August 2017

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From Transgender to Transformed

by Brian Hobbs
The Baptist Messenger
posted Tuesday, August 08, 2017

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. -- Francine Perry and her daughter Laura recently sat down to look at family photos. As they reflected on the good times, they also could see how God was at work, especially through the difficult times -- and there were many of those.
 On the heels of rebellious teenage years, Laura lived as a transgender man for nearly a decade of her adult life. Other than her family and select friends, though, most people just knew Laura as "Jake."

...It would be a long road leading home, but God began to awaken faith and belief in Laura.
"I always knew about Jesus and believed. But I never knew Jesus personally or made Him Lord of my life," Laura said.
Francine and  Paul (Laura's parents) kept the lines of communication open, and met with Laura from time to time.
Francine said, "It was as if God said to me, 'If you keep trying to fix Laura yourself, I will not. If you just sit down and leave Laura to me, I will work.'"

That began the change, not only in Francine's life and heart but Laura's.
"I didn't know what came next," Laura said. "But I was clinging to God's promise that He would take care of me. I experienced such love and acceptance from my mother's Bible study group. It was hard, but I had never experienced such peace and love as when I came back to the church."

...Last August, Laura made her decision to follow Christ public in front of the church and was baptized the following month.
The journey home, which took place a year ago, has led to both restoration and reconciliation. Francine and Paul believe God answered their prayers, and they believe that parents should never stop praying for their "prodigal" child or children.
They give all glory to God. "Only God could have done this," Francine said.

Pastor James also sees God's grace demonstrated in the Perry family.

Please read the entire article at http://bpnews.net/49333/from-transgender-to-transformed

Brian Hobbs is editor of The Baptist Messenger (www.baptistmessenger.com), newsjournal of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, and communications director of the BGCO.

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An NSC Staffer Is Forced Out Over a Controversial Memo

The document charges that globalists, Islamists, and other forces within and outside the government are subverting President Trump’s agenda.

Rosie Gray
August 2, 2017
TheAtlantic.com

A top official of the National Security Council was fired last month after arguing in a memo that President Trump is under sustained attack from subversive forces both within and outside the government who are deploying Maoist tactics to defeat President Trump’s nationalist agenda.

His dismissal marks the latest victory by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in the ongoing war within Trump’s White House between those who believe that the president is under threat from dark forces plotting to undermine him, and those like McMaster who dismiss this as conspiratorial thinking.

Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who served in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning, was let go on July 21. Higgins’s memo describes supposed domestic and international threats to Trump’s presidency, including globalists, bankers, the “deep state,” and Islamists. The memo characterizes the Russia story as a plot to sabotage Trump’s nationalist agenda. It asserts that globalists and Islamists are seeking to destroy America. The memo also includes a set of recommendations, arguing that the problem constitutes a national-security priority.

Please click here to read the full article
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/a-national-security-council-staffer-is-forced-out-over-a-controversial-memo/535725/

or read it at other news sites:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/344984-nsc-aide-fired-after-producing-memo-that-alleged-political-warfare
or
http://www.wnd.com/2017/08/trump-adviser-fired-over-memo-warning-of-globalist-islamist-deep-state/

(Why does it seem to me that McM is the one with the blindspot? Is he so young that he doesn't recognize a threat when it is more subtle than a North Korean missile? My WWII era military Dad recognized and taught threats to America, but that was from a time when global security threats like Communism and totalitarianism were recognized and taught in our schools as well as to our fighting forces. Just saying...)

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Former U.N. Amb. Power Unmasked ‘Hundreds’ In Final Year Of Obama Admin

Congress moves closer to detailing potentially illicit national security leaks

by Adam Kredo
of the Free Beacon
August 2, 2017

Former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power is believed to have made "hundreds" of unmasking requests to identify individuals named in classified intelligence community reports related to Trump and his presidential transition team, according to multiple sources who said the behavior is unprecedented for an official in her position.

to read the full article please click here http://freebeacon.com/national-security/former-u-n-amb-power-unmasked-hundreds-last-year-obama-admin/

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Court: Residents Can’t Mention “Islam” or “Muslim” At Public Hearing on Mosque Construction;

 Thomas More Law Center Files Federal Lawsuit

August 1, 2017

Thomas More Law Center

ANN ARBOR, MI – In a settlement agreement, which reads more like an instrument of surrender, Bernards Township (“Township”), New Jersey officials agreed that, in addition to a $3.5 million payment to Islamic Society of Basking Ridge (“ISBR”), residents and citizens of the Township are prohibited from commenting on “Islam” or “Muslims.” at the upcoming public hearing to approve the settlement.  Astonishingly, a federal judge approved the prohibition as a fully enforceable Order of the Court.

Click here to read more of this astonishing order from an American court:
https://www.thomasmore.org/press-releases/court-residents-cant-mention-islam-muslim-public-hearing-mosque-construction-thomas-law-center-files-federal-lawsuit/

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Will There Be Justice For Family Whose Home Was Raided Because Cops Couldn't Tell Tea From Pot?

August 1, 2017
Forbes.com
George Leef, contributor

A case just decided by the Tenth Circuit shows how utterly absurd the “war on drugs” has become, how petty and power-mad the police can be, and how blindly deferential some of our federal judges are.

The case, Harte v. Johnson County Board of Commissioners, arose out of an idiotic, military-style raid by Kansas police on the home of Robert and Adlynn Harte in 2012. They were not in any way involved with drugs (particularly marijuana), but a few officers came to the conclusion that they might be.
 
Click here to read the article in its entirety:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2017/08/01/will-there-be-justice-for-family-whose-home-was-raided-because-cops-couldnt-tell-tea-from-pot/#1671ec2b70e6

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Ohio Muslim plotted U.S. attack after training in Syria

Lied to FBI about international terrorist activities

World Net Daily

Art Moore

July 5, 2017

An Ohio Muslim who pleaded guilty to plotting a “big” terrorist attack in the United States after receiving training from jihadists in Syria was found to have lied to the FBI.

 

The public release of the plea deal came Thursday as President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travelers from Syria and five other terror hot spots went into effect.

 

A federal grand jury charged Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud with providing material support to terrorists, providing support to a designated terrorist organization and lying to the FBI about international terrorism.

 

His lack of cooperation with the FBI is a salient point, says Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer, because the leading Islamic civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, urges Muslims in the U.S. not to answer the bureau’s questions if interviewed regarding terrorist activity.

 

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/ohio-muslim-plotted-u-s-attack-after-training-in-syria/#vJImOrkAFctxTAwu.99

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FAITH UNDER FIRE

Christian school defunded over Bible verses!

Government: Can't share 'teachings that denigrate or vilify someone's sexual orientation'

World Net Daily

July 5, 2017

A Christian school in Alberta, Canada, is learning the perils of depending on public funding for its operation.

 

Cornerstone Christian Academy and Battle River School Division have enjoyed a nine-year cooperative arrangement where the Christian school is operated as an alternative public school, providing nondenominational Christian instruction. BRSD leased facilities to the school and provided instructional resources available to other public schools. Thanks to the partnership, student tuition was lower than private Christian schooling, with fees going primarily to cover facility costs and bus transportation.

 

But that has come to an end in a dispute over the school’s use of two biblical passages that BRSD board members contend “denigrate” and “vilify” LGBT individuals.

 

Cornerstone Chairwoman Deanna Margel said school staff were told by email the passages from the letters of St. Paul “should not be read or studied.” She called the directive “shocking,” reported the London Express.

 

“We’re talking about freedom of religion, but we’re also talking about freedom of expression. We need every single word there [from the Bible] to challenge us, to call us to greater understanding. It’s just so important.”

 

A spokesman with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom, a legal group representing Cornerstone, said BRSD’s funding-body members “have no right to impose their own ideology on schools they disagree with.”

 

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/07/christian-school-defunded-over-bible-verses/#eib8fmVx8dMvEPAy.99

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Government ‘health care’ and the US Constitution

written by Ron Bischof
July 6, 2017
The Signal of Santa Clarita Valley

Our republic is again embroiled in a contentious debate over the federal government’s role in “health care.” I use “scare quotes” here because the issue currently under debate is fundamentally about funding of medical services and who pays for them.
My fellow columnists have written thoughtful and concerning columns that have addressed their challenges with PPACA (Obamacare), health insurance carriers and prospective legislative solutions to address the defects in our health-care delivery and financing system.

This column will offer a perspective that’s been largely overlooked in our community discussion, namely: What is the federal government’s authority to regulate health-care services and its financing for more than 320 million U.S. citizen residents in their respective states and territories?
Bear with me a moment as I review the federal government’s defined role in our constitutional republic.
Click here to read more of this thoughtful article at https://signalscv.com/2017/07/03/ron-bischof-government-health-care-us-constitution/

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Sweden on the Brink of CIVIL WAR, National Police Chief: “HELP US, HELP US!”

Jihad Watch
June 25, 2017
By Nicolai Sennels

Sweden is being torn to pieces by Muslim immigrants and refugees. Law enforcement is crying out for help, and it is only a question of time before the country will need military intervention from abroad in order to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.

