The free exercise of any religion is not a license to break existing laws. The free exercise of religion is not a free pass to commit treason or subversion or sedition. The Constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of a religion does not allow the adherents of that religion to commit violence in its name and in accord with its teachings. When they crafted the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers did not envision a religion that mandated warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers; nor did they intend to lace the Constitution or Bill of Rights with time bombs that would ultimately destroy the republic they were trying to create.

Robert Spencer writes at Jihad Watch:

By nine votes, 217 to 208, the House of Representatives on Friday [July 21, 2017] voted down a proposal to identify “Islamic religious doctrines, concepts or schools of thought” that jihad terrorists use.

Twenty Republicans joined the solid Democratic bloc to vote down this measure, which Muslim Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) termed “wrongheaded” and fought hard to defeat. It’s hard to believe that there would be 217 votes against understanding the ideology that motivates and incites jihad violence, but that testifies to the power of the “Islamophobia” victimhood lobby today.

The measure would have directed the Defense Department to carry out:

… strategic assessments of the use of violent or unorthodox Islamic religious doctrine to support extremist or terrorist messaging and justification.

There is nothing “unorthodox” about jihad violence in Islamic law and doctrine. Yet even though this specification that the Islamic doctrines to be studied were “unorthodox” allowed for support from those who hold that jihad terror is a twisting and hijacking of the religion of peace, that wasn’t good enough. According to Politico:

[The proposal received] heavy criticism from Muslim lawmakers serving in Congress, Muslim interest groups and the American Civil Liberties Union, who say the proposal would unfairly target Muslims.

Ellison added:

If you have an amendment that says we’re going to study one religion and only one, we’re going to look at their leaders and put them on a list – only them – and you are going to talk about what’s orthodox practice and what’s unorthodox, then you are putting extra scrutiny on that religion.

Yes, you are.

And there is a reason for that: 30,000 jihad attacks committed in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings since September 11, 2001.

No one religion has anything approaching that kind of record of death and destruction. So why shouldn’t we put extra scrutiny on that religion?

The Muslim Brotherhood-linked Ellison also claimed that the measure was “abridging the free exercise of that religion”. 

Yes, again – insofar as the free exercise of that religion involves bombs, AK-47s, machetes, and the like. The free exercise of any religion is not a license to break existing laws. The free exercise of religion is not a free pass to commit treason or subversion or sedition. The Constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of a religion does not allow the adherents of that religion to commit violence in its name and in accord with its teachings. When they crafted the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers did not envision a religion that mandated warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers; nor did they intend to lace the Constitution or Bill of Rights with time bombs that would ultimately destroy the republic they were trying to create.

Nor does studying the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists restrict the practice of Islam by peaceful Muslims in any way.

If these peaceful Muslims are as appalled by jihad terrorism as Islamic groups in the U.S. profess to be, why wouldn’t they welcome an attempt to address this alleged misuse of their religion, and support this proposal?

The sponsor of the measure, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), noted correctly:

Right now, there is a certain spectrum within the Islamist world that is at the root of the ideological impulse for terrorism. … Ironically, Muslims are the prime targets of these groups. To suggest that this is anti-Muslim is a fallacy, and I think that anyone who really understands it knows that. … We’ve worked very hard to protect the religious freedom for everybody. But it is important that we empower America to identify those heroic Muslims within the world that will help us begin to delegitimize this ideology of global jihad.

His appeal was to no avail. Ellison would not number himself among the “heroic Muslims” who would “help us begin to delegitimize this ideology of global jihad”. He said of Franks and his measure:

This is the wrong way to do what he’s trying to do.

He didn’t offer any specifics about what the right way might be.

With Ellison leading the way, 217 members of the House of Representatives, including 20 Republicans, chose denial and willful ignorance instead of knowledge of the beliefs, motives and goals of the jihadis who have vowed to destroy us. That’s just asking to be defeated.

We regret that this proposal was turned down.

The passionate opposition to it on the part of Keith Ellison shows how afraid Muslim leaders are of non-Muslims getting to know the truth about Islamic ideology: that it is supremacist, totalitarian, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and cruel.

Muslims are the chief victims of Islam. They are greatly to be pitied. 

