Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Pope Resigns

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Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, resigned today. The National Review posted an article reporting his resignation and the questions that arise from that resignation. The article points out that the demands of the office of Pope are such that a man suffering from some of the ailments of old age may not be suitable to remain in the position. Another question that arises from Pope Benedict’s resignation is how much input a living Pope should have in the choice of his successor.

The writer of the article describes Pope Benedict as the Church’s “doctrinal watchdog.” He compares him to Pope John XXIII:

Both were very aware that secularization has been a mounting tide. Both tried to shape the Church for dealing with it, not by focusing on its evils and condemning them, but by promoting a more effective proclamation of the Gospel.

…One can see Pope John XXIII’s deep faith and his desire to engage with modernity in Humanae Salutis, the apostolic constitution by which he formally convoked Vatican II on Christmas Day 1961. These same concerns animated his interventions during the Council. In my judgment, the strategy evident in that document, which is so dependent on solid faith and hope, has been the strategy of the Popes since John, perhaps especially of John Paul II but not least of all Benedict.

It is a wise man who knows when it is time to step aside and let someone else lead.

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When A Budget Cut Isn’t A Budget Cut

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Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about the current discussion on cutting the federal budget in order to deal with the growing deficit. Sequestration, which is seen as something that will seriously damage the American economy by most of Congress, is rapidly approaching; and because somehow the information has gotten out that the concept of sequestration was an idea created by the White House, there is an effort to prevent it from happening. There are a number of reasons to fight sequestration–despite the fact that defense and domestic spending does need to be cut, this is not a good time to compromise national defense. The Democrats are also screaming about the cuts to domestic spending. So the discussion continues, but it is not necessarily an honest discussion.

The article at Power Line lists some of the ‘targeting cuts’ the Democrats in Congress are praising:

But, as the Washington Post demonstrates, in practice “targeted cuts” frequently prove to be no cuts at all. Instead, they are a method through which legislators can claim to be slashing the budget while continuing to spend at the same levels as before.

Consider the $37.8 billion in “cuts” agreed to in 2011, proclaimed by President Obama as “the largest annual spending cut in our history.” The Post finds that package to be “an epic kind of Washington illusion, stuffed with gimmicks that made the cuts seem far bigger — and the politicians far bolder — than they actually were.”

For example, the Transportation Department took credit for “cutting” a $280 million tunnel that had been cancelled six months earlier and a $375,000 road project that had been created due to a typo on a road that didn’t exist.

Meanwhile, the Census Department took a $6 billion “cut” for not conducting the 2010 census in 2011. And Congress agreed, in the spirit of shared sacrifice, to “cut” $14.6 million by not spending money on a visitors center that had already been built.

These aren’t “smart” cuts, they are smart-ass ones.

Until each member of Congress is held responsible for their role in the runaway spending, the spending will continue. Until voters can easily learn how their Congressman or Congresswoman votes on spending issues, the runaway spending will continue and the budget deficits will continue to grow. At the current time, with low interest rates, about 15% of the money spent by the government goes to interest on the debt. This is the equivalent of paying the minimum on your credit card every month and wondering why you are going deeper into debt all the time. When interest rates increase, that number will rise sharply. Is this a burden we want to leave to our children as they grow up and inherit the country?

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Some Interesting Information About Benghazi

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The U. K. Daily Mail reported today:

‘Benghazi: The Definitive Report,’ published by William Morrow and Company, is due out in e-book on Tuesday. The authors, Webb and Murphy, are editors of SOFREP.com, a site devoted to news and stories written by current and former special operations commandos.

The book makes a lot of interesting charges about the fall from grace of General David Petraeus and exactly who orchestrated that fall, but it makes some even more interesting charges against CIA Director nominee John Brennan.

The article reports:

Murphy and co-author Brandon Webb also revealed that the September 11 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, was retaliation by Islamist militants who had been targeted by covert U.S. military operations.

The book claims that neither Stevens nor even Petraeus knew about the raids by American special operations troops, which had ‘kicked a hornet’s nest’ among the heavily-armed fighters after the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, had been authorizing ‘unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure,’ according to the e-book. Brennan is Obama’s pick to replace Petraeus as head of the CIA.

This is disturbing. The idea that there were ‘unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure’ is highly questionable. I don’t have a problem with the concept of secrecy, but the President is not entitled to run his own private army operations outside the structure of command. This is clearly unconstitutional. Not to inform the people who would be ultimately impacted by these operations is unthinkable.

