Another Terrorist Dry Run « Blog Entry « Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Unbelievable!

Another Terrorist Dry Run « Blog Entry « Dr. Melissa Clouthier.

Remember the flight from Atlanta to Houston that got turned around because of the guy who wouldn’t get off the phone? That’s not what happened. From the website Nobody Asked Me via Pierre LeGrand:

I was in 1st class coming home. 11 Muslim men got on the plane in full attire. 2 sat in 1st class and the rest peppered themselves throughout the plane all the way to the back. As the plane taxied to the runway the stewardesses gave the safety spiel we are all so familiar with. At that time, one of the men got on his cell and called one of his companions in the back and proceeded to talk on the phone in Arabic very loudly and very aggressively. This took the 1st stewardess out of the picture for she repeatedly told the man that cell phones were not permitted at the time. He ignored her as if she was not there.

The 2nd man who answered the phone did the same and this took out the 2nd stewardess. In the back of the plane at this time, 2 younger Muslims, one in the back, isle, and one in front of him, window, began to show footage of a porno they had taped the night before, and were very loud about it. Now….they are only permitted to do this prior to Jihad. If a Muslim man goes into a strip club, he has to view the woman via mirror with his back to her. (don’t ask me….I don’t make the rules, but I’ve studied). The 3rd stewardess informed them that they were not to have electronic devices on at this time. To which one of the men said “shut up infidel dog!” She went to take the camcorder and he began to scream in her face in Arabic. At that exact moment, all 11 of them got up and started to walk the cabin. This is where I had had enough! I got up and started to the back where I heard a voice behind me from another Texan twice my size say “I got your back.” I grabbed the man who had been on the phone by the arm and said “you WILL go sit down or you Will be thrown from this plane!” As I “led” him around me to take his seat, the fellow Texan grabbed him by the back of his neck and his waist and headed out with him. I then grabbed the 2nd man and said, “You WILL do the same!” He protested but adrenaline was flowing now and he was going to go. As I escorted him forward the plane doors open and 3 TSA agents and 4 police officers entered. Me and my new Texan friend were told to cease and desist for they had this under control. I was happy to oblige actually. There was some commotion in the back, but within moments, all 11 were escorted off the plane. They then unloaded their luggage.

We talked about the occurrence and were in disbelief that it had happen, when suddenly, the door open again and on walked all 11!! Stone faced, eyes front and robotic (the only way I can describe it). The stewardess from the back had been in tears and when she saw this, she was having NONE of it! Being that I was up front, I heard and saw the whole ordeal. She told the TSA agent there was NO WAY she was staying on the plane with these men. The agent told her they had searched them and were going to go through their luggage with a fine tooth comb and that they were allowed to proceed to Houston. The captain and co-captain came out and told the agent “we and our crew will not fly this plane!” After a word or two, the entire crew, luggage in tow, left the plane. 5 minutes later, the cabin door opened again and a whole new crew walked on.

Again…..this is where I had had enough!!! I got up and asked “What the hell is going on!?!?” I was told to take my seat. They were sorry for the delay and I would be home shortly. I said “I’m getting off this plane”. The stewardess sternly told me that she could not allow me to get off. (now I’m mad!) I said “I am a grown man who bought this ticket, who’s time is mine with a family at home and I am going through that door, or I’m going through that door with you under my arm!! But I am going through that door!!” And I heard a voice behind me say “so am I”. Then everyone behind us started to get up and say the same. Within 2 minutes, I was walking off that plane where I was met with more agents who asked me to write a statement. I had 5 hours to kill at this point so why the hell not. Due to the amount of people who got off that flight, it was cancelled. I was supposed to be in Houston at 6pm. I got here at 12:30am.

Recall, this post from Michelle Malkin and her thoughts on Anne Jacobson about the James Woods incident where Mohammed Atta was in a “dry run” a month before 9/11.

This has happened before. It could happen again. Will a country so cowed by political correctness, like the Army was, be unwitting dupes in their own demise yet again? If people in the Army were afraid to call out a psychotic superior, will common citizens resist?

I don’t believe we can count on the “officials” here any more than we’ve ever been able to count on them. Americans must be self-reliant. They must stand up for common sense. They must resist the social pressure to ignore threats because it might offend someone to do so.

An Unprecedented Mountain of Debt

An Unprecedented Mountain of Debt.

By Daniel Greenfield  Saturday, November 28, 2009

Since Obama is rather attached to describing everything he does as “unprecedented”, “I have achieved an unprecedented level of transparency”, “I played an unprecedented amount of golf this year” and “I just wasted an unprecedented amount of money”… in honor of the Liar in Chief, we can make “unprecedented” the word of the day.

First up is Obama’s unprecedented deficit. The current real cost of ObamaCare is up to 2.5 Trillion dollars and rising.

The Senate Republicans’ chart demonstrates that the total for all of these costs—based on CBO projections for the bill’s true first 10 years—is $2.5 trillion. And costs would only skyrocket from there, as the chart’s trajectory suggests. In the 5 years to follow (2024-28), spending on “expansions in insurance coverage” alone would be $1.7 trillion, making the bill’s total costs in its real first 15 years well over $4 trillion—based on CBO projections.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re looking at real money.

Just by way of comparison, the cost of ObamaCare is more than the entire US national debt during the Reagan Administration, which Democrats repeatedly criticized for being wasteful and running up the national debt.

That’s right, one bill by Obama and the Democratic congress alone outweighs all of Ronald Reagan’s national debt. Under wasteful ole Ron, the national debt was below 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Under Obama we’re now set to have the national debt pass 100 percent of the GDP, at which point we’ve pretty much sold America to the People’s Republic of China.

From Clinton to Bush, the National Debt jumped by 12 percent of the GDP. Under Obama is jumped by 20 percent in only one year, and is set to make that 30 percent pretty soon.

Unprecedented? You betcha.

Oh but there’s some good news, because the crunch isn’t just hitting us, it’s hitting Obama’s buddies too, with Dubai in big trouble.

Just a year after the global downturn derailed Dubai’s explosive growth, the city is now so swamped in debt that it’s asking for a six-month reprieve on paying its bills — causing a drop on world markets Thursday and raising questions about Dubai’s reputation as a magnet for international investment.

The fallout came swiftly and was felt globally after Wednesday statement that Dubai’s main development engine, Dubai World, would ask creditors for a “standstill” on paying back its $60 billion debt until at least May. The company’s real estate arm, Nakheel — whose projects include the palm-shaped island in the Gulf — shoulders the bulk of money due to banks, investment houses and outside development contractors.

