Freedom Before All Else….

Many conservative groups have sprouted up over the past year. The Tea Party Patriots, the whole Tea Party movement, the 9-12 project and Americans For Prosperity are just a few. These groups have great heart and a good purpose. In all honesty, these groups have become an easy target for those against freedom to label certain groups and ideas. They, in and among themselves, have been a way for our enemies to destroy us. However, many are also becoming splintered because of certain ideas and groups within the larger movement. Some individuals in these groups are promoting single issues before what is most important. In all truth, there are two things most important that we, as Americans, must stand behind and fight for, as one group, one citizenry and one people. Those two things are simply, the Constitution of the United States of America and Freedom!

If we do not stand for these two ideas and the way of life they represent, what else actually matters? Without Freedom, we lose who we are as individuals, we lose our souls. Right now, we can see ourselves losing more and more Freedom each and every day. Our government says we need more security, more legislation, more rules, that all risks must be taken away. They seem to be trying to create sameness, misery if you will. Please, do not underestimate this regime. They know exactly what they are doing, and many of Americans continue to let them move us into a totalitarian country.

There is a great line from Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” where he says, on the battlefield, “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!” What will our lives to be without Freedom? What will our lives be worth, especially considering that a government official will be making healthcare decisions for us where all individualism loses worth and governmental money prevails?

Americans throughout the past have always done what is right. We have stood for individualism, Freedom and the rights given to man by our creator. However, most of the world has fought against these things, starting many years before this great country was born. Those who have fought against these ideas have always failed. Unfortunately, totalitarian regimes have always lost, only because of violent uprisings from the people. This is where the people of America have a great opportunity before us. We can halt this attempt to socialize America through non-violence-only because of the people, only because of each and every one of you.

The ideals and beliefs of the people of this country is what has made America what is has always been, the shining city on the hill. Once again we find ourselves at a crossroad, although, maybe one of much more importance than ever before. We have the people, the ideas, the heart to do what is necessary to return this country back to the people. I ask this though: do the people of this country have the will to put government back into their place? As a necessary evil only and not a regime that tries to control the decisions and lives of the people it is supposed to protect.

Freedom and individuality along with personal responsibility has for too long, been eroded away and put into hindsight. Now we must put them into the forefront as we march behind them down the road of revitalizing America. Do we need a revolution, or just a revitalization? We have everything we need to bring this country back to prosperity. Those things are in our Constitution and in our hearts and minds. Now is the time for people to get motivated; not under many ideas, but just one. That one idea is Freedom. With it, we can do wonders and live extraordinary lives; without it, everything is futile.

We have a long road ahead of us in this country. The choice is ours, the time is now.

We do, in fact, live in a strange time here in America. We know man can be inherently evil, however, our politicians are even more so. Our own government calls the ones defending and staning for the Constitution of the United States extremists, while allowing Islam to march all over our free speech and threaten American citizens with death. If we are the extremists, what are those who are in the process of destroying our Constitution, our freedom, and our way of life?

I have many more questions than answers at this point. I do, however, understand these evil men who lead our government must be stopped before they bring death and destruction to the United States just as Socialism has done throughout the history of the world.

The University Guild vs. Glenn Beck

By Amity Shlaes

Drive them crazy. That’s what Glenn Beck seems to specialize in doing, whether the “them” at issue is fellow radio hosts, fellow tv hosts, or, now, professors at universities. This last group is opening its own front in the war against the television king. An associate professor, Joseph Palermo of California State/Sacramento, took to the Huffington Post to mock the broadcaster as “Glenn Beck, Ph.D.” I personally noticed this since Professor Palermo mentioned me by name, in tandem with author Jonah Goldberg, as an effort to “misinform” the gullible.

The rage at first seems odd, coming from professors. Why should these serene Yodas care what a man on television bellows? Yet they are on the warpath. The academic fury is at first directed at interpretation. Mr. Beck’s explanation of how the Framers viewed religion, Mr. Beck’s depiction of how Franklin Roosevelt’s policy affected the Great Depression; Mr. Beck’s argument that regulation is currently curtailing liberty in general — all fall short in academic eyes. Prof. Palermo, for example, calls Mr. Beck’s views as “stupid and false.” But the real issue, the reason professors are on the attack, is not specific content. It is rather the professional and, in the end, economic, threat that Mr. Beck represents. To academics, Mr. Beck is more dangerous than any other radio show host, and they know it.

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education Glenn Beck

To understand the nature of the Beck challenge, you have to recall that our system of higher education is a throwback to medieval economics: a guild. As in the classic guild, members require a lengthy period of training, with formal stages. To be in any way authoritative, a writer must have a Ph.D., a guild seal. Members of this guild have enormous discretion when it comes to the conferring of the seal – also typical. In the humanities and social sciences, Ph.D.s. and, it goes without saying, tenure-track posts — are usually awarded to those not hostile to the master professors’ views. For many decades top universities have been especially rigorous in this practice, with the result that it is difficult to find non-progressives with top credentials in the humanities. The guild demands much from its apprentices, graduate students, including dull work in obscure texts. Indeed it is proud of that obscurity, for it distinguishes academic work from, say, the easy popular histories on bookstore shelves or tv.

