After Marie Harf claimed that we can prevent people from joining ISIS by providing more job opportunities for them, Twitter has seemed to explode with some ideas for some well fitting jobs. Some of the most hilarious ones can be seen below:
Imperial President Obama has been conducting a conference on “Radical Extremism”. In light of that, I find it a constant source of irritation that most people have to be reminded how these Leftist/Marxist/Socialist/Extreme-Liberal/Muslim-Loving/Islamist-Defending/Christian-Hating/Conservative-Hating/Democrats define what “Radical Extremism” actually is, and who are guilty of their judgment.
So I have given you some reminders below.
Jerry Broussard of WhatDidYouSay.org
It’s been some 1,400 years since Islam entered the world’s culture. And from its inception, it has maintained a suffocating menu of choices to mankind…none of which concern free will OR peace. As we have seen and continue to see globally, Muslims hot for the Quran and Sharia Islamic Law, are on a Jihad crusade against all who choose NOT to follow Allah or his prophet Muhammed.
There have been over 25,000 deadly terror attacks committed by Muslims since 9-11. From Canada to Denmark to Australia…Islam’s influence (by its hateful harangues emanating from Islam’s holy books) has encouraged torture, rape, pedophilia and slaughter (via beheadings, incinerations, stabbings and bombings) of thousands upon thousands of innocent human beings.
And yet, anyone who dares mention these facts…is subject to an crushing bombardment of verbal salvos by cowering Westerners…as well as death threats by Muhammed’s faithful.
Exactly WHEN was the last time an Islamic message broke out in loving and serving non-Muslims? Or a street rally of Muslims chanted: “Love to America”, “Hugs to Israel”, “Bless anyone who slanders the prophet” or “Be kind to Infidels, wherever you find them”? Has this EVER happened? As we say in NYC: NEVA!!
Western leaders and the mainstream media like to use the term “Radical” when referring to devout Muslims that commit heinous acts for Islam. But here lies the rub…the actual definition of that term is the antithesis of how it’s being used. The dictionary defines “radical” as: of or going to the root or origin; fundamental.
These Mohammedans have gone back to the roots of their creed. They are fundamentalists who follow in the footsteps and behaviors of their prophet. M0hammed was not a man of peace, but rather a man of war, having been in 100 violent campaigns to spread Islam and fill his Jihad coffers. We see this STILL occurring with ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas, et al. They invade the lands of non-Muslims, kill, steal and destroy… Just like Mohammed did…
The split second these Islamic attacks occur…the West is falling all over itself in a mad rush for the microphone to announce to the world the mantra of morons: Islam is a religion of peace.
But, in actuality…according to the empirical evidence: Islam is a religion of bigotry, hate and brutality. And that’s on a good day…
Now, I don’t intend to be harsh, BUT…let’s stop being the idiotic infidels that Mohammed told his followers we are. Let’s instead go back to critical thinking where we use the intellect the Judeo-Christian God gave us…and finally confront this centuries-old LIE with TRUTH.
The reverend isn’t beating around the bush on this interview. Check out what he has to say.
“The president is ignoring the fact that these are Islamic extremists. These are terrorists. And ISIS is a terrorist organization. And they are bent on destroying the West. They’ve already said they want the flag of Islam to fly over the White House. The president, his entire life his whole influence has been Islam. His mother has been married to a Muslim. His father is a Muslim. Then she married a man from Indonesia. He was raised in Indonesia. Went to Islamic schools. I assume she was a Muslim. So, his whole life experiences have been surrounded by Islam. He only knows Islam. And, he’s given a pass to Islam. He’s refusing to accept and understand the evil that is in front of him.”
Aaron Klein On 02/17/2015
Egypt, now at the forefront of fighting ISIS, is warning it has intelligence revealing the global jihadist group is planning a worldwide offensive this spring or summer that could reach targets within the United States. Interrogations of ISIS members captured in recent weeks in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula Egyptian and information collected by Egyptian security forces indicate ISIS is planning ground offensives this spring and summer aimed at taking over more territory across the Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf, a senior Egyptian intelligence official told WND. Some of the information indicates the new offensive will not be limited to the Arab world. Timed to coincide with its planned surge, ISIS is plotting possible attacks using cells abroad. ISIS and its jihadist allies could activate cells to carry attacks in Europe and possibly within the U.S., the senior Egyptian official warned. 
The official advocated the deployment of significant ground troops acting on multiple fronts to stop ISIS’ progression. He complained the Obama administration and international community has been hesitant to take major action against ISIS advances.
Egypt on Monday sent warplanes over the border into Libya to bomb ISIS targets after the terror group’s well publicized, savage attack on Egyptian Christians. Egyptian F-16 fighter jets reportedly struck ISIS training camps and weapons depots along Libya’s coast, including targets in Derna, where Islamic extremist groups have joined with ISIS.
One day earlier, ISIS allies released a video that appears to show the execution of 21 Coptic Christian prisoners. The Coptic Church is headquartered in Egypt. The Egyptian government reportedly dispatched its foreign minister to New York in a bid to rally international support for their military intervention in Libya. Last week, WND reported Egypt estimates ISIS and its allies currently boast an army of about 180,000 fighters.
An Egyptian intelligence document, the contents of which were obtained by WND, warns that while the U.S. has been attempting to maintain a coalition to fight ISIS, the Islamic terrorist organization has itself been hard at work building a sustainable coalition of jihadist gunmen. The 180,000 figure is up to six times greater than a CIA estimate from last September, which placed the number of ISIS fighters at between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters.
According to Egypt, ISIS has created an umbrella army with the Taliban, Al Shabab, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and local jihadist groups from Yemen, Mali, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian Sinai.
There have been numerous claims of ISIS cells embedded in the U.S. Earlier this month, Michael Steinbach, head of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, was asked by CNN whether or not there are ISIS cells in the U.S. Steinbach said, “[T]here are individuals that have been in communication with groups like [ISIS] who have a desire to conduct an attack,” and those people are living in the U.S. right now. He conceded the FBI finds it extremely difficult to track every American traveling abroad who can join ISIS or receive training by foreign terrorist organizations.
“I’m worried about individuals that we don’t know about that have training,” Steinbach said. “We know what we know. But there is a number that’s greater than that that we don’t know. Once you get to Europe, you can easily get down to Turkey and into Syria,” he noted.
In August, former CIA officer Bob Baer told CNN he had been “told with no uncertainty there are ISIS sleeper cells in this country.” CNN cited two unnamed U.S. officials rebutting the claim but still expressing concern ISIS militants with passports might travel to the U.S. to launch attacks on American soil.
Author Unknown
He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.
Of a war that he once fought in, and the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.
And ‘tho sometimes to his neighbors his tales became a joke,
All his buddies listened quietly for they knew where of he spoke.
But we’ll hear his tales no longer, for ol’ Joe has passed away,
And the world’s a little poorer for a Veteran died today.
He won’t be mourned by many, just his children and his wife.
For he lived an ordinary, very quiet sort of life.
He held a job and raised a family, going quietly on his way;
And the world won’t note his passing, ‘Tho a Veteran died today.
When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing, and proclaim that the were great.
Papers tell of their life stories, from the time that they were young,
But the passing of a Veteran goes unnoticed, and unsung.
Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land,
Some jerk who breaks his promise and cons his fellow man?
Or the ordinary fellow, who in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his country and offers up his life.
The politician’s stipend and the style in which he lives,
Are often disproportionate, to the service that he gives.
While the ordinary Veteran, who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal and perhaps a pension, small.
It is not the politicians with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our country now enjoys.
Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you really want some cop-out, with his ever-waffling stand?
Or would you want a Veteran, his home, his country, his kin,
Just a common Veteran, who would fight until the end.
He was just a common Veteran, and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us – We may need his likes again.
For when countries are in conflict, we find the Veteran’s part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.
If we cannot do him honor while he’s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let’s give him homage at the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline in the paper that might say:
Jennifer LeClaire, on 16 February, 2015
Is the Bible Belt coming unbuckled? Stan Mitchell, pastor of the GracePoint megachurch in Franklin Tennessee, has apparently taken his Bible belt off altogether. Mitchell told his congregation—a congregation that includes superstar singer-songwriter Carrie Underwood—that practicing homosexuals can be card-carrying members of his Bible-believing protestant church and can even hold their gay weddings in the sanctuary. “Our position that these siblings of ours, other than heterosexual, … cannot have the full privileges of membership, but only partial membership, has changed,” Mitchell told the church.
“Full privileges are extended now to you with the same expectations of faithfulness, sobriety, holiness, wholeness, fidelity, godliness, skill and willingness. That is expected of all. Full membership means being able to serve in leadership and give all of your gifts and to receive all the sacraments; not only communion and baptism, but child dedication and marriage.” 
Wait, what? Mitchell seems to completely misunderstand—or at least misinterpret—the Bible. Practicing homosexuals may indeed be faithful tithers and attenders, but one cannot reconcile homosexual lifestyles with holiness and godliness. As kind, generous and loving as some practicing gays may be, sexual sin defiles homosexuals the same as it does heterosexuals.
The question here is this: How did Mitchell fall into this deception? What caused him to accept this strong delusion that counters the holy Scriptures? Mitchell is certainly not the first preacher—or denomination for that matter—to reject the Word of God on this topic. What happened?
According to Mitchell’s own testimony, the Spirit of God moved on his heart several years ago, causing him to reconsider his stance on full inclusion for practicing homosexuals at his megachurch. He calls it a divine wind, but God does not speak with a forked tongue. “We were thrust, I believe, by a divine wind, into a prayerful, painful, invigorating, careful and hopeful conversation regarding sexual orientation and gender identity,” he said. “My soul has been stretched to the point that if I do not say what I say today, I cannot be here any longer. I have felt this way for many, many years.”
Clearly, Mitchell is in angst over this move, which I believe is the Spirit of God bringing conviction to his heart over his present unbiblical conclusion. Indeed, if the Spirit of God—or a “divine wind” as he called it—moved over his soul at all it was not to give practicing homosexuals church leadership positions or hold gay marriage ceremonies in his sanctuary. If the Spirit of God moved over him it was to pray against the deception he has now embraced.
So what happened? I don’t have all the answers but I believe it comes down to cowardice and compromise in the end. If we are willing to compromise God’s Word in any area, we open ourselves up to all manner of deception. Mitchell may be dealing with the fear of man, since he’s lost so many members while he wrestled with his revelation. The Bible says the fear of man brings a snare (see Prov. 29:25). He has certainly been snared.
Owen Strachan, assistant professor of Christian theology and Church history at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, put it this way: “If you fear man, God will become small to you. The approval of fellow sinners will matter more to you than obeying God by the witness of his Word.”
The only saving grace here is that Mitchell remains double-minded about his decision, which means there is still hope for him to come to repentance.
“I am not sure I am right, but I am sure I sense the presence of God, and I know I’m doing my best,” he said. “And I believe before God Almighty to this we have been called, and here we stand.”
I pray he turns from this skewed theology and repents publicly, which could give other pastors the courage to do the same. I also pray that professing evangelicals—whether they are in the pulpit or the pews—will stand and withstand the winds of culture that are raging against us. The days are growing darker. The Great Falling Away is underway. And the next great move of God is emerging even now. I want to stand on the right side of eternity on these issues. What about you?
Last week, Prof. Jacobson noted that The Washington Post published an editorial criticizing President Obama’s handling of the nuclear negotiations with Iran. Prof. Jacobson’s mentioned the editorial in the context of arguing that the likely deal is against “the best interests of the American people.” But there’s something else remarkable about the editorial. It was the fifth one since October in which the Post questioned the concessions being made by the P5+1 nations; and several of the central points of the editorial were buttressed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D – Va.), so they could hardly be called partisan. To quote from the editorial:
A related problem is whether Iran could be prevented from cheating on any arrangement and acquiring a bomb by stealth. Mr. Kaine (D) underlined that an attempt by the United States to negotiate the end of North Korea’s nuclear program failed after the regime covertly expanded its facilities. With Iran, said Mr. Kaine, “a nation that has proven to be very untrustworthy . . . the end result is more likely to be a North Korean situation” if existing infrastructure is not dismantled.
The administration at one time portrayed the nuclear negotiations as distinct from the problem of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, its attempts to establish hegemony over the Arab Middle East and its declared goal of eliminating Israel. Yet while the talks have proceeded, Mr. Obama has offered assurances to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the two countries have shared interests in the region, and the White House has avoided actions Iran might perceive as hostile — such as supporting military action against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
For their part, the Iranians, as Mr. Kaine put it, “are currently involved in activities to destabilize the governments of [U.S.-allied] nations as near as Bahrain and as far away as Morocco.” A Tehran-sponsored militia recently overthrew the U.S.-backed government of Yemen. Rather than contest the Iranian bid for regional hegemony, as has every previous U.S. administration since the 1970s, Mr. Obama appears ready to concede Iran a place in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond — a policy that is viewed with alarm by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, among other allies.
Good for Texas. Rule of law should play a role somewhere here in the USA and I’m glad Texas is setting the example.
