Obamacare’s Consequence
BY Matthew Continetti:
The liberal line is that President Obama has secured his place in history by signing into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. And secured it he has. Henceforth Obama will be remembered as the man who accelerated America’s mad dash toward bankruptcy. He will be remembered as the leader who promoted a culture of dependency. He will be remembered as the figure who sacrificed a dream of national unity upon the altar of big government liberalism. It’s true: Obama is now a president of consequence. And almost all of those consequences are bad.
[...]
Obama’s Treatment of Israel is Shocking
By Ed Koch:
In portraying Israel as the cause of the lack of progress in the peace process, President Obama ignores the numerous offers and concessions that Israel has made over the years for the sake of peace, and the Palestinians’ repeated rejections of those offers. Not only have Israel’s peace proposals, which include ceding virtually the entire West Bank and parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, been rejected, but each Israeli concession has been met with even greater demands, no reciprocity, and frequently horrific violence directed at Israeli civilians. Thus, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s agreement to suspend construction on the West Bank – a move heralded by Secretary of State Clinton as unprecedented by an Israeli government – has now led to a demand that Israel also halt all construction in East Jerusalem, which is part of Israel’s capital. Meanwhile, Palestinians are upping the ante, with violent protests in Jerusalem and elsewhere. And the Obama administration’s request that our Arab allies make some conciliatory gesture towards Israel has fallen on deaf ears.
[...]
Daily Gut: The Burden of Poop
by Greg Gutfeld, BJ:
So in a recent AP column, Michael Blood says it’s up to Andrew Breitbart to prove that Tea Partiers didn’t yell the N-word in Washington last Sunday.
He writes:
“Conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart disputed accounts that tea party activists in Washington shouted racial epithets at black members of Congress amid the health care debate, although he didn’t provide any evidence.”
[...]
Duke University cancels motherhood event when pro-life group participates
by Ed Morrissey:
The defender of free campus speech FIRE has a new report that has to be read to be believed. Duke University Students for Life booked a space at the campus Women’s Center for a presentation on the challenging roles of motherhood as part of their “Week for Life” campaign. The event at the center involved a student and her mother speaking about their relationship and the difficulties each had. Unfortunately, Duke apparently fears that students might come into contact with pro-life arguments while discussing motherhood — and acted to protect students from the trauma:
[...]
I BLAME THE DEMOCRATS’ INFLAMMATORY EXTREMIST RHETORIC
INSTAPUNDIT:
Man Arrested For Eric Cantor Death Threat. With an anti-semitic angle: “Leboon’s video also makes reference to Cantor’s Judaism – Cantor last week said he has received anti-Semitic threats in the past.”
UPDATE: Reader Kevin Menard writes:
[...]
Questions surround Midwest raids against “militia” groups
By Doug Hagmann, CFP:
An army of federal, state and local law enforcement agents conducted coordinated raids in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio over the weekend, arresting at least three men on gun charges. Initial reports and details leading to the raids remain sketchy, but it has been verified that the raids focused on domestic “militia” groups, including one fundamentalist Christian organization that openly prepared and trained for a biblical “end-times” scenario.
[...]
The raids against the militias, including the Christian survivalist organization, were conducted in the wake of our March 25th report that disclosed a shift of focus by federal authorities onto domestic groups that allegedly pose a threat to domestic security. We will have more detailed information on the raids as it becomes available. We are also monitoring the response of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as unconfirmed reports indicate that the leaders from the Michigan chapter and their Washington, DC headquarters are reportedly being briefed by high-level federal officials in advance of public disclosures relating to the raids.
Chief Israel ‘war crimes’ investigator at Soros-financed human rights group also avid Nazi memorabilia collector
By: Mark Hemingway, Washington Examiner:
This story has actually been around for a few months, but glad to see it’s finally gaining some traction. Last fall, one of the founders of Human Rights Watch came out and accused the organization of being irrationally anti-Israel. To make matters worse, members of the organization thought nothing of fund raising in Saudi Arabia, where the organization’s criticism of Israel was no doubt a selling point.
And if this weren’t bad enough, the Times of London has an in-depth piece about the ensuing scandal when it was revealed that one of the organization’s lead investigators and vocal Israel critic is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia:
[...]
The next move of the Alinsky left
Andrew Thomas, AT
The war between the left and right has been ratcheted up this past weekend. Although a philosophical war of words, to the committed Alinsky left it is nonetheless a deadly serious war.
