis.</p>
<p>Iranian military leaders were excited about the ceremony for the publication of the 28-page report on human rights and the US held Monday in Tehran. The reports lacks any statistical data for supporting its conclusions, and it fails to provide any credible arguments to back its thesis. It draws on cases arbitrarily, such as the case of George Zimmerman.</p>
<p>Speaking of Iran&#8217;s record, Esfandiyari mentioned that human rights issues are at the foundation of the Iranian government and that Iran&#8217;s emphasis on human rights is &#8220;extensive.&#8221;</p>
<p>It is ironic that Iranian Ayatollahs, Mullahs and leaders are boasting about their human rights records while the nation is carrying out egregious human rights abuses, according to various international organizations.</p>
<p>These facts are documented by credible international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, rather than by a militia group that itself carries out crimes against humanity. It is worth noting that these facts are the official ones, there are many covert human rights violations being carried out in Iran and other Islamic countries that are not recorded by human rights organizations or Amnesty International since they cannot be adequately verified.</p>
<p>Iran tops many credible lists compiled about human rights violations, lack of democracy, and constriction of rights including freedom of speech, press, assembly, and political participation of the citizenry. Iran tops the rank in arbitrary arrests and detentions, capital punishment, stoning, unequal rights for women and men, widespread abuses against members of recognized and unrecognized religious and ethnic minorities— this groups includes Christians and Baha’is who have been discriminated against and continue to encounter arbitrary detention and unfair trials, and be denied educational opportunities and jobs.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In addition, according to Human Rights Watch, Iran also engages in systematic discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  According to the organization, &#8220;Iran is one of only seven countries with laws allowing executions for consensual same-sex conduct.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Several branches of the Iranian regime have been accused by international organizations of human rights abuses, including the volunteer paramilitary force, the Basij, the judiciary, as well as security forces like the elite Islamist Revolutionary Guards Corps.</span></p>
<p>According to Amnesty International, just since the beginning of 2014, the Islamist state of Iran has carried out a total of 40 executions. According to reports, at least 33 of these executions were carried out in the past week alone. These executions are officially acknowledged by the Iranian regime.  Public executions were also carried out this month, on January 14<sup>th</sup> in a city called Saveh, Markazi Province, in the northern part of Iran.</p>
<p>“The spike in the number of executions carried out so far this month in Iran is alarming. The Iranian authorities’ attempts to change their international image are meaningless if at the same time executions continue to increase,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa. Iran&#8217;s Islamist authoritarian rulers have abused their own people for decades, since 1979.</p>
<p>In 2013, thousands of students, political activists, human rights activists, filmmakers, lawyers, advocates for gender equality, Iranians with ties to Western countries, journalists, ethnic and religious minorities, and religious dissidents have been arrested, jailed and executed by the Iranian regime. Many of these victims did not receive due process. Many are tried in the military courts of Iran’s notorious Revolutionary Guards Corps.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to Sahraoui, “Revolutionary Courts which routinely fall far short of international fair trial standards. The reality in Iran is that people are being ruthlessly sentenced to death after unfair trials, and this is unacceptable.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Iran’s constitution legitimizes these human rights abuses by adding Sharia or Islamic laws to almost every article. For example, when it comes to arresting bloggers and torturing those who exercise free speech or press, a certain article states, &#8220;publications and the press are free to express their ideas unless these contravene the precepts of Islam or harm public rights. These conditions will be defined by laws.&#8221; This gives the Islamist regime the legal apparatuses to arrest, torture, jail, kill and execute people.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These recent happenings are only the tip of the iceberg of human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike Iran’s 28 page unsubstantiated report collected by an institution accused of crimes against humanity, the aforementioned reports about Iran’s human rights abuses are collected by credible international organizations that do not record anything until it is completely verified by the concrete evidence.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The New York Times&#8217; Benghazi Revisionism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-new-york-times-benghazi-revisionism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-new-york-times-benghazi-revisionism</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Dec 2013 05:36:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214161</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Clearing the deck for Hillary Clinton in 2016.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/US-consulate-libya-blood-streaks.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214164" alt="US-consulate-libya-blood-streaks" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/US-consulate-libya-blood-streaks.png" width="305" height="227" /></a>To help put Hillary Clinton in the White House, the once-great <i>New York Times</i> has published a dubious report swallowing the Obama administration&#8217;s lies about the Sept. 11, 2012 Islamist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.</p>
<p>In an act of journalistic malfeasance, the agenda-setting newspaper of record <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi/?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=edit_th_20131229">concluded</a> over the weekend that the once-obscure &#8220;Innocence of Muslims&#8221; YouTube video sparked the armed assault that left four Americans dead at the height of last year&#8217;s presidential election cycle. The newspaper also concluded that al-Qaeda wasn&#8217;t involved, ignoring the mountain of evidence suggesting al-Qaeda was involved.</p>
<blockquote><p>Months of investigation by <i>The New York Times</i>, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.</p></blockquote>
<p>Evidently the Old Gray Lady didn&#8217;t look too hard for the truth.</p>
<p>From the outset the Obama administration said that what happened in Benghazi was a spontaneous riot identical to what had taken place in Cairo, Egypt, a short time before.</p>
<p>The administration <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/11/16/flashback-what-susan-rice-said-about-benghazi/">claimed</a> that the Benghazi violence was a spontaneous protest that somehow got out of hand. The official line was that a demonstration outside the U.S. mission in Benghazi grew increasingly violent and that protesters unconnected to terrorist groups eventually stormed the facility.</p>
<p>Not long after the attack National Security Adviser Susan Rice told Fox&#8217;s Chris Wallace that,</p>
<blockquote><p>the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. That what happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent and those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in post-revolutionary Libya and that then spun out of control.</p></blockquote>
<p>Weeks later the Obama administration changed its tune, admitting as more and more evidence accumulated that terrorist groups were involved in planning and carrying out the attack.</p>
<p>After Rice&#8217;s TV appearance, the State Department said that there were no protests whatsoever outside the consulate before the attack. The tale that Rice told of &#8220;mobs&#8221; and &#8220;protests&#8221; spiraling out of control was an utter fabrication. It was a bald-faced lie told with a straight face to the American people on national TV.</p>
<p>Why would the administration go on with this charade? Mostly likely to downplay the threat of Islamic jihad during Obama&#8217;s reelection campaign. President Obama had gone to great lengths to declare that al-Qaeda was in decline thanks to his efforts. It is clear that the Benghazi attack was premeditated and planned, though the exact details of for how long and by whom remain a bit fuzzy.</p>
<p>Like radical leftist fabulist Oliver Stone laboring to create his crazy-quilt alternative myth explaining the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the <i>New York Times</i> is attempting to rewrite the narrative about what really happened in Benghazi and afterwards. It is trying to resurrect the Obama administration&#8217;s original line of argument in order to create wiggle room for Hillary Clinton who has been scathingly criticized by Republican lawmakers and the occasional Democrat for bungling the Benghazi saga.</p>
<p>Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), an outspoken critic of the Obama administration&#8217;s handling of the Benghazi saga, was not impressed, saying a proper congressional investigation is urgently needed to clear the air.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is why I introduced my discharge petition to force a full investigation into the Benghazi attacks with full subpoena power,&#8221; Stockman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told <i>FrontPage</i>. &#8220;So far we have had only partial, limited investigations. I hope Speaker Boehner will immediately bring my petition to the floor so justice can be served.&#8221;</p>
<p>Stockman&#8217;s discharge petition, <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hres306ih/pdf/BILLS-113hres306ih.pdf">House Resolution 306</a>, would establish &#8220;a select committee to investigate and report on the attack on the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya.&#8221; Boehner has been blocking Stockman&#8217;s request for months.</p>
<p>Amidst White House stonewalling, intimidation of witnesses, and Republican gutlessness, little has been done to move the ball forward in the investigation surrounding the deaths on Sept. 11, 2012, of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods at U.S. facilities in eastern Libya.</p>
<p>But on &#8220;Fox News Sunday,&#8221; House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/29/congress-in-bipartisan-tone-disputes-report-al-qaeda-not-involved-in-benghazi/">rejected</a> the <i>New York Times</i> story. “I dispute that, and the intelligence community, to a large volume, disputes that,” he said, adding several times that the article was “not accurate.”</p>
<p>Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), also on the show, also rejected the newspaper report, saying “intelligence indicates al-Qaeda was involved.”</p>
<p>On Saturday, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a member and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News the contention in the <i>NYT</i> article that the militia group Ansar al-Shariah &#8212; not al-Qaeda &#8212; led the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, was an exercise in semantics.</p>
<p>“It’s misleading,” said King, given that Ansar al-Shariah is widely believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. “It’s a distinction without a difference.”</p>
<p>The <i>New York Times</i> article, allegedly the work product of a team of researchers, also contradicts the testimony of Greg Hicks, the deputy of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was murdered during the attack. Hicks said the &#8220;Innocence of Muslims&#8221; video, which portrayed the Islamic prophet Mohammed in an unflattering manner, was &#8220;a non-event in Libya&#8221; at that time and didn&#8217;t precipitate the Benghazi attack.</p>
<p>As previously noted, the obvious goal of this breathtakingly dishonest move is to insulate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from criticism for her role in the affair. It is no understatement to suggest that there is a vast left-wing media conspiracy aimed at maintaining the political viability of the woman who coined the phrase &#8220;vast right-wing conspiracy&#8221; as a red herring to explain away the problems of her corrupt, lawbreaking husband, then-President Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>The Left&#8217;s coverup of the Obama administration&#8217;s mishandling of the Benghazi saga began as soon as the attack got underway a little over 15 months ago. A coordinated effort to deflect blame from President Obama, at that time involved in a competitive reelection fight, was directed by the White House with the assistance of dupes in the media.</p>
<p>Even the hapless Candy Crowley got involved in defending Obama when during a televised presidential debate she <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/candy-crowleys-benghazi-lifeline-to-obama/">slapped down</a> GOP candidate Mitt Romney for correctly stating that “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.” Obama got more support from the left-wing media and the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, which went on to publish a book titled <i>The Benghazi Hoax</i>, by Media Matters founder and confessed liar David Brock, in order to provide progressive dupes with talking points to regurgitate.</p>
<p>The <i>New York Times</i> story comes as Democrats grow increasingly nervous about an electoral wipeout in the congressional elections in November 2014. Evidence of Democrat jitters abounds. Republicans <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/2014-a-bad-year-for-the-left/">lead</a> Democrats in the generic congressional ballot by 5 percentage points as public disapproval of President Obama and Obamacare continue to rise.</p>
<p>The Obama White House is preparing <a href="http://tiny.iavian.net/1rj1">to flood</a> the airwaves with pro-Affordable Care Act propaganda showing alleged Obamacare success stories. Over the weekend the Democratic National Committee <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/28/dnc-sends-email-defending-obama-from-impeachment-possibility/">sent out</a> a mass email to Obama supporters warning that Republicans are preparing to impeach the 44th president. The email referred to the “I-Word” and said that “Republicans are actually excited about the idea.” Actually, only a handful of Republican lawmakers would like to move forward with impeachment proceedings. Members of the GOP leadership are terrified of taking action out of a paralyzing fear of being tarred as bigots by left-wingers who characterize virtually all criticism of Obama as motivated by racial antagonism.</p>