In an order filed on Monday, the judge, Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced in November that would offer protection from deportation and work permits to as many as five million undocumented immigrants. The first of those programs was scheduled to start receiving applications on Wednesday and the immediate impact of the ruling is that up to 270,000 undocumented immigrants nationwide who came to the United States as children will not be able to apply for deportation protection under an expansion of an existing executive program. A larger new program is scheduled to begin in May.
Judge Hanen, an outspoken critic of the administration on immigration policy, found that the states had satisfied the minimum legal requirements to bring their lawsuit. He said the Obama administration had failed to comply with basic administrative procedures for putting such a sweeping program into effect.
The administration argued that Mr. Obama was well within long-established federal authority for a president to decide how to enforce the immigration laws. But Texas and the other states said the executive measures were an egregious case of government by fiat that would impose huge new costs on their budgets. The White House responded to the judge’s ruling in a statement early Tuesday, saying the president had acted within the law and with decades of legal precedent behind him in issuing the guidelines.
“The Department of Justice, legal scholars, immigration experts and the district court in Washington, D.C., have determined that the president’s actions are well within his legal authority,” the White House statement said. “The district court’s decision wrongly prevents these lawful, common sense policies from taking effect, and the Department of Justice has indicated that it will appeal that decision.”
In ordering the administration to suspend the programs while he makes a final decision on the case, Judge Hanen agreed with the states that the president’s policies had already been costly for them.“The court finds that the government’s failure to secure the border has exacerbated illegal immigration into this country,” Judge Hanen wrote. “Further, the record supports the finding that this lack of enforcement, combined with the country’s high rate of illegal immigration, significantly drains the states’ resources.”
Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, which is leading the states bringing the lawsuit, hailed the judge’s ruling as a “victory for the rule of law in America and a crucial first step in reining in President Obama’s lawlessness.” He said Mr. Obama’s actions were “an affront to everyone pursuing a life of freedom and opportunity in America the right way.”
Mr. Obama said he was using executive powers to focus enforcement agents on deporting serious criminals and those posing threats to national security. Three-year deportation deferrals and work permits were offered for undocumented immigrants who have not committed serious crimes, have been here at least five years and have children who are American citizens or legal residents. As part of the package, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson also established new priorities, instructing enforcement agents to concentrate on deporting the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists and gang members, as well as migrants caught crossing the border illegally.
In his opinion, Judge Hanen accused administration officials of being “disingenuous” when they said the president’s initiatives did not significantly alter existing policies. He wrote that the programs were “a massive change in immigration practice” that would affect “the nation’s entire immigration scheme and the states who must bear the lion’s share of its consequences.” He said the executive actions had violated laws that the federal government must follow to issue new rules, and he determined “the states have clearly proven a likelihood of success on the merits.”
Read more: NY Times
Reported by Baron Von Kowenhoven February 16, 2015This is a real hero and a man who should be featured front page on every news site! When a Virginia trucker pulled into a run of the mill rest stop, he never would have believed he would save someone’s life. Kevin Kimmel parked at a truck stop in New Kent County, Virginia. As he was sipping coffee in his cab, he noticed a odd-looking RV with black drapes covering its windows.
Then, he saw caught a glimpse of a young girl’s face looking out one of the windows. And something about the look on her face disturbed him. So he started watching the RV more intently.
It seems the girl was being held by sex traffickers and was being forced into a life of prostitution and the trucker’s vague feeling that something wasn’t right saved her from a life of slavery and degradation.
A truck driver has described the moment he spotted a suspected trafficking victim peeking out of a van before a man got in and the vehicle ‘started rocking’.
Kevin Kimmel was parked at a gas station in Richmond, Virginia, on January 6 when he witnessed the alleged incident and called police.
image: http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Screen-Shot-2015-02-14-at-2.33.01-PM-296×197.jpg
His call led to an FBI investigation after officers found a dishevelled 20-year-old woman who appeared to be malnourished with puncture wounds in her feet, according to a police report.
An Iowa couple, Aldair Hodza, 36, and Laura Sorensen, 31, have been charged with abducting the woman and forcing her into an online prostitution scheme.
Court documents allege Hodza tortured the woman by burning her with keys heated over a stove, and driving nails into her feet with a hammer.
“When I saw the young girl’s face, I said that’s not going to happen, I’ve got daughters and granddaughters,” Kimmel told WTVR.
“I only learned the gruesome details through the news. I’m just happy I helped her,” he added.
Baron was just a shy kid with a dream, growing up in the 40’s with a knack for story-telling. After a brief career in film, Von Kowenhoven went to Europe in search of fringe-scientific discoveries and returned in the 90’s to unleash them on the entertainment and political landscape of AmericaRead more at http://joeforamerica.com/2015/02/hero-trucker-saves-life-sex-slave-brief-glimpse-van-window/
The American Conservative Union (ACU), and its signature annual event the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), are heading in a more conservative direction after previous years when they drifted away from the core values of conservatism.
ACU’s new chairman Matt Schlapp, new executive director Dan Schneider and other staff sat down with Breitbart News for a lengthy interview at the ACU’s headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., last week—an interview in which they walked through the themes of this year’s conference. A large focus will be discussing how to apply Ronald Reagan’s three legged stool of conservatism–social conservatism, national security conservatism, and fiscal conservatism–to the problems ahead. Reagan’s “Peace Through Strength” doctrine, they say, applies to the entire cultural and political debate, not just in fighting off foreign enemies.
But Schlapp, a former White House official, told Breitbart News that the primary theme for CPAC 2015 is “Conservative Action Starts Here.” He referenced how Breitbart News and other conservatives held, at CPAC 2013 and CPAC 2014, panels called “The Uninvited” and “The Uninvited II,” because of a lack of focus on social and national security issues at CPAC those years. The divide wasn’t just found at those Uninvited panels, though–conservatives inside CPAC raised their concerns with leaders like Citizens United’s Dave Bossie, the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell, and others speaking up about the concerns in the building.
Because of those struggles in recent years, and concerted efforts by the ACU to listen to grassroots concerns about the direction of the landmark conference, the organization is now emerging as stronger, more conservative and more united.
The path that it’s taken is not the easy road. As anyone who has been swept up into the political establishment over the years knows, it is much easier in politics to just roll with the tide of the powerful and the elite, ignoring the grassroots. But under Schlapp’s and Schneider’s leadership, and with the help of key staffers like Carin and Ian Walters among others, the ACU has rejected that powerful pull of the establishment. They’re fighting to include as many people in the process as possible. And they’re implementing the recommendations from grassroots activists and leaders for solutions to the things they’ve been criticized for in the past.
“We believe [that action-focused theme] is important because I have been on the board of the American Conservative Union for a number of years now and have attended a lot of CPACs, and we thought that there was an element that was missing—something that actually other groups would take advantage of with extra-curricular activities,” Schlapp says:
That is that we have all these activists here from all around the country, why aren’t we helping them figure out how to be better activists? They can listen to their political heroes and sometimes they can talk to them, they can hear great inspirational talks—and sometimes talks that quite frankly depress you when you realize how bad the state of certain things are, but what helps them go back into their communities and be a more effective voice for conservative beliefs? So, we’ve got this day of training on the day before CPAC, and this is not a one-day thing. We’re going to come out of this and figure out how do we do this generally? I think we have an obligation to continue the conversation and develop the relationship with those people who put their hard earned money on the table to come to CPAC. We need to keep talking to them. We need to keep educating them. We need to keep being challenged by them. We need to challenge them. That’s the type of organization ACU is going to become.
Schlapp said the second major theme that this year’s CPAC will focus in on is how the history of ACU and the history of the conservative movement is important.
“Conservative Action Starts Here” will be big and loud on the stage but also the second thing is we think our history is very, very important. Our history has always been about uniting people in the conservative world together because—yeah, we’re going to have disagreements. We do not want to stop the disagreements. But we don’t want to have everyone at each other’s throats so if we forget that if we don’t all work together, bad things happen like Barack Obama gets two terms. He gets a lot of liberal judges. He uses his pen to dictate all kinds of executive action that’s problematic. We don’t need a third term. We hopefully have woken up to the fact that it’s imperative that we get our act together, that we win. Now, I think we win when we stand for conservative policies. I’m not asking us to water down our conservative policies. I just want to make sure ACU plays the role that it has of uniting social conservatives—people who care about the culture—people who care about national security, and people who care about low taxes, free markets and free trade.
Schneider even keeps taped to his computer a printout of two different stools—one with the words CPAC 2014 above it and the other with the words CPAC 2015 above it. The 2014 stool is missing two legs, and the 2015 stool has all three. “I’ve been pounding this theme with our staff that we need to have all three legs of the Reagan stool and I showed up one morning and our CPAC director, Carin Walters, had taped this on to my computer screen,” Schneider said. “This image of CPAC 2014 versus CPAC 2015, a one legged stool versus three legs. I was so thrilled that they’ve absorbed the concept. It is now part of our DNA.”
Schlapp echoed that, saying it’s now the view of the ACU that the three major elements of conservatism “should be in balance. So we think that people who are concerned about the culture predominantly should be able to come to CPAC and see that those issues are important,” Schlapp said.
We think that people who think that what’s going on with the radical Islamic threat come to CPAC and they will see that we share their concerns. People who come to CPAC and say that the government is too big and does too much and is in all of our lives, will come to CPAC and say they understand our point of view. All three of the major parts of this coalition, there will be panels and speeches that focus on those areas. Specifically, we have decided—the American Conservative Union as a nonprofit—that okay, there are a lot of conservative groups and there’s a lot of conservative voices. But we still think there are gaps. There are gaps when it comes to questions of religious liberty. We don’t think that we really have the right strategy yet when it comes to making sure those rights are protected. National security, there’s a lot of Bush people, Reagan people, Cheney people who completely disagree sometimes on questions of when America goes to war, what’s the nature of a threat and what we should do, what are legitimate privacy concerns and what are our civil liberties? So these are legitimate questions and by the way, I don’t know what the conservative consensus is on all of these. CPAC is going to explore that.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who has been described by the Weekly Standard as the “most important Republican not running for president” because of the ideas and solutions he’s pushing with his Conservative Reform Agenda, will be kicking off the conference with the first major speech on Thursday morning of that week.
“It’s not an accident that he is speaking at the start of CPAC,” Schneider said. “He has a comprehensive approach to conservatism that we think can launch the conference in the right direction.” Schlapp added that Lee’s vision—which he is now pushing as chairman of the Senate Steering Committee—is “uniquely important” to conservatism. “His themes remind us that we just can’t revolt against the powers that be, we have to have tangible policies in a democracy that will fix the problems that the American people are facing,” Schlapp said.
That matches nicely with where we think CPAC and the American Conservative Union—and the conservative movement at large—needs to go. It’s one thing to have a conversation with other conservatives about what we should do tactically. But in a democracy, your audience has to be bigger. And you have to provide solutions for those people. Those solutions have to be well vetted by those conservative thinkers in the conservative movement and we think Mike Lee is someone who leads in that and who is doing that. There are others who are doing that as well, but his is an interesting voice since he’s so new to Washington. He’s come to this conclusion that that is what is needed—and we agree with him.
Schneider said, too, that a big focus of the conference this year will be re-exploring what Ronald Reagan meant with “Peace Through Strength”—something he noted didn’t mean just military might. “People have long forgotten what the Reagan Doctrine of Peace Through Strength really means,” Schneider said.
It means economic strength. It means military strength. It means political influence abroad. It means cultural strength. So we are having a panel on the main stage—a discussion—with some of the most influential people in the movement who can educate attendees on what America’s role in the world ought to be so we can protect our own freedoms. So from the main stage we also have breakout panels that dissect other parts of the Peace Through Strength doctrine. Because, ultimately, the conference is about combining conservative ideas with action because ideas without action might be personally interesting but not beneficial to society and action without ideas can be pointless. We’re combining the ideas with the action.
Coming off the resounding GOP win in the 2014 midterm elections, and heading into the crucial 2016 presidential election, this CPAC may be one of the most important ever for the conservative movement–and ultimately for the Republican Party–as the party’s fate and the nation’s hang in the balance.
Most, if not all, potential GOP presidential candidates will be speaking at CPAC this year. They include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, real estate magnate Donald Trump, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Dr. Ben Carson, 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Schlapp said that for the first time in decades, the conservative base will have a huge role in determining who the GOP nominee is going to be—and that the GOP isn’t just going to coronate who’s next in line. And because they’re all speaking at CPAC, he said, they will all be claiming the “conservative mantle”—even if they don’t have a good claim to make that they’re conservative. While it’s the job of the base and the voters to determine who actually has a just claim for the “conservative mantle,” Schlapp noted by the mere fact that all the potential GOP candidates coming and claiming to be conservatives the influence—and importance—of the conservative movement is on display.
“First of all, we are at a historically unique moment for those of us who claim the Republican mantle. It’s an open seat,” Schlapp said.
There is not a likely nominee. There is not a person who came in second who is waiting to take the next step up, which we always do. We don’t have that situation. All these candidates are coming to CPAC because they know conservatives will have the largest role in determining who the nominee is. Some people look at that situation and find a glass half empty. I look at that situation and say that glass is not half full, it’s three quarters full. We have a fantastic opportunity to have the biggest impact that the movement has ever had on this nominating process. All of those potential candidates who come here are going to try to claim that conservative mantle. Some might have a better claim. But they’re all going to try to grab it. And they’re going to make their case.
