There's a major asterisk next to this one because William Arkin had <a href="https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1557464955602890753">formerly claimed</a> at Newsweek that his sources told him AG Garland hadn't approved the Mar-a-Lago raid.


	And plenty of people got burned by that.


	This story claims that the FBI raid <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-sought-documents-trump-hoarded-years-including-about-russiagate-1734280">targeted </a>specific documents.

<blockquote>
	
		"The&nbsp;FBI&nbsp;raid on Mar-a-Lago last Monday was specifically intended to recover&nbsp;Donald Trump's personal "stash" of hidden documents, two high-level U.S. intelligence officials tell&nbsp;Newsweek.

	
		To justify the unprecedented raid on a former president's residence and protect the source who revealed the existence of Trump's private hoard, agents went into Trump's residence on the pretext that they were seeking&nbsp;all&nbsp;government documents, says one official who has been involved in the investigation. But the true target was this private stash, which Justice Department officials feared Donald Trump might weaponize."
</blockquote>


	According to Arkin, these documents involved Russiagate.

<blockquote>
	
		"The sought-after documents deal with a variety of intelligence matters of interest to the former president, the officials suggest—including material that Trump apparently thought would exonerate him of any claims of Russian collusion in 2016 or any other election-related charges."

	
		"Trump was particularly interested in matters related to the Russia hoax and the wrong-doings of the deep state," one former Trump official tells&nbsp;Newsweek. "I think he felt, and I agree, that these are facts that the American people need to know." The official says Trump may have been planning to use them as part of a 2024 run for the presidency.
</blockquote>


	Is it true? Who knows. Arkin's sources were wrong about Garland. And that's a very basic thing. But it would provide a certain motive power for the controversy. It would explain why Trump wanted certain documents and why the Biden administration might want to seize them.


	Of course just because something sounds plausible, doesn't mean that it's actually true.

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

There's a major asterisk next to this one because William Arkin had formerly claimed at Newsweek that his sources told him AG Garland hadn't approved the Mar-a

Did FBI Raid Seek "Exonerating" Russiagate Materials?

The engine of Holocaust denial is a desire to kill Jews. Otherwise why bother?


	There's a fringe of conspirazoids, the sorts of people who believe that the moon landing was faked,&nbsp;that UFOs can be found in your backyard, and that 9/11 was carried out by the NYPD, and that Bigfoot killed JFK who are attracted to Holocaust denial among the many other conspiracy theory options.&nbsp;But the big leagues of Holocaust denials are associated with Nazism and Communism because they both specialized in the extermination of Jews.


	The "Palestinian" cause is a toxic inbreeding of Nazis and Communists.


	The Muslim Brotherhood, key players in the Arab Revolt, got a lot of their techniques from the Nazis. And the Nazi influence was felt most strongly in Egypt. But the "Palestinian" cause was manufactured by the Soviet Union.


	Mahmoud Abbas, the current dictator-for-life of the PLO, got his <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/abbass-untranslated-book-480751">Holocaust denial training</a> from the USSR. Abbas wrote it as a "student" in the Soviet Union as part of the&nbsp;Palestinian-Soviet Friendship Foundation which was itself <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/how-holocaust-denial-shaped-mahmoud-abbas-worldview/">crossbred with Nazi propagand</a>a.

<blockquote>
	
		&nbsp;PA President Mahmoud Abbas is profoundly fascinated by Nazi propaganda and has employed it in his own writings, particularly in his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the Holocaust, “The Other Face: The Secret Connections Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement,” which he wrote in Moscow in 1982. Two years later, Abbas published a book based on his dissertation. It is written in Arabic and, tellingly, has never been translated into any other language.

	
		There is a reason for this: The book is inspired by and based on the work of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. While he was a fugitive in Argentina, Eichmann formulated and disseminated Nazi propaganda according to which the Holocaust was a Jewish-Nazi conspiracy that sacrificed Jewish lives in order to create a Jewish state in Palestine.&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	So what did the Germans really expect when they invited the head of a terror group responsible for the <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-714943">Munich Massacr</a>e?

<blockquote>
	
		At a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Abbas was asked by a reporter whether he plans to apologize to Israel and Germany for the 1972 Munich massacre, ahead of its 50th anniversary. Eleven members of the Israeli delegation and a German police officer were murdered after members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, which was linked to&nbsp;Abbas’s Fatah party, took hostages at the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972.&nbsp;

	
		“If we want to go over the past, go ahead,” Abbas responded in Arabic. “I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed... 50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts,” saying the last word in English.

	
		While Scholz could be seen wincing at Abbas’s Holocaust reference, he did not immediately rebuke the Palestinian president, although he had earlier rejected his use of the word “apartheid” to describe Israeli policies.
</blockquote>


	Scholtz has since tepidly condemned Abbas' Holocaust denial.


	The debate about Holocaust denial is less important than the motive for it. Abbas responded to his role in the massacre of Jews with Holocaust denial. That's typical. It's the essence of the purpose that Holocaust denial is meant to serve.


	The "Palestinian" cause is about finishing the work that the Nazis began. It's why Hitler is so widely admired in the Palestinian Authority. "Palestinian" Holocaust denial, like most kinds, is about paving the way for justifying the future murder of Jews.

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

The engine of Holocaust denial is a desire to kill Jews. Otherwise why bother?


	There's a fringe of conspirazoids, the sorts of people who believe that

Abbas' Holocaust Denial Tour Hits Germany

Here's the JTA&nbsp;very <a href="https://www.jta.org/2022/08/16/united-states/texas-school-district-orders-librarians-to-remove-a-version-of-anne-franks-diary-from-shelves">deliberately</a> pushing its political agenda of getting sexualized books to kids.

<blockquote>
	
		A school district in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered its librarians to remove an illustrated adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” from their shelves and digital libraries, along with the Bible and dozens of other books that were challenged by parents last year...

	
		“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation,”&nbsp;by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman and illustrator David Polonsky, is a 2019 illustrated adaptation of the bestselling diary by the teenage Holocaust victim.&nbsp;The New York Times called the book&nbsp;“so engaging and effective that it’s easy to imagine it replacing the [original] ‘Diary’ in classrooms and among younger readers.”&nbsp;

	
		The parental challenge against the book came in February, and the district initially dismissed it, Hawes said. Hawes, who is not Jewish, is on a list of parents who can be called in to serve on a committee to review book challenges.

	
		“When we got ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ we thought, ‘This is a joke.’ But it wasn’t,” Hawes said, adding that the complaint was that “the book shouldn’t be read without parent supervision.” She suspected that the parent may have objected to the unabridged diary’s references to female genitalia,&nbsp;same-sex attraction&nbsp;and&nbsp;other sexual matters, which&nbsp;have been deemed “pornographic” by parental challenges in the past. But she couldn’t be sure because the parent who challenged the book didn’t show up to the meeting.
</blockquote>


	This is not Anne Frank's diary.


	This is a comic book based on a version of the diary that neither Anne nor her father wanted published.


	I've written about the abuse of Anne Frank's legacy multiple times. There's the famous play that eliminated her Jewishness. There's also the 'unabridged' diary. This is material that Frank wrote when she was younger that she then got rid of. Her father respectfully edited the diary when he fulfilled her wish to have it published. After his death, the "unabridged" diary containing sexual materials that neither the dead girl nor her father wanted to publish was gleefully put out there.


	The material that parents objected to in&nbsp;“Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation”, even assuming it's true to the unabridged version (I have no idea if it is) was also the material that Anne's older self censored and that her father got rid of. It doesn't belong in schools and shouldn't be in public view. It's an insult to her memory.


	Not everything people write as 13-year-olds should be out there. Nor should they be forced to live with it after death.&nbsp;


	The publishing interests pushing this claim that they have some moral right to dig up and publish material that Anne did not want out there for the "greater good".


	Getting it out of libraries and out of publication is a very good thing because it's effectively stolen material that was never meant for publication. It's no different than publishing sexual materials or photos of any other deceased person&nbsp;that they would have not wanted in the public realm.&nbsp;


	Exploiting the Holocaust to push a sexual agenda in schools is despicable. And using stolen writings from a murdered Jewish girl to do so is equally so.


	Anne Frank deserves better. So do our children.

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

Here's the JTA&nbsp;very deliberately pushing its political agenda of getting sexualized books to kids.


	
		A school district in suburban Fort Worth,

This Version of Anne Frank's Diary Should Be Removed From Libraries

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

Toy guns don't kill people, violent criminals who aren't locked up kill people.


	But New York's Governor Hochul has made it clear that, along with

NY Gov Hochul Won't Lock Up Criminals, Will Ban Toy Guns

I remember the controversy over dropping Truth, Justice and the American Way. But that was just the beginning.


	This story involves Spider Man: Remastered, a game for Sony video game consoles that recently came to the personal computer. PCs have a vibrant modding community, much of which is based around a site known as 'Nexus'. While the game's fictional depiction of New York City contained the inevitable 'Pride' flags, a&nbsp;'modder' on that site reportedly figured out how to trigger an alternate graphic used in Muslim countries that would get rid of the flag. And he replaced the Pride flags with American flags.


	Anyone downloading the 'mod' would be able to replace all the 'Pride' flags with the Stars and Stripes.&nbsp;


	Since Spider Man: Remastered is a single-player game, it's an individual choice and nothing they did would have any impact on anyone else playing the game.


	Despite hosting a variety of violent and sexual mods,&nbsp;Nexus, the modding site, responded by banning the 'modder' declaring that sort of thing isn't welcome here. The ban however has only made the mod <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/woup7g/nexus_mods_removes_spiderman_mod_that_replaces/">more popular </a>and it's being distributed across a variety of sites.


	While it's been a while since Gamergate hit the scene, the struggle between the social justice elites and gamers has never actually gone away. Gaming journalism has become much less relevant since, but at the same time corporate wokeness has become more rigidly policed.&nbsp;


	And the one thing you can't do in even the most violent games, as Rockstar's GTA 6 series and its studios are reportedly being remade to be sensitive and politically correct, is be proud of being an American.

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

I remember the controversy over dropping Truth, Justice and the American Way. But that was just the beginning.