A leaked report concludes that the number of lawless areas (commonly referred to as “no-go zones”) in Sweden now totals 61. That is up from 55 in just one year’s time. This increase includes not only the total number, but also the geographical size of these areas.

Sweden’s National Police Commissioner, Dan Eliasson, spoke on national television and pleaded for assistance: “Help us, help us!,” he said, while warning that Swedish police forces no longer can uphold the law and therefore must ask all good powers in the country to support them.

Please click here to read in entirety at jihadwatch.org

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Moms declare holy war after school teaches Islam 'true faith'

Women pilloried as 'KKK' for going public with lesson concerns

 Updated: 04/01/2017 at 6:15 PM
Author: Leo Hohmann
World Net Daily

A middle school in Chatham, New Jersey, is using a cartoon video to teach the Five Pillars of Islam to seventh-grade students, and now two parents have obtained legal services to fight the school district which has ignored their concerns.
Seventh graders in this school are taught: “May God help us all find the true faith, Islam.”
Also taught in the video is the Shahada, which is the Muslim prayer of conversion “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”
The parents say no other religion is taught nearly to this level of detail in the “world cultures and geography” class.
The parents wanted to know who picked the curriculum, who picked the video and the accompanying PowerPoint. None of their concerns have been addressed by the school board or the superintendent.
So, the two mothers have retained legal help from the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center.
For speaking out, the moms have been attacked by members of their community. Their crime: appearing on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to voice concerns about Islamic indoctrination of Chatham Middle School seventh graders.

Please click here to read more at
http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/moms-declare-holy-war-after-school-teaches-islam-true-faith/

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Trump Wins Saudi Praise for ‘Turning Point’ After Meeting Prince

by Nafeesa Syeed
and Glen Carey
March 15, 2017, 11:08 AM EDT

Saudi Arabia, seeking to breathe life into its decades-old alliance with the U.S., claimed “a historic turning point” in bilateral relations after President Donald Trump welcomed Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House.

“Relations had undergone a period of difference of opinion,” a senior adviser to the crown prince said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting. “However, today’s meeting has put things on the right track, and marked a significant shift in relations, across all political, military, security and economic fields.”

Sunni Arab leaders are embracing Trump with praise the president isn’t finding from other U.S. allies in the world, reflecting an eagerness to reset ties after feeling shunned by President Barack Obama, who crafted the 2015 nuclear deal with their Shiite rival Iran. The Saudi statement said Trump had a “great understanding” of the bilateral relationship. The president and the prince “share the same views on the gravity of the Iranian expansionist moves in the region,” the adviser said.

In a statement Wednesday, the White House said that Trump and the prince “directed their teams to explore additional steps across a broad range of political, military, security, economic, cultural, and social dimensions to further strengthen and elevate the United States-Saudi strategic relationship” and to confront “Iran’s destabilizing regional activities.”

But while Trump has signaled his plans for a more aggressive policy against the Islamic Republic, political analysts say it’s unlikely he’d seek an open confrontation with Iran or deepen the U.S. role in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, which are serving as proxy battlegrounds between the regional rivals.

“The administration will give the Saudis the rhetoric they want on Iran -- more confrontational, emphasize the threat,” said Gregory Gause, a professor of international affairs at Texas A&M University and a Saudi specialist. “But in terms of specifics, I do not think that the Trump administration wants to get more deeply involved in Iraq, Syria or other places where the Saudis would want help in turning back Iranian influence.”

Saudi Arabia and its closest regional ally, the United Arab Emirates, are bogged down in a two-year war in Yemen against Shiite rebels they say are armed by Iran. Its leaders have openly complained about the rising Iranian influence in Iraq. In Syria, the Sunni rebels they have backed are losing ground against President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group.

Please click here to read entire article at Bloomberg.com

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Germany: Muslim migrant killed “infidel” landlady,

scrawled Qur’an verses on wall

Jihadwatch.org
January 26, 2017 2:09 pm
By Robert Spencer

Remember: if you think this is reprehensible, you’re a racist, bigoted “Islamophobe.”

“Asylum seeker in court for killing ‘infidel’ landlady,” Express, January 26, 2017:
    An asylum seeker has appeared in court accused of having killed his landlady because she was an infidel.
    The man named only as Abubaker C. appeared for the first time in the courthouse of Heilbronn, a city in the south-western German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, on murder charges.
    Prosecutors say the asylum seeker killed his landlady Maria M., 70, in the nearby town of Bad Friedrichshall because she was an infidel.
    Although the man’s full surname has been withheld under Germany’s privacy laws, his real name is unclear because he has given various names and ages when questioned about himself, telling detectives on one occasion: “I am known by many names.”
    The asylum seeker is estimated to be 27 years old and thought to have been born in Pakistan, although he says his family moved to Saudi Arabia with him later on in life.
    In court he had a Punjabi translator, a language spoken in Pakistan.
    The prosecution alleges that the defendant strangled his victim with a telephone cable.
    Afterwards, he is said to have smashed his victim’s face with an iron rod and fled the house with cash and jewellery.
    When the police arrived, the walls were full of Arabic writing, including verses of the Quran, and also the English phrase: “It’s payback time.”
    A lawyer for the prosecution said: “The accused wanted to kill a person who disbelieved in his view.”

This article can be read where it was originally published at
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/01/germany-muslim-migrant-killed-infidel-landlady-scrawled-quran-verses-on-wall

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https://youtu.be/m6s-JFnw15Q   

This ^  ten minute youtube video is an aid in your understanding, as a westerner and American, of ISIL, radical Islam, an enemy of freedom, through the words of a British Islamist, Anjem Choudary. His view of Islam upholds the totalitarian notion that those non-Muslims and apostates who do not agree with, and bow to the tenets of his religion should be killed, and the entire world should be under the rule of sharia (Muslim) law. He repeatedly proclaims that the killing of non-Muslims, is legitimate.
On 6 September 2016, Choudary was sentenced to five years and six months in prison for his support for a proscribed organization ISIS.
 Several quotes from that trial:
The judge: “The jury were sure that you knowingly crossed the line between the legitimate expression of your own views and the criminal act of inviting support for an organisation which was at the time engaged in appalling acts of terrorism.”
The judge said both men (he and his acolyte Mohammed Rahman, 33) justified Isis’s most appalling acts and expressed contempt for democracy. They had “encouraged your audience ... to believe that no one who failed to support the caliphate established by Isis could be a true Muslim,” the judge said.
Pam Geller does a fine job (when she has a chance to speak) of defending the Western notion that the Lord God created people as free beings rather than robots, an inconvenient truth for tyrants and despots.
To allude to a comic strip, Pogo, from the 1950s to 1970s, We have met the enemy and this time it isn't us.

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House Dems demand 'full, categorical pardon' for illegals

By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Time
 Wednesday, December 7, 2016

House Democrats renewed their call for President Obama to issue a “full, categorical pardon” for illegal immigrants, saying Wednesday that he is misunderstanding the extent of his powers and he can, in fact, help out hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant Dreamers.

Young adults who came to the U.S. as children, the more than 740,000 Dreamers who gained tentative legal status under Mr. Obama’s 2012 deportation amnesty, are the most sympathetic figures in the debate.
Democrats demand ‘full, categorical pardon’ for illegal immigrants, say Obama ignoring own powers
Democrats said they trusted Mr. Obama’s promises and came forward, announcing themselves as illegal immigrants, and now a Trump administration would have a road map for how to deport them, unless the president finds a way to shield them.

“You’re the president of the United States, you asked them to join this program, you use the power of your pardon,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who led a letter signed by more than 60 House Democrats in asking for the relief.

The White House’s top domestic policy adviser shot down the idea of a pardon, saying that they had concluded that the president’s powers apply to criminal offenses, while immigration status is a civil offense. Cecilia Munoz, the adviser, also said a pardon couldn’t grant legal status, so the Dreamers would still not be on firm footing even if they could be pardoned for their immigration offenses.

Please click here to read the full story

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Why is the world silent about Christian genocide?

December 8, 2016
The American Spectator

A Toronto conference last week asked: Why is the world silent about Christian genocide?
“If Christianity [in the Middle East] survives, it will not be because of any interest taken by Christians in our part of the world, but rather because the State of Israel, the people of Israel, and conscientious Jews everywhere are dedicated to saving it,” said Dr. Paul Merkley, Professor of History at Carleton University, last week in a panel discussion at Toronto’s Beth Radom synagogue.
The academic conference, titled “Christian Genocide in the Middle East: Why is the World Silent?” was co-sponsored by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
“In 1910, it’s estimated that Christians were 14% of the Middle Eastern population” said Dr. Frederick Krantz, Director of CIJR. “Today, they are under 4% and rapidly declining.”
Other figures were highlighted throughout the conference, such as how in Iraq alone, there were 1.5 million Christians until 2003. Today, that number is estimated at 275,000 with the strong likelihood that there won’t be any more of a community left within five years.
Much of the present-day persecution was tied to the Islamic State. National Executive Director of ICEJ Canada, Donna Holbrook, showed graphic images of the genocide of Christians currently taking place in Iraq.
“This mother was killed, but not before the terrorists made her watch them kill her baby,” said Holbrook, showing a horrific image of an Iraqi Christian woman murdered by ISIS terrorists.
Please click here to read the complete article on the American Spectator.