<p>The Left will do whatever it takes to decouple Hillary Clinton in the public mind from the fiasco in Benghazi. Expect many more blatant media attempts to rehabilitate her stained legacy as Secretary of State to come.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The UK Confronts Islamism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-uk-confronts-islamism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-uk-confronts-islamism</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Dec 2013 05:42:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212791</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The West still remains clueless.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/kl.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212793" alt="kl" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/kl-450x272.jpg" width="315" height="190" /></a>A century ago the murder of a British soldier in broad daylight in London would have been an act of war. In this post-imperial and post-everything age, an atrocity leads to a task force which produces a report which is then filed in a desk drawer by the undersecretary for something or other.</p>
<p>Like clockwork, the murder of Lee Rigby led to a task force and to a report. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/263181/ETF_FINAL.pdf">The report is 7 pages long.</a> It’s possible to read it in much less than the twenty minutes that it took London police to respond to the murder in progress. You could even get through it a few times in real time while a Muslim convert who describes himself as a soldier of Allah saws away at a fallen Englishman’s head with no one to stop him.</p>
<p>There is a thing that organizations say when they know that they are hip deep in a crisis. They say that “we are taking this seriously.”</p>
<p>The report, “Tackling Extremism in the UK” certainly takes matters seriously. The evidence of that is not so much in the report, as in the task force which included the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, four Secretaries of State, three Ministers, one Chancellor, one Lord Chancellor and a partridge in a pear tree.</p>
<p>Like so many of the more “serious” and “sincere” efforts at tackling the biggest threat to civilization in the twenty-first century, the report mixes occasional good ideas with politically correct absurdities. It starts off by equating Islamophobia with Al Qaeda and rolls out a plan to fight back against Islamism.</p>
<p>“As the greatest risk to our security comes from Al Qa’ida and like-minded groups, and terrorist ideologies draw on and make use of extremist ideas, we believe it is also necessary to define the ideology of Islamist extremism,” the report states. And then it goes on to carefully avoid defining it except to contend that, whatever it is; it is not Islam.</p>
<p>“This is a distinct ideology which should not be confused with traditional religious practice. It is an ideology which is based on a distorted interpretation of Islam, which betrays Islam’s peaceful principles, and draws on the teachings of the likes of Sayyid Qutb.”</p>
<p>The mention of Sayyid Qutb is startling considering that the UK seemed to be pretending that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “moderate” group. Say what you will about Cameron, but I don’t see Obama chairing a task force that would produce a report denouncing the Muslim Brotherhood’s evil genius.</p>
<p>But Qutb’s mention feels like a random aberration thrown in by someone a little too knowing. Beyond that the only further definition of Islamist extremism is that, “they seek to impose a global Islamic state governed by their interpretation of Shari’ah as state law, rejecting liberal values such as democracy, the rule of law and equality.”</p>
<p>In other words, Islamists are seeking to impose Islam on everyone. But then they aren’t a distorted interpretation of Islam. Islamism is simply the organized political implementation of Islam in the same way that Nazism was the implementation of National Socialism and Marxism is the attempted implementation of Karl Marx’s ideas.</p>
<p>Apologists can argue that Marxism distorts Marx and that Islamism distorts Islam, but those remain unconvincing defenses. Implementing a set of ideas always distorts them, but realizing ideas is the only truly objective way to assess their merit by seeing their consequences.</p>
<p>What the report is clumsily getting at is the idea that Islam is legitimate in private practice, but not in public imposition. It’s Islam when a Muslim goes to a mosque or avoids alcohol, but Islamism when he harasses barflies or chops off heads under the dictates of Islamic law. Unfortunately this distinction has no meaning in Islam which was never rewired to function as a private religion in a secular state.</p>
<p>America dealt with the clash between religion and tolerance by separating church and state allowing churches to retain their full doctrine while secularizing the machinery of the state.  Europe dealt with it by secularizing and liberalizing national churches to such a degree that they no longer had any religious content that anyone could object to.</p>
<p>Islam was absent from Europe when this rewiring took place. Unlike its Christian and Jewish antagonists, it hasn’t been liberalized or secularized. And it insists on being a public religion because theocracy is what it was built to do. Islam was not the religion of the oppressed. It was the religion of the oppressors. It equates morality with authority. If it doesn’t control the public square, then it has no function.</p>
<p>To Europeans, the infringement of religious values on public life is considered extremism. More so than blowing up buses. But Islam is dedicated to doing exactly that. It is an unreconstructed theocracy.</p>
<p>The Extremism report talks around these basic facts.  The solution of all the extremism projects is to combat Islamic theocracy by having governments distinguish “good Islam” from “bad Islam”. It’s a silly and awkward solution because it creates a government religion in the name of combating a government religion.</p>
<p>The difference, as in countries like Egypt or Russia, is that it’s supposed to end with government riding herd on religion instead of the other way around. But it’s not likely that the UK will have the stomach for the confrontation and repression that Egypt or Russia carry off with a shrug. And so Islam will ride it.</p>
<p>When Western governments talk about countering extremism, they mean picking and choosing between the obvious Islamists who march around with “Sharia for the UK” banners and the slightly more subtle followers of Qutb who promise to fight extremism with their moderate front groups.</p>
<p>True to form, the UK report tries to fight Islam with more Islam. It rightly calls for more thorough inspections of religious schools and urges universities to choose their speakers more wisely, but then it throws in proposals to equip every university and prison with more Muslim chaplains.</p>
<p>It never asks why, if Saudi-trained Imams are the solution to extremism, Saudi Arabia, which has more Imams per square metre than even Tower Hamlets, also turns out more Muslim terrorists than even Tower Hamlets.</p>
<p>Nowhere on earth has an increase in the number of Imams led to a decrease in theocratic violence. It’s like trying to slow down left-wing violence by importing more Communist agitators. It can’t ever work.</p>
<p>In totalitarian movements, the difference between the moderates and extremists lies only in the paths that they take to the same final goal. The radicals want action now. The moderates are willing to wait until the demographics are firmly on their side. The radicals want to blow up buses. The moderates want to expand immigration numbers. And both totalitarian paths ultimately lead to Londonistan.</p>
<p>Both the moderates and the extremists are Islamists. They both want an Islam that is a public religion. And that is not only a public religion, but the public religion.</p>
<p>It is not only the extremism of means by those who wish to make Islam into the religion of the state rapidly and violently that ought to concern Cameron; but it is also the extremism of ends that is Islam regardless of whether its rule is achieved by the bomb or the ballot box that ought to worry him.</p>
<p>The unlicensed beheaders are the short term threat. But the long term threat is a Britain in which the beheaders are licensed by the state.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>The U.S. Jobs That Went to Immigrants</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/the-u-s-jobs-that-went-to-immigrants/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-u-s-jobs-that-went-to-immigrants</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Jul 2013 04:35:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=195940</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A devastating new report casts serious doubts on immigration reform.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/iStock_000018164382Medium.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195984" alt="iStock_000018164382Medium" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/iStock_000018164382Medium-450x311.jpg" width="315" height="218" /></a>A new report concludes that immigrants accounted for all the employment gains in the US labor market from 2000-2013. The report challenges the notion that immigration helps the economy, a common argument by those who favor comprehensive immigration reform, and S. 744, the recently passed Senate immigration bill, specifically.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cis.org/immigrant-gains-native-losses-in-the-job-market-2000-to-2013?utm_source=E-mail+Updates&amp;utm_campaign=a781f22ea4-Immigrants+Gain%2C+Natives+Lose&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_7dc4c5d977-a781f22ea4-44724005">The report was commission by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and it was written by Steven A. Camarota, the director of research at CIS, and Karen Zeigler, a demographer</a>. It concluded that the native-born population accounted for two-thirds of overall growth in the working-age population (16 to 65), but none of the net growth in employment among the working-age has gone to natives. As the report stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>While jobs are always being created and lost, and the number of workers rises and falls with the economy, a new analysis of government data shows that all of the net gain in employment over the last 13 years has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). From the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2013, the number of natives working actually fell by 1.3 million while the overall size of the working-age (16 to 65) native population increased by 16.4 million. Over the same time period, the number of immigrants working (legal and illegal) increased by 5.3 million.</p></blockquote>
<p>The study also found that the native percentage of the working population has decreased by nearly 15% in the last decade.</p>
<blockquote><p>Even before the recession, when the economy was expanding (2000 to 2007), 60 percent of the net increase in employment among the working-age went to immigrants, even though they accounted for just 38 percent of population growth among the working-age population.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/3/immigrants-account-for-all-job-gains-since-2000/">Speaking with the Washington Times, Alex Nowrash, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, challenged the findings of the CIS study</a>. Mr. Nowrash concluded that immigrants and natives rarely compete for the same jobs because both groups end up specializing in different niches.</p>
<p>In April, Florida Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to David Addington of the Heritage Foundation in which he stated that his current immigration <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/RubioLetter.pdf">reform plan would be an economic boon by shifting the immigration population to include more skilled workers</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>As I consider the potential impact of immigration reform, I am keenly aware that there will be budgetary impacts when illegal immigrants begin to access citizenship beginning 13 years after immigration reform is enacted. However, I also believe that immigration reform that shifts the mix of legal immigration away from family-based toward highly-skilled/merit based combined with bringing millions of undocumented aliens out of the underground economy will improve the labor market, increase entrepreneurship and create jobs, leading to a net increase in economic growth and reducing the deficit.</p></blockquote>
<p>The CIS study comes as the fate of immigration reform remains up in the air even as S. 744 passed the US Senate in June. Immigration reform now moves to the US House of Representatives which is currently considering a number of immigration reform bills, all of which are currently much less ambitious.</p>
<p>At roughly the same time the Senate was passing S. 744, the Judiciary Committee for the US House of Representatives passed the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/06/19/house-panel-approves-controversial-immigration-bill/">Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act (SAFE).</a> SAFE is an enforcement-only bill that not only makes being in the country illegally a federal crime (it’s currently only an administrative violation), but would provide more authority to local and state officials to make immigration-related arrests.</p>
<p>SAFE is one of four immigration-related bills making its way through the House of Representatives. All four are significantly less ambitious than what has passed in the Senate.</p>
<p>Media reports claimed that a House counterpart to the Senate&#8217;s &#8220;Gang of 8&#8243; was close to agreeing to their own version of comprehensive immigration reform, but that has yet to materialize.</p>
<p>If any of the four bills currently making their way in the House passes, the House and Senate would conference. In that case, the ambitious Senate bill would have to be reconciled with the much less ambitious bill from the House. If nothing passes in the House, immigration reform will die.</p>