The article further reports:

Webb and Murphy said they wrote the book to reveal ‘the truth’ behind the attack. They say news accounts of the incident have often been inaccurate because journalists have not had inside access to the people who were on the ground at the time.

The authors have been frustrated, they say, by politicians who have attempted to twist the facts of the case to suit their own ends. Conservatives sought to use the attack as an election issue and place the blame on Obama.

Democrats and the Obama administration have worked to deflect responsibility and downplay the warning signs that were present before the consulate was raided.

Webb and Murphy claim that the ‘inside’ story of the attack – as told by their connections in the CIA and special operations units of the military – show that Brennan never warned the CIA or Stevens about ongoing U.S. military operations in the country.

Had the State Department and the intelligence community known about what was happening, they would have stepped up security in Benghazi and could have prevented the tragedy.

The entire article makes me wonder about the fitness of John Brennan to be Secretary of Defense.

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When A Compromise Isn’t A Compromise

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On Thursday CNS News reported that Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had stated that the Catholic Church will not accept an offer by the Obama Administration that would exempt the Catholic Church from the Heath and Human Services (HHS) mandate on contraception, but not exempt Catholic business owners. The mandate forces employers to provide health insurance that covers sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs, all of which violate the tenets of Catholicism.

The article quotes Cardinal Dolan:

“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath,” said Cardinal Dolan. “We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”

We need to look at what is actually going on here. Oddly enough, this is not about money–it is about principle. The principle involved is simple, “Will the government allow people of faith to practice their faith outside the walls of their churches?” This is a very important argument. Right now the Obama Administration is targeting the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is one of the largest denominations in America, and many Catholics do not necessarily agree with the stand the Catholic Church has taken on abortion and birth control. Therefore it should be fairly easy to push that principle back inside the walls of the church. The idea here is to set a precedent. If Catholics can be forced to practice their religion only inside the walls of their church, who is next? What about Bible-believing churches who believe the Biblical teaching about homosexuality? Can they be forced to perform gay marriages? What about Bible-believing Christians who own businesses? Can they be forced to cater a homosexual wedding? That is where this is headed. The goal of the Obama Administration, for whatever reason, is to force believing Christians back into their churches. As Christian charities shut down (as Catholic adoption agencies were forced to do in Massachusetts), the government will exercise more control over the lives of the average American. This is not good for religious freedom or individual freedom in America.

As I stated, this is not about money. There are many affordable forms of birth control that are available–some through government agencies or planned parenthood. Most people of the age where this would be an issue spend more per month of their cell phones than they would or do on birth control. Money is not the issue–the freedom to practice your religion outside the walls of your church is.

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Regular Readers Of This Blog Know This, But Here It Is Again

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I  have periodically posted the YouTube video “Burning Down the House” on this website to remind people what actually caused the housing bubble as opposed to what they were being told caused the housing bubble. There is a reason I am posting it again.

In December 2012, a website called examiner.com posted a story with the headline, “New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies.” Sounds like the video at YouTube. The study was done by the National Bureau of Economic Research and released the week of December 21, 2012.

The article reports:

-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn’t go along with the left’s Affirmative Action lending policies…all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.

–Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left’s favorite blatantly partisan “fact-checkers,” Snopes, admits (while pretending to ‘set the record straight’).

If we are to remain a free people, we need to understand facts–not spin. The lies that have been told about the financial collapse of 2007 are astounding. Even worse is the fact that the Dodd-Frank legislation passed as a result of the collapse does not come anywhere near addressing the core issue.

The graph below from the National Bureau of Economic Research study shows the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act on mortgage lending:

It is time to change both the Washington culture and the media culture. Unless we do that fairly quickly, we will cease to exist as a free, prosperous nation.

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A Major Question About The Hagel Nomination

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There has been some reluctance on the part of Senator Hagel to reveal his financial supporters. There have been two recent articles at Breitbart.com regarding those supporters–one on Thursday by Ben Shapiro and one on Thursday by Joel B. Pollak.

The article by Mr. Pollak states that some of the financial supporters of Senator Hagel are very friendly to Hamas. One of Senator Hagel’s supporters is former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri.

Mr. Pollak reports:

Hariri, whose father Rafik Hariri was assassinated (likely by the Hezbollah terror group) in 2005, inherited his family fortune and emerged as a Sunni Muslim leader in Lebanon’s fractured ethnic-religious mosaic. He served as prime minister from late 2009 until early 2011, when Hezbollah’s political wing withdrew from his government amid controversy over its involvement in his father’s death. He now lives outside Lebanon in self-imposed exile.

