The Arab Spring has become an Islamist Winter.

Tunisia’s weekend vote, the brutal killing of a brutal dictator in Libya, Egypt’s upcoming legislative elections, and Barack Obama’s announcement of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq are among the current events sparking observers to rethink future events. Might the oppressors we knew prove preferable in some cases to the oppressors we don’t quite know yet?

Tunisia held the first free elections in its history this weekend. The victors appear to be the Ennahda, or Renaissance, party, an Islamist movement which had opposed, sometimes violently, the fallen regime. “Allahu Akbar!” chanted hundreds of supporters gathered outside the headquarters of Ennahda, which some Tunisians regard as “God’s party.” But the party leader (in the temporal world, at least) Rachid Ghannouchi insists that there is no conflict between representative government and a party that represents Allah. “We have declared that we accept democracy without any restrictions and we accept the decision of the people whether they come with us or against us,” he explained in the wake of his political victory. “We accept the notion of citizenship as the basis of rights, so all citizens are equal whether they are Islamist or not Islamist.”

Next door in Libya, the Qaddafi-like torture, summary execution, and corpse humiliation of Muammar Qaddafi suggest that Libya’s “liberators” may have been more interested in replacing their oppressor than deposing him. “Islam is the Religion of the State and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia),” the proposed new constitution decrees. Conversely, it also asserts, “The State shall guarantee for non-Moslems the freedom of practicing religious rights and shall guarantee respect for their systems of personal status.” As with Tunisia, Libya’s new rulers offer rhetorical ambiguity. But Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of Libya’s National Transitional Council, has already lifted the old ban on polygamy and intends to impose a new ban on loan interest. Abdul-Jalil reasons, “Interest creates disease and hatred among people.”

To the east in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party campaigns for the 27 November parliamentary elections under the slogan: “Islam Is the Solution.” They’re not saying what the problem is. Judging by the exodus of 100,000 Coptic Christians in the last six months, and September’s invasion of Israel’s embassy in Cairo by an Islamic mob, the presence of anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist Muslim may be the unnamed problem they seek to solve.

Though Iraq’s liberation from a tyrant came eight springs before the Arab Spring, uncertainty abounds there as well. The announced December pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq will unleash unexpected consequences. Iraq, which some Westerners saw as the model for Middle Eastern democracy, may be so in ways unimagined. Already, the persecution of Christians, continuous terrorist attacks, state support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and strengthening ties with Iran show a nation at odds with the one envisioned prior to the U.S. invasion. That surprises will follow the withdrawal should not be much of a surprise.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s news company is teaming up with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to launch “Alarab” next year, a 24/7 news network that is sure to reflect Alwaleed’s anti-Israel viewpoint.

Bloomberg will provide Alarab with five hours of financial-related programming. The focus of the network is to cover the Arab Spring with an emphasis on free speech and press. The manager of the network, Jamal Khashoggi, says it is “going to be to the left of Al-Arabiya and to the right of Al-Jazeera.” With an estimated networth of $19.6 billion, Prince Alwaleed will be in a position to influence the region like never before.

Alwaleed is the Saudi prince that sought to make a $10 million donation to New York City after the 9/11 attacks, only to have his check returned to him by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The mayor was offended at Alwaleed’s response to the disaster. He said, “At times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause… Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek,” he said.

In other words, the “root cause” of the attacks was America’s alliance with Israel, and if future attacks are to be avoided, that relationship must be downgraded. After Giuliani turned Alwaleed away, the Saudi prince said the mayor had caved to “Jewish pressure.” Alwaleed apparently believes that the U.S. government is held hostage to the “Zionist lobby.”

In 2002, Alwaleed donated $27 million to a telethon on Saudi television for the families of Palestinian “martyrs.” The entire event brought in $155 million. This has led to reasonable allegations that Alwaleed was giving money to the families of suicide bombers, which is very possible. The Saudi government says this isn’t so, and that the “martyrs” were “Palestinians victimized by Israeli terror and violence.” He is also a co-owner of ART TV, a station that aired a fundraiser called, “Jihad in Palestine” that advocated violence.

Alwaleed has spent tens of millions of dollars to spread Saudi influence around the world, especially in the U.S. In many cases, this has benefited the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2002, for example, he donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations for a media campaign to defend Islam. The Islamic Society of North America got $1.5 million for a scholarship program. John Esposito, probably the Muslim Brotherhood’s top non-Muslim advocate, founded Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding with his support. Alwaleed’s foundation is run by the daughter of Dr. Abdul-Hamid Abu-Sulayman, called “one of the most important figures in the history of the global Muslim Brotherhood.”

Alwaleed does not disguise the fact that his donations are meant to change minds. He says that Arabs who boycott the U.S. are mistaken because “economic interests” bring more influence. “We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion…to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration but also inside U.S. society,” he said.

In keeping with this strategy, Alwaleed is the second largest shareholder of News Corp., the parent company of Fox News Channel. He has boasted that when he saw Fox describing Muslim riots in France as, well, Muslim riots, he called Rupert Murdoch and had the terminology changed within 30 minutes. News Corp. owns14.5% of Alwaleed’s Rotana media group.

Never before have I walked into a church to be greeted by a barrier of armed police with metal detector wands. Nor have I had to let officers open my purse to search for weapons before I could enter a sanctuary—that is, until now.

That was when Geert Wilders came to speak at Cornerstone Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He came to warn America, to warn Christians. He came to wake up the Bible Belt to the threat of Islam. But before a single word was spoken, these ominous signs foreshadowed the truth of what was yet to come.

Geert Wilders is not a president, royalty, or anyone most of us would recognize on the street. And yet, as he took the podium to a loud applause and standing ovation, Wilders stood flanked with security constantly scanning the crowd, reminiscent of our own presidential secret service.

Why all the fuss for a representative from the Netherlands—a politician? Because he is a rare and endangered species; he is willing to speak the truth about what is happening in Europe. He refuses to submit to Islam or be bound and gagged by the power of the politically correct.

For this, he is facing a 16-month jail sentence by his own government for the high crime of “hate-speech.” Even more profound is that he is the constant target for assassination from the “misunderstanders of Islam.”

Wilders opened by telling the crowd he was happy to be there — happy to be able to speak freely, without the fear of being carted off to jail once he stepped out of the door. A concept hard for us here in the U.S. to grasp, but it is the stark reality of Europeans today.

He came with a very sobering warning, and a list of five things we must do now without fail, if we are to save our western culture and values.

“My friends, I am sorry. I am here today with an unpleasant message. I am here with a warning. I am here with a battle cry: “Wake up, Christians of Tennessee. Islam is at your gate.” Do not make the mistake which Europe made. Do not allow Islam to gain a foothold here.”

“My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called “hate speech crimes” which is only used to punish people who are critical of Islam, that day America will have lost its freedom.”

Next page: How Europeans got into this mess.

President Barack Obama wants Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, with a few minor agreed upon swaps. He might as well have told the Jews living in Israel to pack up their belongings and leave or take their chances in the Hell that Hamas has waiting for them.