<p>The current Senate version of immigration reform is more than one thousand pages long. Despite what Nancy Pelosi once said, it’s much better if the public knows what’s in the bill before any bill passes. Now that immigration reform has reached the House of Representatives, it’s important that the issues be fully debated and analyzed. The true nature of benefits from immigration are chief among the issues that should be discussed and debated.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Beirut: The Next Benghazi?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/beirut-the-next-benghazi/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=beirut-the-next-benghazi</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:30:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192923</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How long before jihadists ransack another under-protected consulate?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/050813_dcl_biasbash_640.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-192926" alt="050813_dcl_biasbash_640" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/050813_dcl_biasbash_640-450x319.jpg" width="270" height="191" /></a>Nine months after four Americans, including our ambassador, were killed at the US consulate in Benghazi, a new State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report warns that a series of security vulnerabilities at the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon leaves it vulnerable to a similar attack in that unstable area.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.washingtonguardian.com/sites/default/files/beirutembassyreport.pdf">report released in May concluded</a> that a series of security deficiencies, including weaknesses in the physical structure itself, leave the Beirut embassy vulnerable. While the State Department has put in place a plan to upgrade the facility, a new structure won’t be completed until 2016. As the OIG report said,</p>
<blockquote><p>Physical security vulnerabilities at mission facilities, which include office buildings and residences, place employees at risk. Compliance with Overseas Security Policy Board standards is not possible at the current location.</p>
<p>Construction of a new embassy compound (NEC) in Beirut, including office and residential facilities, was scheduled by the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) as an alternate candidate for 2016.</p></blockquote>
<p>The report further concluded that staff wasn’t receiving proper counter-terrorism training:</p>
<blockquote><p>Some embassy employees feel they lack training for responding to an attack or a crisis. Unlike staff at other critical threat posts, Embassy Beirut employees do not take the foreign affairs counterterrorism course, which provides training on emergency medical procedures, chemical biological remediation, and driving in dangerous situations.</p></blockquote>
<p>The OIG report also pointed out that the State Department didn’t classify the embassy in Beirut to be in a “high threat” area.</p>
<p>Not only does Beirut have a high presence of the terrorist group Hezbollah, but the civil war in Syria has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees spilling over the border into Lebanon.</p>
<p>The report comes at a difficult time not only for the State Department but for security in Beirut. Over the weekend, a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/anti-hezbollah-protester-shot-dead-outside-irans-embassy-in-beirut/2013/06/09/d0cab710-d114-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html">protest in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut</a> left at least one protestor dead. (It should be noted that Iran’s state run media has denied any such attack occurred.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile, this State Department OIG report comes on the heels of a separate <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/volpe/hillary-turned-over-embassy-security-to-hired-guns/">OIG report on the embassies in Kabul and Baghdad</a> that concluded that inefficiencies there led to wasting over $200 million in tax payer dollars.</p>
<p>The State Department didn’t respond to a comment for this story.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57588456/state-department-memo-reveals-possible-cover-ups-halted-investigations/">CBS News is reporting that in a separate unreleased OIG report top deputies of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton</a> actively attempted to shut down investigations including an investigation into child abuse allegations against the US Ambassador to Belgium and reports that Secretary Clinton’s security detail routinely visited prostitutes.</p>
<p>As all this is going on, the State Department recently approved a <a href="http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130306/FACILITIES01/303060010/More-embassies-becoming-environmentally-friendly">$140 million upgrade to make the embassy in Mauritania more energy efficient, including a 50 kilowatt wind turbine.</a> Furthermore, security at the embassy in Benghazi was outsourced to local militias, with ties to Islamists, on the night of the attack last September. <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/12/19/177888/benghazi-security-was-grossly.html#.UbeRRfnp2uk">The militias were mostly absent on the night of the attack.</a> Taken together, all these report raise serious questions about the priorities and management of the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Benghazi Smoking Gun Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/benghazi-smoking-gun-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=benghazi-smoking-gun-exposed</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 04:45:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=188368</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama lied, people died. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/benghazi-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-188399" alt="benghazi-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/benghazi-1-447x350.jpg" width="268" height="210" /></a>New evidence <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-talking-points_720543.html">reveals</a> the Obama administration&#8217;s version of the events that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was based on a tissue of lies. The Weekly Standard&#8217;s Steven Hayes has obtained a timeline and a series of emails revealing the self-serving efforts made by administration officials, who heavily edited CIA talking points about the attack that cost four Americans, including ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, their lives. Also revealed is who made the changes and why they made them.</p>
<p>The revelations are part of a <a href="http://thehill.com/images/stories/blogs/globalaffairs/benghazi.pdf">report</a> published by the five Republican Committee chairmen that has been largely dismissed by a calculatingly indifferent media, despite the reality that it includes direct quotes from administration officials, along with footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. Although the names of some officials have been omitted in some places, the Weekly Standard has confirmed the identity of two administration officials who authored two critical emails: one illuminating the reason for the editing itself and the other announcing a September 15 meeting of top administration officials, where the ultimate draft of the talking points would be finalized.</p>
<p>The two officials are State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland and White House national security official Ben Rhodes.</p>
<p>What they sought to obscure is the realty that while the initial attack was still taking place, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts, at 4:05 p.m and 6:08 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The former indicated an attack was taking place. The latter alert revealed that an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, Ansar al Sharia, was claiming credit for it. According to the House report, these alerts were widely circulated among administration officials, including those at the highest levels of government. Another cable sent by the CIA station chief in Libya the following day reveals that eyewitnesses confirmed that a terrorist attack involving the participation of Islamic jihadists had occurred.</p>
<p>It was exactly that reality the administration sought to obscure.</p>
<p>The Standard reveals the <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-talking-points_720543.html?page=2">three versions</a> of the edited talking points. Version 1 was distributed internally for comment at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, September 14. Key points include:</p>
<p>&#8211;The initial theory that the Benghazi attacks &#8220;were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo&#8221;;</p>
<p>&#8211;&#8221;Islamic extremists with ties to al Qa&#8217;ida participated&#8221;;</p>
<p>&#8211;Members of Ansar al Sharia &#8220;were involved&#8221;;</p>
<p>&#8211;&#8221;Wide availability of weapons and experienced fighters in Libya contributed to the lethality of the attacks&#8221;;</p>
<p>&#8211;&#8221;Five other attacks against foreign interests&#8221; had taken place since April, leading to the possibility that the consulate had been &#8220;previously surveilled&#8221;;</p>
<p>&#8211;The U.S. is &#8220;working w/Libyan authorities and intelligence partners&#8221; to bring those responsible to justice.</p>
<p>After this draft&#8217;s initial distribution, the CIA amended it, adding two more points. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy,” and &#8220;The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” They also changed two talking points: the reference to  “al Qa&#8217;ida&#8221; was removed, and Benghazi &#8220;attacks&#8221; became &#8220;demonstrations.&#8221;</p>
<p>An hour into the vetting process, the official confirmed by the Standard to be Victoria Nuland raised &#8220;serious concerns&#8221;&#8211;about the political impact, fearing that Congress would hammer the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.” Minor revisions followed, but they weren&#8217;t good enough for Nuland, who said the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” further warning that State Department officials would directly contact National Security Council (NSC) officials as a result. In a matter of moments, the House report noted, that &#8220;White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” It was then that Ben Rhodes notified the various groups working on the points that a meeting would take place on September 15 to resolve their issues.</p>
<p>Version two of the report was put together at 9:45 a.m. on Saturday. According to officials with knowledge of what occurred at this meeting of the Deputies Committee, CIA deputy director Mike Morrel heavily edited this version, removing 148 of its 248 words. The entirety of the previous report was reduced to the &#8220;spontaneous attack&#8221; theory, followed by the idea that &#8220;this assessment may change as additional information is made available,&#8221; and that the “investigation is ongoing to help bring justice to those responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens.&#8221;</p>
<p>Less than two hours later, those three points became the bullet points in Version three, which became the final version of the  administration’s talking points.</p>
<p>On Sunday, September 16, UN Ambassador Susan Rice was sent out by the administration to pitch the Muslim video canard. The following day, Nuland rose to Rice&#8217;s defense. “What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial assessment of what happened is. And this was not just her assessment, it was also an assessment you’ve heard in comments coming from the intelligence community, in comments coming from the White House.”</p>
<p>Yet even the redacted version of the talking points never mentioned anything about a video. Despite that reality, the administration, led by Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, continued to pitch that mendacious version of the events, inaugurating the Obama administration&#8217;s ongoing efforts to mislead the American public in the weeks leading up to the presidential election &#8212; weeks during which we were <a href="http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2012/10/17/obama-dropping-al-qaeda-run-stump-speech">assured</a> that al Qa&#8217;ida and terror were &#8220;on the run.&#8221;</p>
<p>At a press briefing last Friday, State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell <a href="http://freebeacon.com/benghazi-boils-over/">declined</a> to comment regarding Nuland’s involvement, and why critical details were edited out of the final draft. “We regularly discuss our public messaging with our interagency counterparts, that’s part of what happens in the interagency,” said Ventrell. “We’re not going to get into the details&#8230;of our internal deliberative process on these. We continue to be transparent with the congress, and have been, and shared thousands of documents. Talking points is something that they’ve looked into.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet the &#8220;most transparent administration in history&#8221; provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the stipulation that they would only be available for a limited time, and not turned over to the committees. That agreement was part of a political deal whereby Senate Republicans would not hold up the nomination of current CIA Director John Brennan.</p>
<p>As damning as these revelations are, they are far from the only problems the Obama administration faces in a scandal that can no longer be contained. Last Thursday, it was <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/02/state-department-benghazi-review-panel-under-investigation-fox-news-confirms/">revealed</a> that the State Department&#8217;s Office of Inspector General will be conducting an investigation of the Accountability Review Board&#8217;s (ARB) <a href="http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/202446.pdf">report</a>, an outrageous whitewash whose central conclusion was the idea that &#8220;the tragic loss of life, injuries, and damage to U.S. facilities and property rests solely and completely with the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks.&#8221; According to well-placed sources, the IG wants to determine if the ARB declined to interview critical witnesses, who wanted to provide their accounts of Benghazi to the panel whose conclusions insulated top officials&#8211;including Hillary Clinton&#8211;for the &#8220;inadequate security&#8221; at the consulate.</p>