In the field of history, the guild also maintains a monopoly on education by generating curricula, syllabi, and, of course, a canon, a set list of texts for each period of the past. Of course the academic guild, generally on the progressive side, has made many concessions to conservatives or classical liberals. Professors have assigned the odd conservative book; they mentioned the opponents’ arguments. But such offerings have generally been presented as an afterthought, secondary, less authoritative. Looking back at their education many adults saw through this pretense of fairness. They resented the guild monolith. Something was missing.

Enter Mr. Beck. At first, the radio show host appeared no different from the rest of conservative radio. In other words, another product of the 1987 repeal of the old Fairness Doctrine, which said that a radio license “may not be utilized to achieve a partisan or one-sided presentation.” Pre-repeal that requirement was so strictly adhered to that radio tended the dull. After the repeal hosts were free to deliver soliloquys of rage and individual insights, legal, historical, political. This change which turned out to be welcome to millions of viewers. The first to take advantage of this market opening was Rush Limbaugh, who remains the undisputed king of conservative talk radio.

The second explanation for Beck rage however involves the guild. For unlike other hosts, who tend to pick up and drop topics, Mr. Beck has begun to develop a new canon for adults. And unlike other hosts, but indeed like a professor, Mr. Beck tends to demand a lot of his viewers. For example, he recently devoted the better part of an hour to a biography of Samuel Adams by a historian without a Ph.D., Ira Stoll, whose book highlights the revolutionary firebrand’s piety. Mr. Beck breaks other tv rules. He insists viewers read books by dead men – W. Cleon Skousen’s work on the Constitution, the “5000 Year Leap.” It is all a long way from “Oprah,” “The Newshour” or even much of public television. Mr. Beck’s broadcast was barely over when Mr. Stoll’s book shot up to the highest heights of the Amazon list, where it has resided ever since. Beck-recommended books sometimes sell as well as, heaven forfend, textbooks. I had the good fortune to experience some of this after Mr. Beck talked about my Great Depression history.

Every author is glad to sell books. But the victory is far more Mr. Beck’s than any individual writer’s or publisher’s. His genius has been in his recognition that viewers do not want merely the odd, one-off book, duly pegged to news. They want a coherent vision, a competing canon that the regulated airwaves and academy have denied them. So he, Glenn Beck, is building that canon, book by book from the forgotten shelf. Since the man is a riveting entertainer, the professors are correct to be concerned. He’s not just reacting or shaping individual thoughts. He is bringing competition into the Ed Biz.

What to do? The Glenn Beck reading list may not satisfy everyone. Some of his views are indeed worth questioning. Some of us don’t agree with important components of his politics. Beck’s personal attacks put a lot of us off. Maybe there should be yet a third new reading list. As for the guild, a better response than its own ad hominem smearing is to widen their own reading lists and lectures. Professors can blame only themselves if Mr. Beck has taken an opportunity to teach. It is they who gave it to him.

Great news: Hollywood to make Rush Limbaugh biopic

by Ed Morrissey

Even better news: Deadline says the effort will be similar in tone to Oliver Stone’s W. The pitch line, according to screenwriter James Sclafani, is Citizen Kane meets Private Parts, except of course for one key point (via Slashfilm):

He’s the country’s top-rated talk radio host, beacon of conservatives, a lightning rod for controversy. Is Rush Limbaugh movie material?

Writer/producer James Sclafani thinks so, and has written a feature film about Limbaugh’s life that is in the process of being packaged and shopped for financing. Sclafani, who recently sold his script Counter Kid to Bill Murray’s Devoted Pictures, optioned The Rush Limbaugh Story: Talent on Loan from God, an unauthorized biography by longtime Gotham-based journalist Paul Colford, who currently heads media relations for the AP. The book served as the basis for the script.

Sclafani said the script he’s written is a close cousin to the Oliver Stone-directed George W. Bush feature W, in that he tries to get beneath the surface politics and controversies and down to the ambition and demons that drove Limbaugh’s success. The film will include contradictions that have gone against his radio diatribes, from the dubious 4-F draft status during Vietnam (unearthed in Colford’s book) to a get-tough stance against drug abusers that was contradicted by the revelation that he himself was addicted to prescription painkillers and got them illegally.

“This is Citizen Kane meets Private Parts, where you have a man who always had trouble relating to people in the outside world, but does it effortlessly in the booth,” said Sclafani, adding that Limbaugh is the proverbial fat kid, ignored in high school, and determined to prove everyone they were wrong about him. “There’s this anecdote about a game of spin the bottle in high school. The bottle pointed at him, and the pretty girl who was supposed to kiss him ran away, and that stayed with him,” Sclafani said. “When he came up in radio, he was culturally opposed to everything happening in the 60s and 70s, and all this left him with something to prove. He is an underdog, and became an extremely determined person with something to prove.”

