Let the Muslim names fly and the Islamic innuendo increase!  It is now politically correct to refer to the POTUS as Barack Hussein Obama, he of the Muslim roots.

Not only has Al TOTUS’ pet journalist Jake Tapper torn off the veil ( http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/abc-news-jake-tapper-and-sunlen-miller-report-the-other-day-we-heard-a-comment-from-a-white-house-aide-that-neverwould-have.htm) — and is it true Jake keeps jammies in the Lincoln bedroom? — but the Teleprompter-In-Chief himself has now told the French that America is a Muslim nation.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transcript-of-the-Interview-of-the-President-by-Laura-Haim-Canal-Plus-6-1-09/

Yes, that’s actually an American president, heir of the pilgrims, announcing to the French: “if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. ”

While it’s difficult to argue statistics, especially since the census data is under the direct control of the White House, this flagrant kiss-up to Al TOTUS’s hosts-to-be in Riyadh and Cairo is at best a terrible and a telling mis-speak.

Don’t libs always argue that this is NOT a Christian nation, or even a Judeo-Christian nation, but rather a nation that has no official religion? Didn’t Obama say that on his visit to Turkey?  Isn’t that why kids can’t pray in schools and official buildings have to remove seasonal manger scenes and sculptures of the Ten Commandments? So how are we now “one of the largest Muslim countries”?

Yet, anyway. Yet.

May 1, 2009 (h/t Atlas Shrugged)

By email (to the Counterterrorism Division) and by regular mail:

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.

Attorney General of the United States
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.  20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases.  An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.

The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.”  I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith.  Nevertheless, it is quite clear—most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany—that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States).  Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues.  I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people.  Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.

Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct.  Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.

Beyond that, as elucidated in my writing (including my proposal for a new national security court, which I understand the Task Force has perused), I believe alien enemy combatants should be detained at Guantanamo Bay (or a facility like it) until the conclusion of hostilities.  This national defense measure is deeply rooted in the venerable laws of war and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi case.  Yet, as recently as Wednesday, you asserted that, in your considered judgment, such notions violate America’s “commitment to the rule of law.”  Indeed, you elaborated, “Nothing symbolizes our [adminstration’s] new course more than our decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay….  President Obama believes, and I strongly agree, that Guantanamo has come to represent a time and an approach that we want to put behind us: a disregard for our centuries-long respect for the rule of law[.]”  (Emphasis added.)

Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting.  After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.
For what it may be worth, I will say this much.  For eight years, we have had a robust debate in the United States about how to handle alien terrorists captured during a defensive war authorized by Congress after nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans were annihilated.  Essentially, there have been two camps.  One calls for prosecution in the civilian criminal justice system, the strategy used throughout the 1990s.  The other calls for a military justice approach of combatant detention and war-crimes prosecutions by military commission.  Because each theory has its downsides, many commentators, myself included, have proposed a third way: a hybrid system, designed for the realities of modern international terrorism—a new system that would address the needs to protect our classified defense secrets and to assure Americans, as well as our allies, that we are detaining the right people.

There are differences in these various proposals.  But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing:  Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted.  We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans.  Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.
The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight.  Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year.  The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules.  Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried.  Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy.  It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance.  I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees.  According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training.  Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness.  But I can decline to participate in the charade.

Finally, let me repeat that I respect and admire the dedication of Justice Department lawyers, whom I have tirelessly defended since I retired in 2003 as a chief assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.  It was a unique honor to serve for nearly twenty years as a federal prosecutor, under administrations of both parties.  It was as proud a day as I have ever had when the trial team I led was awarded the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award in 1996, after we secured the convictions of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his underlings for waging a terrorist war against the United States.  I particularly appreciated receiving the award from Attorney General Reno—as I recounted in Willful Blindness, my book about the case, without her steadfastness against opposition from short-sighted government officials who wanted to release him, the “blind sheikh” would never have been indicted, much less convicted and so deservedly sentenced to life-imprisonment.  In any event, I’ve always believed defending our nation is a duty of citizenship, not ideology.  Thus, my conservative political views aside, I’ve made myself available to liberal and conservative groups, to Democrats and Republicans, who’ve thought tapping my experience would be beneficial.  It pains me to decline your invitation, but the attendant circumstances leave no other option.

Very truly yours,

/S/

Andrew C. McCarthy

cc:        Sylvia T. Kaser and John DePue
National Security Division, Counterterrorism Section

More likely, there will be a backlash against EVERYONE in public office.  Because there is plenty of blame to go around, and We, The People are sick of trusting and then being screwed.

At the April 15 Tea Party I attended, the signs didn’t say “Throw the Dems Out”.  They said “Throw Congress Out”!  They likened Congress to Somalian Pirates, and no distinction was being made as to party.

There are plenty of Republicans in Congress to share the blame: John McCain, Arlen Specter, and the Maine Twins are at the top of my list, but they are hardly the only ones.  Even the Senators who stood against the Porkulous Bill and the united House (thanks to Eric Cantor) are not blameless. Yes, they did a good job that time; but what about all the other times they went along to get along?

The Republican party has been complicit by their silence and by their actions. Vote-trading, DC style; well, We, The People are sick of it.

And We, The People, are not going to forget it.

Times are hard and getting harder for many of us. Each day brings new and ever more disheartening news. We are becoming angry. Listen to your friends and co-workers and take the public pulse yourself; you’ll hear disillusionment and griping where you didn’t just a few months ago. And it is growing.

If a Republican truly does not wish to get tarred and feathered with the rest of the flock, he or she needs to be the Voice Crying In The Wilderness.  Let’s see some political courage, and some moral courage — not just one one issue or another, but on ALL of it.  Someone, somewhere, stand up!  Point and cry out that THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES ON!