In his stab-Israel-in-the-back speech delivered on Thursday at the State Department, Obama declared:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

Obama waited towards the end of his speech on the Middle East and North Africa to throw our most reliable Mideast ally, and the region’s only true democracy, under the bus. His timing, on the eve of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House on Friday, could not have been more provocative.

Prime Minister Netanyahu did not waste any time in reacting to Obama’s gambit. He said that Israel would object to any withdrawal to “indefensible” borders, which the pre-1967 borders would most certainly be.

A future attack launched from the pre-1967 lines against Israel’s nine-mile-wide waist at its narrowest point could easily split the country in two.  Most of its national infrastructure (airports, cities, industries, and inter-city highways) was fully exposed to hostile fire from military forces deployed along the adjacent West Bank hill terrain, which served as an ideal platform of attack for regional military forces. The Golan Heights provided the Syrians with the same strategi military position to threaten Israeli civilians living below.

Obama’s inclusion of a demand for a “contiguous” Palestinian state encompassing Gaza and the West Bank would also have the effect of splitting Israel in two.

The pre-1967 borders are not defensible because they do not provide Israel with sufficient buffer depth enable Israel to protect itself against terrorist infliltration, as well as to defeat a conventional military assault if Israel is once again attacked.

To illustrate Israel’s profound vulnerabilities if it returned to the pre-1967 borders, here is a map of what those borders would look like:

Israel has returned Sinai to Egypt.  Under the terms of the peace treaty Israel signed with Egypt, there has been more than thirty years of relative peace between the two countries. However, that peace is now threatened as a result of the so-called Arab Spring Obama is so proud of that swept Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power and left a vacuum which is likely to be filled by the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

And what does the Muslim Brotherhood have in mind for Israel? A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Muhammad Ghannem, provided the answer to the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam:

the people should be prepared for war against Israel

Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, after entering into detailed security arrangements with the Palestinian Authority. When Hamas took over Gaza completely in 2007, the agreed upon security arrangements fell by the wayside as the terrorist organization Hamas launched thousands of rockets into populated areas of Israel, targeting and killing civilians including children.

At least President Obama recognized in his State Department speech that Hamas is not to be trusted. He criticized the ongoing rocket attacks and other terrorist acts by Hamas and its allies and the long-standing Palestinian culture of hate. Israelis, he said, have had to live

with the fear that their children could get blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them

Obama even acknowledged that Hamas’s participation in the new Palestinian government

raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel

And he asked rhetorically

how can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist

Yet, rather than first insist on the logical condition that such a terrorist party – namely, Hamas – be excluded from the Palestinian government and repudiated by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama told the Israelis to never mind and just turn the clock back to pre-1967.

Obama seeks to define in advance the Palestinian-Israeli borders, after which the “emotional issues” of Jerusalem and return of the Palestinian refugees would be negotiated. What kind of leverage would Israel have then, especially when the Obama administration has declared previously that East Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians.

Obama is essentially telling Israel:  Give up all defensible borders first — then take your chances on Jerusalem and the Palestinians’ claim to a “right of return.”

All of these issues are inextricably linked. Why didn’t Obama insist, in his same speech telling the Israelis what they must do for “peace,” that the Palestinians must renounce once and for all their bogus claim for the right of millions of descendents of the original refugees to return to their “homes” within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement issued following Obama’s speech pointed out:

Without a solution to the refugee issue by settling them outside of Israel, no territorial concessions will end the conflict.  Equally, the Palestinians, and not just the United States, must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, and any peace agreement with them must end all claims against Israel.

Whatever intentions Obama may have had in making his reckless proposal, his meddling where he does not belong will likely make the Jews’ historic and legitimate homeland a living Hell.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam.

It is impossible to understand the world around us, or to cultivate a coherent set of core principles, if our use of language is fraught with sloppiness and imprecision. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of politics, where emotionally charged terms are routinely bandied about with scarcely any conception of what they actually mean. “Liberal” and “conservative” are perhaps the most significant of these.

Many people who describe themselves as “liberal” typically use the term as a synonym for all things noble and morally pure. The late newsman Walter Cronkite, for instance, equated liberalism with a “broad-minded,” “unprejudiced,” and “beneficent” mindset. Author and radio personality Garrison Keillor – who views “conservatives” as people of “ugly and rancid” political beliefs  – proudly declares: “I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness … tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for.”And the revered “Liberal Lion” of the U.S. Senate, the late Ted Kennedy, defined a liberal as “someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions” and “someone who cares about the welfare of the people.”

But if one merely equates liberalism with what is “good,” and conservatism with what is “bad” – or vice versa, for that matter – he or she cannot lay claim to any authentic understanding of either term. Thus we need an operational definition for each term, just as we need definitions for any other words we employ in our daily lives. Regardless of how we feel about “liberalism” or “conservatism,” we need to know specifically what qualities give each of them their respective identities.

When the term “liberalism” (from the Latin word liberalis, meaning “pertaining to a free man”) first emerged in the early 1800s, it was founded on an unwavering belief in individual rights, the rule of law, limited government, private property, and laissez faireeconomics. These would remain the defining characteristics of liberalism throughout the liberal epoch, generally identified as the period from 1815-1914.

But many who call themselves “liberals” today are in fact leftists – i.e., the very antithesis of liberals. The modern Left – which traces its roots back to a faction of early-19th-century French liberals who proclaimed that capitalism and private property were agents of inevitable moral decay – is animated by a desire to topple the existing capitalist order and to replace it with a socialist regime where the utopian ideal of perfect equality will reign. Disingenuously portraying itself as an agent of enlightened commitment to “liberal” causes, today’s Left in fact rejects each of the liberal ideals enumerated in the preceding paragraph. We can readily observe for instance, that the modern Left is the stalwart champion of:

• group rights and collective identity, rather than of individual rights and responsibilities (e.g., racial preferences, notions of collective guilt and innocence, and a devotion to identity politics generally);
• the circumvention of law rather than the rule of law (as exemplified by the flouting of immigration laws and nondiscrimination laws, and by a preference for judicial activism whereby judges co-opt the powers that rightfully belong to legislators);
• the expansion of government rather than its diminution (favoring ever-escalating taxes to fund a bloated welfare state and a government that oversees — and intervenes in — virtually every aspect of human life); and
• the redistribution of wealth (through punitive taxes and, again, a mushrooming welfare state), rather than its creation through free markets based on private property.