	This story involves Spider Man: Remastered

Pride Flags, Yes, American Flags, No in Spiderman Game

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/09/fraud-scam.jpg"><img alt="Definition of fraud" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/09/fraud-scam.jpg" width="270" height="179" /></a>A congressional report, issued by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on September 18, 2013, is warning that a key portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) program is being mismanaged and is under threat for abuse and fraud. This report follows another report on the same Obamacare program which also warned the program was susceptible to fraud.
Exchanges were set up in Obamacare to provide a marketplace for individuals not covered by their employer’s health insurance or by Medicare/Medicaid. These exchanges were supposed to be set up by each individual state, but about half refused and forced the federal government to set up exchanges in those states.
“Navigators” were written into the law to be individuals who would help consumers navigate the exchanges and help consumers understand their option to choose the best insurance plan. Because half the states didn’t set up exchanges, “navigators” weren’t set up either. As a result, the Obama administration has set up the federal program of “assisters” a group of federally funded individuals who will help consumers navigate exchanges to find the best deal.
According to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, there is clear language in Obamacare which specifies that only state, not federal funds, be used to fund the “navigator” program, making this new program an end run around the clear language of the statute, according to the report.
<a href="http://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-report-on-obamacare-enrollment-programs-reveals-risk-of-fraud-misinformation/">In a press release,</a> the Committee identified five specific areas of concern for fraud in the “navigator” program: 1) The Administration created the Assisters program without congressional approval, 2) top HHS officials have admitted that the enrollment outreach programs are prime targets for fraud, 3) consumers have no way to verify that someone taking their application or encouraging enrollment is actually a Navigator or Assister, 4) HHS officials were concerned about security risks, but did not look into whether or not they could require background checks, 5) HHS has criticized direct phone calls, door-to-door solicitation, but has not banned them, and in some states, Navigators and Assisters are paid based on the number of persons they enroll, creating a conflict of interest.
The report also pointed out that navigators won’t go through a background check, be required to only have twenty hours of training, and have access to all sorts of personal information which they’ll be authorized to enter into a central database. The congressional report said:
<blockquote>Individual Navigators and Assisters will have access to many applicants’ personally identifiable information (PII), including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, email addresses, and in many cases the PII for other members of the applicant’s household. Such information may also be stored on computers and scanners owned by Navigator and Assister organizations. Furthermore, unlike agents and brokers, Navigators and Assisters bear no personal liability if they give taxpayers misinformation that damages their financial interests.</blockquote>
An email to the HHS media relations department for comment on this story was left unreturned.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wasn’t the only committee expressing concern about the navigator program. <a href="http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/letters/20130920CCIIO.pdf">Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee also fired off a letter last week to Gary Cohen,</a> the Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, expressing their concerns that the navigator grant program was also ripe for fraud.
This is not the first time that fraud has become an issue in the health care exchanges. <a href="/2013/volpe/how-obamacare-will-expose-americans-personal-information/">In August an HHS Office of Inspector General report warned that security in the information technology</a> system that would put all health care plans in each exchange on-line was so far behind schedule in its implementation that the final test would only happen on September 30, the day before the exchanges were due to be fully operational.
Separately, <a href="/2013/volpe/obamacares-unraveling/">the $2 billion loan program to augment Health Care</a> Co-ops is now the subject of four separate investigations with allegations of fraud being so systemic the program has been shut down entirely while the investigations go on. Health care Co-ops are non-profits, which would offer health insurance in certain state exchanges to compete with for profit health insurance providers.
With less than a week before Obamacare is to be fully implemented, most news stories are concerned with the economic effects of the law. Fraud, identity theft, and other crimes should be of concern as well since this complicated program is being put together on the fly, with all sorts of individuals being hired to help implement, whether they are qualified to do so or not.
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ObamaCare: Exposing Citizens to Identity Theft, Fraud

A congressional report, issued by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on September 18, 2013, is warning that a key portion of

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/09/Espinoza.jpg"><img alt="Espinoza" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/09/Espinoza.jpg" width="260" height="274" /></a>A new directive by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will allow even more criminal illegal aliens to avoid being deported.
The new directive, titled Facilitating Parental Interests in the Course of Civil Immigration Enforcement Activities, was issued by ICE's new director, John Sandweg, to all ICE agents on August 23, 2013, and it referred to the euphemistic moniker of “prosecutorial discretion,” which has been used repeatedly to administratively direct ICE agents in the field to no longer apply immigration laws if individuals fit into the definition of the directive.
In this case, Sandweg directed all ICE agents to use “prosecutorial discretion” regarding individuals ICE detainees who are parents or caregivers to children living in the USA.
The directive identified three specific categories: 1) primary caretakers of minor children without regard to the dependent's citizenship; 2) parents and legal guardians who have a direct interest in a family court proceeding involving child welfare proceedings in the United States; and 3) parents or legal guardians whose minor children are U.S. citizens (USCs) or lawful permanent residents (LPRs).
This latest prosecutorial discretion memo follows in a long line of similar memos authored by a variety of high-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, each of which has reduced the scope of illegal aliens who are to be prioritized for removal.
The so-called <a href="http://www.ice.gov/doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretion-memo.pdf">“Morton Memo,”</a> authored in 2011 by then-ICE Director John Morton, instructed ICE agents to treat any illegal alien not convicted of a crime as a low priority. <a href="/2012/volpe/obama-administration-redefining-dangerous-illegal-aliens/">Then, in December 2012, another ICE memo instructed ICE agents to treat anyone with two or fewer misdemeanors as a low priority</a>. (ICE still considers even one felony conviction as a high priority). With this new directive, all illegal aliens considered primary caregivers for children, here legally or illegally, will also be treated as a low priority.
Recently, Congress has gotten into the act. Earlier in September, <a href="http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=3ad9f59c-d459-42c0-9deb-3377c41c0855%5d">liberal California Senator Diane Feinstein sent a letter to outgoing DHS Director Janet Napolitano urgin</a>g DHS to consider applying prosecutorial discretion to farm workers.
Jessica Vaughan is a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies, <a href="http://www.cis.org/vaughan/new-amnesty-parents-and-nannies">and in a blog post</a>, she likened the new directive to the parental version of the DREAM Act. In that same blog post, Vaughan singled out a criminal illegal alien previously featured in <a href="/2013/volpe/illegal-immigrant-pedophile-may-be-released-in-chicago-area/">Front Page Magazine.</a>
Amado Espinoza-Ramirez is a suspected serial child molester, who’s accused of acts that include incest. After making bond in a criminal court in Chicago, Illinois in early September 2011, ICE took custody of Espinoza-Ramirez. ICE decided to release rather than hold him in an ICE facility because there wasn’t enough bed space in ICE facilities and he no longer fit their definition of dangerous. He was released with a tracking monitor. He subsequently maneuvered out of that tracking monitor, missed all subsequent court appearances, and is considered a fugitive, while being charged in criminal and immigration court in absentia.
The<a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/24/congressman-blasts-ice-for-releasing-alleged-child-rapist/"> two reasons</a> identified by ICE at the time for releasing rather detaining Espinoza-Ramirez were that Espinoza-Ramirez was only suspected but not convicted of criminal acts and that he had a legal citizen child.
Espinoza-Ramirez is still a fugitive and likely back in his home country of Mexico. However, were he to be apprehended, the same principles would still be in place, and arguably, Espinoza-Ramirez would be eligible for release under the new directive.
This new directive did not escape the ire of Congress. The Chairman the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, immediately issued a statement linking this policy to a tough-on-criminal-illegal-alien bill passed out of his committee called the SAFE Act.
<blockquote>The primary reason why our immigration system is broken today is because our immigration laws have largely been ignored by past and present administrations.  It’s imperative that we prevent this from happening again by taking away the enforcement on/off’ switch from the President.  That’s why the House Judiciary Committee approved the SAFE Act, which prevents the Executive Branch from unilaterally turning off immigration enforcement by granting states and local governments the authority to enforce federal immigration laws.</blockquote>
Not everyone was attacking the directive. The American Immigration Council (AIC) defended the directive, <a href="http://immigrationimpact.com/2013/08/26/ice-policy-on-parental-rights-addresses-long-overdue-problem-in-immigration-system/">stating in a blog post</a> that this was nothing more than a sensible first step toward immigration policy which places priority in not breaking up families.
<blockquote>The directive, signed by Acting ICE Director Jon Sandweg, reminds ICE officers that they must continue to review all cases individually and "continue to weigh whether an exercise of prosecutorial discretion may be warranted" while considering such factors such as whether the immigrant is a parent, guardian, or primary caretaker of a U.S. citizen or a minor.</blockquote>
Tough deportation policies against criminal illegal aliens was one of the main promises of all those who have been proponents of comprehensive immigration reform. The public has been promised repeatedly that criminal illegal aliens will be pursued with vigor and all dangerous illegal aliens would face deportation. A series of memos (including this last one) prove that President Obama has no intention of getting tough on dangerous illegal aliens.
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De Facto Amnesty for Child Rapists

A new directive by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will allow even more criminal illegal aliens to avoid being deported.

The new directive,

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/09/1239807_573315069398010_2013190991_n.jpg"><img alt="1239807_573315069398010_2013190991_n" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/09/1239807_573315069398010_2013190991_n.jpg" width="270" height="208" /></a>A counter-protest group of bikers is coming from all over the USA to honor the victims of 9/11, as well as our armed forces, who went on to defend America after that attack. The group will rally in Washington, DC on September 11, 2013 to counter-protest another rally held by the American Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC).
"2 Million Bikers to DC," as its now called on Facebook, has become a near overnight sensation. There are now state chapters in each of the fifty states and over 35,000 likes on Facebook
The group is the brainchild of Belinda Bee, a biker from the D.C.-area. She said a fellow rider named “Top Fuel” Bill Williamson had started a local biker group counter-protesting AMPAC, and that she took it over once the movement went national.
While the group didn’t respond to FrontPage Magazine in time for publication, <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/conservativerefocuslive/2013/08/28/conservative-refocus-live-featuring-barry-secrest">Bee did make her first public comments to Blog Talk Radio host Barry Secrest on Wednesday August 28, 2013.</a>
Bee told Secrest that AMPAC is not a moderate group but rather one which supports terrorists.
“They are not moderate Muslims, they are, we consider ‘the Brotherhood' [Muslim Brotherhood].”
The leader of AMPAC, Radi Alum, said in an interview with FrontPage Magazine that his group and their 9/11 rally have both become lightning rods unnecessarily because of a series of misstatements about them in the media.
“If they understood what we are doing, they would join us. Unfortunately, some media outlets have lied by saying there is a ‘Million Muslim March.’ There is no such march. That idea has been dead since last February. We are the Million American March Against Fear, and most of our coalition is non-Muslim. The media outlets that spread the lie will be held morally and legally responsible for any damages that may occur as a result of their lies. We are consulting with lawyers and will be putting certain media outlets on notice in the near future.”
2 Million Bikers to DC has also complained about media coverage it has received. The group has complained repeatedly on its Facebook page about a series of misrepresentations of them in the media. One especially scurrilous attack came last week from the far-left website, Veterans Today Network (VTN). VTN suggested that Bill Williamson was a part of a group called Bikers for 9/11 Truth. This turned out to be a scurrilous report with no basis in fact (the group Bikers for 9/11 Truth doesn’t exist), with Williamson even being forced to issue a press release denying the report.
The controversy has also put a renewed spotlight on AMPAC. As Ryan Mauro explained in FrontPage Magazine, <a href="/2013/ryan-mauro/the-million-muslim-march-and-its-foreign-islamist-ties/">AMPAC has numerous ties to terrorists and its leader has made anti-Semitic comments in the past</a>:
<blockquote>AMPAC is based in Missouri and is led by MD Rabbi Alam, who has suggested that Jews were responsible for 9/11. He also leads the Missouri Democratic Party Asian American Caucus and received significant attention when the Missouri Right to Life PAC <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/missouri-right-life-group-endorses-islamist-911-doubter">endorsed his bid</a> to become Secretary of State.</blockquote>
The group defended itself saying it is not an anti-Semitic group.
<blockquote>We oppose anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry. MD Alam, founder of AMPAC, once made an unfortunate mis-statement about Jews that was widely quoted by the media. Unfortunately, when Mr. Alam quickly apologized and clarified his statement, the media barely reported it.</blockquote>
Both groups will be free to argue their side on September 11. The First Amendment is only as powerful as the sum total of the will of the American people willing to use it. This story should remind all of its overwhelming power: after all, the hotly anticipated counter-protest is the product of a few regular Americans who decided to exercise that power and started a sensation.
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>.

Bikers Ride to D.C.

A counter-protest group of bikers is coming from all over the USA to honor the victims of 9/11, as well as our armed forces, who went on to defend America

Bikers Ride to D.C. 