The progressive movement has long been known for its intolerance of opposing philosophies and its propensity for violence to attain its goals. As Noel Sheppard notes, at the 2008 Republican Convention leftist demonstrators hospitalized conventioneers with bricks thrown through bus windows and sandbags dropped from overpasses onto passing cars. The progressive media looked the other way.
Following the passage of ObamaCare, much media frenzy has surrounded incidents where a coffin was put on congressman Carnahan’s front lawn (didn’t happen) and a brick was thrown through congresswoman Slaughter’s Niagara Falls office window. Of course, the last time someone smashed Democratic Party office windows, a Democrat was found responsible.
Now, new incidents of Democrat windows being broken have been reported, some credible, some not. These are being used by the progressive media as a weapon against the Tea Party conservatives. Since this type of childish vandalism is a signature act of progressivism, I would search for suspects on the left side of the aisle.
[...]
The Meaning of Exodus
Moshe Dann, AT:
As if Jews needed a reminder about what a modern rendition of “Pharaoh’s heart hardened,” President Obama provides an example, emphasizing an important lesson: the Egyptian dictator/king was part of the process of liberation and, ultimately, of God’s will and the destiny of the Jewish People.
Despite Obama’s nasty treatment of Israel’s Prime Minister and unreasonable demands, Sec of State Hillary Clinton’s hysterical condemnations’ despite suggestions that Israel is guilty of war crimes, human rights violations, apartheid, and hindering America’s war efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan; despite Israel’s demonization at the UN and Arab/Muslim boycott and isolation, the Israeli government and the Jewish People are stronger and more united. Go figure.
[...]
Obama rewards the SEIU
Phil Boehmke, AT:
Once again Mr. Obama has thumbed his nose at the American people. Emboldened by his big win in passing ObamaCare, the future former president placed both of his thumbs squarely on the American worker’s windpipe and squeezed. With the U.S. Senate in recess Mr. Obama moved quickly to wield his executive sword to fill a number of federal positions including the appointment of Craig Becker to the NLRB.
This past week all 41 U.S. Senate Republicans sent a letter to Mr. Obama requesting that he not use the recess to force Becker’s appointment to the NLRB and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a separate letter to the president on behalf of numerous business groups that oppose this disastrous appointment.
Mr. Becker’s appointment has been on hold since his nomination last year, even though at the time the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority. According to The Foundry.
[...]
The Tragedy of the Peace Process
Mario Loyola, NRO:
When the right-wing Benyamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister of Israel the first time round in 1996, Clinton-administration officials barely disguised their bitter disappointment. For the next three years, relations between the U.S. and Israel would be dominated by tempests-in-teapots such as what an Israeli bulldozer might have been doing in a particular neighborhood of East Jerusalem.[...]
After Labor came back to power at the end of Clinton’s term, Yasser Arafat was able to secure almost every concession that Palestinians could ask for at Camp David in 2000 — and promptly rejected the deal. Weeks later, Arafat unleashed the “second intifada” — not a popular uprising like the first, but an organized campaign of suicide bombings that would kill a thousand Israeli civilians in just a few years. The concessions Israel had made for peace, including withdrawal from 90 percent of the West Bank, had proven suicidal.
Many of these same Clinton hands are back at the helm of the “peace process” now, but they hardly seem to have learned from its failures. The Israeli decision to build hundreds of new housing units in a heavily Jewish area of East Jerusalem was “condemned” by the Obama administration. The reaction revealed the personal animus that Obama’s advisers feel toward Netanyahu, a hostility that is a relic of the Clinton administration and an extension-by-proxy of U.S. partisan politics. The reaction also demonstrated that U.S. officials still don’t understand what they themselves have done wrong.
[...]
Obama And Israel: The Trust Is Gone
Ed Koch, Jewish Press:
I consider the Obama administration’s recent actions against the Israeli government to be outrageous and a breach of trust.
The timing of the Israeli government’s announcement, while Vice President Joe Biden was in Jerusalem, that 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem would be built for Jews, was unfortunate and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for it, but it did not mark any change in the Israeli government’s policy. That policy is and has long been to allow construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.
Now a little history. In 1947, the United Nations passed a resolution authorizing the creation of a Jewish state within the British Mandate of Palestine. After it declared independence in 1948, Israel was immediately attacked by the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Although Israel repelled the attack, Jordan conquered East Jerusalem, separating it from its Western half.