Howard Stern told his own story in Private Parts, from his own autobiography. Sclafani used an unauthorized biography for his screenplay. Citizen Kane was another thinly-veiled unauthorized “biography” written by Orson Welles about William Randolph Hearst, another media titan of his time, as a means of casting Hearst as a bogeyman at about the same time Hearst was going broke. It’s a brilliant film, perhaps the best American film ever made (my money is on Casablanca), but it’s hardly a model of unbiased truth.

This seems much less incisive. We’re to assign Rush’s conservatism and his will to succeed to a game of Spin the Bottle? Well, heck, I played Spin the Bottle in high school too, but the girls didn’t run away from me. Does that make me a hippie? It’s hardly a Rosebud moment, although according to the film RKO 281, “rosebud” wasn’t a reference to a sled in Hearst’s life, and is closer to Spin the Bottle than snow-covered hills.

If Sclafani himself wants to compare his script to W, a political hit piece that the Washington Post called “a rushed, wildly uneven, tonally jumbled caricature,” few of Limbaugh’s fans will hurry to correct him. If he’s using that as a pitch, Sclafani may want to check the box office of Stone’s magnum dopus. It cost over $25 million to make and only made $25 million in domestic sales, only stayed in theaters a total of six weeks, and made less than $60 million worldwide despite skewering a deeply unpopular Bush.

Addendum: Congratulations are in order for Rush, though, as he gets married tomorrow.

Now We Know Why Clinton and Obama Had Lunch on Thursday

Rush Limbaugh

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I guess now we know why, ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton had lunch yesterday. They had to get their stories straight. You know who this is, and you know what this is, so let’s go.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: There is no major media figure like I who takes this great a career risk every week. On Friday when we go to the phones the content of this program is totally yours, unlike Monday through Thursday where you have to talk about things I care about — ’cause I don’t want to be bored because if I’m bored, the audience will be bored and nobody will listen. But on Friday, ever you want to talk about is fine, if I don’t care, I’m fake it. I’m pretty good at that. It’s a golden opportunity for you to discuss things you think haven’t been discussed or to pretend that you, too, are a real radio announcer. Telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, hurricanes could be… (interruption) Yes! I’m going to get to Sestak in a minute. Just keep your pants on. “Hurricanes could be stronger than usual because black oil would heat water faster and accelerate formation.” So the hurricane geniuses are now revising their forecasts because of all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The theory is the oil is dark, it’s black. It gets hot faster than the water does, and if a hurricane comes along, I mean it’s over. Why don’t we all just commit suicide and be done with this? Let’s just be done with it. Every waking moment is a disaster waiting to happen. The Drive-By Media cannot wait for it.

Okay, now we know why Clinton and Obama had lunch yesterday. They had to get their stories straight on this Sestak business. It is… (laughing) Folks, this is just too rich. Isn’t it great? Here’s what happened. Apparently Rahm Emanuel went to Clinton and said, “Look, would you go talk to Sestak informally? See if he’s interested in taking a nonpaid — an unpaid job — high position job, unpaid here in the administration.” And Clinton, of course, said (impression), “Hey, Mr. President, whatever you want. You know, I said, ‘You’re going to have to kiss my ass’ back during the campaign if you wanted my support ’cause of the way you called me racist and so forth, the way you portrayed me and Hillary. Now you gotta come kiss my ass. So fine you’re kissing my ass.” I got the story right here. Clinton said that. Sit tight.

“I’m going to kiss your ass, you kiss my ass, and I will make sure that you are all right. You come groveling to me I’ll be happy to help you out here.” Now, look at what’s happened here. They go to Bill Clinton. He’s famous for getting people jobs. Monica Lewinsky offered a job at Revlon. She was offered a job at the United Nations. She didn’t take any of them. But they’ve got Bill Clinton. Isn’t it great, folks, that they’ve found a guy who they know will commit perjury to carry the water here? (chuckling) Snerdley… This is why the staff does not have microphones. People ask, “Why can’t we hear them speak to you?” (chuckling) Anyway, what better choice than Bill Clinton, a man who they know was willing to commit perjury in order to carry the water here.

