Jessica Mokdad

This popular post was originally published May 4.

Bin Laden may be dead but, as many have noted, his ideology is still very much alive. Indeed, it  landed on our shores long ago. It is now most definitely here.

Women in burqas and in severe hijab are increasingly commonplace as are other more barbaric gender apartheid practices. This includes heartless honor killings.

Over this past weekend, there was a new honor killing in America. The mainstream media did not really cover it. To their credit, the Associated Press did a short online story which was picked up by CBS online and by local Minnesota and Michigan newspapers, also online.

Otherwise—silence.

The victim’s name was Jessica Mokdad. She was 20 years old. Her killer was her stepfather, Rahim A. Alfetlawi, 45 years old. According to the assistant principal, Jessica was a “standout student” at Coon Rapids High School in Minnesota. “She was a quiet student who was very confident in who she was and proud of being a Muslim.”

Why was she killed? Because, according to the police, her stepfather’s believed she was “not adhering to Muslim customs.” And, because her biological father was “letting her be a little more Americanized than what (the defendant) wanted.”

What’s different about this case is that Jessica fled to the safety of her biological father’s home in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Thus, her own father was supporting her as was her paternal grandmother, in whose home she was when Alfetlawi found her and shot her with a 9mm handgun.

Like Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan in Buffalo (who beheaded his wife), Atfetlawi calmly went to the police and admitted killing his stepdaughter. Like Faleh Almaleki in Arizona (who ran over his daughter down with a two ton jeep), Alfetlawi also hedged his bets and claimed that the gun went off “accidentally.”

Mokdad was planning to attend college.

Why is the mainstream media silent about this outrage? Why are Muslim-American organizations silent?

Why are Muslim women’s organizations also silent? Please speak out. Why is her mother, Wendy, silent? Was she complicit in this decision as were the mothers of Toronto’s Aqsa Parvez and the mother of the Said sisters in Dallas?

Jessica Mokdad

Bin Laden may be dead but, as many have noted, his ideology is still very much alive. Indeed, it  landed on our shores long ago. It is now most definitely here.

Women in burqas and in severe hijab are increasingly commonplace as are other more barbaric gender apartheid practices. This includes heartless honor killings.

Over this past weekend, there was a new honor killing in America. The mainstream media did not really cover it. To their credit, the Associated Press did a short online story which was picked up by CBS online and by local Minnesota and Michigan newspapers, also online.

Otherwise—silence.

The victim’s name was Jessica Mokdad. She was 20 years old. Her killer was her stepfather, Rahim A. Alfetlawi, 45 years old. According to the assistant principal, Jessica was a “standout student” at Coon Rapids High School in Minnesota. “She was a quiet student who was very confident in who she was and proud of being a Muslim.”

Why was she killed? Because, according to the police, her stepfather’s believed she was “not adhering to Muslim customs.” And, because her biological father was “letting her be a little more Americanized than what (the defendant) wanted.”

What’s different about this case is that Jessica fled to the safety of her biological father’s home in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Thus, her own father was supporting her as was her paternal grandmother, in whose home she was when Alfetlawi found her and shot her with a 9mm handgun.

Like Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan in Buffalo (who beheaded his wife), Atfetlawi calmly went to the police and admitted killing his stepdaughter. Like Faleh Almaleki in Arizona (who ran over his daughter down with a two ton jeep), Alfetlawi also hedged his bets and claimed that the gun went off “accidentally.”

Mokdad was planning to attend college.

Why is the mainstream media silent about this outrage? Why are Muslim-American organizations silent?

Why are Muslim women’s organizations also silent? Please speak out. Why is her mother, Wendy, silent? Was she complicit in this decision as were the mothers of Toronto’s Aqsa Parvez and the mother of the Said sisters in Dallas?

The freedom of speech is perhaps the most popular among those cited in the Bill of Rights. The ability to express yourself without fear of fine or incarceration is essential to the maintenance of a free society. Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, a prolific author on the topic of Islam, has an important article at Human Events suggesting that free speech may be endangered.

On Good Friday in Dearborn, Mich., the notorious Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones was jailed and fined for the crime of refusing to pay a so-called “peace bond” to cover the costs of extra police protection for Jones’ planned demonstration outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.  Judge Mark Somers also ordered Jones to stay away from the massive Dearborn mosque for three years.

Spencer points out that Jones was not the threat to public order that Dearborn authorities treated him as. Rather, the threat to public order was the prospect of violent reaction from Muslims.

… if Jones and his fellow protesters were not being violent themselves, wouldn’t the responsibility for any disturbance be upon those who decided to react to whatever Jones was doing by causing the disturbance?(…)

… To restrict Jones’ right to protest in front of a mosque is to send the signal that violent intimidation works, and that those who killed people in Afghanistan because of Jones’ Koran-burning have achieved their ultimate goal: to make Islam immune from criticism because every potential critic will be afraid to speak out.

Spencer is right. Jones is not responsible for the reactions of others. It is the violence, and not the speech, which ought to be subject to police action. Instead, the Detroit Free Press reports that authorities have those priorities reversed.

Dearborn officials and Wayne County prosecutors have said that if Jones protested at the mosque, it might lead to possible violence because of Jones’ past actions.

Kowtowing to Islam in this manner is unacceptable, and Spencer rightly condemns it. However, it is equally important that we not shoot ourselves in the foot by elevating freedom of speech above countervailing rights. Either imbalance is equally threatening to liberty.

For example, consider the deplorable Westboro Baptists, notorious for their vile protests at military funerals. Families should be able to bury their loved ones in peace, and not be subject to protest while conducting their solemn business. So noted Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter in a recent decision which favored the Westboro Baptists over the mourning survivors of fallen soldiers.

Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.

Unless they own the venue, no one has any business at a funeral to which they were not invited. The same principle applies to an increasingly popular tactic among labor unions, protesting outside the homes of people they don’t like. Your neighbor’s right to speak does not trump your right to live in peace, free of their blathering idiocy. You do not deprive another of their freedom by ejecting them from your venue, be it your home, your business, or – through the proper enforcement of ordinance and statute – any public area where their activity inhibits lawful business.

Time, place, and manner restrictions are crafted upon the precarious junction between freedom of speech and freedom of association. This is the principle which informs noise ordinances and statues regarding disturbance of the peace. Enforcement of community standards is entirely consistent with, and indeed demanded by, genuine libertarianism. The freedom of speech is not a license to coerce association by shouting people down out of turn.

On this point, the Michigan authorities might have made a legitimate case. While Jones is entitled to criticize Islam, he is not entitled to do so in whatever time, place, and manner he pleases. Property rights and association rights are as legitimate as speech rights.

Instead, Dearborn officials and Wayne County prosecutors clearly singled out the content of Jones’ speech.  This is evident, as Spencer points out, in their requirement for a “peace bond,” subjectively imposed in response to what Jones planned to say and who he planned to say it about. Proper time, place, and manner restrictions are blind to such considerations.

It’s important to get this argument right. It is wrong to hold Jones responsible for the actions of others. However, it’s an overreach to say he’s entitled to protest wherever, whenever, and however he wants. In light of the Left’s increasing willingness to impose upon others under the guise of “free speech,” it’s a point worth clarifying.

Displaying the dazzling rhetorical shrills that earned him less than 40% of the vote for governor in a state that had been run by Democrats for 2 terms, Michigan Democrat Virg Bernero appeared on the Rachel Maddow show to scream at the nation  that his state was turning into “Soviet Russia.”

VIRG BERNERO, MAYOR OF LANSING, MICHIGAN, RECENTLY SLAUGHTERED GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE:  You know, this is the kind of thing in Russia, in Soviet Russia, what is becoming increasingly Soviet Russia again!

Then in the next breath…

BERNERO:  And not only that, Rachel, but they‘ve cut revenue sharing for cities.  So they‘re really cutting support for cities.

So, Michigan is turning into Soviet Russia because it is curtailing a tax policy toward cities that is no longer “From each according to its ability, to each according to its need?”

Do you people listen to yourselves?  Luckily, not many are listening to you…

I decided to drop in as an uninvited guest to this paranoia-fest (commentary in bold):

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST:  We begin tonight with a story that is not happening in Washington, D.C., so most of the beltway press will not tell you that it‘s happening at all.  (Yeah, they so neglected Arizona… ) But it is the story that I think is the single-most telling thing in American politics right now (Because you are clueless) about the difference between the two parties, about the choice in basic philosophy that we‘ve got to make about how we shall be governed as Americans.  (Actually, it may BE telling that Democrats are frantic about the idea that local public employee unions will no longer be able to extort money from poor taxpayers and cities that have met the definition of bankruptcy for years.)

Despite what you will hear day in, day out from Washington, the difference between the two parties right now is not about President Obama versus House Speaker John Boehner, or even if you want to get really geeky between Senator Harry Reid and Congressman Paul Ryan.  (Sure, a trillion here, a trillion there, who cares?) We tend to talk about politics in those terms, in terms of personalities, obviously, or the radical budget proposal of the week that‘s never going anywhere, but will drag the whole country to the right in policy terms anyway while it‘s trying.  We tend to talk act politics in America like that.

But, frankly, those are stand-ins for the real debate between the two parties‘ visions of what government ought to do, of what politics are for, not about what people say they‘re for, but how they will act if they are in office.

And if you want to know about that, you have to go here, to Michigan‘s great southwest, to the little twin cities on the shore of Lake Michigan.  (Which you have read about online.)

Last night, we talked about how one of these twin cities, St. Joseph, population: 8,500, is nearly 90 percent white, has a per capita income of about $33,000.

The other twin city, right across there, is Benton Harbor.  Benton Harbor, population: 10,000 plus.  It is nearly 90 percent black.  Benton Harbor has a per-capita income of about $10,000 — a third of what its twin city enjoys. (Say what?  They “enjoy” it?  It was what, just given to them for being white?  What is your point here, Rache?  It’s possible, just possible that they WORK for it.)

Michigan‘s new Republican governor is a man named Rick Snyder.  Governor Snyder has spent his first few months in office engaged in an aggressive campaign to strip Michiganders’ union rights and pass big new taxes on the poor and the elderly, (Cutting back the so-called Earning Income Tax credit, a backdoor welfare payment that results in people getting back 3 times what they PAID in taxes, is not a tax increase!) using the revenue not to plug the state‘s budget deficit but rather to give it away to corporations (Cutting the nation’s highest business tax in a state with an effective 20% unemployment tax—and once again, taking less is not “giving!”) and to the already well-off.  (Not true, there are no tax cuts in the Snyder budget outside of the business tax, the income and sales taxes will not change.) That platform has not been kind to Governor Snyder‘s popularity.  (MSNBC has been pushing this “buyers’ remorse” line on all its shows with micropolling on Republican governors… Hmmmm, checked Obama’s poll numbers lately?  How did Obamacare effect those numbers?  How about the 10% drop in Obama’s numbers after his response to Paul Ryan’s budget—you know, the one you wanted replayed in every “stadium” in America?)

