http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1685/pub_detail.asp Solyndra: Energy Dept. pushed firm to keep layoffs quiet until after midterms [WA PO] New emails: DOJ, Eric Holder manipulated press for favorable ‘Fast and Furious’ coverage [DAILY CALLER] GOP senators rip Iraq pullout plan: McCain, Graham fear ‘losing the peace’; Panetta: Baghdad left us no choice [WT] How Can The American People Ever […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10830/pub_detail.asp The International Atomic Energy Agency’s incriminating report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program should be the last straw—not just for Iran, but for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The country simply cannot afford to have him in charge of overseeing our entire intelligence community any longer. In March, Clapper stood by the controversial National […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10832/pub_detail.asp
The Center for American Progress Fear, Inc. Report: A Roadblock to American Progress
The Center for American Progress (CAP) recently issued a 132 page report entitled “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” (pdf). The report’s supposed objective is to “expose—and marginalize—the influence of the individuals and groups” that CAP claims are a part of an “Islamophobia network in America.” The report was immediately seized upon by many Muslim organizations and enablers on the political left as well as the Iranian government’s Press TV as proof positive of the victimhood of American Muslims.
This report portends to be an in-depth investigative analysis that connects the dots of a supposedly sinister anti-jihadist movement. But a glossy cover around 132 pages of political blog material does not make a report either journalistically or academically sound. From my perspective, CAP lost all journalistic and academic credibility when it failed to contact me to corroborate, refute or even respond to any of the accusations the report levels against me and our organization- the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. This would not be considered acceptable for a college term paper, let alone a report that is being billed as useful in-depth analysis.
“The same media and public that caused Paterno and McQueary to be fired cannot seem to raise the same level of indignation against those political appointees and law enforcement officers that knew they were enabling murderers.”
http://pjmedia.com/blog/warped-priorities-penn-state-vs-gunwalker/?print=1
In one of the most repulsive scandals in college history, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged [1] with 40 counts of sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period, some of them as young as seven. Sandusky is alleged to have used a charity he founded to help disadvantaged boys, the Second Mile Foundation, to find his victims in assaults that occurred between 1994 and 2009.
The American public, and the media in particular, is sickened by these charges and has reveled in the opportunity to destroy the perverse and their enablers in this scandal.
Yet Elisabeth Meinecke, deputy managing editor of Townhall.com, has noticed that the public and media outcry regarding the abuse of these eight children is almost entirely absent from a concurrent scandal of far greater magnitude [2]:
But across the news cycle, this cry for accountability seemed to vanish when applied to a similar situation in the political world, a place where a program cost someone his life and responsibility always seemed to be the job of someone else.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/supreme-ironies-obamacare-and-the-court/?print=1
When Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow Supreme Court justices review Obamacare next year, it will be a moment of supreme irony.
The Roberts Court will decide the constitutionality of President Obama’s signature legislation under the Commerce Clause, since the law was cast as a regulation of interstate commerce, although it was actually a massive new government entitlement, using an unprecedented individual mandate to provide insurance companies the funds to administer it. Appellate courts across the nation have struggled with the issue, producing opinions in six different circuits covering a total of 654 pages, using diverse analyses to reach conflicting decisions (and usually split ones), necessitating Supreme Court review.
How should the Justices approach the issue Obamacare presents? What judicial philosophy should they bring to the question? The answer to that question may require the resolution of an issue raised six years ago — in a confirmation proceeding involving a new senator seeking to justify his vote against an indisputably qualified nominee.
The nominee was John Roberts, and the senator was Barack Obama.
http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2011/11/16/penn_state_the_banality_of_collaborative_evil
When the Israeli government captured Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, journalist Hannah Arendt was struck by the fact that Eichmann appeared to be a nondescript accountant type. He was not highly intelligent, and he did not appear to be particularly vicious. This led Arendt to the conclusion that anyone could, under the right ideological circumstances, become evil. Evil, she said, was banal.
This was an exaggeration of the case. Eichmann was a willing executioner of Hitler’s orders; he identified deeply with Hitler’s anti-Semitism. He was not just a cog in the system, he was an active system-maker.
But there is truth to the notion that anyone, given the right amount of self-interest, can be sucked into collaborating with evil — or at least looking the other way. Edmund Burke once stated that all that was necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing. The Nazis believed ideologically in the murder of Jews, but the rest of the Western world, including the Roosevelt administration, were willing to sit idly, closing their gates to the refugees. A Holocaust is a worldwide affair.
At Penn State, the same principle applied. Former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky spent decades sexually assaulting young boys. He started a charity, The Second Mile, to recruit young boys. One victim was a houseguest with Sandusky. Sandusky fondled him, performed oral sex on him and forced the boy to perform oral sex in return. A Clinton County high school routinely called the victim out of study hall to meet Sandusky in a conference room. The wrestling coach at the high school, Joe Miller, saw Sandusky molesting the victim; Sandusky said that he was wrestling the boy. Miller found the situation odd, but said nothing. This behavior lasted from 2005 to 2009.
