We have often wondered why it is that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), regularly named as an “unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case”, remains unindicted.

In April this year, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who is holding hearings on the radicalization of Muslims in the US, wrote  to Attorney General Eric Holder to ask him why.

Here’s Peter King’s letter, from the website of the Committee on Homeland Security (of which he is chairman):

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I write to inquire about your decision not to prosecute the 246 individuals and organizations, named as unindicted co-conspirators in a Hamas terror finance case, United States v. Holy Land Foundation.

I have been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the Council on American Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) and its co-founder Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”), and the North American Islamic Trust (“NAIT”), was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case. Their opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

I request that you provide answers to the following questions:

What are the reasons for the Department’s decisions not to prosecute CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and Mr. Ahmad, who is a CAIR co-founder and former head of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States?

Who made the final decision not to prosecute? Who, if anyone, from the Executive Office of the President, consulted with, advised, or otherwise communicated with the Department of Justice, in electronic, oral or written form, regarding the Department’s decision to not seek indictments of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and Mr. Ahmad?

How does and will the Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation address the potential for CAIR, ISNA, or NAIT to engage in terrorism financing? What policies with regard to those organizations have you implemented to address that threat?

The answers to these questions should provide some explanation for declining a prosecution that is strongly supported by the record from the Holy Land Foundation trial. As you are aware, in a previously sealed Memorandum Opinion Order of July 1, 2009, United States District Judge Jorge A. Solis declined CAIR, ISNA and NAIT’s August 14, 2007 and June 18, 2008 requests to strike their names from the United States Attorney’s list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case. Judge Solis found that the “Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with [the Holy Land Foundation, “HLF”], the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas.” The Court found that the evidence was “sufficient to show the association of these entities with HLF, IAP, and Hamas. Thus, maintaining the names of the entities on the List is appropriate in light of the evidence proffered by the Government” ..  At minimum, FBI testimony established that Mr. Ahmad attended a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in which participants discussed how they could support Hamas, including by raising funds for this terrorist group. NAIT was similarly unsuccessful in its subsequent request to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to have its name removed from the list of co-conspirators.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the Department of State since October 9, 1997, and its status was reconfirmed by the most recent annual report of the National Counterterrorism Center, issued April 30, 2010. Hamas shamefully conducts cowardly suicide bombings against civilian targets inside Israel. Hamas also, between 2008 and 2009, conducted 2,614 indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks upon residential areas in that country, an ally of the United States. According to the State Department, Hamas finances its terrorist activities “through state sponsors of terrorism Iran and Syria, and fundraising networks in the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, the Middle East, [and] the United States”.. It raises the most serious question for the Justice Department to decline to even attempt to prosecute individuals and organizations, accused by a US Attorney and found by a federal judge, to have a nexus with fundraising for an organization which conducts terror attacks upon civilians.

I believe that in order to maintain the credibility of the Department, there should be full transparency into the Department’s decision. Please respond to this letter by April 25, 2011..

Sincerely,

PETER T. KING

Chairman

We don’t know if Eric Holder replied, and if he did what he said. But we do know there have been no prosecutions of the terrorist-supporters named  in Peter King’s letter. And we don’t think there will be any as long as the infamous Eric Holder heads the Department of Justice.

China is becoming militarily stronger, and the US militarily weaker.

An article in Investor’s Business Daily suggests that Obama is granting this alteration in the balance of power to the Chinese in exchange for their indulgence as the US’s chief creditors:

The White House suddenly announced it wouldn’t sell F-16 jets to Taiwan — a huge strategic favor to the Chinese. Was there a quid pro quo?

Explicitly or not, the U.S. seems to be offering them a deal — buy our bonds and pay for our out-of-control spending, and we’ll let you build a massive military presence and expand your influence in the Western Pacific.

China might see that as a good investment, one that will deliver them one of their much-cherished, long-term strategic goals: a weaker U.S. military.

That nation is already challenging the U.S., increasing defense spending at double-digit rates year after year, in what a U.S. Air Force website recently called “the most remarkable expansion of military power since the U.S. geared up for World War II” … is busy building a blue-water navy to challenge America, and just this month it launched its first aircraft carrier, with plans for more. It already has 2 million men under arms — a third more than the U.S.

At the same time, it’s building its unconventional warfare capabilities, extensively testing anti-satellite weapons and … engaging in a massive, five-year cyberattack on at least 50 U.S. government agencies and corporations.

China’s new generation of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, submarines, sophisticated new radar and minelayers is premised on … forcing us out of East Asia, leaving allies such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea unprotected.

Some deal. They buy our bonds while we watch their defense buildup. Clearly, China’s preparing for conflict. What are we preparing for? National bankruptcy?

