Come fix upon me that accusing eye.

I thirst for accusation.

                                   – W.B.Yeats

*

How interesting that you are intent on destroying our nation – please tell us all about it, Sir. And tell us how we deserve it. How bad we are.

Thus the BBC (in effect) to a leading jihadist, inspirer of the Butcher of Woolwich. To provide him with one of the biggest platforms for his loathsome propaganda that the world can offer.

This is from the MailOnline:

As the awful events unfolded on the streets of Woolwich on Wednesday, the mobile phone secreted inside the black Islamic robes worn by Anjem Choudary — the self-styled Sheik of East London — soon started ringing.

Calling him were producers from the BBC’s Newsnight programme, as well as rolling BBC news shows and Channel 4, all wanting to find out from this so-called ‘expert’ what exactly drove young, British-born men to hack an innocent young soldier to death in the capital with knives and a meat cleaver.

An expert on what? On JIHAD. On Islam’s mission of slaughter and subjugation. Why else phone HIM? By the very act of inviting him to come on their programs they were demonstrating that they know what they will not confess to knowing – that the butchery on the street in Woolwich was a religious act, and the religion is Islam, and Islam is a murderous ideology.

Media-savvy, and far more intelligent than his oafish demeanour suggests, Choudary was given star billing on a discussion panel with Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, as he insisted he was not a ‘hate preacher’ or Islamic extremist.

Indeed he is not an Islamic extremist. He is just Islamic. A Muslim. Like the Butcher of Woolwich.

The 45-year-old, who is often seen talking in whispers with young acolytes at Middle Eastern cafes in London, was given a platform as if he were a respected academic talking at arm’s length about Islamic extremism.

Refusing to condemn the killers of Lee Rigby, the British drummer crushed by a vehicle and then hacked to death with machetes, Choudary even suggested that ‘one man killed in a street’ was hardly proper vengeance for those killed by ‘Britain and the U.S.’ in wars overseas.

Claiming most Muslims support that view, the ‘preacher’ — he has no formal religious qualifications — also talked over the presenter and other guests as he implied that the killing was the result of British prejudice and racism towards young Muslims.

Lap it up, lap it up, Kirsty Wark and all ye BBC dhimmi! To your decadent and corrupt taste, accusation is sweeter than honey.  Must be. You grovel for it so.

As well as admitting that he knew and had been on marches with Michael Adebojalo, one of the alleged Woolwich killers, who was photographed standing immediately behind him at a demonstration in 2007, Choudary insisted that ‘persecution’ of Muslims prompted attacks against Western targets.

Perhaps that’s why he felt moved to describe Adebojalo [the Butcher of Woolwich]— whom he first met eight years ago — as a man of ‘impeccable character’.

Disgracefully, Choudary even claimed that he and his followers had signed a covenant — akin to the British military’s covenant to care for the welfare of its soldiers — not to wage war against this country’s people in return for living here unmolested and at our expense.

There is only one problem with this preposterous claim: it is simply not true. For the preacher is a fan of what is known by Islamic extremists as taqiyya — the telling of lies to protect their secret, deadly aims.

What is the point of inviting an habitual liar to say anything on a public platform? The BBC is so full of Islam-lovers and cowed dhimmis that that question would not occur to it.

… The extent of Choudary’s activities in Britain raises disturbing questions about how individuals with known terror links are allowed to flout the law and openly recruit on our streets.

Though he comes over as an excitable buffoon (he orders his young recruits to call him ‘Sheik’ and shouts down anyone who disagrees with his extremist views), the reality is that Choudary is smart, cunning and dangerous — prompting [some] commentators to brand him the most dangerous man in Britain.

Funded by benefits from the infidel taxpayers he so despises, for the past four years he has openly staged ‘Islamic road shows’ across Britain to recruit young men to his chilling cause.

As a result, some of those with whom he has come into contact have become embroiled in hatching terrorist attacks here and abroad. An extremist who believes his sole calling is to wage holy war against Britain and her ‘infidel’ allies, his real goal is trying to prepare the ground for a global Islamic jihad.

He dreams of seeing the black crescent flag — which is the symbol of his extremist Islam and Al Qaeda — flying over Downing Street, and a draconian form of sharia law imposed across Britain. …

Once described by a moderate Muslim as the sort of religious leader who ‘sets the mood music for suicide bombers to dance to’, Choudary wants alcohol banned, amputations for thieves and adulterers to be stoned to death. …

According to terrorism experts, Choudary is the recruiting sergeant for what U.S. intelligence dubs Britain’s ‘Generation Jihad’. …

In a chilling portent of the horrors that unfolded in Woolwich this week, [one of Choudary’s native British converts to Islam] told me that British soldiers were a fair target. …

Choudary’s tentacles run far across a number of militant Islamic groups. He is a founding member of extremist groups that are banned in many countries, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun — of which the alleged Woolwich killer Michael Adebojalo is thought to have been a member.