Now, there’s some question over whether this is any big deal or not. The document dump on this coincides with The One’s arrival down in New Orleans. He’s going to spend three hours touring the disaster in Louisiana. His average golf game, according to the New York Times, is five hours. Last summer he went on vacation up to Martha’s Vineyard and he played on a course owned and operated bay good friend of mine, the Vineyard, and he spent five hours out there. The reason it takes five hours because he’s not any good, most of the time is spent in the woods looking for his errant shots. That’s in the New York Times! I’m not it up. Now, I went and looked at the law on this.
“18 U.S.C. § 211 : US Code – Section 211: Acceptance or Solicitation to Obtain Appointive Public Office — Whoever solicits or receives, either as a political contribution, or for personal emolument, any money or thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both,” and it doesn’t say here anything about it has to be a paid position. “Whoever solicits…” In this case it would be Rahm Emanuel going through Der Schlick Meister. “Whoever solicits or receives,” that would be Sestak — and then, by the way, Clinton went to Sestak’s brother. That’s the circuitous route here.

“Whoever solicits or receives any thing of value in consideration of aiding a person to obtain employment under the United States either by referring his name to an executive department or agency of the United States or by requiring the payment of a fee because such person has secured such employment shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. This section shall not apply to such services rendered by an employment agency,” I guess they’re going to say Clinton has one because Lewinsky has been a previous client “pursuant to the written request of an executive department or agency of the United States.”

So they’re trying to get around this by saying it’s not paid. You know, we’ve always thought “B.J.” meant one thing. No. It means “bribe jobs.” That’s apparently what it means. Lewinsky is what it is. B.J. means “bribe jobs.” There are two laws here, this one I just read to you. There two laws they appear to be violating but I doubt anybody’s going to press this, but clearly this is subject to the law. A lot of people have been saying this is a potential impeachment type of offense here. Now, I’ve heard some commentators inside the Beltway commentators “Oh-ho-ho! This no big deal. Why, this is just the way Washington works. It happens all the time. People are offered jobs for silence. People are offered jobs to give up their congressional seats all the time if they think they’re going to lose, fall on the sword. This happens all the time.”

Well, just because it happens all the time doesn’t make it right. Sestak, the onus has been on him because he belie the whistle on this. He’s the one that said he was offered a job. Well, who and what and how? So Clinton, Obama had lunch yesterday and the story is, “Well, Rahm Emanuel went to Clinton and Clinton sought Sestak out through his brother to see if Sestak was interested in a very influential and important unpaid federal job.” Now, we are left here to believe that that is what happened, t was totally innocent, and as I say: It looks like the lawyers are gonna claim that if the offer was for an unpaid position, it is of no value, and therefore not technically a bribe, because it all centers here on whether or not Sestak was being bribed by the administration to give up his campaign for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Now, if… (interruption) (laughing) Bribery for him?

Every time the Democrats break laws, we need to “reform the laws,” as though the law was the problem. The Democrats are just fine people. Even if the White House and Clinton are not lying about this (which is unlikely) it’s still a very tough argument to make, since a high position in the government has real value besides and beyond just monetary compensation. No matter how they slice it, it’s still a quid pro quo offer. So Fox News was first on this saying the White House counsel’s office going to say that Clinton offered Sestak a vague unpaid position or possible positions through Sestak’s brother. Buried way, way back in the New York Times on their website, the Caucus Blog: “White House Used Bill Clinton to Ask Sestak to Drop out of Race — Obama’s chief of staff” that would be Rahm Emanuel “used Clinton as an intermediary to see if Sestak would drop out of the Senate primary if given a prominent but unpaid advisory position.”

Now, a lot of you are probably wondering, “What do you mean, Rush, that you started out here with Clinton talking about kissing his rear end?” Here it is. This is the UK Telegraph back in June of 2008. It’s by Tim Shipman in Washington and Philip Sherwell in New York, and it’s June 28th, 2008. This is after Operation Chaos is over and the Democrat primaries are over. “Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama’s victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support. … The Telegraph has learned that the former president’s rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence. A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could ‘kiss my ass’ in return for his support.”

So here it is, UK Telegraph, the media. Clinton’s “lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: ‘He’s been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn’t. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who he’s been in contact with and he is mad as hell. ‘He’s saying he’s not going to reach out, that Obama has to come to him. One person told me that Bill said Obama would have to quote kiss my ass close quote, if he wants his support.” Well, it appears that it happened yesterday. It appears that it happened. (laughing) Clinton finally got what he wanted. He was asked to bail Obama out of this, and has — has done so. So this has been a building. It’s been building to a crescendo here and people have been wondering, “Well, who did what to who?” because, you know, Sestak, the onus has been on him. He’s the one that revealed this had happened but he wouldn’t provide any details.