<p>Two of those whistleblowers, now <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/05/04/Whistleblower-Lawyer-ARB-s-Gen-Pickering-Became-Physically-Ill-At-The-Thought-of-Dealing-With-Hillary">revealed</a> to be Gregory Hicks, Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affairs in Libya, and Mark Thompson, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, are being represented by Washington attorneys Victoria Toensing and her husband Joseph DiGenova, respectively. Appearing on &#8220;Geraldo&#8221; Saturday night, Toensing told Rivera that “the things that her client will be saying will be contradictory to what the administration’s scenario was.” DiGenova promised that “what will come out of the hearing is that the Accountability Review Board conducted by General Pickering and Admiral Mullen will be proven to have been a cover-up&#8211;one of the worst jobs ever done in the history of governmental reporting…”</p>
<p>DiGenova further noted that nether Pickering or Mullen ever interviewed Hillary Clinton during their investigation, and that when Pickering was told he would have to deal with it, he became physically ill.</p>
<p>The third witness expected to testify is <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/04/witness-names-released-for-benghazi-hearing/">Eric Nordstrom</a>, diplomatic security officer and former regional security officer in Libya. Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until two months before the attack, is the security officer who twice requested additional security in Benghazi before the attack. Nordstrom cited a chronology that included 200 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, including 48 that occurred in Benghazi.</p>
<p>An equally explosive revelation emerged a week ago, when an anonymous U.S. special operator <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/29/explosive-report-forces-were-available-to-help-americans-under-attack-in-benghazi/">told</a> Fox News the administration&#8217;s contention that no forces were available to get to Benghazi in time was also a lie. “I know for a fact that C 110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise, not in the region of northern Africa, but in Europe. And they had the ability to react and respond,” he contended. The C 110 is a 40-man special ops force reportedly capable of conducting rapid response and deployment. They were located only three-and-a-half hours away in Croatia on Sept. 11.</p>
<p>The operator revealed there were other members of special ops and other officials aware and involved, but that they would be &#8220;decapitated if they came forward with information that could affect high-level commanders.” The Fox source added that members of the special ops community feel betrayed, and believe that betrayal goes to the highest levels of the administration.</p>
<p>The administration apparently couldn&#8217;t care less. Last Tuesday at his press conference, President Obama <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/republicans-benghazi_n_3188181.html?utm_hp_ref=politics">claimed</a> he was “unaware” of any effort to prevent whistleblowers from testifying. On the same day, Secretary of State John Kerry contended that there is &#8220;an enormous amount of misinformation out there.&#8221; &#8220;We have to demythologize this issue and certainly depoliticize it,&#8221; Kerry told reporters at the State Department. &#8220;The American people deserve answers. I&#8217;m determined that this will be an accountable and open State Department as it has been in the past, and we will continue to do that, and we will provide answers.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kerry had previously expressed frustration with Republicans for refusing to accept the conclusions of the ARB. “Let&#8217;s get this done with, folks,&#8221; Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in testimony last month. &#8220;Let&#8217;s figure out what it is that&#8217;s missing, if it&#8217;s legitimate or isn&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t think anybody lied to anybody. And let&#8217;s find out exactly, together, what happened, because we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done.&#8221;</p>
<p>Last Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney echoed Kerry’s indifference. “Let’s be clear,” he said. “Benghazi happened a long time ago. We are unaware of any agency blocking an employee who would like to appear before Congress to provide information related to Benghazi.”</p>
<p>On Saturday, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, praised the State Department officials who have agreed to testify at the hearings. “They have critical information about what occurred before, during, and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks that differs on key points [from the administration,]” Issa said in a statement. “Our committee has been contacted by numerous other individuals who have direct knowledge of the Benghazi terrorist attack, but are not yet prepared to testify,” he added. &#8220;In many cases their principal reticence of appearing in public is their concern of retaliation at the hands of their respective employers,” Issa said.</p>
<p>State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell took issue with that characterization. “The State Department would never tolerate or sanction retaliation against whistleblowers on any issue, including this one,” Ventrell contended. &#8220;That’s an obligation we take very seriously, full stop.”</p>
<p>The country will find out exactly how seriously beginning Wednesday, when the House Oversight Committee resumes its hearings. It remains to be seen how mainstream media outlets, many of which have been more than willing to dismiss the investigation into the deaths of four Americans as a Republican <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Benghazi+a+republican+conspiracy+theory&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a">conspiracy theory</a>, will handle what is likely to be some of the most explosive testimony on the attack to date history. Benghazi may have happened &#8220;a long time ago,&#8221; but it is not going away anytime soon.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama &amp; Clinton&#8217;s Benghazi Lies Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obama-clintons-benghazi-lies-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-clintons-benghazi-lies-exposed</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:53:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benghazi]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=187194</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New tell-all report unveils the administration's deceit. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/clinton-obama630.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-187197" alt="clinton-obama630" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/clinton-obama630-450x320.jpg" width="315" height="224" /></a>A searing new <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/130423_Libya-Progress-Report.pdf">Interim Progress Report</a> released by the GOP chairmen of five House committees reveals the disturbing extent of the Obama administration&#8217;s deceit and manipulation over the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As the 43-page document details, not only was gross incompetence to blame for the success of the attack that cost four Americans their lives, but a concerted effort at the highest levels of government was undertaking to cover up the debacle, deceive the public and shield officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama, from responsibility.</p>
<p>Ranking Democrats on the same five committees, who said they were not included in writing the report, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/23/house-gop-administration-blew-benghazi-response/">dismissed</a> it as politically motivated. “You are sacrificing accuracy in favor of partisanship,” they said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).</p>
<p>Hardly. Dividing the timeline into three sections &#8212; before, during and after the attack &#8212; the report paints a damning picture of the Hillary Clinton-led State Department, which knew &#8220;the threat environment in Benghazi was high and that the Benghazi compound was vulnerable and unable to withstand an attack, yet the Department continued to systematically withdraw security personnel.&#8221;</p>
<p>The smoking gun revealed in the report &#8212; contrary to Hillary Clinton&#8217;s congressional testimony that requests for additional security in Benghazi never reached her &#8212; was that &#8220;an April 2012 State Department cable bearing Secretary Hillary Clinton’s signature acknowledged then-Ambassador Cretz’s formal request for additional security assets but ordered the withdrawal of security elements to proceed as planned.&#8221; A Senate report, &#8220;Flashing Red: A Special Report on the Terrorist Attack at Benghazi,&#8221; released on December 31, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/31/politics/benghazi-senate-investigation">confirmed</a> the lack of security, citing &#8220;extremely poor security in a threat environment that was &#8216;flashing red.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>President Obama was blamed for the lack of security as well, in that he &#8220;failed to proactively anticipate the significance of September 11 and provide the Department of Defense with the authority to launch offensive operations beyond self-defense.&#8221; The report noted that the Intelligence Community was not to blame for anything, in that they &#8220;collected considerable information about the threats in the region, and disseminated regular assessments to senior U.S. officials warning of the deteriorating security environment in Benghazi, which included threats to American interests, facilities, and personnel.&#8221;</p>
<p>The 2013 report&#8217;s most scathing assessments concern the post-attack response by the Obama administration that &#8220;willfully perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the attacks evolved from a political demonstration caused by a YouTube video.&#8221; The report excoriated the administration&#8217;s so-called &#8220;talking points,&#8221; revealing that</p>
<blockquote><p>after a White House Deputies Meeting on Saturday, September 15, 2012, the Administration altered the talking points to remove references to the likely participation of Islamic extremists in the attacks&#8230; removed references to the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya, including information about at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi.</p></blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, the report states, &#8220;Senior State Department officials requested&#8211;and the White House approved&#8211;that the details of the threats, specifics of the previous attacks, and previous warnings be removed.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/">timeline</a> following the attack reveals a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign that began with the president, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice peddling the YouTube video story, even as government emails surfacing six weeks later revealed that both the State Department and the White House were told <i>during</i> the attack that terror group Ansar al-Sharia took credit for it. The video charade continued until September 19, when Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first administration official to label Benghazi a terrorist attack, even as Obama continued to push the video lie a day later. On September 24, during a taping of &#8220;The View,&#8221; the president still refused to label Benghazi a terrorist attack. “We’re still doing an investigation,” he said.</p>
<p>As the facts became known, Clinton <a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/10/199196.htm">blamed</a> &#8220;the fog of war&#8221; for her initial lies, while White House spokesman Jay Carney <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/10/10/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-10102012">claimed</a> the White House was giving out the best information it had at the time, but the information had “evolved.&#8221;</p>
<p>Other lies by the administration are also forcefully rebutted in the 2013 report, including claims that the talking points were altered to protect classified information of the FBI investigation, noting that the FBI itself  “approved a version of the talking points with significantly more information about the attacks and previous threats than the version that the State Department requested,&#8221; and that even &#8220;limited due diligence&#8221; of an Intelligence Committee (IC) report would have made it clear that &#8220;the situation was more complex than the narrative provided by Ambassador Susan Rice and others in the Administration.&#8221;</p>
<p>The final post-attack conclusions noted that the administration&#8217;s decision to conduct an FBI investigation, as opposed to one by military or other intelligence sources, &#8220;contributed to the government&#8217;s lack of candor&#8221; and &#8220;significantly delayed U.S. access to key witnesses and evidence and undermined the government’s ability to bring those responsible for the attacks to justice in a timely manner. &#8221;</p>
<p>That delay was underscored by the reality that 15 days after that attack, it was reported by CNN that the FBI was still <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/26/world/africa/libya-investigation">waiting</a> to get access to the area. That would be the same CNN that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/22/world/africa/libya-ambassador-journal">found</a> ambassador Christopher Stevens&#8217; journal on the floor of the unsecured compound &#8212; three days after the attack.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the White House pushed back Wednesday, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/24/white-house-clintons-signature-benghazi-cable-stan/">accusing</a> Republicans of creating a political distraction. White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden claimed that the report goes over old ground and that some of its conclusions conflict with those reached during an internal investigation conducted by the State Department itself. “The State Department’s Accountability Review Board&#8211;the independent body charged with reviewing the attacks and evaluating the interagency response&#8211;released its report which specifically found that the interagency response was ‘timely and appropriate’ and ‘helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans,’ while also making important recommendations to improve security that we are in the process of implementing,” she said.</p>