On China rising to space superiority, this report comes from the Heritage Foundation:

As NASA sends its shuttles to museums, China is making great strides in its space program—with preparations under way for the launch of a Chinese spacelab in the next few weeks. These advances are beginning to threaten U.S. space superiority and America’s ability to support its friends and allies and to deter aggression. …

In the past several years, China’s space efforts have become increasingly prominent. …

The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has concluded that the high ground of space is essential to the information gathering, transmission, and exploitation necessary to fight and win future wars. …

As Beijing expands its space program, the United States must maintain and expand robust space capabilities, develop alternatives to space-based systems to reduce American vulnerability …  Only then will the United States be able to maintain its superiority in space …

Hasn’t that already been abandoned?  NASA’s mission now is “to improve relations with the Muslim world“, by order of President Obama.

Which will be worse, the US falling under Islam and sharia law, or China and communism?

To prevent either catastrophe, the US needs a president who will defend the nation – on earth and all around it.

Any government interference in the market  is bad for the economy. The Obama administration is interfering massively. The result is high unemployment.

Regulation and the new health legislation are destroying businesses, or driving them to operate outside the law – which means the rule of law itself is weakened.

Patrick Richardson writes at PajamasMedia:

CKE owns or franchises 3,182 restaurants under the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s brand names nationwide, employing more than 70,000. Each new restaurant generates roughly 25 new jobs and pumps more than $1 million into the surrounding community.

According to the release, to comply with just one of the hundreds of new regulations in the health insurance law CKE will be forced to spend approximately $1.5 million to replace all restaurant menus. That equals 17 percent of what the company invested in new restaurants in 2010. …

Those numbers were provided by CKE’s CEO Andy Puzder. In a video sent out with the release, Pudzer said unknowns — in particular, health care — are stifling job growth:

“You generally try to come up with a five-year business plan. You have to know what your expenses are going to be and generally know what your revenue will be. People right now are very worried about taxes because the president keeps talking about raising taxes so it’s very difficult to model that in the forecast. The uncertainty in the businesses community arises from a number of factors: taxes, energy and primarily health care. …

“Health care is probably the most significant unknown at the moment. People are unsure about how much it will impact their business, but they will know it will be significant and it will be negative. It’s very hard to model the cost because the bill is so complex. The range [CKE’s economic forecasters] gave us on our health care costs increasing was between $7.3 and $35.1 million. We spent about $9 million last year building new restaurants. That would be totally wiped out.”

Puzder said he was given a best guess of $18 million on increased health care costs, double what they spent creating new restaurants and new jobs last year. …

It’s not just health care killing jobs: state and federal regulations can amount to as much as 50 cents on every dollar a business makes, according to Jennifer James of Build with Conscience in California. She said the cost of regulation per employee to them each year is about $20,000:

“We would like to hire three or four more guys, easy. We pay $15-26 per hour for new laborers and generally hire inexperienced young workers and train them because the cost of experienced men is too high. We’re not able to take on extremely qualified people, so we train young kids in the trades.

[But] she said between increased health care costs and the contractor fees, they simply can’t afford to hire. She said licensing fees in California are so high many contractors are simply not paying them and working under the table. … Fees are so high and the number of agents to enforce the law so low that it is a better risk to operating without a license for many contractors. …

Annette Logsdon from Watertite Deck Coatings, also in California, said taxes, fees, and health care are killing them as well. She said they grossed about $400,000 last year, but workers’ compensation was $21,600 for the year — nearly 6 percent of gross:

“The federal government is killing us on payroll taxes.” …

Additionally, regulations are hitting them on the inventory side. All their raw material suppliers have raised prices because government regulations have driven up their costs …

All of the business owners had basically one message: “get out of our way.” It’s clear that the more regulation the government heaps on business, the fewer jobs will be created.

Long ago, in the land of Canaan, it was the custom to sacrifice little children to the  god Moloch. The Canaanites literally fed children into the mouth of a huge bronze idol of the god. It had a human body with a bull’s head. The Canaanites made a fire inside it and heated the metal until it glowed red-hot. Then they threw babies into the furnace through the gaping mouth. Moloch had to be propitiated, they believed, with human flesh and blood so that he’d allow the tribe to survive and prosper.

In our time, Allah, the god of Islam, also requires the sacrifice of children, so that the Ummah – the community of the religion – may survive and prosper.

Here are two tales of child sacrifice by devout Muslims: The Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the erstwhile land of Canaan, and al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa.

First, here and here are reports on Palestinians sacrificing their children:

A Palestinian Authority kindergarten showed off what its young students had learned over the past year by having the five-year-olds act out scenes of terror and death for their families. The parents were moved to tears upon seeing their children pretend to die as “martyrs” …

During the graduation ceremony two plays were performed – one based on “Little Red Riding Hood,” the second, “The Martyr’s Wedding,” a story glorifying death in battle with Israel for the sake of Islam.

“Another performance named ‘The Martyr’s Wedding’ delighted the audience due to the role-play of the children, whose acting depicted the reality of roadblocks, children, occupation, soldiers, and the children’s death as Martyrs,” wrote the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida …

The performance was accompanied by “nationalistic” songs, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported. Many such songs encourage “martyrdom” and bloodshed for the sake of “freeing the land of Palestine” – a land which, according to the PA, includes all of Israel.

