Displaying posts published in

August 2012

ANDREW McCARTHY: A SPEECH ON “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION” AND THE MOSLEM BROTHERHOOD…..MUST READ****

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/313481

I gave a speech yesterday morning at the National Press Club on the Muslim Brotherhood and why we need to worry about our government’s growing coziness with it. I spoke for almost an hour and then there was an extensive Q&A. C-SPAN covered it, and you can watch here. (The text of my speech is here.)

Dana Milbank, the leftist columnist of the Washington Post, covered the event — though you can judge for yourself whether his account of it in the paper today accurately reflects what I actually said. It would take too long, and is not worth the time, to react all of Mr. Milbank’s meanderings. I do want to address two contentions he makes, however:

1. Ms. Abedin is an inconsequential official being subjected to “guilt by association.”

I guess we’ve come a long way since John McCain first claimed that the concerns about Huma Abedin’s ties to Islamists were “unspecified and unsubstantiated.” Those concerns have now been so overwhelmingly proved that apologists have to change tacks. So now the argument is, “Well, all right, there are many connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, but Ms. Abedin is a victim of ‘guilt by association.’” Mr. Milbank tries to make that fly today.

Remember, we are not talking about an indictment here. When people are being evaluated for their suitability for appointment to high public office and access to national-security information, the whole process is about associations – that’s why, for example, the form all candidates for security clearances have to fill out exactingly probes a person’s background, relations and associations. I don’t expect Milbank to agree with me on this point — although he certainly seemed to think background and associations were pretty significant when Sam Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court). Still, given that I specifically addressed the charge in the speech, he might at least have given readers my take on the “guilt by association” canard:

The five members [of the House of Representatives who have asked for five executive branch inspectors-general to investigate Muslim Brotherhood influence at their agencies] have not made accusations of criminal wrongdoing. The critics who say they are relying on “guilt by association” are absurdly mixing apples and oranges.

Our bedrock principle against “guilt by association” has to do with criminal prosecutions — we won’t tolerate someone’s being convicted of a crime and having his freedom taken away just because of who his friends are, or what his associates have done. But “guilt by association” has nothing to do with fitness for high public office. High public office is a privilege, not a right. Access to classified information is a privilege, not a right. You need not have done anything wrong to be deemed unfit for these privileges.

P.DAVID HORNIK: HEALTH-CARE ISRAELI STYLE….WHEN GOOD DEEDS DON’T PAY

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/08/09/health-care-israeli-style On Wednesday one of Israel’s largest dailies had a scoop: four months ago a man from Gaza received urgent medical treatment at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel. He had had a serious cardiac episode that no hospital in Gaza was able to treat. Not such a scoop, one might think? The man was […]

DAVID GOLDMAN: THE SANCTITY OF CIRCUMCISION

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/108801/sacred-rite-of-circumcision?all=1 After a German court criminalized infant circumcision as “grievous bodily harm” in a June 26 ruling, Jewish as well as Muslim and Christian protests convinced the country’s government to present legislation to protect this most fundamental Jewish practice. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to Jewish concerns was sympathetic—including her July 17 declaration that a ban […]

LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS: JIMMY CARTER UNITES JEWISH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS WHO DENOUNCE HIS SPEAKING AT THE CONVENTION….SEE NOTE

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/jimmy-carter-unites-democrat-and-republican-jews-in-renouncing-his-convention-message/2012/08/09/ Jimmy Carter Unites Democrat and Republican Jews in Renouncing his Convention Message On the contrary…If they are still for the jackasses, they deserve Jimmy Carter ….just as they deserved Jesse Jackson …..rsk Imagine this: two Jews, one opinion! And not only two Jews, but two Jewish organizations, one representing Jewish Democrats and one representing […]

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: IN ILLINOIS DISTRICT ROBERT DOLD FOR CONGRESS

http://www.doldforcongress.com/

CHECK OUT WHERE HE STANDS ON ISSUES

http://www.doldforcongress.com/pages/foreign_affairs/220.php

ON HEALTHCARE:

http://www.doldforcongress.com/pages/healthcare/184.php

ON ENERGY:

http://www.doldforcongress.com/pages/energy___environment/182.php

SEE THESE LINKS FOR CRAGI KARPEL’S 12 STEP GUIDE FOR RECOVERING OBAMA VOTER

http://www.craigkarpel.com/newsrelease.html

http://www.craigkarpel.com/index.html

http://www.amazon.com/12-Step-Guide-Recovering-Obama-ebook/dp/B007XIC0UA

Product Details
The 12-Step Guide for the Recovering Obama Voter by Craig S. Karpel (Aug 7, 2012)

24/7 NEWS AND VIEWS

http://times247.com/
Hispanics gain prominent slots at GOP convention
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Greendoggle: Nevada spends $1.3b for 288 jobs
Solar subsidies are actually worse t…
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30 million to remain uninsured under Obamacare
A new Congressional Budget Office re…
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Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz232thF4yk
Saudi vows to intercept aircraft en route to Iran
Ynet News
Thursday, August 9, 2012
News

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz232uDhQgn

Saudi Arabia has informed Israel that it would intercept any Air Force aircraft crossing its airspace en route to Iran. Read more.

Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz232u2C1JL

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: SUPER PACS TARGET TEA PARTY CONSERVATIVES: MATTHEW VADUM

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/a-super-pacs-war-on-the-tea-party-ten/print/

Rep. Allen West (R-FL)Steve King (IA), Dan Lungren (CA), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA), Joe Walsh(IL), Frank Guinta (NH), Sean Duffy (WI), and Chip Cravaack (MN)

A well-funded leftist group is targeting 10 Tea Party-backed congressmen because they believe in the Constitution, limited government, and fiscal responsibility and oppose President Obama’s socialist juggernaut.