<p>Hayden is, unfortunately for the Obama administration, misrepresenting reality. The thrust of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board’s report was completely different. &#8220;Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department &#8230; resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,&#8221; it said.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton supposedly <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/23/hillarys-opening-statement-on-benghazi-i-take-responsibility/">took</a> &#8220;full responsibility&#8221; for those deficiencies &#8211;responsibility <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/23/clinton-on-benghazi-story-confusion-what-difference-does-it-make-video/">best described</a> by Clinton herself in a testy exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, when he accused her of blaming non-existent protests for the deaths of four Americans. “What difference at this point does it make?” Clinton asked.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the four officials ostensibly terminated because of their mistakes leading up to the attack <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/benghazi_penalties_are_bogus_ncP7RZx5uTIgDPbTp5WtoN?utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_content=International">remained</a> on the State Department payroll. And while spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton “has accepted [Assistant Secretary of State] Eric Boswell’s decision to resign as assistant secretary for diplomatic security, effective immediately,” she neglected to mention that Boswell gave up only the presidential appointment as assistant secretary, not his other assignments. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) illuminated reality. “State Department officials proclaimed &#8230;that heads would roll&#8230;Now we see that the discipline is a lie and all that has happened is the shuffling of the deck chairs.”</p>
<p>White House spokesman Jay Carney defended Clinton, contending that her signature on the damning cable mentioned above was standard procedure for all diplomatic cables, essentially meaning that<i> any</i> State Department cable has the head of the Department&#8217;s signature on it. &#8220;In this way, Secretary Clinton and others before her signed hundreds of thousands of cables&#8221; as secretary, he said. &#8220;Efforts to politicize this have failed in the past and they are not helpful to the broad national security interests we share.&#8221; Neither is the fact that Carney is apparently suggesting that Clinton signed something she didn&#8217;t read, despite the deadly consequences that occurred as a result.</p>
<p>Regardless, the Republican chairmen weren&#8217;t buying it. &#8220;An April 19, 2012, cable bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature acknowledged requests for additional security, but nevertheless ordered the withdrawal of security assets to proceed as planned,” they said in a letter to the White House. “Given the gravity of this issue, we request that you immediately make the April 19, 2012, State Department cable public.” So far the White House has not responded.</p>
<p>Despite the stonewalling, House Republicans will press on. On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/04/24/new-benghazi-hearings-called-after-administration-whistleblowers-come-forward/">announced</a> that the investigation into Benghazi will continue next month. This part of the investigation is likely to become compelling, because it will include testimony from whistleblowers within the administration. “Next month, the Oversight Committee will convene a hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attacks to examine evidence that Obama Administration officials have attempted to suppress information about errors and reckless misjudgments,” said Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA). “The American people still don’t have the full truth about what happened both before and after the murders of four brave Americans.”</p>
<p>Adding fuel to Issa&#8217;s fire are the <a href="http://freebeacon.com/unsatisfactory-response/">allegations</a> made by former special ops forces that the revelations contained in the current report don&#8217;t go far enough, especially regarding why the administration seemingly abandoned its responsibility to protect those who came under attack. “As a former soldier it pains me to think that for hours upon hours and more hours they waited in vain for someone to come to their rescue,” retired Special Forces Col. Jamie Williamson told the <i>Washington</i> <i>Free Beacon. </i></p>
<p>Williamson is the cofounder of <a href="http://www.opsecteam.org/mission.html">OPSEC</a>, a non-profit organization that protects US special ops forces and intelligence operatives from &#8220;political exploitation and policies, and the misuse of classified information, that unnecessarily exposes them and their families to greater risk and reduces their effectiveness in keeping Americans safe.&#8221; The group is asking critical questions that remain unanswered, such as “why were no U.S. military assets immediately deployed in response?” and “why did the commander of Africom tell a member of Congress that he had available assets but was never given order to deploy them?”</p>
<p>In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/panetta-defends-military-response-libya-attack-150227323.html">insisted</a> assets could not have reached the scene in time. Yet Panetta and Dempsey were <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/22/facts-and-questions-about-what-happened-in-benghazi/">not alerted</a> about the attack until almost an hour after it began, and they didn&#8217;t raise the issue with Obama until their previously scheduled 5 p.m meeting, one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began. Moreover, Africom commander Carter Ham <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/10/top-africom-leader-general-carter-ham-was-never-ordered-to-save-us-men-in-benghazi-video/">told</a> Rep. Jason Chaffetz he was never given the order to secure the consulate in Benghazi. And according to Fox News, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/1027/Benghazi-attack-Urgent-call-for-military-help-was-denied-by-chain-of-command">neither</a> was a Special Operations team in Sigonella, Italy, despite being only two hours from Benghazi.</p>
<p>OPSEC also illuminated another potential hazard for the administration, claiming that the 20-30 survivors of the attack have been intimidated into remaining silent. “They’re afraid and reasonably so,” said Williamson, who says his group has had direct contact with them. “It appears there has been overt or subtle intimidation and they’re afraid to come forward with their stories.”</p>
<p>A March 1 letter <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/288059-gop-may-subpoena-benghazi-survivors">sent</a> to Secretary of State John Kerry by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Jim Gerlach (R-PA) demanded the names and contact information for “as many as 30” Americans that were injured in the attack “so that we can make appropriate arrangements.”</p>
<p>OPSEC and other like-minded organizations are calling for a Watergate-like select committee to investigate. Rep. Wolf has been the primary advocate for such a committee, and has garnered the support of 120 lawmakers who believe that such a committee, which would have the power to issue subpoenas compelling key officials to testify, is vitally necessary.</p>
<p>Four dead Americans, 20-30 survivors, and every other American frustrated with the media-abetted lying perpetrated by the Obama administration deserve nothing less. Those on the left who deride the effort to get to the bottom of this scandal have certainly demanded much more for far less serious transgressions. That they would reject the same effort here reveals a level of ideological bankruptcy and hypocrisy that is nothing short of appalling.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama Finds His Benghazi Fall Guys</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/robert-spencer/obama-finds-his-benghazi-fall-guys/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-finds-his-benghazi-fall-guys</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:58:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170233</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An independent report on the Benghazi jihad massacre widens the cover-up.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/robert-spencer/obama-finds-his-benghazi-fall-guys/house1/" rel="attachment wp-att-170235"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170235" title="house1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/house1-450x334.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="200" /></a>After an independent report found that mistakes were made in the Obama Administration’s handling of the Benghazi jihad massacre, Barack Obama immediately took action against those who apparently made them: Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security; Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security; and Raymond Maxwell, the deputy assistant secretary of state whose purview included Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, all <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_LIBYA_ATTACKS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2012-12-18-21-20-30">resigned under pressure</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/us/politics/inquiry-into-libya-attack-is-sharply-critical-of-state-department.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=edit_th_20121219&amp;_r=1&amp;">The report says</a> that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus” led to a security arrangement “that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”</p>
<p>Are we really to believe that it was Eric Boswell, Charlene Lamb, and Raymond Maxwell who were really responsible for the refusal of repeated requests from the Benghazi consulate for more security personnel, and the complete disregarding of warnings from Ambassador Chris Stevens that al-Qaeda was operating in the area? There are numerous indications that all this came from higher up.</p>
<p>After all, the Obama Administration’s entire Middle East policy has since January 2011 been predicated on the unquestioned dogma that the “Arab Spring” uprisings were a glorious outpouring of democracy and pluralism. Speaking about the Libyan revolution in March 2011, Obama warmly praised the dawning in Libya of “the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny.” Thus after providing military aid to the anti-Gaddafi rebels despite evidence of their al-Qaeda links, the administration – whether the call really came from the White House or the State Department or both – had every reason to ignore the request from Benghazi for more security, and to pretend that the whole thing was just a spontaneous uprising over a video about Muhammad, not the carefully planned September 11 jihad attack that it proved to be.</p>
<p>Speaking about Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/us/politics/inquiry-into-libya-attack-is-sharply-critical-of-state-department.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=edit_th_20121219&amp;_r=1&amp;">New York Times</a> said that “the report affirmed there were no protests of an anti-Islamic video before the attack, contrary to what Ms. Rice had said on several Sunday talk shows days after the attack.”</p>
<p>But Susan Rice was in an extremely difficult position. To have acknowledged what was really happening in Benghazi would have been to admit that the Allahu-akbaring mob besieging the consulate was nothing remotely close to a responsible citizenry enjoying their rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and self-determination. And that would have given the lie to Obama’s description of the uprising against Gaddafi. It would have been to admit that the jihad against the United States would not be turned away from its goal by hearts-and-minds gestures, even if those gestures included the removal of a brutal dictator. The people of Benghazi were no more inclined to welcome the Americans as liberators – and Ambassador Stevens had attempted to play exactly that role, sneaking into Libya during the most difficult days of the uprising and doing everything he could to aid the rebels – than were the people of Iraq when Saddam Hussein was toppled.</p>
<p>The reason in both cases was the same: the rebels against both Saddam and Gaddafi were largely Islamic supremacists who wanted a Sharia state, disdained democracy, and considered the United States to be their enemy not primarily because of various aspects of its foreign policy, but because it is the world’s foremost infidel polity, against whom the mujahedin believe they have a sacred duty to wage war. The Qur’an and Islamic law direct Muslims to wage war against and subjugate the “People of the Book” (cf. Qur’an 9:29) – that is, primarily Jews and Christians – not if they behave badly by supporting Israel or Middle Eastern dictators, but simply because they are not Muslims.</p>
<p>But the White House and State Department not only do not acknowledge this fact – they have done all they can to deny and obfuscate it. The one cardinal proposition that accepted analysts must repeat is that the present conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims have absolutely nothing to do with Islam; indeed, Obama Administration officials are expressly forbidden to link Islam with terrorism, as if Islamic terrorists weren’t busy linking the two on a daily basis. The errors of analysis and wrong decisions that cost lives all follow from this initial false premise.</p>
<p>That false premise is reminiscent of what is said about State during the Iranian Revolution: that while the Ayatollah Khomeini was bringing about the toppling of the shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, only one of his books could be found anywhere in the State Department, and no one had read it. No one thought the rantings of an obscure fanatic who for years had been exiled to far-off France were important.</p>
<p>This was the willful blindness that killed Chris Stevens, and is the real scandal of Benghazi. The politically correct fantasies that characterize the Washington establishment’s views on Islam and jihad not only make for bad policy; they also kill. Clearly what happened in Benghazi was part of a coordinated, carefully planned series of jihad attacks.</p>