Now keep in mind that Dubai World is run by the Dubai government which is in turn run by the family of the region’s biggest headchopping family, which in this case is Sheikh Mohammed.

Dubai’s prosperity was built on slave labor imported from abroad and by convincing stupid Westerns that Dubai was a happening place by hiring foreign architects to create insane skyscrapers and customized islands. Now Dubai World is bleeding badly and the Dhimmis who rushed to sink their money into a brutal oil rich totalitarian dictatorship are thinking twice, not because of morals or ethics, but because of finances.

And here’s what helped break the camel’s back

The straw that broke the Dubai camel’s back is a $3.5 billion sukuk bond. It had been due to be repaid on December 14. It won’t be.

Sukuk is of course Sharia finance. A lot of Western banks jumped on the Sharia finance bandwagon, only to get burned by Dubai.

Investors also face legal risk. If investors seek redress under English law, any ruling may be unenforceable as it is likely to be subject to review by the Dubai courts—who may take a different view. The Dubai courts will never have dealt with a restructuring on this scale, and Dubai law may not allow for creditors to claim government assets. This may also test the Sukuk, or Islamic bond, structure, under which the investors are effectively the owners of the underlying assets, but may find it difficult to enforce their rights.

Dubai has spent the last few years seeking to build a reputation as a modern, international financial center. Much of that work has been undone by Wednesday’s shock announcement. The need now is to start to repair the damage: and that means fair, transparent and equal treatment of all creditors.

That of course is delusional, considering that fair and transparent is not the way things are done in Dubai and the Muslim world. The irony here is that Islamic finance is not fundamentally different than what Madoff was doing, and Dubai is a great example of an attempt to turn worthless desert into desirable real estate through hype and promotion.

Meanwhile Dubai is still raising money through Sukuks vowing that it has come out strong from the financial crisis. Uh huh.

Citing Al Mal Capital fund manager, the Gulf News said “the market expects Dubai to raise another USD 5 billion soon which will take care of some of Dubai’s debt and lift the confidence of the investors”.

Once again another can’t fail plan.

But investors worrying about transparency, need to remember that this is how debt collection works in the UAE.

A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.

A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim’s arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man’s wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

In a statement to ABC News, the UAE Ministry of the Interior said it had reviewed the tape and acknowledged the involvement of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, brother of the country’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed.

“The incidents depicted in the video tapes were not part of a pattern of behavior,” the Interior Ministry’s statement declared.

The Minister of the Interior is also one of Sheikh Issa’s brother.

The government statement said its review found “all rules, policies and procedures were followed correctly by the Police Department.”

Anyone investing in this oil dungeon of a hellhole that is Dubai while signing on to Sharia finance deserves exactly what they get.

Meanwhile back to our own mad Sheikh Hussein Obama, Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard points out that it’s now better to have destroyed the WTC than given a terrorist a fat lip

They could’ve executed him in the desert and left him in a shallow grave for all I care, but the SEALs are professionals, and so they brought the man behind the 2004 murder of four American contractors in Fallujah to the Green Zone, where one SEAL told investigators that he “had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.”

Maybe there’s a whole lot more to this story than is currently being reported, but it’d have to be pretty terrible stuff to convince me that three Navy SEALs who successfully captured a high-value target now deserve to be court martialed for their service. A fat lip? That’s enough to get you rough military justice from the Obama administration, but blow up the World Trade Center and you get all the due process rights of the civilian criminal justice system. Sounds fair, right?

And back to the Gulf, Phyllis Chesler asks reasonably enough, Why is America Still Allied with Saudi Arabia?

The Saudi mutawas (“morality police”) are terrifying. Like vultures, they swoop down on their vulnerable prey, especially women, and then send them straight to Hell. The “long beards” curse and beat their female prisoner, totally terrify her; then, they throw her into a dark, medieval dungeon, (assume the worst here). They remove her only in order to gang-rape and torture her—all presumably in the name of Islam. Her crime? In one instance, although the woman was a foreign national, she dared to take a taxi downtown without a male escort.

Remind me: Why are we still allies with Saudi Arabia? Why did President Obama bow to the King who presides over such Hell? Can we find no oil elsewhere, no other sources of energy? Do Americans really understand what goes on in Saudi Arabia? Have we forgotten that the Saudis have single-handedly exported Wahhabi fundamentalism and propaganda that has poisoned both westerners and those in the east—and have funded western universities and media as well? Does anyone remember that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia? Or that Osama bin Laden is a Saudi? Do we not understand that the Kingdom has funded bin Laden? And that they have funded many influential Islamic “charities” in North America?

…

Al Rabaa tells the story of Karin (presumably a pseudonym), a German woman who took a taxi downtown and got arrested for doing so. Thrown into a dungeon, beaten, raped, traumatized, no one knew where she was. Finally, a married Saudi man (alas, one to whom she was already attracted), moved heaven and earth to rescue her. He got her released after having her German husband deported and after marrying her without Karin even being present. A well connected Saudi man can rescue his wife from prison. Satam moved Karin into the home he shared with his first wife Fatima and their children. Satam soon lost interest in Karin and spent long hours away from home. But Karin was already pregnant. Here’s how Fatima handled the situation.

First, around midnight, while Karin was sleeping, Fatima put on loud Arabic music, came into Karin’s room and “slammed a massive stick down onto my stomach…I screamed for help. ‘No one is going to hear you, Gahba (#####)!’” The first wife kept swinging the stick at her. Karin fled. Finally, Satam got Karin her own apartment. Whereupon, Fatima started calling her to “harass and terrorize me…she spread rumors that I had a boyfriend who secretly came to visit me.” In fact, Fatima enlisted relatives in an elaborate scheme to entrap Karin and to report all such concocted suspicious doings to Satam.

But here is the most evil thing that Fatima did. Because Mimi, their housemaid, was helpful to Karin, Fatima reported Mimi to the mutawa for “fornication.” The fact that this was totally untrue made no difference. Once Mimi was arrested, Prince Salman signed her death warrant. Satam could do nothing to reverse this decree. Thus, the following Friday, after prayers, the appropriate verses from the Qu’ran having been read, Mimi was stoned to death. The two Indian men she was accused of “fornicating” with (shopkeepers, where Mimi was shopping for Karin) each received one hundred lashes.

The graphic description of Mimi’s stoning is too awful for me to repeat.

I am waiting for Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama to spell out precisely what American policy should be vis a vis Saudi Arabia given their barbaric record on human rights and their major role in funding and exporting Islamic Jihad globally.