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/IRS_office_AP.jpg"><img alt="IRS_office_AP" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/IRS_office_AP.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>About three months after revelations first came out that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party and other conservative non-profit groups, the targeting continues largely unabated with many of the same IRS officials doing the same kind of targeting in much the same way.
<a href="http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/dlc_to_irs_on_continued_targeting.pdf">House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Republican Dave Camp sent a letter</a> on August 12, 2013 to acting IRS Chief Dan Werfel complaining that an IRS agent had told Ways and Means Committee investigators that they were still being instructed to flag groups with the term "Tea Party" in their name for extra scrutiny.
According to Camp’s letter, an IRS agent told his investigators that, per their manager’s instructions, all groups with “Tea Party” in their names would immediately be sent by the IRS agent for “secondary screening,” a designation assigned by the IRS to any group it deems to be involved in political advocacy.
In the letter, Camp points out that such indiscriminate flagging of Tea Party groups amounts to nothing less than a continuation of the “be on the lookout (BOLO)” policy which caused so much controversy when it was revealed:
<blockquote>In a spreadsheet dated August 12, 2010 produced by the IRS to the Committee, under the heading, 'BOLO list', (Be on the Look Out) are instructions to refer all Tea Party organization applications to Group 7822 for secondary screening. Today, according to information obtained by the Committee, those applications are still sent to secondary screening, but now they are sent to Group 7823.</blockquote>
Front Page Magazine has learned that Tea Party groups are not the only groups still being targeted. The Thomas More Society has represented a number of pro-life organizations. Peter Breen is Vice President &amp; Senior Counsel of the Thomas More Society and in an interview with Front Page Magazine, Breen said three groups have contacted his organization since the revelations in May to complain of continued harassment.
In the case of pro-life groups, Breen said, the IRS would routinely ask these groups how often they intended on holding prayer sessions in front of abortion clinics.
“There has been a real fixation on the prayer activity,” said Breen.
He said that Emerald Coast Coalition for Life, Christian Voices for Life, and Cherish Life Ministries all complained within the last three months that the IRS was holding up their tax exempt application and continuing to ask such questions as how often the group planned on praying in front of abortion clinics.
The three groups were being handled by two IRS agents, Tyrone Thomas and Ms. R. Medley, two agents that Breen said harassed other pro-life groups in the past. In all three cases, concerns were raised by IRS case worker into July 2013 over the perceived propensity to pray of the members of the group. Both Thomas and Medley work out of the same Cincinnati IRS office that has become the subject of so much controversy.
Front Page Magazine has also learned that the continued targeting of at least one pro-Israel group continues. Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the principal of Z Street, a group designed to support the Jewish State of Israel.
Marcus said that her group’s battle with the IRS is more than three years old. On October 24, 2010, Z Street sued the IRS, alleging that the group was unfairly targeted for intrusive and inappropriate questions, thus violating the group’s due process rights.
Marcus said that as a result of the suit the IRS retaliated by putting off the decision on Z Street’s non-profit status indefinitely. The decision has still not been made almost three years later, and the IRS has said it won’t issue a decision until this court case has been settled.
Z Street was back in federal court on July 18, 2013 facing off with the IRS. The IRS continued to maintain in court that the organization would not make a final decision on the group’s status until after the lawsuit was settled.
Marcus said she believes that there are other pro-Israel groups being targeted but that people are afraid to speak up because they are worried that the IRS will target them if they do.
Front Page Magazine has found evidence to corroborate that claim. In one correspondence with an unidentified pro-Israel group, the IRS agent in charge of the case, Tracy Dornette, asks the group, “Does your organization support the existence of the land of Israel? Describe your organization’s religious belief system toward the land of Israel.”
Neither question, said Marcus, should have anything to do with determining the tax exempt status of a group.
While President Obama claimed when this scandal first broke to be taking it seriously, it appears as though, for the most part, it’s business as usual for the IRS. Many of the same IRS agents who were in the middle of the targeting which became the subject of the explosive Office of Inspector General report continue to work in the same capacity, carrying on the same way at the IRS.
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Obama's IRS Still Persecuting Conservatives

About three months after revelations first came out that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party and other conservative non-profit groups, the

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/obamacare8.jpg"><img alt="obamacare8" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/obamacare8.jpg" width="273" height="218" /></a>Just a day after the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that everything was on track as far as CMS was concerned in implementing Obamacare, a Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHSOIG) report concluded that CMS was behind schedule on testing key information technology security necessary for the automated rollout of key parts of Obamacare. Without this security system, the personal information of tens of millions of people may be exposed.
Marilyn Tavenner, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on August 1 and she testified that everything was on track for the impending rollout of Obamacare.
“Sixty days from now is the beginning of open enrollment when Americans will be able to compare and enroll in affordable health care coverage, and that implementation is on track,” Tavenner said.
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Tavenner even went on to specifically identify IT as a specific area where progress was being made and something that CMS had taken seriously for years.
“Over the last three and a half years, CMS and our Federal partners have been hard at work drafting policy, implementing consumer protections, working with stakeholders, and building IT systems that will enable Americans to shop and apply for insurance coverage starting just two months from now.”
On August 2, 2013, however, HHSOIG <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region1/181330070.pdf">released a report </a>which concluded that CMS is about two months behind in testing a key IT security system necessary for the smooth rollout of the health care exchanges, and because of this their last test is currently scheduled for the day before enrollment officially is supposed to start in these healthcare exchanges (Sept. 30th).
The system is referred to as <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/06/us-usa-healthcare-security-idUSBRE9750YH20130806">the “hub” and</a> it is supposed to be designed to protect the personal information of tens of millions of people from hackers and identity thieves when they enter in their personal information in order to apply for health insurance through these exchanges.
The first test, which included a security system plan assessment and a security risk assessment, was initially supposed to be completed on June 1. That was first pushed back to July 1 and then pushed back again to July 15. Subsequent tests were also pushed back, some more than two months.
Furthermore, Front Page Magazine couldn’t confirm if the initial test was in fact successfully completed on July 15. HHSOIG would not confirm the completion of this test on that date and referred all comment to CMS, which did not return a phone call and email asking for confirmation.
Even at the current schedule, assuming the July 15 test was successfully completed, the final step, a security authorization decision, wouldn’t come until September 30, the day before open enrollment is supposed to begin. Any further delays would mean that the government wouldn’t be able to guarantee personal information for the beginning of open enrollment or would have to push open enrollment back an indefinite period of time.
This latest revelation comes on the heels of a <a href="/2013/volpe/obamacares-unraveling/">report last week by Front Page Magazine on a key loan program which is also attacking the rest of Obamacare</a> like a bureaucratic cancer. Both stories illustrate that Obamacare is a complicated nightmare, with thousands of moving parts, and if any of those parts ever breaks down, that breakdown leads to a domino effect in the system at large.
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ObamaCare: Exposing Americans' Personal Information

Just a day after the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that everything was on

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/hani-nour-eddin.jpg"><img alt="hani-nour-eddin" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/hani-nour-eddin.jpg" width="305" height="245" /></a>A new Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) report raises more questions than answers regarding the circumstances behind the approval of a visa for a known member of a group identified by the State Department as being a member of a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
In June 2012, Egyptian Hani Nour Eldin visited the United States as a member of an Egyptian parliamentary delegation to meet with U.S. government officials and business leaders. During the course of those meetings, Eldin raised with then Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough the issue of the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheikh, from federal prison for humanitarian reasons.
Eldin’s presence at all these meetings is peculiar because in 1993 he admitted to being a member of Gama’a al-Islamiyya. Gama’a al-Islamiyya is an Egyptian Islamist group first designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. Gama’a al-Islamiyya has been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Gama%27a_al-Islamiyya">linked, though indirectly,</a> to the assassination of Anwar Sadat. In the 1990s, the group was linked to a string of terrorist acts, including the murder of Egypt’s speaker of parliament and a 1995 attempted assassination of Hosni Mubarrak.
In 1993, Eldin was arrested after members of Gama’a al-Islamiyya got into a shoot-out with Egyptian security officials at a mosque. In a 1993 article that accompanied the arrest, Eldin denied his involvement in the shoot-out but proclaimed he was a member of Gama’a al-Islamiyya.
As such, the strictest reading of State Department protocols means that Eldin should have been denied a visa. After hearing complaints from New York Republican Congressman Peter King, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General did an audit of DHS efforts to screen members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
The <a href="http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2013/OIG_13-103_Jul13.pdf">heavily redacted unclassified report absolves DHS</a> of any wrongdoing in this matter, and only recommends three cosmetic improvements to the process:
<blockquote>We determined DHS has policies and procedures for admitting members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations into the United States, and collaborating with other departments and agencies when screening members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and issuing inadmissibility waivers. DHS did not determine any derogatory information on Mr. Eldin prior to admitting him, and DHS followed established procedures for allowing Mr. Eldin into the United States. However, we identified operational challenges that may reduce the effectiveness of DHS’ visa security processes. We are making three recommendations to enhance DHS’ efforts to screen members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The Department concurred with all recommendations.</blockquote>
According to the report, Eldin was determined not to be a member of a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but the reason behind this determination isn’t explained, and may very well be part of the redacted portion of the report.
In an email exchange with Front Page Magazine, DHS OIG only said cryptically that the scope of their audit didn’t include determining whether or not Eldin was a member of a Foreign Terrorist Organization and pointed out that such determinations aren’t only made by DHS but also by the State Department. The DHS OIG audit only looked into the performance of DHS in this matter.
If the State Department’s Office of Inspector General was also investigating the matter, such information would not be released to the press until the investigation was over.
Front Page Magazine reached out to the offices of Congressman Peter King, the House Homeland Security Committee, and the Senate Homeland Security Committee because all three received a copy of the audit, but all declined comment for this story.
In a 2012 article for the Daily Beast when this story first broke, a State Department spokesperson told Eli Lake that the State Department <a href="http:/">had no information that suggested that Eldin was a member of a Foreign Terrorist Organization</a>.
In the same 2012 article by Eli Lake (which was referenced repeatedly in the report), <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/21/member-of-egyptian-terror-group-goes-to-washington.html">Lake proclaims</a>, “Terrorists aren’t supposed to get visas. But Hani Nour Eldin was apparently invited to D.C. this week to meet with top officials. Did no one Google him?”
More than a year later it’s still not entirely clear why a known terrorist designated as such by the State Department was given a visa and allowed to meet with high ranking officials in the White House, giving him the ability to ask for the release of the mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack. This report seems to raise more questions than it answers.
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The White House's Visas-for-Terrorists Program

A new Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) report raises more questions than answers regarding the circumstances behind the