Schneider added that Americans should view the upcoming GOP presidential primary process—of which this upcoming CPAC is really the first event where all the potential candidates are going to appear together—as a hiring process. “Our attendees, and the American public generally, should think of this next presidential election as a hiring process,” Schneider said. “The American public is on the hiring committee, and we’ve got people looking for a job. This is an interview process. Our attendees get to evaluate the talent and make a decision as to how they think will be most effective in running the executive branch of our government.”
Because of that influence the grassroots has over the electoral process, Schlapp said, Washington and Wall Street powerhouses no longer get to determine outright who is going to be the next president of the United States. “I said to someone the other day that 10 home school families in Iowa could have a bigger impact on who this next nominee is than your 10 biggest financiers from Manhattan,” Schlapp said. “I really do believe that. I think that today, like never before, these activists are in a bigger way in the driver’s seat. Once again, I see that as a positive.” Schlapp said Americans are upset with—furious at—the power structures in America. “I think the American people look at their institutions and their leaders and they’re incredibly disillusioned,” he said.
Because of that disillusionment with the establishment world of business and politics and its intersection with liberal Hollywood, Schlapp said, the Republican candidate who understands that the most is likely to win over the conservative movement and then eventually likely the GOP nomination. If the Republican Party doesn’t figure out what the conservative movement has, however, they could be headed for an official split—something that the presence of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage’s presence at CPAC represents.
“I grew up in Kansas. Dan grew up in Kansas,” Schlapp said.
If you are out there in flyover country, which I mean as a term of endearment, but I think they look at all these big, big banks, big government—it almost sounds flattering, I’m getting dangerously close [to sounding like the themes of Breitbart News’ website]—they look at all that and the collusion of these worlds and they wonder who’s doing their bidding and how do they come out in this process? I think the Republican Party has a real chance—and they might blow it—but they have a real chance to connect to people by saying it’s not about the government picking the winner and the loser, and it’s not about the government working with the big business trade associations to figure out the policies that work for all them, it’s a great moment to go back and think about what are the principles from which we should govern for the next four years? The candidate who gets that, and connects with that, is the one who is going to get that conservative mantle, I think.
All of this and more will be on display at CPAC in 2015, which will be held from Feb. 25 through Feb. 28 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C.
State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told Chris Matthews tonight that we cannot win this war with ISIS by killing them. She said we have to get to the root cause of why people are attracted to Jihad — you know like poverty, jobs, etc…
“We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…”
Reverend Franklin Graham issued a eery warning today saying, “the storm is coming”, in response to ISIS murdering 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. See the full text of it below via Facebook:
With the clock ticking on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which will expire Feb. 27 at midnight, the House and Senate left Washington for a weeklong break for President’s Day.
Mr. Boehner said Democrats aren’t even willing to vote to begin debate on the bill — an oft-heard criticism from Democrats when they were in the Senate majority trying to overcome Republican-led stalemates last year. Democrats rejected Mr. Boehner’s finger of blame and said Americans will realize it is Republicans who are refusing to budge and placing the country’s national security at risk. “When Speaker Boehner tied immigration to DHS funding, he knew exactly what he was doing; saying unless I get my way, I’m going to shut down a large part of the government,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said in a statement. “To now blame Democrats when members of his own party, conservative leaders and others have all asked him to back off this game of chicken is disingenuous at best.”
Senate Republicans said that shutting down the Department of Homeland Security — especially at a time when radical Islamic terrorist threats are growing — is not the answer to the president’s actions. “We do not need to leave our nation in a situation with the types of threats we have with an agency that is not working at full steam,” Sen. Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, said Americans elected a GOP majority to both chambers of Congress to get things done, not to have infighting between House and Senate Republicans. “We cannot cut funding from the Department of Homeland Security. We need to sit down and work this thing out,” he said on “Meet the Press.” “There’s ways we can address what the president did was unconstitutional, but it’s not through shutting down the Department of Homeland Security; it’s too serious.”
Mr. Boehner said the House will not vote on another bill that is able to pass the Senate and that the responsibility is on senators to come up with a plan if they are unable to move the House-passed bill. “If the Senate doesn’t like it, they’ll have to produce something that fits their institution,” he said. The speaker said it’s imperative to rein in what many Republicans believe was an executive overreach when Mr. Obama issued an immigration executive order last year. “The Congress just can’t sit by and watch the president defy the Constitution,” he said. “So the House acted. Now it’s time for the Senate to act.”
Posted by Baron Von Kowenhoven February 15, 2015Don’t you just love stories about Global Warming protests canceled by snow, or Communist rallies canceled for lack of funds, etc. Here’s a great one – a group of militant anti-coal activists who believe fossil fuels are evil getting a reality check when their solar and wind powered balloon deflated.
The solar battery failed to maintain the balloon’s inflation. The group even admits that they’d usually plug the fan into a gas-powered generator.
The MacIver Institute reported: Demonstrators gathered outside the Public Service Commission to protest against a requested rate structure change by the local utility company, Madison Gas and Electric (MG&E). During the protest, they decried the use of “dirty coal” and called for more renewable energy. To make their point, they had a blow-up coal power plant that was running on a fan powered by wind and solar charged batteries. Before the protest was over, however, the batteries died and their solar panel could not produce enough energy to keep the power plant standing upright.
Watch the video:
Now be honest, did you laugh? The hypocrisy of these people is alarming and amusing at the same time. Unfortunately, however, these people are very loud, and a small group of people shouting can influence policy creation.
Baron was just a shy kid with a dream, growing up in the 40’s with a knack for story-telling. After a brief career in film, Von Kowenhoven went to Europe in search of fringe-scientific discoveries and returned in the 90’s to unleash them on the entertainment and political landscape of America.
Rodney Lee Conover February 15, 2015
Investor’s Business Daily reports on a news conference last week in Brussels, where Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said. Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
Got bad news for you Maoist wannabes – the only economic model that works well is Capitalism. Countries who have embraced free-market capitalism over the past 150 years have enjoyed a system in which output has increased 70-fold, work dayshave been halved and lifespans doubled.
Rodney Lee Conover is a writer, producer and Senior Editor at JoeForAmerica.com
At this writing, nearly two dozen Democrats are planning to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in March. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy called the speech “a tawdry and high-handed stunt.” Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betsy McCollum said, “In my view Mr. Netanyahu’s speech before Congress is nothing more than a campaign event hosted by Speaker Boehner and paid for by the American people.”“I’m offended as an American,” said New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel, who appeared to challenge Netanyahu to a fight over Twitter.
This once would have been unthinkable. “You used to be able to find critics of Israel in the Republican Party,” John Judis wrote in The New Republic last year, rattling off names like Charles Matthias and Paul Findley. “But the Democrats, and particularly liberal Democrats, stood squarely behind whatever the Israeli government was doing.”
“Our alliance with Israel is an alliance based on common democratic ideals and mutual benefit,” said a prominent Democratic senator in a 1980 speech. “We must never barter the freedom and future of Israel for a barrel of oil — or foolishly try to align the Arab world with us, no matter what cost.” The name of that senator? Ted Kennedy, who was then running for president to the left of Jimmy Carter.
Pro-Israel Democrats think the recent tempest merely reflects tension between Netanyahu and Barack Obama, the Democratic president of the United States. “It doesn’t matter that the president and the prime minister don’t like each other,” New York Democratic Rep. Elliot Engel, the ranking member on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told the Los Angeles Times. “The strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship has always been at its core a very bipartisan one. I think anything that threatens to jeopardize that is not good for the U.S. and is not good for Israel.”
Obama’s frosty relationship with Netanyahu has exacerbated the growing rift between liberal Democrats and Israel. Netanyahu clearly preferred his old friend Mitt Romney in 2012, while Obama has been similarly chummy with the Israeli opposition. Secretary of State John Kerry linked Israel and apartheid, later apologizing but not particularly effusively. An unnamed Obama official told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that Netanyahu was a “chickenshit,” a remark they likely knew would be published.
But Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir didn’t get along famously with President George H.W. Bush or Secretary of State James Baker and that didn’t stop Republicans from moving in a more pro-Israel direction, including during the administration of George W. Bush.
The Obama-Netanyahu conflict reflects a real shift in Democratic sentiment that can’t be entirely attributed to the president. The Pew Research Center conducted a poll asking, “In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, who do you sympathize with more?” According to the poll;
Democrats booed references to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital at the party’s 2012 convention. In this case, it was actually Obama’s forces who pushed to have the pro-Israel language restored to the Democratic platform over delegates’ objections.
“Basically, support for Israel gets stronger as you move right, and weaker as you move left,” Bill McGurn observed in the New York Post. Where liberals once saw Israel as a homeland for Jewish victims of discrimination and genocide, today’s liberals see the Palestinians as the victims and Israelis as the oppressors. Liberalism can more readily accept the nationalism of the former over the latter. Israel is too Western for the multicultural left and Zionism fits uneasily alongside the priorities of contemporary multiculturalism. The Jewish state has launched military offenses that Republicans were more likely to support than Democrats. Liberals are more secular than in the past, and less impressed by Judeo-Christian Holy Land claims.
American supporters of Israel, on the other hand, have become more conservative and less secular, entangling this foreign policy question in the domestic culture wars. Israel itself has had center-right and right-of-center governments more frequently than the United States over the past 20 years. Netanyahu is close to the American right. It’s no accident House Speaker John Boehner invited him.
The disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu over Iran, colored by their barely concealed distaste for each other, may compound all of this. But the Democrats’ drift away from Israel is likely to continue after the president and prime minister are gone.
W. James Antle III is managing editor of The Daily Caller and author of the book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped? Follow him on Twitter.
It is well-known that the pro-Muslim Obama White House will not call Islamic terrorism, Islamic terrorism. Nor were the Jews murdered by Islamists in a Jewish deli in France allowed to be called Jews, instead, Obama referred to them as “random” and “folks.” The same regime that said “you can keep your policy” and “you didn’t build that” has a problem with the truth, especially when it comes to painting Islam, the “religion of peace” that’s responsible for almost all terrorism in the world, in any kind of negative light.
And now, following the horrific beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians over the weekend by ISIS (who the regime still calls “ISIL”), Obama immediately went golfing to celebrate mourn, while his mouthpieces were given the marching orders to not say that those slaughtered were Christians and that is the reason why the barbaric Islamic monsters brutally beheaded them.
Below, you will see the full written official statement by Obama White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest regarding the beheading of 21 Christians. You will notice that while some of the verbage sounds tough, no where is it mentioned that the victims were Christians. Instead, they are referred to as “innocents,” and “citizens.” [Emphasis added]
The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens. ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity. This wanton killing of innocents is just the most recent of the many vicious acts perpetrated by ISIL-affiliated terrorists against the people of the region, including the murders of dozens of Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai, which only further galvanizes the international community to unite against ISIL.
This heinous act once again underscores the urgent need for a political resolution to the conflict in Libya, the continuation of which only benefits terrorist groups, including ISIL. We call on all Libyans to strongly reject this and all acts of terrorism and to unite in the face of this shared and growing threat. We continue to strongly support the efforts of the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General Bernardino Leon to facilitate formation of a national unity government and help foster a political solution in Libya.
Interestingly, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harber did have the courage to speak the truth, saying in the opening of his statement that, “I am outraged and saddened by the beheadings of Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians.”
PLEASE Watch the Following Report by Todd Starnes:
Only weeks after leaving office, Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come out and fix it. Joe drives to Obama’s new house, which is located in a very exclusive, gated community where all the residents make more than $250,000 per year. Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the guest bathroom that contains the leaky pipe under the sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes. Obama asks Joe how much it will cost. Joe checks his rate chart and says, “$9,500.”
“What?! $9,500?” Obama asks, stunned, “But you said it’s an easy repair!
Joe says, “Yes, but what I do is charge those who make $250,000 per year a much higher amount so I can fix the plumbing of poorer people for free,” explains Joe.”This has always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied the Democrat Congress, who passed this philosophy into law. Now all plumbers must do business this way. It’s known as ‘Affordable Plumbing Act of 2014 .’ I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”
In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves. Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book calling for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses in the area have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe’s price, Obama does nothing and the leak goes unrepaired for several more days. A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. Michelle is not happy as she has guests arriving the next morning. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour and there’s a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with him to return.
Joe goes back to Obama’s house, looks at the leaky pipe, checks his new rate chart and says, “Let’s see, this will now cost you $21,000.”
Obama quickly fires back, “What! A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!”
Joe explains, “Well, because of the ‘Affordable Plumbing Act ,’ a lot of wealthier people are learning how to maintain and take care of their own plumbing, so there are fewer payers into the plumbing exchanges. As a result, the price I have to charge wealthy people like you keeps rising. Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work by those who get it for free has skyrocketed! There’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs but the amount we get doesn’t cover our costs. This unfortunately has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, they’re not being replaced, and nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they can’t make any money at it. I’m hurting, too, all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their fair share.”
Obama says, “Joe! This is really bad. If all the rich people learn how to fix and maintain their own plumbing and you can’t charge the poorer people, you’ll be broke! What will you do then?”