He was waiting for the White House to come out with the story, and now that they’ve come out with the story, Sestak’s not talking. You know, he’s going right along with it. But he was either one of two things. Either Sestak was lying when this all happened, or something far more serious was going on and that is that a bribe was offered. Now, it may be “the way the game is played in Washington” but Sestak blew it by going public with it. So now the lid’s off, everybody is looking into it, and it remains to be seen if this is going to be accepted and the end of the story. In the meantime, Sestak’s poll numbers in the Pennsylvania senatorial race are sort of leveling out. He’s run against Pat Toomey, as you know, who looks good.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Have you noticed the Democrats always throw their brothers under the bus when a controversy comes up? I mean look at the brothers of Democrats always get thrown to the wolves. Billy Carter got thrown to the wolves. Roger Clinton got thrown to the wolves. Hillary’s brothers got thrown to the wolves. Hugh Rodham was thrown to the wolves and now Sestak’s brother. It’s all Sestak’s brother’s fault! Do you know what the two most dangerous jobs in the world are? The two most dangerous jobs in the world are being number three at Al-Qaeda and being the brother of an American Democrat politician — and of course look at Obama’s brother! This guy, he’s still stuck in a hut. He’s still living in a six-by-nine-foot hut in Kenya. His brother is president and he hadn’t even sent the him a little sign “Home, Sweet Hut.” Living in a hut for crying out loud! Twenty dollars would change this guy’s life. No running water.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’ll start in Chicago with Susan. Glad you called, and welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s a pleasure to talk with you and an honor.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: I just think that this is absurd with this Sestak job offer. Nobody’s going to offer somebody a job with no compensation to give up a Senate race? That’s absurd.

RUSH: Well, but the Democrats understand they’ve got a sympathetic and supportive stenographer-like media to report this — and they have, of course, the august stature of Bill Clinton stand behind the veracity of this. I mean, what better guy could they have found to carry the story than a guy that has been willing to commit perjury before.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: It’s made to order. So you’re not buying it.

CALLER: No, not at all. And another thing I wanted to bring up to you is I heard on late night radio that President Obama has a Connecticut-issued Social Security number that he supposedly got when he was 21 years old from a state that he never lived in.

RUSH: I seem to have heard that somewhere. I don’t know. I don’t know any of the details about that. In fact, I don’t know if that’s actually true. I haven’t looked into it, but I think I’ve heard that. But regardless, that’s way down on the list of things to be concerned about is where he has his Social Security card. I appreciate the call, Susan.
END TRANSCRIPT

Rush Limbaugh mocks Bill O’Reilly in book

By Christina Wilkie

In a new biography on sale Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh calls fellow conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly a “Ted Baxter” — after the fictional character on the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” who was portrayed as a vain, shallow, buffoonish TV newsman.

“Sorry but somebody’s gotta say it,” Limbaugh is quoted as saying in Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One by Zev Chafets. At press time, O’Reilly had yet to respond to the comment.

But it wasn’t just Bill-O who took grief from Big Rush. Limbaugh said he doesn’t consider any of his fellow conservative talk show hosts to be in his league.

“Sean Hannity and Mark Levin are protégés,” writes Chafets, “and [Limbaugh] has defended Glenn Beck.”

But Limbaugh “doesn’t really consider them, or anyone else, in his league.”

Also on Limbaugh’s hit list is CNN’s Larry King, whom Limbaugh “really doesn’t like.”

“He has never had nice things to say about me,” Limbaugh says about King in the book. “He was working midnights [on the radio] when I started and demanded that his syndicator move him to afternoon drive when my success was obvious. He bombed and quit radio for CNN exclusively.”

The book also divulges how Limbaugh spends his multimillion-dollar earnings: The radio host owns five houses on an oceanfront estate north of Palm Beach, as well as a garage full of Maybach 57Ss (all black) and a $56 million Gulfstream G550 jet.

Limbaugh’s main home on the estate is 24,000 square feet, while the remaining homes are for guests.

The décor includes a massive chandelier just like the one that hangs in the lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel, as well as a full suit of armor and a “life-size oil portrait of El Rushbo.”

And according to Chafets, “fragrant candles” burn throughout the place. The main guest suite is “an exact replica of the Presidential Suite of the Hotel George V in Paris.”

The publisher notes that the biography is unauthorized, but Limbaugh gave Chafets extensive interviews for it. Chafets first wrote about Limbaugh in a 2008 New York Times Magazine cover story.

Radical Islamic Terrorists and Immigration

by Marinka Peschmann

At a press conference last Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama said his administration was taking a “very close look” at Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, “for any implications, especially for civil rights.”

So while the Obama Administration looks at civil rights implications, the big question to ask is will they also look at the implications of the radical Islamic terrorists in America—including those who have taken advantage of the broken U.S. immigration system?

What? Radical Islamic terrorists are in America?

According to a previously disclosed 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment, the answer is a resounding yes, and among them are members of; Al-Qa’ida, Al-Shabaab, HAMAS, Hizballah, Jama’at al-Tabligh, Jama’at ul Fuqra, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni Extremists, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad Union, and the Taliban.

This information you will not learn from the Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who considers acts of terror to be man-made disasters. The same Secretary Napolitano, who quickly condemned the Arizona immigration law (intended to do the job the Federal government failed to do), even though she had not read it.