To be born a female into Islam is to be born to endless suffering – for millions, along these lines: genital destruction; the harsh “education” of the madrassa; living much of her waking life concealed inside a tent; forced marriage; no rights over her children; liable to be divorced by a mere statement of repudiation. If she suffers the violence, pain and humiliation of rape, she is likely also to suffer being stoned to death or buried alive, because her rape “dishonors” her family; not because she is guilty of wrong-doing, but because she is a walking sexual organ which has been made impure.

Western feminists – who complain bitterly if (that ever rarer thing) a male partner inflicts suffering on them by not helping them enough with household chores – see nothing to criticize in all that.

In Europe, citizens outraged by the horror of Islamic doctrine, have been penalized for quoting passages from the Koran.

The Koran proves that  Islam is supremacist, totalitarian, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and cruel.

There is no peaceful Islam. Muslims who live peacefully are not doing their religious duty. Jihad – taking action to conquer the non-Muslim world – is commanded.

There is no reforming Islam.  As the ex-Muslim Armin Navabi says, “The only way to reform Islam is to get rid of Islam“.

If there is an ideology that can reasonably be argued to be even worse than Nazism, that ideology is Islam. It is certainly at least as bad.

The more people know about Islam, and the more about Islam they know, the more likely they are to resist its advance and save our civilization from it.

That’s why a proposal that federal lawmakers learn something about it should have been accepted.

As usual, a bunch of useful political idiots did the dumb thing and turned it down.

They will go on chanting in mindless chorus, “Islam is a religion of peace.”

And it will not trouble them in the least that the First Amendment is being outrageously exploited to ends entirely opposite to those envisaged by the Founders.

How did the West become so stupid?

In our post No problem for atheists (June 28, 2017), we include a video clip of Professor Jordan Peterson (whom we much admire and usually agree with on political issues) in which he talked about myths of religion.

We quote from that post:

[Professor Jordan Peterson] thinks that atheists such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins do not realize that the ethics they take for granted are predicated on a long tradition of moral principles encapsulated in the myths of religion. The myths convey, down through the ages, the “higher”, the “transcendent” morality – which, he says, “can be personified in the idea of God”.  Those moral principles, he suggests, are not just divinely revealed, they can be said to define and constitute the Divine itself.

The implication is that at certain moments in ancient history, revelations of some “transcendent” moral truths were imparted to certain men. If not by a god at least from some source of divine wisdom. And because these come from that “higher” source, they are the right guides for human behavior.

So they possess, in Professor Peterson’s opinion – as in the opinion of his fellow believers – a validity for all human beings for as long as the human race exists.

Subsequently we critically examined the myth of “the Fall”, the story of Adam and Eve, in our post The moral messages of religious myths (1), (June 29, 2017).

Here now are some observations on the story of Cain and Abel.

First, here is the story as told in Chapter 4 of the Book of Genesis, verses 1-17, in the King James Version of the Hebrew bible:

 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.  And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.  And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.  And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering:  But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.  And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?  If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.  And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.  And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?  And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.  And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;  When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.  And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.  Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.  And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.  And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

What are we told?

The first man and woman had two sons. [No mention is made of daughters.]

One son, Abel, raised sheep. The other son, Cain, cultivated the land for plant food.

Abel took some of his mutton and made a [burnt] offering of it to God. Cain did the same with some of his vegetables.

God in some way not told indicated that he accepted the offering of Abel and rejected the offering of Cain.

Cain, apparently out of jealousy, killed Abel.

God punished Cain. He told him he’d have a much harder time in future raising food, and he would henceforth be a fugitive and vagabond.

Cain complained that “every one” who found him as fugitive and vagabond would kill him.

To save him from this, God put a mark on him. [We are not told what the mark looked like, where on him it was put, or how it signaled to those who would kill him that God forbade them to do so – or who these people are who have suddenly appeared upon the earth.]

Cain left the vicinity of Eden (from which his father and mother had been exiled)  and moved east to a land called Nod (when and by whom is not told). There he and his wife – presumably a sister of his – have a son called Enoch.

There follows, in the next few verses (not quoted), a list of Enoch’s descendants. His sons and grandsons all have wives. A female descendant is mentioned.

What messages can we extract from the story?

Our common ancestor was a murderer. A fratricide.

God likes meat (fatty meat), not vegetables.

Can anything in the story provide a message of eternal validity for all people at all times?

That killing is wrong?

That fratricide is wrong? 

That it is wrong not to be our brothers’  keepers?

That we are all brothers and it is wrong to kill each other?