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/obamacare-supreme-court-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg"><img alt="obamacare supreme court-cropped-proto-custom_28" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/08/obamacare-supreme-court-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg" width="306" height="245" /></a>Another critical ObamaCare program has turned into a nightmare of mismanagement and corruption, and this debacle serves not only as a microcosm of the health care law itself, but also to illustrate how any obscure part of highly complicated and interconnected law can potentially bring down the entire system.
The name of the program is the Health Care Consumer Oriented and Operated Program (co-op). Its $2 billion dollar affiliated grant loan program has been so disastrously mismanaged that Congress has been forced to freeze all future loan funds while it investigates protocols and management of the program.
The health care co-ops were set-up in the Affordable Care Act to serve as a competing force to traditional health insurance on state exchanges, which were set-up to serve those that aren’t able to get insurance through Medicare, Medicaid, or through their employers. Health care co-ops were presented as promising options for cheap health insurance because they were set-up as non-profits.
The program is now the subject of four federal investigations including by the <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-committee-subpoenas-obamacare-co-op-program-documents/">House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee</a><a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/obamacare-co-ops-are-focus-of-four-federal-investigations/article/2531803">, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General</a>, and <a href="http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/house-republicans-take-aim-health-co-ops">the House Energy and Commerce Committee</a>.
Jonathan Ingram, a healthcare policy analyst with the Illinois Policy Institute, has been tracking health care co-ops, and specifically those in Illinois. He explained that while the concept of health care co-ops was written into the Affordable Care Act, the specific rules governing them were written by staff within DHS. Effectively, this means that nameless and faceless bureaucrats were deciding how health care co-ops would function.
With the loan program in flux, the fate of health care co-ops is also up in the air. Twenty-four co-ops in twenty-five states were exclusively selected by DHS to provide health insurance to compete in the health care exchanges in each of the twenty-five states.
The health-care exchanges, of which health care co-ops are so critical, have their own history of turbulence. Initially, the Obama administration planned on having states each set up their own exchanges, but starting in 2011, mostly Republican governors objected, and currently, in nearly half the states, the federal government will be forced to set-up the exchange itself.
Exchanges are supposed to be on-line and fully functional starting October 1, 2013, but all accounts make that a near impossibility in all fifty states.
Ingram said that the impact on health-care exchanges of the collapse of health-care co-ops is a state-to-state issue. Ingram said that in Illinois, there are currently only five entities offering health insurance on the exchange, making the collapse of one quite critical. He said only four entities appear on the California health-care exchange.
According to an emailed statement from the Chief Executive Officer of Land of Lincoln Health Care Co-op, Dan Yunker told Front Page Magazine that the co-op in Illinois should not be affected:
<blockquote>The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act pledged $3.8 billion in funding loans to assist in establishing co-ops in every state. In all, 24 co-ops received federal approval and loans, however the remaining funding for co-ops was cut as part of the fiscal cliff agreement. Land of Lincoln Health (the co-op sponsored by MCHC) was the last co-op to receive federal approval/funding. Land of Lincoln Health’s approval to launch a consumer oriented and operated health plan and loan award was not impacted by Congress’ fiscal cliff agreement. Land of Lincoln Health is continuing to move forward in creating affordable, comprehensive insurance options for the people of Illinois. Land of Lincoln Health’s plans will be available for individuals and business owners on October 1, 2013.</blockquote>
Other states won’t be so lucky. According to figures provided by the HHS, a whopping 43% of all the twenty-four loans are projected to default.
In Vermont, the health care co-op Vermont Health Co-op hasn’t even been able to secure the proper license from the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation despite receiving $34 million in grant money.
Freelancers Union Co-op is a health care co-op functioning in New York, New Jersey and Oregon, and it received a $340 million loan from the program <a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/04/2012-10-02-DEI-Gowdy-to-Horowitz-Freelancers-Union-Co-op-program-due-10-16.pdf">even though it was directly tied to the Freelancer’s Union Insurance Company, a relationship expressly forbidden by the Affordable Care Act.</a>
HHS declined to respond to an email on the fate of the health care co-op program and the health care exchanges in light of this recent scandal.
As Obamcare unfolds, it’s clear that the complicated program is predicated on the smooth transition of thousands of obscure and yet interlocking programs, as this story illustrates. The failure of even one obscure program serves as a domino effect to other programs and ultimately to the entire program. Success can only be achieved if all these programs are smoothly and effectively instituted all at once, and that is now a near certain impossibility. As such, the health care co-op program serves as an apt metaphor for the law itself, a never ending sea of endless mismanagement and corruption.
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ObamaCare's Unraveling

Another critical ObamaCare program has turned into a nightmare of mismanagement and corruption, and this debacle serves not only as a microcosm of the health

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/gty_internal_revenue_service_building_irs_thg_130515_wg.jpg"><img alt="gty_internal_revenue_service_building_irs_thg_130515_wg" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/gty_internal_revenue_service_building_irs_thg_130515_wg.jpg" width="256" height="210" /></a>An information technology (IT) company used its connections to land approximately $500 million in government contracts with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the period of a year and half, even though the company had less than $1 million in total revenue prior to the awarding of these contracts, according to a new House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs report.
The name of the company is Strong Castle and it is the subject of an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, completed in June 2013. According to the report, a cozy relationship between the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Braulio Castillo, and an official with the Internal Revenue Service named Greg Roseman led Strong Castle to receive lucrative contracts the company didn’t earn.
The committee’s report found that Strong Castle had been in business less than two years total before the company began bidding on hundreds of millions in lucrative IT contracts with the IRS.
The CEO of Strong Castle, Braulio Castillo, has been friends for more than two decades with Greg Roseman, an IRS manager whose position puts him in the middle of the process for approving IRS IT contracts. Roseman used his position to get Strong Castle approved for about $500 million in contracts, even though there were more experienced competitors with lower bids.
Worst of all, Castillo fraudulently claimed he had an old war injury in order to qualify for special contracts earmarked specifically for wounded veteran small business owners. The grants were part of a program called the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) program. Castillo claimed he sustained a foot injury while he attended U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School (USMAPS) in 1984. Castillo did attend USMAPS but it was only for one year, and this would be the only so-called military service that Castillo had, the committee found.
Furthermore, on one occasion Castillo claimed he sustained the foot injury playing football, while on a subsequent occasion he claimed it was during an “orienteering” session.
Roseman took the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqAt5itCwUA">Fifth Amendment</a> when he testified on the matter in front of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee in June 2013.
Deputy Commissioner of the IRS, Beth Tucker, also testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee and <a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/Tucker-Testimony-Final.pdf">defended the IRS in its process of choosing IT vendors</a>:
<blockquote>IRS Procurement follows not only bureau policies and procedures in the acquisition process, but also rules established by the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). The IRS uses a number of different acquisition approaches and contract types to fulfill its requirements, including Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs), which may be established under any General Services Administration (GSA) contract. As a purchasing option, GSA Schedules are an efficient and convenient acquisition approach. Using a GSA contract allows ordering activities to benefit from additional price discounts, expanded opportunities for contractors, elimination of redundant effort by utilizing a single contracting vehicle that fulfills complex or ongoing needs, reduction of administrative time and paperwork, expanded business opportunities for underrepresented groups and help for procuring agencies in reaching various contracting goals.</blockquote>
Strong Castle didn’t respond to an email from Front Page Magazine for comment for this story. According to the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, weaknesses in the procurement process for IRS IT contracting subject taxpayers to billions of dollars in waste and abuse.
This latest report comes on the heels of a separate investigation by Front Page Magazine into another information technology company, <a href="/2013/volpe/billionaire-swindlers-line-up-for-obamacare/">Client Network Services, Inc. (CNSI)</a>. In the case of CNSI, that company used a similarly cozy relationship with the state of Louisiana to also secure a contract worth more than $100 million. In that case, Governor Bobby Jindal canceled this contract after it came to light that the relationship between one of his officials, Bruce Greenstein, and CNSI was the subject of a federal investigation.
As a result of ObamaCare, IT companies like CNSI will be in line to bid on tens of billions of government contracts in order to upgrade Medicare and Medicaid IT systems, a requirement of the health care law.
The investigation into the relationship between the Obama administration and the IT industry by Front Page Magazine is only beginning to unfold, however all the evidence uncovered so far shows that classic crony capitalist relationships are afoot.
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Crony Capitalism at the IRS

An information technology (IT) company used its connections to land approximately $500 million in government contracts with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/trayvonbanner.jpg"><img alt="trayvonbanner" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/trayvonbanner.jpg" width="270" height="192" /></a>A number of radical groups -- including Marxist, Socialist, and other groups whose goal is the overthrow of the American system -- have seized on the Trayvon Martin verdict and are now organizing events and rallies trying to instigate anger over the verdict to serve their own agenda.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) organized a rally in San Francisco that drew several hundreds within hours of the verdict. PSL is also holding a number of events related to police brutality, which they’ve augmented to focus on the Trayvon Martin verdict. In Chicago, they <a href="http://pslweb.org/">held a study group </a>titled “Stand Up Against Police Brutality and Justice for Trayvon Martin” on July 23, 2013. A similar event will be held in San Francisco on July 26, 2013. A major rally against police brutality in Syracuse, New York is slated for August 21, 2013.
According to PSL and groups with a similar ideological bent, the police are merely tools of the capitalists, used to suppress the working class, which PSL declares has been given the shaft by America’s capitalistic system. Eugene Puryear is an organizer with PSL and <a href="http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-7-no-9/the-cops-and-the-war-on-black-america.html">he explained</a> the group's view in the most recent issue of Liberation News, the magazine published by PSL.
<blockquote>Militarized policing became the status quo, creating a massive apparatus that keeps itself going by always creating new “wars”. What started as a war on revolutionaries switched to the so-called “War on Drugs” and now the “War on Terror.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the suppression of the radical wing of the social movements of the era significantly weakened those who would have been the principal obstacles to the mass incarceration policies and police repression against Black America, trends that intensified in the 1980’s and continue to this day.</blockquote>
PSL and groups like it see the Trayvon Martin affair as another example of misplaced priorities and inherent racism in the criminal justice system.
The New Black Panther Party will use the Trayvon Martin verdict as the main theme of its annual “Million Youth March,” which will be held in <a href="http://www.ezmediahost.com/MYM/trayvon.htm">Harlem, New York on</a> September 7, 2013. On its website announcing the event, the New Black Panthers proudly proclaim that they’ve been in favor of vigilante justice in this case for months.
<blockquote>We responsibly identified our constitutional rights to offer a $10,000.00 reward for anyone that could keep up with this Zimmerman whom we fear would try to leave the country. We also, under the United States Constitution, gave the city of Sanford, Florida and the United States Attorney General, our brother, Eric Holder that we were following protocol of issuing a citizen’s arrest and that we could prove probable cause. We would make it our mission to bring in the murderer George Michael Zimmerman, who is still with his father and mother, Robert and Gladys Zimmerman.</blockquote>
The National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression (NAARPR) issued a statement as well, condemning the verdict as another example of the racism inherent in the justice system. The NAARPR favors a total abolition of America’s prison system. <a href="http://www.enewspf.com/opinion/commentary/44312-chicago-alliance-against-racist-and-political-repression-the-murder-of-trayvon-martin-and-acquittal-of-george-zimmerman-is-another-dagger-in-the-heart-of-democracy.html">The statement</a> from the NAARPR also indicated that the verdict is another example of the inherent racism in our justice system.
<blockquote>Two things have occurred in the past month which indicate that African Americans have no rights that white law makers, police and racist vigilantes are bound to respect. The first was the U.S. Supreme Court gutting of the Voting Rights Act, characterizing it as “perpetual racial entitlements” and thereby perpetually entitling white representatives of ruling elites to disenfranchise African Americans in an effort to bring back Jim Crow. The second was the acquittal Saturday of George Zimmerman, murderer of Trayvon Martin.</blockquote>
The Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the International Socialist Organization, <a href="http://socialistworker.org/featured/racism">also dedicated an entire section in its last newspaper to the Martin verdict</a>.
At nearly every rally related to the Trayvon Martin case, one can find radical groups like the above passing out literature and hoping to ride the coattails of the controversy to advance their own agenda. Their agenda includes the complete overhaul of the USA, into something that resembles a Marxist or anarchist state. Will they gain converts to the cause?
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The Radical Hijacking of the Zimmerman Verdict

A number of radical groups -- including Marxist, Socialist, and other groups whose goal is the overthrow of the American system -- have seized on the Trayvon