I recommend a big tall fence to keep the Saudis in and everyone else out. If the Saudis want anything, they can pay for it in oil. Which they’ll have to learn to pump themselves.

But oil money rules all. Case in point, after the Lockerbie Bombing release the UK’s elite are still visibly partying with Kaddafi and his spawn.

Lord Mandelson, was there, and also Lord Rothschild’s country neighbour, Cherie Blair. Neither of them picked up a gun. Various young friends of Nat with double-barrelled or European princely names were shooting. But the keenest shot was Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator, and the man who escorted the Lockerbie bomber, Al Megrahi, home to a hero’s welcome in Libya in August.

Now that Libya has made its strange bargain with the West, Saif has taken up our traditional upper-class sport with delight. Near Tripoli, he has laid down 40,000 partridges.

How wonderful that Khaddafi’s kids enjoy the sport of shooting birds in the UK. Pity Dick Cheney wasn’t invited along to show off his hunting skills. I suspect he could have bagged something bigger than a partridge.

And more good news from the EU, its new Foreign Secretary will be a Soviet agent.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland’s past came back to haunt her yesterday when the European Union’s new foreign affairs chief was forced to deny taking funds from the Soviet Union during her days as treasurer for the Campaign forNuclear Disarmament.

Lady Ashton, a surprise choice for her post, was challenged to deny that she had contact with Russian sources while she was in charge of its accounts at the height of the Cold War.

The Times has learnt that concerns about her CND involvement are felt across countries from the former Iron Curtain now in the EU and that MEPs plan to question her about it when she appears before them for the hearing to confirm her in her post.

But don’t worry, finally no mercy will be shown to humans, the WHO promises.

Margaret Chan, of the World Health Organisation, warned that “no mercy” would be shown for humans’ mistakes over climate change.

And back to Sheikh Hussein Obama, Israpundit has Ken Timmerman’s interview which charges that Obama is obstructing the progress of Iranian pro-democracy groups

In the interview, Rahman Haj Ahmadi accuses the Obama administration of thwarting negotiations among Iranian pro-democracy groups that were on the verge of creating a united opposition front that could have led to the collapse of the Islamic regime during this summer’s post-election turmoil.

Those negotiations were on the verge of success, Haj Ahmadi told me – until the Obama administration inexplicably placed his group on the terrorism list on Feb. 4, 2009. The U.S. action “made the other groups afraid to work with us, for fear of U.S. government reprisals.”

You will also find in the story a link to some of my earlier reporting from the PJAK training camps in northern Iraq. Far from being a terrorist group, PJAK is dedicated to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic regime in Iran and its replacement by a pro-Western, secular, united Iran that recognizes the rights of all its citizens.

At the Copenhagen Post, a study shows that Muslim immigrants are importing anti-semitic attitudes into Europe. Shocker.

Of course the same thing is happening in the US as well, and not just with Muslims either.

Meanwhile Mikey Weinstein is back. Back in the day I caught some flack for taking Mikey Weinstein apart and demonstrating that he was actually a left wing activist, trying to tout his time in the Reagan Administration and supposed defense of Jews in the military to mainstream his credentials. In fact Weinstein is part of a left wing agenda, and now part of a pro-Muslim agenda too, piggybacking on the Fort Hood shootings to try and give Nidal Hassan some help with his alibi.

Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s alleged killing of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood is inexcusable and reprehensible. But he believes that it’s important to investigate reports of harassment that Hasan said he faced as a Muslim in the military, which might have contributed to his mental state.

“There’s enough out there” to look into, said Weinstein. “I’m not excusing him, but did it affect him, or was he just a maniac to begin with?”

Weinstein cited media reports quoting Hasan’s family, saying that someone had put a diaper in his car and told him, “That’s your headdress,” and that a camel was drawn on his car with the words, “Camel jockey, get out!”

Weinstein also provided a letter, with the name withheld, from a Muslim woman and wife of a member of the military, in which she described how her best friend on the base, immediately after the shooting, told her that “Muslims shouldn’t even be allowed in the U.S. Army,” and that she repeatedly heard things like, “Go back to your country” and “F—-ing Muslims,” as she shopped at the base commissary.

Weinstein, who spent 10 years in the Air Force as a military attorney, or JAG, said that he also doesn’t believe that Hasan’s colleagues hesitated to report his changes in behavior because of political correctness. In fact, he claimed, Hasan’s superiors would have been sympathetic to hearing such charges because of their strong Christian beliefs.

Weinstein would like to see military leaders make an “unadulterated clarion call” that Americans shouldn’t “paint all of Islam with a broad brush,” as well as emphasize a “zero tolerance policy” of any religious harassment.

Any Jewish newspaper that runs Mikey Weinstein’s op eds slash infomercials should know exactly what they’re getting into. His organization is backed by non-Jewish left wing activists. It is not about religious freedom, but about promoting their agenda. It is not a Jewish organization, but another tentacle of the myriad of left wing organizations strangling America.

Meanwhile at Joshuapundit, my article Obama Goes Mao, on Obama’s betrayal of Taiwain, was nominated for the watcher’s council. Header cartoon comes courtesy of Jew With a View.

The American Spectator : The Man Who Despises America

The American Spectator : The Man Who Despises America.

By Mark Hyman on 11.11.09 @ 6:09AM

The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the “they’ve-lost-all-touch-with-reality” crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother’s basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news’ resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC’s Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I’ll say it.

Barack Obama despises America.

When people who voted for Obama in 2008 — including registered Democrats — start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it “in for America,” then it’s clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.

The central conviction of Obama’s ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world’s ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.

The 30-years of Obama’s post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.

Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.

Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life’s accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.

Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader’s most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.

Obama’s view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.

Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.

Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused “America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward its European allies.

He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.

Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA “torture memos,” seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.

In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation’s long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.

Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua’s Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere’s other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?

Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.

In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.

In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation’s founders were devout Christians.

In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America’s history of slavery; for “sacrificing [American] values;” for “hasty decisions” in the war on terror; for “America’s standing in the world;” for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.

He pronounced Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities. Obama’s approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.

This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran’s election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.

In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister’s requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.

Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.

Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “Tear down this wall!” Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. — or even the West, for that matter — in bringing down the wall, instead crediting “a world that stands as one.”

Obama’s disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and “truther” who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush’s Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)

Three weeks after America’s first black president was sworn in, the nation’s first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America “a nation of cowards” for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder’s comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.

Obama’s Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.

One of Obama’s very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He’s all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.

Hours after a belligerent “African-American Studies” Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having “acted stupidly” and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.

Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama’s motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.

In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was “shocked and outraged by the murder” of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a “heinous act of violence.” Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.

But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was “saddened” without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.

Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military’s Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.

The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.

CAIR speaker to Muslims: OK to attack Fort Bragg

CAIR speaker to Muslims: OK to attack Fort Bragg.

MUSLIM MAFIA
CAIR speaker to Muslims: OK to attack Fort Bragg
Exhorts Islamic faithful to target planes carrying ‘82nd Airborne’

---

A “state within a state” could that be what the President mean by saying that we have 57 states?

 

Posted: November 11, 2009
1:48 am Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

 

Imam Zaid Shakir

A Council on American-Islamic Relations adviser and regular speaker at its events has suggested Islamic law permits Muslims to attack C-130 military transport planes carrying the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, N.C., according to a stunning new book exposing Washington-based CAIR’s inner workings.

Radical Islamic cleric Zaid Shakir, a frequent guest speaker at CAIR events, tells his Muslim audiences: “Jihad is physically fighting the enemies of Islam to protect and advance the religion of Islam. This is jihad.”

Acceptable targets of jihad, he says, include U.S. military aircraft.

“Islam doesn’t permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people,” Shakir once told a Muslim audience. However, “If you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that’s something else.”

The 82nd Airborne Division’s elite paratroopers fly out of Fort Bragg, N.C., which is part of North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw’s district. Shaw is CAIR’s new chairman.

The recording of the lecture, which Shakir gave earlier this decade to a Muslim audience in the San Francisco Bay area, was obtained by the authors of the bestselling “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.”

The bombshell revelation comes in the wake of the worst military massacre at a domestic U.S. military base in American history, and the worst Islamic terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

Last week, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly gunned down in cold blood more than 50 of his fellow soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan from Fort Hood, Texas. Eyewitnesses say before opening fire, Hasan jumped up on a desk and screamed, “Allahu akbar!” like the 9/11 hijackers. The suspect fatally shot 13, including a security guard. The death toll is actually 14 when a slain unborn child is counted.

Imam Shakir also gives his blessing to the use of bombs as a weapon of jihad, as long as the explosives hit “select” targets and are not indiscriminate in their destruction. Civilians can be a legitimate target, he says, if “there’s a benefit in that,” according to “Muslim Mafia,” co-authored by former federal agent P. David Gaubatz and investigative journalist Paul Sperry, author of “Infiltration.”

Even “old elderly men” and “women who are conscripted” – including Israeli and American women in uniform – are eligible enemy combatants in jihad. “This is Shariah,” Shakir asserts in a CD recording of one of his lectures in 2001, which the authors obtained from a radical mosque bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Shakir, a black convert, has been portrayed as a moderate in the mainstream media, including the New York Times, which recently ran a positive profile of him. His pro-jihad statements revealed in “Muslim Mafia” have not been previously reported. CAIR has sued and obtained a temporary restraining order to censor the book’s documentary evidence detailing CAIR’s support of terrorism and obstruction of FBI investigations.

Longtime CAIR advisory board member and chief fundraiser Siraj Wahhaj echoes his friend Shakir’s interpretation of jihad.

“If we go to war, brothers and sisters – and one day we will, believe me – that’s why you’re commanded [to fight in] jihad,” the imam has told his flock in Brooklyn. “When Allah demands us to fight, we’re not stopping and nobody’s stopping us.”

World Trade Center bombing

CAIR has invited Shakir back to speak at its events even after the FBI questioned him about a copy of one of his incendiary pamphlets found in the apartment of a suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing. The pro-jihad pamphlet lauded the “armed struggle” that brought about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are dying in record numbers from Taliban and al-Qaida ambushes.

Shakir, who recently confided to the New York Times that he’d like to see the U.S. “become a Muslim country” ruled by Islamic law, is a regular speaker at CAIR as well as Islamic Society of North America events. (Federal prosecutors say CAIR and ISNA are fronts for the terrorist group Hamas and its parent the radical Muslim Brotherhood, and the sister organizations were recently listed as unindicted terrorist co-conspirators in the largest terror finance case in U.S. history.) Recently, Shakir helped host workshops and delivered keynote speeches at banquets held at CAIR chapters in Chicago, Orlando and San Diego, among others.

“Imam Zaid’s speeches are very practical and bring the best out of his listeners,” said former CAIR official Ibrahim Moiz, a close personal friend who invited Shakir to speak to Muslims in Maryland, according to “Muslim Mafia.”

The cleric has not tempered his jihadist views.

“I don’t regret anything I’ve done or said,” Shakir has insisted.

Shakir holds little, if any, respect for law enforcement, particularly the FBI, according to “Muslim Mafia.” He constantly belittles the bureau in speeches to Muslims, even warning them that the FBI frames Muslims for terrorism – terrorist acts that he contends the FBI secretly commits.

“The World Trade Center bombing of course was aided and abetted by our good friends at the FBI,” the imam has claimed, in just one of the many wild-eyed conspiracy theories he peddles.

‘State within a state’

The American Muslim cleric also preaches treason against the United States, according to the book, which hit No. 5 on Amazon.com’s non-fiction best-seller list the day after it was released last month. It currently ranks No. 1 in books on terrorism and Islam.

Shakir advises the Muslim community in America to wage a cultural jihad now, and a violent jihad later – once the proper “infrastructure” is in place.

He says Muslims should respect American democracy insofar as it can be exploited to help the Brotherhood one day assume power here.

And the only thing that could stop the Islamization of America, he notes, is if its people rose up and denied the subversive movement the unbridled freedom it’s heretofore enjoyed.

However, if Americans were to do that, Muslims would then be obligated, he says, to exercise their supposedly “divine legal right” to rise up and wage violent jihad, reveals the book “Muslim Mafia.”

“What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims,” sermonized Shakir, who continues to be a marquee speaker at CAIR functions.

For now, he said, following the radical Muslim Brotherhood playbook, Muslims must continue to “create a state within a state.”

Neighbor: Fort Hood suspect emptied his apartment – Yahoo! News

By JEFF CARLTON and MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writers Jeff Carlton And Mike Baker, Associated Press Writers – 25 mins ago

FORT HOOD, Texas – An Army psychiatrist suspected of opening fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood cleaned out his apartment in the days before the rampage that left 13 people dead, a neighbor said Friday.

The neighbor, Patricia Villa, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came over to her apartment Wednesday and Thursday and offered her some items, including a new Quran, saying he was going to be deployed on Friday. She wasn’t sure if he was going to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Authorities said Hasan went on a shooting spree later Thursday at the sprawling Texas post. He was among 30 people wounded in the spree and remained hospitalized on a ventilator Friday. All but two of the injured were still hospitalized, and all were in stable condition.