• Call it Marxism.
• Call it a power grab.
• Call it stealing from the future to pay for the past.
• Call it stealing from hard-working Americans to pay the bills of those who don’t want to work.
• Call it pandering and manipulation of the electorate’s fears.
• Call it Treason when it aids and abets the enemy.
• Point out every inconsistency.
• Point out every flip-flop.
• Point out every broken promise.
• Point out every effort to redefine perfectly good English words in order to pass the blame.
• Point out every lie and call it a LIE, no matter who is telling it.
• Stop being meek and gentlemanly; say what you mean and mean what you say.

We, The People cannot let the career politicians of either party get by with this crap. Remind them they took an OATH to uphold the Constitution. And they work for us.

This current crop is an absolute disgrace. If they are the best we can do, I’m ashamed to call myself an American. Where are the ones fit to stand with Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, Monroe, Franklin, Henry, and Paine?  Where are the ones today who have the moral courage of those true patriots? To risk what they did for love of liberty and for a future they might not have lived to see?

That’s what We, The People want, what we hunger for, what we are searching for. If there is a patriot out there, let him or her stand forth, and We, The People will stand alongside him.

Are you listening, Republican Party? Do you really want ideas to “rebuild the party”? Then here are two: (1) Read the Constitution, and (2) Live It.

For months now, we’ve been hearing about Tea Parties — starting with Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC back in February.  Since that time, folks all over the country have been organizing and getting in on the protest.

It’s worth listening to again and again:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZB4taSEoA

So the Tea Parties have been springing up, including here in Houston. But now, it seems that because www.freedomworks.org (of which Dick Arney is a part) listed the Houston Tea Party, a lefty blogger named Jane Hamsher, who lives in VA, has decided that the Houston Tea Party, in particular, is a corporate lobbyist induced thing. All part of that vast rightwing conspiracy, doncha know, along with Fox News and all of us on the DHS’ newest watchlist.

Check out Jane’s tweets; she’s obsessed: http://twitter.com/janehamsher

I want to invite Jane down for a weekend.  We’ll pick her up at Bush International (the name alone will give her a coronary), whisk her past the miles of bluebonnets towards one of the newest, cleanest downtowns her Falls Church eyes have ever beheld. Houston is chock-full of world-class restaurants and some danged impressive shopping, too.  She’ll be as stunned as I was on my first visit at the sheer size of the place, the friendliness of the people, the many cultures and languages here, and the cosmopolitan flavor of this little ole’ Texas city.

What she won’t find is a lack of independent spirit, people who are impressed with your ancestors (for or against), or a lack of opportunity. Houston has always been the place where people reinvent themselves.  She also won’t find those corporate lobbyists “organizing” us to go to Tea Parties.  Texans don’t cotton to being organized.

So as part of the “take down the Tea Parties” strategy, bloggers paid by Soros and the like will link with ACORN activists to try and discredit us all. They won’t succeed with taxpayers. We’ll all be feeling too much pain as we write those checks tomorrow (I have a Xanax set aside just for the occasion, to be washed down with a nice glass of Knob’s Creek; writing checks that big requires sedation).

Then, once the chemistry wears off, I will pick up my poster board and magic marker to make a sign.  They cannot be on sticks or poles, per the Houston PD. I can live with that; it’s like the kind of signs you can smuggle into an NFL game these days.

What to wear… my “Infidel” t-shirt from AtlasShrugged hasn’t arrived, and I’ve had no time to arrange for a “Rightwing Extremist” t-shirt.  So I may have to improvise with a plain tee and a sharpie.

Here’s where you can get one: http://www.patriotwebstores.com/home

But how about that sign?  “Taxed Enough Already” seems … understated. “Mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” seems old hat. “Reward the water carriers, not the water drinkers” may not be understood by the masses.  “Individuals Support The Collective” may be too subtle.

I’m leaning towards “You Keep Your Socialism and I’ll Keep MY Money!” … so far.

So I’ll be taking along the camera tomorrow afternoon to Jones Plaza for some hopefully impressive shots of us doing things bigger in Texas. And if anyone knows where I can pick up that corporate check, let me know, huh?

Texas is now officially on the States’ Rights bandwagon.  Don’t blame us for being slow; it just took a while to occur to us here in Texas that this could even be a issue!

State Rep Brandon Creighton has sponsored HCR 50, calling for the Federal Government to “cease and desist”  any and all mandates “beyond the scope of … constitutionally designated powers.”  Don’t just Remember the Alamo; Remember the 10th Amendment!

Here’s the full text: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/html/HC00050I.htm

Governor Rick Perry has joined the resolution:

“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,” Gov. Perry said. “That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”

‘Tis the season for counting our blessings. And we also think back on the history of Thanksgiving in America. Those early celebrants, whether in Virgina or Massachusetts, weren’t just thanking the Christian God for bounty.

In fact, there were Native Americans there, thus beginning the melting pot that would be this nation. There were religious differences and even a few witch trials in front of us, and one can argue that we were within sight of the beginnings of the slavery, civil war, and racial tensions.

Still, here we are, all these years (almost 400 of them) later. Perhaps grateful hearts do bear fruit despite a world of trouble, after all. And perhaps all evidence to the contrary (those colonists must have been terrified of starving or freezing that winter), there is bounty all around us unseen, if we’ll only embrace it.

And so it is in 2008. I’d have to write all night to list the problems we face. Heck, it’s going to take some time to list my personal ones! The economy is in a mess; radical Islam is on a collision course with Western civilization; natural resources face serious scarcity issues; our border leaks like a sieve; we are giving the nuclear football to an untested and untried, albeit charismatic, leader; the planet is plagued by war and famine and generally criminal grumpiness on an unprecedented scale; my roof still isn’t fixed from Hurricane Ike; and the Houston Texans are having yet another losing season.

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