But the one thing in Mr. Snyder‘s approach to governing that brought out the biggest protests in the capital, reportedly the biggest protest that Lansing, Michigan, had ever seen, the catalyst for those huge crowds, those thousands of people was in part a Rick Snyder law that take ace way–people‘s right to choose their local elected officials, a law that allows the state to declare your town a failure and to appoint an emergency financial person to be the new boss over the elected officials in your town someone who can order them to do things, who can undo what they have done as elected officials, who can fire them if she or he so decides.  (First, Rachel, take a breath!  My English teacher mother couldn’t diagram THAT sentence…  Second, what brought out the protests was the fact that the Detroit public schools and Detroit employee unions have about twice as many people as they need and their pay and benefits are crippling a city that has lost 25% of its population in the last 10 years.  The other unions brought out the Astroturf to support their most craven and corrupt “brothers and sisters” in no small part because they know as long as Detroit exists in its current form, then no one is going to bother them.  Most of them only really cared about the fact that they pay an average of about 5% of their benefit costs and don’t want to pay more like 20%, which is still less than most of the people who pay their salary.)

The state is not only coming in and saying we don‘t care who we elected to represent you, we‘re firing them and taking over ourselves, and state is also claiming the power to just abolish your town.

When was your town founded?  Who are your town founding fathers or founding mothers?

The state says we can dissolve your town now.  We can wipe you off the map, give your land and assets to the next town over if we want to, just roll up the whole deal and deed it over.  Your town doesn‘t get a say in the matter.  (Only if your town is spending a lot more than it takes in in taxes, and has outstanding pension debts roughly equivalent to the value of the town, itself.)

The first town to feel the tender ministrations of Governor Snyder‘s new law is little Benton Harbor, one of the poorest towns in the state.  And yes, despite the Rust Belt decline that has defined life in Benton Harbor for decades, Benton Harbor is also home to the global headquarters for Whirlpool appliances. (Conspiracy theory alert)

Among the heirs to the Whirlpool appliances fortune is Benton Harbor‘s Republican congressman, Fred Upton.  A former Fred Upton staffer, Republican state rep Al Pscholka, he represents Benton Harbor in the statehouse.  He‘s the person who introduced emergency state takeover bill that Governor Rick Snyder signed.  This is their ceremonial re-enacting of the signing there.

Until last year, Mr. Pscholka served on the board of directors for a nonprofit that wants to build a half billion-dollar, 530-acre lake-front Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course and luxury real estate development that would span both relatively wealthy St. Joseph and poor little Benton Harbor.  A development that eats the one collective asset that Benton Harbor had, Benton Harbor‘s beautiful beach-front park.  It would turn it into a place where caddies carry bags for Whirlpool executives and for rich folk who is drive in from Chicago for a weekend at their new luxury signature home.  (You mean something that might generate revenue and provide jobs?  Horrors!  It would be the “small government” thing to do to just tax those rich folks instead.)

I don‘t know what a signature home is, but they‘re very expensive and they‘re part of the whole golf course deal.  (It probably costs less than yours, Rachel.)

Benton Harbor‘s park, Jean Klock Park, was deed as a gift to the town, one of the poorest towns in Michigan.  It was deeded to the town in perpetuity in 1917.  Perpetuity I guess is not as long as it used to be, because now, Benton Harbor residents are looking at a golf course where the cost of an annual pass for a family to play there is $5,000 — $5,000 is half the average annual income of actual families living in Benton Harbor.  This golf course development thing is not for them.

And neither, apparently, is Democratic local government.  On Friday, Benton Harbor‘s new state-appointed energy overseer Joe Harris, issued an executive order that restricted the mayor and the city commissioners to three duties: they can call a meeting, they can approve meeting minute, and they can adjourn the meeting.  Three things that elected officials of Benton Harbor are now allowed to do.  That‘s it. (This is also exactly what the Flint City Council could do when Democrat governor Jennifer Granholm appointed an EFM about 8 YEARS AGO… That’s what happened with all the financial managers Granholm appointed, without cries of fascism from the Left.)

That story broke in the “Michigan Messenger,” which is one of the few media outlets that has been covering this story with diligence.  Last night, as we were covering the story of Benton Harbor, the Benton Harbor City Commission met for the first time since the emergency manager guy there told them that they, you know, had been turned into pillars of salt, more or less.

The manager knew this meeting apparently might get a little hot.  He set up a two-minute timer for anyone who wanted to speak up at this meeting.  And this is what he got from local residents.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Somebody about to go, and I think it‘s going to have to be Joe. (Gee, I think THIS genius should be in charge…)

(BUZZER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  He‘s not even an elected official!  He‘s going to fire me?  Why you going to fire me?

(BUZZER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Adolf Hitler was a dictator.  Now we have a dictator in Joseph Harris.  We have allowed this man to be too comfortable in our homes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  We‘re not going to let it start at the foot of a so-called giant who‘s really a grasshopper.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  Nobody going to take this from me or my voice because (INAUDIBLE) and I have a voice.  And ain‘t no piece of paper going to take that from me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)  (Are you trying to prove that democracy might be over rated, Rache?)

MADDOW:  Goodwin‘s law notwithstanding, that‘s how it went last night in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

…This is really, really, really big intrusive government.  This is “sit down, shut up, your elections don‘t matter, we‘re in charge now” authoritarian giant government.  (No, this is the “State of Michigan is not going to bail out your bankrupt town and its pension funds anymore as long as you refuse to correct the problem.  These people—and Rachel’s next guest — cry big tears about cuts in state funding to cities, and cry that it’s fascism for them not to be able to take the aid and flush it down the nearest toilet.) And this ought to be the debate about what‘s on offer right now from American politics.  This ought to be the debate about the two major parties right now, about whether we are OK as Americans with really big “takeover your town,” intrusive government, because that is what is on offer.

I realize that the debate in D.C. is going to be about the “gang of six,” whether the Democrats are really going to let them change the Social Security retirement age.  And that is fine.  That is a real debate.  It is important.

But on real policy, real implications, real governing, not what people are saying they‘re going to do but what they‘re actually doing, there is a stark choice to notice and debate out in the states.  Florida, Texas, Arkansas, North and South Carolina, now moving to require you to take a drug test, forced drug testing as part of getting the unemployment benefits that you paid for when you were working.  Arizona and Georgia passing laws that force anyone to prove they‘re in the country legally whenever a police officer wants to know—papers, please. (Heavens to Betsy!) States across the country saying they will decide whether or not you can get an abortion and what your doctor is allowed to say to you about abortions in your doctor‘s appointment.  The government will give you a script.  The government will decide what your doctor says and what you are allowed to do.  The government decides now, not you.

State governments in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, are acting people to strip people of their union rights.  You might have heard something about that.  (You also may have heard that taxpayers voted in governors to try to fix the private economy, after Obama’s bailout of states and localities that overspent somehow failed to “stimulate” anything…)

This is big, intrusive activist government put into motion and law at statehouses around the country.  Republican-controlled legislatures right now are filled with politicians who campaigned on small government and respecting the will of the voter trademark.  And then they got into office and they really started doing quite radically the opposite.  (Yes, it would be small government to just keep extracting money from taxpayers in one of the nation’s 5 worst economies and transferring that wealth to the public sector…)

In Montana this month, Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer, remember he heated up his veto brand far long string of bills that had been passed by the new legislature in Montana?  One of those bills, a bill to recriminalize medical marijuana.  The Republicans‘ bill would overturn a law passed by the people of Montana in a referendum in 2004.  Another one of those Republican passed laws would have allowed the return of cyanide leaching in mines.  Voters had outlawed that through a referendum not once but twice in Montana.  But the Republican bill would have overturned what the voters said they wanted.

In Wisconsin, the Republican legislature overturned a Milwaukee referendum that mandated that companies give their workers sick leave.  When that got up for the vote in Milwaukee, it got 69 percent of the vote.

The people in Milwaukee want that.  (… and screw the Constitution… wait, did somebody mention Soviet Russia?  Who yells “communism!” then argues for the next 20 minutes for socialism?  The True Twit, that’s who.  Then she calls it “small government.”  Letting local officials do whatever they want with state money.  That is “small government.”)

…This is the vision of governance in America we ought to be debating, because regardless of what people say they‘re going do when they get in office, this is what‘s on offer now that they‘ve got there.

Joining us now is the Democratic mayor of Lansing, Michigan, Virg Bernero.  Mayor Bernero ran in the 2010 gubernatorial race against the current governor of Michigan, Republican Rick Snyder. (and played the union card harder than any candidate in my memory… and got royally waxed in November.)

Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for being with us tonight.

MAYOR VIRG BERNERO (D), LANSING, MICHIGAN:  Rachel, thank you for being such a patriot and a believer in democracy for bringing this to the fore.

Our Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves at what‘s happening in Michigan.  It is dire, and it is sad—a sad day for democracy.  It‘s really everything you said.  It is taxation without representation.  (Only if Benton Harbor wants to forgo all state funds, you constitutional scholar and historian, you…) You know, it is the corporatization.  We‘re seeing the corporatization of our Democratic process.

Today, in Michigan, they trained something—the government is training 200 EFMs, emergency financial managers.  This is an industry now that the administration is going to be in.  They have lowered the bar for taking over cities.

It used to be—EFMs were very rarely used.  (Uh, Virg, this guy was APPOINTED BY GRANHOLM A YEAR AGO.  Snyder has yet to appoint one in his supposed Operation Barbarossa to invade Michigan…) Their powers were circumscribed. (Read the law, it’s all circumscribed, by definition.) They were to go in and deal with the finances and work with the powers that be. (Only if the powers that be worked with them, ask the Flint City Council)

Now, they are in charge.  Now they can fire elected officials.  (No, they can just take away their power to do anything that costs the city money.) It is unprecedented in Michigan and I think in America and it‘s dangerous.

MADDOW:  I saw a Bloomberg News report about those trainings for the emergency financial managers, and one of the things that lucked out for me was—as you were saying, this is something that used to exist in a very small scale, reserved for real emergencies.  (And it still is.  But all the communities that had one, are back where they started, so it has been given more teeth.  If the past method worked so well, why aren’t those cities back on track, Virg?) They‘re talking about broadly expanding this and using this with something—more than a dozen different triggers that can start a process like this where a town just gets taken over.

And what Bloomberg pointed out was that it is investment banks and law firms and other people who have been involved in sort of corporate takeovers, doing this stuff in the private sector, who are now hoping to get in on this as a hot industry in the public sector.

Do you see this as a privatization of democracy, of public processes?  (He just said that, Rache.)

BERNERO:  Exactly, and this is why I say corporatization—profitization of local government.  It is unprecedented!  It‘s dangerous!  It‘s incredible that it‘s come to this.

You know, I‘m a believer in democracy.  This is autocracy.  I think the governor must have asked himself WWPD, what would Putin do?

You know, this is the kind of thing in Russia, in Soviet Russia, what is becoming increasingly Soviet Russia again.  They appoint the governors and the mayors.  And that‘s basically what we‘re headed for.  And they‘ve lowered the bar.   So, it‘s very easily to fall into this.

And not only that, Rachel, but they‘ve cut revenue sharing for cities.  So they‘re really cutting support for cities.  In essence, shoot you in the foot and blaming you for limping.

We‘re struggling to survive in this economy, and the state is doing nothing to help us.  In fact, they‘re hindering us.  And the only thing they‘re doing then is threatening us with this privatization, this corporatization with a czar who‘s going to be appointed who is not going to work with the local authorities.

You know, never mind—what happened to local control?  I thought the Republican Party was the party of less control, less government, and local control.

They have thrown local control out the window.  This is a return to King George.  You know, this is what the American Revolution was about. (The American Revolution was about having city governments get bullied into union contracts that cost more than they can possibly generate in tax revenue?  The American Revolution was about having city workers make 4-6 times what the average city resident WHO PAYS THEIR SALARY makes?  Is that what George Washington froze his… toes off at Valley Forge for?  Thanks for clarifying, Virg!)