Investigators were still trying to piecing together how and why an Army psychiatrist facing deployment allegedly gunned down his comrades in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base.

“This was an individual who took it upon himself to attack and murder his colleagues, people who were on the base with him,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Sky News from Brussels, Belgium. “That investigation is under way by law enforcement authorities, and let’s let that be the No. 1 priorty in terms of ascertaining what motivations he had.”

Officials at the post hospital where Hasan worked said they weren’t aware of any problems with his job performance.

One of Hasan’s bosses praised his work ethic and said he provided excellent care for his patients.

“Up to this point I would consider him an asset,” said Col. Kimberly Kesling, deputy commander of clinical services at Darnall Army Medical Center.

She described Hasan as “a quiet man who wouldn’t seek the limelight.”

An imam from a mosque Hasan regularly attended said Hasan, a lifelong Muslim, was a committed soldier, gave no sign of extremist beliefs and regularly wore his uniform at prayers.

Soldiers who witnessed the rampage reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — an Arabic phrase for “God is great!” — before opening fire, said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander. He said officials had not yet confirmed that Hasan made the comment before the shooting spree.

Hasan’s family said in a statement Friday that his alleged actions were “despicable and deplorable” and don’t reflect how the family was raised.

Villa, who recently moved next door to Hasan, said she had never spoken to him before he came over to her apartment.

She said Hasan gave her frozen broccoli, spinach, T-shirts and shelves on Wednesday, then returned Thursday morning and gave her his air mattress, several briefcases and a desk lamp. He then offered her $60 to clean his apartment Friday morning, after he was supposed to leave.

The motive for the shooting wasn’t clear, but someone who used to work with Hasan said he had expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Retired Col. Terry Lee told Fox News said Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars.

But another neighbor said Hasan appeared to be OK with his pending deployment, which he said was supposed to be to Afghanistan.

“I asked him how he felt about going over there, with their religion and everything, and he said, `It’s going to be interesting,’” said Edgar Booker, a 58-year-old retired soldier who now works in a cafeteria on the post.

Col. Steve Braverman, the Fort Hood hospital commander, said early Friday that Hasan was on deployment orders to Afghanistan. A military official later told The Associated Press that Hasan was to be deployed to Iraq. It was not immediately possible to verify the discrepancy.

The military official, who did not have authorization to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, said Hasan had indicated he didn’t want to go to Iraq but was willing to serve in Afghanistan.

Cone said authorities have not yet been able to talk to Hasan, but interviews with witnesses went through the night.

As some of the wounded began to recover, tales of heroic action during the shooting spree emerged.

Base officials lauded an officer, Kimberly Munley, who shot the gunman and was wounded herself.

“She happened to encounter the gunman. In an exchange of gunfire, she was wounded but managed to wound him four times,” Cone said. “It was an amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer.”

Cone said some 300 soldiers had been lined up to get vaccinations and have their eyes tested at a Soldier Readiness Center when the shots rang out. He said one soldier who had been shot told him, “I made the mistake of moving and I was shot again.”

Sgt. Andrew Hagerman said before the first ambulance even arrived, soldiers were tearing off their clothes to help the wounded.

“You had people without tops on. You had people ripping their pant legs off,” said Hagerman, a military policeman from Lewisville, Texas.

Hagerman said he saw Hasan laying on the ground receiving medical assistance for a gunshot wound as responders tried to get his handcuffs off to better treat him.

Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of “friendly fire,” that in the confusion at the shooting scene some of the responding military officials may have shot some of the victims.

Cone acknowledged that it was “counterintuitive” that a single shooter could hit so many people, but he said the massacre occurred in “close quarters.

“With ricochet fire, he was able to injure that number of people,” Cone said. He said authorities were investigating whether Hasan’s weapons were properly registered with the military.

The wounded were dispersed among hospitals in central Texas, Cone said. Their identities and the identities of the dead were not immediately released.

Friday was designated a day of mourning at Fort Hood. There also will be a ceremony at the air base to honor the dead.

For six years before reporting for duty at the Texas post in July, Hasan worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing a career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. The Army major received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.

But his record wasn’t sterling. At Walter Reed, he received a poor performance evaluation, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. And while he was an intern, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.

Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md., said “I got the impression that he was a committed soldier.” He said Hasan attended prayers regularly at the mosque in Silver Spring, Md., and was a lifelong Muslim. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan’s aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and he wanted out of the Army.

“Some people can take it and some people cannot,” she said. “He had listened to all of that and he wanted out of the military.”

At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.

FBI agents who searched Hasan’s apartment early Friday seized his computer, a law enforcement official said. It was not immediately known if they found anything suspicious on his computer files.

A military official said investigators were sifting through materials Hasan carried with him during the shooting and evidence left in his vehicle, which was found parked at the base.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation

___

Baker reported from Killeen, Texas. Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes, Devlin Barrett, Brett J. Blackledge and Eileen Sullivan in Washington, April Castro in Killeen and Matt Curry in Dallas contributed to this report.

via Neighbor: Fort Hood suspect emptied his apartment – Yahoo! News.

Pelosi Plan Makes Millions of People Pay Fines

Pelosi Plan Makes Millions of People Pay Fines

Monday, November 2, 2009 9:39 AM

By: Ernest Istook Article Font Size

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s healthcare plan presumes that about 8-14 million American workers will pay fines rather than buy health insurance. Unless they do, there’s a $167-billion hole in her financing plan and everything falls apart.

Like the rest of us, this group would face higher-than-ever insurance prices under Pelosi’s proposed bill.

Speaker Pelosi, President Obama, and others claim they will make coverage cheaper, yet the official projection relies upon millions who would prefer to pay fines rather than join their system. In some cases the individuals would pay the penalty; in others their employers would pay; and sometimes both.

The estimate of 8-14 million who would be fined is based on the official projections made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The plan is built around a major contradiction. Only if it fails to make insurance more affordable would the bill generate the promised $167-billion by fining people who would still remain uninsured.

Why would this happen? Because insurance would become more expensive if the legislation passes, thus increasing the disincentives to buy coverage.

Premiums under the new government-run “public option” will probably be higher than from private insurance, according to the CBO (page 6 of its report). The Associated Press reports that “premiums in the public plan would be higher than the average for private plans.” Rather than inducing private carriers to lower their premiums, other experts agree that private insurance will also be costlier under Pelosi’s plan, as insurers pass along the bill’s tax increases.