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AMERICA TO TRUMP: YOU'RE HIRED!

November 9, 2016

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November 3, 2016

US taxpayers (by way of deficit spending to be inherited by our children) are footing the bill for the U.S. State Department's refurbishment of mosques and setting up of internet service in Muslim countries of the Middle East.

Those Muslim nations (rightly) views us as weak, appeasing fools, worthy of contempt.

As a US citizen and taxpayer, I regard the U.S. federal government as a poor steward of my hard earned money and US State Department expenditures as treasonous to my children and our way of life.
Check out this short video and see what you think.

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  In Colo., a look at life after marijuana legalization

Boston Globe

Joshua Miller

Feb 22, 2016

 

DENVER — Nestled between a 7-Eleven and a store selling Broncos jerseys, the door to the generic-looking retail establishment is easy to miss. But once inside, the smell is unmistakable.

 

At Euflora, tables are filled with glass containers of marijuana next to interactive tablets describing each strain (“sweet floral aroma,” “intoxicatingly potent”). An array of marijuana-infused products beckon behind locked cases: from energy shots to sour gummies, brownies to bacon brittle. And if you’re 21 or older, it’s all legal to buy.

 

This is Colorado, where a billion-dollar-a-year legal marijuana industry has emerged since January 2014. It offers an early look at what Massachusetts could face should voters greenlight an expected ballot question and legalize the drug this fall.

 

So has legalization been a plus or a minus?

 

“Yes,” Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman replied with a laugh.

 

The consensus among several top state officials — who emphasize that their job is to carry out the will of the voters rather than mull whether their constituents made the right choice — is that there have been no widely felt negative effects on the state since marijuana became legal, and a crop of retail stores, cultivation facilities, and manufacturers sprung up from Aurora to Telluride.

 

Legalization has ushered in thousands of new jobs in the burgeoning industry, brought $135 million into state coffers last year, and ended the prohibition of a widely used substance.

 

But police say they struggle to enforce a patchwork of laws covering marijuana, including drugged driving. Officials fret about the industry becoming like big tobacco, dodging regulation and luring users with slick advertising. And this state, long a leader in cannabis use, has the highest youth rate of marijuana use in the nation, according to the most recent data available from a federal drug-use survey.

 

Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment in November 2012 legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana, which began in 2014.

 

The drug is heavily regulated. Each plant for sale must be tagged with a radio frequency identification chip, from an early stage of its life to sale, to help the state track it. Marijuana, both in plant form and infused in products, is required to be tested for potency and contaminants, and sold in child-resistant containers.

 

 

Tourists and locals alike can buy recreational marijuana as long as they are at least 21 and can possess up to 1 ounce. Only those with a medical marijuana “red card,” issued by the state on the recommendation of a physician, can possess more at one time.

 

While the popular image of marijuana use remains joints and vaporizers, a significant percentage of marijuana sales in Colorado — nearly half according to some estimates — take the form of infused products, such as edible treats, pills, drops, bath soak, and even “sensual enhancement oil.”

 

More than two years into the still-rapidly growing industry, how do top officials and their constituents see legalization?

 

“There are a certain number of folks, like myself, who were pretty reticent about it to begin with,” said House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, a Democrat. But “the sky didn’t fall. Everything seems to be working pretty well.”

 

That’s in line with the view of Colorado voters, according to a November 2015 survey. The poll found 53 percent believe legalizing marijuana has been good for the state, while 39 percent believe it has been bad.

 

And Dr. Larry Wolk, the top medical official in Colorado’s public health department, said that since legalization no large troubling public health trends have cropped up yet. But he noted sporadic reports of impaired driving and people getting violently ill from ingesting too much marijuana in edibles, such as candy bars.

 

He said this month new data indicate that the biggest increases in marijuana hospitalizations have been seen among out-of-staters, who might be naive about the drug’s effects.

 

All marijuana, including medical, is subject to standard state and local sales tax in Colorado. But recreational marijuana is also subject to an additional 10 percent special state tax, along with additional local marijuana taxes. And there’s also a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale transfers of recreational marijuana, that ends up raising retail prices.

 

For producers, the tax picture is among the many complexities of running a marijuana business.

 

Sally Vander Veer, president of one of the state’s largest dispensaries and cultivation operations, which has 70 employees and a payroll of about $3.8 million a year, is bullish on her rapidly expanding business. Medicine Man has a 40 percent profit margin, she said. But her company struggles with what she estimates to be an effective tax rate of nearly 50 percent, as well as having to deal almost exclusively in cash. Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, access to banking services is severely restricted.

 

The state saw $135 million in tax and fee revenue last year from the recreational and medical marijuana industry, money that has gone to, among other efforts, education for youth and law enforcement on the drug.

 

State Representative Jonathan Singer, a leader on marijuana issues in the House, said what legalization has done is “allowed marijuana to pay its own way,” with the cost of regulation paid for by dispensaries and consumers.

 

Yet law enforcement officials offer a more negative, chaotic view. They paint a picture of a quickly evolving array of laws, regulations, and ordinances that outpace their enforcement tools for related issues, such as drugged driving.

 

For one, they say, there’s no quick, reliable check to see whether drivers are too high to operate a vehicle safely, as there is for blood-alcohol level. And there’s no easy way to determine whether food products in a vehicle are infused with pot.

 

“You have no ability to test the gummy bear laying there on the dashboard,” said Chief John Jackson of the Greenwood Village, Colo., Police Department said.

 

“Edibles pose a problem because there is no way to tell the potency of it, there is no way to test it in the field. And no law enforcement officer is going to lick it and say, ‘Well, there’s marijuana, THC in that.’ ” (THC is the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana.)

 

Jackson, former president of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, and other police officials said legalization simply moved much faster than law enforcement officers’ ability to keep up with it.

 

Jackson, who sounded beleaguered in an interview, said a fallacy of legalization is that it would give law enforcement time back to focus on more serious, complicated criminal issues and bigger drug problems.

 

Two years and two months into full legalization, he said, “we’re not seeing that.”

 

Another problem with edible marijuana products, said Dr. Michael DiStefano, who directs emergency medicine clinical operations at Colorado’s only top-level pediatric trauma center: the inability of kids to distinguish between normal products and those infused with THC.

 

When marijuana is “handled responsibly, it’s not an issue for children’s health. The problem is a lot of these edibles,” he said. “They look like regular candy. . . . There’s no way to discern what is an edible gummy bear that has THC in it, versus a regular gummy bear. In fact, you cannot distinguish them unless they’re in the package.”

 

He said he’s seen an uptick in kids admitted to the ER at Children’s Hospital Colorado — to about 15 last year — ill from accidentally ingesting edible marijuana-infused foods since the drug became legal for recreational use in January 2014.

 

Indeed, the most grinding concerns and the biggest question marks focus on kids and young adults. But the effects of legalization on children remain effectively unknown with about two years of experience and lagging statistics.

 

Opponents of legalization point to a federal drug survey that estimates Colorado had the highest level of any state of 12- to 17-year-olds reporting marijuana use in the last 30 days for 2013-2014. But the change in Colorado’s youth use rate from 2012-2013 — before full legalization— to 2013-2014 — partly after — was not statistically significant. And federal statisticians say the findings are not sufficient to draw conclusions about changes in youth marijuana use patterns as a result of legalization.

 

Wolk, the top doctor at the state’s public health department, said Colorado marijuana use has always been high compared with the rest of the country.

 

“No pun intended,” he said, “we started high and stayed high — use hasn’t increased in a statistically significant way since legalization. Those that were using before are still using now, among youths and adults.”

 

For some opponents, a big concern isn’t just what has happened so far, but what’s yet to come. They worry that the burgeoning marijuana industry, like alcohol and tobacco before it, could eventually use its profits to gain clout and subvert attempts at regulation.

 

Jeffrey Zinsmeister, executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a national nonprofit group cofounded by former US representative Patrick Kennedy that opposes legalization and commercialization of marijuana, said there have been several red flags.

 

“You’re seeing this headlong rush into another addictive industry without knowing what widespread marijuana use is going to do to society,” he warned. “And the signs from Colorado are not good.”

 

Officials say their primary concerns include: adults being able to legally consume the drug normalizes it for kids; Joe Camel-like ads that make pot smoking seem appealing to kids; and legalization increasing availability, thus making the barrier to getting marijuana lower.

 

“I worry about normalization, I worry about commercialization, and I worry about availability,” said Andrew Freedman, who directs Governor John Hickenlooper’s Office of Marijuana Coordination.

 

“What happens to people over the long term, especially kids over the long term, as they see marijuana normalized, as they see people advertising for marijuana, and as accessibility becomes greater and greater?” he asked. “Kids who are, right now, saying, ‘No thanks,’ will that change over time?”

 

Freedman and other people deeply involved in the day-to-day oversight of the new market say it functions pretty smoothly. But they emphasize the broader question of whether or not legalization ends up a success will probably take five or 10 years to answer fully.

 

Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jm_bos. Click here to subscribe to his weekday e-mail update on politics.

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File this Under U S Constitution or Religious Freedom??