Under self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza, child sacrifice has turned into a normative part of the socialization process as the phenomenon of suicide bombers has escalated to epidemic proportions.

From an early age, children are fed anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish and anti-Western hate propaganda. Mosques, schools, summer camps, and even children’s television programs are exploited to encourage children to become martyrs in an act that will bring them respect and parental pride:

In Hamas-run kindergartens, signs on the walls read: “The children of the kindergarten are the shahids (holy martyrs) of tomorrow.”

A television show called “The Children’s Club” shows a young Palestinian, age 9 or 10 proclaiming, “When I wander into Jerusalem, I will become a suicide bomber.” …

A 6th grade Palestinian textbook, Our Beautiful Language, includes the “Shahid Song” that encourages death in war as a shahid or martyr. Other textbooks carry similar messages. …

An Islamic Jihad summer school massages the libidos of teenage boys by telling them they will “liberate Palestine from the Jews” by becoming martyrs, and promise the boys that they will be greeted [in heaven] by 72 virgins.

Kindergartens, schools, summer camps, and school sports tournaments (and other institutions) are named after terrorists and young suicide bombers, who are used as pedagogic role models. …

Throughout the Palestinian territories, walls are plastered with posters of young martyrs who are idolized by Palestinian youth the way other teens worship rock stars.

Parents in Gaza dress up their infants in mock suicide vests, and when one of their children dies a “martyr” death by exploding a real one, they celebrate with cakes and candy.

The PA loads buses with children to carry them to points where they throw rocks at the Israeli security forces.

In fire-fights, the Palestinians use children as human shields. They set up their guns on the roofs of schools. And in battle on the ground, men with guns stand behind rows of children.

Next the story of al-Shabaab in Somalia:

The drought in the Horn of Africa that began in 2009 is the worst in 60 years. … In Somalia that drought soon turned into a famine of unprecedented proportions. To date almost 30,000 children under the age of 5 have died of starvation … More than one million Somalis have fled to Ethiopia and Kenya, where makeshift refugee camps house hundreds of thousands.

One might expect that all Somali leaders and political parties would join forces to help their people survive this enormous tragedy; but one would be wrong. The Somali Muslim terrorists known as al-Shabaab have worked for the past two years to prevent any foreign aid from reaching their Muslim Somali co-religionists …

Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (the “Organization of the Youth Jihad Fighters”), or al-Shabaab (“the lads” or “the youths” in Arabic) for short, is a group of Islamist terrorist jihadis fighting to overthrow the Muslim government of Somalia in order to replace it with a government committed to a more extreme form of Islam and to Shari’a law. The group now controls large swathes of southern Somalia. Its leaders claim that they are waging war against the “enemies of Islam” which includes the present Somali government.

Al-Shabaab leaders formerly denied any connection with el-Qaeda, but early in 2010 they acknowledged that they worked with el-Qaeda forces in Pakistan and Yemen for training and deployment. … Its terrorist forces, under el-Qaeda influence, have created the single greatest obstacle to humanitarian assistance in Somalia. Thanks to al-Shabaab, the rate of malnutrition in southern Somalia is the highest in the world, approaching half the population …

In addition to denying aid workers access to the regions where the drought and famine rage, al-Shabaab terrorists force local Somali Muslim humanitarian organizations to pay “taxes” (aka bribes) in order to be able to funnel food and other supplies to the devastated areas… In some cases, al-Shabaab terrorists have burned food stocks and medicine, and have kidnapped or killed charity workers, when bribes were not paid. These “taxes” can be as high as $10,000 for access to the areas al-Shabaab controls. Then there are the “registration fees” of another $10,000, and payments of $6,000 every six months, as well as 20 percent of the value of all food and other supplies and 10 percent on all vehicles, as a form of “import duties.” Their terrorism pays well; but their extorted wealth and their Islamic jihad agenda come at the expense of the lives of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of their own people. …

Why does al-Shabaab wreck this horrific inhuman brutality against their own Muslim Somali people?

As al-Shabaab spokespersons explain it, alien non-Muslim groups cannot be permitted to enter Somalia because they might host spies, or worse, promote an un-Islamic way of life among the Somali Muslims…  Attacks on humanitarian workers … bringing food to starving Somalis are merely self-defense against foreign non-Muslim influences that might corrupt the pure Islamic way of life for Somali Muslims.

Are these devout Muslims incapable  of feeling pity?

Now comes a surprise. A strange, ironic twist in the story.

Gazans, whose walls are plastered with pictures of their sacrificed children, are so moved by the plight of the dying children of Somalia, that they are sending aid to them.

Here is the report:

In another sign that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza isn’t all it is said to be, Gazans are sending aid to Somalia.

Imams in mosques in the Gaza strip mentioned Somalia during Friday prayers last week and asked Gazans to donate to their brothers there.

Moreover, the Arab Doctors Union Gaza branch ran a campaign asking the people of Gaza to donate to people of Somalia.