(Certainly not that it is wrong for a man to marry his sister.)

Whatever the wrong is, it  is not to be punished by death but by hardship.

What moral message of eternal validity does Professor Peterson extract from the story?

He lays stress on the “sacrifice”.  

Here is a link to a YouTube video in which he talks about it at some length (starting on the subject of Cain and Abel and their sacrifices at about the 8.50 mark).

He asks, ‘Why do people make sacrifices to God?” He observes that some of his students, or their families, may have made sacrifices in order to pay for them to go to university, his implication being that we can all understand the idea of sacrifice. We give up something in the hope that by doing so we gain something else that we desire.

He says that “before the invention of electricity or even fire” [?], people looked up at the lights in the night sky. They saw the infinite (“the fact of the infinite”, he says), and thought that “God resides there”.  That, he says, is not a primitive idea, it is “an intelligent and creative hypothesis”.

Having hypothesized that God resides up there, “You burn something  and the smoke rises” and “God gets a crack at determining the quality of your offering”.  

We cannot see that sacrificing something to God in the hope of getting something else – traditionally in many religions that something else being prosperity, progeny, good health, long life, ultimately heaven – is anything more than superstition.

He might say we belittle the story. We think he magnifies its significance as an eternally valid moral lesson about sacrifice.

We might agree more if the chief message of the story is that it is wrong to kill, and that we have a moral duty to each other, at least of restraint. To us that is a rational assumption in the interest of self-preservation, while to him it is a principle taught to us by this religious myth.   

We rely on our readers to correct us if we have overlooked something in the story that makes it convey, down through the ages, the “higher, transcendent morality”.

The late great Robert Conquest, Sovietologist, historian and poet, propounded three “laws of politics”. They are (as recalled by John Derbyshire at National Review):

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

2. Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.

3. The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the Church of England and Amnesty International as examples.

Of the Third, he noted that a bureaucracy sometimes actually IS controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies – e.g. the postwar British secret service.

We would add as more examples of the Third, the US State Department and the Republican Party.

And Emmett Tyrrell, writing at Townhall, finds that once an organization – true to Conquest’s Second Law – begins its leftward trend, it forgets what it’s for:

When any entity falls under the dominance of liberalism, it loses all sense of its fundamental purpose.

A city [authority] loses all sense of its purpose, which is governance.

A university loses all sense of its purpose, which is education.

You name the entity – if it falls under the dominance of liberalism, it becomes utterly confused as to its goal.

Now, under liberalism’s more extreme evolutionary stage, called progressivism or leftism, progressives and the left cannot even maintain a public toilet facility for men or women. Going to the bathroom at a public comfort station today can be a source of embarrassment, or even an actionable civil rights matter where the left is in charge.

So if you, as an organization, take the left road – the one more traveled by – you’re on your way to aimlessness, worthlessness, futility.

It seems that is the road the whole of the Western world, our civilization, has taken.

Saudi Arabia poisons the human world.

The world will little note nor long remember the recent death of one of the 10,000+ princes of Saudi Arabia: Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdulaziz al Saud. So what of it?

Ah! His death occasions a video not to be missed. A Mark Steyn video.

Here’s part of the introduction to it:

Abdul-Rahman’s mother was said to be Ibn Saud’s favorite among his 22 wives – or, at any rate, one of the favorites. Top Five certainly. She also had the highest status, because she bore him more boys – seven – than any other other missus. They’re known as the Sudairi Seven or, alternatively, the Magnificent Seven. She also gave him seven daughters. They’re known as the seven blackout curtains standing over in the corner. This splendidly fertile lady’s name was Hussa bint Ahmed, and she was Ibn Saud’s cousin once removed and then, if I’m counting correctly, his eighth wife. But she’s a bit like the Grover Cleveland of the House of Saud – in that he’s counted as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, and she’s the eighth wife and also either the tenth or eleventh. He first married her when he was 38 and she was 13. But he divorced her and then remarried her. In between their marriages she was married to his brother, but Ibn Saud was a sentimental lad and never got over his child-bride-turned-sister-in-law, so he ordered his brother to divorce her.

Don’t worry, though: In the House of Saud, it’s happy endings all round. Two of their daughters wound up marrying two of the sons of another brother of Ibn Saud. The Saudi version of Genealogy.com must be a hoot: “Hey, thanks for the DNA sample. You’re 53.8 per cent first cousin, and 46.2 per cent uncle.”