September 22, 2016

  A 300 page report issued by the United States Council on Civil Rights (USCCR) on 7 September of 2016, has caused a righteous outcry from many religious and other liberty loving institutions. You may rightly question the authority of a commission that  blindly ignores the fundamental liberty of individuals alluded to in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The commission, headed by chairman Martin R Castro, appointed by President Obama in 2011, suffers a serious blind spot of vision.

The USCCR recommends particular protections for people who fall within a variety of groups designated by particular labels adopted over the years, offering these groups special privileges beyond that of "regular" Americans, those generic citizens, whose basic liberties were noted and codified in the founding documents of our country to be protected from the encroachment of the rules and restrictions and regulations of an ever-growing totalitarian government which has usurped some non-existent power to brand my conscience and beliefs as "intolerant" or discriminatory.

There is a blind spot on the part of the commission that does not recognize the freedom of faith-abiding people of conscience to live by the tenets of their respective religions, that do not infringe upon health and welfare of others.

There are a number of links to explore- first of all a link to the report itself, followed by reactions and comments of a variety of faith-based organizations, as well as the watchdog groups that recognize the freedoms that our Constitution attempted to protect.

http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/Peaceful-Coexistence-09-07-16.PDF

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/obama-crony-religious-liberty-code-discrimination-intolerance

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/09/16/the-deeply-troubling-federal-report-highlighting-religious-freedom/

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2016/09/14/archbishop-blasts-claim-religious-freedom-code-discrimination/

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/bill-donohue/federal-agency-trashes-religious-liberty

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865662326/US-Civil-Rights-Commission-chairman-says-religious-freedoms-stand-for-nothing-except-hypocrisy.html?pg=all

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/are-religious-freedom-advocates-christian-supremacists

http://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/discriminatory-overreach-civil-rights-commission-attacks-religious-freedom

http://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=8CEC1C14-EA39-40FC-97A8-51BB6408C91C

http://libertycounsel.com/breaking-obama-administration-declares-war-on-religious-liberty-liberty-counsel/

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U.S. Slams Israel for New West Bank Settlement Expansion

Marcy Oster
September 1, 2016

(JTA) — The U.S. State Department condemned the announcement that an Israeli planning committee approved the construction of hundreds of housing units in four West Bank settlements.

“We’re deeply concerned by the government’s announcement to advance plans for these settlement units in the West Bank,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in answer to a reporter’s question during a briefing, hours after reports of the approval. “Since the Quartet report came out, we have seen a very significant acceleration of Israeli settlement activity that runs directly counter to the conclusions of the report. So far this year, Israel has promoted plans for over 2,500 units, including over 700 units retroactively approved in the West Bank.”

Kirby said that the State Department is “particularly troubled by the policy of retroactively approving unauthorized settlement units and outposts that are themselves illegal under Israeli law. These policies have effectively given the Israeli Government a green light for the pervasive advancement of settlement activity in a new and potentially unlimited way. This significant expansion of the settlement enterprise poses a very serious and growing threat to the viability of the two-state solution.”

“Potentially unlimited” is a recent term used by the State Department, and seems to indicate that State believes Israel wants to annex the West Bank.

The Civil Administration’s High Planning Committee on Wednesday approved construction of 234 living units in Elkana in the northern West Bank, designated to be a nursing home; 30 homes in Beit Arye in the northern West Bank; and 20 homes in the Jerusalem ring neighborhood of Givat Zeev.

The committee also retroactively legalized 179 housing units built in the 1980s in Ofarim, part of the Beit Arye municipality.

The approval comes less than a week after Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, criticized Israel for continuing to build in West Bank settlements and neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, going against the recommendations issued in June by the Mideast Quartet. The Quartet, made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the U.N., called on Israel in June to stop building in the settlements and on the Palestinians to halt incitement.

Click here to read the above article on the forward.com web site

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In Saudi Arabia, signs of an effort to break the Israel taboo

By Michael Wilner, Herb Keinon
08/30/2016 21:30

Saudi state-run media appears to be softening its reporting on Israel, running unprecedented columns floating the prospect of direct relations, quoting Israeli officials and filling its news holes with fewer negative stories on Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.

The public shift – from outlets such as al-Arabiya and Riyadh newspaper, among other local or state-owned outlets – reflects secret, under-the-table contact between the Arab kingdom and the Jewish state that has been a work in progress for years.

But media movement marks a new phase in that diplomatic process, according to some experts on the kingdom, who see signs of a monarchy effort to prepare Saudi society for debate that had previously been off limits.

“The key here is that everybody understands this is not going to turn around overnight, and its probably not going to convince a lot of people. But that’s not really the point,” said David Pollock, an expert on the region at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The point is to establish this as a debatable proposition, and to break the taboo of even debating about it – about the prospect of normalizing relations.”

“Once you’ve done that, you’ve made it legitimate,” Pollock added. “There are suddenly two sides.”

One column called for Saudis to “leave behind” their “hatred of Jews,” and another said that talks between the two nations should be direct, without intermediaries, based on Saudi national interests.

Those national interests appear to align with Israel’s, primarily on the issue of Iran, which has dominated the Saudi news cycle in recent months– from Islamic Republic activities in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Saudi conservative Islamists view Iran, the Shi’ite and Hezbollah as “much worse than the Jews,” Pollock commented. “So that kind of takes the edge off – and actually pushes them in the same direction.”

An official in the Foreign Ministry said there have been some positive signals from Riyadh – such as an interview that ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer gave recently to the Saudi media, and one that Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold had last year with a Saudi website – but that there is no sense this is part of an organized campaign to prepare the ground for better ties.

“These are positive signs, but I would not say they are game changers,” the official said. “Good things are happening.

But rather than seeing this as trying to prepare the ground for something, I’d say it is a sign that there is less enmity.”

A source in the Prime Minister’s Office concurred. He acknowledged a few articles of late from “some pretty big journalists” against hating Jews, but said that he knows nothing about it coming from the top as part of an organized campaign.

Quiet talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia began leaking into public view in June, when a handshake between Gold and former Saudi government adviser Anwar Eshki raised eyebrows. Putting to rest any doubt that the handshake was an isolated affair, Eshki led a Saudi delegation to Jerusalem the following month that was publicly acknowledged.

Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud also shared a stage with Israel’s former military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, in 2014.

A similar effort is under way in Egypt, Pollock said.

“I gather from talking to some of the people who are directly involved with it that there are different camps – different schools of thought in these countries,” said Pollock. “There is definitely internal opposition, and it’s very delicate, and fragile. But in both countries, the government and the establishment media – and their spin-offs and allies – are pursuing a deliberate strategy to do this.”

Click here to read the entire article on the Jerusalem Post web site.

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UN Backs Secret Obama Takeover of Police

International org calls for federalization of U.S. law enforcement to be 'beefed up,' cover all of America

by Robert Romano | Updated 04 Aug 2016 at 10:04 AM

“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.”

That was United Nations Rapporteur Maina Kai on July 27, a representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who on the tail-end of touring the U.S., endorsed a little-known and yet highly controversial practice by the Justice Department to effect a federal takeover of local police and corrections departments.

    The Obama administration has been pursuing the federal takeover of local police right under Congress' nose — and Republicans in Congress were apparently unaware it was happening.

The consent decrees are already being implemented in Newark, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and other municipalities.

Here's how it works: the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice files a lawsuit in federal court against a city, county, or state, alleging constitutional and civil rights violations by the police or at a corrections facility. It is done under 42 U.S.C. § 14141, a section of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, granting the attorney general the power to prosecute law enforcement misconduct. The municipality then simply agrees to the judicial finding — without contest — and the result is a wide-reaching federal court order that imposes onerous regulations on local police.

The federal court orders are designed to undo Rudy Giuliani-style policing tactics that were effective at reducing crime in big cities in the 1990s and 2000s.

In short, the much-feared nationalization of local police departments is already being initiated by the Obama administration's Justice Department. And somehow nobody noticed.

Federal requirements include how searches are conducted, what constitutes legitimate use of force, the mandatory use of on-body cameras by the police, and so forth. The agreements impose years-long compliance review regimes, implementation deadlines, and regular reviews by federal bureaucrats. This makes local police directly answerable to the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ.

One example includes a 77-page March 30 consent decree between the department and the City of Newark, New Jersey, that resulted from a 2011 investigation, a 2014 series of findings by the Civil Rights Division, and then finally a federal lawsuit alleging police misconduct in the U.S. District Court in the District of New Jersey.

The original complaint alleged that the Newark Police Department (NPD) "has engaged in a pattern or practice of constitutional violations in its stop and arrest practices, responses to individuals' exercise of their rights under the First Amendment, uses of force, and theft by officers. The investigation also revealed that the pattern or practice of constitutional violations stems in part from deficiencies in NPD's systems that are designed to prevent and detect misconduct, including its systems for reviewing force and investigating complaints regarding officer conduct."