It was this group that praised the ‘magnificent’ July 7 London terror attacks that killed 52 innocent people in 2005. Choudary also once ran a hard-line sect called Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’aah Muntada. …

‘Jihad is part of the Koran,’ he says. …

And there he speaks the truth.

He wants Britain to become an Islamic state.

He believes Muslim immigrants will eventually out-breed the native British population, pointing out that Medina in Saudi Arabia once had just 200 Muslim inhabitants, but went on to become the second city of Islam. His mood will no doubt have been buoyed by new figures this week showing that one in ten of under 25-year-olds living here are Muslim. …

Choudary claims to have converted hundreds of young men to his cause. …

With breathtaking cynicism, Choudary instructs his recruits that it is their Muslim duty to claim benefits, ensuring they make no contribution to the ‘enemy’ British state through taxation.

And successive British governents, whatever their party color, support this terrific idea. And judges uphold the “right” of immigrant Muslim criminals to continue to live in the country and be housed, educated, and medically treated at the expense of the British tax payers.

The ‘Sheik’ leads by example. Now separated from his wife and three children, for years he has received more than £1,700 a month in benefits — which he once referred to as ‘Jihad seekers allowance’. …

So why is he still allowed to preach hate on Britain’s streets — and why is he given airtime on flagship TV news programmes only hours after a murder he refused to condemn? That is a question that is going to enrage more and more people …

Until tolerance is tried to breaking point, and more tens of thousands will join the English Defence League –  just any organization, however unsavory in itself, that will take action – violent action – to stop Muslim immigration, deport Muslim criminals, ban terrorist-affiliated Muslim organizations … No. Against Muslims. It will be too late then to start arguing against the ideology of Islam – at present a more promptly punished crime in Britain than butchery on the streets of London –

This is from PowerLine:

A 22-year-old man has been charged on suspicion of making malicious comments on Facebook following the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby.

Benjamin Flatters, from Lincoln, was arrested last night after complaints were made to Lincolnshire Police about comments made on Facebook, which were allegedly of a racist or anti-religious nature.

Thus does civilization end with a whimper.

How interesting that you are intent on destroying our nation – please tell us all about it, Sir. And tell us how we deserve it. How bad we are.

This map, via the Washington Post, shows the distribution of the world’s atheists in 40 countries.

A 2012 poll by WIN/Gallup International – an international polling firm that is not associated with the D.C.-based Gallup group — asked more than 50,000 people in 40 countries whether they considered themselves “religious,” “not religious” or “convinced atheist.” Overall, the poll concluded that roughly 13 percent of global respondents identified as atheists, more than double the percentage in the U.S.

The most atheist nation is China, with 47 percent of  respondents self-described as atheist. Next comes Japan with 31%, and the Czech Republic about the same. France falls into the 20%-29% category; Germany and Australia 10%-19%; the US, Canada, Russia  – and Saudi Arabia [!] 5%-9%; India, Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Peru under 5%.

WIN/Gallup notes that religiosity is highest among the poor and the less educated.

So chances are, the better off you are and the better informed you are, the more likely you’ll be to slough off religion.

Though not so much in the United States.

No surprise there.

6 a Woken by the Common Alarm loud as usual. Shower water cool as usual. (Am not complaining.) Did not shave as this is the very day scheduled for my conversion to Islam and I’ll have to grow a beard.

6.30 Ate a salad from my own mini-refrigerator. Got the bed into the wall (mechanism now fixed), so able to lower table and eat comfortably sitting on the chair.

7.00 Bicycled to work. Timed myself. 25 minutes from the Unitarium to the Ministry, bicycle hall to bicycle hall. Enjoyed the ride today. Lovely weather thanks to the City Council finally achieving its goal of carbon dioxide reduction to lowest level in the state. Saw that they’ve begun to remove the dead trees along Michelle Obama Avenue. Larger sign over main door must have gone up overnight: New America Federal Ministry of Tolerance.

8-12 noon. Productive morning. Found an intercepted email from an 80-year-old woman to her son in the Progressive Army Pre-School Sex Education Division complaining about getting no treatment for her heart condition. They just don’t get it, these oldies, that they’ve had their time and resources simply cannot be squandered on keeping them alive. Stupid really. Obstinate. What are they clinging to life for when they’re of no more use to the People? Launched the prosecution of both of them as the son has not reported receiving the complaint.

12 noon. Ate a salad in the Ministry Food Space. Also today both slices of Pleistocene Loaf. A hard chew. Still not used to the taste. (Am not complaining.)