Joe replies, “I may have to run for office.”
Leo Hohmann On 02/13/2015
ISIS fighters come from all over the world, including Western Europe and America, with Tunisia leading the way in the number of jihadists it has sent to the battlefields in Iraq and Syria.
In Syria, the challenges are much greater. That’s why Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, held hearings this week on the process of vetting refugees and sent a letter to the White House voicing the committee’s “serious national security concerns.” “We learned our lessons with the Iraqi refugee population. We put in place a USIK-wide background and vetting process that we found to be effective,” Steinbach told the committee Wednesday. “The difference is that in Iraq we were there on the ground collecting (information), so we had databases to use,” he added. “The concern is that in Syria, the lack of our footprint on the ground in Syria, the databases won’t have the information we need. So it’s not that we have a lack of a process, it’s that there is a lack of information.”
Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y., asked Steinbach if he could suggest ways to go about getting this vital background information that would separate legitimate refugees from those who may be seeking to enter the U.S. to harm Americans. “I just don’t think you can go and get it,” Steinbach said. “You’re talking about a country that’s a failed state, does not have any infrastructure so to speak. So all the data sets, the police, the intel services, that you would normally go to and seek that information, don’t exist.”
“And that obviously raises a grave concern of being able to do proper background checks on individuals coming into the country?” Katko asked.
“Yes,” Steinbach responded.
Listen to clip of FBI agent Michael Steinbach’s testimony before house Homeland Security committee.
McCaul’s panel sent a letter to the Obama administration Jan. 28 saying they have “serious national security concerns” about the U.S. State Department’s plans to accept tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into the U.S. by the end of 2016. The letter implored the administration not to let the refugee resettlement program become a “backdoor for jihadists” to enter the country.
The United States has traditionally taken in the majority of the world’s displaced persons, but since 1980 the refugee program has been handled through the United Nations high commissioner on refugees, who approves individuals for refugee status and then assigns them to various host countries. The U.S. can reject any refugee assigned by the U.N. if it discovers ties to terrorism during its vetting process.
The four-year-old Syrian civil war has created a humanitarian crisis, with 3.2 million Syrians having fled their country. Most are staying in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The State Department said in December it was processing more than 9,000 applications referred from the United Nations, with tens of thousands more Syrians waiting in the U.N. pipeline. Resettlement agencies have lobbied the White House and Congress to allow up to 75,000 Syrians into the country as refugees over the next five years.
“Would bringing in Syrian refugees pose a greater risk to Americans?” asked McCaul.
“Yes, I’m concerned,” said Steinbach. “We’ll have to go take a look at those lists and go through all of those intelligence holdings and be very careful to try and identify connections to foreign terrorist groups.”
Another purpose of McCaul’s hearings was to get a handle on the size of the ISIS fighting force and how many Westerners have left their countries to fight for the terrorist army, which has butchered Christians across Iraq and Syria. More than 150 Americans are believed to have gone to fight for ISIS. That’s up from the number Vice President Joe Biden gave just last fall, when he said about 100 Americans were fighting for ISIS. “We don’t have it under control,” said Steinbach. “Absolutely, we’re doing the best we can. If I were to say that we had it under control, then I would say I know of every single individual traveling. I don’t. And I don’t know every person there and I don’t know everyone coming back. So it’s not even close to being under control.”
McCaul said the American people want answers. “You know the American people have seen Americans, the American journalists, beheaded by the ISIS executioner. It was a wake-up call for the United States,” McCaul said. “Kayla Mueller was just recently executed, and the Jordanian pilot, in one of the most horrific videos I’ve ever seen, in a very sophisticated Hollywood movie production style, lit in flames,” he continued. “They’re barbarians. And I think the barbarians are at the gate. We want to keep them outside the gates of the United States. I’m concerned that some have already returned.”
Under an Islamic caliphate, the fighters swear allegiance to the caliph. Christians in the caliphate have been forced to convert or die. Many of the Christian women have been sold into slavery after being forced to watch the murder of their own children.
“We know that foreign fighters have gone from 15,000 to 20,000. We know that 5,000 of these foreign fighters have Western passports that could get them entrance into the United States,” McCaul said. “… There are hundreds of Americans who have traveled to the region to fight with ISIS. We know that some of them have returned, and that’s a classified number. But my first question is, for those who have returned to the United States, what assurances can you give the American people, and what are we doing about it to make sure they do not attack in the United States?”
Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, also testified Wednesday and said the numbers are far from clear. “We know what we know, but that comes from a wide variety of sources and we have always assessed that there is likely more information out there that we have not yet been able to collect … And that is possible there are greater numbers of foreign fighters and potentially even greater numbers of individuals from Western countries who have traveled to the conflict zones.”
Steinbach agreed the numbers could be much greater than the 150 or so Americans suspected of fighting for ISIS, also called ISIL. “I would not be truthful if I told you we knew about all the returnees. We know what we know. There is a number that we don’t know about,” he told the committee. “The ones we know about, that have returned from Syria and the conflict zone. … Regardless of the intelligence that we started with, we build a case to disrupt. … And we seek to determine the root cause of their travel, what they did in Syria, and then ultimately if it was in support of a foreign terrorist organization such as ISIL we look for prosecution or some other type of disruption.”
McCaul said he does not believe the U.S. has “sufficient human intelligence in Syria to properly identify these individuals and hopefully the administration will move forward to do that.”
“The proposed act may be subject to challenge in court because it expands religious protections to an extent not currently recognized by the courts,” wrote legislative attorney Eric Weeks in the memo obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune. “Consequently, it is impossible to effectively evaluate its constitutionality or its practical effect on the balance between civil rights and the free exercise of religion. We are working closely and very carefully to make sure that these protections are fairly applied and balanced for the benefit of all,” said Christensen.
“We’d like something that reflects … the sentiment from the [LDS] church about how we treat everybody with respect and dignity,” said House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper. “I believe we have a bill that is beginning a process.”
The analysis details numerous ways HB 322 goes beyond religious-freedom laws in any other state, including significantly expanding what constitutes a burden on an individual’s religious beliefs, in a way that “potentially extends religious freedom protections to arenas of public commerce, property, individual freedoms, and fundamental rights that have not traditionally been subject to religious exercise exemptions in this manner.” By elevating religious protection above other rights, the bill may violate the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, another Republican, expressed concerns about whether Christensen was inclusive of other viewpoints in drafting his bill. “My question would be: How involved was the LGBT community in that bill?” he asked.
Nearly 20 religious leaders joined Equality Utah Executive Director Troy Williams in asking the Utah Legislature to support Republican Sen. Steve Urquhart’s non-discrimination bill, SB 100, which offers protections for LGBT people from discrimination in employment and housing. Williams added the body should reject Christensen’s bill, which would recognize religion as a valid defense against claims of discrimination. “His bill would allow employers and landlords to impose their faith on their workers and their tenants,” Williams said. “It would allow people to pick and choose what laws they want to follow.”
Christensen indicated he sincerely wants to make sure all persons are fully respected and protected in the vital areas of housing and employment. House and Senate Leaders say they’re likely to come up with a single bill that balances religious and LGBT protections.
Legislative attorney Eric Weeks issued a memo detailing numerous ways Christensen’s law goes beyond any religious-freedom law in any other state. For example, HB 322 explicitly restricts actions by individuals and private entities that might impact another’s religious beliefs. In essence, Christensen’s bill would allow a person of faith to sue another person or business if the religious person contends his or her beliefs have been burdened. And the church-goer would win the suit and be awarded damages unless the defendants could clear an exceptionally high bar — showing that the actions they are accused of taking were the only available to prevent a grave risk to public health and safety.
Senate Majority Whip Stuart Adams, Republican, who has a bill filed on religious liberties and will be central to the negotiations on the discrimination issue, said Christensen’s bill is “well-intentioned,” but talks are just beginning.
Christensen was a sponsor of Utah’s 2004 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that was struck down by federal courts.
Michael Becker February 12, 2015https://embed.reembed.com/joeforamerica.com/0CNVU71iq7kg3zVtbk0SQD8t“>
ISIS has, at least to this commentator, been successful in striking fear into the heart of at least one man.
At least, after announcing the death of Kayla Mueller the President didn’t zip off to a golf game as he did after his speech about the murder of James Foley. He didn’t offer the parents of either murder victim the opportunity to speak, as he did with the parents of the deserter who he traded five top level terrorists to get back. Of course, the parents of the murdered hostages aren’t Muslims either.
The President is making noises. But he’s not doing a damn thing.
The U.S. government obtained intelligence on the possible location of American captives held by ISIS in Syria last year, but Obama administration officials waited nearly a month to launch a rescue mission because of concerns that the intelligence wasn’t conclusive and some of it had come from a foreign service, U.S. and British officials told The Daily Beast.
British officials, as well as private security contractors, said they were frustrated by Washington’s hesitance to give the go-ahead for a rescue attempt, which eventually was carried out on July 4, 2014, by which time the hostages had been moved. The following month, ISIS began beheading its American and British prisoners in a series of grisly Internet videos.
According to the British, Obama knew exactly where James Foley was for over a month. They did nothing. Foley was butchered.
And, as you would expect with the Obama team, the story just gets worse.
Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, who was the first American to be shown murdered on camera, also raised questions about the timing of the rescue effort, telling The Daily Beast that French officials had developed information about the hostages’ location as early as March, but that the U.S. government didn’t act on it.
“That was part of our frustration,” she said. “The State Department said they were connecting with the French and everybody at the highest levels.” And yet, there was no movement on the U.S. side. “Very specific information was available as early as mid-March. And that’s what’s been so tough for us as families, because apparently they were held in the same place all those months,” Foley said.
March. On the Curmudgeon calendar that’s four months before Foley’s death. The Obama team had the location of the hostages and refused to act. Actually, “they” didn’t have to do a damn thing. All they had to do was give an order. The Special Ops guys would have done the work. They wouldn’t even have made a peep when the President took credit for bringing the hostages home.
F. Michael Maloof On 02/12/2015Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com
WASHINGTON – Some 3,000 Sunni jihadist fighters have gathered in the Syrian Qalamoun mountains bordering eastern Lebanon, poised to attack a series of Christian towns in northern and central Lebanon. They appear to be preparing to undertake a pincer attack on the north around Tripoli and in the south from the Syrian Golan Heights, according to informed Middle East sources. As they appear to be surviving the harsh winter in the mountains for a possible series of attacks in the spring.The sources say the fighters, comprised of ISIS and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, survived the harsh winter in the mountains to position themselves for a possible series of attacks in the spring. To keep open supply lines, the jihadists are conducting sporadic guerrilla attacks against the Lebanese army. Nusra and ISIS fighters generally have been fighting with one another, but in Lebanon there appears to be increasing coordination of their fighters, although their objectives are different, sources add.
According to Middle East analyst Mario Abou Zeid, elements of the Free Syrian Army, which has U.S. backing, also have begun to team up with Nusra fighters. “Free Syrian Army fighters had begun to lose hope of receiving any significant aid from foreign stakeholders,” Zeid said. “The well-supplied Nusra Front won the trust and loyalty of these fighters, which translated into cooperation in Qalamoun. There is a “new death triangle for ISIS,” Lebanese Interior Minister Mouhad al-Machnouq said recently, “stretching from the barren Lebanese lands of Arsal to the Palestinian Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp and Roumieh prison (in east Beirut), reaching Iraq and Raqqa,” the ISIS caliphate capital in Syria.
Arsal is where ISIS and Nusra began their foray last August inside northern Lebanon, taking hostages in the process, including numerous members of the Lebanese army. After the town of 35,000 residents exchanged hands a few times, Arsal has become a center of strict Islamic law imposed on its occupants.
The “death triangle” to which Machuouq referred, said Middle East economist Sami Nader, “suggests that Lebanon not only represents a strategic depth for Hezbollah and (Syrian President Bashar) al-Assad’s regime, but also that ISIS is taking refuge within its borders to escape the international alliance’s airstrikes against it on the eastern front.”
For now, the Lebanese army has been thwarting numerous attacks in the surrounding towns in the north around Ras Baalbek, which is only about 25 miles from the historic Roman city of Baalbek, which has been a major tourist magnet. There have been periodic attacks around Baalbek and near Britel in areas controlled by the Iranian-backed Shia Hezbollah but, to date, the Sunni jihadist attacks have been unsuccessful. Deep in Shia-controlled territory, Baalbek, where settlements are believed to go back 9,000 years, has withstood centuries of attacks from barbarians, the Greeks and the Romans. The city once was given as a gift by the Roman general Marcus Antonius – Marc Antony – to his lover, Egyptian queen Cleopatra, as a birthday gift.
Ras Baalbek, in the northern part of the Bekaa Valley, is in a Christian region of the country. Nusra and ISIS seek to target it as a stepping stone to such other ancient Christian towns in central Bekaa as Zahle, Firzel, Ablah and Drous (see map).
“(Jihadist fighters) are under pressure in the ongoing battle in Syria; in retaliation they may attack the Bekaa, but I assure you they will not be able to do more than hit and run operations,” one Lebanese source told WND. “The army is ready alongside the resistance (Hezbollah),” he said. “We will prevail, the takfiris (foreign fighters) will not prevail. God does not allow the takfiri to prevail.”