The city of Newark, via the consent decree, agreed to the allegations and to implement a "comprehensive and agency-wide policies and procedures that are consistent with and incorporate all substantive requirements of this agreement," including rules on stops, searches, use of force, etc. The city has two years to implement, with the full agreement lasting five years. Meaning — even if the political parties change power in the city of Newark, the new mayor and city council would still be required to implement the court order.
U.S. Cities with Active DOJ Consent Decrees
City    State    Police Force
Chicago    IL    11944
Los Angeles    CA    10000
Miami    FL    1259
Ferguson    MO    54
Source: Americans for Limited Government

These consent decrees are in essence regulations. That, is, without the niceties of administrative procedures requirements, public comments, or even any congressional oversight.

Remarkably, congressional offices contacted by this author were generally unaware of the regulation of local policing via DOJ consent decrees with cities — even though the agreements have been implemented for years. Not a single hearing or word of protest has occurred on this topic.

The lack of oversight is pathetic enough — but to make matters even worse, this could actually be the first step in a new wide-ranging body of federal rules on local police.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" (AFFH) actually originated as a consent decree in 2009 against Westchester County, New York, requiring affordable housing units to be built in the county. Afterward, Republican Robert Astorino was elected county executive and yet was still required to implement the court order.

Westchester became the basis for AFFH, where every city and county in the country that accepts any part of $3 billion of annual community development block grants to 1,200 recipient cities and counties now has to comply with HUD's dictates on zoning along racial and income guidelines.

DOJ may very well end up doing the same thing with the local police — that is, if Congress does not wise up to what's really happening and defund implementation of 42 U.S.C. § 14141. This is dangerous. What is most chilling is how far along the Obama Justice Department is in this process. The breadth of regulation here shatters any notion of local governance or federalism. The Obama administration has been pursuing the federal takeover of local police right under Congress' nose — and Republicans  in Congress were apparently unaware it was happening.

No doubt the practice would continue under a Hillary Clinton administration too. Do you want a Clinton Justice Department running your local police force? That is how important the election in November suddenly becomes — with law and order already hanging in the balance and police being targeted by domestic terrorists in the slayings in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

As Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning noted in a statement calling attention to the U.N.'s interest in the DOJ program and urging Congress to act, "The fact that the U.N. Human Rights Council — which includes some of the worst abusers of human rights in the world that hate the U.S. — is cheering for this DOJ national takeover of the police should tell members everything they need to know. It's time to support local police, not render them impotent via federal restrictions against maintaining law and order. No less than the very existence of local government is at stake."

Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.

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Panic Mode: Khizr Khan Deletes Law Firm Website that Specialized in Muslim Immigration

by Matthew Boyle
Breitbart
August 2, 2016

  Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet. This development is significant, as his website proved—as Breitbart News and others have reported—that he financially benefits from unfettered pay-to-play Muslim migration into America.

    A snapshot of his now deleted website, as captured by the Wayback Machine which takes snapshots archiving various websites on the Internet, shows that as a lawyer he engages in procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other “Related Immigration Services.”

    The website is completely removed from the Internet, and instead directs visitors to the URL at which it once was to a page parking the URL run by GoDaddy.

    The EB5 program, which helps wealthy foreigners usually from the Middle East essentially buy their way into America, is fraught with corruption. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has detailed such corruption over the past several months, and in February issued a blistering statement about it.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety.

Or click here to read how Captain Khan's father is being used by the leftist media and political establishment.

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Islamic State Answers Pope Francis: Ours Is a Religious War, and We Hate You

breitbart.com
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
2 Aug 2016

The Islamic State terror group has come out publicly to reject Pope Francis’ claims that the war being waged by Islamic terrorists is not religious in nature, assuring the pontiff that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah in the Qur’an.

In the most recent issue of Dabiq, the propaganda magazine of the Islamic State, ISIS criticizes Pope Francis for his naïveté in clinging to the conviction that Muslims want peace and that acts of Islamic terror are economically motivated.

“This is a divinely-warranted war between the Muslim nation and the nations of disbelief,” the authors state in an article titled “By the Sword.”

The Islamic State directly attacks Francis for claiming that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence,” saying that by doing this, “Francis continues to hide behind a deceptive veil of ‘good will,’ covering his actual intentions of pacifying the Muslim nation.”

Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to portray Islam as a religion of peace, the article insists, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.

Despite the obviously religious nature of their attacks, the article states, “many people in Crusader countries express shock and even disgust that Islamic State leadership ‘uses religion to justify violence.’”

“Indeed, waging jihad – spreading the rule of Allah by the sword – is an obligation found in the Quran, the word of our Lord,” it reads.

“The blood of the disbelievers is obligatory to spill by default. The command is clear. Kill the disbelievers, as Allah said, ‘Then kill the polytheists wherever you find them.’”

The Islamic State also reacted to Pope Francis’s description of recent acts of Islamic terror as “senseless violence,” insisting that there is nothing senseless about it.

“The gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme to our terrorism, warfare, ruthlessness, and brutality,” they declare, adding that their hatred for the Christian West is absolute and implacable.

The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah [tax for infidels] and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.

In a recent press conference, Pope Francis told journalists  that the world is at war. “But it’s a real war, not a religious war,” he said.

“It’s a war of interests, a war for money. A war for natural resources and for the dominion of the peoples.”

“Every religion wants peace,” he said.

Read this article, and related others at breitbart.com

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Netanyahu reaches out to Orlando victims in video

PM draws parallel to attacks in Israel and across Middle East, says Islamic terror driven by ‘fanatical hatred’

from Times of Israel
 by Raoul Wootliff
June 16, 2016, 12:29 am

In an English language video posted to Facebook on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the casualties in Sunday’s deadly nightclub shooting in Orlando were victims of homophobia and intolerance and called on people not to give in to “hate and fear.”

Here is the complete text of his statement:

"In Orlando, a terrorist walks into a nightclub and murders nearly 50 human beings. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters cut down in cold blood.

They did nothing wrong. They were dancing with friends, they were enjoying music with loved ones.

Why did the terrorist murder them?
Because he was driven by a fanatical hatred.

He targeted the LGBT community because he believed they were evil.

Now, the murderer wasn't alone.

Regimes and terrorist organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute the LGBT community.

In Syria, ISIS throws gays off rooftops.
In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.

Too many people have remained silent in the face of this awful persecution.

This week's shooting wasn't merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was an attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom and diversity and choice.

Radical Islamist terror makes no distinction between shades of infidel.

This week it was gays in Orlando. A few days before that it was Jews in Tel Aviv. Before that it was music fans in Paris; Travelers in Brussels; Yazidis in Iraq; Community workers in San Bernardino; Christians and journalists in Syria.

All of us are targets.

We believe that all people are created in the image of God.

ISIS, by contrast, believes that all people who aren't just like them deserve to die.

We will not be terrified into submission. We will fight back. And we will triumph.

Today I ask you to reach out to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them. Tell them you stand together, we stand together as one. And that you will always remember the victims. Tell them they will never be alone, that we are all one family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.

I have no doubt that those who seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.

Working together we will defeat them even faster.

We need to stand united, resolute in the belief that all people regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of their ethnicity, all people deserve respect, deserve dignity."

This was posted on the Prime Minister's Facebook page if you wish to log in and READ and/or WATCH his statement at https://www.facebook.com/IsraeliPM/?fref=nf

or you can WATCH his statement at
http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reaches-out-to-orlando-victims-in-video-after-attack/

PM Netanyahu is not afraid to speak the Truth.

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Continental Chutzpah: EU Building on Israeli Land, Warning Against Demolitions

the JewishPress.com
by David Israel
Published June 1, 2016

The European Union over the past few years has been erecting illegal structures in Area C, which according to the Oslo agreement is under Israeli control. After several rightwing NGOs have complained, the IDF set out to demolish some of those structures. By rights, they should have taken all of them down, what with their being built without a permit. Israeli media publicized the demolition of those structures, some of which actually flew the EU flag — like those mythical cat burglars who leave their personal business card in the open safe. But last week the EU chutzpah has reached unprecedented highs when Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the Danish diplomat who since 2013 has been the ambassador of the European Union to Jerusalem, met with Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Gen. Yoav Mordechai, to warn him that if Israel keeps demolishing those “Palestinian homes” it would damage relations with Brussels.

According to a senior Israeli official who spoke to Ha’aretz, the meeting was tense and loaded. The ambassador accused Israel of hurting the “weakest Palestinian populations.” What the senior official did not share was that those structures are a means by which the EU has been challenging Israel’s claim to sovereignty in Area C (the PA is currently in charge in Areas A and B). It has to do with the diametrically opposed views of Israel and the EU of what constitutes the “two-state solution.”

Essentially, the Israeli politicians who are now in government, as well as more than a few in the opposition, envision a future peace deal that turns Areas A and B into an independent Palestinian entity, either as a state or an autonomy. The same Israeli leaders envision some permanent legal solution for the upwards of 400 thousand Jews living in Judea and Samaria, all of them in Area C, most likely with Israel annexing the large settlement clusters and giving away the rest of the land.

Virtually no one outside Israel supports this idea at the moment. Even Israel’s best friends in the world envision the ousting of the Jews from Area C, possibly while allowing Israel to retain eastern Jerusalem. How would that actually be done—no one cares to say, nor where would Israel gather the tens of billions of dollars required for such a move, never mind whether the settler population would acquiesce or opt instead for resistance that would make the traumatic evacuation of 8,000 Jews from Gaza’s Gush Katif look like a picnic. Meanwhile, while Area C in Israel’s view is eventually going to be annexed as part of a peace deal — to the Europeans Area C is Palestinian land ready to be redeemed.

