Archive for June, 2013

What is a “True Conservative?”

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

We are facing a lot of major issues that seem to divide the Republican Party. There is immigration and deficits. There is the little matter of Obamacare. There is the matter of international relations with countries like Iran and Syria.

Right now we have the immigration bill that has been passed by the Senate after being written by the “Gang of 8.” This bill, like so many major pieces of legislation lately, was written in secrecy and has not been through the usual committee process. “We have to pass it to see what is in it.”

As if Obamacare were not enough, here we have another opaque and mysterious bit of legislation that is thousands of pages of incomprehensible legalese.

Jennifer Rubin weighs in with a rather beltway-oriented view. Fair enough as she writes in the Washington Post.

The immigration battle, the debate over U.S. involvement in Syria and the flap over NSA surveillance have suggested two starkly different visions of the GOP as well as two potential paths for the GOP.

The question remains whether the GOP will become the party of: Sen. Rand Paul, Ky., or Sen. Kelly Ayotte, N.H., on national security; The Gang of Eight or the Gang of Three (Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions) on immigration; Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio, or Rick Santorum on gay marriage; Broad-based appeal (e.g. Govs. Chris Christie, Gov. Scott Walker) or losing ideologues (Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Michele Bachmann). I don’t know that Angle and O’Donnell were “ideologues.” Angle, at least was an amateur, somewhat like other candidates supported by the Tea Party.

I’m not sure I agree with her choices but let’s think about it.

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Who are they protecting us from ?

Thursday, June 13th, 2013

The latest word on the NSA scandal, and it is a scandal, is that they are not allowed to snoop on mosques.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel’s formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

After all, all terrorists thus far have been fundamentalist Christians. Oh wait.

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.

If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshiped.

We have empowered CAIR, a group linked to Muslim extremists like The Holy Land Foundation, which:

In its earliest days, HLF received a $200,000 cash infusion from Ghassan Elashi’s brother-in-law Musa Abu Marzook, the Hamas senior political leader and Virginia resident who would be deported in 1997 for his involvement in six terror attacks in Israel that killed 47 people. By 1989, HLF had already sent nearly $1 million to Marzook and Hamas co-founder Ahmed Yassin (to the latter through an account called the Islamic Center of Gaza — another ostensibly charitable entity used by Yassin to finance Hamas activities).

Major Hassan, who is now representing himself, was an obvious suspect for jihad before he acted out.

At a hearing last week at the Army base here, Major Hasan told a judge that he was protecting Taliban leaders in Afghanistan from danger when he opened fire on Nov. 5, 2009. In describing his new defense — known in legal terms as a “defense of others” — he told the judge that he had been defending Mullah Muhammad Omar, the founder of the Islamic insurgent group, and its other leaders, from Fort Hood soldiers deploying to Afghanistan.

Oh well, that explains it. Can we be any more clueless with these dangers ?