12.30p Had to search for nearly twenty minutes of Love Hour to find someone to copulate with. Looked first for a same sex partner as per regulations, but eventually had to settle for a womin. Her living unit no nearer than mine, and time running out. Copulation Hour always a rush as regular partners are forbidden and search always takes time. (Am not complaining.) So we went to the Ministry Love Annexe. Every cubicle engaged. Had to wait ten minutes. Then she made me use a condom (the Free Dispenser was working) even though she was on the pill, because, she said, she knew how unreliable the Pharmaceutical and Birth-Prevention Department was as she’d once worked in it, and also from her own experience, having had seven abortions in the last three years. She talked too much, actually. And it amounted to complaining in my opinion. Am wondering whether to launch a prosecution. Would have to find out her full name and Unitarium. It wasn’t an A-class experience. I signed off on a  B- on the Records Chart. She signed off on a C-, which I thought was just plain insulting. Yes, a prosecution will be the honest thing to do.

1–4  Not productive. I suppose I was a little over excited about my conversion coming up. Confined myself t0 searching for the word “freedom” without result. Had no time to look for “Constitution” or “patriotic” or “gun”.

4-6  Off early from work to go to conversion ceremony. Actual conversion took only a few minutes. Recited the first shura of the Holy Koran aloud, and bingo! I was a Muslim.  But then there was buying a prayer mat (special allowance in my cash packet this month for that as conversion is increasingly encouraged), then prayers and a sermon from the imam. I knew the guy. He was at my school back in the bad old days. He singled me out to welcome me personally into the faith. He used to be a good baseball player. Wanted to join the old Army – willing to kill people! Being an ethnic minority (half native-American) and gay, he was admitted into the State university. “Not the old Army then?” I said – perhaps a little unkindly. “They cured me of all that in my first semester,” he said. Then he asked me where I went to college. Had to admit I’d been turned down everywhere. He remembered I was only good at math and physics. I told him how I’d finally got a degree in computer science from Common Core Higher Education Online. “Main thing is, you must learn the Koran by heart,” he said. “One year from now I’ll be testing you.” I wanted to ask him if he was still gay, but didn’t dare. Must find out first thing tomorrow at work whether I must still look for same-sex partner in Love Hour now that I’m a Muslim.

6 Ate a salad in our Unitarium Food Space. Then met Mike in the Play Space for a game of chess. Not easy to concentrate. Noisier games all round us, much more popular. Almost everyone naked now. Mike said he hoped they don’t make it a Play Space rule. Actually I do too, but he shouldn’t have said so. He caught the look in my eye and quickly added,“I’m not complaining. It’s fine really – I just feel the cold rather more than most, I think.”  After that his game went off and I won three times in a row.

9-10.30 Did some Koran memorizing and now finishing these diary notes just before Conservation Time lights out. Hope the bed comes down okay. Don’t want to have to sleep on the floor. (Am not complaining.)

Today two Muslims beheaded a 20 year old British soldier on a street in London. They shouted “Allahu Akbar!” of course. Police shot them. They were taken to a hospital.

The young soldier was  wearing a T-shirt of a military charity called Help for Heroes.

Why did the Muslims do it? Because they are Muslims fighting perpetual jihad, and the victim was a British soldier. In their primitive mentality, a legitimate target.

WHEN ARE THE PEOPLE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS, INVADED BY THESE BARBARIANS, GOING TO START FIGHTING BACK?

This report comes from the Telegraph:

One witness, called James, told LBC radio: “We saw clearly two knives, meat cleavers, they were big kitchen knives like you would use in a butcher’s, they were hacking at this poor guy, we thought they were trying to remove organs from him”

“These two guys were crazed, they were not there, they were just animals. They then dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road.

“They took 20 minutes to arrive, the police – the armed response.”

He added: “There was only a few people at first then traffic began to build up because people were getting out of their cars to shout at them they were taking no notice, they were standing there, I think they were proud of what they were doing.

“When they dumped the body in the road, these two black guys had the opportunity to hurt other people if they wanted to because there were brave women with the dead guy on the floor, they were shielding and covering him. The attackers with the knives were standing over these women.

“The guy with the gun, the tall guy with the beanie cap on, even a bus had pulled up – he was going over to the bus and asking people to take his photo.”

This infuriating story, which we quote almost in full, is about a victim of the Obama administration, showing how it zealously, even sadistically, implements its leftist policy, through the IRS and other government agencies, to target conservative groups and persecute individuals who form them. It comes from National Review, written by Jillian Kay Melchior.

The Engelbrechts were not, until recently, particularly political. They had been busy running a tiny manufacturing plant in Rosenberg, Texas. After years of working for others, Bryan, a trained machinist, wanted to open his own shop, so he saved his earnings, bought a computerized numerical-control machine, which does precision metal-cutting, and began operating out of his garage. “That was about 20 years ago” he says. “Now, we’re up to about 30 employees.” 

For two decades, Bryan and Catherine drove to work in their big truck. Engelbrecht Manufacturing Inc. now operates out of a 20,000-square-foot metal building on the prairie just outside of Houston … They went back to their country home each night. Stress was rare, and life was good.

But the 2008 elections left Catherine feeling frustrated about the debates, which seemed to be a string of superficial talking points. So she began attending tea-party meetings, enjoying the political discussion. A spunky woman known for her drive, Catherine soon wanted to do more than just talk. She joined other tea partiers and decided to volunteer at the ballot box. Working as an alternate judge at the polls in 2009 in Fort Bend County, Texas, Catherine says, she was appalled and dismayed to witness everything from administrative snafus to outright voter fraud.