In the predominantly Christian region, Islamist fighters have threatened to attack churches and the Christians themselves. In response, the residents are taking up arms. “If Hezbollah did not exist, it would have been necessary to create it,” said Albert Mansour, a former government minister who is a resident of Ras Baalbek. “The party’s existence makes the people – including Sunnis, Shiites and Christians of the region – feel safe in the face of this strange formation,” referring to the presence of the Sunni jihadist fighters. According to Esperance Ghanem, however, such attacks would give the militants “both field and moral gains. The field aspect is related to how close these villages are to the international road connecting Beirut to Damascus,” Ghanem said.
Called the Al-Sham, or Damascus road, Ghanem said it is of strategic importance to supply lines to Syria and is a “vital crossing connecting the northern Bekaa to central and western Bekaa, where some Christian villages are located.”
Middle East expert Jean Aziz said the Damascus-to-Beirut road would cut the supply route between Hezbollah and the Syrian army and also represent a serious threat to the Syrian capital of Damascus itself. “The accomplishment of this would be highly dangerous for Hezbollah and thus cannot be taken lightly,” Aziz said.
Ghanem said it also connects the southern Bekaa region around Arkoub near the Syrian town of Beit Jinn, which remains under the control of the militants and an entry point from which the militants could try to get through to Arkoub. “This goal cannot be achieved unless the militants invest in the moral gains they are aiming to accomplish in the even that their plan in Ras Baalbek had worked and they had succeeded in displacing its residents as well as the residents of other regions by spreading fear across the Christian villages of the central and western Bekaa, guaranteeing there would be no resistance,” Ghanem said. To date, the Lebanese army has thwarted the plan by blunting their push into Tallet al-Hamra, even though the militants are expected to continue their probing attacks.
Nevertheless, Aziz said the Israeli-Syrian border area constitutes a natural geographical extension to the southwest of the Lebanese-Israeli border area. “Any gains by Sunni militant groups opposed to Hezbollah in this area would become a new front for Hezbollah in south Lebanon,” Aziz said. “It would also constitute something of a siege, as Hezbollah would be stuck between Israeli forces on the southern border of Lebanon and armed groups to the east along the border with Syria,” he said. “For Hezbollah, such a scenario would be unacceptable and impossible to endure” since, as Aziz said, “reports alleging cooperation between Israel and Jabhat al-Nusra makes this especially troubling for the organization.”
Aziz was referring to a third area where Lebanon becomes vulnerable, namely in the south opposite the Syrian Golan Heights. He said that area in the three-border area of Lebanon, Syria and Israel is symbolic for Hezbollah and Iran, where Israel on Jan. 18 fired on and killed a group of Hezbollah and Iranian personnel in the Syrian Golan, which has become an area of concern to Hezbollah and Iran. The Hezbollah member leading the group was Jihad Imad Mughniyah, the 25-year-old son of Imad Mughniyah, who was the senior Hezbollah military commander assassinated by Israel and, as reports now reveal, the Central Intelligence Agency on Feb. 12, 2008.
In addition to Jihad Mughniyah, there were five other Hezbollah personnel and Iranian Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, whom sources say was the depty for Syrian operations to Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Israel claims they were planning an attack on the northern part of the country. However, other sources tell WND that the Israelis knew the Hezbollah/Iranian group was planning an attack on Nusra fighters who occupy the area. In turn, this led to the charge that Israel is working with Nusra. “Some Israeli media outlets have further revealed direct cooperation between the militants and the Israeli army,” Aziz said, “and other media outlets have reported about the lack of animosity between the Israeli state and Jabhat al-Nusra, which represents al-Qaida in Syria, as well as Israeli reports about direct contacts with the Syrian opposition and mutual reassurances.”
Nusra’s positioning in the Syrian Golan is not only seen as threatening Hezbollah’s presence at that strategic location to ward off any southern invasion of Lebanon from the jihadists. But it is a strategic location for the Iranian-proxy group against Israel to its north.
A Republican senator on Wednesday ripped President Obama for seeking to limit the use of military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), calling the proposal “utterly stupid.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in a radio interview noted the recent death of Kayla Mueller, who died while held captive by the terrorist group, to argue the president needs to threaten ISIS with “all the force he can get.”
“And here we have the president coming up with this — I think it’s utterly stupid — proposal,” Hatch told KSL News Radio. “And he’s binding the next president also with really stupid language. Any president worth his or her salt is going to ask for as much authority as they can get, so at least the ISIS people know that he has the authority to come in on them anyway he wants to.”
Obama’s proposal, which was sent to Congress Wednesday morning, would allow U.S. troops to conduct search and rescue operations, target ISIS leaders and advice and assist operations against the terrorist group. But in an attempt to win over Democrats, the plan also bans any “enduring offensive ground combat operations” while limiting the authorization for the military campaign to three years. Hatch said ISIS could use the restrictions in the proposal to its advantage.
“Why would we not only unilaterally impose limitations as to which types of tools and tactics our service members can use then also broadcast these limitations to the enemy?” he said. “If we’re telling the Islamic State upfront that we will not using ground forces, will they not tailor their strategy around that fact? Tell me!” he continued. “If we advertise when the authorization expires with the arbitrary date and time, won’t they just hunker down and wait for that date?” Hatch, whose voice raised several times during the interview, apologized for getting worked up. “I mean, I’m really up in arms about it.”
Hatch said a new AUMF should clearly articulate that the executive branch is authorized to use force against ISIS, be flexible enough to be use against future forms of ISIS, and be able to target associated organizations. “Most importantly, the president should be asking for an authorization that would not impose any artificial and any unnecessary limitations such as those based on time, geography and type of force that could interfere with our strategic objectives of defeating the Islamic State,” he said. 
“What he’s doing is tying his own hands, and stupidly tying his own hands,” he said. “I mean my goodness, talk about telegraphing weakness. That’s what he’s doing. The AUMF should not be public relations tool, and that’s what he’s using it for,” he said. “I can’t believe it. I can’t understand what this man does.”
Geller’s event comes on the wake of the Islamic terrorist attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in January. Following the attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) scheduled the “Stand with the Prophet” conference at the public school district’s conference center. Geller, the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), scheduled a protest outside the event that was attended by approximately 2,000 people.
During the Free Speech Rally in Garland, Geller spoke with Breitbart Texas about her reaction to the large and loud crowd of protesters. She said that Muslims are trying to impose restrictions on free speech like they are doing in Paris. “Thousands of Americans said ‘no way!’” “The media can smear us and the President can stand with them,” Geller said. “We the people are not having it. If there is any proof of that, it’s today. We dwarfed them.” “If the Western media ran the Danish cartoons back when this Islamic supremacist movement first started gaining steam, the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo would be alive today,” Geller stated in response to an inquiry from Breitbart Texas. “That said, the European press ran the Hebdo cartoons in the wake of that jihad slaughter. But the American press would not. The beacon of freedom, the shining light on a hill, is running scared. Well, that’s not who we are. The elites do not represent the people.”
The art exhibit and contest will be held at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland on May 3rd. ”This was the site of a Muslim conference denouncing ‘Islamophobia’ — an obscene stand for them to take after the Charlie Hebdo massacre – and our massive Free Speech Rally outside that event,” Geller wrote in a press release obtained by Breitbart Texas.
The contest will take submissions online and the winner will be announced at the event in Garland. The winning cartoonist will receive a $10,000 prize. The exhibit will feature images of Islam’s prophet in both historical and contemporary settings. There will also be a series of speeches by internationally renowned free-speech advocates.
Geller explained that the art exhibit is the next logical step following AFDI’s Free Speech Rally in Garland. “This event will stand for free speech and show that Americans will not be cowed by violent Islamic intimidation,” she stated. “That is a crucial stand to take as Islamic assaults on the freedom of speech, our most fundamental freedom, are growing more insistent.”
“Of course, this event will require massive security,” she assured potential attendees. “But this exhibit has to be staged. If we don’t show the jihadis that they will not frighten us into silence, the jihad against freedom will only grow more virulent.”
An author and activist with passionate fans and detractors, Geller has been sounding the alarm about Muslim encroachment into Europe and America and the possible impact on American culture in the future. The Free Speech Rally Geller organized is one of many activities she has created to shine the light on radical Islam and the teachings of Imam’s in mosques in the United States. In June, 2010, Geller organized and led a group of approximately 5,000 protesters (Geller released this estimate) to march on the site of the site of the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque.” Eventually, plans for the mosque were cancelled.
Geller is also listed as an “Extremist” on the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) website. The SPLC says she is the “anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead. She’s relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-based denunciations of Islam.” The organization also lists AFDI as an anti-Muslim hate group.
Late last year, Geller made headlines by running an anti-Islam advertising campaign on buses and subway stations in New York City. She said the campaign was designed to educate. It was designed to warn the public of the “problem with jihad” and Sharia Law. The ads also ran in San Francisco, where Geller drew fire from the Jewish Voice for Peace. The organization states that Geller and AFDI “have initiated Islamophobic ad campaigns in more than a dozen communities, from Boston to Seattle, Chicago to Miami. The pattern is simple—provide hateful anti-Muslim/anti-Arab ad copy to a public transportation agency, offer to make a modest ad buy, sue (or threaten to sue) the agency on First Amendment grounds if it refuses to run the ad (or expresses reservations about running it), and reap lots of free publicity from the ensuing media coverage of the controversy.”
More information about the event will be published at a later date on the AFDI Facebook page.
Bob Price is a senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
Aaron Klein On 02/11/2015Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Hezbollah-Iran axis is also leading battles against Islamist insurgents in Daraa, at the Jordan-Israel border and along the southwest of Damascus province.
WND last month was first to report that according to Mideast defense officials, Hezbollah and Iran were planning an imminent counterinsurgency against rebel-held positions inside and near the Syrian sections of the Golan Heights aimed at taking the strategic border territory. Now the source from Syria’s Information Ministry has confirmed to WND that “dozens” of Iranian officers are leading the battle with both strategy and field tactics. The source said Iranian forces are giving instructions to both the Syrian army and Hezbollah, who are carrying out the attacks.
“The operation started two days ago and is very big,” Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said Tuesday. “Regime troops and their Hezbollah-led allies are advancing in the area linking Daraa, Quneitra and Damascus provinces,” the group stated.
On Wednesday, Syrian television for the first time reportedly recognized the contribution of Iranian forces to the counterinsurgency. “The operation launched by the Syrian army is being fought in cooperation with … Hezbollah and Iran,” a Syrian army officer told state television, Agence France-Presse reported.
Israel has been on alert and anticipating retaliation after an Israeli official took the unusual step of recognizing his country was responsible for a strike last month a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. The attack killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Mohammed Allahdadi as well as a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group’s late military leader, Imad Muughniyeh. Hezbollah said six of its members died in the strike.
Ann Coulter | 
The magnificent new book “Hollywood Traitors” by Allan Ryskind, son of Hollywood royalty (Marx Brothers screenwriter Morrie Ryskind), has been published just in time for the release of “Trumbo,” in which Bryan Cranston will portray Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo as a hero.
I’m guessing the movie skips over Trumbo’s aggressive efforts to prevent America from joining the fight against Hitler. To that end, Trumbo wrote two of the most ghastly anti-war films ever made, “Johnny Got His Gun,” released as a novel in 1939, and “The Remarkable Andrew,” published in 1941.
To place this in context for Hollywood half-brights, in 1938 Hitler invaded Austria and seized the Sudetenland — sweeping through the rest of Czechoslovakia the following year. On Sept. 1, 1939, the Fuhrer invaded Poland, finally forcing France and England to go to war with Germany.
As Ryskind notes in his magnificent insider’s account of such monstrous treacheries as Trumbo’s, by 1939, Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was not a secret. He had attempted to exclude Jews and blacks from the 1936 Olympics. Jews had been banned from government, journalism, farming, teaching and the theater, among other professions in Germany. They were prohibited from purchasing most food or medicine. In 1938, the Gestapo staged Kristallnacht, looting and burning thousands of Jewish businesses across Germany, incinerating about a thousand synagogues and murdering scores of Jews.
(And remember: This was before the U.N. came along and made Jew-hating a legitimate foreign policy.)
All that, in addition to Hitler’s sweep through Western Europe, was well known. But the very month that Hitler marched into Poland, Trumbo published “Johnny Got His Gun,” a pure propaganda piece designed to squelch American ardor for helping Hitler’s victims.
In Trumbo’s upbeat story, the protagonist, Joe Bonham, a fresh-faced American soldier, has returned from World War I grotesquely disfigured. Inasmuch as Hitler was obviously a deranged monster, Joe’s brutalization would have to be pretty bad to convince Americans to stay neutral in any war to stop him. Thus, Trumbo’s character had lost both his arms, and for good measure, also his legs. But that’s not all! The war had blasted out Joe’s eyes. And his ears. And his nose. And his mouth.
Is that enough to stop you from leaping into a war among indistinguishable imperialist powers, America?