MADDOW:  Is this what the 2010 campaign was for there?  When you were running against Rick Snyder and Michigan voters were give an choice about who they want for governor, is this what the campaign was about?  Is this what Republicans, including Rick Snyder, said they were going to do to Michigan if they got into power?

BERNERO:  Well, absolutely not.  And, I mean, we tried to get out of him what he would do.  There wasn‘t a lot—there was one debate, exactly one.  He said very little.

I think a lot of the Republican candidates for governor said very little.  They had a script.  They stuck to it.

And certainly, there was nothing like this talked about.  In fact, there was talk about helping cities.  You know, I‘m a mayor, I was running for governor.  I know our cities need to be the hub of the wheel instead of the hole in the donut.  (Right now, they are a black hole that sucks in resources from every community around them.)

There was a lot of talk about how to help cities.  And I haven‘t seen any of it.  We‘re not getting any help.  (Yeah, how is making the state attractive to employers again going to help cities?  What’s that got to do with anything?  What employers are looking for are cities run by public employee unions with big fat pension liabilities and high property taxes to pay for them, right?  Right?) What we‘re doing is getting the rug pulled out from underneath us and then these incredible, unprecedented powers, this power grab coming from the executive office is unprecedented and they‘ve lowered the bar so much.

You know, the governor‘s office is right across the street from me.  I‘m afraid if I sneeze loud enough that could be grounds for an EFM.  (How would they know you weren’t just making a speech, Virg?) They have really made it easy to take over a city, and you‘d think that normally, the state government wouldn‘t want to do that.  (The last thing the state “wants” to be in control of is a complete loser of a proposition like Benton Harbor.  It’s a great job, because people LOVE to be forced to face reality after years of the gravy train, and you get to be pilloried nationwide by populist morons.) Normally, the state government would be assisting and trying to help you on your own, maybe move you back. (So you would go bankrupt more slowly.)

Like I say, if there was an EFM, he would be in and out quickly.  He would make adjustments.  He would work with the locals, try to build an empowered local control. (…and as soon as they were gone the public employee unions who funded Virg Bernero were back in charge and every city is back in the same shape they were in before they got there.  What’s the problem?)

They‘re doing just the opposite.  (Hopefully!) They‘re coming in and wiping out the local boards and the local institutions.  It‘s incredible.  (They who, paleface?  The only new EFM under Snyder is in Benton Harbor—ALL THE REST WERE APPOINTED BY GRANHOLM.)

And so, what are you going to be left with?  At the end of the day, what are these EFMs going to have accomplished?  They‘re going to wipe out a lot of city services. (…That the city can’t afford.  Oh, right they are going to balance the budget…)

Where is the economy going to be of the region?  How are we going to grow as a state if we‘re not enabling local control, if we‘re not building up our cities and helping our cities to become strong?  (For the last 8 years, the only thing that has grown in Michigan is PUBLIC EMPLOYEMENT.  In the home of Henry Ford, there are more government jobs than manufacturing jobs, approximately 500,o0o compared to 600,000.  How’s that been working out, Virg?  Seen lots of economic growth?)

MADDOW:  Well, in Benton Harbor there will be three holes of that golf course, I‘m told, which will have a beautiful view of Lake Michigan.  That‘s apparently what they will be presiding over there.  (And what do they have now?)

BERNERO:  That belongs to the people.  (Gee, that doesn’t sound like something they would EVER say in “Soviet Russia…”)

MADDOW:  That‘s exactly right.

What’s exactly right, is that Rachel Maddow has taken a city whose government makes Detroit look functonal and made it the poster child for “local control,” a phrase that has never crossed her central planning loving lips before a Republican governor had to limit it in order to protect the taxpayers.

In fact, we interrupt this fact-free zone for some actually on-the-ground reporting from Julie Mack of the Kalamazoo Gazzette, a dependably liberal newspaper in West Michigan:

There’s much that Maddow didn’t mention, beginning with the fact that Harris was appointed not by Pscholka or Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, but by former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat.

That occurred, incidentally, after a state review found the city’s pension system was underfunded by $4 million, its cash reserves dwindled from $1.7 million to $300,000 in three years and the city was spending between $80,000 to $100,000 annually in overdraft fees. The same week that Benton Harbor officials forcefully told state officials at a hearing that they didn’t need an emergency financial manager, they had to ask the state treasury for an advance on funds to make their payroll.

What happened last week: Harris notified the Benton Harbor City Commission and other city boards that he’s using the revamped law to assume dictatorial powers over city operations.

That certainly is causing a stir. But it’s a separate issue from the controversy involving Jean Klock Park.

And here’s where Maddow’s narrative really falls apart. Despite her implication that Benton Harbor city officials have been holding the fort against the park’s potential development, the exact opposite is true.

In fact, the development already has happened — thanks to the Benton Harbor City Commission, which is leasing 22 acres of the 90-acre park for three holes of the 18-hole Golf Club at Harbor Shores, most of which is on an adjacent site. In fact, the city is a co-defendant in lawsuits filed by park advocates.

There’s also a counter-narrative on Whirlpool’s role. Here’s the other perspective: After the 2003 riot in Benton Harbor, Whirlpool tried to be a good corporate citizen by donating land and lending money for a $500 million upscale housing and golf course development that many said would create jobs, raise real estate values and generate some economic activity in a stricken community.

In fact, the PGA Senior Championship is coming to the Golf Club at Harbor Shores in 2012 and 2014, a nice boost for Benton Harbor.

Moreover, even if one buys the idea that Pscholka, Upton, Snyder and Whirlpool are plotting a takeover of Jean Klock Park, it’s unclear how Harris, a former chief financial officer for the city of Detroit, fits into that picture — and it’s Harris who is calling the shots in Benton Harbor right now.

Of course, the difference is that Julie Mack can find Benton Harbor without a map, and didn’t first learn of the situation from an AFSME talking points memo.

(Photo courtesy Pamela Geller, who has many more here.)

They started showing up long before the rally began at noon today. They came from Washington state, California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Florida, and elsewhere. They were Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, atheists, Muslims of conscience. They were lovers of freedom.

An hour before the rally began, they numbered 1,000. Zuccotti Park's owners sided with the Islamic supremacists and withdrew their permit to allow us to gather there, and so the police repeatedly requested that people leave the park and move into the pens that the police had set up at Church and Liberty streets. Before noon, however, the pens were full -- and so, with free citizens having every legal right to be in the park, the park became a site for the rally despite the best efforts of its clueless dhimmi owners.

By the time the rally was in full swing, the crowd filled the pens, the park, and the other side of the street. Police estimated that 5,000 people were there, and other estimates ranged as high as 10,000. The crowd carried signs expressing their love for freedom, their contempt for Sharia, and their anger at Islamic supremacism and insult to the memories of those murdered on 9/11 that this mosque represents.

And we had a full spectrum of top quality speakers. There were 9/11 family members, including C. Lee Hanson, who lost his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter on 9/11. There were people who experienced the oppression of Sharia firsthand, such as the Egyptian ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish, the Sudanese ex-slave Simon Deng, and the Hindu human rights activist Babu Suseelan. There was Dennis McKenna, who worked recovering remains from the ruins of the World Trade Center; Alan T. DeVona, the patrol sergeant on duty on September 11, 2001; and Keith LeBow, an ironworker who was one of the first responders on the scene on September 11. There was Herb London of the Hudson Institute and Beverly Carlson of the Band of Mothers -- and a host of other speakers, all lovers of America and lovers of freedom.

The theme among all the speakers was common: the mosque is an insult to the Americans who were murdered there. It is a manifestation of a radically intolerant belief system that is incompatible with the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And even with all the political elites against us, and the mainstream media indifferent or compromised (5,000 to 10,000 people at the rally, and no mainstream media coverage!), we will prevail. All we have on our side is the truth.

Pamela Geller did interviews with Al-Jazeera, AP, Chilean television, Italian television and many others; I was interviewed by Italian television and TV Asia. ABC? NBC? CBS? CNN? Even FOX? AWOL.

And the truth is powerful. The forecast had called for rain, but it didn't start raining in New York until after the rally had broken up. Many took it as a sign that we represented the cause of right and justice. And even with all the indifference of the politicians and the media, we sent a signal today: we will not let this injustice stand. We will be rallying again in September, and again when construction begins on the mega-mosque. We will be filing suit against the Federal Government, asking that the Burlington Coat Factory site where the mega-mosque is going to be built be designated a war memorial, a la Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg, etc., because of the part of one of the 9/11 airplanes that crashed into the roof there, and that is in the makeshift mosque that Muslims are using there now.

And above all: we will never give up.

On April 28, 2010, the Islamic Republic of Iran was elected to the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Possibly the world’s worst abuser of women, the Shariah-ruled country in which the fate of women and girls is left in the lecherous hands of misogynistic mullahs had been given membership on a commission founded to protect women’s rights and promote their equality. There was little media coverage of the announcement. And there has been little effort to prevent or denounce this obscene situation. But a few voices in Congress, some women human rights leaders, and, most poignantly, Iranian women themselves, have challenged the moral equivalency and cowardly silence of those that have failed to support women’s rights in Iran.

Iran’s CSW election was not surprising for the United Nations, whose moral vacuity remains proudly unmolested on First Avenue and the Palais des Nations. After all, Libya has chaired the Commission on Human Rights and Sudan has graced the Human Rights Commission with its presence during the most ferocious years of the genocide it has perpetrated in Darfur. But for the United States, it was a new low to remain silent in the face of such an outrage.

Iran was elected by acclamation. (Remember vote by acclamation? That was how Barack Obama got the Democratic presidential nomination, when between clenched teeth Hillary suspended the roll call.) In the case of Iran, it meant that none of the UN member states, including the U.S., asked for an open vote on Iran’s election to the women’s commission. Some say that this was a quid pro quo for Iran withdrawing its bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. So human rights abuser Iran will only make UN policy on women’s human rights, not human human rights. The women of Iran are not greatly relieved by this devil’s bargain.

In past years, the U.S. worked to prevent abusers of women, genocidairres, and other assorted miscreants from achieving such positions of authority on UN commissions. American delegations to the UN encouraged the delegations of other countries to take a stand and to work together to present alternatives to objectionable candidates and to objectionable text in resolutions.

This was not an easy task. Dr. Mark Lagon described the challenges faced by the Bush Administration at the UN in an April 19, 2005

testimony at a subcommittee hearing of the House International Relations Committee (now House Committee on Foreign Affairs). Then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, Lagon explained that “some of the most egregious violators of human rights work through their regional blocs to gain nomination and election” to UN commissions “in order to protect themselves and their ilk from criticism.” The UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR) was being “increasingly confronted with bloc voting. . . shifting the CHR’s focus away from bedrock civil and political rights, and toward economic, social, and cultural rights.”

If

the United States could not prevent such elections or resolutions, it could at least be counted on to speak out about such injustices, even when criticized for acting “unilaterally.” For example, in the spring of 2004, in the midst of horrific genocide in Darfur, the UN Commission on Human Rights passed an insultingly weak resolution on Sudan. As Lagon later told students at Georgetown University’s Institute of International Law and Politics, the U.S. tried to revise and/or replace text to more accurately respond to the atrocities taking place. When this failed, the U.S. opposed the resolution. A few days later, when Sudan was reelected to the Commission on Human Rights, Lagon said “the U.S. delegation reproached the body by walking out of the meeting and issuing a public, very critical, statement.”