[...]
Report: US may abstain from UN resolution on east Jerusalem
YNET:
The US is considering abstaining from a possible UN Security Council resolution against Israeli construction in east Jerusalem, the BBC reported on Sunday.
According to the report, the possibility was raised during talks in Paris last week between a senior US official and Qatar’s foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad Bin Jasim Al Thani.
[...]
Israel fears Obama heading for imposed Mideast settlement
Haaretz:
U.S. President Barack Obama’s demands during his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday point to an intention to impose a permanent settlement on Israel and the Palestinians in less than two years, political sources in Jerusalem say.
Israeli officials view the demands that Obama made at the White House as the tip of the iceberg under which lies a dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Israel.
[...]
A grim sign for ObamaCare
NY POST:
How ironic that, even as the Senate last week debated the reconciliation “fixes” to ObamaCare, word came that Social Security has reached the so-called tipping point — years ahead of schedule.
For the first time, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives in tax revenue, to the tune of $29 billion.
The reason: Continued high unemployment means there are fewer paychecks from which to deduct Social Security taxes. Meanwhile, many who can’t find work are applying for benefits much earlier than they’d planned.
The so-called tipping point wasn’t supposed to arrive until 2017, according to current congressional projections.
And it also means that the ultimate day of reckoning — when Social Security runs out of money unless something is done to stabilize the system — has been pushed ahead by four years, to 2037.
So is this really the time for the US to be setting out on a trillion-dollar entitlement adventure filled with so many unknowns and untested elements?
[...]
Canada Defunds a Terror-Supporting U.N. “Agency”
by Jamie Glazov, FrontPage:
Frontpge Interview’s guest today is Asaf Romirowsky, a Senior Fellow at the Endowment for Middle East Truth and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
FP: Asaf Romirowsky, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Canada has become the first country to defund from UNRWA. It is the first Western government to do so. Tell us about UNRWA and this Canadian move.
Romirowsky: Thank you for having me
To an outsider, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) seems to be a UN humanitarian group aiding Palestinian refugees. In reality however, it helps destroy the chances of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds back Palestinian society from ever achieving statehood.
There has been much evidence to show how UNRWA schools have become hotbeds of anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic indoctrination, as well as recruiting offices for Islamist terror groups. UNRWA is the largest employer of Palestinians as such the local offices are dominated by radicals who staff and subsidize Islamist groups while potentially intimidating anyone from voicing a different line. UNRWA facilities and vehicles are used to store and transport weapons, and have actually served as military bases.
[...]
Giving The Finger To Congress, Obama Recess-Appoints Forced Unionism ACORN Radical
by Matthew Vadum, NEWSREAL:
Acting like a Latin American caudillo President Obama continues to thumb his nose at Congress, daring Republican members of the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against him.
Obama’s latest outrage comes in the form of a recess appointment of extremist Craig Becker, who used to represent ACORN and SEIU (Service Employees International Union), to the National Labor Relations Board. Becker was rejected by the Senate when his nomination came up for a vote last month.
[...]
Nazi scandal engulfs Human Rights Watch
Jonathan Foreman, Sunday Times [UK]:
At the headquarters of Human Rights Watch, more than 30 storeys above the noise and bustle of Manhattan, there is so much high-mindedness hanging in the air you can almost taste it. This is the epicentre of a certain type of socially smart, progressive activism — the kind that persuades Hollywood grandees, power lawyers and liberal financiers to dig deeply into their pockets.
When the story broke that one of the organisation’s most prominent and vocal members of staff might be a collector of Nazi-era military memorabilia it felt like some sort of sexual scandal had erupted in the Victorian church. For a lobbying group accustomed to adulatory coverage in the media, it was a public-relations catastrophe.
Human Rights Watch is one of two global superpowers among the world’s myriad humanitarian pressure groups. It is relatively young — established in its current form in 1988 — but it has grown so quickly in size, wealth and influence that it has all but eclipsed its older, London-based rival, Amnesty International.
Unlike Amnesty, HRW, as it is known, gets its money from charitable foundations and wealthy individuals — such as the financier George Soros — rather than a mass membership.
[...]
The Obama Administration’s Plot Against America
By ANA PUIG, For the Bulletin:
The American people elected President Obama on the basis of his vague promises of “change,” which was assumed by the majority of voters to be something good for our nation.