Yet Speaker Pelosi claims the measure will bring “lower costs for every patient” by “lowering healthcare costs for all of us.” President Obama campaigned on a promise that the plan would save families $2,500 a year in lower premiums. He doesn’t mention that figure anymore.

The exact number of those who will pay fines is unknown, but it is huge. Here’s how the projection of 8-14 million was calculated, based on the CBO report:

• It starts with the finding by the CBO that $167 billion in penalties would be paid in the next 10 years — $135 billion by employers who don’t provide insurance and $32 billion by workers who don’t buy it. For companies, it’s an 8 percent payroll tax; for individuals it’s a convoluted formula that comes out to about 2-2.5 percent of income.

• CBO concluded that by 2019, the employer tax would generate $27 billion a year. Since that’s 8 percent, it represents a tax on $340 billion in wages. If aan average wage were $40,000, that would represent 8.4 million workers for whom fines would be paid.

 

• CBO also says by 2910 the annual fines paid by individuals would be about $6 billion per year. If their average wage were $40,000, it would represent 6-million tax filers (individuals and couples) paying the penalty.

 

• There would be overlap between the groups, so the total paying the penalty should be in the 8-14 million worker range — akin to about 1 worker in every 10 nationwide.

 

For this group of uninsured, the Pelosi plan makes them pay a lot and get little or nothing.

 

This is not a “millionaire’s tax.” It’s a tax on the uninsured. According to The New York Times, these tend to be “the working poor.”

 

Only a fraction of these Americans might receive some form of subsidy or assistance under the Pelosi plan. Yet sponsors claim they will finance the plan by collecting $167 billion in taxes from the uninsured! It contradicts the very premise of the legislation.

 

While attention has focused on the “public option” provision, the notion of collecting billions of dollars from millions of Americans — and still leaving them uninsured — is a serious wrong that deserves serious attention.

 

Ernest Istook, a former U.S. congressman from Oklahoma, is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation. This article is cross posted from The Foundry.

via Pelosi Plan Makes Millions of People Pay Fines.

Document sheds light on ethics probe in Congress – washingtonpost.com

Document sheds light on ethics probe in Congress – washingtonpost.com.

By Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 2, 2009

 

 After years of criticism that congressional lawmakers were reluctant to investigate their colleagues, the disclosure in recent days of a sensitive document from the House ethics committee offers the contradictory portrait of a panel actively pursuing a range of probes even as Democrats under scrutiny remain in positions of power.

This Story

• Bad news for Democrats in revelation of ethics probes

The 22-page document revealed that the ethics committee, as of late July, was looking into the activities of at least 19 lawmakers, including reviews of home mortgages and interviews about corporate-backed trips for members of Congress to Caribbean resorts. Combined with the inquiries being conducted by a new ethics office, the document showed a far more robust set of investigations than previously revealed.

But the document also brings potential political peril for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose party claimed the majority in November 2006 after she promised to “drain the swamp” of corruption on Capitol Hill. Two and a half years into Pelosi’s reign, more than 25 Democrats have been targeted for ethics reviews by the two ethics bodies, while just seven Republicans appeared to be under scrutiny, according to the document.

Republicans have criticized Pelosi for declining to take away power from close allies such as Reps. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). Both are powerful chairmen who were previously known to be under investigation, but the new document offered greater detail about those probes.

Rangel said in an interview he was interviewed by the ethics committee about a trip he took to a Caribbean resort that may have been underwritten by corporate interests. Such privately financed trips were forbidden under rules Pelosi pushed shortly after taking over in 2007. Rangel said the interview did not cover other allegations about his personal finances.

Release of the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a source with no connection to the ethics committee or Congress, provided an unexpected window into the inner workings of the committee, which has operated in secrecy for decades.

The scope of its activities provided a counterpoint to critics who have questioned whether the panel — made up of six Democrats, six Republicans and a staff of fewer than 10 lawyers — has taken its work seriously. Ethics watchdogs, who have spent more than a decade pummeling the House and Senate ethics committees, offered rare praise for the House panel and the new Office of Congressional Ethics.

“Both groups are seriously pursuing their ethics responsibilities at this stage,” six groups said in a joint statement.

But the revelations have also triggered new sensitivities for the ethics committee, which is formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Some lawyers have privately wondered whether the disclosures could damage cases the committee was pursuing. And lawmakers questioned the panel’s professionalism for allowing a now-dismissed junior staffer to take the document home and accidentally load it onto a computer that was using peer-to-peer technology, opening all her files to everyone logged into that network.

The leaders of the ethics committee,  Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and  Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) alerted colleagues Thursday evening and cautioned that some newly revealed cases could just be cursory reviews by staff members. However, the nearly three dozen cases in the confidential report come under the heading “Investigative Issues of Significance.”

Watchdog work

The document covered every activity undertaken by the ethics committee staff for the week of July 27, revealing a hefty workload ranging from complex legal work to mundane requests from congressional staff. One lawyer, for example, fielded 21 phone calls from aides seeking guidance on House rules, reviewed 43 travel requests for staff members or lawmakers hoping to be in sync with chamber rules and reviewed seven financial disclosure forms.

A senior aide to House  Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) asked whether a lawmaker and aide, while visiting a private ranch on a fact-finding trip, could accept horseback rides from the owner so they could traverse the massive ranch. That was ap proved by a committee lawyer.

 

The chief of staff for  Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) asked if it was permissible to use official congressional e-mail to alert citizens outside his eastern Iowa district to lobby other members of Congress on a particular issue. Staff rejected this request, saying it would break the “prohibition on members conducting and assisting outside lobbying of Congress.”

This Story

• Bad news for Democrats in revelation of ethics probes

Committee inquiries rarely become public, only at the most serious stages. Some reprimands are private. Only in recent years has the committee published biannual reports documenting the number of ongoing investigations.

The system is meant to protect innocent lawmakers from the political fallout of being identified as under investigation in cases that are not substantial, according to Robert Walker, a former counsel for the House and Senate ethics committees. He rejected criticism that the panel did not conduct enough inquiries.

“The House ethics committee has historically engaged in a number of ongoing investigations on a regular basis. Many groups may not be willing to acknowledge that, but they did occur,” he said.

A new ethics enforcer

Most watchdog groups credited a spike in committee activity to the Office of Congressional Ethics, a semi-independent body that conducts investigations and makes recommendations to the full ethics committee. Only the committee retains the power to punish a lawmaker.

The OCE’s creation came after a more than yearlong negotiation between Pelosi and many Democrats and Republicans who objected to a new ethics body.