<p>From the beginning of the “Arab Spring,”  I said repeatedly that it was not a democracy movement as the Western press and the White House were claiming, but an Islamic supremacist takeover that would result in the creation of Sharia states far more hostile to the U.S. and Israel than the Arab nationalist regimes they were supplanting. This assessment was greeted with the usual scorn, but Benghazi shows who was right and who was wrong and how desperately the foreign policy establishment in Washington needs a very thorough housecleaning. The firing of Boswell, Lamb, and Maxwell are not that housecleaning; they are just fall guys. The only person responsible for the Benghazi massacre is sitting in the Oval Office.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Education or Indoctrination?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/education-or-indoctrination/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=education-or-indoctrination</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/education-or-indoctrination/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:52:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brigitte Gabriel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[classrooms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education or Indoctrination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Textbooks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=169613</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Brigitte Gabriel delivers a stunning investigative report on the treatment of Islam in 6th-through-12th grade American textbooks.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/jamie-glazov/education-or-indoctrination/brig/" rel="attachment wp-att-169867"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-169867" title="brig" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/brig-364x350.jpg" alt="" width="364" height="350" /></a>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Brigitte Gabriel, the author of two New York Times Best Sellers &#8220;Because They Hate&#8221; and &#8220;They Must Be Stopped.&#8221; She is also the founder and president of <em><a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/" target="_blank">ACT! for America</a>,</em> the largest national security grassroots organization in the U.S. with over a quarter of a million members, 750 chapters nationwide and a full-time lobbyist on Capital Hill. She just issued a report titled: <a href="http://www.actforamericaeducation.com/" target="_blank">Education or Indoctrination? The Treatment of Islam in 6th through 12th Grade American Textbooks</a>.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Brigitte, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>Congratulations on issuing your new report, <em>Education or Indoctrination.</em> What inspired you to embark on this project?</p>
<p><strong>Gabriel</strong>: When I was doing research for my second book &#8220;They Must Be Stopped,&#8221; I came across numerous instances where information that was being put in school textbooks or taught in classrooms was inaccurate, sometimes outright false, and at times sounded more like indoctrination than education. ACT! For America Education executive director and I discussed this at length in 2009, because when we traveled and spoke to groups about this they were very concerned. We investigated the issue more closely and found there had been a handful of previous studies done on this, but we believed much more needed to be done. We also knew that if we did a report, we could leverage its impact by drawing on the strength of our growing grassroots organization. So by late 2009 we drafted a plan, created the budget to do it, and embarked on the research in early 2010.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>How broad was your research?</p>
<p><strong>Gabriel</strong>: We retained a top-notch team of experts with years of experience in this area. They selected 38 textbooks based on how widespread they are used in the schools and how much they address the topic of Islam. To give you an example of the breadth of the research, our team spent two years conducting the research, and comparing what they found with credible historical sources as well as Islamic sources. The results were astonishing, even to those of us who are familiar with this issue.</p>
<p>In some books the errors were less frequent and egregious, but in most of the books errors of the commission and omission occurred with such frequency that it was clearly evident the average student today is receiving a rewrite of history that paints a rose-colored picture of the history and central doctrines of Islam that is not supported by the facts. The report is painstakingly and thoroughly documented, with nearly 375 footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 275 sources.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What type of topics do you address in your report?</p>
<p><strong>Gabriel</strong>: The report examines everything from the founding of Islam and its early history, up through modern times. The report addresses a broad range of topics such as:</p>
<p>- Muhammad and Jerusalem</p>
<p>- Relationship between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina</p>
<p>- Sharia law</p>
<p>- Status and treatment of Jews and Christians under Islam</p>
<p>- Jihad and the early Islamic conquests</p>
<p>- Islam and women</p>
<p>- Islam and slavery</p>
<p>- Islamism</p>
<p>- The Crusades</p>
<p>- The Holocaust</p>
<p>- The Arab-Israeli conflict</p>
<p>- Terrorism</p>
<p>- 9/11</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Share a few examples with us.</p>
<p><strong>Gabriel</strong>:</p>
<p><strong>1)</strong> Slavery: While the books went into great detail exposing and condemning the Atlantic slave trade run by Europeans, they were all either completely or nearly silent on the Islamic slave trade, which began eight centuries before the Atlantic slave trade and continues in some parts of the world today. This double standard treatment of Islam vs. the West was fairly common in the books we reviewed. The danger here is that students are led to draw conclusions about the West with respect to slavery that they aren’t led to draw when it comes to Islam.</p>
<p><strong>2)</strong> Islamic Conquests: Book after book used phrases like “Muslim conquerors treated those they conquered with tolerance.” Some books claimed, falsely, that conquered Jews and Christians retained religious freedom. One book said, “Full religious freedom.” Another said the Muslim conquerors were “extremely tolerant.” Such a rewrite of history, when there is so much historical data that contradicts these false assertions, could well be termed educational malpractice. And like the issue of slavery, look how it leads students to rosy, positive views of the history of Islam that simply don’t square with the facts.</p>
<p><strong>3)</strong> Treatment of Women: The books typically either devoted little attention to this subject, or when they did, they overlooked or downplayed the second-class treatment of women under Islamic law and in Muslim cultures. Actually the word downplayed is an understatement. Some even claimed that women had more rights than they did. Again, this was consistent with a narrative the books created about the supposed tolerance and goodness of historical Islam.</p>
<p><strong>4)</strong> Jihad. Not surprisingly, the books generally toed the politically correct line that “Jihad” is essentially a “struggle to be a better Muslim.” I like how my friend Dr. Walid Phares describes this description of Jihad as “Islamic Yoga.” Students get almost no understanding of the centrality of Jihad to the historical advance of Islam through conquest and the creation of the Islamic Empire. They are therefore conditioned to agree with the apologists for radical Islam and the talking heads from groups like CAIR who describe Jihad completely differently from what happened in history and how the vast majority of ancient and contemporary Islamic scholars define Jihad. Again, this fits the narrative the books have created about historical Islam that simply isn’t accurate.</p>
<p><strong>5)</strong> 9/11. This is especially disturbing. It’s one thing to rewrite ancient history. People can debate about the reliability of various historic accounts. However, we all know, except for the conspiracy crowd and politically correct deniers, that 9/11 was an act of Jihad perpetrated by 19 Islamic jihadists. Yet almost without exception, the textbooks we reviewed did not tell the students this. They called them “Terrorists,” some referred to Al Qaeda (but didn’t describe what it is), but they completely ignored any reference to the terrorists as “Muslims” or Jihadists.” One book described them as those who believe they are fighting for a noble cause! It would be as if school books written in 1951 described those attacking Pearl Harbor as an enemy fleet without ever telling students who they were or why they did it. It is an astonishing rewrite of modern history done obviously to appease the forces of political correctness – but it’s not historical education.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What can people do &#8212; especially those who are very concerned about this and have kids in schools?</p>
<p><strong>Gabriel</strong>: They should go to <a href="http://www.actforamericaeducation.org/" target="_blank">www.actforamericaeducation.org</a>, and read either the executive summary or the full report or both. They can download and print either or both. There is an action item option on that page where they can find out things they can do. We mailed the executive summary to over 70,000 state and local school board members, and this year a number of our chapter leaders and members met with school board members and school officials to bring their attention to this report. We are going to continue this effort over the next two years, and our goal is to convince as many of the book publishers as we can that they need to revise their books so that they treat the history and central doctrines of Islam more accurately. We’re not opposed to teaching about the major religions in the public schools, as this is part of our history and culture. But the teaching should be accurate, and when it comes to Islam, most of the time it simply isn’t.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Brigitte Gabriel, it was an honor to speak with you. Thank you for everything you do for the cause of freedom and liberty.</p>
<p>We encourage all of our readers to go to <a href="http://www.actforamericaeducation.org/" target="_blank">actforamericaeducation.org</a> and to read the report and then to spread the word and make a difference.</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>
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		<title>Operation Fast and Furious and the Massacre of Mexican Kids</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/operation-fast-and-furious-and-the-massacre-of-mexican-kids/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=operation-fast-and-furious-and-the-massacre-of-mexican-kids</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:55:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brian Terry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drug cartels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Holder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fast and Furious]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun running]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[killing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mexico]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Party]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Univision]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146411</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Too many dead bodies for the administration to cover-up. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/eric-holder.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146457" title="eric-holder" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/eric-holder.gif" alt="" width="375" height="256" /></a>As <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/who-should-really-be-held-accountable-for-the-benghazi-cover-up/">Benghazigate</a> continues to heat up, so too does the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The gun-running operation was previously connected to the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry after weapons found at the crime scene were traced back to a gun-walking scheme overseen by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Now a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/video/excerpt-univisions-fast-furious-special-17352864">bombshell report</a> that the Spanish language television news network Univision aired on Sunday evening has linked more of the program&#8217;s guns to the massacre of at least fourteen Mexican youths and to other horrific crimes committed by Mexican drug rings against innocent Mexican citizens.</p>
<p>ATF is a division of Attorney General Eric Holder&#8217;s Justice Department. This agency, for which Holder is ultimately responsible, decided to use unsavory gun smugglers as intermediaries in the movement of guns the smugglers purchased from federally licensed firearms dealers in Arizona and sold to Mexican drug cartels. The idea was allegedly to follow the trail of the guns to locate the drug lords and put them out of business. Instead, the drug lords used the guns provided to them courtesy of ATF to continue their rampage of killings.</p>
<p>In April 2009, Holder delivered a speech at the Mexico/United States Arms Trafficking Conference held in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He said that he was &#8220;committed to putting the resources in place to increase our attack on arms trafficking into Mexico&#8221; and promised that the United States &#8220;will take responsibility by joining our Mexican counterparts in every step of this fight&#8221; against the Mexican drug cartels.</p>
<p>What happened instead?  The ATF launched Operation Fast and Furious in the fall of 2009 without informing the Mexican government.</p>
<p>On January 30, 2010, according to the Univision report, hired hit men working for the Mexican cartel La Linea invaded a house and opened fire on nearly 60 teenagers who had gathered there for a birthday party. More shootings occurred outside against neighbors and fleeing students. Univision reported that three of the high-caliber weapons used by the hit men were linked to Operation Fast and Furious.</p>
<p>This massacre does not appear to be an isolated incident. There is a disturbing pattern in which the ATF lost track of weapons provided to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers, some of which later ended up at crime scenes in Mexico. In other words, it allowed suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns in order to try and catch bigger fish. But the big fish got away as well after using the guns to kill their prey.</p>
<p>&#8220;Many weapons cross the border and enter Mexico, but that [Fast and Furious] number, quantity and type of weapons had quite an impact in the war in this area&#8221; Jose Wall, an ATF agent stationed in Tijuana from 2009 to 2011, told Univision News.</p>