Under the Obama Administration the U.S. delegation has twice

walked out of speeches by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The most recent walkout occurred on May 3, 2010, at the UN Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But walking out on the Iranian dictator’s sound and fury about “the Zionist regime,” aimed, in part, at America, is less difficult than a public reproach of the UN body for approving Iran’s CSW election.

Writing in Commentary the day after the election, Jennifer Rubin

raged, “The U.S. couldn’t muster a word of opposition — not even call for a vote… why? Because our policy is not to confront and challenge the brutal regime for which rape and discrimination are institutionalized policies. No, rather, we are in the business of trying to ingratiate ourselves, and making the U.S. as inoffensive as possible to the world’s thugocracies. …It is what this administration does and how they envision raising our status in the world.”

Thankfully, “making the U.S. as inoffensive as possible to the world’s thugocracies” is not the approach of some members of the U.S. Congress. U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) released a

statement the day after the election in which she said, “Allowing Iran to sit on the commission, a nation where gender equality is only a dream and where women are subject to inequality in all aspects of their daily lives, makes a mockery of the commission’s work.”

Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Michigan, also vehemently

denounced Iran’s election the same day. McCotter declared, “By electing the Tehran butchers to its Commission on the Status of Women, a morally rancid United Nations has salted the wounds of the Iranian freedom movement’s regime-murdered martyrs.” The congressman went on to blast this outrage in an interview on Fox News in which he said that the moral relativism of the UN had allowed Iran to “get elected to sit as a predator monitoring the prey.” McCotter will also introduce a congressional resolution condemning Iran’s election. Hopefully, many other members of congress will join on the resolution as co-sponsors.

No corresponding calls denouncing Iran have been issued by the major feminist organizations, however. The National Organization of Women (NOW) is too busy gloating over the Wal-Mart lawsuit, cheering Democratic congressional delegates, and experiencing ecstasy over President Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee to go about the messy and thankless job of defending the rights of women under Islam. On the other hand, the women’s rights group Equality Now does fight against the evils that affect women under Shariah in Iran and elsewhere, such as

female genital mutilation (FGM), rape, sex trafficking, and child marriage. But perhaps because they work too closely with the disease-ridden United Nations, Equality Now focuses on the symptoms rather than the disease.

Women’s ministries and commissions of left-leaning and “progressive” evangelical churches have also let down the women and girls of Iran by not protesting Iran’s farcical election. The feminists of

such groups make careers of attempting to shatter every stained glass ceiling that they encounter. But given the opportunity to respond to the life-long suffocation of women under Shariah’s oppressive ceiling, they are silent. Officers and staff of these ministries spend their days issuing statements against gender inequality, sexual violence, and the perceived iniquities of misogynistic patriarchal Christianity, but the UN is their friend! And the progressive evangelicals of trendy organizations like Sojourners blog and twitter in their usual self-important, self-righteous way about America’s greed, evil, and injustice. But there is neither a tweet nor a blog post expressing outrage over Iran’s ascendency to the UN commission.

Other than the resolution pending in Congress, there have not been many efforts to support the women of Iran. But on May 5, 2010, a group of women leaders sent an

open letter to Secretary Clinton protesting U.S. silence over the election of Iran to the women’s rights commission. The letter called on Clinton to “denounce Iran’s election. . . as an appointment that shocks the conscience of civilized societies” and demanded to know why the United States failed to request an open vote. “We await your public and clear condemnation of this outrageously sexist and insensitive decision by the U.N.,” the letter concluded.

Letter signers range from Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Wafa Sultan, Anne Applebaum to Diana West. They are international human rights and women’s rights specialists, attorneys, scholars, columnists, media figures, women in the arts, and activists of all sorts. Experience for experience they match and surpass the leftist feminists. But unlike their counterparts in liberal land, the letter signers “get it” and their integrity requires them to enter the realm of the so-called politically incorrect and intolerant on behalf of women living under Shariah.

The most courageous effort to prevent Iran’s CSW election came from Iranians themselves. On April 27, 2010, 214 Iranian women’s rights activists inside and outside Iran sent an

open letter to the United Nations urging that Iran not be allowed CSW membership. Supported by “the global sisterhood network” and endorsed by over a dozen other organizations, the Iranian activists told the UN that “for the sake of women‘s rights globally, an empty seat for the Asia group on CSW is much preferable to Iran‘s membership.” They reminded the UN that “discrimination against women is codified in [Iran’s] laws, as well as in executive and cultural institutions, and Iran has consistently sought to preserve gender inequality in all places, from the family unit to the highest governmental bodies.” Iran will certainly use the opportunity afforded to it on CSW “to curtail progress and the advancement of women,” they warned.

Not long after the UN failed to heed this warning and elected Iran to the CSW, the official Iranian news agency (IRNA) demonstrated the accuracy of the Iranian activists’ prediction when it stated that “Iran’s membership in the Commission on the Status of Women is important because “Iran’s views about the position of women,” through this podium, “can help reflect Islamic views about family and women.” The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran also

reported IRNA’s claim that efforts against their candidacy were by “hostile groups and western media” trying to prevent Iran’s membership in the CSW through “poisonous propagation.” IRNA then boasted “their efforts were ignored by members of ECOSOC.” A sad indictment of all of the member nations of the UN.

The U.S. and other nations of the free world let down the Iranian people when they stood by and did nothing as the regime crushed the election protesters last year. Some brave Iranian freedom fighters are still

paying the cost for that defiance. Five political prisoners were hanged in secret on May 9, and twenty-seven others are awaiting execution. Now by remaining silent about the election of Iran to the CSW the U.S. has failed to support the people of Iran again.

But this will not deter courageous Iranians. They will find encouragement from those who have decried the UN’s outrageous election. And it’s not too late for the U.S. to help. By supporting legislative efforts like Mr. McCotter’s resolution, the U.S. could, as that resolution’s last sentence says, “reaffirm its solidarity with the Iranian people in their continuing struggle for freedom and human rights, including equal rights for women in Iran.”

Faith J. H. McDonnell directs The Institute on Religion and Democracy’s Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan, and is the author of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007).

Liz Blaine’s excellent piece Sunday showed the tension between union members who see illegal aliens flooding the job market and driving down the price of labor, and union bosses who lobby for watering down immigration laws, obsessing over “migrant rights,” and boycotting Arizona.

And while Liz is right that this fits into the socialist mindset of most union muckety-mucks, and although workers are indeed befuddled by how their leadership can sign onto something that is so obviously against the interest of American workers, both miss the real reason behind this position: Money and power, that’s what this is really all about.

You see, union leaders consider floods of unskilled and unschooled workers a ripe field for harvesting union dues. Democrats look at them as future (maybe near future) voters.  Since the union bosses are tied to the Democratic Party, that makes them a source for political power, as well.

President Barack Obama is doing everything he can to promote– and even force– union membership. From the infamous “card-check,” to directing stimulus funds to unions, to specifically unionized sectors: as long as a plan increases union’s hold over Americans, Obama’s for it.

Proof that unions no longer see any line between private industry unions and public sector unions can be illustrated by taking a closer look at the United Auto Workers.  The UAW’s middle initial is becoming increasingly ironic, as its largest local is no longer a GM or Ford factory complex in Detroit or Flint, but Local 6000—a State of Michigan employees union.

Once upon a time, there was a certain tension between autoworkers and public employees on union and strike issues, as the former knew they paid the salaries of the latter.  This was especially true around teachers’ strikes, because it were the autoworkers’ children and grandchildren who were being used as political pawns so teachers could extract more money from—well, their (grand)parents.

Now, for the union bosses, “Workers of the world, unite!” truly is the battle-cry.  As unions become less and less relevant in the real world, government is the only unionized growth industry – and illegal immigrants may be the only audience ill-informed enough to fall for the union spiel en masse.

Listening to an Obama speech is like chowing down on a box of assorted chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get. The president’s commencement speech at the University of Michigan last Saturday was a classic case in point. To paraphrase an orator whose reputation for greatness did not involve the use of either speechwriters or teleprompters: never in the course of American politics has a president used so many words to say so little. For example, on the one hand, Obama deplores the nature of debate in the nation today:

“You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question someone’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like “socialist” and “Soviet-style takeover;” “fascist” and “right-wing nut” may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.”

On the other hand, there’s really nothing to worry about, for that’s the way it’s always been:

“In fact, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Since the days of our founding, American politics has never been a particularly nice business – and it’s always been a little less gentle during times of great change. A newspaper of the opposing party once editorialized that if Thomas Jefferson were elected, “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.” Not subtle.”

The president is also happy to acknowledge that too much government is obviously a bad thing:

“The democracy designed by Jefferson and the other founders was never intended to solve every problem with a new law or a new program. Having thrown off the tyranny of the British Empire, the first Americans were understandably skeptical of government. Ever since, we have held fast to the belief that government doesn’t have all the answers, and we have cherished and fiercely defended our individual freedom. That is a strand of our nation’s DNA.”

Which, of course, is why we need more government:

“But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad. One of my favorite signs from the health care debate was one that read “Keep Government Out Of My Medicare,” which is essentially like saying “Keep Government Out Of My Government-Run Health Care.” For when our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it conveniently ignores the fact in our democracy, government is us. We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders, change our laws, and shape our own destiny.”

It’s pretty much all like that. It always is when Barack Obama hits the teleprompter. If you only listened to his words, you’d have a hard time figuring out what exactly this president stands for. Fortunately, we have the benefit of observing his actions, so America has a pretty good idea where his real sympathies lie. The mainstream media touted the Michigan commencement speech as a blast back at the “anti-government” crowd and, with a small correction, that’s what it was. Despite the bromides, the president was clearly firing back at what should correctly be called the “small government” sentiment in America that is embodied by the tea-party movement. (“Anti-government” is a phrase that properly describes anarchists, not patriotic Americans protesting more bureaucracy, more spending, more debt and less self-determination).

Nobody outside of crazed militia types says, or thinks, that “government is bad.” Rather, millions of Americans believe that government is inefficient, expensive and stifling and should therefore be used as a means toward accomplishing an end only when absolutely necessary. “Absolutely necessary” can be defined as some of the examples that Obama cited: police officers, highway safety and the laws and regulations designed to prevent workplace injuries and promote environmental responsibility. There’s a role for government in all of these cases that no private entity could fulfill, but it should be self-apparent that we all pay a price when we employ government to do so.

Having police protect us requires a justice system and, the government being what it is, that justice system is necessarily bloated, inefficient and burdened by mountains of contradictory rules. We deal with OSHA and the EPA, because most of us realize that somebody has to do what some private companies won’t: ensure that both employees and the environment are protected. But again, we pay a price. OSHA may help prevent injuries, but it’s also enormously powerful and too often petty. The EPA has done a stellar job of cleaning up America, but the massive bureaucratic structure it created while doing so now intrudes in the operation of private enterprise in stifling ways that have little or nothing to do with environmental protection. It’s always that way. Once the nose of the bureaucratic camel pushes through the tent, you’ve got yet another dromedary for a roommate, and the basic problem is that there’s not much room left in the tent that used to be our private lives for more camels.