The Hariri family has supported the Atlantic Council, a think tank Hagel chairs, and provided the funding for the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, which was launched in 2011 with Vice President Joe Biden in attendance. The Hariri Center’s stated purpose is to “promote innovative policies to advance economic and political liberalization, sustainable conflict resolution, and greater regional and international integration.”

Hariri is thought to be connected to Syrian opposition groups, even though as prime minister he attempted to improve relations with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. He is well-regarded by Western supporters–a fact that his local opponents sometimes use against him. Accusations–likely false, and probably planted by opponents–have even circulated that he is working with the Israel Defense Force to train anti-Hezbollah soldiers in Jordan.

Yet even the liberal-minded Hariri has expressed open hostility towards Israel, and has been at pains to show his support for Hamas, the predominantly Sunni Palestinian terror group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Ben Shapiro reports:

On Thursday, Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.”

Yesterday, 25 senators sent a letter to Hagel demanding information on his foreign funding. Hagel has refused all such requests, prompting the senators to state, “in the judgment of the undersigned, a Committee vote on your nomination should not occur unless and until you provide the requested information.”

Generally I believe that a President should be allowed to choose his own cabinet, but until the questions regarding Senator Hagel’s overseas friends are answered, I think this nomination should be put on hold.

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If The Truth Is Not Repeated Often Enough The Lie Will Take Over

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Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted an article with a quote from Dan Rather on the supposed National Guard documents concerning George W. Bush.

Dan Rather is quoted as saying:

Number 1 – the facts of case are not in dispute.

Number 2 – no one had ever established that the documents were forged (those who attack them argued that we didn’t do enough to demonstrate that they were not forged) The whole documents argument was a camouflage – what was described in the documents was factual. As for the trap argument — could have been, might have been but nobody has ever proven that. What I know, all I know, is we reported a true story. Whatever you think of the documents, facts are facts.

Yes, Mr. Rather, facts are facts. First of all, the charges against President Bush have never been proven. Second of all, the fact that the documents were forged has been proven.

The article includes comments by Font expert Thomas Phinney, who has built a career on typography:

I am on the left wing of the political spectrum, and I am also a typography expert who was quoted twice in the Washington Post about the memos, and approached by ABC News to get my opinion on the topic. TL;DR: they were blatant forgeries.

…The assertion that all the attacks on the Bush National Guard story were “partisan political” attacks is nonsense. I voted against Bush in both elections, and I donated money to his opponents. But that doesn’t change my assertion that the memos were clear forgeries. None of the hundreds of typographers who have come to one of my presentations has even tried to collect the $1000 reward I have repeatedly offered to anybody who can produce a device, available in 1972, that could have produced those memos. (The Selectric Composer and the IBM Executive typewriter are not plausible candidates, btw.)

It’s an old story, but I guess it needs to be retold occasionally. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” In this case at least we have the information to refute the lie.Enhanced by Zemanta

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Please have a safe night. I am done posting for the day because the lights are beginning to flicker and I am afraid of losing the internet. Stay safe.

The Testimony On Benghazi Only Gets Worse

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the testimony of Army Gen. Martin Dempsey during the Congressional hearings Thursday.

The testimony from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was telling:

“The United States military is not and should not be a global 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,” Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This was followed by the testimony of General Dempsey:

“Why didn’t you put forces in place to be ready to respond?,” Senator John McCain asked the general.

Dempsey started, “Because we never received a request to do so, number one. And number two, we –”

McCain interrupted, “You never heard of Ambassador Stevens’s repeated warnings?”

“I had, through General Ham,” responded Dempsey, referring to the commander of AFRICOM. “But we never received a request for support from the State Department, which would have allowed us to put forces–”

“So it’s the State Department’s fault?”

“I’m not blaming the State Department,” Dempsey responded.

Any American who is paying attention and has common sense knows that September 11 has become an important day for terrorists who want to attack America. It is also logical that terrorists would attack a ‘soft’ target–one that was not heavily defended. It is also obvious to Americans paying attention that the situation in Libya has not been stable since the revolution there. So the logical thing to do would have been to increase the security at Benghazi at least on a temporary basis. Instead, the brilliant minds at the State Department decreased security (Washington Times October 2012) in the weeks before September 11.