Nor would you know that Islamic radical terrorists have taken advantage of America’s immigration crisis by listening to Attorney General Eric Holder either. Instead, for instance, he obfuscated then refused to identify radical Islam as the motive behind the failed Times Square terrorist attack earlier this month, after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen (via marriage) from Pakistan, who returned to the States after five months of terror training in Waziristan, was arrested. Holder is considering suing Arizona over their immigration law even though, as he admitted last week, he had not read it either.

For unknown reasons the Obama Administration has deliberately refused to publicly address the clear and present danger of radical Islamic terrorists and the immigration crisis. As previously reported here, Terrorists have applied for Green Cards, and as the 215-page 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment confirms, “The international terrorism threat to Virginia and the nation as a whole stems from several radical Islamic militant groups….”

Moreover, as the threat assessment documents, there is a connection with radical Islamic terrorists and immigration:

Marriage fraud is a common method of facilitating the extended stays of foreign
terrorists in the U.S….Known cases of sham marriages exist involving al-Qa’ida, Hizballah, and individuals with radical ties. Fraudulent marriages have enabled individuals affiliated with al-Qa’ida, Hizballah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to remain in the U.S. One regional example is the Charlotte Hizballah cell, where a key figure “helped secure three fraudulent visas and three sham marriages for the purpose of ‘legally’ bringing in the United States his brother, his brother-in-law, and sister so that they might become legal permanent residents…

… one Virginia-linked case occurred in which a Norfolk police officer testified against an Ohio-based Jordanian man who had tried to recruit him online for a terrorist cause. Subsequent federal investigation showed this subject likely entered the U.S. through a fraudulent marriage to a Kansas City woman in 2001; the marriage was annulled five months later…

… Many individuals enter the U.S. on student visas and never enroll in school… [or] individuals may enroll and seem to be legitimate students but may still be working as operatives. The three categories of nonimmigrant student visas monitored and tracked by DHS are F visas for academic study, M visas for vocational study, and J visas for cultural exchange. Such visas can be exploited by terrorists not only as a method to legally penetrate the borders, but also present a legitimate opportunity to study technical fields which may be of use in future attacks.

One of the FBI’s most wanted subjects, Aafia Siddiqui, who has ties to al-Qa’ida, entered the U.S. on a student visa and lived in the country for over a decade while studying and teaching at Brandeis and MIT… she was found with handwritten notes referring to a ‘mass casualty attack’ at various prominent locations in the U.S., such as the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, and the Brooklyn Bridge… Separate FBI reporting advised that an individual in the U.S. had sponsored several individuals from Egypt to enter to the U.S. on F-1 student visas. This individual had an identified contact at Strayer University who prepared and filed the visa paperwork through the University… The sponsor and the university contact allegedly hold radical Muslim beliefs…

Borrowing from Secretary Napolitano, the immigration crisis is a federal government-made disaster that occurred under both Republican and Democratic leadership. The consequences of the unsecured borders and the broken, backlogged United States Citizenship & Immigration Services do not exclusively adversely and dangerously affect Arizona– but the nation. It’s time for the Obama Administration to stop deflecting reality and tell the truth about the threats facing America.

Cross-posted at marinkapeschmann.com

Another Obama free radical gets loose

By: Bill O’Reilly
Examiner Columnist

In yet another example of the federal government’s being out of control, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, in a human rights discussion with the Chinese, brought up the new Arizona illegal-alien law as an example of American “discrimination.”

Posner said he discussed the law “early and often” with Chinese officials, even though they didn’t even initiate the conversation.

So let me get this straight. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department is trying to persuade China to close its political concentration camps, to stop incarcerating dissidents and to cease brutalizing the people of Tibet, and in the course of that discussion, Hillary’s guy says, “Oh, yeah, we’re pretty bad, too. Look at Arizona!”

Is this Bizarro World or what?

The Arizona law will not even take effect until the end of July, but already, according to some, the United States is violating human rights. The law simply says that authorities in Arizona can question people about their nationality if they are already involved in a police matter.

But if you listen to NBC News, you wouldn’t know that. No, the liberal media are telling the world that Arizona law enforcement officers will be dragging Hispanics out of Kmart. Be careful walking your dog in Phoenix; you could wind up in handcuffs.

Now, I expect this kind of stuff from the dishonest, ideological press, but from an assistant secretary of state? That takes the issue to another level. So, what’s really going on?

Well, it’s ideology again. Michael Posner is a committed left-wing zealot who joined the State Department in September 2009. Before that, he founded an organization called Human Rights First, which is generously funded by radical billionaire George Soros.

Human Rights First is a very lively group. In 2005, it joined with the American Civil Liberties Union in trying to sue former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torturing people. Posner’s group opposes the Patriot Act, rendition, all coerced interrogation and Guantanamo Bay.

Also in 2005, Posner made a speech comparing the treatment of American Muslims to the rounding up of Japanese-Americans during World War II. If this guy isn’t a left-wing loon, nobody is. So, what on Earth is he doing in the State Department negotiating with the Chinese?