The campaign, called “From Gaza hand in hand to save the children of Somalia“, will last throughout Ramadan.

The Union took out advertisements supporting the campaign in local radios and websites to encourage people to contribute to the campaign. It is planning advertisements on local television also.

Various people responded to the campaign, but most donations came from the local non-governmental organisations and some wealthy businessmen, according to the organizers of the campaign.

One of the donors, Mohammed Abd Al Latif said, “I saw the pictures of our brothers in Somalia and felt so sorry for them; I wanted to do anything to help.”

“The campaign aimed at demonstrating the extent of physical cohesion between the besieged Gaza and Somalia, showing that the Palestinian people are capable of supporting and standing by the Somali people,” said Ahmad Hathat, the public relations officer of the Union.

The charity campaign underscores the fact that Gaza is swimming in surplus aid from an international community willing to underwrite the national aspirations of Fatah and Hamas to the extent that their enclaves have become transit points, rather than a destination, for aid.

So the money comes out of aid from the West, including the US, by which the Gazans’ own existence is chiefly sustained.

But whether the aid-out-of-aid they are sending will actually reach the dying children of Somalia is uncertain. Will al-Shabaab consider Gazans – ruled by Hamas, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – pure enough to be allowed to help the dying children without religiously corrupting them? Or will al-Shabaab pocket the bounty?

We have written often and at length about the futility of continuing the US engagement in Afghanistan. (Put “Afghanistan” or “Taliban” into our search slot to find our numerous posts on the subject.)

AP now reports that hundreds of millions of US dollars have found their way into the hands of the Taliban.

After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

The losses underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central part of the Obama administration’s strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to help improve quality of life and stoke the country’s economy.

A nice clear demonstration of its political naivety.

But until a special task force assembled by Gen. David Petraeus began its investigation last year, the coalition had little insight into the connections many Afghan companies and their vast network of subcontractors had with insurgents and criminals – groups military officials call “malign actors.”

In a murky process known as “reverse money laundering,” payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks …

“Funds begin as clean monies,” according to one document, then “either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted.”

The conclusions by Task Force 2010 represent the most definitive assessment of how U.S. military spending and aid to Afghanistan has been diverted to the enemy or stolen. …

Has it learnt its lesson from the discovery and grown wiser? No.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million … Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining –

To determine something it is not flexibility that is required, just determination –

whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it …

Security? How about American armed guards keeping cold eyes fixed on every one of the bastards?

And the Pentagon’s wondering who – if they decide for it – should provide it?  Does that mean they’re considering getting Afghans to do it? Oh yes!

The Pentagon did not provide the names of the 20 companies picked due to worries that larger contractors who weren’t selected might try to coerce them into a takeover, the senior defense official said.

Ah, canny, canny!

But about those security providers. Among a bunch of them named in the report, here’s one who is so surprisingly discovered to have been cheating:

In 2009 and 2010, [a] subcontractor identified in the document only as “Rohullah” received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan. …

Rohullah’s hundreds of heavily armed guards operated a protection racket, charging contractors moving U.S. military supplies along the highway as much as $1,500 a vehicle. Failure to pay virtually guaranteed a convoy would be attacked by Rohullah’s forces … Rohullah’s guards regularly fought with the Taliban, but investigators believe Rohullah moved money to the Taliban when it was in his interest to do so. …

U.S. authorities in Afghanistan are screening contractors more carefully to be sure they can handle the work and also are trustworthy, the senior military official said. Authorities also are being more aggressive in barring companies if they violate contract terms or are found to be involved in illicit activities. Since the task force was created last year, the number of debarred Afghan, U.S. and international companies and individuals associated with contracting in Afghanistan has more than doubled – from 31 to 78, the official said.

And those not on the list may be presumed trustworthy?

Just how dumbly trusting and incurably naive the Western directors of the Afghan campaign are, here’s a reminder of how easily they were deceived by the Taliban last year. We quote from our post The Sting of Nov. 23 , 2010, concerning “a perfectly performed con-trick by which an imposter extracted a mountain of moola from craven double-dealing presidents, diplomats, and generals involved in The Endless War of Waste and Futility.”

The conman claimed to be Mullah Akhta Muhammad Mansour, “the second highest official in the Taliban movement” after the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

He and “two other Taliban leaders” were flown to Kabul from Pakistan in a NATO plane, wearing serious beards, and were ceremoniously ushered into the presidential palace, where they proceeded to beard President Karzai in his den, so to speak. Then they were conducted to the city of Kandahar where “Mullah Mansour” and his two merry men hoodwinked government officials, NATO commanders, American diplomats and top-brass.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

For “little” read “nothing”.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

Doubts about the man’s identity arose after the third session of negotiations. Only then –

A man who had known [the real] Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him.

Even so, they wistfully hoped that whoever he was would come again. They’d paid him to keep the fake peace talks going, and any old talks, with anyone at all, are better than none.

So who was the guy they were negotiating with?