Anyway, all this Saudomy reminded me that on The Mark Steyn Show back in January I offered a few thoughts on Ibn Saud’s establishment of his alleged kingdom. This is the first time this has been aired in the wider world, so give it a click and see what you think:

… to worthier tribes?

On Christmas Eve 2014, a former Prime Minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, said on Swedish TV that Sweden belongs to “the immigrants”, not to the Swedes.

We quote a report by Speisa (Sweden):

The former prime minister now claims that Sweden’s borders are fictional and that Sweden belongs to the immigrants who come here – not the Swedes. …

– It is a choice of what country Sweden should be, Reinfeldt told TV4.

– Is this a country that is owned by those who have lived here for three or four generations [sic!] or is Sweden what people who come here in mid-life makes it to be? he asked rhetorically.

– For me it is obvious that it should be the latter and that it is a stronger and better society if it may be open, said Reinfeldt. …

He went even further, claiming that Sweden’s borders are only imaginary.

– What is Sweden? Is this country owned by those who lived here for four generations or those who invented borders? he said condescending[ly].

Then he said that the Swedes are uninteresting as an ethnic group and that it is instead the immigrants that create the new Sweden.

He may be right that “the Swedes are uninteresting as an ethnic group” – unexpected as it is to hear a leader of them say so. No boring old patriotism for him! Patriotism? What is patriotism in the West these days but xenophobia, bigotry, racism, and – considering which immigrants in particular he is talking about without putting a name to them – “Islamophobia”?

But is being “uninteresting” a reason for the Swedish nation to wipe itself out?

What makes a people “interesting”? Fredrik Reinfeldt seems to think the Islamic religion does the trick. So “interesting” in this context means primitive, savage, cruel, intolerant, misogynistic, homophobic, supremacist, and totalitarian.

Nice liberal values à la mode, Mr. Reinfeldt!

Recently (July 16, 2017), Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, doomed the country she leads to self-extinction by the Swedish method.

From Deutsche Welle (Germany’s public international broadcaster) online:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to place an upper limit on refugees that the country accepts, speaking in an annual interview broadcast on Sunday.

Distancing herself from the position of her conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), Merkel, who leads the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said placing a limit on refugees was not the way forward.

“As far as an upper limit is concerned, my position is clear: I will not accept it,” she said …

Reinfeldt, Merkel, and almost all the other European political leaders believe that to let their countries go to the Muslim invaders is the height of moral virtue.

The international Left, including the Democratic Party of the US – and of course Islam – agree with them.

So why would anyone be surprised that they despise the patriotic leader, President Trump, for wanting to make America great again?

An ex-Muslim talks about his religion-tormented childhood; his terror of hell; his attempted suicide; his path of agony, to reach at last the relief of atheism.

“The only way to reform Islam is to get rid of Islam.”

… What a wonder and a boon that would be!

Adam Shaw writes an article at Breitbart that gives us new reason to hope that President Trump really will defeat the vast left-wing conspiracy to destroy America, the free world, and our civilization:

President Trump is attempting to overhaul the State Department and leave his “America First” stamp on the cumbersome bureaucracy — a move that is reportedly making former officials very nervous. …

And – more necessarily – present officials too?

While past Republican presidents have sought to trim the unwieldy department, Trump’s remake is unprecedented. Stewart Patrick, who served on the policy planning staff at the State Department under the George W. Bush administration [said, regretfully and all too typically]:

My suspicion is that within the White House, particularly amongst the nationalist faction … this seems to actually be a concerted effort to diminish the role of the State Department in U.S. foreign policy and hamper its abilities to pursue policies that would be considered overly globalist.

… Many on Trump’s nationalist flank have feared the globalist-minded bureaucrats and diplomats will stymie the President’s agenda, and so they will be hoping for significant changes. …

Trump’s budget proposal would gut the State Department budget by as much as 30 percent.

A 30% budget cut, accompanied by an almost autumnal shedding of personnel, is a development of “great concern to globalists”, but one to be met “with glee by those keen on an ‘America First’ foreign policy“.

“It is top-to-bottom a dismissing of the State Department,” Gordon Adams, a senior Clinton White House official [said]: “This is about the most systematic dismantling of a federal department that I’ve witnessed.” 

Reducing the spending power of the present State Department, and waving good-bye to many of the deep-state moles who work in it, has been a good start.

