RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Obama administration, bowing to the wishes of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups in the United States, has handcuffed our intelligence and law enforcement agencies from doing their job to protect the American people.

Barack Obama promised the Muslim world in his June 2009 speech in Cairo that he would use his presidency to “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” True to his word, his administration conducted what amounted to a censorship campaign within the government of anything deemed critical of Islam. For example, an anti-terrorism conference scheduled for August 10-12, 2011 hosted by the CIA’s Threat Management Unit was cancelled after Islamic groups protested the content of several presentations and the speakers.

Beginning in the fall of 2011, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties undertook a campaign to purge any critical references to Islamic ideology and beliefs from intelligence and law enforcement training materials.

“Don’t use programs that venture too deep into the weeds of religious doctrine and history,” the Homeland Security unit warned in a set of guidelines it issued to other federal agencies. Don’t listen to “self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’,” the unit’s guidelines advised. The guidelines also called for rejecting the inclusion in the training materials of the fact, documented by a Muslim Brotherhood memo outlining its own strategic plan for America, that Islamists were intent on using our own democratic institutions and laws to subvert our system from within.

Here is what the Muslim Brotherhood memo said about its own strategic objective:

“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”

Of all the constitutional freedoms granted to us in the Bill of Rights, none is more sacred than the right to free speech. That is why it stands apart from all other amendments at the top as the First Amendment. The Framers, having experienced the suppression of free speech firsthand, were cognizant of the tyranny ruling monarchs and assorted despots could impose by suppressing speech and sought to make clear that this was a sacred right that with few exceptions was not to be infringed upon.

But in recent years, we’ve witnessed an unrelenting assault on free speech with a concerted effort by the regressive Left to curtail thought and restrict the free exchange of ideas. Last week, I wrote about campus terrorism and how conservatives and others who maintain views that are inconsistent with the leftist narrative have been subjected to campaigns of harassment and abuse by campus hooligans.

Often university officials are apathetic, turning a blind eye to these transgressions, while in other universities the administration is complicit by instructing campus police to stand down, allowing the agitators free reign to shut down speaking engagements through use of bullying tactics. In at least two instances, university presidents were forced to issue rather craven apologies to an alliance of leftists and Islamists for having the temerity to defend the right to free speech.

This disturbing trend of muzzling free speech has now substantially broadened to include criminalizing speech that issues challenges to the so-called science of climate change. Some seventeen left-leaning state attorneys general have launched investigative and intrusive probes against Exxon Mobil and conservative groups because of their involvement in debunking alarmist claims of imminent doom issued by hysterical climate change proponents.

The ringleaders of this anti-free speech witch hunt include Eric Schneiderman (D-New York) and Claude Walker (I-Virgin Islands). At a recent speech at the Bloomberg’s Big Law Business Summit, Schneiderman was dismissive of his critics, accusing them of “First Amendment opportunism.” The more he spoke the more he sounded like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s thuggish dictator who utilized the vast resources of the state to silence anyone who disagreed with him.

On June 16, 2016 John Brennan, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before a hearing conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the various threats and challenges that confront our nation, including the growth of the Chinese military and its expanding sphere of influence and the threats posed to the United States, our allies and other countries around the world by ISIS. C-SPAN posted a video of the hearing.

The title of the report posted by Fox News in covering that hearing pulled no punches and left nothing to the imagination: “CIA Director Warns of ISIS Using Refugee Streams to Move Operatives .”

Here is the way that Brennan articulated his concerns on this issue in his prepared testimony:

Since at least 2014, ISIL has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, resulting in hundreds of casualties. The most prominent examples are the attacks in Paris and Brussels, which we assess were directed by ISIL’s leadership.

We judge that ISIL is training and attempting to deploy operatives for further attacks. ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West. And the group is probably exploring a variety of means for infiltrating operatives into the West, including refugee flows, smuggling routes, and legitimate methods of travel.

Meanwhile, even as Brennan voiced his concerns about the multitude of ways that terrorists were on the move around the world and seeking to attack the United States and its allies in the West, the administration continues to admit ever more refugees into the United States who cannot be effectively vetted.

The hearing that focused on the concerns of the CIA Director was not, however, the only hearing conducted last week in Washington that provided disturbing information about how our immigration system is likely to be exploited by terrorists.

On June 14, 2016 the Washington Times article “Illegal immigrants who overstay visas hardly ever caught, feds admit” reported on a hearing conducted by the House Committee on Homeland Security on the topic, “Overstaying Their Welcome: National Security Risks Posed by Visa Overstays.”

The seventeen attorneys general who have been pursuing “climate deniers” for prosecution have been put on notice: turnabout is fair play. If Democrats can use the force of law to silence climate change narratives they deem to be fraudulent, so can Republicans. This is not a road anyone should want to go down, but fascistic Democrats have left Republicans with no choice. A group of Republican AGs along with Republicans on the House science panel have decided to push back.

On June 15, the Republican AGs of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin sent a letter to the Democrat AGs pointing out that if statements minimizing the risks of climate change are prosecutable as “fraud,” then so are statements exaggerating the dangers of climate change.

Via the Washington Times:

The “cuts both ways” argument was among those raised by 13 Republican attorneys general in a letter urging their Democratic counterparts to stop using their law enforcement power against fossil fuel companies and others that challenge the climate change catastrophe narrative.

Consider carefully the legal precedent and threat to free speech, said the state prosecutors in their letter this week, headed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.

“If it is possible to minimize the risks of climate change, then the same goes for exaggeration,” said the letter. “If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud.”

The letter comes as Exxon Mobil fights off subpoenas by two prosecutors — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker — for decades’ worth of climate-related documents and communications with academics, universities and free-market think tanks.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and California Attorney General Kamala Harris have also reportedly launched probes.

The 17 attorneys general — 16 Democrats and one independent — announced at a March 29 press conference that they had formed a coalition, AGs United for Clean Power.

“We think this effort by our colleagues to police the global warming debate through the power of the subpoena is a grave mistake,” said the letter.

The name of the coalition itself shows that the attorneys general “have taken the unusual step of aligning themselves with the competition of their investigative targets,” namely the solar and wind energy.

“If the focus is fraud, such alignment by law enforcement sends the dangerous signal that companies in certain segments of the energy market need not worry about their misrepresentations,” said the GOP letter.

Schneiderman spokesman Eric Soufer insisted in a statement that “the law is clear: the First Amendment does not give any corporation the right to commit fraud.”