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/1photo.jpg"><img alt="1photo" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/1photo.jpg" width="210" height="158" /></a>At the July 20 Chicago "Justice for Trayvon" rally, which garnered somewhere between 5-10 thousand people (predominantly African-American), mainstream public figures like Jesse Jackson and celebrities like MC Lyte demonstrated alongside radical groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (REVCOM), Occupy Chicago, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The event was one of hundreds sponsored by the National Action Network (NAN), run by Al Sharpton.
At this particular rally, as was undoubtedly the case at most of the other Justice for Trayvon rallies across the country, the message was clear: the United States is a racist nation, the Zimmerman verdict must be the beginning of a "social revolution," and that social revolution must include the distribution of federal money to the inner cities.
Father Michael Pfleger has gained a reputation both in Chicago and nationally, not only for daring to work in areas almost everyone else has deemed too violent, but for making a number of comments many consider to be racist.
In a fiery speech, Pfleger unequivocally called the USA a racist nation, called for a "social justice" revolution, and demanded unspecified funds from the federal government to address poverty. The speech included the line, “racism is in the DNA of America,” which was met with enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4KP-j_6Iq3c?list=UUCrDsZAhG5wwebFclVQ2Lcw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
Exemplifying how farcical this spectacle was in Chicago, the poster child of black homicide, Pfleger shouts at the end of the video, "We will not tolerate the killing of black and brown children, whether it's in Sanford, Florida, the backwoods of Mississippi, Englewood ... the genocide is over starting today!" The assembled crowed roared with approval.
The city of Chicago itself would, of course, constitute one "genocide" hotspot. In 2012, the city had over 500 homicides. It has had over 200 homicides so far this year. Both the victims and perpetrators are <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/most-murder-victims-in-big-cities-have-criminal-record/">overwhelmingly</a> black and the circumstances of the killings have no resemblance to the Trayvon Martin shooting whatsoever. A better representation is the case of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who preformed at President Obama's inauguration and was shot and killed in the city in January by two black gang members. Yet Pendleton's tragic story has received a fraction of the attention the Trayvon Martin case received.
Chicago "civil rights" attorney and activist Andre Grant also addressed the crowd and spoke about what plagues the inner city. Grant rattled off statistics demonstrating "racial disparities" in the criminal justice system -- such as "people of color" consisting of 60% of the prison population -- using them as evidence of American racism. Of course, Grant conveniently omitted the fact that in 93% of the time, according to 1976-2005 study from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, African-Americans are killed by other African-Americans. The Bureau also says that <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf">80%</a> of the time, black victims of nonfatal violent crime report that their attacker was <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf">black</a>.
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The most prevalent sign at the Chicago rally was one sponsored by the National Action Network and WVON, Chicago’s most popular radio station geared toward African-Americans.
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There was also a significant presence of signs sponsored by radical groups. As an example, there was an abundance of signs sponsored by a group that advertised the website <a href="http://revcom.us/">revcom.us</a>.
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Revcom.us is the website of the <a href="http://revcom.us/">Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.</a> The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is headed by a man named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Avakian">Bob Avakian</a>, who has been the subject of a number of reports claiming he maintains a cult of personality and that the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA is nothing but a cult. Revcom was passing out fliers promoting the group's planned presence at the Bud Billikin Parade on August 10.
Another radical group present at this rally was Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER Chicago).
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<a href="http://www.chicagoanswer.net/">ANSWER Chicago</a> is on the short list for most radical groups in Chicago: they don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, demand a "living wage," totally open borders, and routinely sponsor socialist conferences in Chicago.
The <a href="http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&amp;id=14047&amp;news_iv_ctrl=1008">Party for Socialism and Liberation</a> was also passing out fliers for a smaller event against "police brutality" that they will be having this week:
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Below are two members of <a href="http://occupychi.org/">Occupy Chicago</a> in their typical masks also passing out their own literature.
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Members of the <a href="http://www.internationalsocialist.org/">International Socialist Organization</a> were also selling copies of their newspaper, the <a href="http://socialistworker.org/">Socialist Worker.</a>
A Chicago-area rapper later took the stage and lamented negative aspects of his childhood and pathologies of the black community, including fatherlessness, single motherhood, teen pregnancy, poor education and drug abuse. At one point (about two minutes in) he adds in a gratuitous and unnecessary dig at former President George Bush. Though Obama is well into his second term as president, he -- along with the Democrats who have controlled Chicago for decades -- apparently warrant no blame for the misery of which this rapper speaks.
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Last but not least, Jesse Jackson addressed the crowd. Jackson led chants of "stop the violence, save the children" and "keep hope alive," as if the Trayvon Martin shooting is somehow representative of what is killing black children. You won't see 8,000 people rally in Chicago over that.
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'Justice for Trayvon' Chicago: 'Racism Is in DNA of America'

At the July 20 Chicago "Justice for Trayvon" rally, which garnered somewhere between 5-10 thousand people (predominantly African-American), mainstream public

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/health-care-costs-money.jpg"><img alt="health-care-costs-money" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/health-care-costs-money.jpg" width="270" height="184" /></a>An information technology (IT) company in line to bid on billions in new contracts as a result of ObamaCare is the subject of a growing list of scandals and investigations in which its alleged that, among a number of abuses, the company has produced low ball bids in order to win Medicaid related contracts, only to create overages that balloon the expense of the project as it is implemented.
The name of the company is Client Network Services, Inc (CNSI) and it’s headquartered in Maryland. The company will be able to bid on billions in new ObamaCare-related IT contracts because, in order for states to receive new grants for expanded Medicaid rolls, ObamaCare requires states to have IT systems that are able to share data at so-called finger-tip access. Because most states have antiquated systems, such overhauls will often require the assistance of companies like CNSI.
In March, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal <a href="http://www.wbrz.com/news/jindal-cancels-medicaid-contract-under-grand-jury-review/">canceled one such contract</a> between CNSI and his state after it came to light that a federal grand jury <a href="http://theadvocate.com/home/5500946-125/federal-grand-jury-looks-at">was investigating</a> the relationship between one of his top aides and CNSI.
Front Page Magazine interviewed Tom Aswell, <a href="http://louisianavoice.com/">a blogger</a> and author from Louisiana with more than three decades of news experience. <a href="http://louisianavoice.com/2013/06/09/la-not-the-first-state-in-which-cnsi-contracts-have-come-under-scrutiny-but-youll-need-a-program-to-follow-players/">Aswell</a> has been writing about the case from the beginning.
Aswell said he first became aware something was amiss in June 2011, when Bruce Greenstein went before the Louisiana Senate Governmental Affairs Committee to be confirmed as the secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH), the equivalent of the US Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary.
During the proceedings, things became contentious and confusing when Greenstein refused to divulge the recipient of a contract to upgrade the State of Louisiana’s antiquated computer system, which electronically processed Medicaid health care claims.
Greenstein went back and forth with lawmakers for quite a while before he finally admitted it was CNSI, his own former employer. He assured the state legislators at that hearing that he created a firewall between himself and his former employer during the contractual process.
That turned out not to be true, and, instead, in March 2013, news was leaked that a federal grand jury was investigating the potentially illegal relationship between Greenstein and CNSI during the process in which this contract was awarded.
Once that came to light, not only did Jindal cancel the contract, <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/03/bruce_greenstein_resigns_in_wa.html">but Greenstein resigned shortly after.</a> Aswell said that all sorts of issues were raised with CNSI’s bid ($194 million), and a number of people in the media raised concerns that CNSI would not be able to achieve the contract for the pre-arranged price.
In 2012, Southeast Michigan Healthcare Information Exchange (SEMHIE), a multi-stakeholder initiative trying to integrate a health information exchange throughout southeast Michigan, <a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/Michigan-CNSI-Lawsuit.pdf">sued CNSI for breach of contract</a> after CNSI allegedly failed to provide SEMHIE with prior agreed upon software. An email was left unreturned by SEMHIE for this story. Jennifer Bahrami, press secretary for CNSI, also didn’t respond to an email for comment for this story.
In 2011, CNSI was accused of lowballing a contract in South Dakota, only to have expenses increase exponentially as the project wore on. A local story on the affair <a href="http://articles.aberdeennews.com/2011-06-27/news/29715374_1_medicaid-computer-system-new-system-medicare-and-medicaid-services">explained</a>:
<blockquote>The South Dakota Department of Social Services has paid $49.7 million so far for a new Medicaid processing system that at this point remains inoperable.
The original contract was for $62.7 million, but the new system is now expected to cost far in excess of $80 million to complete and will take two to three more years to get running, according to court documents filed as part of a lawsuit between the contractor and the department.</blockquote>
The most in-depth investigation of CNSI occurred in Maine in 2006, and it was conducted by the magazine CIO, a journal for IT professionals. <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/20133/Maine_s_Medicaid_Mistakes?page=8&amp;taxonomyId=3198">In that piece,</a> CIO concluded that not only did CNSI’s system end up costing 20% more than the company's originally bid, but its implementation was a logistical nightmare.
<blockquote>The department’s Bureau of Medical Services, which runs the Medicaid program, was being deluged with hundreds of calls from doctors, dentists, hospitals, health clinics and nursing homes, angry because their claims were not being paid. The new system had placed most of the rejected claims in a ‘suspended’ file for forms that contained errors.
Tens of thousands of claims representing millions of dollars were being left in limbo.
About 15 IT staffers and about 4 dozen employees from CNSI, the contractor hired to develop the system—were working 12-hour days, writing software fixes and performing adjustments so fast that Hitchings knew that key project management guidelines were beginning to fall by the wayside. And nothing seemed to help.</blockquote>
Because CNSI is a private company, their financials aren’t published, and thus, the exact amount of business it does with our government isn’t known. Furthermore, because most IT-related Medicaid contracts are done on the state level, tracking the amount of IT business that ObamaCare will create is also very difficult to do. It is clear that one company that should be happy with the implementation of ObamaCare is CNSI because it is without a doubt a boon to a company like it. The company’s behavior before and during the implementation of ObamaCare should therefore be watched very carefully and Front Page Magazine intends to do so.
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Billionaire Swindlers Line Up for ObamaCare Cash

An information technology (IT) company in line to bid on billions in new contracts as a result of ObamaCare is the subject of a growing list of scandals and