Four Americans died because the people in charge were not paying attention. It is extremely unfortunate that many of the same people were still in charge after the attack.Enhanced by Zemanta

Sometimes It’s Hard To Imagine How Some People Think

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Yesterday the Washington Examiner reported that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has suggested that military pay be cut in order to help with the budget cuts facing the Pentagon due to sequestration. This suggestion comes after President Obama signed an executive order raising the salary of Vice President Joe Biden and other federal officials.

The article reports:

“The President’s pay hike even increases the salary for federal employees who receive poor performance reviews from their own supervisors,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said when a group of lawmakers proposed legislation to reverse the pay increase. “As President Obama continues to say one thing and do another on deficit spending, it is appropriate for Congress to challenge his unilateral decision to spend $11 billion on non-merit based pay raises for federal workers.”

Secretary Panetta suggested that military salaries be limited to a one percent increase in 2014.

This is simply disgusting.

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The Scandal In New Jersey Grows

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Yesterday the Washington Post posted an article about Senator Robert Menendez and his relationship with Florida eye surgeon Salomon Melgen. The headline of the article reads, “Sen. Menendez contacted top officials in friend’s Medicare dispute.”

At the center of this controversy is a federal investigation into the billing practices of Dr. Melgen. The article details a history of federal inquiries into the billing records of Dr. Melgen culminating with an FBI raid on the doctor’s office at the end of January this year.

The article reports:

But a Menendez aide said Wednesday that the senator did not know Melgen was under formal investigation for possible fraud until the well-publicized raid last week.

“Senator Menendez was never aware of and has not intervened in any Medicare fraud investigation on behalf of Vitreo Retinal Consultants,” his office said in a statement.

The senator’s conversation with federal officials about Melgen’s case was unrelated to the current investigation, Menendez aides said.

“On a separate issue regarding Medicare reimbursement, he has in the past raised concerns with CMS about conflicting guidelines and ambiguity in CMS rules that are difficult for providers to understand and can lead to judgments after the fact,” the statement said. “His interest was in making sure providers were not penalized if CMS clarified or changed the rules of the game retroactively.”

Alan Reider, Melgen’s attorney, said Wednesday that his client has returned the government money in dispute but is contesting the CMS audit finding so he can reclaim the money. Reider said Melgen believes he was following Medicare guidelines. Reider added that Melgen was not aware that his practice was under investigation until federal agents arrived at his clinic last week.

At issue in the reimbursement dispute is Melgen’s multiple use of individual vials for eye injections to treat macular degeneration. Federal auditors have said Melgen often billed the government three to four times for injections from a single vial, according to two federal officials and lawyers familiar with the case.

The government’s Medicare program reimburses providers $2,000 for each vial, so Melgen was billing $6,000 to $8,000 for each vial.

There is also an incident in the article where another doctor criticized Dr. Melgen, and Dr. Melgen threatened the other doctor with a Medicare investigation.

There are a few aspects of this story. There is the salacious part about the underage girls and the private jet trips, but there is also the implication that Medicare fraud is a significant problem. I understand that a Medicare investigation is probably a major pain in the neck for a doctor, but it disturbs me that it could be used as a threat by a doctor who was seen as being able to carry out the threat. That really does not say a lot about the integrity of either our government or of Medicare.

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Altering The Facts To Get The Conclusion You Want

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In June 2012, I posted a story about a kindergarten graduation in in Gaza (rightwinggranny.com). The article included a picture of sweet little kindergarten children dressed in camouflage outfits carrying rifles. This is the picture:

Below is a sample of Palestinian media taken from YouTube:

.

Meanwhile, CBN News reported today that a research study funded by the United States State Department has said that that Palestinians do not teach their children to hate Israel at school and through the media.

The article at CBN states:

American, Israeli, and Palestinian researchers spent three years examining hundreds of textbooks to determine how the two sides portrayed themselves and each other. They called their report, “Victims of Our Own Narratives? Portrayal of the ‘Other’ in Israeli and Palestinian School Books.”

“As you know in the Oslo agreements, this was highlighted as a key issue, education for peace,” Dr. Bruce Wexler, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, told CBN News.

Wexler, Adwan, along with Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of research in child development and education at Tel Aviv University, presented their findings in Jerusalem on Monday.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad welcomed the research, saying the “conclusions are not in line with its standing pre-conceived positions.”

One interesting aspect of this study is that it charges that putting the 1972 Olympic Massacre in Israeli history books casts Palestinians in a negative light because the terrorists who killed the 11 Israeli athletes were Palestinian.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry Director General Yossi Kuperwasser is quoted in the article at CBN:

“I’m afraid that this report is going to be used in order to whitewash the Palestinians from the need to really tackle the major problem that prevents us from promoting peace here,” Kuperwasser said.