<p>Univision News reported that it had &#8220;identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.”</p>
<p>Displaying the best of journalistic investigative reporting, Univision compared two lists and found some significant overlaps that had eluded congressional investigators &#8211; the list of serial numbers for weapons used in Fast and Furious and the list of guns seized in Mexico.</p>
<p>Mexican government officials claim that at least three hundred people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons.</p>
<p>At least as far back as March 2010, some ATF agents were raising alarm bells about the operation, but were ignored by their superiors. ATF agents stationed in Mexico also expressed concern as they were aware that a large number of weapons being recovered at bloody crime scenes in Mexico were traced back to the beginning of the Operation Fast and Furious pipeline in Arizona. Still the operation continued.</p>
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		<title>Two Justice Department Officials Leave Over Damning Fast &amp; Furious Report</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/two-justice-department-officials-leave-over-damning-fast-furious-report/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=two-justice-department-officials-leave-over-damning-fast-furious-report</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:35:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brian Terry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eric Holder]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fast and Furious]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justice Department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=144930</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[But report doesn't go far enough.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1005-Eric-Holder-congress_full_600.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-144932" title="1005-Eric-Holder-congress_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1005-Eric-Holder-congress_full_600.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>The Fast and Furious gun-running scandal reached another milestone Wednesday in the form of a scathing report <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/19/major-report-released-on-fast-and-furious-doj-official-resigns/">released</a> by the Justice Department&#8217;s Office of Inspector General. 14 people, including Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer, &#8220;bore a share of responsibility for ATF&#8217;s knowing failure in both these operations to interdict firearms illegally destined for Mexico, and for doing so without adequately taking into account the danger to public safety that flowed from this risky strategy,&#8221; the report <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/19/us/us-fast-furious-report/index.html">states</a>. The report recommended the DOJ consider disciplinary action against these men. Within minutes of its release, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein had resigned and former ATF chief Kenneth Melson was retiring. The report further <a href="http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/19/13966068-investigation-finds-no-evidence-ag-eric-holder-knew-of-fast-and-furious-gun-running-sting">notes</a> that there is &#8220;no evidence that&#8230;(Attorney General Eric) Holder was informed about Operation Fast and Furious, or learned about the tactics employed by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in the investigation&#8221; prior to the congressional inquiries directed at him 2011.</p>
<p>Yet as details emerge, it remains far from clear how accurate and/or comprehensive the report is. While IG Michael E. Horowitz focused his blame on what he characterized as a dysfunctional and poorly supervised group of Arizona-based federal ATF prosecutors and agents plagued by “a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgment and management failures,” his report also noted that a member of the White House National Security staff <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/doj-fast-and-furious-report-wh-aide-declined-interview-ig-white-house-did-not-produce">refused</a> to be interviewed, and that the White House itself would not produce internal documents for the investigation.</p>
<p>&#8220;We also sought to interview Kevin O’Reilly, an official with the White House National Security Staff, about communications he had in 2010 with Special Agent in Charge William Newell that included information about Operation Fast and Furious,&#8221; says the report. &#8220;O’Reilly declined through his personal counsel our request for an interview.&#8221; Wiliam Newell was the Special Agent in Charge of ATF’s Phoenix Field Division, and the report reveals that he had communications with O’Reilly in 2010 that included information on Fast and Furious.</p>
<p>Efforts to get information from the White House were equally unsuccessful. &#8220;We requested from the White House any communications concerning Operation Fast and Furious during the relevant time period that were sent to or received from (a) certain ATF employees, including Special Agent in Charge Newell, and (b) certain members of the White House National Security Staff, including Kevin O’Reilly, the report states. &#8220;In response to our request, the White House informed us that the only responsive communications it had with the ATF employees were those between Newell and O’Reilly. The White House indicated that it previously produced those communications to Congress in response to a similar request, and the White House provided us with a copy of those materials.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet that&#8217;s as far as it went. &#8220;The White House did not produce to us any internal White House communications, noting that &#8216;the White House is beyond the purview of the Inspector General’s Office, which has jurisdiction over Department of Justice programs and personnel,&#8217;&#8221; said the report.</p>
<p>In the context of what happened such stonewalling is remarkable. More than 2,000 guns were were allowed to be bought by suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF. Many of those weapons ended up in the hands of criminals working for Mexican drug cartels, even as federal agents lost track of their whereabouts. As a result, at least one American, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and somewhere between 200 and 300 Mexican nationals were murdered.</p>
<p>At the DOJ, the buck apparently stops with Deputy AG Weinstein, who the report contends was the highest-ranking official in the Department with the ability to stop the program. It claims he knew about Fast and Furious as early as 2010, when he spoke with ATF official Bill McMahon about bringing indictments for a Bush-era gun-running program called Wide Receiver. Weinstein was reportedly learned about Fast and Furious during that meeting, even as he was reportedly assured no gun-running was taking place in the new program. Months later, he helped move wiretap applications along to facilitate Fast and Furious, but claims he only read the cover-sheet of those applications. He told <em>Fox News</em> that while he takes issue with the report&#8217;s conclusions about him, he is resigning so as to not &#8220;distract&#8221; from the department&#8217;s work.</p>
<p>With respect to Fast and Furious other <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/19/us/fast-furious-highlights/index.html">highlights</a> from the report paint a picture of bureaucratic ineptitude and indifference at both the DOJ and the ATF. ATF officials in Phoenix &#8220;provided demonstrably inaccurate and conflicting information&#8221; to the DOJ as they drafted&#8211;and later retracted a&#8211;response to questions from Sen. Charles Grassley about the probe. Yet the report also notes that &#8220;the Department is ultimately responsible for representations that it makes to Congress.&#8221;  Then-ATF chief Melson &#8220;was not well served&#8221; by his subordinates, but &#8220;should have asked basic questions about the investigation, including how public safety was being protected.&#8221; Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer ostensibly failed to warn Holder or his deputy about concerns about Operation Wide Receiver, when he learned about it in 2010. Dennis Burke, the U.S. for the District of Arizona, &#8220;failed to exercise responsible oversight and failed to provide the leadership and judgment required of a United States attorney.&#8221; Burke resigned in 2011, and later <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/09/former-ariz-us-attorney-admits-leaking-memo-smearing-fast-and-furious-whistle-blower/">admitted</a> leaking a memo designed to smear ATF agent, John Dodson, the Fast and Furious whistleblower.</p>
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		<title>Major Hasan’s Killer Emails</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/major-hasan%e2%80%99s-killer-emails/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=major-hasan%25e2%2580%2599s-killer-emails</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lloyd-billingsley/major-hasan%e2%80%99s-killer-emails/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2012 04:17:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lloyd Billingsley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hasan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ignore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weber]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138304</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Webster report on Fort Hood massacre downplays the role of militant Islam that it cites within its own text.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/nidal1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138314" title="nidal" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/nidal1.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="216" /></a>“On November 5, 2009, [Major Nidal] Hasan entered the Fort Hood deployment center. He carried two pistols. He jumped on a desk and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!’ &#8211; Arabic for ‘God is great!’ Then he opened fire, killing twelve U.S. soldiers and one DoD employee, and injuring forty-two others.”</p>
<p>That narrative is from the recently released William Webster <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/final-report-of-the-william-h.-webster-commission">report on the Fort Hood massacre</a>. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was tracking Hasan but failed to prevent his murderous rampage. The report gives some clues for that failure, such as the diagnosis of the problem:</p>
<blockquote><p>“The Fort Hood shootings are a grim reminder that violent radicalization is a persistent threat to the United States and its citizens and residents. Radicalization &#8211; whether based on religious, political, social, or other causes &#8211; challenges the capability and capacity of the FBI and other members of the U.S. Intelligence Community to identify, collect, analyze, and act on accurate intelligence in time to detect and deter those who would commit violence.”</p></blockquote>
<p>So the problem is not anti-American hatred, jihad, terrorism or political murder. The problem is “violent radicalization.” The report adds:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Although highly publicized terrorist plots and acts &#8211; and the Fort Hood shootings – have referenced Islam, violent radicalization transcends any one religion &#8211; and, indeed, religion &#8211; and can find causes in political, social, environmental, and other contexts. The FBI&#8217;s report on terrorist acts in the U.S. between 1980 and 2005 identified 318 events (including bombings, arson and malicious destruction, and shootings); only 7% of those events were attributed to Islamic extremists.”</p></blockquote>
<p>That declaration deserves a spot-weld. An official report on a mass murder by an Islamic extremist, who praised Allah as he killed American troops, goes out of its way to downplay the role of militant Islam in violence. The report is freighted with bureaucratic filler and blacked out in parts, but it does provide emails that Major Hasan sent to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11658920">Anwar al-Awliki</a>, a noted jihadist killed last year in a drone strike. In these emails, here quoted as he wrote them, Hasan comes across as eager to kill Americans but in need of religious justification for such action.</p>
<p>“There are many soldiers in the us armed forces that have converted to Islam while in the service,” Hasan wrote.</p>
<blockquote><p>“There are also many Muslims who join the armed forces for a myriad of different reasons. Some appear to have internal conflicts and have even killed or tried to kill other us soldiers in the name of Islam i.e. Hasan Akbar, etc. Others feel that there is no conflict. Previous Fatwas seem vague and not very definitive. Can you make some general comments about Muslims in the u.s. military. Would you consider someone like Hasan Akbar or other soldiers that have committed such acts with the goal of helping Muslims/Islam (Lets just assume this for now) fighting Jihad and if they did die would you consider them shaheeds. I realize that these are difficult questions but you seem to be one of the only ones that has lived in the u.s. has a good understanding of the the Qur&#8217;an and Sunna and is not afraid of being direct.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In another email, Hasan said:</p>
<blockquote><p>“If the Qur&#8217;an it states to fight your enemies as they fight you but don&#8217;t transgress. So, I would assume that suicide bomber whose aim is to kill enemy soldiers or their helpers but also kill innocents in the process is acceptable. Furthermore, if enemy soldiers are using other tactics that are unethical/unconscionable than those same tactics may be used.”</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Report on Biased Textbooks Goes to 500 Superintendents</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/report-on-biased-textbooks-goes-to-500-superintendents/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=report-on-biased-textbooks-goes-to-500-superintendents</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/report-on-biased-textbooks-goes-to-500-superintendents/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:28:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[500 Superintendents]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bias]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[texts]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=117963</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Exposes anti-Western biases in teaching materials.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/books.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117966" title="books" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/books.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="539" /></a></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.christianaction.org/">Christian Action Network</a> has sent 500 school superintendents a report showing that many textbooks are biased against Israel and the West while whitewashing radical Islam. The report, authored by Citizens for National Security, examines 200 quotes from 30 textbooks used in Florida.</p>
