http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/349110/fifth-obama-andrew-c-mccarthy You can always rely on the administration of Barack Obama, a former constitutional-law lecturer (or as his résumé-inflating fans put it, “professor”), to do the sleazy thing when it comes to the Constitution the president is sworn to defend. Thus, the performance on Wednesday of Lois Lerner, chief of the Obama IRS’s Conservative Harassment Division, […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3599/america_s_new_isolationists_are_endangering_the_west
MUCH AS I ADMIRE JOHN BOLTON THE FAULT LIES WITH GEORGE BUSH WHO STARTED TWO WARS WITHOUT A DEFINED MISSION OR ENEMY OR ULTIMATE STRATEGY…..IT WAS A WAR ON “THE ENEMIES OF FREEDOM” WITHOUT CLEARLY ENUNCIATING THE WORDS ISLAM OR JIHAD…..AMERICANS ARE TIRED OF FOREIGN INTERVENTION WHICH RESULTS IN NO GAIN ABROAD BUT REAL PAIN IN A TANKING ECONOMY AT HOME…..RSK
The spectre of isolationism is stalking the Republican Party. It is still far from dominant, but we would be ignoring reality to underestimate the risks evident in today’s turbulent political milieu. Ironically, Republican isolationism is in many respects attributable to Barack Obama.
His palpable lack of concern for foreign and defence policy issues, and the public’s false sense of security thereby generated, combined with his massive federal expenditures and consequent budget deficits that threaten the vitality of America’s economic system, have created an unexpected and deeply troubling reaction among Republicans, heretofore America’s national-security stalwarts.
A little recent history. In the late 1990s, many Europeans feared the United States was drifting back into isolationism. They worried that Republican victories in the 1994 elections, capturing control of both the House and Senate for the first time since 1952, inevitably meant a reactionary, inward-turning America. George W. Bush’s 2000 election as president only cemented their fears that, for example, Washington would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, erect a national missile-defence shield and leave Europe to fend for itself.
These European concerns, shared by the American Left, badly misinterpreted US history. While the United States certainly steered clear of European entanglements before World War I (or tried to), it was not for lack of interest in the rest of the world, but because of preoccupation with building what Thomas Jefferson called “an empire of liberty”. While Europe’s 19th-century empires have disappeared, America’s successful imperialism is memorialised today in once foreign lands named Florida, Texas, California, Alaska, Hawaii and the like. One may find such success irksome, but what Europeans saw as “isolationism” was actually US unilateralism and exceptionalism at work. Of course, many of America’s critics also detest those characteristics, but they are nonetheless conceptually and empirically very different phenomena.
George W. Bush’s presidency made the differences between isolationism and unilateralism completely clear, contrary to the expectations of critics who feared the former and got the latter. Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, “unsigning” the Rome Statute (which created the International Criminal Court), scuttling a “verification” protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention, and refusing to negotiate a “small arms and light weapons” agreement violating the Constitution’s Second Amendment, and more, appalled the “blame America first” crowd. Of course, what really sent them over the edge was dismantling the Taliban/al-Qaeda regime in Afghanistan, followed by regime change in Iraq without a new Security Council resolution granting humble supplicants from Washington permission.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/22/the-obama-enemies-list/ The Obama administration has an enemies list, and John Dodson was on it. The special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) infuriated his superiors by alerting Congress and everyone else about the government’s gunrunning scheme called Fast and Furious. He had to pay for his act of good citizenship. […]
http://www.steynonline.com/5562/jihad-abhors-a-vacuum Post-9/11, we in the omniscient pundit class were all Afghan experts. Post-Boston, we are all Chechen experts. Strictly between us, I can count what I know about Chechens on one leg. A couple of years ago, while I was in Copenhagen picking up an award from the Danish Free Press Society, a one-legged Chechen […]
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/05/22/irs-abuse-the-guide/?print=1 Cleta Mitchell has prepared this comprehensive guide to the IRS abuse of election-integrity and Tea Party groups. It has everything you need to know to understand the legal environment which sprouted this scandal. An interesting narrative split is developing among the Left. As Bryan Preston notes, the reliable Praetorian Press Guard, formerly known as […]
http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2013/05/22/dont-criminalize-the-investigations-immunize-the-witnesses/?print=1