“And this is the ongoing Palestinian incitement for hatred, incitement for violence, for terror and the ongoing denial of the Palestinians of the rights of the other and the existence of the other, which is the Israelis and the Jews in this piece of land,” he added.

Until someone is willing to tell the truth about what is going on, there will not be peace.

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The 3 AM Telephone Call That Was Never Answered

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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is testifying before Congress today, and the Weekly Standard has posted some of that testimony.

The article reports:

Panetta said that Obama left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under seize, “up to us.”

In fact, Panetta says that the night of 9/11, he did not communicate with a single person at the White House. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Panetta said that, save their 5 o’clock prescheduled meeting with the president the day of September 11, Obama did not call or communicate in anyway with the defense secretary that day. There were no calls about the what was going on in Benghazi. He never called to check-in.

This is the video posted at YouTube::Enhanced by Zemanta

I have nothing to say.

Sorting Out The Truth In Congress

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UPI reported today that the statement by Harry Reid that Congress has already cut $2.6 trillion from projected future deficits by reducing non-defense programs alone is simply not true. Fact Check originally posted the story.

Fact Check reports:

Democratic claims of $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction refer not just to spending cuts. For example, President Obama said at a news conference on Jan. 14 that he had signed “a total of about $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the past two years.” But Obama included in that figure only $1.4 trillion in actual “spending cuts.”

Obama’s figure also included more than $600 billion in tax increases on upper-income individuals, which he signed Jan. 3. And it included about $500 billion in reduced interest payments, resulting from reduced future borrowing. A spokesman for Reid, whom we contacted by email, also conceded that Reid’s higher figure includes what he called “tax savings,” by which of course he means higher taxes.

The problem with cutting spending is part of the culture of Washington. Money equals power, and the more money Washington controls, the more power it feels it holds. Establishment politicians in both parties have learned that lesson well. Unless groups like the Tea Party bring new faces into Washington who refuse to enter into that culture, the runaway spending will continue, and Americans will be asked to turn over more and more of their hard-earned money.

If the American people want the runaway spending to stop, they need to make their voices heard at the ballot box. Just because someone has been in office for twenty years, they are not necessarily working for you!

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Common Sense In A Muslim Society

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The International Business Times reported today that Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Qandil has stated that the recent diarrhoea epidemics in rural Egypt are caused by breastfeeding women who were cleaning themselves properly before feeding their children.

The article states:

Qandil previously caused widespread anger by offering a bizarre solution to Egypt’s power crisis. He urged the Egyptians to wear cotton clothes and gather in a single room to conserve power.

Has anyone asked about the quality of the water the people in rural Egypt are drinking or bathing in? It’s obviously much easier to blame women.

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One Of The Questions Raised By Terrorism

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The successful assassination of Adolph Hitler would have been seen as a blessing. It would have saved many lives–German, British, European and American. Adolph Hitler was leading Germany into war with all of its neighbors and had plans for an even larger war. He needed to be stopped.

Life is a little less black and white when you are dealing with terrorist leaders. The average terrorist leader is not the head of a country, although there are a few exceptions. The average terrorist leader has followers, but there are not necessarily all located in one place. The average terrorist leader may not even be acknowledged as a terrorist–he may be perceived as a moderate Islamic leader. It really is difficult in a war on terror to tell the bad guys from the bystanders. That is part of what makes President Obama’s drone program such a major concern.

NBC News has posted an article about three drone killings that occurred in September 2011. All those killed were American citizens. Americans would be up in arms if Americans were killed overseas by other countries without proper jurisprudence, so why are we doing it ourselves?

The article reports:

Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed by a missile strike in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011, while al-Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman, was killed in the country just weeks later.

Anwar al-Awlaki posted anti-American sermons on the internet and encouraged terrorism by his followers. Major Nidal Hasan, who killed soldiers at Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” is said to be a follower of Anwar al-Awlaki. 

The article reports on al-Awlaki and Khan:

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, he ( Anwar al-Awlaki) became a popular spokesman for moderate Islam, and was often used to juxtapose perceptions that Islam is a religion that spreads hate.  But less than a decade later, he was hiding in Yemen as a name on the CIA’s kill list.

“I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim,” he said in an audio message in March 2010.    