We called Secretary Clinton and, surprise, received no response. But if you think about it, Posner’s presence at State really isn’t a surprise. You may remember that White House environmental adviser Van Jones was sacked after it was learned he was a member of a Marxist group in San Francisco and had accused the U.S. government of attacking itself on 9/11.

Another far-left person, former Georgetown professor Rosa Brooks, holds a position of responsibility in the Defense Department.

Critics of this column will cry McCarthyism, but there comes a point when a person’s credentials should matter, especially when that person is representing the United States in delicate matters, such as human rights.

Michael Posner should be hosting a program on Air America. Not speaking on behalf of the American people.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Another-Obama-free-radical-gets-loose-94732204.html#ixzz0or7VKby4

2010: The Limbaugh Victory

By Zev Chafets

HERE are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.

But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence.

How did this happen? The Obama victory in 2008 left Republicans dazed, demoralized and leaderless. Less than six weeks after the inauguration, in a nationally televised keynote address to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Limbaugh stepped into the void with a raucous denunciation of the new president’s agenda and a strategic plan based on his belief that real conservatism wins every time. He reiterated his famous call for Mr. Obama to fail and urged the party faithful to ignore the siren song of bipartisanship and moderation and stay true to the principles of Ronald Reagan.

Democrats responded by branding Mr. Limbaugh — whom they considered self-evidently unattractive — as the leader of the opposition. The day after the conservative conference, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, went on “Face the Nation” and described Mr. Limbaugh as the “voice and the intellectual force and energy” of the G.O.P.

Mr. Limbaugh loved being tossed into this briar patch. He mocked the notion that he was the titular leader of the Republicans even as he was becoming the party’s top strategist and de facto boss.

His strategy was simple. With Democrats controlling Congress, Mr. Limbaugh saw that there was no way to stop the president’s agenda. He dismissed the moderates’ notion that compromising with the president would make Republicans look good to independents. Instead he decreed that the Republicans must become the party of no, and force Democratic candidates — especially centrists — to go into 2010 with sole responsibility for the Obama program and the state of the economy. And that is what has happened.

Mr. Limbaugh was not just the architect of this plan, he was (and continues to be) its enforcer. Dissenters like Arlen Specter, whom Mr. Limbaugh disparaged as a “Republican in Name Only,” found themselves unelectable in the party primaries. Moderates like Michael Steele, the party chairman, were slapped down for suggesting cooperation with the administration. When Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia had the temerity to suggest that Mr. Limbaugh was too uncompromising, he was met with public outrage and forced into an humiliating apology.

When the Tea Party movement emerged, Mr. Limbaugh welcomed it. The movement’s causes — fighting against health care reform, reducing the size and cost of government, opposing the Democrats’ putative desire to remake America in the image of European social democracies — were straight Limbaughism. A very high proportion of the Tea Partiers listen to Mr. Limbaugh. Sarah Palin’s biggest current applause line — Republicans are not just the party of no, but the party of hell no — came courtesy of Mr. Limbaugh. (Ms. Palin gave the keynote address at the first national Tea Party convention.) Glenn Beck, who is especially popular among Tea Partiers, calls Mr. Limbaugh his hero.

So why the lack of attention? Mr. Limbaugh has studiously refrained from claiming credit for the movement. His only intervention thus far has been to quash talk about the Tea Party becoming a third party. He wants a unified, right-wing G.O.P. in 2010, and by all appearances he is going to get it.

Rush Limbaugh came along after the age of Ronald Reagan. He has never really had a Republican presidential candidate to his ideological satisfaction. But if the party sweeps this November under the banner of Real Conservatism, Mr. Obama will find himself facing two years of “no” in Washington and, very likely, a Limbaugh-approved opponent in 2012.

Zev Chafets is the author of the forthcoming “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.”

Senators Press for National Guard Troops on Border

Associated Press

Frustrated lawmakers are demanding action to stem the spread of violence and drug trafficking that has spilled across the border into their states.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security and Pentagon officials are at loggerheads over a plan to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, even as President Barack Obama is pledging to bolster security there.

The Guard stalemate has festered for nearly a year, and frustrated lawmakers are demanding action to stem the spread of violence and drug trafficking that has spilled across the border into their states. The inaction raises questions about whether the White House is convinced the federally funded deployment is necessary, or whether border states will be forced to bear the costs of dispatching the Guard troops on their own.

Speaking at the White House on Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama said the U.S. is committed to standing with Mexico against the drug cartels.

“As your partner, we’ll give you the support you need to prevail,” he said, adding that through increased law enforcement on the U.S. side of the border, “we’re putting unprecedented pressure on those who traffic in drugs, guns and people.”

Fueling the discord over sending the National Guard to the border was the U.S. response to the Gulf oil spill, which has included federal authorization for deploying up to 17,000 National Guard troops.