By calling themselves “liberals,” leftists have entirely redefined the terms of debate. The media and the general public have largely gone along with this fraudulent self-identification, as evidenced by the fact that few people nowadays draw any distinction between liberalism in its original and authentic sense, and leftism — or socialism posing as “liberalism.” Indeed the terms are generally used interchangeably by people at every point along the political spectrum. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for one, calls Barack Obama “the most liberal president ever.” Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly similarly calls Obama ”the most liberal president I’ve seen in my lifetime,” and then, in the next breath, says Obama “may well be the most left-wing chief executive in American history.” As a consequence of such imprecision, we witness the travesty of the “liberal” label being widely attached to leftists like Obama, Michael Moore, George Soros, Noam Chomsky, Al Sharpton, Jane Fonda, Ted Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton. In the process, the noble values and ideals that are genuinely “liberal” in the true sense of the word — and that are in fact wholly consistent with what is nowadays called “conservatism” — are wrongly conflated in the public mind with the socialist, revolutionary, and anti-American agendas of the foregoing leftists. As a result, the definition of “liberalism” continues to drift inexorably leftward.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has created a website, DiscoverTheNetworks.org, to help explain exactly what, and who, the Left is – and how it utterly rejects every major principle that can legitimately be classified as “liberal.” This NewsReal blog post will be followed in the coming days and weeks by a long series of posts taking you on a guided tour of DiscoverTheNetworks and its multitudes of special sections and features. We invite you to come along for the ride. If you do, you will understand the Left, its agendas, its tactics, and its key players in a profound and illuminating way. And you will see clearly how the Left has fraudulently draped itself in the vestments of a once-noble tradition — liberalism — thereby giving the false appearance that its own socialist objectives are somehow consistent with that tradition. They are not.

For today, why not visit DiscoverTheNetworks’ section titled “Defining and Understanding the Left”? It’s a great starting point if you’re not yet familiar with this vast and informative website.

Obama has gone Old School. Literally. Back in 1967, he was living in Indonesia and attended “Koran class”, where a negative attitude towards Jews and Israel was no doubt instilled in him. (See also here.) Today, he “suggested”, drawing on the Full power of the office of the President of the United States, that Israel pull back to its 1967 borders. Especially today when we have Facebook groups calling for a massive invasion of Israel tomorrow, Obama’s words are particularly inexcusable.

On Tuesday, we received this critique from someone called Robson who didn’t care for Calvin Freiburger’s foray into the debate about whether it’s appropriate for the Obama White House to honor the racist, pro-cop killer rapper Common:

Seriously  Calvin Freiburger i think you the man who needs to look at this in a different perspective. I don’t why all you americans bother about such a small thing but fox news of course trying to make it big. This matter is not a biggie. Lets start with Johnny Cash a man you totaly defend in your oeace  of writing. This Man whoin his younger years did write some really rough lyrics is given a National Medal of arts BY PRESIDENT BUSH. Okay fairly you say it wasn’t the whitehouse giving to him but President Bush was just presenting it to him, But as a President it’s your choice whether to endorse it or not, and what does the President do? he endorses it because he thinks the man deserves it. What does fox news and america say? nothing because they also conquer. Now Michelle Obama Invites common for a poetry slam, Common having some rough lyrics and has supported certain activists against cops. For the activists i will take Jon stewart position of saying maybe he supports them
because he thinks they were wrongly accused. But on the rough lyrics, on your blog you only have little extracts of his poem. Only getting the parts which are really rough and i think that is really not being a good analyst or critic. I think in your blog you start by defending Johnny cash and criticize common. Tell me what is really different about Common and Johnny cash? Jon stewart is simply just saying really why criticize Common invitation when other regimes have also invited and endorsed people with the same rough lyric. And if you take a look again at common’s poetry at the white house he is simply saying like the world is in a bad condition, full of corruption and corrupt leaders but lets make an end to this and live in peace. Poetry needs time to analyze, if you don’t analyze it and try to understand it from what you first read then truly you have high chances of misinterpretation.

I responded:

What Johnny Cash lyrics are comparable to Common? And why do you think the White House should be honoring racists who oppose interracial marriages?

Robson provided “evidence” to back up his claims:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/cocaine-blues-lyrics-johnny-cash.html

http://www.lyrics007.com/Johnny%20Cash%20Lyrics/Ship%20Those%20Niggers%20Back%20Lyrics.html

I don’t know is you got me properly.  But What am saying the whitehouse should not honour racists nor those who disagree about interracial marriages. The links i have sent on top, is johnny cash lyrics one of them being really racist. I don’t know why fox can’t pick up on that and now compare him and common. If johnny cash was accepted in the whitehouse and no drama was caused out of the visit then the same should be done for common.

I responded (and have yet to receive a reply):

I haven’t heard back from Robson yet but if anyone would like to check up on him his email is robsonchimenge@yahoo.com

And in memory of Cash — one of America’s greatest musicians — here’s the greatest music video ever made, which happens to be of the greatest cover ever recorded:

It’s official. A controversial petition effort has succeeded in San Fransisco. This November, the city’s voters will decide whether or not to ban infant circumcision.

If the measure passes, circumcision would be prohibited among males under the age of 18. The practice would become a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail. There would be no religious exemptions.

This would be the first ban of its kind in the United States. It would undoubtedly trigger litigation from religious groups alleging a First Amendment violation. Circumcision has religious significance for Jews and Muslims.

While religious freedom is surely threatened by the San Fran proposal, the larger threat is against parental rights. The vote evokes a question which serves as a litmus test separating libertarians from communitarians. Are parents the natural custodians of their children, or mere civil guardians beholden to the judgment of others?

“Parents are really guardians, and guardians have to do what’s in the best interest of the child. It’s [the child's] body. It’s his choice,” said Lloyd Schofield, the measure’s lead proponent and a longtime San Francisco resident, who said the cutting away of the foreskin from the penis is a more invasive medical procedure than many new parents or childless individuals realize.

Schofield’s view of the parental role is instructive of the Left’s war against parenthood. Unfortunately, the emotions evoked wherever children are concerned drive many well-meaning conservatives toward the same line of thinking.

Opponents of parental rights like Schofield imagine some esoteric distinction between individual rights and parental authority. If an adult wants to [fill in the blank], that’s one thing. But they don’t have the right to force it on their children.

This position is extremely problematic. It betrays a flawed view of individual rights, if not an outright rejection of them.

Who gets to determine what is in the best interest of a child? Surely, children cannot be expected to make such decisions on their own. So who may act in their stead? Parents are the only individuals with any natural claim upon that role.

In a free society, the only prohibition is against harming another. The mistake opponents of parental rights make is regarding children as that other, as if they are distinct from their parents, as if they are mere roommates whose agency is violated by parental intrusion. Of course, children are not independent agents. They are wards subject to the judgment of their custodians. Evoking their rights is therefore evoking parental rights. The threshold for state encroachment upon parental judgment is no different than the threshold for state encroachment upon individual judgment. They are, quite literally, one and the same.

This is not a frivolous issue. It strikes at the core of fundamental American values – religious freedom, natural law, and individual rights. What is the principle which informs our regard for those rights? Do we let people act upon their own judgment because they always make rational decisions? Do we let people act upon their own judgment because they agree with us? Or do we let people act upon their own judgment because it is their inherent right to do so, whether they are rational or not, whether their judgment aligns with ours our not?

The answer is well established. The entire concept of religious freedom proceeds from it. Your religion does not have to make sense to me. Your decisions do not require my approval. Your actions are not subject to my judgement. How quickly that falls by the wayside once we imagine the state as parent.