Fifteen months into his term it is time for us to stop deluding ourselves with his good intentions and accept the fact we must immediately stop the madness of his agenda in order to regain control of our destiny and country.
It is time for us to accept the fact that Mr. Obama’s administration has no appreciation or respect for our country’s heritage. They reject our principles and moral values, as well as everything else that makes America the paradigm of all free and allied nations and the envy of our enemies.
It is time for us to accept the fact that while we have been fully focused on the Health-Care Bill, Mr. Obama continues working on the final assembly of his multi dimensional plot, which requires the approval of as many anti-American bills as possible before the congressional election of 2010.
We must understand that no other legislation is more important to the implementation of his plot than the Immigration Bill.
[...]
Obama bully-boy tactics are divisive – in everything
Fierce debate on Israel underway inside Obama administration (UPDATED)
In Defense of Sarah Palin
By NORMAN PODHORETZ:
Nothing annoys certain of my fellow conservative intellectuals more than when I remind them, as on occasion I mischievously do, that the derogatory things they say about Sarah Palin are uncannily similar to what many of their forebears once said about Ronald Reagan.
It’s hard to imagine now, but 31 years ago, when I first announced that I was supporting Reagan in his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, I was routinely asked by friends on the right how I could possibly associate myself with this “airhead,” this B movie star, who was not only stupid but incompetent. They readily acknowledged that his political views were on the whole close to ours, but the embarrassing primitivism with which he expressed them only served, they said, to undermine their credibility. In any case, his base was so narrow that he had no chance of rescuing us from the disastrous administration of Jimmy Carter.
[...]
Despite Record Levels of Islamic Terror in U.S., FBI raids Christian Groups
Atlas Shrugs:
In a word, nuts. Seven people have been arrested for allegedly selling pipe bombs in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, Fox News has learned.
How about raiding Homegrown Jihad: The Terrorist Camps Around the U.S.?
Was the armed camp in New York, Islamberg, raided? The Muslim Brotherhood (CAIR) is already crowing about it.
Amidst record levels of Islamic terrorism in U.S., FBI raids Christian militia groups
[...]
My Word: Where has my Great Britain gone?
By LIAT COLLINS, J’POST:
Perhaps the country where I grew up no longer exists.
My exodus from Great Britain some 30 years ago passed fairly quietly. A farewell party for family, an open house to part from friends, a surprise dinner arranged by those who would soon seem a world away, and that was pretty much that. Not for me the humiliation of being asked to leave by the foreign minister at a day’s notice with the unsubtle understatement that British diplomats and politicians do better than most.
I was 18 and had been preparing for aliya all my teen years. Unlike the “spy who came in from the cold,” or at least the reported head of the Mossad liaison in London requested to leave her majesty’s realm, I celebrated my departure, accompanied by strains of Hallelujah, which had just won the Eurovision Song Contest for Israel.
Of course, arrival in the Promised Land was not all I had dreamed of, but never did I think of returning. Israel was home. And over the years, I increasingly came to the conclusion that the England that I left – which gave me a decent education, good health care and a sense of fair play – no longer exists.
[...]
The England that I left – Winston Churchill, Carnaby Street, The Beatles, Radio Caroline, Dr. Who and the Daleks, The Saint, Cricket, Football, Rugby, not to laugh at another man’s misfortune, your word is your bond, sportsmanship, honour, self-sacrifice, horses, dogs, gardens, boats and this-side-of-heaven countryside – is long dead.
So all Tea Party members are racists?
By Toby Harnden, Telegraph [UK]:
When you have absolutely no argument to advance, what’s the easiest thing to do? Denounce your opponents as racist. Colbert King, who won a Pulitzer for “distinguished commentary” in 2003, really plumbs the depths with this column. The Tea Party crowd needn’t be your particular cup of Earl Grey to spot the intellectual bankruptcy of this kind of thing:
[...]
At Qatar’s request, Obama may not veto UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israel
Jihad Watch:
Turning allies into enemies and enemies into allies. It’s all explained in my forthcoming book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America. “US ‘may not veto UN resolution on Jerusalem,’” from the BBC, March 28 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):
[...]
As Predictable As the Sun Rising
by Victor Davis Hanson:
If we assume that Obama & Co. wish to radically remake the United States — along the lines of a European socialist society, or perhaps to the left even of a Belgium or Denmark — then the past 14 months were as predictable as the sun rising.