Conversely, Khan was never interested in the peaceful side of Islam. The New York Times reports that as a teen, Khan’s attraction grew exponentially to militant sites on the Internet after 9/11. Parental concerns and intervention from community leaders proved unsuccessful. Khan was 25 when he died in Yemen.

My point is this. These men were killed without a trial for words they posted on the internet. They were not leaders of countries. Would it not have been better to take them alive and put them in Guantanamo to end their internet postings?

I believe in fighting terrorists; I just have a problem killing Americans because of what they say rather than what they do.Enhanced by Zemanta

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Exposed

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The Center for Security Policy posted an article on Thursday about a court case currently going on in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The case involves five former clients of CAIR who are alleging common law and statutory fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The case has to do with Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney” and “Manager for Civil Rights” at the now defunct CAIR-MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Virginia. Mr. Days was not an attorney and failed to provide legal services for CAIR clients.

The article reports:

…CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations, and the media. When CAIR did get irate calls from clients about Days’ failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived their clients about Days’ relationship to CAIR, suggesting he was never actually employed by CAIR, and even concealing the fact that CAIR had fired him once some of the victims began threatening to sue.

…The complaint also alleges that in addition to covering up the fraud scheme, CAIR forced angry clients who were demanding a return of their legal fees to sign a release that bought the client-victims’ silence by prohibiting them from informing law enforcement or the media about the fraud. According to the agreement, if the “settling” clients said anything to anyone about the fraud scheme, CAIR would be able to sue them for $25,000. This enforced code of silence left hundreds of CAIR’s victims in the dark such that to this day, they have not learned that Days was not an attorney and that he had not filed the legal actions on their behalf for which CAIR publicly claimed credit. Days has since died of a lung complication.

Mr. Yerushalmi (David Yerushalmi,  AFLC’s (American Freedom Law Center) co-founder and senior legal counsel) concluded, “Why this organization is allowed to exist as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization at all is mind-boggling.”

CAIR was also named as a Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the federal criminal trial and conviction of a terrorist funding cell organized around one of the largest Muslim charities, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). HLF raised funds for violent jihad on behalf of Hamas, and top CAIR officials were part of the conspiracy.

Hopefully this trial will put an end to the idea that CAIR is simply a Muslim public interest law firm.

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The Visit That Occurred After The F-16’s Were Delivered

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The Blaze is reporting today Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has visited Egypt and met with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi today. This is the first visit to Egypt by an Iranian leader since the 1979 Iranian revolution. The visit also occurred two days after Egypt received its shipment of F-16’s from America.

The article reports:

Though Egypt’s shifting alliances are unavoidably apparent, the United States is continuing to arm the country.  On Sunday U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson held a ceremony in Cairo to mark the arrival of four F-16 fighter jets from the United States.  Twenty in total are due to be delivered throughout 2013.

“Today’s ceremony demonstrates the firm belief of the United States that a strong Egypt is in the interest of the U.S., the region, and the world,” she declared.

According to the United States Embassy website, the U.S. has delivered 224 F-16 aircraft to Egypt.

It is interesting to me that the visit occurred after the planes were shipped. I really do question the wisdom of arming the present Egyptian government. This may easily be something we will regret later.

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Sometimes Going Green Has A High Price Tag

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Steven Hayward at Power Line posted an article today about the unintended consequences in cities and counties that have banned plastic bags in supermarkets. It seems that the use of cloth bags has caused some unintended problems.

The article quotes U. of Penn. Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper 13-2:

San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.

The article also quotes an article at Bloomberg.com:

Klick and Wright estimate that the San Francisco ban results in a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illnesses, or 5.5 more of them each year. They then run through a cost-benefit analysis employing the same estimate of the value of a human life that the Environmental Protection Agency uses when evaluating regulations that are supposed to save lives. They conclude that the anti-plastic-bag policies can’t pass the test — and that’s before counting the higher health-care costs they generate.

Back to the drawing board…

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The Results Of Sharia Law

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Sharia Law is the justice system of Islam. It discriminates against women in the way it regards the testimony of a man versus the testimony of a man, and it allows for honor killing–the murder of a family member for improper behavior. Sharia Law does not allow religious freedom and treats non -Islamic members of society (if it allows them to live) as second-class citizens. It prohibits Bibles, crosses and Christian literature. It also preaches anti-Semitism. It is the law of the land in Saudi Arabia, and soon may be the law of the land in Egypt.