But what is really needed is a shining new State Department; one that will be loyal to President Trump and serve the interests the United States of America.

A Canadian Muslim traitor, Omar Khadr, has recently been awarded $10.5 million “compensation” by the government of the country he betrayed, which is led at present by the Islam-loving leftist, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The award was given sneakily in an out-of-court settlement. Determined to do this evil thing, while being fully aware that it was evil, the government avoided the publicity of process in open court.

We posted our article about this shocking case, Reward for treason, on July 5, 2017.

We now quote from an article at Gatestone by Ruthie Blum, which brings more information about the Muslim traitor to light. It shows that far from his having been “tortured” – the alleged abuse for which it is said he deserves compensation – he was given extremely expensive medical treatment and nursed like a baby at Guantanamo.

His father too was a traitor to Canada, and another Canadian leftist Prime Minister saved him from punishment in Pakistan and brought him back to safety in the country he had betrayed.  

The Khadr family is obviously very wealthy. How much of Omar Khadr’s gift from the Canadian tax-payer of $10.5 million will go –  as much of the family wealth has already gone – to funding Islamic terrorism?  

Khadr is the son of a Palestinian mother and an Egyptian father (Ahmed Khadr), who had strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and became one of Osama bin Laden’s loyal lieutenants. After 9/11, Ahmed Khadr was placed on the FBI’s most-wanted list in relations to the attacks. He was arrested in Pakistan in 1995 on suspicion of financing the suicide bombing at the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, in which 16 people were killed. Protesting his innocence, he went on a hunger strike, and the Canadian government, then headed by Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, rallied behind him.

While on a trade mission to Pakistan, Chrétien appealed to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and a few months later, Ahmed was released from prison and sent back with his family to Toronto. However, according to the New York Post, the Khadr clan soon returned to Pakistan, where Ahmed Khadr resumed his connections with al Qaeda and the Taliban. Young Omar Khadr not only met with the leaders of these terrorist groups, but lived with his parents and siblings in the bin Laden family compound, attending al Qaeda training camps, which his father — who was killed in 2003 — partly funded.

The report continued:

A month before he joined an al Qaeda cell in 2002, Omar was sent by his father for private instruction in explosives and combat… [where he] learned to launch rocket-propelled grenades and became skilled at planting improvised explosive devices that were used to blow up US armored vehicles in Afghanistan.

In his interrogation about the incident that led to his arrest and subsequent incarceration at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr said he had been on a suicide mission “to kill as many Americans as possible”.

This did not prevent the U.S. military from flying an ophthalmologist to the Bagram Air Base – where was being treated for wounds he sustained while fighting American and Canadian soldiers – to save his eyes and keep him from going blind.

That can bear repeating. While Omar Khadr, the al-Qaeda terrorist whose mission and accomplishment was to kill Canadians and Americans, was being held at Guantanamo, the U.S. military flew an ophthalmologist to where he was being treated for wounds that he sustained while fighting American and Canadian soldiers, “to save his eyes and keep him from going blind”.

Is that a definition of torture? Saving the enemy’s eyesight?

It is bitterly ironic in the light of the fact that one of Khadr’s victims, the American soldier Layne Morris, was blinded by Khadr with a grenade.

Nor did it cause Omar to experience gratitude on the one hand, or remorse on the other. On the contrary, as military court documents revealed, when he was informed that [the American soldier he had attacked, Wayne Speer] had died, he said he “felt happy” for having murdered an American. He also said that whenever he remembered killing Speer, it would make him “feel good”. 

And now, this monster, on whom undeserved benefits have already been heaped, is further rewarded for his treachery and murder by being made richer; and again made “very happy” by having the government of Canada, representing the people of Canada, humbly apologize to him. For what?

This is a miscarriage of justice so egregious, so destructive of the very idea of justice, that it can burn the mind of every decent citizen of every country under the rule of law, if any such country with such citizens still exists.

Is Canada in uproar about it?

The Muslim traitor’s victims were American soldiers.

Are United States citizens in uproar about it?

Have the people of the West, whose ancestors built our powerful, rich, brilliant civilization on the idea of the rule of law protecting the liberty of every individual, now become quivering infants when faced by the world’s bully, Islam?

Mr Churchill, Britain is now surrendering to Islam without a shot being fired! 