The theory we like best is that he was “a humble shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta”, who simply enlisted the help of two cronies and carried out the sting operation for the most understandable of motives – to get a lot of money. Which they did.

When will they ever learn?

An inspector from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided the fish fry at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in Rochester. He had been there for his annual inspection of the church’s kitchen, but … he espied an elderly parishioner unwrapping some pies.  He swooped. Would those by any chance be homemade pies?

They were. Four ladies had made each her favorite pie. They’d brought them to the church to sell at a dollar a slice. The inspector stopped them doing so, telling them that if they did they’d be committing a crime. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to bake a pie in a home kitchen for sale at a church fundraiser.

The inspector informed the ladies they could continue baking pies [for sale] at home if each paid a $35 dollar fee for him to come round to her home and certify her kitchen as state-compliant.

Mark Steyn tells the story in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. He also tells this one:

Seven-year-old Julie Murphy was selling lemonade in Portland, Oregon, when two officers demanded to see her “temporary restaurant license” which would have cost her $120. When she failed to produce it, they threatend her with a $500 fine, and also made her cry.

And this one:

For their morning customers the Collins family had been putting a coffee pot and doughnuts on the counter of their hardware store for fifteen years…

But in California that’s an illegal act. The permit mullahs told Randy Collins that he needed to install stainless steel sinks with hot and cold water and a prep kitchen to handle  the doughnuts.

Mr Collins was submissive.

“We want to be in compliance with the law” [he said].

“Why?”  Mark Steyn asks.

When the law says it’s illegal for a storekeeper to offer his customer a cup of coffee, you should be proud to be in non-compliance. Otherwise, what the hell did you guys bother holding a revolution for? …

This is the reality of small business in America today. You don’t make the rules, you don’t get to vote for people who make the rules. But you have to work harder, pay more taxes, buy more permits, fill in more paperwork, contribute to the growth of an ever less favorable business environment, and prostrate yourself before the Commissar of Community Services – all for the privilege of taking home less and less money.

Mark Steyn calls it tyranny. It is.

Another example from a different source:

When California’s elected officials come back from their month-long recess they face a mountain of proposed legislation (almost 900 bills are lined up and waiting), including a new law (SB432) that would require hotels to eliminate flat sheets. Not having fitted sheets on hotel beds would now be a crime in California. This is not a joke.

California, the state trying to deal with a massive $26 BILLION dollar debt, is considering a law that some hospitality industry experts claim would add an estimated $15 to $30 million dollars in costs to an already hurting hotel industry. The low-end estimate of fifteen million is the projected cost to purchase new fitted sheets for the 550,000hotel beds in the state. Of course the hospitality industry is claiming that these added costs will hurt their business and put jobs at risk.

The fitted-sheet bill is the brainchild of State Senator Kevin De Leon (a Democrat from Los Angeles), whose mother suffered back pains while working as a hotel maid. Kevin has been quoted as saying this was “an issue close to my heart.” It is also a bill that has the support of Big Labor. …

We are now going to make it a crime in California not to use a fitted sheet? Really?

The desirability or undesirability of something is not a good reason to legislate for or against it. There should be no more laws than are frugally necessary (administered as rigorously as possible). To make thousands of petty laws that are easy to break through ignorance, incapacity, or bewilderment is to bring the law into contempt.

It’s debatable whether there should be any regulatory laws whatsoever. They are inevitably oppressive. They establish a niggling, nagging, tyranny-of-interference.

Tyranny American-style.

It is communitarian, a sneaky form of collectivization. It is job-killing, impoverishing. Enlarging the reach and power of the state, it is dictatorial.

And it  is Obama’s preferred method of government. He is using the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement his dictatorial will. The EPA is continually churning out thousands of regulations to complicate and hamper work in agriculture, animal farming, industry, construction … everything. With this Stasi-like agency, he by-passes Congress.

The only good point made by Jon Huntsman in a recent debate among GOP candidates for the presidency, was that the EPA must be abolished.

Should America intervene in other countries when, for instance, a tyrant is mowing down thousands of his own people? Is it in America’s interest to transform despotisms and anarchic states into democracies – as the neoconservatives believe? Or should America ignore what is happening in the world at large unless it is directly threatened – as the isolationists believe?

Caroline Glick writes at Townhall:

In truth, the dominant foreign policy in the Republican Party, and to a degree, in American society as a whole is neither neoconservativism nor isolationism.

It is, she argues, what may be called Jacksonianism, after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US.

What are the essential ideas of Jacksonian foreign policy?

The US is different from the rest of the world and therefore the US should not try to remake the world in its own image by claiming that everyone is basically the same.

The US must ensure its honor abroad by abiding by its commitments and standing with its allies.

The US must take action to defend its interests.

The US must fight to win or not fight at all. The US should only respect those foes that fight by the same rules as the US does.

President Ronald Reagan, she says, “hewed closest to these basic guidelines in recent times”.