Those costs, however, are likely to be borne by oil giant BP PLC, which leased the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that exploded off the Louisiana coast April 20, killing 11 and releasing a huge, continuing oil spill.

The oil spill notwithstanding, border state lawmakers say they need help too.

“If you’ll indulge me, we think we have another crisis on the border,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at a hearing this week. “I want to know about whether you’re going to send the Guard to the border or not.”

When she tried to explain other DHS improvements along the border, McCain cut her off.

“People’s homes are being violated, and their families can’t take kids to the bus stop,” the senator fumed. “And you are very familiar with the issue, because you yourself asked for the Guard to go to the border back in 2006.”

Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, responded that the request involves the White House as well as the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department, and is still in the interagency process. While she said she would like the decision to be made as soon as possible, she added she could not say when she would have an answer.

“We don’t have a resolution on that yet,” Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart said in an interview with The Associated Press. Renuart, who headed the U.S. Northern Command until his retirement Wednesday after 39 years of service, added that while money is a point of contention, the greater disagreement centers on what missions the National Guard would perform.

He said the discussion between the Defense and Homeland Security departments continues, and some of the requests “have evolved a bit in this interim period.” He did not provide details.

First floated last June, the idea was to use 1,500 Guard troops temporarily to supplement border patrol agents. The Pentagon and Homeland Security drafted a $225 million plan, but disagreed over who would pay for it and how the troops would be utilized.

Pentagon officials, worried about perceptions that the U.S. was militarizing the border, argued that the Guard could only be used for particular duties. Military leaders said they did not want Guard troops to screen vehicles at border points or perform any law enforcement duties, and said the program should be temporary and not tied to any existing program that could get extended.

Defense officials have said that possible missions for the Guard soldiers could include surveillance along the border, intelligence analysis, helicopter transportation support and aviation surveillance, which likely would involve unmanned aircraft.

In a letter to Obama this week, McCain and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said sending at least 6,000 National Guard to the border — with half focused on the Arizona portion — would immediately improve the safety of Americans there.

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said the administration has taken a number of steps to improve security at the border, including adding more law enforcement personnel and prosecutors, and increasing cooperation with the Mexican government.

“The president is firmly committed to ensuring that our Southwest border is secure,” Shapiro said. “The administration continues to evaluate additional law enforcement options as well as the use of the National Guard, as needed, along the Southwest border.”

Rev. Wright: ‘Obama Threw Me Under the Bus’

AP

NEW YORK — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that he is “toxic” to the Obama administration and that the president “threw me under the bus.”

In his strongest language to date about the administration’s 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.

“No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am ‘toxic’ in terms of the Obama administration,” Wright wrote the president of Africa 6000 International earlier this year.

“I am ‘radioactive,’ Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!” he wrote. “Any advice that I offer is going to be taken as something to be avoided. Please understand that!”

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment Monday about Wright’s remarks. Several phone messages left by the AP for Wright at the Trinity United Church of Christ, where he is listed as a pastor emeritus, were not returned. Wright’s spokeswoman, his daughter Jeri Wright, did not immediately comment on the substance of the letter.

Then-Sen. Obama cut ties with Wright when his more incendiary remarks became an Internet sensation in the spring of 2008. At a National Press Club appearance in April 2008, he claimed the U.S. government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested Obama was putting his pastor at arm’s length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced Wright as “divisive and destructive” and later cut ties to the pastor altogether and left Wright’s church.

The letter was sent Feb. 18 to Joseph Prischak, the president of Africa 6000 International in Erie, Pa. Wright subsequently agreed to write a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the group’s behalf to try to get access to millions of dollars.

Wright’s original letter ranting against Obama’s treatment of him surfaced in an appeal filed by federal inmate Arthur Morrison, boxing great Muhammad Ali’s one-time manager, who was convicted of making phone threats.

Charles Lofton, Wright’s executive assistant, told The Associated Press that he faxed a copy of the letter to Morrison’s attorney as requested. A copy of the faxed letter signed by Wright showed that it was sent from the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago on March 31 to the fax number for Goodwin’s law office in Tulsa, Okla.

Prischak, of Africa 6000 International, is a business partner of Morrison, who has been imprisoned for nearly 18 years after he was convicted of making phone threats between 1989 to 1992 to hospitals where an ex-girlfriend worked.

Prischak told Wright in a Feb. 11 letter that he was seeking the clergyman’s help in reaching out to the U.S. Treasury Department. He said that Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein, had entrusted 87 million British pounds in 1990 to Morrison and Ali to buy pharmaceuticals, milk and food for the children of Iraq.

Prischak said the money was never spent because Morrison was imprisoned. He sought Wright’s help in lobbying U.S. authorities to permit 25 million British pounds in interest from the money held in an overseas account to be allowed to be sent to faith-based groups for the children of Haiti.