These formative experiences prompted her to found two organizations: King Street Patriots, a local community group that hosts weekly discussions on personal and economic freedoms; and True the Vote, which seeks to prevent voter fraud and trains volunteers to work as election monitors. It also registers voters, attempts to validate voter-registration lists, and pursues fraud reports to push for prosecution if illegal activity has occurred. …

In July 2010, Catherine filed with the IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her organizations.

Shortly after,the troubles began.

That winter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking with questions about a person who had attended a King Street Patriots event once. Based on sign-in sheets, the organization discovered that the individual in question had attended an event, but “it was a come-and-go thing”,  and they had no further information on hand about him. Nevertheless, the FBI also made inquiries about the person to the office manager, who was a [King Street Patriots] volunteer.

The King Street Patriots weren’t the only ones under scrutiny. On January 11, the IRS visited the Engelbrechts’  shop and conducted an on-site audit of both their business and their personal returns, Catherine says.

“What struck us as odd about that,” she adds, “is the lengths to which the auditor went to try to … find some error. She wanted to go out and see [our] farm, she wanted to count the cattle, she wanted to look at the fence line. It was a very curious three days. …”

Bryan adds: “It was kind of funny to us. I mean, we weren’t laughing that much, but we knew we were squeaky clean. … ” 

Two months later, the IRS initiated the first round of questions for True the Vote. Catherine painstakingly answered them, knowing that nonprofit status would help with the organization’s credibility, donors, and grant applications. In October, the IRS requested additional information. And whenever Catherine followed up with IRS agents about the status of True the Vote’s application, there was always a delay that our application was going to be up next, and it was just around the corner …

As this was occurring, the FBI continued to phone King Street Patriots. In May 2011, agents phoned wondering “how they were doing”.  The FBI made further inquiries in June, November, and December asking whether there was anything to report.

The situation escalated in 2012. That February, True the Vote received a third request for information from the IRS, which also sent its first questionnaire to King Street Patriots. Catherine says the IRS had “hundreds of questions, hundreds and hundreds of questions.”  The IRS requested every Facebook post and Tweet she had ever written. She received questions about her family, whether she’d ever run for political office, and which organizations she had spoken to.

“It’s no great secret that the IRS is considered to be one of the more serious [federal agencies],” Catherine says. “When you get a call from the IRS, you don’t take it lightly. So when you are asked questions that seem to imply a sense of disapproval, it has a very chilling effect.” 

On the same day they received the questions from the IRS, Catherine says, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) launched an unscheduled audit of their machine shop, forcing the Engelbrechts to drop everything planned for that day. Though the Engelbrechts have a Class 7 license, which allows them to make component parts for guns, they do not manufacture firearms. Catherine said that while the ATF had a right to conduct the audit, “it was odd that they did it completely unannounced, and they took five, six hours. It was so extensive. It just felt kind of weird.” 

That was in February. In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid a visit to Engelbrecht Manufacturing while Bryan, Catherine, and their children were out of town. The OSHA inspector talked with the managerial staff and employees, inspecting the premises minutely. But Bryan says the agent found only “little Mickey Mouse stuff, like, ‘You have safety glasses on, but not the right kind; the forklift has a seatbelt, but not the right kind.’” Yet Catherine and Bryan said the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it.

Not long after, the tab arrived. OSHA was imposing $25,000 in fines on Engelbrecht Manufacturing. They eventually worked it down to $17,500, and Bryan says they may have tried to contest the fines to drive them even lower, but “we didn’t want to make any more waves, because we don’t know [how much further] OSHA could reach.” 

“Bottom line is, it hurt,”  he says. “[$17,500 dollars] is not an insignificant amount to this company. It might be to other companies, but we’re still considered small, and it came at a time when business was slow, so instead of giving an employee a raise or potentially hiring another employee, I’m writing a check to our government.” 

A few months later, True the Vote became the subject of congressional scrutiny. In September, Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) wrote to Thomas Perez, then the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice (who has now been nominated for labor secretary): “As you know, an organization called ‘True the Vote’, which is an offshoot of the Tea Party, is leading a voter suppression campaign in many states,” Boxer wrote, adding that “this type of intimidation must stop. I don’t believe this is ‘True the Vote’. I believe it’s ‘Stop the Vote’.”

And in October, Representative Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, attacked True the Vote in a letter. He wrote that: “Some have suggested that your true goal is not voter integrity, but voter suppression against thousands of legitimate voters who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates.”  He added that: “If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated, and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”  He also decried True the Vote on MSNBC and CNN. …

The next month, in November 2012, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, showed up for an unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing. Catherine says the inspector told her the agency had received a complaint but couldn’t  provide any more details. After the inspection, the agency notified the Engelbrechts that they needed to pay for an additional mechanical permit, which cost about $2,000 per year.