But Becky Bond, president of Credo Super PAC, puts it another way.

“They are anti-woman. They are anti-science. They are hypocritical, bigoted, and have said and done things that are downright crazy,” says Bond, a Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizer.

What exactly have these Republican lawmakers done to stir up this kind of hatred among leftists? Answer: they’ve acted like conservatives.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) is being targeted because he’s unapologetically pro-Israel and pro-life, positions that got him labeled “racist” and “sexist” by Bond’s group. Because West backed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) very modest budget-balancing proposal Credo has falsely accused him of voting “to abolish Medicare.”

An Iraq war veteran, West calls Islam “a totalitarian theocratic political ideology.”

Pretty crazy, huh?

Credo is especially afraid of West because he’s “a national rising star in the Tea Party,” who “is going to start to define” what the Republican Party stands for.

“And he’s a freshman,” Bond said June 18 at the Campaign for America’s Future’s Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington, D.C. “If we don’t take him down now, he’s raising millions of dollars, and he’s going to set what the new normal is for the Republican Party.”

Credo Super PAC was created by Credo Mobile, the wireless reseller that donates part of its profits to left-wing groups such as the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, ACORN-affiliated Project Vote, Color of Change, and the Sierra Club Foundation.

Credo Mobile president Michael Kieschnick, a member of George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, boasts that his company’s activist network has given upwards of $70 million to left-wing groups since 1985. Credo Super PAC has raked in nearly $2 million so far, according to the Federal Election Commission database. Patricia Richardson of TV’s “Home Improvement” and movie actress Stockard Channing have given the PAC $1,000 and $750, respectively.

BEN SHAPIRO: “OCCUPY” UNMASKED

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/occupy-unmasked/

This week, Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s Magnet Releasing revealed that they had purchased the rights to Occupy Unmasked, a Citizens United production, also produced by Andrew Breitbart, and created by Stephen K. Bannon. About a month ago, I had the opportunity to pre-screen the film along with the attendees of the Right Online conference.

Full disclosure: I’m editor-at-large of Breitbart News; I was a close friend of Andrew’s; I’m a Shillman Journalism Fellow with the Freedom Center. Leaving all that aside, Occupy Unmasked is a thought-provoking and powerful piece of work that will make you worry for your country.

The film itself explores the deep, dark crevices of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Where did it come from? What are its ideological and philosophical roots? And what was the goal of the movement?

Occupy Unmasked uncovers the answers through exclusive footage of the Occupy movement – footage that will leave your skin crawling and your stomach writhing. This was not a peaceful, hippie movement of the 1960s, with thousands of grassroots turning out for drug-induced love-ins. This was a top-down, insidiously planned movement with a set of very real goals: chaos, political pressure, undermining the existing constitutional order. Occupy was dangerous, and it was purposefully designed to be dangerous.

Through all of this, Andrew Breitbart acts as guide. Andrew was a larger-than-life figure – a passionate advocate for what he believed, and a deep believer in the great hope that is America. And you can see the fire in his eyes when he describes the shameful dreams and tactics of Occupy. The rapes, the assaults, the property damage; the smear campaigns; the media complicity. It’s all there.

When we get to the ideological roots of the movement, David Horowitz takes the fore. As a former leftist radical, Horowitz understands the motives of the thwarted ‘60s radicals standing behind the Occupy movement. He understands the underpinnings of an astroturfed operation, and he details how Occupy stole the Marxist philosophy of the 1930s radicals, combined them with the sit-in politics of the 1960s radicals, and then added a patina of legitimacy provided by a compliant mainstream media. There is a history to Occupy. It did not spring from the mind of Zeus, full-blown. It sprang from a hundred-year history of class and race discontent; it was fruit of the poisonous tree. Horowitz explains all that, and he also explains how so many Americans were duped into believing that Occupy was simply an innocent movement frustrated with the workings of the political machinery.

The film isn’t just commentary. It features undercover work by video journalists including Brandon Darby, Lee Stranahan, Pam Keys, and Mandy Nagy. It allows viewers to enter deep into the heart of a movement that wasn’t a joke, no matter how much it may seem so in retrospect.

And today, that is the true danger of Occupy: that we will take it too lightly, pretend that it meant nothing. In truth, it meant everything to the left. That’s why the Obama administration defended it. This week, Judicial Watch announced that it had obtained access to Obama administration Department of Homeland Security documents showing that the General Services Administration told law enforcement to “stand down” and allow Occupy Portland protesters to violate the law. As Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch said, “These documents clearly show that federal agencies colluded with the Obama White House to allow the Occupy Wall Street protestors to violate the law with impunity. These documents tell us that the GSA and DHS can’t be relied upon to protect federal workers or property.”

Occupy may not be the first radical movement to seize the imaginations of millions of Americans. And it won’t be the last. But it may have been the first fully produced mass movement in American history – a movement created in back rooms, to specific ends. Occupy Unmasked documents the evolution of the Occupy movement in all its horrific detail.

And you can guarantee that we haven’t seen the last of Occupy. Not yet.

CONRAD BLACK: ISRAEL CONFRONTS IRAN

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/313253 The recent visits of Republican presidential candidate W. M. Romney (I am still having a problem calling a possible president Mitt; Millard Fillmore almost creates a precedent for Willard M. Romney) and defense secretary Leon Panetta to the Middle East have raised to a height of attention the perennial problem of a nuclear Iran. […]