Reagan fought Soviet influence in Central America everywhere he could and with whomever he could find … exploited every opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union in Europe … deployed Pershing short-range nuclear warheads in Western Europe … called the Soviet Union an evil empire … began developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. And he walked away from an arms control agreement when he decided it was a bad deal for the US.

Throughout his presidency, Reagan never shied away from trumpeting American values. To the contrary, he did so regularly. However, unlike the neoconservatives, Reagan recognized that … the very notion that values trumped all represented a fundamental misunderstanding of US interests and the nature and limits of US power.

What would be the foreign policy of a Jacksonian president  now?  She takes one example, the revolutionary upheavals in the Arab lands:

He or she would understand that supporting elections that are likely to bring a terror group like Hamas or Hezbollah into power is not an American interest … that toppling a pro-American dictator like Mubarak in favor of a mob is not sound policy if the move is likely to bring an anti-American authoritarian successor regime to power … that using US power to overthrow a largely neutered US foe like Gaddafi in favor of a suspect opposition movement is not a judicious use of US power. Indeed, a Jacksonian president would recognize that it would be far better to expend the US’s power to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad — an open and active foe of the US and so influence the identity of a post-Assad government.

In her view, neoconservative policy was fine in theory, but in practice it brought unwanted consequences:

Broadly speaking, neoconservatives argue that the US should always side with populist forces against dictatorships. While these ideas may be correct in theory, in practice the consequence of Bush’s adoption of the neoconservative worldview was the empowerment of populist and popular jihadists and Iranian allies throughout the Middle East at the expense of US allies.

Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. Its electoral victory paved the way for its military takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Hezbollah’s participation in Lebanon’s 2005 elections enabled the Iranian proxy army to hijack the Lebanese government in 2006, and violently takeover the Lebanese government in 2009.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s successful parliamentary run in Egypt in 2005 strengthened the radical, anti-American, jihadist group and weakened Mubarak.

And the election of Iranian-influenced Iraqi political leaders in Iraq in 2005 exacerbated the trend of Iranian predominance in post-Saddam Iraq. …

Still, the neoconservatives’ “muscular” policy, intended to “advance the cause of democracy and freedom worldwide”, was preferable to isolationism, and far preferable to [what passes for] Obama’s foreign policy.

For all the deficiencies of the neoconservative worldview, at least the neoconservatives act out of a deep-seated belief that the US as a force for good in the world and out of concern for maintaining America’s role as the leader of the free world. In stark contrast, Obama’s foreign policy is based on a fundamental anti-American view of the US and a desire to end the US’s role as the leading world power. And the impact of Obama’s foreign policy on US and global security has been devastating.

From Europe to Asia to Russia to Latin America to the Middle East and Africa, Obama has weakened the US and turned on its allies. He has purposely strengthened US adversaries worldwide as part of an overall strategy of divesting an unworthy America from its role as world leader. He has empowered the anti-American UN to replace the US as the arbiter of US foreign policy. And so, absent the American sheriff, US adversaries from the Taliban to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are empowered to attack America and its allies.

A worse position with regard to US foreign relations could hardly be devised.

Is the damage repairable by a Republican president adopting Reagan-like – or “Jacksonian”  – ideas?

The ideas seem to us to be sensible enough. But much of what is happening in the world – partly as a result of the disastrous Obama presidency – has no precedent, and new threats will require new thinking.

Huge changes are looming up. The age of the nation-state seems to be passing. There’s a global trend back to tribalism. Will America alone be immune to it? Much of the world – perhaps a third of its population – is likely to be Muslim before the middle of the century.

In his new book  After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, Mark Steyn visualizes “the world after America” will be “more dangerous, more violent, more genocidal” – in a chapter ominously titled The Somalification of the World. But he does hold out some hope:

Americans face a choice: you can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea – of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunity to exploit your talents to the fullest – or you can join most of the rest of the western world in terminal decline.

And he warns:

To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult.

But to do that must be the first task of a new president. Only a free, strong, prosperous America can be an effective power in the world, however it may decide to exert that power.

“The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.”

That’s a quotation from a study of poverty in America by the Heritage Foundation.

The study found that the officially-designated poor enjoy a high standard of living. Read the whole illuminating study here.

A summary of its most important findings:

The typical poor household, as defined by the government, has a car and air conditioning, two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there are children, especially boys, the family has a game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.

In the kitchen, the household has a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences include a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.

The home of the typical poor family is in good repair and is not overcrowded. In fact, the typical average poor American has more living space in his home than the average (non-poor) European has.

By its own report, the typical poor family was not hungry, was able to obtain medical care when needed, and had sufficient funds during the past year to meet all essential needs.

This happy state of affairs is changing as the present socialist government makes the nation poorer.

Obama promised “change” without describing it’s nature, so each voter could imagine it to be whatever he or she hoped for.

Now we know what he meant.

The big divide in politics, the all-important ideological choice, is between collectivism and liberty.