Since then, the IRS has sent two further rounds of questions to Catherine for her organizations. And last month, the ATF conducted a second unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing.

Catherine says she still hasn’t received IRS approval for her nonprofits, though she filed nearly three years ago. …

On behalf of the True the Vote and King Street Patriots, Representative Ted Poe (R., Texas) sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF, inquiring whether the organizations were under criminal investigation. A statement on Poe’s website states that “the reply from these agencies was that none of these individuals were under criminal investigation. Well, if they’re not, why are they being treated like criminals? Just because they question government?” 

… Other Tea Party groups decided not to form nonprofits at all after learning about her experience, [Catherine] says. “They were scared,” she explains, “and you shouldn’t be scared of your government.”

Meanwhile, Catherine says the harassment has forced her to seriously reconsider whether her political activity is worth the government harassment she’s faced.

“I left a thriving family business with my husband that I loved, to do something I didn’t necessarily love, but [which] I thought had to be done,” she says.”But I really think if we don’t do this, if we don’t stand up and speak now, there might not [always] be that chance.”

Her husband offers an additional observation: “If you knew my wife, you’d know she doesn’t back down from anybody. They picked on the wrong person when they started picking on her.”

*

The Washington Post reports that Steven T. Miller, the Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, appearing today before the Senate Finance Committee, denied that he misled Congress about the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.  He said –

I’m not going to disagree at all with the characterization of bad management here, but the actions were not politically motivated.

!!!

The untruths and hypocrisy hover in the partisan atmosphere and incrementally and insidiously undermine each new assertion that we hear from the president … Indeed, the more emphatically he adds “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” “I’m not kidding,” or the ubiquitous “me,” “my,” and “I” to each new assertion, the more a growing number of people will come to know from the past that what follows simply is not true. … When we hear the president remind us that he is not a tyrant or monarch, then we assume he laments that fact; “make no mistake about it” ensures that you should believe that the president is not being “perfectly clear.”

So Victor Davis Hanson writes at PJ Media.

Here are more extracts from the same article:

The president had a strange habit, like a moth to a flame, of demagoguing the wealthy as toxic (spread the wealth, pay your fair share, fat cat, you didn’t build that, etc.), while being attracted to the very lifestyle that he damns, a sort of Martha’s Vineyard community organizer. Sometime in 2009, $250,000 in annual income became the dividing line between “us” and “them.” …

I did not think that the administration would be so haughty as to go after the Associated Press and monitor their official and private communications, especially given that the source of most national security leaks par excellence was the Obama White House itself. Recall the sordid details of the AP scandal: the AP sat on a story until they were given a quiet administration go-ahead to publish the account — even as the administration desperately wanted to scoop them and high-five over the story of the Yemeni double agent 24 hours earlier than the AP. The AP was not first advised of the administration investigations, nor were the phone checks focused and narrow. Instead, the administration went whole hog after two months of phone records to send a message to its pets in the press — secure that Eric Holder, in Fast and Furious fashion, could always go to Congress with “I don’t now,” followed by executive privilege and stonewalling.

Meanwhile, in Machiavellian fashion the Obama administration had divulged classified information about the Stuxnet virus, the bin Laden raid, and the drone targeting — in order that sympathetic Washington Post and New York Times reporters might have pre-election fuel for the hagiographic accounts of Obama, the underappreciated commander-in-chief.

While we all knew that a filmmaker did not prompt a riot that just happened to kill four Americans, we did not, until the testimony of State Department officials and the published communications of White House, CIA, and State Department staffers, appreciate just how far the administration would go to further a false narrative. And quite a myth it was: lead-from-behind Libya was still a success; al-Qaeda was still scattered; Obama was still on the global front lines condemning anti-Islamic bigots like Mr. Nakoula, whose religious hatred supposedly had spawned violence that even the Nobel laureate Barack Obama could not deter. …

The IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals were all adroitly kept under wraps for months before the 2012 election, as [Democrats] thundered about right-wing wealthy people not paying their fair taxes, and the press echoed a “how dare you” when anyone questioned the frightening state of events.

Now the wraps have come off and we find –

Five departments of government are either breaking the law or lying or both: State [Benghazi], Defense [sexual harassment issues], Justice [monitoring of phone lines], Treasury [corruption at the IRS], Health and Human Services [shaking down companies to pay for PR for Obamacare]).

The National Rifle Association is now supposed to be a suspect paramilitary group …

Women [are] suddenly eligible to serve in front-line combat units — no discussion, no hearings, no public debate.

We had a “war on women” over whether upscale Sandra Fluke could get free birth control from the government, but snoozed through the Dr. Gosnell trial. The latter may have been the most lethal serial killer in U.S. history, if his last few years of snipping spinal cords were indicative of his first three unmonitored decades of late-term aborting.