In President Higgins’s Ireland, The Wearin’ Of The (Islamic) Green?
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
As the Irish blogger Mark Humphrys has remarked, deploringly, Michael D. Higgins, sworn in on 11 November as the ninth President of the Republic of Ireland, is the most anti-American and most anti-Israel head of state in the western world.
With Higgins’s track record, its no wonder the extremely virulent Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign is cock-a-hoop at its old friend’s rise to a position if not of wide formal powers, then certainly of not inconsiderable influence.
I’ve taken my eye off the Emerald Isle since posting about Michael D. Higgins a little while ago. So I’m grateful to Mark Humphrys (whose blog has many revealing photos of Higgins like this one) for paying a visit to this site just now, and giving me the tidbit that at President Higgins’s inauguration an Islamic cleric recited a prayer.
Nothing wrong with a little bit of ecumenism, you might say. After all, what better way to make all sections of society feel they are part and parcel of the nation in which they live than by their religious representatives participating at such a state occasion?
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2581/norway-islamist
Anti-Semitism in Norway, where I have lived for twelve years, is over the top. I have never quite gotten used to it. Every now and then I hear or read something that reminds me that I am living in Europe, in a country that was occupied by the Nazis, and where a lot of people were perfectly okay with that. I think it is fair to say that anti-Semitism in Norway is most virulent among the cultural elite – the academics, intellectuals, writers, journalists, politicians, and technocrats – although thanks to the media and schools, it has trickled down to many ordinary Norwegians, some of whom may never even have met a Jewish person.
This anti-Semitism manifests itself in various ways. When Obama became president, former Norwegian prime minister Kåre Willoch said things did not look promising because Obama had “chosen a Jew as chief of staff.” The chief rabbi of the Oslo synagogue reportedly receives a pile of hate mail every day. During the Gaza War, a major Norwegian newspaper had trouble finding Norwegian Jews who were willing to comment on the record about the war: they said they were scared of repercussions. Norwegian academics have sought to ban contacts with Israeli universities. Norwegian activists have encouraged boycotts of Israeli products. There is terrible anti-Semitic bullying in the schools. Every so often, a high-profile professor or activist or famous author will write a virulent op-ed or give an angry speech denouncing Israel and insulting Jews. Nothing could be safer for them to say; no one will seek to harm them physically or otherwise – as opposed to what would happen if, say, they made certain public statements about Islam. And they know this. Norway’s most respected newspaper cartoonist, Finn Graff, who has admitted that he never draws cartoons about Islam because he is scared for his life, has frequently drawn cartoons comparing Israelis to Nazis; he knows Jews will never harm him. These anti-Semitic op-eds and speeches and cartoons are never remotely fresh, witty, or original; all they ever do is recycle tired cultural-elite clichés. And their creators get nothing but praise from their colleagues, who celebrate them as courageous truth-tellers. It is much more acceptable to scream “kill the Jews” at an anti-Israeli protest than it is to criticize Hamas.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
As the ObamaCare Mandate winds its way up to the Supreme Court, which will decide whether we still have the freedom to look after our own health in our own way without compulsion from the authorities, it’s still only the tip of the positive rights iceberg.
When entitlements are transformed into positive rights, this creates a universal reciprocal obligation, first of all to pay for them, and second of all to participate in a planned economy that provides those entitlements as cost effectively as possible. The Mandate is a typical consequence of the process.
The health insurance industry will provide affordable insurance for those who need it most, in exchange for the government delivering recalcitrant consumers who aren’t interested in buying their products. The same principle can be used to make checking accounts more affordable if banks agree to remove minimum balance requirements in exchange for the government compelling everyone to sign up with a bank. The industry gets captive customers and the government gets to write off another social problem.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1953/The-Truth-Hurts-Saudi-Arabia.aspx
Saudi Arabia — sorry, “The Kingdom” — is going ballistic over a 30-second commercial currently airing on Fox Business Network. Does Prince Talal know?
With thanks to Kathy Shaidle:
NEW YORK, Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — EthicalOil.org fights Saudi “lawfare” by expanding campaign’s reach
EthicalOil.org, a grassroots advocacy organization that educates consumers about the choice between ethical oil from Canada’s oil sands and conflict oil from some of the world’s most repressive regimes, is now airing a television ad in the United States that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is actively trying to block in Canada.
The 30 second television ad factually informs North Americans of Saudi Arabia’s horrific treatment of women and asks “why are we paying their bills and funding their oppression” through our annual purchase of 400 million barrels of Saudi oil. The ad presents ethical oil from Canada’s oil sands as the alternative to Saudi conflict oil.