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/Notario.jpg"><img alt="Notario" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/Notario.jpg" width="230" height="154" /></a>A new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHSOIG) accuses a small but critical agency within DHS of once again turning a blind eye to fraud.
The name of the agency is US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS), and it is important because it is responsible for processing Visa and other applications. For example, it is USCIS that is approving the application of every single "DREAMer" under the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.
USCIS has already been the subject of two scandals involving fraud prevention under the leadership of its current director, Alejandro Mayorkas, and this new report has opened the door to a third scandal.
The investigation measured the effectiveness of the fraud prevention system for the family-based immigration system. The family-based immigration system is critical because, according to the most recent figures from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Immigration Statistics, 74% of all legal immigration admittance in 2012 (roughly 1 million people) was of the family-based variety.
While the report concluded that USCIS case workers were effectively spotting incidents of fraud, the report also concluded that managers weren’t putting in proper protocols to record and track individuals accused of defrauding DHS, or any other agency for that matter. As the report explained:
<blockquote>FDNS personnel did not record in appropriate electronic databases all petitions and applications denied, revoked, or rescinded because of fraud. Supervisors also did not review the data entered into the databases to monitor case resolution. Without accurate data and adequate supervisory review, USCIS may have limited its ability to track, monitor, and identify inadmissible aliens, and to detect and deter immigration benefit fraud.</blockquote>
This problem is not new. In fact, the Sub-committee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement in the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on this very issue <a href="http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/112th/112-94_72904.PDF">on February 5, 2012.</a> That hearing was titled “Safeguarding the Integrity of the Immigration Benefits Adjudication Process” and during that hearing, Texas Congressman Lamar Smith warned how dangerous all these mistakes can be.
<blockquote>There are foreign nationals who will do and say whatever they think will get their benefits approved—forge documents, get bogus employers to sponsor them, and even deny their terrorist ties. So we must have policies in place that help ensure we will not admit those who intend to cause us harm or make a mockery of our immigration system. We need immigration policy designed to protect American workers and taxpayers.</blockquote>
It should be noted that the Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon, slipped through the cracks due to similar oversights to what Rep. Smith describes. In their case, previous run-ins with federal law enforcement were overlooked because their names were spelled incorrectly. In the case of USCIS, the names of about half the cases aren’t even entered into the system at all.
In a statement given exclusively to Front Page Magazine, USCIS Press Secretary Christopher Bentley defended the record of the organization in the area of fraud prevention.
<blockquote>USCIS takes immigration fraud seriously and coordinates with other agencies to swiftly rescind or revoke benefits obtained through willful misrepresentation. At the same time, we ensure that individuals who are eligible for benefits are not harmed by the unscrupulous actions of others.  Since its creation in January 2010, the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) has, in addition to many other enhancements, increased the scope and frequency of vetting for immigration benefit applicants, enhanced biometrics screening, established a new national security branch in its field operations, and increased its staffing of Fraud Detection and National Security officers by approximately 20%[.]</blockquote>
Under Alejandro Mayorkas, USCIS has developed a pattern of being soft on fraud. This is the third scandal involving USCIS that involves lax fraud prevention. <a href="http://www.cis.org/Announcements/2012KatzAward">The first </a>such instance eventually became the feature for an award-winning 2012 series for the Daily.
According to that series, higher ups in USCIS were pressuring case workers to approve Visa applications at far too quick a pace. When at least one complained, USCIS targeted that person, and the whistleblower, Christina Poulos, was demoted.
In the second case, an astonishing <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/22/995-of-illegal-immigrants-get-approval-for-legal-s/?page=all">99.5% of all DACA</a> applications were approved. If something like the Senate's new amnesty bill becomes law, USCIS will be in a position to process tens of millions of new applications.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Mayorkas">Mayorkas, who has been running USCIS since early 2009</a>, has his own checkered past that started long before his troubled reign as head of USCIS. In fact, a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15651.html">Politico article</a> from 2010 suggested that Mayorkas's appointment was political in nature, payback for Mayorkas being a significant bundler for Obama’s 2008 campaign.
The same article repeated publicly available information about his time as a US Attorney in the Clinton Administration. Mayorkas recommended the pardon of Carlos Vignali, a politically connected convicted drug dealer who was eventually set free by then-President Bill Clinton in his final days in office.
It’s clear that for a comprehensive immigration reform bill to be successful, the organization in charge of processing millions of new applications must be competent. It’s clear that Alejandro Mayorkas has built a long resume for incompetence and/or corruption in terms of fraud prevention. So, before anyone can expect immigration reform to be successful, Alejandro Mayorkas must be removed as Director of USCIS.
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Turning a Blind Eye to Immigration Fraud

A new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHSOIG) accuses a small but critical agency within DHS of once again

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/iStock_000018164382Medium.jpg"><img alt="iStock_000018164382Medium" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/iStock_000018164382Medium.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.
<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:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
The study also found that the native percentage of the working population has decreased by nearly 15% in the last decade.
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
<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.
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>:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
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.
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.
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.
Media reports claimed that a House counterpart to the Senate's "Gang of 8" was close to agreeing to their own version of comprehensive immigration reform, but that has yet to materialize.
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.
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.
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The U.S. Jobs That Went to Immigrants

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

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/progressive_muslims_rally.jpg.size_.xxlarge.promo_.jpg"><img alt="progressive_muslims_rally.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/progressive_muslims_rally.jpg.size_.xxlarge.promo_.jpg" width="315" height="211" /></a>The news pages, both in print and online, are routinely splashed with a plethora of stories about groups that claim to represent Muslims (think: CAIR) and that contribute to the demonization of the Global War on Terror (GWT). Rarely are readers exposed to a Muslim group that fights this demonization.
But in Canada, a new group called the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Progressive-Muslims-Institute-Canada/532732110118067">Progressive Muslims Institute Canada (PMIC)</a> has been vocal in its opposition to Islamic jihadists, and they’ve been able to build bridges with the Jewish community.
In a wide-ranging interview not only with PMIC but with representatives of B’Nai B’rith of Canada, one of the groups that has reciprocated PMIC's extended hand, FrontPage Magazine was able to get a view of these activists' unique perspective of the GWT.
Tahir Gora is the Director General of PMIC, and he said that the goal of the group is not only to fight extremism but to make sure that there is a clearly separated marker between religious and political affairs:
<blockquote>Progressive Muslims Institute Canada (PMIC) strongly denounces all forms extremism and terrorism in the name of Islam. The group advocates and promotes gender equality.  It promotes liberal, progressive and secular values among Muslims and believes in clear separation between religion and state.</blockquote>
As part of its efforts, PMIC has also formed the Muslim Committee against Anti-Semitism (MCAAS), which, according to Gora, was “established to counter and discourage ideas and concepts of anti-Semitism amongst Canadian Muslim Diaspora. It conducts monthly seminars, workshops, conferences and rallies in order to curb anti-Semitism.”
Included in those efforts was a rally held on Sunday, June 9, 2013, at Queens Park in Toronto, Canada. That rally was organized in response to a series of terrorist attacks committed around the world by Islamic terrorists.
One speaker, Arshad Mahmood the PMIC honorary director, said, “I stand here today and publicly announce that I am sorry. I am sorry that I did not come here before. I am sorry that I did not stand up when my religion was being hijacked.”
Among those who covered that rally was the <a href="http://www.jewishtribune.ca/news/2013/06/11/i-am-sorry-that-i-did-not-stand-up">Jewish Tribune of Canada</a>, the media arm of B’nai B’rith of Canada.
B’nai B’rith is a worldwide organization that operates on behalf of the social welfare of Jews the world over. Sam Eskanasi handles press matters for B’Nai B’rith in Canada, and he said that PMIC is part of a number of Muslim groups in Canada, locked in a struggle between those looking to stand up to extremists and reach out to the Jewish community and others that tacitly approve of Islamic extremism while demonizing the Jewish race. According to Eskanasi,
<blockquote>The Jewish community has a good, working relationship with the certain branches of the Muslim community in Canada. Some personalities such as Tahir Gora and, Asma Mahmood, Salma and Naseema Siddiqui ... are among those with whom we work on a regular basis and on a variety of issues. We regularly interface with them through interfaith dialogues, but also express our concerns regarding radicalization.</blockquote>
However, there are many other groups in Canada with whom B’nai B’rith has not been able to form such a nice relationship:
<blockquote>There are groups within the community that are not as open to dialogue with us such as the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), whose former president Khaled Mouammar, who had made hateful remarks, or the Canadian Islamic Congress, who have, with the CAF, been accused of spreading "hateful sentiments" toward Israel and Jews. This is in addition to those who hold a yearly "Al-Quds day rally" or who have held rallies blaming "Zionists" for the sectarian violence in Pakistan[.]</blockquote>
Both Gora and Eskanasi said that Canadians in general underestimate the threat from Islamic jihadists because there hasn’t yet been a successful attack on Canadian soil. Both say that Canada’s long-time official stance against Islamic extremism makes the country an inviting target. Eskanasi noted that this is a double edged sword:
<blockquote>There is a clear and present danger to Canada as we continue to be outspoken against the threats of Islamic extremism. One need not look much further than a recent government report or the VIA Rail Bombing plot, let alone the infamous Toronto 18 from 2006. Canada is one of, if not the only country, mentioned by Osama Bin-Laden and Al-Qaida that has not been hit.</blockquote>
Many long-time observers of the Middle East note with great sadness that the Jewish, Arab and Muslim people have a great deal of natural similarities that aren’t being recognized as a result of longstanding bad blood and the growth of Muslim extremism. Movements PMIC are meant to counteract that dynamic and bring people  together.
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Muslim Activism Done Right

The news pages, both in print and online, are routinely splashed with a plethora of stories about groups that claim to represent Muslims (think: CAIR) and that

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/050813_dcl_biasbash_640.jpg"><img alt="050813_dcl_biasbash_640" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/050813_dcl_biasbash_640.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.
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,
<blockquote>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.
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.</blockquote>
The report further concluded that staff wasn’t receiving proper counter-terrorism training:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
The OIG report also pointed out that the State Department didn’t classify the embassy in Beirut to be in a “high threat” area.
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.
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.)
Meanwhile, this State Department OIG report comes on the heels of a separate <a href="/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.
The State Department didn’t respond to a comment for this story.
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.
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.
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Beirut: The Next Benghazi?

Nine months after four Americans, including our ambassador, were killed at the US consulate in Benghazi, a new State Department Office of Inspector General (

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/Schumer-and-Graham.jpg"><img alt="Schumer-and-Graham" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/Schumer-and-Graham.jpg" width="270" height="198" /></a>If the new Senate immigration bill, S.744, passes, approximately 1.6 million new foreign temporary workers will be given legal status in the first year alone. That’s a number even higher than was estimated for the defeated 2007 immigration bill, according to a new study.
<a href="http://cis.org/gang-of-eight-bill-doubles-temporary-worker-flow">According to study from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS),</a> 1,590,833 extra foreign temporary workers will be approved for legal status in the first year after the bill's passage, and more than 600,000 extra foreign temporary workers will be approved over current levels for temporary legal status yearly after that. The 2007 McCain/Kennedy bill only increased the number of foreign temporary workers by about 125,000 over 2007 levels.
About one third of these new foreign temporary workers will be approved for H-1B visas, or they will be family members of those approved for H-1B visas. The study estimates that about 125,000 more H-1B visas will be approved over the current levels if S.744 passes. Furthermore, about 400,000 extra family members of H-1B visa holders will also be approved. An <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa">H-1B Visa</a> allows US employers to temporarily employ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_worker">foreign workers </a>in specialty occupations, like information technology.
On a conference call introducing the study, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, one of the most outspoken critics of the bill, stated that such a massive increase in foreign temporary workers will only make it even tougher for US workers to find jobs in an already difficult economic environment.
“This report from CIS is a bombshell," he said.
<blockquote>To my surprise, and no doubt the surprise of many, the Gang of Eight immigration bill doubles the annual number of guest workers from today’s level a much larger increase than any of us had imagined. It adds four times more guest workers than the rejected proposal from 2007. Yet today’s employment situation is far worse than when Congress considered the 2007 proposal. This large increase in guest workers guarantees that Americans’ wages will remain stagnant and that the unemployed will remain unemployed. This legislation surges the number of low-wage workers at the expense of the poor and middle class.</blockquote>
Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama echoed those sentiments. He pointed out that the problem comes down to basic knowledge of supply and demand.
“It’s a matter of economics. If you have a large influx of legal immigrants, that increases the supply of labor.”
Whenever the supply of anything goes up, the price of that corresponding unit goes down. In this case, increasing the supply of labor would decrease wages, according to Brooks’ argument.
Senator David Vitter of Louisiana asked rhetorically how adding millions of new workers would relieve the unemployment crisis for American workers. “How do we expect to improve our unemployment statistics, by adding millions of temporary workers to our labor force? We must make securing our borders and stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into our country our principal focus,” Vitter said.
On the flip side, the last several years, H-1B visas have been exhausted quickly by American companies. According to a story from Daily Tech, H-1B visas <a href="http://www.dailytech.com/Nearly+All+H1B+Visas+Used+for+2013+Tech+Companies+Push+for+Increased+Availability/article24913.htm">nearly hit their limit</a> for 2013 in the middle of 2012.
<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/current-h1b-visa-system-incredibly-disruptive-microsoft/article4647817.ece">Microsoft</a>, as an example, has been lobbying the government to increase the number of H-1B visas for years.
Jessica Vaughan, who authored the study for CIS, acknowledged that H-1B visas are generally exhausted every year, but said that while increasing the number of those approved maybe good for companies like Microsoft, it doesn’t mean that increasing that number, especially as dramatically as proposed in the bill, would be good for American workers.
It’s been noted many times that the last four plus years have a part of the worst recovery from any recession in the history of the nation. Unemployment is hovering near eight percent only due to a statistical anomaly which doesn’t count those that have been unemployed for extended periods of time. With those counted, the unemployment rate would be well into double digits. With that economic environment, adding millions of new foreign temporary workers will only place an even greater burden on those Americans already struggling to find work.
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Temporary Workers to Flood America with Gang of 8 Bill

If the new Senate immigration bill, S.744, passes, approximately 1.6 million new foreign temporary workers will be given legal status in the first year alone.