The Obama administration …  decided to shut down as many coal plants as it can, stop most new gas and oil drilling on federal lands, and go after private companies ranging from huge aircraft manufacturers to the small guitar concerns — based not on law, but on certain theories of climate change and labor equity. As in the case with the IRS, the EPA is now synonymous with politically motivated activism designed to circumvent the law. The president in his State of the Union address assured us that cap-and-trade will be back, given, he says, the atypical violent weather that hit the U.S. in his term — even as global temperatures have not risen in 15 years, and hurricanes are now occurring more rarely than during the last administration. …

We are in unchartered territory.

The IRS has lost our trust, both for its rank partisanship and its inability to come forward and explain its crimes.

Eric Holder wants us to believe that he has no idea why his office was monitoring the communications of journalists, and yet now warrants the renewed trust of the president.

Susan Rice serially misled on national television about Benghazi and so will probably be promoted to national security advisor. …

On campuses, the Departments of Justice and Education have issued new race/class/gender guidelines that would effectively deny constitutionally protected free speech in universities, a sort of politically correct idea that proper thinking is preferable to free thinking.

If you oppose “comprehensive immigration reform” you become a nativist or worse—and apparently are one of the “enemies” the president wants to “punish.” …

In sum:

Government has become a sort of malignant metasisizing tumor, growing on its own, parasitical on healthy cells, always searching for new sources of nourishment, its purpose nothing other than growing bigger and faster and more powerful—until the exhausted host collapses.

We have a sunshine king and our government has become a sort of virtual Versailles palace.

I suppose that when a presidential candidate urges his supporters [as Obama did] to get in someone’s face, and to take a gun to a knife fight, from now on you better believe him.

And, finally, the strangest thing about nearing the threshold of 1984? It comes with a whimper, not a bang, with a charismatic smile and mellifluous nonsense — with politically correct, egalitarian-minded bureaucrats with glasses and iPhones instead of fist-shaking jack-booted thugs.

This is from a book review by Mark Tapson:

A recent book … lays out the historical evidence for massive Communist penetration of our government beginning in the New Deal era, increasingly rapidly during World War II, and afterward leading to gaping breaches of national security and the betrayal of free-world interests. 

Contrary to the notion that domestic Communists were simply harmless, misguided idealists, Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein shows that widespread government infiltration by Soviet spies sabotaged our foreign policy and molded the post-WWII world in favor of the Soviet Union. Evans, the author of eight previous books including the controversial revised look at Joseph McCarthy called Blacklisted by History, is a former editor of the Indianapolis News, a Los Angeles Times columnist, and a commentator for the Voice of America. Romerstein is a leading Cold War expert, formerly head of the Office to Counter Soviet Disinformation at the U.S. Information Agency from 1983 until 1989, who has served on the staff of several congressional committees including the House Intelligence Committee.

The early Cold War spying which resulted in the theft of our atomic secrets, radar, jet propulsion, and other military systems was serious enough, but that wasn’t the major issue. “The spying,” as the authors put it, “was handmaiden to the policy interest,” which was by far the leading problem. As President Franklin Roosevelt’s health and mental ability waned, covert Communist aides exerted pro-Soviet influence on U.S. policy, which was reflected in postwar discussions by the Big Three powers about the new shape of the world.

We would contend that even if his mental powers had not been waning, he would still have tried to please “Uncle Joe” Stalin. FDR actually admired that evil man. 

The policy impact of such deceptive influence on the part of Soviet agents was to turn Western influence and support against the anti-Communist forces and in favor of their Red opponents, as U.S. and other Allied leaders based decisions on false intelligence from pro-Soviet agents.

The effects were calamitous for the cause of freedom, as numerous countries were thus delivered into the hands of Stalin and his minions.

The three leaders – FDR, Churchill, and Stalin – “would ultimately decide what political forces would prevail where and the forms of government to be installed in formerly captive nations, including those in alignment with the victors.” Unfortunately, at that time “seeking Soviet ‘friendship’ and giving Moscow ‘every assistance’ summed up American policy [in meetings] at Teheran and Yalta, and for some while before those meetings.”

At the Yalta meeting at the end of the war, when the future of eastern Europe was decided, Roosevelt allowed the subjugation of hundreds of millions of non-Russians to Communist tyranny. Churchill was against it, seeing Stalin as the incorrigible tyrant he was, but Roosevelt’s decision prevailed.

Three notable examples of countries “pulled into the vortex of Communist power” were Yugoslavia, Poland and China. Other nations in central Europe were absorbed into the Soviet empire as well, as prelude to the Cold War struggle. Similar results occurred in Asia, where millions were slaughtered in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos where Communists came to power. “Red police states would in due course extend from the Baltic to the Pacific, and later to Africa and Latin America… The supposedly progressive twentieth century thus became a saturnalia of tyranny and violence, surpassing in this respect also all previous records of such horrors.”