In Islam, polygamy is practiced according to the Koran for the purpose of breeding as many warrior killers as possible.  And breeding warrior killers is just what Osama bin Laden did with the wives who were gifted to him. The women were on call at all times to gratify his sexual desires and produce male heirs, taught from early childhood to commit murder in the service of jihad.

Najwa Ghanem, first cousin and wife of bin Laden, married him when she was only 15 and he 17.  Najwa gave birth to 11 of bin Laden’s children, one of whom is the fourth son, Omar bin Laden.  Najwa says her “tyrant” husband forced her to have as many children as possible to create “Islamic warriors.”  The children were raised and trained–against Najwa’s will–to be suicide bombers. The training included teaching his children to murder their pets as preparation for what they would do to human beings.

Despite the child abuse and tyrannical marriage, Najwa says she never complained:

I reminded myself that my husband knew much more about the big world than any of us.  We were all pearls to my husband, and he wanted to protect us.

The anti-woman beliefs and values of Islamic religion and culture have made these so-called “pearls” into fool’s gold. Muslim women may consider themselves “pearls,” but Najwa says, “few women dance with joy when they contemplate sharing their husband with other women.”

Despite Najwa’s complaints about her “tyrant” husband and polygamist marriage, both of whom she fled after 9/11,  she says she remained married to bin Laden, living in an undisclosed location but not in contact with her husband.

Not all Muslim wives come to reject the polygamist life and jihadist child rearing as Najwa bin Laden did.  Many girls embrace jihad because, like boys, they are also bred for terror. One such woman is bin Laden’s fifth wife.

The youngest wife of bin Laden, 29 year-old Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, who was with him when he was killed, was gifted to bin Laden by her Yemeni family when she was only 18.  Bin Laden demanded the girl “be of high moral value,” (these wives must be virgins or they’re useless), and she, like all bin Laden wives, “would be called to do almost anything bin Laden wanted.”

That included murder.

What’s the newest trend in feminism today?  SlutWalks are all the rage, where women dress like sluts and proudly embrace their sluthood. This will apparently have the double effect of fighting back against blaming the victim for being raped, as well as being empowering for women — because being a slut in modern feminism is supposedly empowering. Of course, all that these SlutWalks are really doing is proving that the death knell for femisogynists is continuing to ring.

Pseudo-feminists advocating for sluthood is nothing new. Instead of being looked down upon, sleeping around is considered to be embracing sexuality. It’s healthy, empowering, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a misogynistic anti-feminist prude (and probably a right-winger to boot!) So the comment made by a Toronto policeman that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” naturally meant that femisogynists should revel in sluthood! And while the Toronto cop’s comment may have been what kicked the event off, fighting back against victim-blaming is nowhere near the only goal of these SlutWalks. Unsurprisingly, organizers want women to be proud of their sexuality and to reclaim the word slut.

Historically, the term ‘slut’ has carried a predominantly negative connotation. Aimed at those who are sexually promiscuous, be it for work or pleasure, it has primarily been women who have suffered under the burden of this label. And whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word is always to wound, so we’re taking it back. “Slut” is being re-appropriated.

We are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result.

Ah, yes, the ever-present threat of slut-shaming. Why can’t more people be supportive of sleeping around with a different random guy every night? Clearly, if more people were supportive of being a slut, there would be less rape. Or something.

So far, there have been SlutWalks in Toronto, Dallas, London, Ottawa, and Boston. There are many, many more planned, all around the world, in cities like Montreal, Orlando, Tucson, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Philadelphia. This is all to the liking of many noted femisogynist leaders. Jaclyn Friedman appeared at the Boston SlutWalk as a featured speaker. Feministing has multiple posts glowing with approval of the SlutWalk. Jill Filipovic said she was with the walkers in spirit. And Amanda Marcotte offers up the most common defense of the SlutWalks: it’s, like, supposed to be funny, you humorless prudes:

I’ve been broadly supportive of this, because it brings together two of my favorite things in the world, feminism and humor.

… Of course, since Slutwalk is built around humor, it baffles the humorless. And so defenders of Slutwalk have entered into this maddening space that is the equivalent of trying to explain a joke to the humorless, and if you’ve ever tried to do that, believe me, it may be the biggest waste of time on the planet.

Oh, I get it! Debasement of women as humor! Hilarious! And it’s progress, too. It’s just what the original feminist leaders envisioned when they were fighting for equality: the right for women to be called sluts and be proud.

Leftists still don’t get the Tea Party, and neither does the Republican party establishment. Reuters recently reported on a private meeting which took place between several Tea Party activists and House Speaker John Boehner. The mood was less than cordial.

One of the 25 or so [Tea Party] leaders, all from Boehner’s district, asked him if Republicans would raise America’s $14.3 trillion debt limit.

According to half a dozen attendees interviewed by Reuters, the most powerful Republican in Washington said “yes(…)”

That answer incensed many of the Tea Party activists, for whom raising the debt limit is anathema.

From the sidelines, the Left snickers and wags a finger.

Boehner, along with much of the GOP, is “stuck between the Tea Party and a hard place.” But, he only has himself to blame for bringing the activists into the fold and over-promising what he could deliver with control of a single chamber of Congress.

Surely, there are Tea Party activists with unreasonable expectations of what Republicans can accomplish with control of the House. However, the major beef Tea Partiers have with Republicans is not their lack of accomplishment. It’s their unwillingness to stand and fight, their apparent lack of principle, and the resulting impotence toward shifting the narrative in Washington.

The crux of the conflict between the Tea Party and Republicans is a choice between short-term pragmatism and entrenched political warfare. Too often, the questions Republicans ask themselves are. Will this work? Can this pass? Will we win?

The Left never asks these questions. They never concern themselves with whether a course is practical. They focus on controlling the narrative, framing the debate, then dominating the conversation. Doing so enables them to affect whether a future gambit, which may not work today, works tomorrow. They’re willing to double-down when the long-term benefit is worth the risk.

Just look at the lengths Democrats were willing to go to in order to shove Obamacare down our throats. They didn’t care how much it cost them in 2010. They only cared about affecting a fundamental transformation which would benefit their cause in the long-run.

That’s what the Tea Party demands of Republicans. Will the debt ceiling be raised? Almost certainly. The point is how. What will Republicans get in return? What will Democrats have to concede? How will the debate be framed? How will conservatives control the narrative? How will Boehner put the Left on the defensive, and strike a counter-blow that will sour their comparatively small victory?

Ron Musilli, 62, a native of Troy, recalls asking Boehner what leverage points the Republicans planned to focus on in debt limit talks with the White House and Senate Democrats.

“We haven’t figured that out yet,” he recalls Boehner replied.

That’s unacceptable. The fear is that Republicans haven’t concocted a strategy against the White House because they are more focused on “managing expectations” among conservatives. That leads the Tea Party to the conclusion that serious changes are due in 2012.

“The Tea Party will almost certainly primary those they want to get rid of,” said Larry Sabato, a politics professor at the University of Virginia. “They are not out to rebuild the Republican Party. They are out to take over the Republican Party and make it more like the Tea Party.”