Liberal Utopia. To transmogrify a center-right country into a liberal utopia, certain things follow: higher taxes on the better off to pay for redistribution and to bring “fairness” to society (e.g. called “redistributive change”, “spread the wealth” “patriotic” “paying your fair share”); increased government coercion to force the reluctant to conform (e.g., new IRS agents, more regulations and government intrusion; mandatory new fees); a growing constituency to administer and receive entitlements (e.g., I never really heard much about ACORN or SEIU until the Obama ascendency); a public relations campaign to demonize the skeptical as enemies of civil society, starting with “selfish” and “greedy” escalating to “racists” and finally reaching the dangerous level of “terrorists” who “threaten officials” (those who used to court Michael Moore, or snooze about books and movies suggesting scenarios of killing George Bush are suddenly worried about uncivil discourse); a new neutralist foreign policy to match defense cuts on the horizon and to adjust our stature abroad with our new more revolutionary profile at home (cf. the treatment of an Israel or Britain to the new efforts at winning over Iran and Syria; or our shrinking navy and air force); and a highly educated, urban technocracy not subject to its own new protocols and dependent on an ever growing bureau (e.g., Geithnerism, or the strange career of Van Jones); and a new euphemism in language (there is no “terrorism” any more; liberals disappeared and were replaced by “progressives,” we have no more enemies from the radical Islamic world, etc.).
[...]
Open Letter from Bibi (P.M. Netanyahu) to Barack (Obama)
Dear Mr. President,
I wish to express my apology again to you for the embarrassing situation that occurred during Vice President Biden’s visit to Jerusalem. As I said to him and reiterate here, I did not know that the announcement of new construction in our capital was to be made and I have taken measures to ensure that such a mistake does not recur. I understand your dismay at the timing and substance of the announcement and want to reassure you that my government is committed to maintaining and strengthening its longstanding alliance with the United States.
As your officials have been candid in expressing their views to me, I would like to be equally forthcoming in explaining our position. We are dismayed and puzzled by statements from your administration suggesting that our government is not doing everything possible to achieve peace with its neighbors.
Your secretary of state, who undiplomatically leaked to the press what was supposed to be a private conversation, surely recalls that during the administration of President Clinton, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to create a Palestinian state in 97% of the West Bank and to dismantle most of the settlements as well as to make unprecedented compromises on Jerusalem. The Palestinians rejected that offer. As recently as two years ago, my predecessor offered the Palestinians a similar deal that they also rejected. In fact, as our ambassador, historian Michael Oren, can easily document, it is the state of Israel that has repeatedly offered and made compromises in the interests of peace.
As you also know, I have repeatedly expressed a willingness to sit down with the Palestinians and negotiate all outstanding issues. It is their leadership, however, that has refused to come to the negotiating table. I must add in all candor that their recalcitrance is in part related to your insistence on a settlement freeze that was never before a precondition for their participation in peace talks. The Palestinians now have the impression that your administration will force Israel to capitulate to their demands, a view that has been reinforced by the uncharacteristic public attacks of the last week.
I am well aware of your position on settlements and want to assure you that the State of Israel has repeatedly shown it is prepared to take difficult and risky steps in the hope of peace. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from the Sinai when Egypt made a commitment to full peace. Just five years ago, Ariel Sharon removed every soldier and settler from Gaza in the hope that this would prompt peace. Unfortunately, the Palestinians once again missed an opportunity to build on our concession and move closer to peace by relentlessly attacking our country with terror rocket attacks. In fact, Mr. President, more than 1,000 Israeli citizens have been killed in three wars during this decade alone. As a commander-in-chief fighting two wars, I know you can appreciate what this sacrifice means.
As a result of the Gaza experience, the people of Israel are in no mood to make new concessions to the Palestinians in the absence of gestures on their side that they are committed to peace. But all we see is continued incitement, lately reflected in calls for a holy war against Israel, and belligerence. Despite this, we hear no criticism of the Palestinians from your administration, again, giving them the impression that they have nothing to concede in negotiations because the United States is only interested in pressuring Israel.
I have imposed a freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank at your insistence, despite the difficulties this created for me politically. The Palestinians did not reciprocate. In fact, they hardened their position.
I must also respectfully decline your request to freeze construction in Jerusalem. We are not building settlements; we are developing our capital. When you or the Palestinians or anyone else suggests that we stop building in Jerusalem, I must be blunt and say that this is unacceptable and was unacceptable to my predecessors.