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/hillary_clinton_benghazi.jpg"><img alt="U.S.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sits down in Washington to testify on the September attack" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/06/hillary_clinton_benghazi.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>As a US Senator, Hillary Clinton sponsored legislation to ban the US State Department from hiring private security contractors in Iraq, but as Secretary of State, she ceded all security in the embassies in Baghdad and Kabul to the same private security contractors, and now one firm has been cited in an Inspector General report.  The Office of Inspector General for the US State Department has concluded that improper protocols by the US State Department on Clinton’s watch allowed a private security firm to make the US State Department needlessly spend about $130 million.
The name of the company is Triple Canopy LLC. An <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/134594/obama's_blackwater_chicago_mercenary_firm_gets_millions_for_private_%22security%22_in_israel_and_iraq">Alter Net story from 2009 likened</a> the relationship between President Obama and Triple Canopy to former President George W. Bush's relationship to Blackwater:
<blockquote>On the campaign trail, Barack Obama's advisers <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/scahill">said </a>he "can't rule out [and] won't rule out" using mercenary forces, like Blackwater. Now, it appears that the Obama administration has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/01/us.iraq.security/">decided </a>on its hired guns of choice: Triple Canopy, a Chicago company now based in Virginia. It may not have Blackwater's thuggish reputation, but Triple Canopy has its own bloody history in Iraq and a record of hiring mercenaries from countries with atrocious human rights records. What's more, Obama is not just using the company in Iraq, but also as a U.S.-government funded private security force in Israel/Palestine, operating out of Jerusalem.</blockquote>
In 2008, then-Senator Hillary Clinton boldly <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/02/just-as-blackwa/">proclaimed that Triple Canopy</a>, and all companies like it, should not get any more contracts with the US government and referred to private security firms as "mercenaries." As Wired reported at the time:
<blockquote>Senator Hillary Clinton broke her longstanding silence on private security contractors in Iraq.   Her senate office <a href="http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=293878&amp;&amp;">announced </a>late Thursday that she is co-sponsoring a bill to ban "Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq."</blockquote>
As Secretary of State, however, Hillary Clinton “evolved” on her view of private contractors.
According <a href="http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/210209.pdf">to a recently published report from the Office of Inspector General for the US State Department</a>, Triple Canopy now provides the majority of embassy services, including all the security services, at the US embassies in Kabul and Baghdad. Triple Canopy is not the only private security firm to receive substantial business for numerous embassy services all over the world.
<a href="http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/210209.pdf">The report further </a>found that because of inefficiencies caused by the US State Department not implementing proper protocols for catching bloated and inefficient bills by Triple Canopy, the US State Department spent about $130 million needlessly:
<blockquote>Contractor staffing requirements for the base year of WPS Task Order 5 exceeded the staffing needs for the Baghdad movement security mission. Specifically, for the Embassy program and the Airport option program combined, only 253 (49 percent) of the 513 contractor personnel provided were used, on average, to conduct daily movement security missions. The overstaffing occurred because DS did not conduct a needs analysis before awarding the task order and unnecessarily exercised the Airport option.
In addition, although the onsite COR, primary COR, and GTM were ensuring that Triple Canopy, Inc., generally complied with the contract terms and conditions, they did not review the contractor’s daily movement detail reports or adequately review the contractor’s muster sheets to assess security staffing needs against the movement security requirements. As a result, the Department paid $20.6 million during the base year to retain, for the Airport option program, 84 contractor security personnel who were not needed. In addition, the Department paid approximately $111.8 million for 429 Embassy program security personnel who were not part of the Airport option. OIG determined that the Department still would have used only about 253 (59 percent) of the 429 movement personnel provided by the contractor without additional Airport option personnel to conduct daily.</blockquote>
The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-forget-about-big-bird/2012/10/09/5f9a411c-1258-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html">security budget for all embassies around the world is about $2 billion yearly</a>.
While Triple Canopy hasn’t received as much publicity as Blackwater did during the Bush administration, it has been the subject of a number of controversial incidents during the course of its duties in fulfilling contracts with the US government. <a href="http://gawker.com/5866375/gentlemen-we-shot-a-judge-and-other-tales-of-blackwaters-rampage-through-iraq">This report from Gawker from 2011 likened Triple Canopy to a poor man’s version of Blackwater</a>.
<blockquote>They come from the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which was charged with overseeing and monitoring the contractors hired by State to secure its diplomats and other VIPs in the war zone. While firms like DynCorp and Triple Canopy make frequent appearances, the reports are dominated by Blackwater, which was paid roughly $1 billion between 2004 and 2009 to provide "worldwide protective services" for State Department personnel.</blockquote>
Triple Canopy has also been accused of hiring former Blackwater employees into their embassy operations in Baghdad. <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jAqi52uxmDuXNiy0ow7iBt7kozTg">As the report pointed out</a>:
<blockquote>“There are many former Blackwater employees at other private security companies in Iraq, most notably Triple Canopy and DynCorp, providing security services to us," said a January 4, 2010 cable from the US embassy in Baghdad, which was released on August 30.</blockquote>
Furthermore, this latest OIG report is only the latest in which Triple Canopy has been accused of overbilling. In October 2012, the US Justice Department <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/October/12-civ-1300.html">filed suit</a> against Triple Canopy for submitting false claims and providing unqualified security guards for their mission in Baghdad.
Triple Canopy did not return an email from Front Page Magazine for comment for this story.
It’s important to note that then-Secretary Clinton claimed that she left the security details to the security professionals in the case of the Benghazi, Libya consulate that was attack on the anniversary on 9/11. The "security professionals" in question were in fact part of a hired Libyan militia group with known ties to <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/phares-benghazi-security-brigade/2013/05/04/id/502778">Islamic jihadists</a>.
There have also been a series of reports of the State Department allowing embassies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create fleets of alternative energy vehicles. <a href="http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130306/FACILITIES01/303060010/More-embassies-becoming-environmentally-friendly">This story from March 2013</a> talks about a $140 million, environment friendly embassy in Mauritania.
Most shockingly, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/20/state-department-spending-70g-on-pakistan-ads-denouncing-anti-islam-film/">the US State Department spent $70,000 in Pakistan in September 2012</a>, denouncing the so-called anti-Muhammad video that the administration initially claimed was the culprit for the attacks in Benghazi.
Taken together, it becomes clear that priorities for US embassies all around the world under Hillary Clinton emphasized frivolous things, all while downplaying the importance of efficiency and security.
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Hillary Turned Over Embassy Security to Hired Guns

As a US Senator, Hillary Clinton sponsored legislation to ban the US State Department from hiring private security contractors in Iraq, but as Secretary of

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/05/gang-of-8.jpg"><img alt="The Group Of Senators Dubbed The &quot;Gang Of 8&quot; Hold News Conference On Immigration Legislation" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/05/gang-of-8.jpg" width="270" height="178" /></a>A second union representing immigration enforcement officers is sounding the alarm in a letter released to the media about the new immigration bill, S.744, being debated in the Senate. The concerns of the union largely mirror the same concerns raised <a href="/2013/volpe/scandal-plagued-dhs-agency-to-oversee-amnesty/" target="_blank">by FrontPage Magazine in an exclusive report last week</a>.
The union, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, represents about 12,000 employees in US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The president, in a letter dated May 20, 2013, raised concerns that USCIS has a culture in which managers pressure their subordinates to rubber stamp applications and this problem will only be exacerbated by the bill"
<blockquote>USCIS adjudications officers are pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation. The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications. USCIS has been turned into an "approval machine.
USCIS has created an almost insurmountable bureaucracy which often prevents USCIS adjudications officers from contacting and coordinating with ICE agents and officers in cases that should have their involvement. USCIS officers are pressured to approve visa applications for many individual ICE agents have determined should be placed into deportation proceedings.</blockquote>
There is plenty of reason for the union to be concerned that tens of millions of new applications, to be created by S.744, will be rubber stamped by USCIS. That’s because as <a href="/2013/volpe/scandal-plagued-dhs-agency-to-oversee-amnesty/" target="_blank">FrontPage Magazine reported last week</a> USCIS has been involved in two scandals during the Obama administration in which applications were almost universally approved without scrutiny. Under the new bill, USCIS will be tasked with approving tens of millions of new applications, including the provisional status of all illegal aliens currently in the country.
Earlier this year, it was widely reported in the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/22/995-of-illegal-immigrants-get-approval-for-legal-s/?page=all" target="_blank">media that USCIS approved 99.5%</a> of all applications generated under the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals program, President Obama’s administrative DREAM Act announced in June 2012.
In 2012, the Daily ran an investigative series based on an unpublished Inspector General report which documented a culture in which managers pressured their staff to rubber stamp visa applications.
In an email, Alex Conant, press secretary for Marco Rubio, said the letter contained concerns that have been addressed:
<blockquote>We addressed some of their concerns in the committee mark-up that just wrapped up last night, and will address other concerns during the Senate floor debate next month. We welcome their suggestions for how to improve border security.</blockquote>
Senator Jeff Sessions, in a conference call with reporters, was skeptical of this assertion. "The bill does not do what it says," Sessions said. He continued:
<blockquote>The standards for biometrics for the entry/exit system have been weakened substantially. Even e-verify has been put off and a completely new system has been ordered.</blockquote>
"Even though we are a nation of immigrants, and have an immigration system that needs fixing, this bill does not do that," Sessions concluded.
This union is the second major union representing immigration enforcement professionals to publicly speak out against the bill. The National ICE Council, <a href="http://iceunion.org/news/national-ice-council-requests-meeting-8-senators-drafting-bipartisan-immigration-reform-bill" target="_blank">which wrote a similar letter in February</a>, raised concerns that officers were being ordered to release dangerous illegal aliens because Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy has narrowed the definition of dangerous individuals.
Last month, <a href="/2013/volpe/criminal-illegal-aliens-to-receive-amnesty/" target="_blank">FrontPage Magazine exclusively reported that individuals with as many as two misdemeanors would still be eligible</a> to qualify for legal status under the new bill. Chris Crane, the head of the National ICE Council, testified last week in front of the House Judiciary Committee expressing his concerns, and those concerns included allowing those with multiple misdemeanors the ability to attain legal status.
<blockquote>Not only is the Gang of Eight bill legalization first, but it actually weakens and undermines interior enforcement. Successful reform must move in the opposite direction: providing ICE with the authority, resources and enforcement tools it needs to protect the country—and putting a stop to the administration’s abuse of power that blocks ICE officers from enforcing our nation’s laws.</blockquote>
It appears that opposition to the bill is gaining momentum. <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/301925-menendez-gang-of-eight-immigration-bill-doesnt-have-the-votes-to-pass-senate" target="_blank">Robert Menendez, one of the bill’s backers, told Univision on Friday that the bill does not have the sixty votes necessary to pass yet</a>.
Despite assurances by the so-called Gang of 8, most concerns of those who believe that this bill will not lead to the enforcement of the border have not been answered. Even though tens of millions of individuals that entered the country illegally will be made legal, most of the elements that caused this crisis will continue.
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Immigration Control Union Sounds Alarm on Gang of 8 Bill