The most powerful pro-Red influence was actually the President himself. He distanced himself from Churchill’s warier stance about Russian imperialism, and instead made common cause with Stalin. “His main object was to get Stalin to agree with the Rooseveltian vision of a peaceable kingdom to come via the United Nations.” FDR seemed to be “guided very heavily by his advisers and took no step independently,” as one observer noted. Harry Hopkins, FDR’s longtime and most powerful adviser, “held pro-Soviet views of the most fervent nature.” Indeed, the authors claim, “Throughout the war years, Moscow had no better official U.S. friend than Hopkins.”

FDR’s wife too advocated in a pro-Red direction, and Vice President Henry Wallace was “arguably the most prominent pro-Soviet political figure of his time.”

But entities outside the government affected American foreign policy in these years too. The press corps, academics, lobbyists, and think tanks all helped mold a climate of opinion that paved the way for pro-Red policymakers in federal office. Media spokesmen then helped promote pro-Soviet policy “while attacking the views and reputations of people who wanted to move in other directions.” A complicit media helping to advance the Communist agenda while shutting down opposition voices – sound familiar?

The most famous example of infiltration was, of course, the spy Alger Hiss, whose “skill in positioning himself at the vectors of diplomatic information indicates the degree to which Soviet undercover agents were able to penetrate the U.S. government in crucial places, up to the highest policy-making levels.” Hiss rose from obscurity to become the custodian of all memoranda for the President on topics to be considered at the crucial Yalta summit. However, “he wasn’t an isolated instance, but only one such agent out of many.”

The authors’ conclusions are threefold: 1) Communist penetration in the American government in the WWII-era and early Cold War was deep and extensive, involving many hundreds of suspects; 2) the infiltrators wielded important leverage on U.S. foreign policy in that period; and 3) pro-Soviet penetration and the resulting policy damage occurred because Soviet agents preyed on the credulity of officials who were willfully ignorant of Communist methods. “The net effect of these converging factors was a series of free-world retreats” in the face of Marxist conquests across Europe, Indochina, Latin American states, and African nations.

The lessons of this highly readable and concise history are well worth taking to heart today, not merely as an historical study, but as a reflection of the subversive infiltration and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on our current administration.

For Muslim infiltration and influence on the Obama administration see for instance our posts:

Obama gang submits to America’s enemy, June 14, 2012

The State-whisperer, August 16, 2012,

Al-CIA, al-FBI, al-DHS, al-USA, November 4, 2012

Nailing it. Here’s a typically to-the-point cartoon by the brilliant cartoonist Michael Ramirez, from IBD:

If you wondered why the sky is full of flying pigs, and why the rumor is spreading that hell is freezing over, it’s because the Press and the mainstream media in general are beginning to notice that the feet of Obama are made of clay – or at least that his hands are, the persons who administer his policies.

This criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder, claiming to know nothing about his department’s illegal raid on Associated Press phone records in order to investigate the source of an information leak, comes from the pen of Dana Milbank writing in the left-leaning Washington Post:

As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information. But he seems to be proud of how little he knows.

Holder was appearing before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing. He was asked –

Why didn’t his Justice Department inform the Associated Press, as the law requires, before pawing through reporters’ phone records?

“I do not know,” the attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon, “why that was or was not done. I simply don’t have a factual basis to answer that question.”

Why didn’t the DOJ seek the AP’s cooperation, as the law also requires, before issuing subpoenas?

“I don’t know what happened there,” Holder replied. “I was recused from the case.”

He “recused” himself from the case because, he said, he was ” a possessor of information eventually leaked” – which leak his department was investigating. But if he had the information, was it not therefore already leaked? And what reason would there be in that for him to “recuse” himself? If he were likely to be  investigated as one of the people who could have, might have, done the leaking, he would be right to recuse himself, as he couldn’t be both investigator and investigatee. But the leak was of  a plan by the Intelligence Services. If Horder heard of it because it was leaked, and therefore had his department investigate it, wasn’t that the proper thing for him to do? Or is he afraid that not having his department investigate the leak when he first heard of it makes him vulnerable to investigation? Curiouser and curiouser!

Why, asked the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was the whole matter handled in a manner that appears “contrary to the law and standard procedure”?

“I don’t have a factual basis to answer the questions that you have asked, because I was recused,” the attorney general said.

On and on Holder went: “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . . I would not want to reveal what I know. . . . I don’t know why that didn’t happen. . . . I know nothing, so I’m not in a position really to answer.”

Holder seemed to regard this ignorance as a shield protecting him and the Justice Department from all criticism of the Obama administration’s assault on press freedoms. But his claim that his “recusal” from the case exempted him from all discussion of the matter didn’t fly with Republicans or Democrats on the committee, who justifiably saw his recusal as more of an abdication. …

“[I]t seems to me clear that the actions of the department have, in fact, impaired the First Amendment,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told Holder. “Reporters who might have previously believed that a confidential source would speak to them would no longer have that level of confidence, because those confidential sources are now going to be chilled in their relationship with the press.”