The crux of Obama’s defense of big government is that, in a democracy, the “government is us.” No doubt the president really believes that, because his entire working life has been spent working for the government, in academia or as an advocate for people trying to get more out of government. His “real world” experience, as those of us who work in the private sector understand it, is zero. Accordingly it’s no surprise when Obama doesn’t understand that for the majority of us in the private sector – who pay for the ever-expanding public sector, by the by – the government isn’t “us” at all. The government isn’t the people we actually elected, as the president styled it, the government is rather the army of nameless bureaucrats to whom the people we elected have bequeathed, and continue to bequeath, enormous power over our lives.

The liberal myth says that conservatives and libertarians trust the private sector and don’t trust the public sector. That’s not the case. The truth of the matter is that we don’t trust anybody. But, when it comes to excess in the private sector, at least we have a chance of winning. If some company rips off a consumer, the consumer can go to the Better Business Bureau, complain to the Attorney General, call the local media watchdog, or employ a vast number of other means to settle the score. If a consumer thinks that a particular corporation’s product is inferior, there’s a host of other companies willing to fill the need. But, when it comes to government excess, people don’t have any hope of leveling the playing field unless they’re very rich or very lucky. There is no protection from our protectors. Anyone who has been victimized by an over-zealous IRS agent, EPA official, OSHA inspector or any other member of the bloated, blustering bureaucracy that runs more and more of our lives knows exactly how stifling big government is.

So yes Mr. President, we understand that we need some government in our lives. The problem, as we see it, is that we have so much damned government that it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.

Detroit -- A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit against a Wayne County judge accused of telling a woman to remove her Islamic head scarf.

U.S. District Judge Marianne O. Battani ruled there was no evidence Wayne Circuit Judge J. William Callahan knew Raneen Albaghdady's head covering had religious significance when he asked her to remove it during a name change petition last June.

"Albaghdady never protested removal of her head piece, she never informed defendant that her 'hat' was a hijab, and most critically, when asked to remove it, said, 'OK. It doesn't matter,'" Battani said in an 11-page opinion dismissing the lawsuit brought by the woman and the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Michigan.

"There simply is no evidence that Callahan would have required the removal of a head covering if he had known of its religious significance."

Albaghdady of Dearborn Heights said in an affidavit she acquiesced because she was "terrified and scared," but Battani, who reviewed a videotape of the court proceeding, said "her demeanor in court does not comport with her assessment of her feelings."...

Huey Long was once asked whether he thought fascism could ever come to America. His answer was “Yeah, but it’ll come calling itself anti-fascism.” America isn’t close to such a future, but I couldn’t help thinking about Long’s comment in connection with an episode that occurred recently at my alma mater.

The occasion was a conference at Columbia University, scheduled by a conservative organization called Accuracy in Academia. The conference title was “A Place at the Table: Conservative Ideas in Higher Education” and its purpose was to highlight the lack of intellectual diversity in the highly politicized environments of academic institutions like Columbia. Among the announced speakers were two university trustees, Ward Connerly and Candace DeRussy, as well as Dinesh D’Souza, the urbane author of “Illiberal Education.”

The ceremonies were to begin with a Friday evening dinner, addressed by Connerly, who is currently heading a national civil rights campaign. Connerly was coming off an important victory at the polls Nov. 3, when Washington state became only the second (after California) to ban racial preferences. According to Accuracy in Academia president Dan Flynn, 140 students and professors attended the dinner, which was held in the East Room of Columbia’s Faculty House.

But guess who else came to that dinner? The mere presence of Connerly, who expresses ideas the campus left doesn’t want to hear, was enough to rouse 100 raucous radicals into action. They threw up a picket line outside the dinner and hurled obscenities and racial epithets at those entering the building. Keep in mind that these students, like Columbia itself, had previously welcomed such rabid antisemites and racial demagogues as Khalid Muhammad, and had honored unrepentant Communists like Angela Davis, who in a recent appearance at Michigan State told students that the main problem in the world was white people. Columbia not only welcomes such race-haters, but pays them handsomely out of student funds to propagate their bigotry.

By contrast, the conservative conference featured no rabble-rousers, no hate-agendas, and actually paid the university $11,000 to hold its event on campus.

– Fascism by any other name

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A conference at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on April 16, 2010, offered “Critical Perspectives on the Criminalization of Islamic Philanthropy in the War on Terror.” Co-sponsored by the UCLA International Institute, the Critical Race Studies Program, and the UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law—and including speakers from UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES)—the conference proffered the usual apologist fare.

It was also an echo chamber. Of the approximately 30 people in attendance, 20 of them were academics. Several students showed up, in addition to the usual assortment of aging leftist revolutionaries.

The thrust of the conference was simple: The war on terror has led to a crackdown on Muslim charities, which has had a chilling effect on Muslims by rendering them unable to engage in Zakat (charity), one of the five pillars of Islam.

Unmentioned throughout this eight-hour infomercial was that the majority of the charities that have been investigated for financially aiding terrorism were found guilty and that decent Muslims are capable of giving to charities that do not foment bombings and beheadings.

Asli Bali, acting professor of law at UCLA, organized the conference and acted as one of the principal moderators. She responded to challenging questions from the audience by stating: “We will take three questions from presenters; others will have to wait.”

Jennifer Turner of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Human Rights Program was the speaker over whom everybody seemed to be fawning. Her presentation was titled, “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity,” and, in typical ACLU fashion, she made excuses for Islamists’ bad behavior while bashing America.

She began by stating: “I’m not a social scientist. I am not here to offer any statistical analysis”—a fig leaf she employed to make wildly unsubstantiated claims, as when she announced that “the conviction in the Holy Land Foundation case was based on faulty evidence.” She didn’t bother to elaborate.

It turned out her “research” that had the entire room in a swoon consisted of the following:

I did 120 interviews with American Muslims in Michigan and Texas. People reported that they were unable to give Zakat. Some had stopped giving entirely. Some felt fear of deportation or denial of citizenship.

Turner excused her extremely small sample size with more platitudes about not being a statistician. She insisted that she did not ask leading questions, although the process was clearly an exercise in promoting victimhood. She did not verify the accuracy of her respondents or analyze any tax returns. In short, she relied on her own biased views to justify a predetermined conclusion.

University of Michigan, Dearborn, history professor Sally Howell actually found oppression in increased giving. As she put it:

Since 2001, there have been 14 new mosques, and 17 mosques have doubled in size. This is proof that people are not donating overseas.

Howell followed this with more bizarre commentary:

“The Arab charity LIFE [Life for Relief and Development] had their board resign one year after Israel invaded Lebanon.”

Foiled again!

“As a result of restrictive policies” a board member of another charity, according to Howell, “embezzled $10,000.”

Yes: and as a result of inconvenient and restrictive securities laws, Bernie Madoff was forced to steal. It was all America’s fault.

“Does government get to decide what is good Islam and what is bad Islam?,” she asked.

No, but it does get to decide what constitutes funding terrorism.

Howell concluded, “The FBI has to show results or lose resources.”

Erica James, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) anthropology professor, offered proof—of nothing:

“I have an anthropology background. I am here to theorize what is happening.”

Her solution to the supposed problems faced by Muslim charities? “Defiant giving.”

During the question and answer period of this panel, an audience member—resorting to the usual name calling directed at critics of Middle East studies— proclaimed that “well-known bigot Daniel Pipes wrote an article about ‘stealth Islamists.’”

The panelists all nodded in agreement. There was no word on Pipes’s findings regarding UCLA law professor—and moderator at this conference—Khaled Abou El Fadl’s status as, in fact, a stealth Islamist.

Laila Al-Marayati, the chairperson of KinderUSA—a charity that terrorism analyst Matthew Levitt included in his book on funding Hamas—portrayed the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as harmless. As she put it, “Hamas helps Palestinian children in Gaza. I don’t consider Hamas and Hezbollah as threats to me and my family.”

Jonathan Benthall of University College, London, gave a talk that can be summed up in one quote: “The United States is the key to the problem.”

Mona Atia, assistant professor of geography and international affairs at George Washington University, claimed that “Egypt has been a model of fighting terrorism.”

Meanwhile, McGill University political science and Islamic studies professor Khalid Medani demonstrated willful blindness by opining, “Somalia is a place where Islamic terrorism is not possible because they are not organized.”

When asked if the definition of a terrorist was hard to prove, Medani responded, “You’re right. I try to critique them based on their own terms. I’m not a lawyer.”

No UCLA conference would be complete without offensive commentary from a member of the Center for Near Eastern Studies faculty. This time, CNES director and anthropology professor Susan Slyomovics—speaking during a break with colleagues about a book she’s working on—said:

If Jews can get reparations from Germany, then Palestinians should get reparations from Israel. After all, what the Germans supposedly did to the Jews [emphasis added] is what Israel is doing to the people of Palestine.

All the while, she kept smiling and laughing. Nothing makes for a good academic sitcom like Holocaust denial from a prominent professor of Middle East studies.

Despite eight hours of groupthink, I was able to finally cut through the leftist clutter to determine why the U.S. is investigating Muslim charities: 9/11 actually did happen, and the majority of the charities accused of funding terrorism actually did.

Only a UCLA Middle East studies conference could deliberately fail to grasp this.

Eric Golub is the publisher of the Tygrrrr Express blog. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

"Mich. McDonald's Accused Of Discrimination," from WWJ, April 13:

Rochester Hills (WWJ) -- The Michigan Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is accusing McDonald's of religious and ethnic discrimination. CAIR has filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against a McDonald's Restaurant in Rochester Hills. The complaint was filed on behalf of a Muslim woman who applied for a job at the restaurant. During the interview, she says that one of the restaurant managers informed her that wearing an Islamic head scarf, or hijab, would be a problem.

In 2008, the EEOC issued new guidelines on accommodating religious beliefs and practices in the workplace.

The guidelines offer protection for workers who wear religious attire such as a headscarf.

"We urge McDonald's to take immediate action to bring its hiring policies into compliance with long-established legal guidelines on reasonable religious accommodation in the workplace," said CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid.

Walid noted that in 2008, CAIR-MI raised concerns with McDonald's regarding two similar incidents in which Muslim women alleged being denied employment because of hijab....

Called the “People’s Pastor” for his long activist career, Herbert Daughtry in 1953 was convicted of armed robbery and assault charges. In prison, he had a religious conversion to Pentecostalism which led him to become a pastor in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1980 Daughtry helped establish the National Black United Front, which helped organize the national campaign for reparations and has worked alongside the New Black Panthers. In 1982 he founded the African People’s Organization, which teaches the black origins of Christianity. In 1984 Daughtry became a special assistant to Jesse Jackson during the latter’s presidential campaign. He has also helped organize a number of initiatives with Al Sharpton, particularly the 2006-2008 demonstrations protesting a police shooting of a young black man in New York City.

A fervent proponent of Black Liberation Theology, Daughtry has served in a number of prominent positions with the World Council of Churches. He also has been one of the principal leaders of the reparations-for-slavery movement in America. His church in Brooklyn is adorned with a banner for slavery reparations, proclaiming, “They Owe Us.”

To view the full Herbert Daughtry profile, click here.

Republican Senate candidate in California Tom Campbell is the frontrunner in the nomination fight and his ties to radical Muslims, specifically Sami al-Arian, have become an issue, but the story is bigger. Campbell has surrounded himself with people tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, who recruited him for their political agenda in a campaign that ultimately reached the Bush White House.