A second union representing immigration enforcement officers is sounding the alarm in a letter released to the media about the new immigration bill, S.744,

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/05/MK-BW282_GIBSON_G_20120806181542.jpg"><img alt="MK-BW282_GIBSON_G_20120806181542" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/05/MK-BW282_GIBSON_G_20120806181542.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>The highly publicized 2011 raid by FBI agents of a plant owned by Gibson Guitar is beginning to look more and more like another outgrowth of the Obama administration's crackdown on citizens considered to be political "enemies." By now it is well known that the Obama IRS has been persecuting individuals affiliated with the Tea Party and even religious organizations through audits, federal agency investigations and the denial of the right to form non-profit groups. The Obama Justice Department, too, has engaged in unprecedented seizing of communication records of journalists, including Fox News's James Rosen, whom the administration has <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/22/doj-invoked-espionage-act-in-calling-fox-news-reporter-criminal-co-conspirator/">threatened</a> with charges of "espionage." With these details now made public, Gibson Guitar has good reason to believe the shocking raid of its facilities, which cost the company altogether millions of dollars, was also a warning to its Republican-supporting CEO Henry Juszkiewicz.
On August 24, 2011, armed FBI agents in SWAT gear executed a warrant for the seizure of wood at Gibson Guitar facilities. At the time, the raid appeared peculiar because of the excessive forced used over charges of regulatory violations. The <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/052313-657569-gibson-guitar-raid-like-tea-party-intimidation.htm">premise</a> of the raid was an obscure 100-year-old law known as the Lacey Act. On the basis of this act, the Feds were able to storm the facilities, claiming that Gibson's had broken foreign (not American) law in its procurement of the wood, even though the government produced no evidence of the crime at the time and no evidence has since emerged that the material was illegally obtained. Juszkiewicz was only told at the time that the Gibson supply chain had a "<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/08/31/140090116/why-gibson-guitar-was-raided-by-the-justice-department">risk</a>" of including illicit wood. This was in fact the only infraction the company was penalized for after it was forced to <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/26/paper-gibson-guitar-raids-may-be-another-case-of-obama-administration-targeting/">settle </a>its case to avoid costly litigation.
Suspicions of political motivations behind the attack were quickly aroused. Gibson Guitars CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz is a known supporter of conservative causes and political candidates. The <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/report-gibson-ceo-gop-donor-martin-ceo-democratic-donor-who-uses-same-wood">Examiner</a>, citing <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/">Open Secrets</a>, reports that Juszkiewicz had contributed $2000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN07) last year, as well as $1500 to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Juszkiewicz also has donated $10,000 to the Consumer Electronics Association, a PAC that contributed $92.5k to Republican candidates last year, as opposed to $72k to Democrats.
Notably, one of Gibson's biggest competitors, C.F. Martin &amp; Co., reportedly uses the same type of wood seized from Gibson's, but did not face any kind of interference from the federal government. The <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/report-gibson-ceo-gop-donor-martin-ceo-democratic-donor-who-uses-same-wood">Examiner reports</a> that Chris Martin IV, CEO of C.F. Martin &amp; Co., is a well-known Democratic fundraiser. The Examiner describes Martin as "a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the DNC over the past couple of election cycles." Furthermore, no other companies known to use the wood in question, such as furniture manufacturers, have reported similar prosecution from the federal government, though the wood is distributed widely throughout the world. As Juszkiewicz<a href="It is…clear to me that there is some terrific motivation because we are not the only company that uses this type of wood. Virtually every other guitar company uses this wood and this wood is used prominently by furniture and architectural industries, and to my knowledge none of them have been shut down or treated in this fashion. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/26/paper-gibson-guitar-raids-may-be-another-case-of-obama-administration-targeting/#ixzz2UfFJVtnO"> told</a> radio host Hugh Hewitt, "Virtually every other guitar company uses this wood and this wood is used prominently by furniture and architectural industries, and to my knowledge none of them have been shut down or treated in this fashion."
Gibson Guitar lost enormous assets as a result of the government's manhandling. Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News Channel legal analyst, described the harrowing nature of the raid and its incredible cost.
<blockquote>These guys came dressed in SWAT gear with machine guns pointed at people. They took dozens and dozens of people out into the parking lot. They then seized what they said was the illegal wood. They effectively shut down the business for a month. Gibson’s legal bills are about $2.5 million and they haven’t even gotten back the wood that was seized from them.</blockquote>
As with the IRS scandal today, the so-called mainstream media attempted to downplay the significance of the Gibson raid, casting it as a political football for Republicans. <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64563.html">Politico</a> reported at the time:
<blockquote>[The] <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html">federal raids </a>on the company that makes Gibson electric guitars were a gift to Republicans who have spent years railing about more obscure issues like boiler MACT regulations and particulate emissions standards.
Here, at last, was a controversy the average person could grasp: Overreaching regulators were out to kill rock 'n' roll.
Still, House Republicans are having some trouble getting the issue to gain traction on the Hill.</blockquote>
However, with both the Attorney General’s office and the IRS now tied directly to scandals in which there is strong evidence that each of the agencies misused and abused their powers in order to target political enemies of the President, the Gibson Guitar case can hardly be dismissed as regulatory overreach. In hindsight, it was an ominous foreshadowing of the explosion of misdeeds we are witnessing today.
Thanks to the dedication of Congressman Darrell Issa, the investigation into the IRS has been moving forward.  The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which Issa chairs, has <a href="http://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-announces-irs-hearing-next-week/">scheduled</a> more hearings into the IRS scandal for later in the week. Head of the IRS's non-profit division, Lois Lerner, whose Fifth Amendment rights have come into question after she chose to emphatically profess her innocence shortly before refusing to testify on the matter, is listed as one of the scheduled speakers. Meanwhile, Attorney General Holder, who has already been cited in contempt of Congress, is being investigated for <a href="http://rt.com/usa/attorney-general-holder-congressional-probe-913/">perjury</a>.
Investor’s Business Daily, which renewed interest in the injustice done to Gibson's with a recent editorial, <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/052313-657569-gibson-guitar-raid-like-tea-party-intimidation.htm?p=2">keenly observes</a> that all of the Obama administration scandals are connected by a common denominator: abuse of power to persecute political adversaries -- even if those on Obama's "enemies list" are ordinary citizens exercising their constitutional rights.
<blockquote>Juszkiewicz' claim that his company was "inappropriately targeted" is eerily similar to the claims by Tea Party, conservative, pro-life and religious groups that they were targeted by the IRS for special scrutiny because they sought to exercise their First Amendment rights to band together in vocal opposition to the administration's policies and the out-of-control growth of government and its power.
The Gibson Guitar raid, the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups and the fraudulently obtained warrant naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as an "aider, abettor, co-conspirator" in stealing government secrets are but a few examples of the abuse of power by the Obama administration to intimidate those on its enemies list.</blockquote>
So far, the administration has dismissed this growing plethora of scandals, claiming ignorance in each case. That claim, as ludicrous as it is, would be equally troubling, even if it were true. The bottom line is that there is a common thread in each of the scandals that have come out over the last few weeks. In nearly all of these cases, there were examples of parts of the Obama administration using the power afforded to them to punish enemies of the administration and subsequently reward its friends. Gibson Guitar was just the canary in the coal mine.
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>.

Gibson Guitar and the Politics of Persecution

The highly publicized 2011 raid by FBI agents of a plant owned by Gibson Guitar is beginning to look more and more like another outgrowth of the Obama

<a href="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/05/im.jpg"><img alt="im" src="/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/05/im.jpg" width="310" height="233" /></a>A number of conservative politicians and pundits signed a <a href="http://www.StopGangOf8.com/">letter</a> and held a conference this week to dispel the rumors, they say, that new immigration bill S.744 will inevitably pass and that it has the broad support of conservatives everywhere.
The letter was signed by well-known conservatives like Monica Crowley, Erick Erickson, Victor Davis Hansen, and David Horowitz. On a conference call introducing the letter, several prominent conservatives explained their opposition to the bill. The letter opened by stating unequivocally that the current bill is beyond repair and should be scrapped entirely.
<blockquote>We write to express our serious concerns regarding the Gang of Eight's immigration bill, S. 744. We oppose this bill and urge you to vote against it when it comes to the Senate floor. No matter how well-intentioned, the Schumer-Rubio bill suffers from fundamental design flaws that make it unsalvageable. Many of us support various parts of the legislation, but the overall package is so unsatisfactory that the Senate would do better to start over from scratch.</blockquote>
On the conference call, several prominent conservatives attacked individual parts of the proposed bill. Carol Swain is a professor at Vanderbilt University, and she said that if this bill were to pass it would only lead to more unemployment of American workers, and especially in the African-American community.
“The proposed legislation works directly against the interest of American workers, especially those with a high school education or less.
“We can safely predict increases in black unemployment, as well as incarceration rate.”
Swain continued, “The last thing that America needs is another guest worker program for low-wage, unskilled workers. What America needs is an investment in American workers.”
Andrew McCarthy is a former US Attorney in the administration of George W. Bush and he was the lead prosecutor in the successful conviction of the so-called “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, the man responsible for the original World Trade Center attack in 1994. McCarthy said that passage of this bill would hurt national security.
“Sponsors of the immigration bill promised us security and enforcement first, and legalization only when that was achieved.”
Instead, said McCarthy, the bill that has been agreed upon gives provisional status to all illegal aliens immediately, even as politicians make yet another promise to secure the border at a later unspecified date. McCarthy concluded with what he would like to see from immigration reform.
“Enforce the law, establish a track record of enforcing the law, and then come back to us [the American people] in five years with a track record of enforcement.” (And to ask for some sort of amnesty at that point.)
Meanwhile, Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out a mandatory biometric system was voted down, and that the new bill scraps the e-verify system in favor of another untested system.
The proposed bill has been going through a furious period known as mark-up. It finally passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 13-5 vote. A vote in the full Senate is expected in the next week and the process will then move to the House of Representatives, where the members appear close to announcing their own immigration reform bill.
For immigration reform to be effective there must be aggressive border enforcement, work enforcement, as well as visa tracking and enforcement. While proponents of the bill have maintained that enforcement will be a priority, numerous troubling details covered by <a href="/2013/volpe/scandal-plagued-dhs-agency-to-oversee-amnesty/">FrontPage Magazine</a> have shown that true enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws continues to be lacking.
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>.

As Amnesty Advances, Conservatives Fire Back

A number of conservative politicians and pundits signed a letter and held a conference this week to dispel the rumors, they say, that new immigration bill S.

Frontpage Mag

michael volpe

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