Now in its first year of existence, the OCE operates with a mandate of speedy probes and public dissemination of information. It is run by a former federal prosecutor who helped send Enron executives to prison and a former Air Force prosecutor who tried terrorists.

The newly released document hints at the uneasy coexistence of the ethics committee and OCE. That relationship hit a bump last week after the committee dismissed a potential case referred from the ethics office.

OCE investigators had found that a Republican lawmaker probably broke rules by inviting his wife’s business partner to testify at a hearing, but the ethics committee unanimously dismissed the case and rebuked the OCE for misunderstanding House rules.

The most persistent critics of the ethics committee said the decision was more evidence of lawmakers declining to police their colleagues. But they also expressed mixed emotions after release of the document.

“We were pleasantly surprised to learn the ethics committee is investigating so many members of Congress, but starting an investigation isn’t enough. The real question is whether any of the members under investigation will ever be held accountable for their conduct,” said Melanie Sloan, founder of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

 

Former senator Edward Brooke receives Congressional Gold Medal – washingtonpost.com

By Ann Gerhart

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The crisp cadence of a fife-and-drum corps reverberated through the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday morning, the august room packed with nearly 500 people craning their necks to see the remarkable tableau arranged on a stage before them.

There sat Edward William Brooke III, who grew up in a segregated neighborhood not far from the Capitol, fought in a segregated Army in World War II and returned to Washington in 1967, the first African American elected to the Senate by popular vote — and on this day, the recipient of the highest honor Congress can bestow, the Congressional Gold Medal.

And there sat President Obama, whose stunning electoral journey to the White House seemed no more improbable than the one made four decades earlier by the 90-year-old man who sat beside him, a black Protestant Republican who won in the overwhelmingly white, Catholic, Democratic state of Massachusetts. After Obama heralded Brooke for a life spent “breaking barriers and bridging divides,” the two men embraced tightly. It was a reminder of how much this country has changed in their lifetimes.

Brooke is a tall and expressive man, unstooped by age, quick to smile and careful to put others at ease. His voice carries more of his youth at Shaw Junior High than his adulthood in Boston. On Wednesday, he wore a gold-striped tie and a dark jacket. And he turned his full charisma on  Nancy Pelosi, noting, with some wonderment, “now the speaker of the House is . . . a . . . lady!”

In his two terms in the Senate, Brooke took up the causes of low-income housing, increasing the minimum wage and furthering mass transit. He took on big tobacco. A strong proponent of civil rights from his days as Massachusetts’s attorney general, he was a lonely Republican voice against school segregation and for reproductive rights for women. Eventually, he took on his own president. Brooke, noted  Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) on Wednesday, introduced legislation to name a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, and he became the first senator in either party to call for President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation.

Such a coalition-builder was Brooke, Obama said, that his “fan base includes Gloria Steinem,  Barney Frank and  Ted Kennedy — as well as  Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush,” who awarded Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004.

“He didn’t care whether a bill was popular or politically expedient, Democratic or Republican — he cared about whether it helped people, whether it made a difference in their daily lives,” Obama said.

Brooke’s way was “to ignore the naysayers, reject the conventional wisdom and trust that ultimately, people would judge him on his character, his commitment, his record and his ideas,” the president said. “He ran for office, as he put it, ‘to bring people together who had never been together before.’ And that he did.”

It was a far different time, of course. A third of the Republican caucus was considered liberal or moderate. The South was still a Democratic stronghold.

Wednesday was the first time Brooke had met the president. When Obama entered the Senate, the two men talked on the phone once. They exchanged their books, “each with kind inscriptions,” Brooke said in an interview. “He wrote, ‘You paved the way for us’ or something like that, and I said something like, ‘You are a worthy bearer of the torch.’ “

He is proud of what Obama has accomplished, he said. “What really pleases me is that he is trying his best and succeeding with what he said he would do. The problem people have with politicians is that they say what they are gonna do, and that is the end of it.”

Brooke added that he was particularly touched that Obama signed legislation Wednesday that extends protection from hate crimes to gay men and lesbians, a cause he first advanced in the 1960s.

Brooke said the two men “share a pragmatism” that enabled each of them to vault over old fears. When he first sought statewide office as attorney general, he said, “I heard it: ‘White voters will never vote for you.’ And I would say: ‘We’ve been voting for whites all these years. I can’t see any reason why, if the candidate has integrity and intelligence and commitment and ideas, he can’t be elected to statewide office.’ “

Brooke, too, angered supporters who thought he was not moving quickly enough or speaking loudly enough as the lone black member of the Senate.

But, he said: “While I could rabble-rouse in my time, I made a lot of enemies by saying, ‘I am not a civil rights leader, I am a politician. They are doing their job, and I welcome it. My job is to be a legislator, and to get things done in the Congress.’ “

In a period of about 10 years after the Civil War, the Mississippi legislature voted twice to send black men to the Senate. In 1913, the 17th Amendment allowed voters to elect their senators directly. Only four African Americans have served in the Senate in the nearly 100 years since then: Brooke, Carol Moseley Braun, Obama and Obama’s successor from Illinois, Roland W. Burris, who was controversially appointed by the governor.

After he lost his bid for a third term and left the Senate, Brooke practiced law in Washington and became chairman of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. After he received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2002, he spoke out to raise awareness of the disease in men.

On Wednesday, Brooke discussed the things he believes Congress still must do. As sunlight glinted through the windows high in the marble dome, he talked from the stage about the halting economy, multiple wars and “people who still are hungry, who still are homeless,” and he charged his former colleagues to get busy.

And then, he displayed a flash of the fortitude he used when cajoling fellow lawmakers. Using the license accorded to a man who has lived for 90 years, Brooke turned, fixed his eyes on McConnell and directly addressed the Senate Republican leader.

“We’ve got to get together,” Brooke lectured, with a smile. McConnell fidgeted. The crowd burst into applause, and McConnell joined in. “We have no alternative. There’s nothing left. It’s time for politics to be put aside on the back burner.”

 

via Former senator Edward Brooke receives Congressional Gold Medal – washingtonpost.com.

DPS trying to reduce wait times | KXAN.com

DL replacements must be done online or by mail

Updated: Monday, 19 Oct 2009, 2:07 PM CDT

Published : Monday, 19 Oct 2009, 11:40 AM CDT

Shane Allen

AUSTIN (KXAN) – The Texas Department of Public Safety announced changes Monday that officials said will reduce the time you’ll have to wait in line at the DMV.

