RUTHFULLY YOURS

Covering the Senate hearings on Islamic terror, Tuesday’s HuffPo headline read: “Witness At Ted Cruz Hearing Accuses Congress’ Two Muslim Members Of Muslim Brotherhood Ties.”
The teaser read: “This doesn’t normally happen on the Hill.” The teaser should have been: It’s about time.

I rarely venture over to the HuffPo, but I couldn’t resist reading their coverage:

In explosive testimony Tuesday, a witness before a Senate panel about Islamic terrorism accused the two Muslim members of Congress of having attended an event organized by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The charge was leveled by Chris Gaubatz, a “national security consultant” who has moonlighted as an undercover agitator of Muslim groups that he accuses of being terrorist outfits, and it was directed at Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and André Carson (D-Ind.). At the heart of his accusation is the attendance by those two members at a 2008 convention hosted by the Islamic Society of North America — a Muslim umbrella group, which Gaubatz claims is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.

HuffPo was eager to smear Chris Gaubatz, whose impressive undercover work inside CAIR is chronicled in his book Muslim Mafia. (To learn more about him, The Clarion Project has a short interview, here.) The Huffpo continues:

“I attended a convention in Columbus, Ohio, in 2008, organized by Muslim Brotherhood group, ISNA, and both the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons had recruitment and outreach booths,” Gaubatz said in his testimony. “Both Congressman Keith Ellison, MN, and Andre Carson, IN, spoke at the Muslim Brotherhood event.”

Allegations that Ellison and Carson are secret Muslim agents with extremist leanings are usually found among fringe groups online, often discussed in dire tones on poorly designed websites. Rarely, if ever, do such sentiments get read into congressional testimony, with the imprimatur that offers.

Wow, this is why, as a rule, I don’t read the HuffPo. But seriously, the excerpt noted above highlights how behind the curve we are regarding the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB should have been declared a terrorist organization ions ago. Instead, they have been operating through countless front groups that are legitimized and lauded by the leftist politicians and the media. As a result, no red flags are raised about anyone affiliated with these groups.

Writing over at Slate (h/t Joel Pollak), Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit states that he no longer desires the application of the United States Constitution within the American legal system:

And on another note about academia and practical law, I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries – well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments). Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post – Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today. David Strauss is right: The Supreme Court treats the Constitution like it is authorizing the court to create a common law of constitutional law, based on current concerns, not what those 18th-century guys were worrying about.

In short, let’s not let the dead bury the living.

This isn’t the first time Posner has embarrassed the judiciary, but it is certainly his most irresponsible public statement. It also proves, since he was appointed by former president Ronald Reagan, that conservatives have a terrible track record – perhaps worse than liberals – when it comes to the quality of their judicial choices.

How Posner has escaped impeachment this long remains a mystery, since his ongoing commentaries while remaining on the bench are a textbook example of bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.

In 2012, he said he has “become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.” This, of course, openly mixes partisan politics with the judiciary, which is a very immature move. Furthermore, it should cause individuals who are known members of the GOP to feel that Posner will be biased against them if he is to preside over their case. For a sitting judge to declare a mainstream political party as “goofy” is truly reprehensible.

His pro-authoritarian police state views on the power of the government to intrude into all aspects of private life is frightening:

A conservative county commissioner won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Colorado on Tuesday, setting up a critical swing-state race with Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet.

Darryl Glenn led the five-way, crowded contest with 37.5% of the votes, according to the Associated Press, with 84% of the precincts reporting.

Once considered a long shot, Mr. Glenn impressed Colorado Republicans—particularly conservatives—with his speech at the state GOP convention earlier this year. And in recent days, he seemed to gain momentum after picking up the endorsement of Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and other national conservative figures.

Republicans had initially been hopeful that the race would produce a heavyweight challenger to Mr. Bennet in a state that is virtually evenly carved up between Democrats, Republicans and voters who don’t identify with either party.

But after more popular GOP politicians including U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, and George Brauchler, the prosecutor in the Aurora theater shooting trial, declined to jump in, those hopes dimmed as lesser known figures joined the fray instead.

The race will be one of several closely watched contests that will determine which party controls the Senate next January. Democrats must win a net of five seats, or four if they win the White House and secure the vice president’s tiebreaking vote, to regain control of the chamber.

That’s how a federal judge in Texas on Monday summed up the Labor Department’s new “persuader” rule as he imposed a preliminary injunction, and he could have been describing the Obama Administration’s entire regulatory apparatus.

The National Federation of Independent Business and 10 states sued to block the rule, which was set to take effect on July 1. Judge Samuel Cummings said the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed” on all five of their claims including lack of statutory authority, abuse of discretion, and violation of First Amendment rights, due process and the Regulatory Flexibility Act.

The rule putatively updates the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, which requires “persuaders” hired by employers to communicate directly with workers to disclose their clients, services and compensation. The real goal is to muzzle employers and help union organizers.

Labor in effect eliminates the law’s “Advice Exemption” that shields privileged attorney-client communications by mandating disclosures from employers and anyone engaged in “actions, conduct, or communications that are undertaken with an object, explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, to affect an employee’s decisions regarding his or her representation or collective bargaining rights.”

As the judge notes, the “use of words like ‘implicit’ and ‘affect’ are too broad,” leaving employers and consultants to “guess” what activities are covered. Merely drafting employment policies could be a persuader activity. CONTINUE AT SITE

CIA Director Brennan warns that ISIS is likely to exploit refugee flows, smuggling routes and legitimate methods of travel to attack the West

On June 16, John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before a hearing conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the various threats and challenges that confront our nation, including threats posed by ISIS to the United States, our allies and countries around the world. C-SPAN posted a video of the hearing.

Fox News put immigration front and center.

Here is an important excerpt from Brennan’s prepared testimony:

“Since at least 2014, ISIL has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, resulting in hundreds of casualties. The most prominent examples are the attacks in Paris and Brussels, which we assess were directed by ISIL’s leadership.

“We judge that ISIL is training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks. ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West. And the group is probably exploring a variety of means for infiltrating operatives into the West, including refugee flows, smuggling routes, and legitimate methods of travel.”

An important, persistent question of our times is how to account for the wide political and social polarization between liberals and conservatives. Monday’s 5-3 Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas abortion law reveals what’s beneath these divisions.

The Court’s opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was about abortion certainly, but the argument between the majority and minority goes deeper. In the final paragraph of his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas went to the heart of the matter.

He noted first the divisions that always emerge from an abortion case: “Today’s decision will prompt some to claim victory, just as it will stiffen opponents’ will to object.” But, he continued, “the entire Nation has lost something essential.” He said the majority’s reasoning is an acknowledgement that “we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.” Justice Thomas is accusing his colleagues of lawlessness.

If putting it that way sounds familiar, it is because Justice Thomas was quoting from a law review article by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Bluntly stated, the dissents by Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito accuse the majority of manipulating the Court’s precedents to police rights favored by liberal politics and to delegitimize the claims of their opponents. The favored right in this case is access to abortion.
In 2013 the Texas legislature passed a law that doctors doing abortions must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic. It also said the clinics had to equal the health and safety rules of ambulatory surgical centers. The Court’s majority struck down the entire law as a violation of the Constitution because its provisions impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to an abortion. It suggested that the law’s hospital-admissions rules for abortion doctors would harm women in rural counties.

The phrase “undue burden” is the famous legal test of state regulatory authority as defined in the 1992 abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The point of Casey was to establish that states had the right to regulate abortion absent an undue burden on women. The point of Monday’s Texas decision is to tell the states to forget Casey, that the legal path is so narrow as to make state regulation of abortion a fiction. CONTINUE AT SITE

I have written a follow-up article to my March 18, 2016 piece with the sarcastic title, “Are DHS Leaders Seeking an MVP Award From ISIS? – The day after the San Bernardino terror attack, why exactly did USCIS managers block a team of ICE agents from entering their facility?”

I began my original commentary by saying that I was not trying to go “over the top” with the title of my article and that I had not lost my mind but that I was infuriated that a manager of USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) would block ICE agents from entering that facility.

It is worth noting that both USCIS and ICE are component agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

At the time I wrote my original article, the actual identity of the manager who blocked five ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents was not known however, it has been disclosed that the manager is Irene Martin.

It must be noted that these ICE agents were assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the office that they sought to enter was located in San Bernardino, the very same city where less than 24 hours earlier, on December 2, 2015, Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook carried out a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 14 and the wounding of 22 innocent victims.

Furthermore, Enrique Marquez, the individual the ICE agents were hoping to locate at the office, was believed to have provided the weapons used in carrying out that terrorist attack. They had discovered that Marquez was scheduled to appear for an interview that day, in conjunction with the application he filed for his wife to provide her with lawful immigrant status.

The agents were not only concerned about questioning and arresting Marquez because of the crimes he was alleged to have already committed in providing weapons and possibly other material support to the two terrorists, but the agents were greatly concerned that Marquez may have provided similar assistance to other terrorists who had not yet carried out additional attack(s). Time was obviously extremely critical and potentially innocent lives were hanging in the balance. The clock was ticking and time was not on the side of the agents- or of possible additional victims, for that matter.