Trapped in his remaining stump of a body, Joe becomes bitterly anti-war and decides he wants to be displayed to the public, in order to show Americans the true horror of warfare. But even after Joe manages to communicate his wish by banging his head in Morse code, his superiors refuse to comply. The corrupt U.S. generals, you see, were gung-ho for another senseless war in Europe, to help countries that were just as bad as Nazi Germany.
In the next year, Hitler would sweep through Europe, taking Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. England stood virtually alone in opposing the Nazi war machine.
At that point, Trumbo produced another screenplay designed to convince Americans not to fight that harmless gentleman in Germany: “The Remarkable Andrew,” published as a novel in 1941. The hero of the story, Gen. Andrew Jackson, reappears from the dead to warn Americans not to get involved in England’s war. It was sort of a “Hot Tub Time Machine 2″ with Old Hickory thrown in. “There’s no point,” Jackson hectors the audience, “in cooking up an alliance with a country that’s already licked.”
For someone who didn’t see why Americans should lift a finger to defeat Hitler, Trumbo was quick to detect fascism in America. When asked by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) whether he was a member of the Screen Writers Guild — a question answered by several writers far more prominent than he, such as Bertolt Brecht — he screamed at the committee, “This is the beginning of an American concentration camp!” (If only Hillary had thought of that!)
This from the man who printed tributes to renowned anti-Semite Theodore Dreiser in his magazine The Screen Writer in 1946. Trumbo’s honored author Dreiser had, for example, called New York a “kike’s dream of a ghetto.”
I think I liked Cranston better as a meth cook.
Contrary to publicity pieces for “Trumbo” claiming that Hitler’s apologist “was punished for his principled stand for free speech and the Constitution,” when the real Trumbo testified before HUAC, he never mentioned the First Amendment. Only later, to prettify Trumbo’s silly outbursts, did his lawyers think to claim that he was making some sort of statement about free speech.
Nor did Trumbo have a problem with snitching on American citizens for their political beliefs. After dropping his own Hitler apologetics and withdrawing the god-awful “Johnny Got His Gun” from distribution, Trumbo took all the letters he had received praising his book — and turned them over to the FBI for investigation.
In the end, Trumbo redeemed himself in the eyes of Hollywood by explaining he had defended one mass murderer only to help an even bigger mass murderer. He said he was “pacifist” until … June 22, 1941: The day Hitler attacked Russia. Suddenly, Ryskind writes: “Trumbo was no longer opposed to policies that could fling American ‘cobblers’ and ‘the man who works’ into harm’s way.”
It wasn’t Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor that gave Trumbo second thoughts about Hitler — that came six months later. It was “the potential destruction of the country he obviously loved the most — Stalin’s Russia — that had changed Trumbo’s mind.”
For the truth about Trumbo and the other dearly beloved “Hollywood Ten” that never seems to make it into these endless Hollywood hagiographies, read Allan Ryskind’s amazing, hilarious, thoroughly documented “Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters, Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler.”
A man allegedly shot dead three Muslim students execution-style near to the University of North Carolina campus on Tuesday after posting anti-religious sentiments online.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, shot dentistry student Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his new wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, in their heads over an ongoing parking dispute at their quiet condominium complex in Chapel Hill around 5pm, police said.
But the women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, said even though parking might have triggered the killings, Hicks had long targeted the family because of their religion and culture.
‘It was execution style, a bullet in every head,’ Abu-Salha told the News Observer. ‘This was not a dispute over a parking space, this was a hate crime.
Dr Abu-Salha, who has one other child, added that police told him Hicks shot the three inside their apartment.
Hicks, who is married, turned himself in ‘without incident’ after the killings and is currently being held in Durham County jail on three counts of first-degree murder.
On Wednesday morning, he kept his head down as he appeared in an orange jumpsuit at the Durham County Detention Center. He is being held without bond.
On a Facebook page in his name, Hicks shared a number of anti-religion posts, describing himself as a supporter of ‘Atheists for Equality’. A banner about ‘anti-theism’ is prominent on his page.
Hicks posted a photo from United Atheists of America on February 8, which has the title ‘why radical Christians and radical Muslims are so opposed to each others’ influence when they agree about so many ideological issues’.
On the page he is listed as married and having studied to become a paralegal at Durham Technical Community College. Records show his wife works at UNC Hospital.
Most of the pictures he has posted in recent months criticize a number of religions, including Christianity. Other recent pictures he has published include one of a loaded revolver.
In one post allegedly written by Hicks and shared by CNN, he wrote: ‘When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I.’
When they arrived they found three people dead. They had been shot in the head, CNN reported.
According to their Facebook pages, Mr Barakat had married his wife just over a month ago and was a second year student at the dental school at the University of North Carolina.
The last picture on his Facebook page, posted on January 29, said he helped provide free dental supplies to 75 homeless people in downtown Durham.
The couple had organised an online fundraiser to get dental care to refugees from Syria, raising around $15,000 – but after news of their deaths, the total reached more than $23,000
Mr Barakat was due to travel to Turkey in the summer to treat children who have become refugees following the civil war.
Last month, he tweeted: ‘It’s so freaking sad to hear people saying we should ‘kill Jews’ or ‘Kill Palestinians’. As if that’s going to solve anything SMH [shaking my head].’
His sister-in-law Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha had been studying for a degree at North Carolina State University in Architecture and Environmental Design.
After their deaths, Barakat’s brother Farris paid tribute to the trio on Facebook as he struggled to comprehend the killings.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he wrote, ‘and for that I rely on the Most Wise. It hurts and for that I know that God will not burden me more than I can handle.
‘I know my brother, his wife, and his sister in law are together as ultimate winners. This life was only ever a test and they have passed with flying colors…
‘I haven’t even begun to fully comprehend what has happened. But I know for sure those three together have done so much we are all proud of. No reason to stop being proud now.’
He added: ‘We live as Muslims to die as Muslims. May Allah enter them to the highest of paradise.’
Following news of the deaths a hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter started trending on Twitter.
Burcu Bozcurt wrote: ‘Hate will not prevail. Three beautiful souls taken, but examples of their love & impact on others abounds. #MuslimLivesMatter #chapelhill’
And MohaNNad said: ‘Remember them like this. Deah and Yusor had names, dreams and families. #MuslimLivesMatter.’
Well-known atheist Richard Dawkins also condemned the killings on Twitter. He said: ‘How could any decent person NOT condemn the vile murder of three young US Muslims in Chapel Hill?’
People called for action to be taken with some speculating that the attack could have been religiously motivated.
A Facebook tribute page has been set up for the victims, called ‘Our Three Winners’. It says: ‘Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha have returned to their Lord. They have set an example in life and in death.’
It noted that funeral arrangements will be announced after they receive news from the medical examiner, who will carry out an investigation and release the bodies.
The shooting took place in the Finley Forest complex – a typically quiet area home to students.
Bethany Boring encountered police cars, crime scene tape and people upset in the street when she went to walk her dog.
She told WRAL: ‘It’s a very quiet community. It’s a lot of graduate and professional students. You know, professional’s families.’
A campus crime alert from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was sent to students. The complex is located near campus.
About two hours after the shooting a group of young people arrived at the scene and sat on the pavement, apparently waiting for news of the names of the people who had been killed. Police later turned away people in tears, claiming to be relatives.
The Chapel Hill Police Department said in a statement there was ‘reason to believe that there is no ongoing threat to the public’.
The school added in a statement: ‘We are sensitive to the impact an incident of this nature has on campus and in the community.
‘We understand you want to know the facts as quickly as possible. At the same time, we must respect the job our Chapel Hill police have as they investigate this crime.
(CNSNews.com) — The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is holding a hearing today to receive public feedback on whether it should create new rules regulating political speech, including political speech on the Internet that one commissioner warned could affect blogs, YouTube videos and even websites like the Drudge Report. The hearing is a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC last year, which struck down the FEC’s previous cap on aggregate campaign contributions from a single donor in an election cycle. Before the decision, individuals were limited to a combined total of $46,200 in contributions to all federal candidates, and $70,800 to federal political action committees and parties. Individuals are no longer restricted by aggregate limits, which Chief Justice John Roberts said “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities’.”
They may now “contribute up to $2,600 per election to a federal candidate, $10,000 per calendar year to a state party committee, $32,400 per calendar year to a national party committee, and $5,000 per calendar year to a PAC [political action committee],” according to the FEC.
The commission, which consists of three Republican and three Democratic members, last considered such regulations in 2005. However, intense opposition from First Amendment groups resulted in rules that were limited to paid advertisements from political campaigns, parties, and PACs. This time around, organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have warned that some Democrats on the commission would like to impose much more burdensome regulations that could serve as the equivalent of spending caps in restricting political speech.
Ann Ravel, chair of the Federal Election Commission. (FEC)
Last October, FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel issued a statement in which she complained that the agency was not doing enough to monitor activity on the Internet. “Some of my colleagues seem to believe that the same political message that would require disclosure if run on television should be categorically exempt from the same requirements when placed on the Internet alone. As a matter of policy, this simply does not make sense,” Ravel said.
However, the commission’s three Republican members – Lee Goodman, Caroline Hunter, and Matthew Petersen – responded to Ravel’s comments in a joint statement. “Despite the Internet’s growing importance as a tool for all citizens to engage in political debate, and notwithstanding this Commission’s promise to take a ‘restrained regulatory approach’ with respect to online political activity, [Ravel] apparently believes the time has come to impose greater regulation on political speech over the Internet,” the group wrote.
According to Commissioner Goodman, who served as chairman of the FEC last year, regulation of content placed on the Internet is a very real possibility. “The commission has seen proposals to regulate even issue advocacy referencing federal candidates that is disseminated on the Internet,” Goodman told CNSNews.com. “That could reach YouTube videos, blogs, and websites like [the] Drudge Report,” he warned.
FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman. (FEC)Among those testifying at Wednesday’s hearing, three former Republican commissioners – Donald McGahn, David Mason, and Hans Von Spakovsky – are scheduled to speak against further controls from the FEC. The Brennan Center for Justice, Campaign Legal Center, League of Women Voters, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG are among those expected to testify in favor of more government regulations. Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University professor who will also be testifying at Wednesday’s hearing, disputed the idea that the agency would follow Ravel’s dictate.
“This seems to me to be a major and silly political distraction, because this hearing is about what the FEC should be doing around McCutcheon. With the decision, along with the Citizens United decision, there are all these new opportunities for patronage politics… I’m calling hogwash [about the idea that regulations will be imposed on online content],” Teachout told CNSNews.com.
Democrats have long supported regulating political content on the Internet, but have generally sought to do so using the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 2009, a staff member for former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) spoke about the possibility of the FCC passing regulations that would affect sites like Drudge. “Does one heavily trafficked Internet site present one side of an issue and not link to sites that present alternative views?” the staff member asked. “These are some of the questions [Waxman] is thinking about right now, and we are going to have an FCC that will finally have the people in place to answer them.”
However, with the FCC set to vote on February 26 on “net neutrality” rules under the auspices of preventing private Internet operators from imposing controls, the political focus behind the push to regulate online political speech has shifted largely to the FEC.
The political affiliation of the FEC chairman works on a rotating basis, with the two major political parties trading off each year. Since each party retains an equal share of members on the commission, any new rules adopted by the commission would require bipartisan support.
Posted By Michael Becker February 9, 2015
Christianity is under fire. Christian leaders are starting to recognize the signs of states trying to squelch the faith. After all, it’s happened before. Nero burned Rome, blamed it on the Christians. Communist governments have labeled Christian faith “the opiate of the masses.” Muslims have been warring against the faithful for 1,400 years. Muslims, specifically, will kill you if you convert from Islam to Christianity (or anything else, for that matter.) If you grew up in a Christian home and convert to Islam, your parents more likely take the outrageous step of praying for you. The one historical fact that those who are going to war against Christianity don’t seem to remember is that when The Church is attacked the Body of Christ grows by leaps and bounds. There were Christians in Nero’s household.
Governments, and even governments in the West have been marginalizing The Church for decades. They’ve been doing it actively in Europe since the end of WWII. Christianity is in worse shape today in Europe than it ever was in the Soviet Union or in Mao’s China. The one holdout against the rising tide of secularism has been the United States. We’ve routinely elected Presidents who proudly proclaimed their faith in Jesus Christ. Not so long ago, President Jimmy Carter taught Sunday School at their church in Washington DC on most Sundays of his Presidency.
Secularism has been making a frontal attack on faith in recent years with the hand of government replacing the hand of God in many people’s lives. Our current President was elected to increase the role of government in our society so people wouldn’t have to be dependent on a loving God.
The Obama’s attended church in Chicago, but what we’ve learned about the teachings of Jeremiah Wright would call into question the faithfulness of that congregation. Mr. Obama was never held accountable for his attendance there, nor would anyone ask him what he thought of Rev. Wright’s sermons which typically railed against America rather than pointing to a loving God.
Last week, we saw the first real frontal assault on Christian faith, and the faithful, by a Government official in the United States. Barack Obama, our President, stood before the National Prayer Breakfast and said this.
“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
First of all, the Crusades took place about 1,000 years ago. The President also failed to mention that the Crusades were in response to Muslim aggression and had it not been for the Crusades, it’s very likely that militant Islam would have swept over the European continent. The President also failed to mention that the biggest threat to world peace today is Muslim terrorism.