In November 2001, a Brotherhood document called “The Project” from 1982 was found by Swiss police raiding the home of Youssef Nada, a Brotherhood leader thought to be financing terrorism. It detailed a sophisticated plan to incrementally bring Sharia Law to the world, including deep political influence operations in the democratic institutions of the West. The Muslim Brotherhood has been diligently following this plan ever since.

The story of the infiltration of the Republican Party should start with Sami al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor now convicted of being a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and admitted Muslim Brotherhood member. In 1997, his brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, was held without bail based on classified evidence connecting him to terrorism after he appealed his deportation. Al-Arian began using his political connections to try to free his brother-in-law, arguing that his civil liberties were being violated. This effort ultimately failed, and al-Najjar was deported in 2002.

One of al-Arian’s political allies was Suhail Khan, the Director of Policy and Press Secretary of Congressman Tom Campbell of California. Campbell introduced legislation to ban the use of secret evidence in immigration court, which would free al-Najjar. This was not merely a consequence of Campbell’s legislation, it was the intent. Campbell wrote a letter defending the man and visited him in jail in May 2000.

Khan’s father served as vice president of the Muslim Students Association and was in the leadership of the Islamic Society of North America, two Brotherhood-created groups. The mosque his father founded was later visited  after he moved by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where he preached violent jihad. In 1983, his father founded the Muslim Community Association, which was used by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad to fundraise twice, including one appearance by Ayman al-Zawahiri. His mother served on the board of the mosque and was also on the board of the California branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose founders are now known to be secret members of the Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee.”

Khan himself regularly speaks at events put together by Brotherhood-connected groups. Frank Gaffney, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and current President of the Center for Security Policy, told me last week that an FBI Special Agent involved in counter-terrorism confirmed to him that Khan is a member of the Brotherhood. On November 6, 2009, Rachel Maddow interviewed Khan about the Fort Hood shootings and asked about the criticism of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He responded by saying that it was “even more sad to see that there might be some who would use and exploit this strategy for their political partisan and worse, for their racist ends.”

Grover Norquist, a prominent conservative activist who had very close ties to the Bush campaign and White House, is central to this story. He founded the Islamic Free Market Institute in 1998 with tens of thousands of dollars from Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who later professed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah and was found to be a top Brotherhood leader in the U.S. involved in massive terrorism fundraising operations. Money also came from the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a Brotherhood front, and The Safa Trust, whose offices were raided in 2002 as part of a terrorism investigation.

Alamoudi’s top aide, Khalid Saffuri, became the executive-director of Norquist’s group. Saffuri later became the National Advisor on Arab and Muslim Affairs for Bush’s presidential campaign in 2000. He would go on to help build relations between the Bush team and Sami al-Arian and later oppose the shutting down of the Holy Land Foundation.

Norquist’s ties to the high-profile groups of the Muslim-American community, a prime target for the GOP’s social conservative message, made him a valuable asset in the eyes of the Bush campaign and White House. John Zogby described Norquist in November 2001 as being “central to the White House outreach” by acting as an “interlocutor.”

These ties become more understandable when it is understood that a devout Muslim married Norquist, something a follower of Islam would never do unless her spouse converted. When Paul Sperry asked him if he had converted to Islam, Norquist would only say that it was“personal.” In 2008, Norquist adopted a baby from the now-Palestinian city of Bethlehem. By no means does being a Muslim convert mean you are an extremist, but it is a factor in explaining what could cause Norquist to seek out relationships like these.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism provided me with several documents showing how Campbell and Khan were active in the political agenda of these groups. The October 1996 newsletter from the American Muslim Council included an interview with Campbell, where he expressed his anger at the “gross stereotyping and dehumanization of Muslims and Arabs” in movies like Executive Decision and Father of the Bride II. He said that he wrote letters to Kurt Russel, Steve Martin, and Eugene Levy asking them to be more responsible in the future.

In the interview, Campbell also boasted of his role in trying to get “inflammatory language” removed from a House resolution. The “inflammatory” language was “in several Islamic countries conversion to Christianity from Islam is a crime punishable by death” and “Sudan is waging a jihad (religious war) against the Christian southern part of the country.” Khan spoke at a Council on American-Islamic Relations conference in August 1997 where he again boasted of Campbell’s effort, saying that the resolution was offensive to Muslims and should instead condemn all religious persecution.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs’ issue from July/August 1999 reported on the American Muslim Council’s annual convention. It says that Khan and Campbell spoke for the group, with Khan focusing on the ban on the use of secret evidence in immigration court. Campbell, speaking alongside Rep. Janice Schakowsky who condemned Israel’s “ethnic cleansing,” said “We [Congress] have to recognize that there are people in Palestine who have the right to their own land.”

The event also included a talk from Mazen al-Najjar’s daughter, crying for her father’s freedom, and the presentation of an award to The Holy Land Foundation. The director of the group said, “Although the Holy Land Foundation is a non-profit organization, we profit the lives of many Palestinians.” Apparently those Palestinians they profited were members of Hamas, as the charity was later found guilty of financing the terrorist group.

When Campbell ran for Senate in 2000, Sami al-Arian and figures from other Brotherhood affiliates like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Society of North America donated to his campaign and spoke at his fundraisers as he courted Muslim votes.

Sami Al-Arian donated to his campaign, as did Abdulrahman Alamoudi. On May 24, 2000, Alamoudi was interviewed by an Islamic website that asked him how to “decrease the influence of the zionist (sic) lobby on presidential candidates.” He responded by calling on Muslims to help elect favorable candidates, specifically mentioning Campbell as a “tested friend.”

When Alamoudi publicly declared his support for Hamas and Hezbollah, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush returned his donations. Campbell did not. He defended Alamoudi, saying he had not advocated violence. Also donating to his campaign was Nihad Awad, the current executive-director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group now labeled as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism financing trial of The Holy Land Foundation.

Awad, a Brotherhood member, was recorded by the FBI participating in a secret meeting of Hamas and Brotherhood supporters in 1993 where he emphasized the need to moderate their language in order to advance their political agenda. The first executive-director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, Muthanna al-Hanooti, donated $2,000 to Campbell. He was later found guilty of being a spy for Iraqi intelligence, who apparently appreciated Campbell’s criticism of U.S. sanctions on their country.

Another donor was Agha Saeed from the American Muslim Alliance, a group that later opposed the Bush Administration’s shutting down of The Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. Saeed spoke in support of the “armed resistance” of the Palestinians, prompting Hillary Clinton to return his donation. Like the case of Alamoudi, Campbell did not return his donation and was not turned off by his pro-jihad rhetoric. The votes and confidence of his Brotherhood friends were too important. Saeed’s group put together a conference in October 2001 where Campbell was given a “lifetime achievement” award. In 2000, Saeed’s group actually held a fundraiser for Campbell, bringing in $35,000 for him.

In September 2000, Campbell was on a panel at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual conference about how Muslims could mobilize to support the ban on using secret evidence in immigration court. Joining him on that panel was Agha Saeed; Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Nihad Awad; and Najir Khaja from Al-Amoudi’s American-Muslim Council. In other words, his Brotherhood political allies.

After Bush’s election victory, these various individuals saw their power increase. Suhail Khan began working in the Office of Public Liaison and then as Assistant to the Secretary for Policy at the Transportation Department. Norquist has said that he used his influence in the White House to get Khan the position. David L. Norquist, Grover’s brother, became the Bush Administration’s Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Homeland Security in 2006.

President of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney writes that a memo prepared by Khan in early 2001 shows that Norquist’s Islamic Free Market Institute “provided the White House with a list of Muslim invitees, with the name, date of birth and Social Security number of each.” In 2003, Mary Jacoby of The St. Petersburg Times wrote that “For a time, the point person at the White House arranging the Muslim groups’ access was Suhail Khan, a former director of the Islamic Institute.”

The success of this effort to gain influence inside the White House was clearly seen following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Ironically, on that very day, these various Muslim leaders and groups who won White House access via Khan were set to meet with President Bush to discuss his pledged support of a ban on using secret evidence in immigration court, a position he likely came to because of the influence of the Brotherhood team. Sami Al-Arian was supposed to call into the meeting. When the attacks prevented the meeting, they met up in Norquist’s conference room, which he shared with Frank Gaffney.

On September 26, President Bush understandably wanted to make clear that the war on terror was not a war on Islam or all Muslims, so he appeared with 15 Muslim-American leaders who condemned the vague term of terrorism. Included were the leaders of the American-Muslim Council, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Islamic Society of North America. Government agencies, officials and candidates built strong relations with groups such as these in the aftermath of the attacks, hoping to win the support of the Muslim communities through them. In reality, these groups used such connections to try to influence the government, gain prestige, and actually undermined support for the government’s counter-extremism efforts, such as by painting the war on terror as a war on Islam—the precise image the government was trying not to create by working with these groups.

Campbell continued to be a friend to these Brotherhood leaders after 9/11. In 2002, he wrote a letter defending Sami Al-Arian, who was under pressure from his school for reports tying him to extremism. Campbell now says that he was unaware of al-Arian’s terrorist activity, but by this time, al-Arian had publicly supported jihad and made anti-Semitic and anti-American statements. A report by The Investigative Project on Terrorism stated, “If he didn’t know it then, it wasn’t because the information wasn’t available. Campbell either never sought it out or simply ignored it.”

Campbell does have a record of supporting Israel as a congressman, but that hasn’t stopped him from endorsing virulently anti-Israel activists, such as Alison Weir of If Americans Knew. The organization’s website proudly shows off his endorsement of her. Campbell says that his praise came from one speech of hers, and the relationship did not continue. He did not say what that speech consisted of. According to Weir, it was a talk she gave in the spring of 2001 where she talked of the brutality and oppression of the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “One of the first on his feet [to applaud her] was Tom Campbell,” she says.

The cast of characters and organizations who penetrated the White House and Bush campaign are the same ones who counted on Campbell as a close ally, supporting him politically and financially. Campbell is not a proponent of Sharia Law, but those involved with the Brotherhood saw him as an official they could influence and use. Eager to win Muslim support, politicians such as Campbell are tempted to follow the advice of advisors like those suggested by Norquist. Based on his record, it is disturbing to think who Campbell will surround himself with should he become the next Republican Senator from California.

While actual Baptists celebrate Easter today, the family cult that calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church is celebrating the death of American soldiers—and the federal court which washed its hands of its responsibilities and turned a fallen Marine’s father over to this rabid mob.

A District Court had hit the Westboro cult with a multi-million dollar settlement on behalf of the Snyder family who sued when their son’s funeral was disrupted by this mob.  That would have crippled their operations; but a simplistically absolutist approach to the First Amendment by an appeals court has them back on their feet– and the Marine’s family footing the bill.

Sgt. Joshua Youmans

Just over 4 years ago, Joshua Youmans, a 26 year-old National Guard sergeant from my home town of Flushing, Michigan was killed in Iraq by an IED.  This was a cause for celebration by the Westboro “Baptist Church” (they are neither Baptist, nor a church) and brought the sociopathic members of 81 year old Fred “Only the Good Die Young” Phelps and his 90-some member extended family cult to my very street.  

For a long time, I thought that the actions of the Phelpses constituted the most cold-blooded act of cruelty I had ever seen.  But this week, a federal court of appeals decided that the Phelpses not only have the right to interrupt the funerals of veterans, their litigation costs to protect that right should be paid by Al Snyder, the father of a fallen Marine, Matthew Snyder.