On the one side are those who want to be looked after. They believe that the state should guarantee that they will always be fed, housed, schooled, and medicated. They believe that they should not be left to provide the necessities of life for themselves. The state should be their guardian and provider. Thus, they imagine, they will be secure; they will never starve, freeze in the streets, be left helpless when they sicken. We’ll call them the Serfs. Also on this side are those who want to be the guardians, the providers, the controllers. They covet the power. They will pride themselves on being the benefactors of the rest. They believe they know what’s best for the people better than the people can know it themselves. We’ll call them the Masters. This ideology of total state control, of an entrenched and privileged elite ruling by decree over obedient serfs, is Collectivism. Its devotees do not describe themselves in those terms. They see themselves as Benefactors and Good Citizens rather than as Masters and Serfs. They name their ideology variously as Socialism, Communism, National Socialism, Progressivism, and even – self-deceivingly – Liberalism. But whatever they call it, it is Collectivism.

On the other side are those who know it is an illusion that lives are best sustained by the state. They know that to depend on the state is to be powerless. They know that what the state gives the state can withhold. They know that each of us can only, first and last, depend on himself. What they want is to be free to pursue their own aims and interests as best they can according to their own judgment. They may acknowledge the necessity of government, but government kept within limits, serving the people and not mastering them; using its monopoly of force only to protect the liberty of the people. That means to protect the country from external enemies, and every individual’s person and property. Those elected to govern must be forever subservient to the rule of law, which must apply to everyone equally – the only equality that is needed and desirable. This is the ideology of Liberty.

These two ideologies are obviously, by their very nature, opposed to each other. Nations need to choose between them. They cannot combine collectivism and liberty. Liberty is indivisible.

Attempts have been made to combine the two. After the Second World War,Western European states tried to preserve a degree of freedom for their citizens while at the same time using the power of government to provide for them. They called this hybrid the Welfare State. It was doomed to failure.

The welfare state is too expensive to maintain. The welfare state is a Ponzi scheme, and can only last – only seem to work – for a limited time. Ponzi schemes must collapse sooner or later.

This is what happened. Productive citizens were taxed exorbitantly to fund “free” education, “free” health care, subsidized housing, and cash handouts to the jobless and handicapped. Multitudes quickly realized that they could do better living on the money the state handed out than by working. In some European countries a working life was barely twenty years. The age at which retirement could begin might be as low as forty-five. Pensions were provided by those still working and paying heavy taxes. Pensioners lived long. The working generation bore fewer children, preferring to use the money the state left them with to finance a pleasurable life. There were not enough productive citizens to keep the Ponzi scheme going. So foreigners were imported. But many of them did not work. Rather than contributing to the economy, they immediately became dependent on the state – which is to say on the ever-decreasing revenue collected from the ever-decreasing work-force.

All over Europe, welfare states are failing, as they had to. Those that are not failing now must fail eventually. For some the moment of crisis has arrived. The people are rioting in the streets. Governments are desperate. They search for help from sources as helpless as themselves. The experiment in “the mixed economy” is over.

More slowly, less comprehensively, the United States has been turning itself into a welfare state over the same period of time. When, in 2008, it elected a Marxist to the presidency, and he appointed collectivists to help him rule as far as he could by decree, and the collectivist Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress, the pace quickened. Giant steps were taken towards transforming the land of liberty into a European-like welfare state.

It is too expensive to maintain. It is a Ponzi scheme. America is impoverishing itself. It has run into vast debt by handing out tax revenues to tens of millions for their “social security” and health care.

The crisis has come upon America. It had to come, and it has come now. There is no reconciling the ideology of those who want to finance “big government” and its spending on entitlements by means of high taxes, limitless borrowing, and the printing of paper money – all of which are impoverishing measures – with the ideology of those who believe in self-reliance, fiscal responsibility, limited government, and who would rather pay for defense than finance dependency.

Compromise between the two is not possible. The collapse of the European welfare states proves that. The choice has to be made now between the crippling Ponzi economics of redistribution and the tried and proved prosperity-making economics of the free market. Which is to say, between collectivism and liberty.

The bitter wrangling between Republicans, who in theory are the party of liberty, and Democrats, the collectivist party, over whether to raise the debt-ceiling; the mutual accusations of “unwillingness to compromise”; the insistence on one side that government spending must be cut and on the other that taxes must be raised, are skirmishes in the battle that had to be joined, that was being prepared over many decades. Some on each side have accused the others of “playing politics” or “only trying to score a political point”, not understanding that this is nothing less than the most important political battle of the age. It is being fought in Congress. It is being fought with words between the political parties in Congress, and more distantly between the Tea Party and the White House. It is not being fought with weapons in the streets. Or not yet. Whether it will come to that depends on whether the argument is won decisively now in Washington.

It is much more than a theoretical controversy. It is not “bickering”. This is the moment of having to choose between serfdom or liberty.

The survival of our civilization depends on the outcome.

Jillian Becker  August 8, 2011

How did it ever come about that an unelected official has the power to override the verdict of a court and have a convicted prisoner released? Isn’t this against the rule of law? Doesn’t it undermine the rule of law?