We have to remember that this is the same President who launched his first term in office with a world apology tour.
For the first time in history, Christian leaders are publicly recognizing the attack on the faith by a secular leader. Franklin Graham is standing in the forefront of the call to believers. First by recognizing the attack.
Today at the National Prayer Breakfast, the President implied that what ISIS is doing is equivalent to what happened over 1000 years ago during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Mr. President–Many people in history have used the name of Jesus Christ to accomplish evil things for their own desires. But Jesus taught peace, love and forgiveness. He came to give His life for the sins of mankind, not to take life. Mohammad on the contrary was a warrior and killed many innocent people. True followers of Christ emulate Christ—true followers of Mohammed emulate Mohammed.
Rev. Graham set himself apart from those who follow Mohammed, a pedophile “prophet,” with these words.
Today some of our leaders, including President Obama, have gathered to pray at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. I urge you to set aside time today to pray for our country also. My prayer is this: Lord, no problem is too great for You. This world is full of hatred and sin, but You are loving and holy. You sent your Son, Jesus Christ, so that we might be saved through Him. We repent and call on your name. We ask you to heal our land and bring this nation back to You.
We want to thank Franklin Graham for his wisdom and courage to talk about what is happening in the highest offices of the nation today. We also want to thank him for his faithfulness to God and to His followers, knowing that prayer must be the answer to attacks like this.
Charles Krauthammer is not a Christian, at least that we know of. He is a political commentator. The interesting thing about President Obama’s remarks is that they are causing the scales to fall from the eyes of even secular commentators.
We think that the President’s outspoken stand against the Christian faith, and his apologetics and enabling of Muslim terrorism, could well be the first steps to seeing a turn away from the secular and a turn back to faith in the US.
Let’s hope so. Let’s pray it is so.
Michael Becker is a long time activist and a businessman. He’s been involved in the pro-life movement since 1976 and has been counseling addicts and ministering to prison inmates since 1980. Becker is a Curmudgeon. He has decades of experience as an operations executive in turnaround situations and in mortgage banking. He blogs regularly at The Right Curmudgeon, The Minority Report, Wizbang, Unified Patriots and Joe for America. He lives in Phoenix and is almost always armed.AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan has deployed “thousands” of troops at its border with Iraq as it ramps up a campaign against ISIS militants who set a pilot ablaze, two Jordanian government officials told NBC News on Tuesday. The troops were sent to prevent the infiltration of ISIS fighters into Jordan and as a show of force, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Jordan’s King Abdullah last week threatened to make ISIS pay for the death of Muath al-Kasasbeh’s after video of the military pilot’s murder emerged. He vowed to wage a “harsh” war against ISIS “because this terrorist organization is not only fighting us, but also fighting Islam and its pure values.” Abdullah also pledged to hit ISIS militants “hard in the very center of their strongholds.”
While there are pockets of ISIS support across the Iraqi border, Jordan’s deployment appeared to be “an intensification of ongoing efforts to secure the border to stop movement of men and weapons” and not the precursor to an incursion, according to Matthew Henman, an analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre in London. “It underlines a robust response on the part of government and the king in response to the killing of Muath al-Kasasbeh,” he added. The kingdom has unleashed up to 20 missions per day by Jordanian jets targeting the militant group’s positions in Syria.
“We are determined to wipe them [ISIS] from the face of the Earth,” Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Jobour told NBC News on Sunday, citing the need for “revenge” after al-Kasabeh’s killing.
Jordan is part of a U.S.-led military alliance that has been bombing ISIS targets in Syria for nearly five months. The Sunni militants have taken over large parts of Iraq and Syria since last summer.
Moufaq Khatib is a producer based in Amman, Jordan.
Freshman Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) on Monday proposed a bill with dozens of other House members to ensure the Constitution’s “right to life” is applied to the unborn.
“I have always believed the greatest duty of society is to protect the most defenseless among us,” Mooney said Tuesday. “There are thousands of unborn babies who need us to fight tirelessly on the issue of human life.”
“A human life is a precious thing and anything I can do to fight for the most vulnerable among us, I will,” he added.
Mooney’s Life At Conception Act is based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says among other things that the government cannot “make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” It also says no government can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and ensures “equal protection of the laws.” Congress has the power to enforce the 14th Amendment, and Mooney said his bill is justified by that language. “To implement equal protection for the right to life of each born and preborn human person… the Congress hereby declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being,” the bill states. The bill defines “human being” and “human person” to include “each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
Mooney’s legislation has 53 cosponsors, all Republicans with the exception of Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.). His bill is the latest version of a proposal that was last introduced by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — in the last Congress, Jordan’s bill ended with 130 cosponsors. 
Despite that strong showing of initial support, GOP leaders last month had difficulty getting support for a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Several Republican women opposed language requiring women to report rape or incest before having the option of abortion for those reasons.
F:\M14\MOONWV\MOONWV_002.XML [113H1091] ……………………………………………………………
(Original Signature of Member)
114TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
To implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Mr. MOONEY of West Virginia introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on (undeclared)
To implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Life at Conception Act’’.
To implement equal protection for the right to life of each born and preborn human person, and pursuant to the duty and authority of the Congress, including Congress’ power under article I, section 8, to make necessary and proper laws, and Congress’ power under section of the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Congress hereby declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being. However, nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.
For purposes of this Act:
(1) HUMAN PERSON; HUMAN BEING.—The terms ‘‘human person’’ and ‘‘human being’’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.
(2) STATE.—The term ‘‘State’’ used in the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States and other applicable provisions of the Constitution includes the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and each other territory or possession of the United States
The Obama administration is refusing to publicly release more than 500 documents on the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups. Twenty months after the IRS scandal broke, there are still many unanswered questions about who was spearheading the agency’s scrutiny of conservative-leaning organizations. The Hill sought access to government documents that might provide a glimpse of the decision-making through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Hill asked for 2013 emails and other correspondence between the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The request specifically sought emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and Treasury officials, including Secretary Jack Lew, while the inspector general was working on its explosive May 2013 report that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to review the political activities of tax-exempt groups.
TIGTA opted not to release any of the 512 documents covered by the request, citing various exemptions in the law. The Hill recently appealed the FOIA decision, but TIGTA denied the appeal. TIGTA also declined to comment for this article. 
In its written response to The Hill, TIGTA cited FOIA exemptions ranging from interagency communication to personal privacy. It also claimed it cannot release relevant documents “when interference with the law enforcement proceedings can be reasonably expected.” Yet, congressional Republicans say there is no evidence of any prosecution in the works, and media outlets have indicated that the Department of Justice and the FBI have already determined that no charges will be filed. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) notes that eight months after Lerner was held in contempt of Congress for not testifying at two hearings, the matter has not yet been referred to a grand jury. The contempt citation is in the hands of Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who was appointed by President Obama.
Asked for comment on the administration’s FOIA response to The Hill, Jordan said, “It’s par for the course. We’ve had a difficult time getting information from the IRS and the Department of Justice.” Jordan, a senior member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has held numerous hearings on the IRS scandal.
Last week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said the IRS recently delivered 86,000 pages of new documents to the panel. Hatch added, “These documents … were given to us without notice or explanation roughly twenty months after we made our initial document request [on the targeting].”
Republicans in both the House and Senate are stepping up their investigations of the IRS. They have criticized the IRS and TIGTA for not informing Congress about the Tea Party targeting before the 2012 presidential election. GOP lawmakers say the administration has largely stonewalled them, while Democrats have called the probes “a witch hunt.”
The crux of the GOP’s IRS targeting investigations is: Who knew what when?
On Friday, May 10, 2013, Lerner famously planted a question at an American Bar Association (ABA) conference where she acknowledged “inappropriate” handling of tax-exempt applications in 2012. Lerner, who has since said she did nothing wrong, released the news before the TIGTA report came out the following week.
The Obama administration considered several other options on how to release the information, including an April conference at Georgetown University and an April 25, 2013, Ways and Means subcommittee hearing. Then-Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson told Republican investigators that he informed the White House about the IRS plan to disclose the targeting “so that the White House wouldn’t be surprised by the news.” Soon after Lerner’s comments attracted national attention, White House officials acknowledged they knew about the report but didn’t tell Obama about it. Lew told Congress he first heard about the IRS matter at a “getting to know you” meeting with TIGTA chief J. Russell George in March 2013. But he said he didn’t learn the full extent of the findings until the media reported Lerner’s remarks at the ABA meeting. 
Lew served as White House chief of staff before succeeding Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in 2013. Republicans on Capitol Hill are considering asking Geithner questions later this year on what he knew about the IRS’s targeting.
TIGTA sends the Treasury secretary “weekly activity reports” on what it is working on. These reports, which are common in the executive branch and obtained through a FOIA request, serve as a “heads up” to Cabinet heads from inspectors general. They include categories such as “potential or expected press stories,” “upcoming hearings” and TIGTA reports that are awaiting public release. From January through early May 2013, TIGTA referenced 25 reports that were subsequently issued in the weekly activity reports to Lew. But the agency’s most explosive report was not included in any of these weekly memos. It is unclear why, though a government official pointed out that Lerner spoke about the targeting at the ABA conference before TIGTA released its report. Her comments likely accelerated the Treasury Department’s clearance process.
Regardless, TIGTA officials briefed IRS and Treasury officials in 2012 and 2013, according to TIGTA memos provided to Congress. On May 30, 2012, TIGTA informed then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman and his deputies that criteria targeting Tea Party groups “were being used. …” Jordan said neither the IRS nor TIGTA informed the Congress at that time — less than six months before the 2012 elections. He also pointed out Shulman didn’t correct his March 22, 2012, testimony to the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee where he said “there is absolutely no targeting” of Tea Party groups.
TIGTA’s FOIA practices have come under criticism before. In the fall of last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia admonished the agency for its use of FOIA exemptions. Cause of Action, a nonprofit group that has sued TIGTA, announced in December that the agency declined to fork over more than 2,000 documents related to a FOIA request. Judicial Watch, another group that has sued the Obama administration on FOIA, said in December that the DOJ withheld 832 documents pertaining to meetings between the IRS and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and Election Crimes Division. Some of the documents that The Hill requested were released to Judicial Watch last year after a judge ruled in favor of the conservative group’s lawsuit.
Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that the DOJ will soon release a report on the IRS targeting that will include “some final recommendations.”
Lerner, who pleaded the Fifth Amendment before Congress, has given a lengthy interview to DOJ officials.
“Human beings should be remembered not dismembered. Because of the violence of abortion, over 16 million black people are history. TooManyAborted.com #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackLivesMatter #AllLivesMatter”
These are the words that have offended some (evidently) disturbed Twitter folk—enough for them to post death threats and insanely profane tweets to both Anna and The Radiance Foundation. The black abortion rate (up to 5 times that of the majority population) isn’t controversial for these folks…just that a white person (namely a Duggar) dared to share this truth with the Twitterverse.
Keep in mind, I am as black as Obama. That’s pretty much where our similarities end. He believes that government can decide who is human and who isn’t. I see how that social experiment has miserably and fatally failed over and over again. But humankind seems to refuse to learn from history. We live in a culture that too often values the emptiness of entertainment over the empowerment of education.
Black History Month. It’s supposed to be a reflection of history. But in a lazy online world, it’s much easier to vent venom than click for clarity. Heaven forbid some of these people should actually dive into the deep pools of digital information and soak up some information. Instead, in 140 characters or less, people celebrate their own ignorance. One tweet scolded me for using Black History Month to further my own agenda: “#BlackHistoryMonth serves a purpose- with that being said, it’s purpose is NOT to get across your point of abortion.”
Well, fighting abortion was the purpose of numerous black historical figures’ efforts.
Famed freedom fighter, Fannie Lou Hamer (“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!”), is known for her courageous efforts to fight poverty and ensure black citizens’ right to vote. But history books and multitudes of tributes omit that she fought for the dignity of all human life, including those in the womb.
Journalist Ethel Payne, known as the “First Lady of the Black Press” wrote in her 1980 Afro-American column: “Fannie Lou Hamer was a passionate believer in the right to life.” She further articulated that Hamer “spoke out strongly against abortion as a means of genocide of blacks.”
One of the most influential and destructive components of Black American History is eugenics. The racist pseudoscience birthed Jim Crow laws and Planned Parenthood. Margaret Sanger, the founder of the nation’s largest abortion chain, was a member of the American Eugenics Society. Alan F. Guttmacher, founder of the Guttmacher Institute, served as President of Planned Parenthood and Vice President of the American Eugenics Society.
This deeply racist and elitist movement established state eugenics boards which forcibly sterilized over 60,000 Americans, as thoroughly documented in Maafa21. North Carolina recently paid reparations to victims for this heinous time in American history. One of those victims is my friend Elaine Riddick, a black woman who was raped at the age of 13. She gave birth to her son, but was then forcibly sterilized and butchered by order of The Eugenics Board of North Carolina. She would never be able to have another child again.
So there’s a little history lesson. Kudos to Anna Duggar for sharing truth that so-called “leaders” in the black community refuse to acknowledge. I wish that one single black celebrity would say something about the millions of black lives snuffed out by abortion. I wish that one single black celebrity would have an ounce of the courage of Fannie Lou Hamer and call out the predatory abortion industry.