And while I share Joseph Klein’s hope that the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible injustice, I find it unlikely than an institution that considers flag burning “speech,” will restrict actual speech—even though allowing this would seem to nullify all disturbing the peace, parade permits, and noise ordinances nationwide.  (In Flushing, you can get a ticket for playing your stereo too loud.)

Had the Phelpses not telegraphed their intention to bring their hatefest to Flushing, and not knowing the Youmans family (other than an uncle), I probably would have limited my involvement in paying respects to Sgt. Youmans to flying my flag at half mast.  Funerals are for the family and friends.

But knowing these bastards were going to be on my street, when the call went out for real Americans to get between the Phelps clan and the Youman family, it was an easy decision—as it was for hundreds of other local people.

Besides the crowds of people who lined the sidewalks along the funeral route, and put our bodies between the monsters and the mourners, and flags in the line of sight over signs about “fags,” we were joined by Rolling Thunder, the veterans motorcycle group, who used their (mostly) Harley engines to drown out the Phelps’s caterwauling.  Without the media amplifying their presence, I’m not sure the Phelpses would have been seen OR heard.

Freedom of speech cuts two ways, baby.

But therein lies the rub.  Media coverage is the oxygen that keeps the Phelps clan’s foul breath going.  They thrive on condemnation.  They live for your outrage.  Would they show up for military funerals if they were ignored?

Of course, the Phelpses choose this method because it is inevitable that it will be covered.  And, I’m not sure it shouldn’t be, even in a perfect world.  Evil should be exposed, condemned—and countered.

The media coverage is interesting at all levels.  Locally, a Michael Moore-wannabe for the Flint Journal named Andrew Heller wrote a column that provoked a lot of community blowback for his struggling daily paper when he accused local Christians of not counter-protesting the Phelpses.

Flushing is a community of about 17,000 people outside Flint, with 3 major Baptist churches, and the county’s largest Catholic parish with several thousand members.  St. Roberts Catholic Church was packed for the funeral with about 500 people and the streets were crowded.  We showed up as Americans; but my guess is that about 99% of the day’s attendees would self-identify as Christians.

It never occurred to anyone that they needed to publicly do so, however– except for the columnist in his cubicle who could not be bothered to attend, but wrote his moronic screed by noting the lack of “I’m a Christian here to say the Phelpses don’t represent me” signs—at a FUNERAL!  (This got Heller his one and only shot at national coverage when I tipped James Taranto at OpinionJournal.com, and a typically brilliant mockery of Heller—which no longer seems to be in their online database– was the result.)

Chris Matthews has put a lot of energy into expressing outrage since the court decision.  In the segment below, he is overly congratulatory of radio host Michael Smerconish for being on the “right side” of this issue—perhaps the easiest moral stance in history, at least no one out here in the hinterlands agonized over it.

But Bill O’Reilly put his money where Matthews’s mouth is, and said he would cover Mr. Snyder’s legal expenses.  (Perhaps the only time I will take Bill’s side against Megyn Kelly on a legal issue.)

So Chris followed up with another segment—in which he commended O’Reilly but the famed motormouth seemed to need an unusual effort to force the words out—in which Chris put out an appeal for his viewers to contribute.

I don’t know if Rolling Thunder still makes the Phelpses their priority.  I hope so.  But this cult’s grim determination and sociopathic singleness of purpose can wear people with actual lives down.  Hopefully, this case will resurrect the determination of patriotic Americans to confront them at every turn.

This verdict, the victory and publicity– there have been more national news stories about the Westboro Cult than the “church” has members– is likely to lead to a bit of a resurgence of this disgusting activity.  So keep an eye out for military funerals in your area, and an ear to the ground as to whether these creeps are likely to show up.

If so, here are my suggestions:

1. Contact Rolling Thunder and see if there is a possibility for a Patriot Guard presence– if the family would like

2. Do NOT bring counter signs about the Phelpses.  Save those for other demonstrations.  Bring flags.

3. Do not counter-chant or shout them down.  Sing God Bless America or another patriotic song as the funeral process nears to drown out the cultists.

4. Get between the cult and the family with the flags as the procession nears.

Finally, a note of caution for those who might plan to show up and counter the hate:  I will confess that the Phelps clan’s steely emotionlessness probably saved me years in court.  After about an hour of this, I was looking for a fight, getting too close, and hoping one of them would lay a hand on me.  Perhaps the scariest thing about seeing the Phelpses up close, was the utter cheerful calmness about them as they go about their awful business.  But as a friend told me later—and as the Snyder case proves—part of the Phelps MO is that a lot of them go to law school, so even though no jury would convict me, my life would have been a constant nightmare of civil court dates.

On this Easter Sunday, I feel compelled to point out that yes, Jesus died for Fred Phelps.  So did Joshua Youmans and Matthew Snyder.  Phelps is spitting on BOTH sacrifices.

(Author’s note:  I have been around a couple of these events, though this was the only one where I played an active—if insignificant—part.  Because of the lousy online archive of my local newspaper, I am relying solely on 4 year-old memories.  If I have conflated any events, that is the reason—along with the onset of middle age–DF)

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/04/resurrecting-hate/feed/ 1 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/01/from-the-writings-of-david-horowitz-april-1-2010/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/01/from-the-writings-of-david-horowitz-april-1-2010/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:45:25 +0000 David Swindle http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=45922

IN THE FALL OF 2001, I spoke at a large public university in the eastern United States, which will remain nameless to protect the innocent. It was one of more than 30 colleges I had visited during the school year and, as usual, my invitation had come from a small group of campus conservatives who also put together a small dinner for me at a local restaurant. Our conclave reflected the current state of conservatism in the American university. Not only were our numbers small, but there were no deans or university administrators present, and only one professor. Open conservatives are an isolated and harassed minority on today’s college campuses, where they enjoy little respect and almost no support from institutional powers.

Although I am a nationally known public figure—author of books that have been best-sellers and nominated for a national book award, a Fox News contributor and one of America’s 100 leading “public intellectuals” according to a recent study of the subject, at these dinners, which normally precede my campus speeches, the absence of administration representatives is wholly predictable. (In nearly 200 campus appearances, I can think of only two exceptions.) When I spoke at the University of Michigan to 1,000 students, there were three university vice presidents in the balcony, but none thought to introduce himself to me. Occasionally a professor will attend these dinners, but rarely more than one. My experience as a conservative is not unique. By contrast, if I were an anti-American, radical like Angela Davis, deans of the college would wait on me and professors would confer academic credits on students for attending my appearances. On many occasions my speech would be an official campus event.

Angela Davis—a lifelong Communist zealot with no noticeable scholarly achievement—is a celebrated campus figure (there is even an “Angela Davis Lounge” at the University of Michigan) and thus can be expected to attract the attention of like-minded peers now entrenched in university administrations. But the same disparity would be discernible between a less well-known leftist and almost any comparable conservative. It reflects the fact that while conservatives often make up a large proportion of the student body on American campuses—and in some cases even a plurality—conservative professors and administrators are notably hard to find. Not only are the overwhelming majority of college professors fashionably “liberal,” most faculties have a strong contingent of hard leftists whose views are extreme, and whose concentrated numbers make it possible for them to dominate (and even define) entire academic fields. These faculty activists are also available to be sponsors of an impressive array of radical campus political groups, which—if the university is large enough—may receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from general student funds.

– Missing Diversity on America’s Campuses

–

If you have a favorite Horowitz quote you want to highlight for others then please submit it here. Please include:

1. “Horowitz Quote of the Day” in subject line.
2. A link to where the quote is from. (No need to include this if it’s from a book.)
3. Any remarks you’d like published explaining what value you take from it.
4. Your preferred name and a link to your blog or homepage (if you have one.)

The point will be the same as the one Tim McVeigh has had to shoulder alone all these years (even though he wasn't really a Christian at all, and did not justify the Oklahoma City bombing by reference to Christian teaching): that every religion has its "extremists," and that therefore it would be bad form to subject Islam to greater critical scrutiny, and Muslims to greater law enforcement scrutiny. Everyone does it, don't you see? Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, al-Shabaab, and on and on and on -- yes, but the Hutaree!

Meanwhile, why doesn't the Detroit News include in this story quotations from Christian leaders explaining how they condemn this "Christian militia," and that Christianity doesn't condone such violence, and that these militiamen have twisted and hijacked their peaceful faith? After all, they always include such quotes from Muslim leaders in every story about Islamic jihad terror activity. Why is the practice different in this case?

Yet instead of the mainstream moderate Christians (heh) that we would have every reason to expect the Detroit News to feature in this story, Hamas-linked CAIR shows up toward the end of this article, playing the victim card with gusto, so that as the arrests were announced, "audible gaps" (yikes!) sounded in their 10th anniversary banquet hall. The claiming of victim status, complete with gasping prospective victims, is artful -- and of course the Detroit News says nothing about CAIR's links to Hamas, the jihad-related arrests and convictions of several of its officials, and the rest of this group's unsavory record. A responsible reporter might have asked Dawud Walid if he thought this alleged Christian militia group was a "backlash" after the sharp increase in jihad terror activity in the U.S. in the last year, but why should the Detroit News have responsible reporters on staff when no other mainstream media outlet does?

And as for the FBI and the JTTF, are they investigating the Muslim camps around the country where firearms and paramilitary training are known to be going on? Are they doing so with the same energy and resources that they obviously have devoted to the investigation of this Christian militia? If not, why not? If the allegations against this group are true, they richly deserve to be raided and arrested and shut down. But there have been allegations made against Islamic compounds in the U.S. that are quite similar, and nothing has been done. Why is that?

"Seven arrested in FBI raids linked to Christian militia group," by Jennifer Chambers for The Detroit News, March 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

At least seven people, including some from Michigan, have been arrested in raids by a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as part of an investigation into an Adrian-based Christian militia group, a person familiar with the matter said. [...]

Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations. [...]

One of the Hutaree members called a Michigan militia leader for assistance Saturday after federal agents had already began their raid, Lackomar said, but the militia member -- who is of Islamic decent and had heard about the threats -- declined to offer help. That Michigan militia leader is now working with federal officials to provide information on the Hutaree member for the investigation, Lackomar said Sunday. [...]

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on Islamic-American [sic!] Relations of Michigan, made an announcement Sunday during the group's 10th anniversary banquet about receiving a call from a network journalist about the alleged threat against Muslims.

"Don't allow this news to scare you away from practicing your faith," said Walid.

Audible gaps [sic!] were heard throughout the banquet hall when the news was announced. Walid said he will call local authorities about more information on the allegations. He urged local Muslims to recommitt [sic] themselves to their faith in light of the accusations.

Yes, that will pacify everything.

Progressive Democrats are telling the opponents of Obamacare to chill out.  Once the American people understand what is in the legislation, they argue, it will be as popular as Social Security and Medicare.  I don’t think so.

Republican amendments to the reconciliation bill were defeated last night in the Senate on a party-line vote.  The amendments – and their defeat by the Progressives in charge of the Senate –  are instructive in highlighting what Obamacare is really all about.

Here are just a few of the amendments to improve health care reform that were defeated by the triumphant Progressives:

• a measure to prevent Medicare from being raided for new entitlements and to use Medicare savings to save Medicare;
• a measure to prevent convicted child molesters and rapists from getting reimbursed by the government for drugs like Viagra to treat erectile dysfunction;
• a measure to certify that no households earning less than $250,000 will see increased taxes as a result of health care reform; and
• a measure to certify that Americans will not have to change their health insurance as a result of the bill if they do not want to.