“If it takes some Republican defeats along the way to make that happen, then that is what they’ll do,” he added.

Believe it. There is a place for pragmatism in political calculations. But like a shield absent a sword, it can’t do much against a fully armed opponent. If Republicans are unwilling to fight, if they lack the courage of their espoused convictions, if they can’t stomach hardcore political warfare, they’ll be replaced by those who can.

It seems another demographic group Democrats once took for granted is snapping out of Obama fever. At the Daily Beast, David Graham reports that American Muslims don’t think the president’s actions match his pro-Islam rhetoric. Aside from insisting that Islam is a religion of peace and appointing a few Muslims to important positions, Obama hasn’t met enough with American Muslim groups or “remade the political landscape for Muslims”:

“Just like the last time, we’re quite happy if any president offers positive rhetoric toward the Muslim world or Islam, but it really needs to be backed up with concrete policy initiatives,” says Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading American Muslim group. “We’re still in Afghanistan, we’re still in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian situation has gone south. We’re not there—we’re just continuing with the previous policies.”

It’s not just foreign policy. Across the board, Muslims are expressing disappointment with Obama’s progress on issues relevant to them in the domestic policy realm. What they express is not so much anger as disillusionment, a recognition that the president hasn’t remade the political landscape for Muslims. (American Muslim opinions mirror international opinions. A Pew survey released Tuesday finds that citizens in majority Muslim countries remain skeptical of Obama.)

[…]

Exhibit A is the Park51 project, the proposed mosque and Islamic center in Lower Manhattan that opponents dubbed the “ground zero mosque”. After delivering what appeared to be a full-throated defense of the project, he walked back his comments the next day, saying, “I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.” It was a crucial litmus test for many American Muslims—and one that Obama failed. “He’s still missing the political courage to stand up for communities, and not just Muslim communities,” says Shireen Zaman, the executive director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a think tank on Muslim issues.

As the Left always does when discussing different ethnic groups, it’s simply assumed at the outset that the positions cited are intrinsically anti-Muslim.

Whatever you think of the wisdom of starting or continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both conflicts were waged against specific governments the United States determined to be enemies, not against Muslims generally; indeed, both wars liberated their Muslim populations from nightmarish despots and gave them a genuine shot at liberty, so one could just as easily call a premature withdrawal from either theater anti-Muslim for enabling a descent back into totalitarianism.

Similarly, supporting the Ground Zero Mosque is only “pro-Muslim” to the extent that we associate that particular mosque with the radicalism of its organizers. Do Graham and Zaman mean to suggest that most American Muslims want sharia to be preached from a bloody site of Islamic conquest? The implication is far more Islamophobic than anything the average conservative has to say on the subject. And yes, that is the implication—considering that over 100 mosques have gone up in New York City without a peep from right-wing hatemongers, why make this particular mosque the litmus test for American tolerance?

Aside from CAIR-approved action on the preceding issues, just what are these groups looking for? What would a “remade political landscape for Muslims” look like? I submit that the United States doesn’t need to become more pro-Muslim. Polls indicate that the American people overwhelmingly distinguish between peaceful Muslims and jihad sympathizers, and a comprehensive study from the Center for Security Policy reveals that Muslims are targeted by hate crimes at comparable levels to Christians, and to a much lower degree than Jews. If anything, we go overboard in our fear of offending Muslims, as in the case of Ft. Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan. We bend over backwards to avoid discussing the theological roots of our terrorist enemies.

For Obama, this is another demonstration that it takes a lot more than the sparkling personality of The One to satisfy people—responsible policymaking can’t help but offend somebody, and not every special-interest demand is susceptible to reason.

For the rest of the country, this should highlight the folly of leftist identity politics. Human beings are first and foremost individuals, and should evaluate political issues based on the facts and principles involved, not on superficial affinities for particular stances and groups that have been imposed by the Left.  The Founders warned us about such exploitation of factional impulses—it not only confuses and oversimplifies issues, all but guaranteeing worse policy, but it also conditions us to divide into insular cultural camps and practice the very us-vs-them thinking the Left claims to oppose.

There is nothing like an election campaign to bring out Barack Obama’s cheerleading for Israel. Knowing that he needs to hold on to his support in the politically important Jewish-American constituency, President Obama is planning to deliver an address this Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is reportedly going to announce plans to visit Israel – his first since taking office. In short, as he gears up for his re-election campaign, Obama is seeking to prove his pro-Israel credentials.

Excuse me for my skepticism, but I have already been burnt once. I was present on June 4, 2008 when Illinois Senator Barack Obama delivered a stirring speech before AIPAC in which he expressed his unwavering support for Israel. The speech came the day after he secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.

I rose to my feet and applauded along with many of the other 7000 attendees when candidate Obama declared :

I know that when I visit with AIPAC, I am among friends. Good friends. Friends who share my strong commitment to make sure that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever… I first became familiar with the story of Israel when I was 11 years old. I learned of the long journey and steady determination of the Jewish people to preserve their identity through faith, family and culture. Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland, in the face of impossible odds.

We know that the establishment of Israel was just and necessary, rooted in centuries of struggle and decades of patient work. But 60 years later, we know that we cannot relent, we cannot yield, and as president I will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.

Not when there are still voices that deny the Holocaust. Not when there are terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel’s destruction. Not when there are maps across the Middle East that don’t even acknowledge Israel’s existence, and government-funded textbooks filled with hatred toward Jews. Not when there are rockets raining down on Sderot, and Israeli children have to take a deep breath and summon uncommon courage every time they board a bus or walk to school.

Just look at what Israel has accomplished in 60 years. From decades of struggle and the terrible wake of the Holocaust, a nation was forged to provide a home for Jews from all corners of the world — from Syria to Ethiopia to the Soviet Union. In the face of constant threats, Israel has triumphed. In the face of constant peril, Israel has prospered. In a state of constant insecurity, Israel has maintained a vibrant and open discourse, and a resilient commitment to the rule of law.

Stirring words, to be sure. I wanted desperately to believe that he meant them. He even went so far as to promise that

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided

However, I began to suspect that something was awry when he walked back his Jerusalem pledge the very next day. Then he cynically used Israel as a photo-op during a pre-election visit (he hasn’t visited Israel since, while making a point to visit several Muslim countries).

I also looked into his past close associations and found they included extremist Palestinian sympathizers including his close friend from his Chicago days, Rashid Khalidi. Professor Khalidi went on to become the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.

I came to distrust Obama’s intentions and opposed his election primarily because I suspected that, once elected, he would revert to form and sell Israel out. That is precisely what has happened.

In his June 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world, for example, President Obama characterized those 60 years of Israel’s existence, about which he spoke so glowingly to AIPAC, as 60 years of “dislocation.”

The Obama administration has tried to isolate Israel for what President Obama himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice call Israel’s “illegitimate” settlements. The Obama administration has relentlessly sought to pressure Israel into making more and more concessions for a phony peace while asking virtually nothing of the Palestinians.