Keep your eye on the mission, which is to save us from an ambitious tyranny. We cannot accomplish this life-and-death task if we turn it over to the lawyers. It’s a political mission, not a law enforcement roundup. We need to know, in detail, what happened. We have to know the details, which will, if we are good, enable us to dismantle an enormously ambitious attempt to change America in precisely the way Alexis de Tocqueville predicted. As I wrote four years ago [1], American tyranny would not resemble those of the past. It would consist of a series of rules and regulations than would enervate us, and reduce us to objects of manipulation by an arrogant state:
That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
We can see this impulse at work in an amazing number of governmental initiatives, from the truly terrifying new speech code [2] for all American colleges and universities that receive federal funds, to the previously unimaginable intrusion of the Feds into our privacy, whether via the IRS or the Justice Department, as in the criminalization of journalists doing their jobs. It goes on and on, from Obamacare to the greatly expanded role of Washington in corporate enterprise, and to myriad regulations–many of which we do not even know–and executive orders.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/is-obama-the-latest-teflon-man/?print=1 New Obama administration scandals are popping up. The latest is the tracking of and threats of criminal prosecution [1] against Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen. Others are deepening, such as news of the IRS scandal investigation reaching top administration officials [2], and the possibility of new whistleblower testimony [3] on Benghazi that will suggest […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/boycotting_the_wrong_country.html
Along with traditional terrorism and political recalcitrance, the Palestinian Arabs, their fellow Islamists, and a recognizable cadre of their sympathizers continually develop additional pressure tactics to erode the sovereignty of Israel.
As boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movements pop up on college campuses, within member states of the European Union (EU), and even certain denominational organizations, pro Israeli Jewish and Christian advocates throughout the world must be prepared to refute libelous accusations against Israel by espousing nonrevisionist, historical facts.
Point in hand: on May 3rd the Church of Scotland issued a disparaging manifesto entitled: “The Inheritance of Abraham?” Laughingly it decries Israel’s biblical connection to the ‘Promised Land.’ It willfully denies thousands of years of well-documented Jewish connection not just to internationally recognized Israel but to Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as well. A connection far predating that of any other people.
Specifically, the church is of the opinion:
Zionism is not a national but a religious ideology, grounded in specific and unconditional biblical claims to the Land of Israel. The position of Zionism is that “God promises the land to the Israelites unconditionally.
The document further states that “Zionists think that Jewish people are serving God’s special purpose.” As such, “Christians should not be supporting exclusive or even privileged divine right” to any territory. “If Jesus is indeed the Yes to all God’s promises, the promise to Abraham about land is fulfilled through the impact of Jesus, not by restoration of land to the Jewish people.”
Talk about stirring up a hornet’s nest. Jewish groups throughout England, Israel, and the United Staes were incredulous over such a hypocritically benevolent claim. One writer for the Jewish Daily Forward labeled the church’s position as supersessionism; “the notion that the truth of the New Testament renders irrelevant the claims of the old.”
The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities described the report as an: “ignorant and tendentious document masquerading as a theological statement.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/3d_printers_and_the_transformation_of_manufacturing.html “Anybody who is new to 3D printing will walk away and remember their first introduction as similar to their first experience with Windows on their PC in 1988, or low-cost digital cellphones in 1996, or Google search on the internet in 1999. Truly transformative.” So said “Michael” on the feedback Meetup thread after the […]
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=47498a2e1ad97dd3d09ae19c5&id=d1aa51d9f1&e=ce445aaf82
Today in Woolwich, England, a man reported to be a British soldier was cut down by two Anglo-African Muslims wielding knives and a machete. One of the killers, speaking in a home-grown English accent, is heard on video to say:
“We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”
Eyewitnesses said that the victim had been wearing a ‘Help for Heroes’ t-shirt. Help for Heroes is a charity to help British soldiers wounded in current conflicts.
Eyewitnesses also reported that the killers attempted to behead the soldier, and that they asked bystanders to call the police, and moved towards the police as if to attack them, as soon as they appeared.
While some said the killers were crazed, the contrary seems to be the case. They appear to have been acting in accordance with a theologically determined logic which can be understood on the basis of Islamic teachings. In the midst of perpetrating this carnage, they found time, calmly and clearly, to explain their motivations on camera.
The killer captured on video was referencing passages from Islamic sacred texts. “We must fight them as they fight us” is a reference to a phrase found repeatedly in the Koran:
