RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0712/postpone_hearings_ramadaan.php3?printer_friendly

Lawyers for accused Sept. 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four co-defendants are seeking to postpone their Aug. 8-12 hearing at Guantanamo, noting it falls toward the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The trial judge, Army Col. James Pohl, set the date for the hearing in May and specifically ruled out an extension on grounds that it coincided with Islam’s fasting month. He noted in his order then that no defense lawyer at that point had raised objection to a hearing that coincided with Ramadan. But the attorneys do just that in a June 21 filing currently under seal on the Pentagon’s war court website entitled “Joint Defense Motion for the Military Commission to Respect the Religious Observances of Enemy Prisoners under Common Article 3.”

Pohl is hearing motions in another Guantanamo case next week. But that hearing ends by July 19, before Ramadan starts. The 9/11 case pre-trial motions would be heard toward the end of Ramadan.

“The last 10 days of Ramadan commemorate the night God – Allah – revealed the Holy Quran to the Prophet Mohammed,” said James Connell, the Pentagon-paid defense counsel for Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. “These 10 days are the most holy period of the Muslim calendar and are typically observed by fasting, prayer, and seclusion.”

The Sept. 11 prosecutor opposes delay in a separate motion, also under seal at the war court website:

http://www.mc.mil/CASES/MilitaryCommissions.aspx

Next month’s would not be the first Ramadan war court appearance by Mohammed and the four men accused of orchestrating, funding and training the 19 terrorists who hijacked the four aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, killingly nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

The five men were brought to war court for hearings in September 2008, as Ramadan was reaching its conclusion that year on the Muslim calendar during a since-aborted Bush effort to try the men before a different judge, a U.S. Marine Corps colonel. Mohammed objected to the timing of that 2008 session during his appearance on behalf of the five men who face the death penalty if convicted at their capital murder trial.

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/07/10/who-cares-about-libya-republicans-should-stay-on-message/?singlepage=true

So far, the Arab ballot box has given us Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a supposedly moderate Islamist party in Tunisia, an Iranian-allied regime in Iraq, and… a putative success in Libya, celebrated by the Wall Street Journal editorial page with the pronouncement, “Once again, Arabs demonstrate their desire for self-government.”

The “once again” part is dubious, for the WSJ does not mention where else this “desire for self-government” has produced the desired result. But the Republican establishment, having signed on to the Bush Freedom Agenda and its gigantic cost in blood and treasure, cannot gracefully back away from a discredited ideological commitment. While the obnoxious military and the unspeakable Muslim Brotherhood square off in Egypt, and the tech-savvy democrats of Tahrir Square disappear, the WSJ praises the one Arab election that appears to justify the grand enterprise of exporting democracy. Why beat up on other conservatives? Because focus on the supposed Libyan success lets the Obama administration off the hook at a moment when Republicans should pillory the president for coddling a terrorist nest like the Muslim Brotherhood.

The WSJ editors wrote:

It’s fashionable these days to say that NATO’s intervention in Libya left that Arab country no better off, but tell that to the Libyans who joyously voted in free elections on Saturday. An election alone does not a democracy make, but Libyans understand it’s better than the tyranny of Gadhafi & Sons, Inc.

The vote for a new legislative body wasn’t perfect but went off better than expected. Armed groups in the eastern, oil-rich region around Benghazi stormed a couple of polling stations, and tribal groups in the south tried to sabotage the vote. Yet a majority—with an estimated turnout of 60%—defied the threats. The post-election celebrations around Libya were the most spirited since Moammar Gadhafi’s demise in October.

Preliminary results indicate a strong showing by a secular alliance headed by a former rebel leader, Mahmoud Jibril. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists may also claim a large share of seats in the 200-member General National Congress once official results come out this week.

Libya has twice Egypt’s GDP per capita (about $6,000 vs. $3,000). It has no shortages of fuel or food. It has the world’s 10th-largest proven petroleum reserves. If there is a pie to divide, it is at least possible for sectarian and political factions to agree to divide it, and there is less incentive to extreme risks. Libya, moreover, has only 6.4 million people, less than half the population of Cairo. Its capital, Tripoli, has only 1.7 million, a tenth the size of Cairo. Libya is no more typical of the Arab world than is the Saudi monarchy, which remains in power because it has enough money to buy off any prospective opposition, at least for the time being.

With massive NATO intervention and a lot of money to spread around, it is not difficult to stabilize Libya (or, for that matter, Tunisia, with $4,300 GDP per capita and 10.4 million people). It is also easy to keep Saudi Arabia stable because the regime has enough money to buy off prospective opponents, at least for the time being. To compare Libya to Egypt is inappropriate. It is the sort of thing that “political scientists” who think in terms of “political models” might do. I avoid contact with such people in case whatever ails them might be contagious.

Egypt has some 82 million people of whom perhaps 40 million live on $2 a day. Nearly half of all Egyptians are functionally illiterate and perhaps two-fifths are unemployed or marginally employed. They live on subsidies from a government that is on the verge of bankruptcy, and (as I posted yesterday) have been kept from catastrophe by droplets of Saudi help. The Obama administration’s ideological obsessions and incompetence are driving the largest Arab country into a disaster. Republicans need to stay on message here.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/the_west_bank_may_never_be_the_same.html A legal tsunami gathering strength in Israel will soon engulf the region. An official report is soon to be released that says the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) does not apply to Judea and Samaria aka West Bank and that Israel has every right to build settlements there. In January of this year, PM Netanyahu […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Say that you get a tempting offer from a Nigerian prince and decide to invest some money in helping him transfer his vast fortune from Burkina Faso or Dubai over to the bank across the street. The seemingly simple task of bringing over the 18 million dollars left to him by his father hits some snags which require you to put in more and more of your own money.

Eventually you have invested more than you ever would have ever done up front, just trying to protect the sunk cost, the money that you already sank into Prince Hussein Ngobo’s scheme. And to protect your self-esteem, you must go on believing that, no matter what Prince Ngobo does, he is credible and sincere. Any failings in the interaction are either your fault or the fault of some third party. Anyone who tells you otherwise must be a Ngobophobe.

Now imagine that Prince Ngobo’s real name is Islam.

That is where Western elites find themselves now. They invested heavily in the illusion of a compatible Islamic civilization. Those investments, whether in Islamic immigration or Islamic democracy or peace with Islam have turned toxic, but dropping those investments is as out of the question as writing off Prince Ngobo as a con artist and walking away feeling like a fool. Western elites, who fancy themselves more intelligent and more enlightened than the wise men and prophets of every religion, and who base their entire right to rule on that intelligence and enlightenment, are not in the habit of admitting that they are fools.

The Arab Springers who predicted that the Muslim uprisings would bring a new age of secularism, freedom and an end to the violence between Islam and the West; are busy writing up new checks. Thomas Friedman is penning essays explaining why the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood will mean regional stability and peace with Israel (and if it doesn’t, it will be our fault.)

It’s not insanity; it’s the term that rhymes with a certain river in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s victory discredits the Arab Spring, which discredits the bid for Arab Democracy, which discredits the compatibility of Islam and the folks on Fifth Avenue. Follow the river back along its course and suddenly the Clash of Civilizations becomes an undeniable fact. It’s easier to give up and let the river of denial carry you further along until, five years from now, you find yourself explaining why Al-Qaeda ruling Libya is actually a good thing for everyone.

Islam’s Latest Contributions to Peace
“Mohammed is God’s apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless
to the unbelievers but merciful to one another” Quran 48:29

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

2012.07.10 (Baghdad, Iraq) – Sunnis bomb a bus carrying Shiites, killing three and injuring fourteen.
2012.07.09 (Kandahar, Afghanistan) – Two children are among five people pulled into pieces by three Shahid suicide bombers.
2012.07.08 (Barkin-Ladi, Nigeria) – Two politicians are twenty-three Christians, including women and children slaughtered by Muslims during a funeral for other victims of Islamic terror.
2012.07.08 (Arghistan, Afghanistan) – Eighteen civilians, including women and children, are torn to shreds by Taliban bombers.
2012.07.07 (Shabelle, Somalia) – al-Shabaab militants open fire on a passenger bus, killing at least four.
2012.07.07 (Kushen, Nigeria) – Muslim terrorists attack thirteen Christian villages and massacre eighty innocents.

http://www.steynonline.com/5063/mr-powell-and-his-peers “All political lives,” said the British politician Enoch Powell many years ago, “unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” It’s certainly the nature of politics in the Westminster system. Consider the dazzling Tony Blair of 1997, […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/308396/roberts-rules-disorder-deroy-murdock
“Run away!” is the chief justice’s battle cry.

The story behind Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius gets stranger and stranger.

First, Roberts stunned the American left, middle, and right on June 28 when he joined Court liberals and upheld the (un)Affordable Care Act — AKA Obamacare.

Next, Jan Crawford of CBS News reported that Roberts originally voted to overturn Obamacare, but then performed a high-stakes, eleventh-hour backflip. In essence, Roberts cracked under public pressure from the Left. To date, neither Roberts nor anyone else has challenged Crawford’s jaw-dropping disclosures.

Amazingly, Crawford quoted unnamed sources with intimate knowledge of the justices’ deliberations. In a city that leaks like the hull of a torpedoed warship, the Court’s inner sanctum traditionally is as impermeable as the bridge of an attack submarine. The fact that the justices, their clerks, or other top staffers are blabbing outside the palace of justice says enough about this mess to fill a law dictionary.

In an even more bizarre twist, it seems that Roberts did not just switch rather than fight. According to a July 3 Salon.com article by University of Colorado at Boulder law professor Paul Campos, Roberts wrote the majority ruling after drafting three-quarters of the dissenting opinion, which began as the majority decision to jettison Obamacare like a sack of medical waste. If true, Roberts achieved a milestone in judicial hermaphroditism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/305187/egypt-s-real-ruler-daniel-pipes What does it mean that Mohamed Morsi is now the president of Egypt? Speaking for the American consensus, Bret Stephens argued in the Wall Street Journal against the consolation that the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory “is merely symbolic, since the army still has the guns,” and went on to conclude that “Egypt is lost.” We […]

Recently my American Laws for American Courts legislation that Governor Brownback signed into law in May has come under unfounded criticism and fraudulent attacks from poorly researched articles that have contained numerous inaccuracies. Critics have mischaracterized the law we passed in Kansas to protect the individual constitutional rights of our citizens against foreign laws and […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/executive-tyranny?f=puball The use of Executive Orders (EO) goes back to the first President, George Washington. Every chief executive has issued them since then. Some have been historic, but the latest Executive Orders of President Obama are downright scary. The Executive Order signed on June 25 is titled “Russian Highly Enriched Uranium” and offers as its […]