Israel values its longstanding special relationship with the United States and I can assure you that I am committed to working to strengthen that bond. I am no less committed to achieving peace with our neighbors and will do everything within my power to reach an agreement at the negotiating table in direct talks with Palestinian leaders or any other Arabs who wish to participate. We count on our friend and ally, the United States, to recognize this commitment to peace and to work with us to ensure that a resolution is achieved that provides peace and security for Israel and allows the Palestinians to create an independent state.
Sincerely,
Bibi
Benjamin Netanyahu
The Scapegoating of Jews
By Amil Imani, AT:
Almost everyone uses scapegoats. It is in our fabric. The word “scapegoat” has come to mean a person, often innocent, who is blamed and punished for the sins, crimes, or sufferings of others, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes. It is a potent human disposition to blame others for our failings.
Without scapegoats to blame, we are forced to look to ourselves for our problems. Examining ourselves can be very disturbing, particularly when we either lack the resources or the willingness to tackle our afflictions. So we take the good old easy way out of the mess by shifting our focus to the outside world for targets to blame.
Look at young kids. They are expert blamers. They always have an answer — someone or something to blame in self-defense. We, the chronological adults, don’t completely abandon our childish strategy of ascribing blame to external sources. We simply do so with a greater degree of sophistication by finding, if at all possible, a grain or two of truth to legitimize our attributions.
The most notorious person who blamed the Jews as scapegoats was the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
[...]
Positioning Israel as the Nazi of Nations
By Richard L. Cravatts, AT:
Jews have been accused of harming and murdering non-Jews since the twelfth century in England, when Jewish convert to Catholicism Theobald of Cambridge perjuriously proclaimed that European Jews ritually slaughtered Christian children each year and drank their blood during Passover season.
That medieval blood libel, largely abandoned in the contemporary West, does, however, still appear as part of the Arab world’s vilification of Jews — now transmogrified into a slander against Israel, the Jew of nations. But in the regular chorus of defamation against Israel by a world infected with Palestinianism, a new, more odious trend has begun to show itself: The blood libel has been revivified, but to position Israel and Zionism as demonic agents in the community of nations, its primitive superstitions are now masked with a veneer of academic scholarship and politicized scientific study.
[...]
The Protocols of the Elders of Christendom?
By Alan Roebuck, AT:
Theocracy-watcher Katherine Yurica calls it “the most immoral political program ever adopted by a political movement in this country.” At Illuminati Conspiracy Archive, Paul and Phillip Collins say that it “echoes the revolutionary fervor of Robespierre’s radical Jacobinism.”
The object of this fear and loathing? An obscure essay (now available only on web archives) titled “The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement,” written in 2001 by Eric Heubeck, a former associate of the late Paul Weyrich at the Free Congress Foundation. Not only has his essay been removed from Free Congress’s website, but Heubeck has apparently withdrawn from public life, as this author has not been able to contact him.
Let’s examine Integration to see what might inspire such heated rhetoric. Beginning his case, Heubeck asserts:
[...]
Instituting law… the Obama way
By Kerry Picket, Washington Times:
A new graphic that surfaced today does a great job showing how the Obama administration manages to create law without going through the usual legislative process. President Obama just made 15 recess appointments which means the candidates for the government positions skip the usual Senate confirmation process. One appointment in particular is Craig Becker. Mr. Becker was appointed to head up the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). A bipartisan majority in the Senate previously held up Mr. Becker’s confirmation. Concern over Mr. Becker stems from his intent to alter labor law through the NLRB as opposed to the normal Congressional channels. This would mean that the Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a “Card Check”), which deals with the relationship between an employer and his non-union employees, could be instituted administratively, without congressional approval.
This particular example of the Obama administration’s working around the legislative process is not unusual. Check out other ways the administration has accomplished their goals when Congress could not do it for them in the graphic below.
[...]
Lefties punk’d
Ian Robinson, Calgary Sun:
As the conservative anti-Christ — aka U.S. political firebrand Ann Coulter — left Canada Friday, did every outraged leftie in Canada wake up with a phantom pain in their cheek?
Kind of a sharp pain? Puncture wound sharp? Big owie?
That’d be where you bit down hard when Coulter dangled the hook in front of you.
Hell, you did more than bite. You bit down hard and swallowed the bait … hook, line and sinker.