Anna Duggar’s “infamous” retweet reminds us of how twisted we have become in our society’s understanding of race and human equality. Some are so desperate to accuse others of racism that they miss it where it screams loud and clear—in an industry that kills unborn human life (disproportionately black) for a living. So they spew their lack of any historical (or present) knowledge of this injustice on Twitter and celebrate their unwillingness to learn. Their responses show they have no concept of what is actually racist. It’s merely an easy buzzword in their minuscule arsenal of hashtags and accusations.
From the bizarre reactions on Twitter it’s apparent many of the opponents of this Black History Month TooManyAborted.com meme don’t realize what message their “outrage” is actually sending. If they don’t agree that there are too many aborted, then they’d have to agree with the converse of that statement: Not Enough Aborted. Now that’s racist.
The great thing about history, regardless of what a teleprompter says, is it cannot be revised. At least for the literate.
Jury selection for the trial for Eddie Routh, the man who killed American Sniper Chris Kyle and fellow Navy SEAL Chad Littlefield, is supposed to begin this week in Stephenville, Texas.
For months we’ve been hearing that Eddie suffered from PTSD and that the VA is to blame for not getting him on potent enough dope, or too-potent dope; and failed to farm him out to an exorcist to have his war demons banished forever; and thus, the VA is the reason Eddie snapped and killed an American icon and his fellow SEAL friend.
Heck, I’m surprised we haven’t heard “The Low Blood Sugar Excuse” tossed out there as the reason Routh killed Kyle: “Eddie, you see, has low blood sugar, and if he‘d had a Snickers, Chris would still be alive.”
Or… or… “Eddie could have also killed Chris and Chad because his third grade teacher never called on him during class when he raised his hand, and that wounded his inner-child, and that’s why Eddie murdered two stellar and innocent soldiers who were trying to help him.”
Why not parlay those excuses as well? The aforementioned makes about as much sense as the PTSD defense that’s been batted around on Eddie’s behalf. A pretext, mind you, that is currently getting severely hammered by the Warfighter Foundation.
Check it out …
The Warfighter Foundation alleged that Eddie Ray Routh, 27, the Marine veteran accused of murdering Navy SEAL Kyle two years ago, never saw combat nor experienced traumatic situations during his time serving overseas.
Eddie Routh served one tour in Iraq in 2007, at Balad Air Base (the 2nd largest U.S. installation in Iraq), with no significant events. No combat experience. Let me say that again, he NEVER SAW COMBAT or any aspect of traumatic events associated with a combat deployment (i.e. incoming mortar or rocket fire). He never left the base, EVER.
The Warfighter Foundation, a nonprofit veterans group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain information about Routh’s service record. It was through the information they received that the group discovered Routh had not experienced any type of combat.
Matter of fact, the base that Mr. PTSD was stationed at was pretty cush.
According to MilitaryBases.com:
Joint Base Balad benefited from some of the best facilities. It was almost a luxurious installation. The military troops had access to swimming pools, dancing lessons, a movie theater, American restaurants and snack bars. The housing facilities were just as advanced. The facilities were probably some of the most important factors that drew the celebrities and officials’ attention during their visits.
Sounds rough, eh? Pools, Pizza Hut, Dancing, Movies … holy crap… oh, the pain.
Garsh … that’s enough to push even the strongest amongst us over the edge and compel one to murder innocent friends who’re trying to help you out, right? No? Yeah, I guess you’re right. Sounds like BS to me, also. However, maybe Eddie imagined, like Brian Williams, that he was actually in war, when he wasn’t, and that’s how he got PTSD. That’s a possibility…
Another interesting twist in The PTSD Eddie Routh Ruse came from the laptop of Walid Shoebat last week. Walid, an expert in all things Islam, points out some interesting and very overlooked ditties about Eddie.
Check out these interesting, and Islamic, nuggets from Walid …
When we evaluate cases for potential Muslim terrorists, we always look for physical signs like a trimmed mustache and a beard that is lesser trimmed. And when it comes to a crime that was committed, we look at who the victims are. In the story on Eddie Routh who murdered Chris Kyle, there are signs of concern, especially the facial hair, it does match the profile of a convert.
Also, Routh was a prison guard over Muslim terrorists at Balad Airbase in Baghdad in 2007. He never served in battle, but spent most of his time looking and talking to Muslims in jail. He could have likely interacted with the inmates and got converted; prison has a higher conversion rate than any mosque. Also, why would he kill a Navy SEAL who was known to have killed so many terrorists? [Especially, given that Kyle had a price on his head?]
Examining [Kyle’s] killer gives also clues. “During a phone call with his father, Routh expressed sympathy for the detainees and discontent over how the US was conducting the war as well as his reluctance to engage in combat” and “While working as a guard at Balad Air Base, Routh laments his [Muslim] prisoners’ poor living conditions”.
Let’s sum up Shoebat’s alarms:
Sounds kinda weird to this redneck, but then again maybe Eddie really admired Abe Lincoln’s facial hair.
Jennifer Kabbany – Fix Editor on February 9, 2015“The government of the United States of America is engaged in drone strikes that have killed over 2,400 people in Pakistan and Yemen, many of them civilians,” the resolution stated. “The government oversees, by far, the highest rate of imprisonment in the world, and racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement agencies, particularly for drug-related offences. 400,000 undocumented
immigrants are held in detention centers every year, and millions have been deported since the current administration took office, and the government is directly supporting and propping up numerous dictatorships around the world with weapons sales and foreign aid.”
The resolution also called on UC system leaders “to withdraw investments in securities, endowments, mutual funds, and other monetary instruments with holdings” from the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Sri Lanka and Mexico, as well as the U.S.
“This resolution aims neither to condemn entire countries, peoples, or communities nor to determine political solutions, but is solely aimed at ending our university’s support of governments that directly engage in and enable human rights violations,” it stated.
A separate resolution passed with a 9-1-6 vote Sunday called for divestment from companies that do business with Israel. That vote was described as a “landmark decision” by progressives for being the “first multi-campus student association to vote in favor of divestment.” The decision was preceded by protests from a large contingent of students who vehemently opposed the measure.
“UC student groups staged a vocal protest during the UCSA meeting, chanting, ‘stop the hate, against the only Jewish state,’ and holding signs telling the UCSA to ‘stop dividing the UCs for an unjust cause,’” StandWithUs reported in a news release.
It is common for universities’ student governments to approve nonbinding resolutions asking their leaders to divest from Israel in what has become known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, UC Los Angeles have all passed Israel divestment measures, as have many other student associations at colleges across the nation. But it’s rare to see a call to divest from America itself.
“Think about that. If they had their way, the student government of the U. Cal. system would require divestment from U.S. Treasuries and most of the world,” Cornell University law Professor William Jacobson points out on Legal Insurrection, responding to the vote. “The U. Cal. student government has proven a point I’ve made repeatedly in terms of the academic boycott: If you are going to boycott Israel, then you need to apply those standards to the whole world, which will result in boycotting yourselves.”
“I’m not glad that the Israel divestment passed, but at least it passed combined with a resolution which made the anti-Israel students and U. Cal student government look like fools.”
But student groups who helped passed the measures have pledged to take their fight to the UC Regents, the 26-member board which governs the University of California.
Jennifer Kabbany is editor of The College Fix. (@JenniferKabbany)
Famed neurosurgeon and potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson has been granted many honors, but his latest designation is anything but flattering.
Carson has been added to a list of “extremists” being populated and compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.”
It’s Carson’s apparent “anti-LBGT” views that have landed him in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “extremist files,” where he is listed among other individuals in categories such as ”anti-Muslim,” “Ku Klux Klan” and “Neo-Nazi.”
“Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson rapidly ascended as a far-right political star after publicly scolding President Obama, whom he sat a few feet away from, at a National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013,” reads the group’s profile on the noted neurosurgeon. “Carson’s reproach of Obama for his health care and tax policies went viral, unleashing a flood of adulation from right-wing media and hate groups.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center claims that Carson began speaking soon after that event to “right wing and hate group gatherings,” claiming that he linked gays to pedophiles and endorsed “biblical economic practices for 21st century America.” The latter is likely a reference to Carson’s comparison of the traditional church tithe to a flat tax system. The profile includes a list of quotes from Carson’s media appearances and writings seen by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being anti-gay — or for being, at the least, egregious. Here are just a few of those quotes:
“Obamacare is really the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And … in a way, it is slavery.” —Values Voter Summit, Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2013
“I mean [our government and institutions] are very much like Nazi Germany. … You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they really believe.” —Quoted by Breitbart News, March 12, 2014
“What we need to do is come up with something simple. And when I pick up by Bible, you know what I see? I see the first individual in the universe, God, and he’s given us a system. It’s called a tithe.” —Endorsing a flat tax for all Americans, White House Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 7, 2013
You can read Carson’s Southern Poverty Law Center profile in its entirety here. 
This is not the first time the Southern Poverty Law Center has added a well-known conservative to one of its lists, as historian David Barton has been among those targeted by the group.
And it’s no secret that the Southern Poverty Law Center has come under fire from conservatives for its liberal inclinations in the past. The group was removed from the FBI’s hate crime web page last year after conservative groups protested its initial inclusion there.
As TheBlaze previously reported, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” targets groups with “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” The hate map is “compiled using hate group publications and websites, citizen and law enforcement reports, field sources and news reports,” its website states.
The Southern Poverty Law Center includes Ku Klux Klan and New Black Panther Party groups on its “hate map,” as well as organizations like the Family Research Council, a socially conservative organization. A man who was convicted of opening fire at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters in 2012 acknowledged that he used the “hate map” to target the organization.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn-Martin
As previously uncovered by Breitbart News, the White House confirmed that Azhar Azeez, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was one of the Muslim leaders that met with President Obama. ISNA was founded in 1981 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. Federal prosecutors have previously described how ISNA funneled its money to Palestinian terrorist group Hamas (via Investigative Project):
ISNA checks deposited into the ISNA/NAIT account for the HLF were often made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahadeen,” the original name for the HAMAS military wing. Govt. Exh. 1-174. From that ISNA/NAIT account, the HLF sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to HAMAS leader…
Azeez’s bio also reveals him as a founding member the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Dallas/Fort Worth Chapter. CAIR has also allegedly funneled money to Palestinian terror groups and was also started by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. In October, 2014, Azeez signed a letter endorsing Sharia Islamic governance. Under the Sharia, non-Muslims are treated as second-class citizens. The Sharia also endorses the hudud punishments in the Koran and Hadiths, which state that apostasy from Islam is punishable by death.
Hoda Elshishtawy of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) was also in attendance at the Muslim leaders’ meeting with President Obama. MPAC, just like CAIR and ISNA, was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group has written and often endorsed a paper rejecting the United States’s designation of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations, and has insisted that the Jewish state of Israel be added as a state sponsor of terrorism. The group’s former president, Salam al-Marayati, has publicly encouraged officials to look at Israel as a suspect in the 9/11/01 attacks.
He has said that Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel should be seen as “legitimate resistance.” In a 1998 speech at the National Press Club, an MPAC senior official described the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah as one that fights for “American values.” In an MPAC-sponsored March 2009 protest to “Defend al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Quds,” participants could be heard chanting slogans encouraging Palestinians to wipe out Israel. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” demonstrators chanted.
Mohamed Majid, who serves as Imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), was also in attendance at the White House meeting with the President, and senior advisors Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett.
In 2002, ADAMS was raided as part of a U.S. government initiative called “Operation Green Quest,” where federal agents suspected the group of supporting terrorist organizations. Government documents said that the ADAMS Center was “suspected of providing support to terrorists, money laundering, and tax evasion.”
Majid is also an official with the brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
He also signed the October 2014 letter, along with White House meeting attendee Azhar Azeez, insisting that Sharia law should be an acceptable political system worldwide.
It remains unclear why President Obama remains a stalwart believer that the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates should be treated as legitimate political entities, when history reveals the organization as one with radical goals. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Islamic cleric (and Hitler admirer) Hassan al-Banna after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The group seeks as its end-game to install a Sunni Islamic caliphate throughout the world. al-Banna said of his organization’s goals, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” Both Former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi were members of the Brotherhood. Its current spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, has a knack for bashing Jews and praising Nazis. The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto remains: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
University of St. Louis Historian Thomas Madden says Obama’s comments reveal an ignorance of history. “I don’t think the president knows very much about the Crusades,” Madden told ABC News. “He seems to be casting them as an example of the distortion of Christianity and trying to compare that to what he sees as a distortion of Islam in the actions of ISIS. The initial goal of the Crusades was to give back lands to Christians that had been conquered, due to Muslim conquests,” Madden added.
ABC News reports that while no reliable estimate of deaths during the Crusades exists, “the massacre of over 2,700 Muslim prisoners by Richard the Lionheart” is well-documented.
University of London Historian Thomas Asbridge also told ABC News that the suggestion of any causal link between the Islamic State terrorists and the medieval Crusades is “grounded in the manipulation and misrepresentation of historical evidence.”
Rottdawg February 8, 2015
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