In a sense, the two topics that dogged Holder most on Wednesday — the AP phone records and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups — were one and the same. In both cases, Americans are being punished and intimidated for exercising their right of free expression — by the taxing authorities, in the conservatives’ case, and by federal prosecutors, in the reporters’ case.

But Holder cared so little about those two issues that he said not a peep about either the IRS or the AP in his opening statement. When he was questioned about the AP case, his first response was to suggest the criticism of him was political. “I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism,” Holder said. “In fact, the head of the RNC [Republican National Committee] called for my resignation, in spite of the fact that I was not the person involved in that decision.” …

[Holder]  may have recused himself from the leak probe that led to the searches of reporters’ phone records (a decision he took so lightly that he didn’t put it in writing), but he isn’t recused from defending the First Amendment. 

Didn’t the deputy attorney general who approved the subpoenas have the same potential conflict of interest that Holder claimed?

“I don’t know.”

When did Holder recuse himself?

“I’m not sure.”

How much time was spent exploring alternatives to the subpoenas?

“I don’t know, because, as I said, I recused myself.”

But when the Justice Department undermines the Constitution, recusal is no excuse.

Strictly speaking, the word “recuse” can only apply to a judge or juror: he can recuse himself from a case because of a conflict of interest.

But Eric Holder sets a precedent that extends the application of the term.

It’s a great tactic: avoid being held responsible for whatever goes wrong in the organization under your control by “recusing” yourself. 

The head of BP might have recused himself when his company’s oil rig polluted the waters of the gulf.

The heads of Enron and Solyndra might have repelled accusations of mismanagement  by recusing themselves.

The Nazi war criminals might have escaped trial at Nuremberg by recusing themselves.

Napoleon might have avoided exile on St Helena by recusing himself.

And just think of the cosmic and historical disasters from which omnipotent “God” could claim to have recused himself!

Obama might elude responsibility for capitulating to the Islamic enemy in Benghazi, using the IRS to intimidate his political opponents, subverting the First and Second Amendments, plunging the US into deep debt, and numerous other calamities which he should be called to answer for, by simply recusing himself.

He could try it anyway, if Holder gets away with it.

*

These important points about collaboration – or conspiracy – between Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice and the nefarious group Media Matters are made by Arnold Ahlert in an article at Front Page. They show how habitual the corruption of the Obama DOJ has become:

Internal DOJ emails obtained in 2012 by the Daily Caller revealed the leftist advocacy group regularly collaborated with the DOJ to attack reporters who covered DOJ scandals.

Tracy Schmaler, Office of Public Affairs Director for the Justice Department, worked with Media Matters staffers to attack a number of prominent journalists, including Townhall Magazine’s Katie Pavlich, Breitbart.com writers Joel Pollak and Ken Klukowski, Fox News’s William LaJeunesse, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum, Bill Hemmer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy. Former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorneys J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky were also attacked.

The Daily Caller obtained the emails after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was fulfilled long after the 20-business-day limit required by law.

Moreover, the Office of Public Affairs has no business conducting a political operation. Its function is to keep the public informed about what the DOJ is doing to enforce the laws. That it was more than willing to violate its mandate is a good indication of how deep the rot at the DOJ goes.

Yesterday [May 15, 2013], Eric Holder did what he does best whenever he appears before a Congressional Committee: provide as little information as possible, become indignant when anyone suggests he has acted improperly, and fob responsibility for every possible impropriety conducted by his department onto someone else – when he’s not busy stonewalling scandals. Even a contempt of Congress citation for his refusal to provide critical information in the Fast and Furious gunrunning debacle that resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, along with hundreds of Mexican nationals, including children, has failed to chasten his contempt for the rule of law, or his determination to maintain the most ideologically-compromised Department of Justice in modern history.

Holder can only serve as long as he maintains the support of President Barack Obama. That he still does, speaks volumes – about both men.

Who could possibly have foreseen that if women and gays were allowed to join the armed forces, there would be cases of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape? What an amazing development!

This is from a Washington Post report:

Military sexual assault isn’t new. In February 2004, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a 90-day review of sexual assaults after allegations of crimes committed against female soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait. … The Pentagon’s own report last week estimated the number of military women and men victimized was up by 35 percent over the past two years. … While 70 percent of women and 83 percent of men said they “would feel free to report sexual assault without fear of reprisals to a large extent,” only 44 percent of those women who reported assaults were satisfied with their commanders’ handling of their cases; 33 percent said they were dissatisfied. In fact, only 3,374 reports of sexual assault were filed in fiscal 2012, last week’s report said, while the Pentagon survey said some 26,000 troops told the survey they had experienced “unwanted sexual contact.” Women who had been sexually harassed said that more than half of the offenders were military co-workers, 28 percent were military personnel and 27 percent were “in their military chain of command.” …

Apparently not enough is being done by the military itself to prosecute and punish sexual offenders, so now Congress may try to deal with the problem more effectively with legislation.

That will put a stop to the shenanigans, wouldn’t you say?