The latest outrage is the administration’s equivocation in response to Palestinian Authority President  Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to partner with the terrorist organization Hamas in a ‘unified’ Palestinian government.

Candidate Obama had told AIPAC in 2008 that

We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations.

He was right back then. And things have only gotten worse since.

Yet we hear little in the way of denunciations from President Obama for Hamas’s continuing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, including its killing of an Israeli student with a rocket aimed at a school bus.

And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that we will have to wait and see before making a judgment regarding the new Hamas-Fatah unification pact:

…speaking for the United States, we are waiting to see the details. We obviously are aware of the announcement in Cairo yesterday. There are many steps that have yet to be undertaken in order to implement the agreement. And we are going to be carefully assessing what this actually means, because there are a number of different potential meanings to it, both on paper and in practice.

We’ve made it very clear that we cannot support any government that consists of Hamas unless and until Hamas adopts the Quartet principles. And the Quartet principles have been well known to everyone for a number of years. So we’re going to wait and make our assessment

Wait for what? Hamas remains dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Hamas’s prime minister, just last Sunday, showed yet again where Hamas is coming from when he called for the “end of Israel” and  for “bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine.” And a prominent Hamas MP and cleric said last week that, in a few years, there will be a “great massacre” of the Jews in Israel “to relieve humanity of their evil.”

President Obama would do well to recall and follow what candidate Obama said three years ago to AIPAC about the need to “isolate” Hamas. But he isn’t.  For example, President Obama had a chance this week to condemn Hamas for its latest incendiary threats after meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Instead, according to the New York Times, he is reported to be seriously weighing a “peace” proposal that would push Israel to accept the entirely insecure pre-1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations with the Palestinians. We hear nothing about asking the Palestinians (including President Abbas) to give up their bogus claims to “a right of return” for millions of refugee descendants – claims which are designed to achieve Hamas’s goal of eliminating the Jewish state of Israel altogether.

President Obama will try to make all the nice sounding pitches to the pro-Israeli AIPAC audience this Sunday that he thinks they want to hear, in order to secure his Jewish-American political base. Don’t believe him.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam.

I am always skeptical whenever anyone uses phrases like “big oil” or “big business” which are just code words for “evil capitalists.” Notice, those phrases never get used when talking about teachers unions (which actually give more money to lobbyists and political campaigns than “big oil”). The newest talking point to run around Washington D.C. and the cable networks has to do with “oil subsidies.” Rachel Maddow sternly rebuked the evil oil executives claiming they need to give up these lucrative subsidies and a cacophony of similar demands is rising from the Left and the Right.

At first this seemed comical because leftists seem to have finally found a subsidy they don’t like, something no one thought was possible. After all, these are the same people who think it’s A-OK to give fifty thousand dollars to every black person claiming to be a farmer because they grew Chia Pets on their windowsills. After further investigation, it turns out that the “subsidies” in question are really just tax incentives. So it makes perfect sense why Maddow and the Left are intent on demonizing the oil executives and confiscating their “subsidies.”

Maddow is maddeningly obsessed with incorrectly labeling tax cuts or incentives as “spending.” What any third grader could understand that Maddow cannot is that letting people keep more of the money they made cannot possibly be compared to spending other people’s money in the way the government spends tax dollars. It’s like comparing apples to socket wrenches.

Instead of running around claiming to want to end “oil subsidies,” why don’t they just say what they really mean? The Left (and some on the Right) want to impose unfair and oppressive taxes on the oil companies…and only the oil companies. The tax incentives in question are no different than tax incentives other corporations receive. Eliminating them for oil companies alone is the very definition of an unfair tax and while I’m no lawyer, I think there are rules about that in the Constitution (a document the Left clearly hates).

Tricking the American public into believing the oil companies are taking food off their tables by dipping into the U.S.Treasury is unconscionable and while we expect as much from Maddow and her ilk, Paul Ryan ought to be ashamed of himself for repeating this damaging lie.

If you want to talk about yanking actual outrageous subsidies away from companies, what about nixing the hand-outs to car companies to produce electric cars no one wants to buy? What about stopping the bribery of people who don’t want to buy them with thousands of dollars in order to change their minds? What about pulling the tax dollars being sent to Brazil so they can drill for their oil, which won’t benefit Americans at all? If the politicians in Washington are going to get their panties in a twist over subsidies, they should go after the multitudinous subsidies that actually affect taxpayers and are going to prop up technology or products people don’t want.

At least we know our oil and gas companies produce a much needed and much appreciated product. Despite their best attempts to demonize the oil companies, the Left has failed to make people unwilling to buy gas. What we need now is some commonsense drilling to bring prices down.

I would like Maddow to explain exactly how taxing oil companies and increasing their cost of doing business is going to bring down the price of gas. Short answer: it isn’t.

Incredibly, the U.S. Navy has decided to name a cargo ship after the guy who came up with the Obama campaign slogan, “Yes, we can!” That man is the late labor agitator and community organizer Cesar Chavez. Chavez’s union, the United Farm Workers, used the saying he coined as its official motto. (In Spanish, “¡Sí se puede!”)

The decision to name a Navy ship after this radical is remarkable not only because President Obama’s teleprompter has the phrase “Yes, we can!” burnt into it from the phrase’s overuse, but because the far-left leader was a disciple of communist sympathizer Saul Alinsky. Chavez, who died in 1993, worked for the Community Service Organization from 1952 to 1962. CSO was a pressure group created by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation.

Chavez has been lionized by the left because he hated capitalism and shared Alinsky’s contempt for the American system. The man even sounded like Alinsky, insisting he loved America while working to undermine its institutions. Chavez said

Until the chance for political participation is there, we who are poor will continue to attack the soft part of the American system – its economic structure. We will build power through boycotts, strikes, new union – whatever techniques we can develop. These attacks on the status quo will come, not because we hate, but because we know America can construct a humane society for all its citizens – and that if it does not, there will be chaos.

“There will be chaos?” Prediction or threat? You decide.

Chavez is also connected to ACORN founder Wade Rathke, a fact I reported in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. When Rathke was employed as an organizer at ACORN’s parent organization, the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), he was trained by a man named Bill Pastreich who had studied Alinsky’s in-your-face organizing techniques. Pastreich had also been employed by Chavez’s United Farm Workers.

Is it just a matter of time before the Obama administration commissions the USS Saul Alinsky? No doubt it will be a destroyer.

Follow me on Twitter and check out my new book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Last night I watched an incredibly moving documentary about the early civil rights movement in America in 1961. The film is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book about the many hundreds of young volunteers who faced savage beatings and possible death as they rode buses in an attempt to end Jim Crow racial segregation laws and practices. Directly by Stanley Nelson, the film shows us the extraordinary dignity and determination of the “freedom riders” whose courage inspired and guided even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

These young people were mainly African-Americans, but they were also white, and both male and female. They dressed conservatively and were trained not to fight back—not even when they were being beaten by racist mobs wielding baseball bats, lead pipes, sharp instruments, deadly fists, and hearts filled with hate. Buses were surrounded by mobs of 200 men. One bus was blown up. Bus drivers refused to drive the buses. Southern governors and police officers refused to protect the “freedom riders” or to stop the would-be lynch mobs. Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia literally marched over their bleeding faces. Journalists and photographers were attacked. The “freedom riders” were arrested.