Which is why the EU has been relentless at challenging Israel’s claim to Area C. And it’s why they’ve come up with the delusional notion that taking down 531 illegal Arab structures in 2015, 75 of which had been built by the EU, was damaging the two-state solution. Because the two-state solution the Europeans envision is without any Jews in Area C.

For the same reason, Ambassador Faaborg-Andersen was complaining that Israel is quick to condemn and demolish those illegal structures, but at the same time refuses to give Arabs permits to build legally in Area C. Because while the Arabs view Area C as soon to be part of free Palestine, Israelis plan to keep most of it, thank you very much.

There’s going to be another meeting with the EU envoy, on June 15, this time at the Israeli foreign ministry. The Europeans are going to demand a freeze on demolishing Arab structures in Area C, while at the same time also demanding a freeze on Jewish construction in the same Area C. And at some point something will have to give.
 
About the Author: David writes news at JewishPress.com.

Click here to read the article in its entirety at JewishPress.com
 http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/continental-chutzpah-eu-building-on-israeli-land-warning-against-demolitions/2016/06/01/

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ISIS Kills Scores of Christians in Retaken Syrian Town: Report

By Conor Gaffey
Newsweek.com
4/11/16

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) killed scores of Christians when they captured a Syrian town recently liberated by the government, a Syrian Christian leader has said.

ISIS swept into the town of Al-Qaryatain in August 2015, kidnapping at least 230 civilians including dozens of Christians in the central Syrian town, which lies 104 kilometers (65 miles) southwest of Palmyra. The town had a population of some 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians prior to the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, but this had dropped to just 300 before ISIS took control.

Al-Qaryatain was retaken by Syrian government forces with the backing of Russian airstrikes earlier in April and reports are just beginning to emerge of life under the extremist group for civilians in the town. Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church, told the BBC on Sunday that 21 Christians were murdered when ISIS first captured the city.

Some died trying to escape while others were killed for violating the terms of contracts they had signed requiring them to submit to the extremists’ interpretation of Islamic law. Hundreds of Christians in Al-Qaryatain were reportedly forced to sign so-called dhimmi contracts, which enabled them to live under ISIS rule in the town. The patriarch added that five other Christians are missing and presumed dead, while ransoms had been paid to ISIS to secure the release of the rest of the Christians.

The civil war in Syria has had a devastating impact on the country’s Christian contingent, which made up approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population before the outbreak of the conflict. The European Parliament stated in October 2015 that about 40 percent of Syria’s Christian population—or 700,000 people—had fled the country.

Go to this website to read the original article http://www.newsweek.com/isis-killed-scores-christians-retaken-syrian-town-patriarch-446132

NOTE: Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem, was dead for three days, and rose from the dead, and walked among us for forty days until his Ascension. After the Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the Apostles, they spread out to different areas of the land to spread the good news, of our salvation. One of the first places they went to was what is now Syria, which was the home of Simon Peter. Not only does ISIS eradicate people who do not bow down to their cult they attempt to erase the ancient traces of preceding times like in Palmyra which was a Roman outpost in Syria, from the first or second century after the year of our Lord. Click here to view more about that.

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R.I.P. Justice Scalia

Feb. 18, 2016

It is hard to imagine a greater loss to Liberty in America than has occurred in the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia. His understanding of the Constitution as a pact between free people and government, and our protection from oppressive government, was unparalleled.

The fact that 30% of Americans do not know who he was, speaks volumes about the state of our Union and our education system.

My words and thoughts are totally inadequate but you can easily find more about the great man's life and legacy. Click here for a link to wikipedia. Or click here to read the thoughts of the other Justices on the Supreme Court about him.

R.I.P. Justice Scalia.

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Shariah Law at work in the Obama Administration

Obama DHS scrubs records of hundreds of Muslim terrorists

Published: 7 Feb 2016
World Net Daily
Pamela Geller

       Not only did the Obama administration scrub counter-terror programs of jihad and Islam, now we find out that his administration scrubbed the records of Muslim terrorists. If the enemedia were not aligned with the jihad force, this would be front-page news across the nation.

An agent of the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, for 15 years, Philip Haney, reported Friday that after the Christmas Day underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to blow up a crowded passenger jet over Detroit, “President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to ‘connect the dots.’ He said, ‘This was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.'”

Haney revealed: “Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material – the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.”

What Haney discloses is truly shocking: “Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to ‘connect dots.’ Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.”

Who gave the order to scrub the records of Muslims with ties to terror groups?

These new shocking revelations come fresh on the heels of whistleblower testimony in the wake of the San Bernardino jihad slaughter, revealing that the Obama administration shut down investigations into jihadists in America (and quite possible the San Bernardino shooters) at the request of the Department of State and the DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. Haney noted: “They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”

How is this not impeachable? When did foreign terrorists get civil rights?

Haney described how he began investigating scores of individuals with links to the traditionalist Islamic Indo-Pakistani Deobandi movement, and its related offshoots, prominently, Tablighi Jamaat. 

I have reported on this infiltration for years. I reported on it extensively in my book, “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.” Obama has partnered with terror-tied groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society and others. The stealth jihad in the information battle-space has led to the vigorous enforcement of blasphemy laws under the Shariah, as Obama ordered that counter-terror training materials must avoid all reference to Islam and jihad. Under Islamic law, it is prohibited to criticize Islam.

The Obama administration is Shariah-compliant at all costs. Its number one priority is to protect Islam, even when it puts American lives at risk. The cold-blooded slaughter of Americans in the homeland by Muslims has not tempered Obama’s Shariah enthusiasm. On the contrary, Garland, Fort Hood, Chattanooga, UCMED, San Bernardino, etc., have accelerated it.

My civil liberties and your civil liberties are being abridged in accordance with the blasphemy laws under Shariah. My organization is engaged in 15 different free-speech lawsuits against various cities. Our free-speech lawsuit against Boston is heading to the Supreme Court, because even though truthful, our ads violate the laws of Shariah (“do not criticize Islam”). We are being forced to adhere to Shariah mores, but jihad murderers are given sanctuary and protection – to slaughter Americans.

The moral, or in this case the immoral, of the story is this: Jihad terror works.

Click here to read this article in its entirety, including links to more information.
 
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title "Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance."

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Wisconsin firm fires Muslims in prayer dispute

Religious breaks disrupted production at lawn mower, snowblower manufacturer

Published: 02/04/2016

(ABC News) A civil liberties group said Wednesday that it plans to file federal discrimination and harassment complaints after a Wisconsin manufacturer fired seven Muslim employees for violating a company break policy that doesn’t provide extra time for prayer.

Ariens Co. terminated the workers in a dispute that began last month when it moved to enforce an existing rule of two 10-minute breaks per work shift and dozens of Muslim staffers of Somali descent walked off the job in protest.

Of the 53 employees involved, 32 have abided with the policy, 14 resigned and seven were terminated Tuesday, according to Ariens spokeswoman Ann Stilp. The news of the terminations was first reported by WLUK-TV in Green Bay.

Please click here to read entire article at ABC News.
 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wisconsin-firm-terminates-muslim-workers-prayer-dispute-36695435

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Finland TV airs 'laughable' strategy to stop rape

If shouting 'No!' doesn't work, then swat attacker with purse

World Net Daily
Published: 02/03/2016
by Leo Hohmann

A public-service advertisement running on Finland TV instructs women in the Scandinavian country on how to fend off a rapist.
But rather than pull out a handgun or even pepper spray, the women of Finland are taught to confront their attackers with bare hands and a purse.
Rape epidemics have engulfed Finland, Sweden and Germany in a sea of fear since the mass influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa began two years ago.

 Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he found the video laughable.
Anti-Shariah activist and author Pamela Geller posted the video on her website earlier this week under the title "It just gets more absurd."

Click here to read this article in its entirety at World Net Daily.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/finland-tv-airs-laughable-strategy-to-stop-rape/

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 Netanyahu: Islamic terrorism is flooding the world from Jakarta to California

The prime minister says the struggle against terrorism will take time but that Israel is fighting hard.

 Jerusalem Post
by JPOST.COM STAFF
BEN HARTMAN
02/04/2016

Islamic terrorism is flooding the world and inciting millions from Jakarta to Africa and all the way to California, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip on Thursday to the Jerusalem hospital treating a Border Police officer who was injured in yesterday's attack at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City.

Netanyahu praised the courage of the security forces and the courage and strength the Border Police officer shown during Wednesday's attack. He also expressed his condolences to the family of Border Police officer Hadar Cohen who was killed in the combined shooting and stabbing attack.

Three Arab terrorists wielding machine guns, pipe bombs and knives carried out the attack on Wednesday killing Cohen, 19, who died of her wounds shortly after being rushed to the capital's Hadassa University Medical Center at Mt. Scopus. Her partner, Ravit, was seriously wounded and underwent emergency surgery at the hospital. As of Thursday morning she was considered to be in moderate condition.