Attorney General Eric Holder wanted a terrorist, who’d been sentenced to 80 years imprisonment, to be released after serving 25 years, and released she was in July 2010. Nineteen days later she died of cancer. So it was a case of compassion overruling justice?

She could hardly have expected it. While she was in prison she wrote poems in which she described the United States as a terribly cruel country. “US koncentration kamps” … “The amerikkan nightmare of life“.

J. Christian Adams writes at Big Government:

Attorney General Eric Holder has a peculiar tendency to set loose militant black panthers. Everyone is already familiar with the dismissal of the voter intimidation case I brought as a Justice Department attorney. There, the DOJ dropped claims against Malik Zulu Shabazz, national head of the New Black Panther Party, and Jerry Jackson, a Philadelphia panther and Democratic Party official. But Jackson and Shabazz aren’t the only militants Holder has set loose.

Marilyn Buck was a Marxist terrorist who participated in conspiracies that led to the deaths of multiple police officers. Buck helped the Black Liberation Army, a violent Marxist offshoot of the black panthers, acquire weapons and ammunition. She participated in the robbery of an armored car where a guard was murdered. If that wasn’t enough, Buck was also charged with the bombing of the U.S. Senate, Ft. McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Officer’s Club and a New York City federal building. In many states, Buck’s behavior might have led to a midnight reservation in the electric chair.

Yet Holder’s DOJ unlocked Buck’s jail cell and set her free last summer. … Releasing Buck reflects an alien attitude that has caused the Obama years to be characterized by an ideological disconnect with most Americans.

The letters which persuaded the Justice Department were stuffed with crackpot arguments and have yet to be reported over the last year. They are full of lawlessness and arguments from extreme fringes of political thought. What’s worse, the letters are on the letterhead of government and private institutions, institutions most Americans incorrectly think are worthy of respect.

Consider Jill Elijah. She writes on behalf of Buck’s release that “a warm nurturing living arrangement is available to Ms. Buck in my home located in Brooklyn. . . . I and my family look forward to her joining our home.” The letterhead? Harvard Law School, where Elijah runs the criminal justice institute.

Also on the letterhead in the Elijah letter to the Justice Department is Charles Ogletree, President Obama’s dear friend and mentor. Having Ogletree’s name associated with such a request was like mailing Buck the keys to her jail cell. Ogletree’s daughter Rashida was recently hired into Holder’s Justice Department as a lawyer.

Note the efforts of James Kyung-Jin Lee. He seeks Buck’s release hoping she can visit Southern California: Buck “would benefit from the refreshing environment and welcoming community, she would also, I believe, enhance the community through her example and fortitude in prison.” The letterhead on Lee’s lunacy? University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of Asian Studies. How reassuring that professors at California’s state university admit they would welcome a Marxist terrorist and feel sufficient sympathy on campus to use school letterhead.

Joseph Velasco, a self described “teacher, storyteller and artist” sent a letter to DOJ arguing for Buck’s release saying: “someone like Marilyn is a role model . . . . I welcome the creativity and intellect that she will bring to our community. . . . Marilyn will find a welcoming home here.” The letterhead on Velasco’s letter to DOJ? The official stationary of the Santa Barbara School District, Santa Barbara High School.

A letter from Das Williams states Buck “participated in many educational and cultural activities. . . . Having her serve any more time is pointless and will accomplish nothing more than wasting of government funds.” Williams sends this letter on the letterhead of the City Council of Santa Barbara, where Das served on city council. Williams now serves in California’s State Assembly.

There are many more. Philip Moffitt of the Life Balance Institute argues in a letter Buck’s release “would be a positive step toward healing the past and our society.” Merle Woo, “retired educator,” tells the DOJ “what a shame she cannot be among us, the public, who could benefit so much from her teachings and great human spirit. . . . With her brilliant human insights, she has given us tools to live better, more enlightened, more conscious lives.” Woo was a professor of woman’s studies at San Jose University. No surprise that she “usually used Marilyn’s poetry and essays in my classes.” Other apologists for the murderer Buck include California attorney Robert Bloom (“loving kind person”), retired math professor Elana Levy (Buck’s “caring for others also continually reminds me of how to live in a compassionate manner.”) and Zaveeni Khan-Marcus , the director of the University of California Santa Barbara multicultural center (“I welcome the creativity and intellect she will bring to our community.”) …

Students of history often wonder how civilized countries can devolve into murderous nightmares. These letters provide a homegrown American example of sophisticates excusing murderous behavior because they agree with the murderer’s political philosophy. Simply, they are chilling.

Also chilling is that the militant and destructive ideas that fueled Buck’s murderous campaigns have gained creeping acceptability in American institutions. Teachers, professors, politicians and lawyers all clamored for Buck’s release. 

Theorists like them brought a real nightmare of life upon the people of Russia, China, Cambodia … But these friends of Marilyn Buck safely dream of their Marxist utopias in a “refreshing environment” unaccountably surviving in amerikka.