One of the uglier sides of Sharia Law has recently come to light in Saudi Arabia. The Washington Examiner reported on Sunday that Fayhan al-Ghamdi, an Islamic cleric who killed his five-year-old daughter because he suspected that she was not a virgin, has been released from prison.

The article reports:

Saudi media reports say Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a frequent guest on Islamic TV programs, was arrested in November on charges of killing the girl. The reports said he questioned the child’s virginity.

Saudi media say he was freed last week after serving a short prison term and agreeing to pay $50,000 in “blood money” to avoid a possible death sentence.

That is the face of Sharia Law.

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Do Parents Have The Right To Know That The School Is Giving Their Children Drugs ?

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The New York Post posted an article on Saturday (updated today) about a program in the New York City schools that provides high school girls with birth control pills–including Plan B (the morning-after pill).

The article reports:

Last September, the city revealed it had started giving out Plan B and other birth control in the nurses’ offices of 13 high schools. At the time, officials said 567 girls had gotten Plan B.

But the birth-control blitz was much bigger than the city had acknowledged. About 40 separate “school-based health centers” doled out 12,721 doses of Plan B in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, according to the newly released data.

 About 22,400 students sought reproductive care from January 2009 through last school year, records show. Under state law, minors don’t need parental OKs to get contraceptives.

The article further reports:

The city says about 6,300 NYC girls under age 17 had unplanned pregnancies last year, and more than half had abortions. Of those who give birth, the city says, about 70 percent drop out of school, making their futures bleak.

Just for the record, the age of consent for sex in New York is seventeen. That means that the schools are giving out birth control to children who are not legally supposed to be having sex. So let me get this straight. There won’t be salt on my table at a restaurant in New York City because Mayor Bloomberg says it is bad for me. No restaurant can use transfat to fry food in New York City, and ‘big gulp’ sodas are illegal in New York City because Mayor Bloomberg says they are bad for me, but my daughter can obtain birth control or the morning after pill without my consent our without consulting me about any medical conditions that she may have.

The world has truly turned upside down.

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History Revealed

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There are lessons to be learned from history, and we ignore them at our peril. This month Elliott Abrams posted a story in Commentary Magazine with a lot of behind-the-scenes information about the Israeli bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the story.

The story begins:

In the middle of May 2007, we received an urgent request to receive Mossad chief Meir Dagan at the White House. Olmert asked that he be allowed to show some material to Bush personally. We headed that off with a suggestion that he first reveal whatever he had to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and to me; I was then the deputy national-security adviser in charge of the Middle East portfolio on the National Security Council. Vice President Dick Cheney joined us in Hadley’s office for Dagan’s presentation. What Dagan had was astonishing and explosive: He showed us intelligence demonstrating that Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor whose design was supplied by North Korea, and doing so with North Korean technical assistance. Dagan left us with one stark message: All Israeli policymakers who saw the evidence agreed that the reactor had to go away.

The article then details the meetings that followed, the fact that the existence of the site was successfully kept a secret from the American media, and the options debated as to the solution to the problem.

A conclusion was reached:

The arguments for going to the IAEA and UN seemed so flimsy to me, despite the length and detail of the planning memos and scenarios to which they gave rise, that I did not much worry about them. Who could believe these organizations would act effectively? Who could believe we would not be sitting there five years later entangled in the same diplomatic dance over the Syrian program that we were in with respect to Iran?

In the end, our near-perfect policy process produced the wrong result. At a final session in the gracious Yellow Oval Room at the Residence, Bush came down on Rice’s side. We would go to Vienna, to the IAEA; he would call Olmert and tell him what the decision was. I was astounded and realized I had underestimated Rice’s influence even after all this time. The president had gone with Condi.

The Israeli attack on the reactor made President Bush’s plan obsolete:

…We knew the Israelis would strike sooner or later. They acted, in the end, when a leak about the reactor’s existence was imminent and Syria might then have gotten notice that Israel knew of its existence. That would have given Assad time to put civilians or nuclear fuel near the site. The Israelis did not seek, nor did they get, a green or red light from us. Nor did they announce their timing in advance; they told us as they were blowing up the site. Olmert called the president on September 6 with the news.

As I had sat in the Oval Office on July 13, listening to his conversation with Olmert, I had wondered how the president would react to the Israeli action. With anger? Or more pressure? None of it. He heard Olmert out calmly and acknowledged that Israel had a right to protect its national security. After hanging up, the president said something like “that guy has guts,” in an admiring tone. The incident was over; the differences over al-Kibar would obviously not affect Bush’s relationship with Olmert or his view of Israel.