Here is our Facebook abstract of a report and commentary by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

A burger van owner has been prosecuted for refusing to serve a sausage sandwich to a customer who argued against his anti-Islamic views, so he found himself before a court for the first time in his life. Retired merchant seaman Jim Gardiner began chatting to landscape gardener Piers Palmer at the Ship’s Galley burger van he runs near the M6. When Mr Gardiner produced some anti-Islamic literature from beneath his sauce bottles, Mr Palmer refused to read it. At that point the angry burger vendor refused to make his sausage sandwich. A furious Mr Palmer reported him to the police for “hate speech” and Mr Gardiner found himself before a court for the first time in his life. Mr Palmer told the court: “He said it was the Muslims in Manchester and London who were the problem. He spoke about Muslim no-go zones in Manchester.” Palmer told him that was an urban myth. The court heard that in his police interview, Gardiner told officers: “Muslims are taking over and they hate Christians.” Asked what he would do if a Muslim came to his burger van, he replied: “I’d give them a bacon butty and laugh.” Asked if he had strong views about Muslims, he replied: “I have strong views about Islam.” Gardiner was fined £127 and ordered to pay costs and compensation of £700. That is police state behavior, with people turning in others to the authorities for ideological deviance. Piers Palmer will soon be living in the Britain he has chosen, and by then he may regret the action he took, but it will be far too late. Freedom of speech is dead in Britain. Britain is finished. 

Was there collusion between the Obama administration and the Kremlin to entrap members of Donald Trump’s family and campaign team ?

John Solomon and Jonathan Easley write at The Hill:

The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances” before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews.

This revelation means it was the Obama Justice Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the country without a visa.

Just five days after meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and then Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya showed up in Washington in the front row of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Russia policy, video footage of the hearing shows.

She also engaged in a pro-Russia lobbying campaign and attended an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where Russian supporters showed a movie that challenged the underpinnings of the U.S. human rights law known as the Magnitsky Act, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has reviled and tried to reverse.

The Magnitsky Act imposed financial and other sanctions on Russia for alleged human rights violations connected to the death of a Russian lawyer who claimed to uncover fraud during Putin’s reign. Russia retaliated after the law was passed in 2012 by suspending Americans’ ability to adopt Russian children.

At least five congressional staffers and State Department officials attended that movie showing, according to a Foreign Agent Registration Act complaint filed with the Justice Department about Veselnitskaya’s efforts.

And Veselnitskaya also attended a dinner with the chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing Russia policy, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and roughly 20 other guests at a dinner club frequented by Republicans.

In an interview with The Hill on Wednesday, Rohrabacher said, “There was a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club here with about 20 people. I think I was the only congressman there. They were talking about the Magnitsky case. But that wasn’t just the topic. There was a lot of other things going on. So I think she was there, but I don’t remember any type of conversation with her between us. But I understand she was at the table.”

Rohrabacher said he believed Veselnitskaya and her U.S. colleagues, which included former Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Calif.), were lobbying other lawmakers to reverse the Magnitsky Act and restore the ability of Americans to adopt Russian children that Moscow had suspended.

“I don’t think this was very heavily lobbied at all compared with the other issues we deal with,” he said.

As for his former congressional colleague Dellums, Rohrabacher said he recalled having a conversation about the Magnitsky Act and the adoption issue: “Ron and I like each other … I have to believe he was a hired lobbyist but I don’t know.”

Veselnitskaya did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday at her Moscow office. Dellums also did not return a call to his office seeking comment.

But in an interview with NBC News earlier this week, Veselnitskaya acknowledged her contacts with Trump Jr. and in Washington were part of a lobbying campaign to get members of Congress and American political figures to see “the real circumstances behind the Magnitsky Act”.

That work was a far cry from the narrow reason the U.S. government initially gave for allowing Veselnitskaya into the U.S. in late 2015, according to federal court records.

The Moscow lawyer had been turned down for a visa to enter the U.S. lawfully but then was granted special immigration parole by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.

During a court hearing in early January 2016, as Veselnitskaya’s permission to stay in the country was about to expire, federal prosecutors described how rare the grant of parole immigration was as Veselnitskaya pleaded for more time to remain in the United States.

“In October the government bypassed 
the normal visa process and gave a type of extraordinary 
permission to enter the country called immigration parole,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni explained to the judge during a hearing on Jan. 6, 2016.

“That’s a discretionary act that the statute allows the attorney general to do in extraordinary circumstances. In this case, we 
did that so that Mr. Katsyv could testify. And we made the 
further accommodation of allowing his Russian lawyer into the 
country to assist,” he added.