"We are all saddened by the death of Hadar Cohen, a real hero. We all embrace the family," Netanyahu said.

The prime minister emphasized that a great effort is being put into the fight against terrorism, during the lengthy effort to defeat it.

"It will take time, it is a long struggle," Netanyahu said. "We are in this fight, it is not passing us by, but we are fighting it with great force and will continue to do so."

"Kabatiya has been closed off while the IDF and the Shin bet make widespread arrests of wanted suspects, we have cancelled many work permits and the attorney-general informed me yesterday that he has added a number of houses belonging to terrorists to be slated for demolition," Netanyahu said of the West Bank village, from where Wednesday's terrorists hailed.

Police Commissioner Inspector General Roni Alsheich paid a visit to the wounded Border Police officer on Wednesday night.

During his visit, Alsheich praised the two teenager Border Police officers who had recently drafted into the force for preventing a major terror attack.

Alsheich said “I have no doubt that a terror cell that comes with an arsenal like this has every intention of carrying out a massive attack.”

Ravit and Cohen were part of a three-man patrol along with their commander. They had only been drafted a couple months before and their deployment at Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem was part of their training.

Since the attack yesterday, police and the Border Police have drawn criticism for the fact that the two women were posted at one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the country so soon after they were drafted.

The three terrorists were responsible for the attack were identified as Ahmed Rajeh Zakarneh, Muhammad Ahmed Kmail, and Ahmed Najeh Abu al-Rub. All three were shot dead at the scene. Their explosives did not detonate and were later neutralized by a police bomb disposal team.

Cohen was due to be buried on Thursday afternoon.

Khaled Abu Toameh contributed to this report.

Click here to read the article at the Jerusalem Post web site.

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A Glimpse of Clinton and her Advisors...

No holds barred: Torrent of anti-Israel advice found in Hillary’s emails

Jerusalem Post - Opinion
By Shmuley Boteach
02/01/2016

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course with Clinton’s advisers.

It’s already been established that one of Hillary Clinton’s most trusted advisers, Sid Blumenthal, sent her anti-Israel articles, ideas and advice during her time as secretary of state. But the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Clinton was much more comprehensive.

In the entire forced dump of Clinton’s emails, you will be hard pressed to find a single one sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any of the people she relied on. The negative, poisonous approach to Israel throughout this email expose shows the atmosphere that she had established around herself. These emails seem to demonstrate that a huge segment of her close advisers and confidantes were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all costs.

This was occurring against the backdrop of Israel’s recent Gaza withdrawal, which led to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. There is almost zero mention of the huge risks to Israel’s security in withdrawing as Clinton and the Obama administration did everything they could to pressure Israel to capitulate to their demands.

Take a look at a sampling of the advice being sent to Clinton from her many advisers that we have now become privy to.

Sandy Berger was Clinton’s foreign policy adviser during her 2008 presidential campaign. In September of 2010 he sent her ideas on how to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace. Berger acknowledged “how fragile is Abbas’s political position,” and how “Palestinians are in disarray,” and that “failure is a real possibility.” Berger was well aware of, and informed Hillary of, the very real possibility that Israel would be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas takeover.

But Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth it.

He advised the need to make Netanyahu feel “uneasy about incurring our displeasure....”

Berger emphasizes the need “to convince the prime minister – through various forms of overt persuasion and implicit pressure – to make the necessary compromises” and talks of the “possibility – to turn his position against him.”

Astoundingly, Berger seems to accuse the Jews in America of racism toward Obama. He writes, “At a political level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings in Israel and among important segments of the domestic Jewish constituency....” He then adds, “Domestically, he faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”

Anne Marie Slaughter was Clinton’s director of policy planning from 2009-2011. She wrote to Clinton in September of 2010 and devised a scheme to encourage wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies as were other funds).

She wrote: “This may be a crazy idea.... Suppose we launched a “Pledge for Palestine” campaign... Such a campaign among billionaires/multi-millionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state....”

She adds: “There would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis who, would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”

Clinton’s response to this email: “I am very interested- pls flesh out. Thx.”

Robert Russo, one of Clinton’s aides and currently her campaign’s “director of correspondence and briefings” sent an email in April of 2012 informing her of Netanyahu’s father’s death and advising her to give him a condolence call. Included with Russo’s email is an extremely biased article attacking both Netanyahu and his father, describing them as virulently racist warmongers and calling the elder Netanyahu “a behindthe- scenes adviser to his son, the most powerful person in Israel.”

The article noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly denied that his father was a one-dimensional ideologue. He further emphasized that he himself was a different person from his father.”

But then it goes on to say, without providing any proof whatsoever, “Israelis seemed in the dark about the extent of paternal influence on their leader,” and “To understand Bibi, you have to understand the father.”

One might be forgiven for questioning Clinton’s sympathy and sincerity when she later placed the call and gave Netanyahu her condolences.

Thomas Pickering, former US ambassador to Israel, wrote to Clinton on December 18, 2011, and suggested a secret plan to stir up major Palestinian protests in an attempt to force the Israeli government into peace negotiations.

He stated that the protests “must be all and only women. Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use force.”

Pickering’s goal was to ignite protests that would engulf the West Bank, “just like Tahrir square.” He adds that the Palestinian “leadership has shied away from this idea because they can’t control it,” and they are “afraid of being replaced.”

This idiotic reasoning that somehow only women would participate and things would stay peaceful is obviously absurd. As Pickering himself notes, “Palestinian men will not for long patiently demonstrate – they will be inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated and use force. Their male culture comes close to requiring it.”

Regardless, Pickering writes that the protests could be used against Israel “to influence the political leadership.”

The idea was as dangerous for the Palestinians as it was for Israel. As Pickering himself admits, widespread protests could overthrow Abbas’ government, and if Palestinian men joined in, widespread violence would inevitably break out. It would obviously be impossible to prevent men from participating in these demonstrations.

Yet Pickering felt this extreme risk was worth taking, even if it meant the replacement of Abbas with another Hamas-led government. And even if meant violence breaking out across the West Bank leading to a third intifada and the murder of countless Jews. He also emphasizes the need to hide all US involvement in this plot. Clinton forwarded this email to Monica Hanley and asked her to “pls print.”

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to try and force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course when it came to Clinton’s advisers.

In a follow-up column we’ll illuminate even more anti-Israel advice that was given the then-secretary of state. Sadly, there was just so much of it.

The author, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international bestselling author of 30 books including his upcoming The Israel Warrior’s Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @ RabbiShmuley.

(Links within this article are not from jp.com)

Click here to read the original article at the Jerusalem Post website and check for the follow up column if you have the stomach for it.

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Another State Is Heard From.......

Senate resolution calls for a US constitutional convention

  Posted: February 3, 2016 at 10:37 am
 KFQD Radio Anchorage, Alaska

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – An Alaska Senate committee is set to consider a resolution calling for a convention of the states to propose a countermand, or veto, amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The measure calls on legislators in the other 49 states to apply for a convention as well.
In his sponsor statement, Chugiak Republican Senator Bill Stoltze says the resolution is meant to restore the balance of power between the states and the federal government.
The resolution calls for a convention of states to amend the U.S. Constitution and provide states with the power to vote on nullifying federal laws.

Click here to read at the KFQD Radio Page.

 Click here to realize that Alaska is not the only state that has called for a Constitutional Convention.

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Turkish Court Rules Government Failed to Protect Christians Killed in Malatya

 Civil suit results in order to pay damages to relatives of victims.

January 27, 2016
By Our Middle East Correspondent
Morning Star News
 
ISTANBUL, Turkey (Morning Star News) – A Turkish court ruled on Tuesday (Jan. 26) that the government was negligent in its duty to protect three Christians who were tortured and killed in 2007 and ordered it to pay damages to the victims’ families.

The Malatya Administrative Court ruled that, nearly nine years ago, the Interior Ministry and the Malatya Governor’s Office ignored reliable intelligence that Turkish nationalists were targeting the three Christians days prior to the April 2007 killings.

At the present rate, it is doubtful what year money might actually change hands

Please click here to read entire article at Morning Star News

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Man with Quran, guns arrested near Disneyland Paris

Manhunt underway for female companion

CNN
by Laura Akhoun and Jason Hanna
Published: 01/28/2016

(CNN) French police are looking for a woman who was with the Paris man who was arrested with guns Thursday at a Disney hotel near Disneyland Paris, police official Michael Le Provost told CNN.

When security guards discovered the firearms, they noticed the woman was with him, but she eluded arrest, Le Provost said.

Bomb disposal experts are inspecting the man’s car, Le Provost said.

Please click here to read the full story at CNN.

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Obama vs. Jefferson on Islamic Terror

Posted By David Barton On 01/27/2016 @ 10:32 pm
 In Education,Faith,Front Page,Politics,U.S.,World
World Net Daily

Democrats have long heralded Thomas Jefferson (along with Andrew Jackson) as the founder of their Party. They traditionally hold annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising dinners, and President Obama is one of their most sought after speakers. But this past year, Democrats began to remove any mention of Jefferson’s name from their functions.  They claim that this is because Jefferson was a bigoted racist, iii but this excuse is historically inaccurate, based on an errant modern portrayal.