Starting Oct. 29, those who need to re-instate their driver’s license or get a copy of their driving record will have to do it all online or mail it in. With this change, DPS officials said the agency will let its employees to focus on driver’s license renewals or issuing drivers permits or new licenses.

Visit the Web site to handle your driver’s license reinstatement or driving record. You can also renew your license there if you live in a participating county.

The service is $1 extra, but in a world where time is money, it could be worth it. DPS has offered eligible people the option of renewing their driver’s license or identification card over the internet since 2001.

Starting at the end of the month, it’ll be mandatory for people who meet the criteria.

You must be 18 years or older, within one year of the license or identification card expiring, and did not renew online, by mail or telephone at their last renewal.

You can also change your address, register their vehicle, file a driver record record request, pay driver responsibility surcharges or access the driver responsibility program on line.

Ineligible driver’s license and ID card holders include: Those who have expired, revoked, or suspended license or identification card, people with a provisional or commercial driver’s license and drivers 79 and older.

“The elimination of these services at Driver License offices will not change the processing time for driver records or driver license re-instatement, which will remain at seven to 10 business days,” said DPS spokesperson Tela Mange in a press release.

“However, customers should submit their paperwork in a timely fashion and keep a copy of the paperwork they have submitted.”

Only three of DPS’ driver’s license offices provide driving records and reinstatement services – Houston on Gessner, San Antonio on Universal City and Austin on Denson. Those three offices will not close. They’ll still remain open for other driver’s license transactions.

This move comes after complaints this year with wait times at DPS offices. The department add that summer months were busy as usual but that a new $48-million computer system was plagued with problems.

via DPS trying to reduce wait times | KXAN.com.

October deadliest month for US in Afghan war – Yahoo! News

October deadliest month for US in Afghan war – Yahoo! News.

By TODD PITMAN and HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Writers Todd Pitman And Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writers – Tue Oct 27, 7:17 pm ET

KABUL – Roadside bombs — the biggest killer of U.S. soldiers — claimed eight more American lives Tuesday, driving the U.S. death toll to a record level for the third time in four months as President Barack Obama nears a decision on a new strategy for the troubled war.

The homemade bombs, also called improvised explosive devices or IEDs, are responsible for between 70 percent and 80 percent of the casualties among U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and have become a weapon of “strategic influence,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz in Washington.

The attacks Tuesday followed one of the deadliest days for the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan — grim milestones likely to fuel the debate in the United States over whether the conflict is worth the sacrifice.

Obama has nearly finished gathering information on whether to send tens of thousands more American forces to quell the deepening insurgency, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. A meeting Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be among the last events in the decision-making process, Gibbs said.

Both attacks Tuesday took place in the southern province of Kandahar, said Capt. Adam Weece, a spokesman for American forces in the south. The region bordering the Pakistan frontier has long been an insurgent stronghold and was the birthplace of the Taliban in the 1990s.

The Americans were patrolling in armored vehicles when a bomb ripped through one of them, killing seven service members and an Afghan civilian, U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said.

The eighth American died in a separate bombing elsewhere in the south, also while patrolling in a military vehicle, Vician said.

The number of effective IED attacks in Afghanistan has grown from 19 in September 2007 to 106 last month.

“It’s a weapon system that the enemy has figured out has strategic impact,” said Metz, who leads the U.S. military organization tasked with defeating improvised explosive devices. “It really hampers our ability to execute a counterinsurgency doctrine. And it’s a weapon system that has to be fought, and I don’t think we can back off or shy away from fighting it.”

Nine coalition forces were killed and 37 were wounded by IEDs in Afghanistan in September 2007. In September 2009, 37 coalition forces were killed and 285 were wounded by IEDs, according to the figures.

Several other Americans were wounded in the Tuesday blasts. The military said the deaths occurred during “multiple, complex” bomb strikes, but gave no details.

“Complex” attacks usually refer to simultaneous assaults from multiple sides with various weapons — including bombs, machine guns and grenades or rockets.

In Washington, a U.S. defense official said at least one of the attacks was followed by an intense firefight with insurgents after an initial bomb went off. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.

The casualties bring to 55 the total number of Americans killed in October in Afghanistan. The next highest toll was in August, when 51 U.S. soldiers died and the troubled nation held the first round of its presidential election amid a wave of violence.

By comparison, the deadliest month of the Iraq conflict for U.S. forces was November 2004, when 137 Americans died during a major assault to clear insurgents from the city of Fallujah.

“A loss like this is extremely difficult for the families as well as for those who served alongside these brave service members,” said Navy Capt. Jane Campbell, a military spokeswoman. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends who mourn their loss.”

The deaths came one day after 11 American soldiers were killed in separate helicopter crashes, marking the biggest loss of American life on a single day in four years.

One chopper went down in western Afghanistan as it left the scene of a gunbattle with insurgents. Seven soldiers were killed along with three Drug Enforcement Administration agents — the agency’s first deaths since it began operations here in 2005. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium and the trade is a major source of funding for insurgent groups.

Two other U.S. choppers collided while in flight in the south Monday, killing four Americans.

Casualties swelled at the start of the month when eight U.S. soldiers were killed Oct. 3. Several hundred militants had launched a coordinated attack on a pair of remote U.S. outposts in mountainous Nuristan province’s Kamdesh district. U.S. troops pulled out days later as part a new strategy by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to shut down difficult-to-defend posts and redirect forces toward larger population areas to protect more civilians.

Also Tuesday, NATO-led forces announced they had recovered the remains of three American military contractors from the wreckage of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane that crashed two weeks ago in Nuristan.

The trio was employed under a Lockheed Martin contract for “counter-narcoterrorism” operations, said Thomas Casey, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Corp. He said the pilot and co-pilot worked for a company called Avenge Inc., while the technician was employed by a contractor called Sierra Nevada Corp.

The Army C-12 Huron twin-engine turboprop went down Oct. 13 while on a routine mission. The military likely delayed announcing the crash site’s location because it did not want to tip off insurgents. Nuristan is believed to be crawling with anti-American militants.

U.S. forces spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the crew were the only ones aboard when the craft went down without giving off any distress signal. “We just lost contact,” Shanks told The Associated Press.

NATO it was investigating the crash and did not believe hostile fire was involved.

The military also said a UH-60 helicopter traveling to the crash site four days later “experienced a strong downdraft and performed a hard landing” nearby. The helicopter’s crew members were rescued, and the chopper was stripped of sensitive and useable parts and destroyed to keep insurgents from salvaging anything in the wreckage.

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Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt and Robert H. Reid in Kabul and Pauline Jelinek and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.