Finally, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had to send in federal marshals. They also requested that the Interstate Commerce Commission end the “white only” and “colored only” facilities for interstate travelers.

I felt absolutely connected to this struggle. I felt indebted to these valiant Americans. I am sure others of my generation felt likewise. As I watched the non-violent riders—their transcendent purity, dignity, courage—I realized that many leftists of my generation have now assumed that Arabs, Muslim jihadists, and “Palestinians” are somehow the same as these brave, young Americans.

They are not. Arabs are not using non-violent tactics to achieve their reactionary goals. They are violent in every way. Their goals are not to obtain rights for their people but rather to return them to the 7^th century and to destroy both the Jewish and Christian presence in Muslim-majority countries.

I don’t know how to convey this insight to my generation of leftists. They do not read conservative websites. They view me as a “traitor” for having abandoned them by evolving to a deeper and greater understanding of reality. If you know any leftists, please ask them to read this piece.

The size of her breasts, the shape of her backside, and of course, her name. These are some of the details Le Monde, the French “journal de référence,” and its subsidiary Le Post published about the woman who says IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn groped her genitals and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a room at the Sofitel near Times Square.

France-Soir described the cut of her hotel maid uniform and how good she looks for a woman in her thirties, while France’s RMC radio reported that Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys were surprised by how “unattractive” she is.

And a bevy of friends and supporters rallied to the defense of Strauss-Kahn, a leading figure in the French Socialist Party, hoping to discredit his accuser lest she derail their plans for him to oust Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential elections.

A photo of the alleged victim is all over Twitter, and a Facebook profile in her supposed name was deleted shortly after links to it began to appear on blogs and social media sites. It’s unclear whether the Facebook profile was hers or a hoax account set up to smear her name. Today, another name and photo are circulating in the French media. It doesn’t matter if they get it right–the effect is the same. Just as they did to the accusers in the Julian Assange rape case, the “pro-woman” Left has launched a vicious campaign to terrorize and shame this woman into silence.

The despicable Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of the “Free Roman Polanski” petition, called Strauss-Kahn “a friend to women” who “bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast.” Henri-Levy tapped into his own inner monster by assailing the accuser on his blog and at the Daily Beast:

I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.

“Bernard-Henri is scandalized that a mere chambermaid can get a ‘great’ man like Strauss-Kahn in trouble with the law merely by credibly accusing him of sexual assault,” writes Jonah Goldberg. Decades of carefully constructed class narratives are tossed out the window in the service of the Left’s political goals. The downtrodden worker is exalted only so long as it’s convenient, only so long as she remembers her place in the power structure.

Commenters at the American “feminist” blog Jezebel smell a “honey trap.”

Why would someone throw away a decades long career and reputation for something they had no chance of getting away with.

Well, if the Sarko campaign offered the maid $100k, she might lie about it at the station and then disappear to live someplace else.

This almost NEVER happens. You almost NEVER hear tales of high level politicians sexually assaulting and raping random women like maids, waitresses .

An accusation does not a conviction make, and I’d argue it’s important to see every angle before making some snap judgment about anyone here. Especially when political powers are involved. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “This smells fishy.” Especially when, well, it does.

Meanwhile, French politicos are in full damage control mode:

Dear President Abbas:

You write in your New York Times op-ed column today that the Palestinians are ready for international recognition of a “long overdue Palestinian state.” You’re wrong.

You may well succeed in persuading the pro-Palestinian UN General Assembly to give you the vote of confidence you will be requesting this September, but you blew any chance to make a legitimate claim for international recognition of a Palestinian state by deciding to lie down with the Hamas terrorists.

The General Assembly can only act on your application for UN membership “upon the recommendation of the Security Council.” (Article 4). There are basic obligations that UN member states are expected to follow.

The United Nations Charter specifically requires in Article 2 that

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Your government partner, Hamas, vows to destroy the member state of Israel. At minimum, you must publicly repudiate Hamas and end its participation in your government in order to begin to meet the UN Charter’s qualifications for membership. If not, even the Obama administration will be likely to veto any Security Council recommendation for Palestinian membership in the United Nations. If the General Assembly proceeds to vote anyway in support of your application for membership, it will be an empty symbolic act having no legal effect.

Choosing to stand with Hamas instead of against Hamas dooms any legitimate claim you might have for international recognition of a Palestinian state. But you won’t stand up to Hamas because you are afraid of its power. You also agree with Hamas’s underlying premise that Israel has no right to continue to exist as a Jewish state. Indeed, in your op-ed article, you gave away the fact that you agree with Hamas’s claim to the entirety of Israel – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – as the Palestinians’ “historic homeland.”

While you say that you are now looking only for recognition of a Palestinian state “on the 1967 border,” you wrongly insist that this represents only “22 percent of our historic homeland.” You write that once admitted to the United Nations as a member state, you will be in a stronger position to press your “core” issue of the return of Palestinian refugees to “their home and homeland” – now in the millions, counting all the descendants of the original refugees.

In other words, “22 percent” now as Step 1. Elimination of the Jewish state of Israel later as Step 2.

Sixty-three years after the Palestinians could have had their own independent state if they had accepted the United Nations’ original two-state solution, you are coming back to the UN demanding that it bail the Palestinians out of their own colossal blunder. But instead of coming in the spirit of contrition for all of the deaths and human suffering the Palestinians caused by rejecting the UN’s original plan and rejecting several peace proposals since that would have given the Palestinians most of the West Bank as well as Gaza, you still maintain that the Palestinians were the victims of some sort of international injustice:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes.

Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.

You are wrong about the history. There was no internationally recognized Arab Palestinian homeland to start with. There was a mostly barren land, owned by the non-Arab Turks for centuries before the British took possession after World War I.  Arabs who had migrated from surrounding Arab countries and Jews who had migrated from surrounding countries and from Europe, settled in this territory. The Jews, who had been promised a home of their own on their historic land under international law, agreed to the UN’s compromise partition solution. The Palestinians did not.

Some Palestinians were expelled from their homes, but many more left voluntarily because they believed their Arab neighbors’ promise that the Jews would soon be driven into the sea. They gambled their families’ future and they lost. Yet you continue the fiction that all of Israel belongs to the Palestinians and you justify the violence perpetrated over the weekend by mobs of Palestinians and their other Arab supporters whom you claim were just trying to “return to their families’ homes.”

Mr. Abbas, if you want international recognition for the Palestinian state you could have had sixty-three years ago, then publicly renounce Hamas and its friends. Give up your spurious “homeland” claims (including claims to any part of Jerusalem, which was forcibly taken by Jordan in violation of the UN partition plan and liberated by Israel to allow access by followers of all faiths).

In other words, demonstrate some responsible statesmanship and a true commitment to the peaceful co-existence of a Palestinian state and a Jewish state living side by side.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam.