<p>“[Students] aren’t being taught about the theological motivations behind radical Islam,” <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/campaign-warning-parents-of-bias-in-classroom-books/">said</a> Martin Mawyer, President of the Christian Action Network.</p>
<p>“The impression students are given is that terrorists are misguided fighters against Western imperialism and aggression, who are only wrong in their approach. It was amazing how many times the word ‘Palestine’ was used, making it sound like Israel was built on top of a conquered country,” he said.</p>
<p>The report lists several quotes from textbooks teaching students that the 9/11 attacks were a response to U.S. foreign policy. For example, one book says, “What were the sources of Muslim anger?&#8230;bin Laden declared that the attacks were a response to the ‘humiliation and disgrace’ that have afflicted the Islamic world for over eighty years.”</p>
<p>Another teaches that Bin Laden was motivated by the “military presence of the sacred soil of the Arabian peninsula and its support for Israel’s hostility to Palestinian nationalism.” The ideology of radical Islam is not discussed. While Bin Laden’s statements about the West’s foreign policies are mentioned, quotes about his ideology are not. For example, Raymond Ibrahim in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Qaeda-Reader-Essential-Terrorist-Organization/dp/076792262X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1325551355&amp;sr=8-1">&#8220;The Al-Qaeda Reader&#8221;</a> brings to light this quote from Osama Bin Laden:</p>
<blockquote><p>“In fact, Muslims are obligated to raid the lands of the infidels, occupy them, and exchange their systems of governance for an Islamic system, barring any practice that contradicts the <em>sharia</em> from being publicly voiced among the people, as was the case at the dawn of Islam.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The texts also are also unfavorable to Israel. One textbook states, “Angered over the loss of their territory to Israel, some militant Palestinians responded with a policy of terrorist attacks.” In discussing the 1948 war, one textbook just says that “war soon broke out” without explaining that the Arabs invaded Israel with the objective of destroying it.</p>
<p>It then says, “By the end of the 1948 war, Israel controlled almost three fourths of Palestine, including land in the Negev Desert and half of Jerusalem. Jordan and Egypt divided the rest of Palestine between them.” Coupled together, it sounds if the war was one of conquest by Israel.</p>
<p>The report documents numerous instances where Islam is treated more favorably than Christianity. For example, one textbook states, “The Quran permitted fair, defensive war as jihad, or ‘struggle in the way of God,” and says that is how Islam expanded.  Another selected quote is that Jews and Christians “have historically enjoyed religious freedom in many Muslim societies.”</p>
<p>“[Islamic forces] rarely imposed their religion by force on the local population…By contrast, Christian monks motivated by missionary fervor, converted many of the peoples of central and eastern Europe,” is another textbook excerpt included in the report.</p>
<p>Some textbooks took a blatantly skeptical stance towards the historical accuracy of Judaism and Christianity.</p>
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		<title>Italy Faces Up to the Evil Within</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/italy-faces-up-to-the-evil-within/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=italy-faces-up-to-the-evil-within</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/italy-faces-up-to-the-evil-within/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:18:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Italy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=110728</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new Italian report on anti-Semitism dares to tell the truth.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/italy.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-110731" title="italy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/italy.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="280" /></a></p>
<p>There is no question that anti-Semitism in Europe has been on the rise during the last few years.  The European left, for a range of reasons, has gotten into the habit of viewing Israel, and by extension all Jews, as the foremost challenge to peace on earth and goodwill toward men.  As Europe&#8217;s Islamic communities have expanded, moreover, and their members grown less and less shy about expressing – and acting upon – their opinions, the articulation of anti-Semitic sentiments and the commission of anti-Semitic acts by young Muslim men has increased accordingly.</p>
<p>While all this has been going on, a number of European governments have chosen to look the other way.  Many political leaders in Europe, indeed, have fueled anti-Semitism by word and deed.  The Italian government, however, has been an exception.</p>
<p>It was in October 2009 that two committees of the Italian Parliament voted to commission an in-depth study of anti-Semitism in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.  They established a sub-committee to perform the inquiry, and put the Jewish writer and parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein (whom I profiled here recently) in charge.  Now the sub-committee&#8217;s report has been released, and its findings are well worth attending to.</p>
<p>The report acknowledges “a strong resurgence of anti-Semitism in European societies” in recent years – a new kind of anti-Semitism that is “less overtly racist, and therefore more subtle and insidious,” than previous varieties, and that is being spread especially through online social networks.  As a consequence of this new brand of anti-Semitism, “Jewish communities in various Western countries have had to deal for the first time with a new atmosphere of insecurity” and “a new cultural climate.”  Though Italy is nowhere near as severely plagued with anti-Semitism as many other European countries, recent years have nonetheless seen a rise in anti-Semitism on the Italian far left, which, like its counterparts elsewhere in the West, has come to view Israel as “a state based on apartheid against the Palestinians,” takes the view that “the victims of the past have become today&#8217;s executioners,” and relativizes the Shoah by essentially equating it to what is routinely, and absurdly, depicted as a “Palestinian Holocaust.”</p>
<p>The report offers its share of sobering statistics.  It references a 2010 study showing a steady rise in Italian anti-Semitism between 2001 and 2009, and another study indicating that “44 percent of Italians express attitudes and opinions in some way hostile to Jews and 12 percent are fully-fledged anti-Semites.”  Fully 22% of Italians between the ages of 18 and 29 were hostile to Jews, and the figure was even higher among males in northern Italy.  One-fourth of Italians surveyed agreed with the statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”  (In other European countries the figure was even higher: 35% in Germany and Britain, 41% in the Netherlands, 48% in Portugal, and no less than 55% in Poland.)  One-third of Italians regard Jews as “not very nice,” and one-fourth don&#8217;t consider them “fully Italian.”  Among Italians between the ages of 18 and 34, 22% were anti-Semitic, even though 71% of them “had never had any direct contact with Jews.”  Of Italians in this age group, 51% balked at the idea of their daughter being in a relationship with a Jew, 38% didn&#8217;t want a Jewish boss, and 25% didn&#8217;t care for the idea of having Jewish neighbors.</p>
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		<title>Challenging the Slander at Columbia&#8217;s Israel-Bashing Event</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/phil-orenstein/challenging-the-lies-at-columbia-israel-bashing-event/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=challenging-the-lies-at-columbia-israel-bashing-event</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/phil-orenstein/challenging-the-lies-at-columbia-israel-bashing-event/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 May 2011 04:34:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Phil Orenstein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Center for Constitutional Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CPS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[david horowitz freedom center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[depaul university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[event]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Goldstone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Norman Finkelstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rashid Khalidi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[report]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92730</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Finkelstein and Khalidi utter shameless lies against the Jewish State.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Khalidi1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92791" title="Khalidi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Khalidi1.jpg" alt="" width="252" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>The Center for Palestinian Studies (CPS) at Columbia University hosted an event on May 2, 2011 entitled “Gaza: Israel’s War and the Goldstone Report.” The panel of rabid anti-Israel academics included Norman Finkelstein, author of “This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion;&#8221; Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab studies at Columbia, co-director of CPS, and author of “The Iron Cage” (and former professor of political science at DePaul University who was denied tenure and resigned); and Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.</p>
<p>I gathered a couple of defenders of Israel and attended the event in order to challenge the radical anti-Israel orthodoxy at Columbia. Before the event began, I handed out a printout of David Horowitz’s forceful and factual ad that ran in the <em>New York Times</em> last week, entitled: <a href="http://www.campsol.com/fpm/images/042911_ad.html" target="_blank">“The Palestinians’ Case Against Israel is Based on a Genocidal Lie.”</a> I had the fortune to meet Danielle Reich, a Columbia undergraduate student, Hasbara fellow and campus Camera representative, who came to defend Israel as well. There were altogether 300 people, an assemblage of student activists, faculty and aging hippies with a handful of Israel supporters. Many people handed the flyer back to me after they saw the name David Horowitz Freedom Center. I engaged a few folks in debate over some of the points in the ad.</p>
<p>I reiterated the message in the Horowitz ad that the Palestinian claim that Israel “occupies Palestine” is an outright historical lie and that there has never been a “Palestinian” state or entity to occupy before the PLO was created in 1964 in order to obliterate the State of Israel. People asked why I am denouncing the Palestinian people. I said, &#8220;Because they are suffering,&#8221; echoing the message in the ad. But, I continued, the cause of their suffering is not Israel, but sixty years of Arab aggression. If we continue to blame and demonize Israel, we will never get to the core of the Israeli-Palestinian question, which is that Arab dictatorships have been using the Palestinian people as political pawns in their war against the State of Israel. This is the manner in which Danielle and I argued with some of the anti-Israel activists around us before the event began.</p>
<p>The speakers, Finkelstein and Khalidi, were venomous in their detailed demonization of Israel, and it was grueling to listen to their talks, but the audience was worse. The person I was sitting next to was mourning the death of Osama bin Laden. In fact, I think many in the audience were OBL sympathizers. I got into a vehement argument with one middle-aged lady who viciously attacked Israel, saying that Israel backed out of every deal and shortchanged the Palestinians and that I should read Dennis Ross&#8217; book, whom she described as “one of your guys.” I said Arafat backed out of the deal which would have given the Palestinians a state and she kept hollering, &#8220;Bulls**t, Israel backed out, read Dennis Ross.&#8221;</p>
<p>I overheard one young woman praising Hezbollah and saying that Israel was the worst thing that happened since the Holocaust. I confronted her on her statements, asking her to repeat what she said about Israel and why she was praising a terrorist organization. She was startled to find a supporter of Israel in the midst of an otherwise compliant group of Muslims and left-wing activists and was speechless. Her friends chimed in saying, &#8220;One man&#8217;s terrorist is another&#8217;s freedom fighter,&#8221; making the point that they, too, are admirers of Hezbollah.</p>
<p>Before the lecture, people were passing out nefarious literature on &#8220;Nakba&#8221; (the Palestinian anniversary of the creation of Israel, &#8220;the catastrophe&#8221;) and the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” to their activist friends and announcing upcoming events to excoriate the Jewish State. I spoke to a Palestinian Muslim sporting a 1960s beatnik goatee, who said the Palestinians have had a &#8220;culture&#8221; in the region for many past generations, after I confronted him with the fact that there was no Palestinian entity during the 400 year Ottoman reign and during the British rule after World War I. I mentioned the fact that Mark Twain said it was a desolate land with virtually no inhabitants. To everything I said, he answered, &#8220;Zionist propaganda.&#8221; He even claimed there was no Arab War with Israel in 1948. It is all Zionist propaganda. There was nothing further I could say to the deaf and dumb.</p>
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