And in perhaps the most hypocritical, self-serving action of all, the Senate Democrats voted to defeat Republican Senator Grassley’s amendment to make sure the President, Cabinet Members, all White House Senior staff and Congressional Committee and Leadership Staff are purchasing health insurance through the health insurance exchanges established by Obamacare for the rest of us!

The New York Times today is running an op-ed piece by a political scientist entitled “The Fight Is Over, the Myths Remain.”  The author repeats what The Times itself has argued – that the opponents of Obamacare are spreading lies and distortions about Obamacare.

The most significant objection to Obamacare all along (aside from its leading the country to bankruptcy) has been the far-reaching power of the federal government over our lives that is central to Obamacare.  This is no myth or Republican scare tactic.  None other than Democratic Congressman John Dingell (Michigan), a long-time ardent supporter of universal health care, said as much:

The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation to cover 300 million people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people

“Control the people” – that is the true agenda of the Obamacare Progressives.  The rest is just icing on the cake.

It took a seedy campaign of intimidation, bribery, and back-room deal-making worthy of Tammany Hall, but Democrats have nearly pulled off the radical transformation of the American health care system that they – if not the rest of America – so desperately desire.

With yesterday’s 219-to-212 party-line House vote, made possible by the last-minute collapse of a holdout block of anti-abortion Democrats led by Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, the federal government’s intrusion into one-sixth of the economy is one step closer to becoming a reality. All it cost the Democratic majority was the prospect of fiscal responsibility, the pretense of bipartisanship, and any remaining confidence that the American public may have had in its elected representatives.

Sunday’s legislative “victory” was achieved despite the flaws of the House health care bill, which are by now well-documented. Of these the most notable is the staggering ten-year price tag for the legislation: $940 billion, complete with tax increases totaling $400 billion. Even in its enormity, that figure does not factor in the expensive new federal bureaucracy that the bill would create. For instance, some 16,500 new IRS workers will be needed to collect, examine and audit the new tax information that families and small businesses will have to provide to comply with the bill’s provisions. Nor does it include the penalties – up to $700 in some cases – that Americans will be forced to pay lest they fail to purchase insurance.

Billions in new entitlement spending may seem troubling, especially during an economic recession, but Democrats have sought to dismiss any anxiety about the health care bill’s effect on the deficit. To that end, Democrats spent the week gleefully touting the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the House bill would reduce the deficit by $138 billion over ten years. If CBO projections could be taken at face value, that would be encouraging news. But as the Washington Post reported, the real budget outlook is far more dire, since the CBO’s estimates are based on the expectation of savings and cuts that may not come to pass. Medicare is a prime example. While CBO estimates factor in cuts in Medicare reimbursements, such cuts are politically unlikely and, indeed, no Congress in recent history has dared to make them. Assuming that those cuts will take place this time around is little more than wishful thinking. As it stands, the health care overhaul seems more likely to confirm another of the CBO’s projections: that public debt will rise to 90 percent of GDP by 2020 under President Obama’s budget.

As awful as the substance of the House bill is, the process by which it was passed may be even worse. By embracing a series of shady procedural stratagems – from the dubiously constitutional “deem and pass,” in which the Senate version of the health care bill would be deemed to have passed without the formality of an actual vote, to “reconciliation,” usually reserved for budgets of bills that are already law – Democrats sowed widespread distrust and even alienated some media allies. At the height of the health care subterfuge, even the Washington Post was stirred to editorialize against the Democrats’ “unseemly” tactics. If last night’s vote was, as House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer suggested, the conclusion of “a national conversation” on health care, it was a conversation carried on largely without the nation.

This go-it-alone arrogance, magnified with unprecedented media coverage, sheds light on the profound cynicism that has set in with the American public. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey finds that 76 percent of Americans do not trust the U.S. Congress. That distrust extends to health care. Polls show that the plurality of the American public opposes the health care reform efforts in Congress – a striking statistic when one considers that the need for the reform was one of the few original points of consensus in the health care debate. With their scorched-earth campaign to pass the bill, Democrats have almost singlehandedly destroyed a once-promising political landscape. The Tea Party protestors who flocked to Capitol Hill yesterday to voice their opposition were only the most visible sign of the public’s sour mood.

To be sure, ObamaCare is not yet the law of the land. The companion legislation to the House bill still needs approval in the Senate. There, the Democrats’ majority is far more tenuous, thanks to the recent of Massachusetts’s Scott Brown on the campaign pledge of opposing ObamaCare. But if the House vote sets any kind of precedent, it is that Democrats will stop at nothing to force through their signature legislation.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the health care battle, the democratic process has clearly become a casualty. The American public is more cynical about its government that at any time in recent history. Next fall’s elections may yet bring a measure of retribution for the Democrats’ overreach. But by then the damage – all $940 billion of it – may be irreparably done.

Sherman Jackson, also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson, is a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.

Jackson specializes in Islamic law and has written and spoken extensively on the subject. Soon after the

September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, Jackson took the line popular among apologists, stating at a September 2001 University of Michigan Teach-in titled, “Terrorism: A Perversion of Islam,” that “the killing of innocent peoples is forbidden by the law of Islam and it has been from the beginning of Islam.”

But it turns out that not only is Jackson an apologist, he an outspoken proponent of the Islamist subversion of Western civilization.

Jackson made this abundantly clear at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit – 8th Convention in Toronto, Canada in December 2009, as a participant in the panel, “The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society.” Jonathan Usher, who attended and wrote about the conference for Campus Watch, described Jackson’s speech as nothing less than “a call to battle.” As he put it, “It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West.” According to Usher, Jackson

…believes that the Muslim and Western worlds are in conflict and competition, and that only one can end up dominant. Put simply, he wants to replace Western culture with Muslim culture.

…Jackson expressed a desire to be included in American society—but not if any sort of cultural sacrifice were required. He said that adapting to Western culture would lead to being a Muslim in name only and advocated defining America by Muslim standards and imposing cultural and intellectual supremacy. He urged Muslims not to follow Western cultural authority, but rather to achieve their own cultural authority from the inside, as part of the system.

…Lastly, to cheers, he said that his primary commitment was to Allah, not to America.

Moreover, Jackson has a history of making such radical statements.

He co-authored a 2000 online book titled, American Public Policy and American-Muslim Politics and published by the Chicago-based International Strategy and Policy Institute, whose mission is to “promote the correct understanding of Islam and Muslims in the United States.” Jackson’s coauthors were DePaul University Director of Islamic World Studies Aminah Beverly McCloud and State University of New York at Binghamton professor and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies Ali Mazrui. McCloud  is a former board member of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a follower of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, while Mazrui’s bio notes that he is “one of the first to try and link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa’s apartheid” and has also “argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy and supported its introduction in some parts of northern Nigeria.”

In the chapter, “Muslims, Islamic Law and Public Policy in the United States,” Jackson cites the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s influential theories about altering societies not through politics, but through cultural and educational institutions. Jackson proposes that American Muslims approach the “difficult task of penetrating, appropriating and redirecting American culture” in order to “influence the legal order in America.” As he puts it:

…it should be understood that once this is done, there are no Constitutional impediments to having these laws applied in the public domain. Muslims must be vocal and confident in articulating the public utility underlying the rules on things like riba [usury], adultery, theft, drinking, contracts, pre-marital sex, child-custody and even polygyny. This should all be done, however, in the context of an open acceptance of American custom (urf) as a legally valid source in areas where the shari’ah admits the reliance upon custom.

As for the gradual acceptance of the more horrifying aspects of Sharia law, Jackson notes that “it would be foolish to deny that the prospects for American acceptance of such institutions as stoning, or flogging or amputation are virtually nil, at least for the foreseeable future.” But he concludes on a note only an Islamist could find comforting:

…notions of what is cruel and unusual, of what is barbaric, of what is draconian (which is the real basis upon which America rejects these punishments) are a function of culture, not law. It is only through changes in American culture that American attitudes towards such things are likely to change. Thus, in the end, as in the beginning, we are brought face to face with the inextricable connection between American culture and Muslim self-determination. May God grant us the courage and the vision to rise to the task before us.

This call to gradually replace the liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution with seventh century notions of justice is both frightening and morally repugnant.

Despite a record of expressing such extreme views, Jackson has made a name for himself as a moderate and a reformer. His success in this charade stems in part from his willingness to break from his peers and  publicly discuss Islamic terrorism, its theological underpinnings, and the need for related reform. An article in the Wesleyan Argus quoted a November 2007 Jackson speech on “Jihad, Terrorism, and Modern Violence” at Wesleyan University:

‘Muslims in the West must be active and vocal in their condemnation of current violations of hirabah,’ he insisted, referring to the Sharia law that outlaws any act of publicly directed violence that spreads fear and helplessness. According to Jackson, hirabah more than covers today’s conception of terrorism. He discussed the moderate Muslim unwillingness to publicly decry acts of terrorism and attributed it to the desire to not be seen as ‘Uncle Toms.’

But Patrick Poole, writing for the American Thinker in September 2007, calls Jackson’s reasoning and motives into question. He describes Jackson as one of the earliest proponents of the “Islamic lexicon” and, in particular, an advocate for replacing the term jihad with hirabah in discussing Islamic terrorism. Poole and other skeptics allege that, in practice, this is nothing more than a semantic sleight of hand that serves to obscure the legitimization of terrorism within Islam and to further the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization-jihadist process.

Poole notes that Jim Guirard of the Truespeak Institute is the “foremost advocate for this approach,” and that Sherman Jackson is among the scholars he relies upon for his findings. Poole points to an unclassified memo from Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin in which Jackson is cited as one of Guirard’s contributors, along with fellow Middle East studies professors John Esposito of Georgetown University and Muqtedar Khan of the University of Delaware. Summarizing Coughlin’s findings, Poole concludes that,

…as Walid Phares and Stephen Coughlin have already revealed, many of the Western Muslim advocates of this new approach are directly tied to known Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the US. As Coughlin itemizes, Sherman Jackson is a “trustee” to the North American Islamic Trust, and affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Student Association, the first two of which were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the current Holy Land Foundation terror financing federal trial underway in Dallas, and the last was the original organizational wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. The hiraba-jihad terminology has also been endorsed by the Wahhabist Council for Islamic Education and the extremist mouthpiece Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That is telling in and of itself.

Jackson is also considered an expert on the intersection of Islam and African-Americans (he is himself an African-American convert to Islam). His 2005 book on the subject, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection, was reviewed favorably by radical Islam apologist John Esposito, James H. Cone (the originator of black liberation theology and stated inspiration for controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s former “spiritual mentor” in Chicago), and DePaul professor Aminah Beverly McCloud. Beyond McCloud’s aforementioned affiliation with CAIR and the Nation of Islam, she played a pivotal role in influencing Washington, D.C. PBS station WETA’s decision to cancel its airing of the laudable documentary on moderate Muslims, Islam vs. Islamists, in early 2007.

Jackson’s career may be peppered with associations and endorsements from some of the worst apologists and radicals from the field of Middle East studies—and his involvement in the obfuscating “truespeak” movement points to even more troublesome ties with Muslim Brotherhood front groups—but, ultimately, it is his own words that prove the most damning. His stated agenda clearly has nothing to do with moderation or reform; it is quite simply that of an Islamist.

Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.