So quickly did he accept the Olmert decision that I wondered then, and do still, if the president did not at some level anticipate and desire this result. He had sided with Condi and shown that she was still in charge of Middle East policy, but her “take it to the UN” plan had been blown up along with the reactor. He did not seem very regretful. What is more, he instructed us all to abandon the diplomatic plans and maintain absolute silence, ensuring that Israel could carry out its plan.

The paragraph below provides food for thought in our current dealings with the Arab world:

A very well-placed Arab diplomat later told us that the strike had left Assad deeply worried as to what was coming next. He had turned Syria into the main transit route for jihadis going to Iraq to kill American soldiers. From Libya or Indonesia, Pakistan or Egypt, they would fly to Damascus International Airport and be shepherded into Iraq. Assad was afraid that on the heels of the Israeli strike would come American action to punish him for all this involvement. But just weeks later, Assad received his invitation to send a Syrian delegation to that big international confab of Condi’s, the Annapolis Conference, and according to the Arab envoy, Assad relaxed immediately; he knew he would be OK. I had not wanted Syria invited to Annapolis because of its involvement in killing Americans in Iraq, but Condi had wanted complete Arab representation as a sign that comprehensive peace might be possible. It was only years later that I learned that Assad had instead interpreted the invitation just as I had: as a sign that the United States would not seriously threaten or punish him for what Syria was doing in Iraq.

Please read the entire article for ‘the rest of the story.’ After reading the entire article, I can’t help but think that pretty much everything American has done in the Arab world in order to make peace has had the opposite effect. I don’t think we understand the culture we are dealing with.

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The Double Standard At Work

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There is a really ugly scandal evolving about New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. It seems that he had a close friendship with a major Democratic donor named Dr. Salomon Melgen. The two of them frequently flew on the Doctor’s private jet to the Dominican Republic where the Senator spent time with underage prostitutes.

The story can be found at Breitbart.com and in the Daily Caller. Recently the Doctor’s offices were raided by the FBI and records removed from the office. So what is this all about? News reports state Menendez has denied published reports he improperly lobbied on behalf of Melgen’s interest in a Dominican Republic Port security contractor.

To be very honest, this scandal is going nowhere. (I would love to be wrong about this.) The Senator did something gross outside of the country, and I don’t even know if what he did is illegal in the Dominican Republic. There is an ethics violation if he accepted free flights, but that will be corrected by paying for the flights. Essentially, I believe that this is much ado about something that will actually have no impact on anything. Unfortunately this man was legally elected to the Senate and the cronyism in the Senate (particularly among Democrats and the media) will keep his dishonesty and shameful behavior from causing him any problems.

Until we elect honorable men to Congress and the press actually reports the news accurately, this sort of thing will continue unpunished.

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Proposed Minnesota Law Proposes Gun Confiscation

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story yesterday about a proposed law in the Minnesota legislature that does call for confiscation of guns.

The article reports:

H.F. 241 relates to “assault weapons.” It defines “assault weapons” in more or less the usual way; I haven’t compared it line by line to Dianne Feinstein’s federal legislation, but the definition is similar if not identical. “Assault weapons” include all semiautomatic rifles that have a pistol grip or a hole in the stock through which you can put your thumb; any “protruding grip that can be held by the nontrigger hand;” a folding or telescopic stock; or a barrel shroud. So, what is it about a hole in the stock, a “protruding grip,” a folding stock and so on that explains why such weapons should be singled out for banning by the state? Nothing. These features have nothing to do with lethality and bear no rational relation to any legitimate governmental purpose.

…Under the Democrats’ legislation, no one can buy or possess an “assault weapon” in Minnesota. If you already own one as of February 1, you can keep it. But you have to register it, and give the state permission to inspect your home–which is the only place you can keep the “assault weapon”–to make sure you are storing it properly, and undergo annual background checks. You can’t sell the firearm or give it away, and when you die, your heirs are required to either destroy it or “surrender the weapon to a law enforcement agency for destruction.” So the statute represents a ban, followed by confiscation.

President Obama will be in Minnesota today supposedly to support this proposal. As I have said before, I am not personally a gun owner, although many members of my family are; however, I support the right of people to own guns, and I worry when the government talks about taking them away–for any reason.

This law (although hopefully it has no chance of passing) is frightening. It is frightening because the legislators think they can bring it up without fear of being voted out of office. The musket was the assault weapon of its day, and it was not banned in the Constitution. I think the founding fathers knew what they were doing.

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