The prosecutor said the Justice Department was willing to allow the Russian lawyer to enter the United States again as the trial in the case approached so she could help prepare and attend the proceedings.

The court record indicates the presiding judge asked the Justice Department to extend Veselnitskaya’s immigration parole another week until he decided motions in the case. There are no other records in the court file indicating what happened with that request or how Veselnitskaya appeared in the country later that spring.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in New York confirmed Wednesday to The Hill that it let Veselnitskaya into the country on a grant of immigration parole from October 2015 to early January 2016.

Justice Department and State Department officials could not immediately explain how the Russian lawyer was still in the country in June for the meeting with Trump Jr. and the events in Washington.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has demanded the U.S. government provide him all records on how Veselnitskaya entered and traveled in the U.S., a request that could shed additional light on her activities.

Interviews with a half dozen Americans who came in contact with Veselnitskaya or monitored her U.S. activities in 2016 make clear that one of her primary goals was to see if the Congress and/or other political leaders would be interested in repealing the 2012 Magnitsky Act punishing Russia or at least ensure the Magnitsky name would not be used on a new law working its way through Congress in 2016 to punish human rights violators across the globe.

“There’s zero doubt that she and her U.S. colleagues were lobbying to repeal Magnitsky or at least ensure his name was removed from the global law Congress was considering,” said U.S. businessman William Browder, who was the main proponent for the Magnitsky Act and who filed a FARA complaint against Veselnitskaya, Dellums and other U.S. officials, claiming they should have registered as foreign agent lobbyists because of the work.

The 2012 law punished Russia for the prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer and accountant who U.S. authorities allege uncovered a massive $230 million money laundering scheme involving Russian government officials that hurt U.S. companies.

Magnitsky became a cause celeb in the United States after his mysterious death in a Russian prison, but Russian officials have disputed his version of events and in 2011 posthumously convicted him of fraud in Russia.

It is that alternate theory of the Magnitsky fraud cause that Veselnitskaya and her U.S. allies tried to get into the hands of American officials, including Rohrabacher, the Trump team and other leaders.

Browder’s complaint, which alleges that Washington lobbyists working with Veselnitskaya failed to register as foreign agents, is still pending at the Justice Department. It identified several events in Washington that Veselnitskaya and her allies attended or staged in June 2016.

All of them occurred in the days immediately after the Russian lawyer used a music promoter friend to get an audience June 9 with Trump Jr. promising dirt on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton but instead using the meeting to talk about Magnitsky and the adoption issue, according to Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya.

On June 13, 2016, Veselnitskaya attended the screening of an anti-Magnitsky movie at the Newseum, which drew a handful of congressional staffers and State Department officials, according to Browder’s complaint.

The next day, she appeared in the front row of a hearing chaired by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.), sitting right behind a former U.S. ambassador who testified on the future of U.S-Russia policy.

Rohrabacher said he recalled around the same time a conversation with Dellums about Magnitsky and the adoption issue and then attending a dinner that included Veselnitskaya at the Capitol Hill Club with about 20 people.

Sources close to the lobbying effort to rename the Magnitsky Act, conducted over the summer of 2016, said it fizzled after only a month or two. They described Veselnitskaya, who does not speak English, as a mysterious and shadowy figure. They said they were confused as to whether she had an official role in the lobbying campaign, although she was present for several meetings.

The sources also described their interactions with Veselnitskaya in the same way that Trump Jr. did. They claimed not to know who she worked for or what her motives were.

“Natalia didn’t speak a word of English,” said one source. “Don’t let anyone tell you this was a sophisticated lobbying effort. It was the least professional campaign I’ve ever seen. If she’s the cream of the Moscow intelligence community then we have nothing to worry about.

*

Update:

Kristina Wong reports at Breitbart that the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who asked to meet with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016, and did so for 20 minutes, had worked for years with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS. That was the firm that produced the lying, absurd, and now entirely discredited dossier it made up for the Democrats to use against Donald Trump.

Plot after plot was laid to establish a connection between Donald Trump and Russia. One after another they have failed.

Meanwhile the very real collusion between the Democrats and Russians, and the treacherous sale of US uranium deposits to Russia that Hillary Clinton accepted bribes to permit when she was secretary of state, are apparently being disregarded by the Trump administration. Why?