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that academic freedom really did reign on America’s college campuses. I know, it’s difficult to envision, but just for the sake of argument let’s pretend it exists.

So into our little fantasy, let’s introduce a character. Let’s make him one of the most influential young conservative Christians in America, who is also a teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate at Yale. (Ha ha ha! A well-known conservative Christian teaching at Yale! This is one crazy fantasy!)

And let’s say that in a lecture one day, he says the following things:

1. The Bible teaches that Islam is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless.

2. Muslims, therefore, are evil.

3. God says that Muslims are spiritually filthy.

4. The life and property of Muslims hold no value when we are battling them. Here in America, this is not the place and time where we can take their lives and property, but in other places, we can, and at another time, we may do it here, as well. But not here now. Not yet.

Let’s further pretend that we have audio of this teaching, widely available on the internet.

Care to speculate on the reaction from the Left? The mainstream media? Obama?

Well, their heads would probably implode.

However, last I looked, their heads are all still intact. Which means that we have one serious double standard working here. Because leaving behind our pretend scenario and turning to cold hard reality, our young influential conservative cleric at Yale is not a Christian (of course) but a Muslim. And here’s what he has to say:

1. The Koran teaches that Christianity is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless. (He calls it “shirk” or polytheism, misunderstanding the nature of the Trinity)

2. Christians are evil. It’s important to study their teachings to understand evil.

3. Allah calls Christians filthy. People who practice “shirk” (known as “mushrikoun”) are “nejjis” – filthy.

4. The life and property of Christians (mushrikoun) hold no value in the state of jihad. Not here right now, in this country. This is not the time or place. This will be the case when we are in a state of jihad, in an Islamic state, when there is a caliphate.

The teacher in question, one Yasir Qadhi, emphasizes that he doesn’t mean in America – at least not now. Qadhi is described by the New York Times as:

“…a fixture on the New Haven campus. He wore a trim beard and preppy polo shirts, blending in with other graduate students as he lugged an overstuffed backpack into Blue State Coffee for his daily cappuccino. A popular teaching assistant, he exuded a sprightly intensity in class, addressing the undergraduates as ‘dudes.’”

Dude! You’re filthy, repugnant and evil, and a day is soon coming when your iPod and skateboard – and head – are mine. But for now… let’s grab a cappuccino.

Of course, my analogy breaks down with #4, because Jesus Christ certainly does not teach that we are to take the lives or property of non-Christians. Even if we lived in a “Christian” state. Even if our leader was a pope or pastor or Billy Graham. It wouldn’t happen – that’s not what following Jesus is all about. That’s why we can live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize the Bible and our teachings. Our Muslim friends, not so much. Islamists cannot live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize their Koran and teachings. In fact, they’re not happy even if someone on the other side of the world burns one copy of their book. They’re so unhappy, in fact, that innocent people have to die because of it.

Now, which faith tradition are we calling evil, again?

Democrats were understandably thrilled that it was their guy, Barack Obama, who finally nailed Osama bin Laden, who has for the past decade been as elusive as he was hated. But just how much of a political boon is the victory for the president? That’s the question asked today by the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, who sees it as a major shift away from the Democrats’ dovish image:

But now, the killing of Osama bin Laden is changing this equation dramatically. Alleged Muslim Barack Obama did in two and a half years what Bush couldn’t do in seven and a half. It wasn’t just the result. The nature of the operation is still breathtaking, weeks later, and the risk Obama took, which he conveyed with masterful cool in his 60 Minutes interview, is mind-blowing (imagine if bin Laden hadn’t been there!). You can call the president who oversaw the operation many things, but weak isn’t one of them.

To talk as if there were two separate hunts for bin Laden is an astoundingly dishonest oversimplification. The truth is that American intelligence officials spent years following the key intelligence trail:

Some time after Sept. 11, detainees held by the U.S. told interrogators about a man believed to work as a courier for bin Laden, senior administration officials said. The man was described by detainees as a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and “one of the few Al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin laden.”

Initially, intelligence officials only had the man’s nickname, but they discovered his real name four years ago.

Two years ago, intelligence officials began to identify areas of Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated, and the great security precautions the two men took aroused U.S. suspicions.

Last August, intelligence officials tracked the men to their residence in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a relatively wealthy town 35 miles north of Islamabad where many retired military officers live […]

President Obama was made aware of the compound when it was discovered last year. By mid-February, the intelligence was solid and since mid-March, Obama led five meetings with the National Security Council regarding the issue.

Intelligence officials worked with the U.S. military to plan the operation and a small team accepted the risk and began to train for it.

On April 29, this past Friday, Obama gave the final go ahead.

The extent of Obama’s role in the operation was essentially allowing the work that began under Bush to continue, and giving the final OK once we were ready to move in. Granted, that final decision was an important one for which Obama deserves credit, but let’s not pretend he masterminded the whole thing, or that the choice was anything other than a political no-brainer—considering how much heat Bill Clinton took for letting bin Laden get away before September 11, it’s hard to imagine that most presidents would dare risk going down in history as the one who let him get away after 9/11.

Watching some Republicans’ first stabs at responding to the event was both sad and hilarious. Some were gracious (even Dick Cheney), but the propaganda machine and its envoys cranked out the usual bluster. They tried the this-proves-that-torture-works argument, pinned to a slender reed involving a man named Abu Faraj al-Libi, but the known facts don’t support the contention that torture played a major role. Then Bush administration torture-policy architect John Yoo played against type by asserting that it was cowardly to kill bin Laden rather than taking him alive. Things finally reached self-parody when Andrew Card of the Bush White House (the one that declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq roughly 4,200 fatalities ago) snarked that Obama was pounding his chest too much.

No doubt there are some Republican partisans who’ve been nitpicking for political expediency, but Tomasky also belittles serious points, particularly regarding the effectiveness of harsh interrogation tactics. As former attorney general Michael Mukasey writes, waterboarding helped break Khalid Sheik Mohammed:

KSM disclosed the nickname — al Kuwaiti — along with a wealth of other information, some of which was used to stop terror plots then in progress.  He did so after refusing to answer questions and, when asked if further plots were afoot, said that his interrogators would eventually find out. Another detainee, captured in Iraq, disclosed that al Kuwaiti was a trusted operative of KSM’s successor, abu Faraj al-Libbi. When al-Libbi went so far as to deny even knowing the man, his importance became obvious.

The substance of Obama’s role in the Abbottabad raid aside, the politics aren’t such a slam-dunk either. A fair amount of voters were swayed at first, and Obama will be able to carry this superficially appealing talking point with him into the election, but whatever bounce he got in the polls seems to have disappeared. And as Tomasky notes, Obama is still vulnerable on other aspects of foreign policy, including his handling of our relationship with Israel, our continued presence in Libya, and the prospect of cutting defense spending.

Unlike the relatively easy call of ordering Osama bin Laden’s death, there is no bipartisan consensus on any of these issues, and they all require the president to make far more complex—and more consequential—value judgments. If the American people recognize the difference, Obama will still have a fight on his hands next year.