Canada’s left-wing outrage machine?
You been punk’d.
Coulter’s Canadian tour was put together by Calgary free-speech crusader Ezra Levant, whose travails with the Soviet-style thought police that is the Alberta Human Rights Commission are well documented in his book, Shakedown.
Other players were local student organizer Matt Gelinas — who dealt with a last-minute venue change and security hysteria with incredible aplomb — the Clare Boothe Luce Institute, which mentors young, conservative women, and the International Free Press Society of Canada.
Their task was simple.
How to bring attention to the cause of free speech?
[...]
The simple reality is none of the solutions proposed by global warmists actually work
By Lorrie Goldstein, Sun Media:
With the fourth global Earth Hour put to bed last night, today let’s ask some inconvenient questions of the global warmists.
First, does the real-world failure of virtually all of your ideas ever give you a moment’s pause?
From the fiasco in Copenhagen, to the collapse of the UN’s Kyoto accord, with its absurd, unrealistic, centrally-mandated, carbon dioxide-reduction diktats, mindful of the old Soviet Union?
Does it never occur to you you’ve barked up the wrong tree rings?
[...]
ADL: Carter has reverted to anti-Israel stance, despite recent apology
Haaretz:
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s apology to the Jewish community over his anti-Israel views should not be taken seriously, an Anti-Defamation League statement said Sunday, claiming that Carter had continued attacking Israel even after sending an apologetic letter to the leaders of the U.S. Jewish community.
[...]
We’re selling our hotel, say Christian couple in row with Muslim guest
Daily Mail [UK]:
The two Christian hoteliers cleared last year of insulting a Muslim guest are being forced to sell up because their business has collapsed.
Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang are putting their nine-bedroom hotel up for auction in May because they can no longer pay the mortgage.
Despite donations sent to them by Christian supporters from around the world, they still have debts of well over £400,000.
They are also considering a civil action against the police who brought the prosecution.
Mrs Vogelenzang, 54, said last night it was ‘devastating’ that they could be left with nothing as the result of a case that should never have come to court.
‘Where do we go from here?’ she said. ‘How do we start all over again?’
[...]
I wish I could advise them to come to Canada but my guess is they would be treated even worse here. Christians must prepare for the coming persecution. Frankly, in broad terms, we have allowed this turn of events in the West by compromising the Word of God and failing to be salt and light. I commend this couple for standing up and not cowering in the face of man. ‘First they came for … .”
Senior bishops call for end to persecution of Christians in Britain
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, TELEGRAPH [UK]:
Six prominent bishops and Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, describe the “discrimination” against churchgoers as “unacceptable in a civilised society”.
In a thinly-veiled attack on Labour, they claim that traditional beliefs on issues such as marriage are no longer being upheld and call on the major parties to address the issue in the run-up to the general election.
In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, the bishops express their deep disquiet at the double standards of public sector employers, claiming that Christians are punished while followers of other faiths are treated far more sensitively.
[...]
Censorship and satire
George Jonas, NP:
The Roman poet Juvenal remarked that it’s hard not to write satire. Things have gone downhill since then. By now it’s hard not to write slapstick comedy.
Take this week, which began with a Canadian academic haughtily reminding a visiting American firebrand of the respect and civility that’s the hallmark of public discourse in this country,
“There is a strong tradition in Canada … of restraint, respect and consideration,” wrote University of Ottawa provost François Houle to enfant terrible Ann Coulter, urging her “to respect that Canadian tradition while on our campus.”
This was on Monday. On Tuesday, a howling mob demonstrated Canada’s commitment to restraint and respect by blocking Coulter (and those who came to hear her) from entering a lecture hall on campus.
The only group exhibiting Canadian-style restraint was the police.
[...]
I don’t think that remark about the police is fair at all. Why if the speaker had been Henry Morgentaler and the crowd a group of pro-lifers peacefully protesting his speech then I ‘allege’ [for legal reasons] the cops ‘may’ [for legal reasons] have beaten the crowd senseless and carted them off in paddy wagons. Just … kidding.
‘People who know Paul Ryan say he will be president one day’
Bill Dupray, American Conservative:
Okay, it’s time to talk about Paul Ryan. The headline quote is from Mark McKinnon, who thinks Ryan is the real deal. Check out Ryan’s list of simple, effective, liberating proposals.
[...]
H/T: Linda at The Great Pumpkin
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