If you doubt this, ask yourself why black civil rights leaders over the past two centuries (such as Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Benjamin Banneker, Francis Grimke, Henry Highland Garnett, and so many others) openly praised Jefferson as a racial civil rights pioneer and champion, as did abolitionists such as John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and others They recognized that Jefferson led a vocal lifelong campaign to emancipate all slaves in the United States, but that the laws of Virginia prevented him from freeing his own slaves. (All of this is covered in my new book, “The Jefferson Lies.”)

The real reason that Democrats should discard Jefferson is that he held nearly no policy position similar to those Democrats hold today. Consider fifteen major categories where the policies of Presidents Jefferson and Obama are opposite.

Click here to read the entire article of David Barton and increase your knowledge of American History.

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Hands up, just shoot!

 
Posted By Jeff Knox On 01/27/2016 @ 7:42 pm
In Commentary,Opinion
World Net Daily

 The occupation of a remote wildlife refuge turned violent yesterday when federal agents stopped two vehicles carrying protesters to a town hall meeting in John Day, Oregon. Victoria Sharp, a passenger in one of those vehicles, has reported that federal agents opened fire on the group without provocation after conflicting and confusing demands for the protesters to surrender. Sharp reported that shots were first fired at Ryan Payne as he complied with orders to show his hands out of the window of the vehicle in which she was riding, but that the shots missed. Payne was calling for police to not shoot, as there were women in the vehicle, and exited the vehicle, asking that the women be allowed out.

At this point, LaVoy Finicum, one of the spokesmen for the occupiers, who was driving the vehicle in which Ms. Sharp was riding, yelled out the window that they were going to go talk to the sheriff (at the meeting in John Day), or that agents could just shoot him. He told the passengers to get down, and drove forward, precipitating heavy gunfire from the agents, and crashing the vehicle into a snowbank.

Sharp said that Finicum then exited the vehicle, hands in the air, yelling, “Just shoot me then!” A volley of shots rang out, and Finicum fell to his back, hands still over his head, and was shot several more times on the ground, Sharp said.

According to Sharp, agents continued shooting at the car, striking Ryan Bundy in the shoulder as he shielded her on the floorboard, and deploying tear gas before finally taking the rest of the group into custody. She also claims that none of the protesters fired a shot or even touched a gun during the encounter.

The full audio of Victoria Sharp’s account is posted on YouTube, and comes across as very credible.

Listen to Victoria Sharp’s testimony:

Another report suggested that Finicum "charged" at police after exiting the vehicle but does not dispute the claim that his hands were in the air. Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, leaders of the occupation who were both taken into custody during the incident, has further charged that, not only were Finicum's hands in the air, but he was not armed at the time.

In interviews during the occupation protest, Finicum, a soft-spoken rancher and father of 11 from Arizona, had insisted that he would rather be killed than "put in a cement box" prison. He said that some things were more important than life, and that freedom was one of those things.

The occupation was initiated in protest of the re-incarceration of a pair of Oregon ranchers who had been convicted of terrorism for starting two controlled burns on their graze lands back in 2001 and 2005. The ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, were initially sentenced to, and served short sentences and fined $400,000 for their actions, but a federal appeals court later concluded that the judge in the case had improperly waived a five-year minimum sentence for the charges, and the two were resentenced to that minimum and ordered to return to prison.

I reported on the Hammond case and the resulting protests a few weeks ago in this column, pointing out that the stated objective of the protest was being lost in the news coverage of the protest itself. Ammon Bundy and his compatriots appeared to be more interested in generating a confrontation with federal authorities than in drawing attention to the Hammonds and the abusive practices of federal agencies that led to their plight.

The death of LaVoy Finicum is a needless tragedy.

Federal authorities had wisely been taking a hands-off approach to the occupation, denying Bundy and his friends the opportunity for the tense stand-off they seemed to be seeking. Unfortunately, politicians like Oregon's Democrat Gov. Kate Brown, took the occupation as a personal affront and were calling for law enforcement to take more aggressive action to put a stop to the flagrant defiance of federal authority. The result is a martyr for the fringe and escalation of the situation from a nuisance to a volatile and dangerous level. The strategy was clearly to "remove the head of the snake" by capturing the leaders of the occupation, but what if those leaders were the cooler heads that were keeping the protest calm and peaceful?

With the death of Finicum, in circumstances that some are calling murder, a fuse has been lit, and unless authorities can and do quickly produce evidence that their actions were clearly justified, this could blow up in a very ugly way. And it all could have been easily avoided.

Realistically, what harm were the protesters doing? They were occupying buildings of a remote wildlife refuge in a sparsely populated area of the country in the dead of winter. They were making no threats, harming no one, and getting less and less attention from an unsympathetic media. They were not supported by any national or state militia organizations, and their whole agenda had pretty well fizzled.

I wish Ammon Bundy had taken my advice, negotiated a peaceful end to the situation and sent his supporters home to their families weeks ago. That didn't happen, and what happens next is anyone's guess. The remaining occupiers must be concerned about what might happen to them if they try to leave, especially in light of the death of Finicum, and by setting up roadblocks and checkpoints, authorities have now committed manpower and resources to potentially long, cold, uncomfortable duty that can't help but engender deeper frustration and resentment between police and occupiers. Any trust that might have developed is completely out the window. Worse, the bloodshed may provoke other groups to step in and escalate the mess even further.

Perhaps this week's arrests will bring this whole thing to a close, but I fear that it is more likely signaling the beginning of something much worse than protesters occupying a wilderness outpost.

 Click here to read this article in its entirety at World Net Daily.

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Christian persecution reached record high in 2015, report says

By William J. Cadigan, CNN
 Sun January 17, 2016

Christians flee persecution in the middle east

(CNN)Last year was the most violent for Christians in modern history, rising to "a level akin to ethnic cleansing," according to a new report by Open Doors USA, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians.

In total, the survey found that more than 7,100 Christians were killed in 2015 for "faith-related reasons," up 3,000 from the previous year, according to the group's analysis of media reports and other public information as well as external experts. Open Door's report is independently audited by the International Institute of Religious Freedom. Open Doors USA is an organization that works with Christians worldwide to "equip and encourage" those living under persecution while also helping churches in America advocate for the persecuted around the world.

The group's report defines Christian persecution "as any hostility experienced as a result of one's identification with Christ." Open Doors found this persecution ranged from imprisonment, torture, beheadings and rape to the loss of home and assets, the loss of a job, or even rejection from a community.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Wednesday, David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors, introduced the annual ranking of countries based on their severity of Christian persecution, evaluating levels of violence worldwide to formulate the global top 50. The list, now in its 25th year, is topped by North Korea for the 14th consecutive time. Curry says that "pariah states" like North Korea are especially hostile toward Christians.

According to the report, however, much of the persecution faced by Christians occurs in predominantly Muslim nations, many of which are "failed states" that fail to protect any of their citizens' religious liberty.

The presence of Islamic extremist factions across the world in 2015 brought religious persecution for not only Christians, but also Muslims, Yazidis and other religious minorities, the report found. Notably, Iraq (No. 2) and Syria (No. 5) are the epicenter of ISIS' so called "caliphate," while Afghanistan (4), Pakistan (6), Iran (9) and Libya (10) all have elements of Islamic extremism.

Curry said that while "Islamic extremism is one of the driving forces" of Christian persecution, "peace-loving Muslims can make an impact on that part of their culture."

ISIS and other extremist groups are spreading, the report highlights, not just in the Middle East but around the world. Curry said he hoped the list would bring attention to the plight of Christians across the globe as they face a "total lack of religious freedom," forced migration and even genocide.

In fact, part of the reason for the annual list, according to Curry, is to highlight for U.S. policymakers the continued persecution of Christians by our "geopolitical allies." Countries such as Saudi Arabia and India are key global partners for the United States, yet Open Doors ranks both in its top 50 of persecutors of Christians.

"We believe in religious freedom for all," Curry said, "and that does not happen in countries that we do business with every day."

Open Doors also seeks to inspire and inform Christians in America, using the annual watch list "as a clarion call to pray, advocate and remember their persecuted fellow Christians."

Click here to read the article in its entirety at CNN

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Ethics Complaint Says Big Clinton Donors Got State Dept Access

The Daily Caller
Richard Pollock, Reporter
01/10/2016

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated federal ethics statutes by giving “preferential treatment” to wealthy political campaign donors and financial supporters of the Clinton Foundation, according to a formal complaint filed Friday by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.

The non-profit government watchdog group filed the complaint with the Office of Government Ethics, asking it to conduct a “full investigation” into Clinton’s “apparent breach of ethics rules.” A copy of the complaint was exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The organization charged Clinton gave “preferential treatment to individuals with which she had financial ties” and “regularly granted access” to rich donors, celebrities, and even powerful foreign nationals.

The FACT complaint follows the State Department’s latest release of thousands of Clinton emails that she turned over to the government more than two years after leaving the office in 2013. She used a private email address and a home-brew server in her private New York residence to conduct official government business throughout her tenure.
 
This article can be read in its entirety at
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/10/hillary-clinton-foundation-donors-ethics/

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WND Exclusive

U.S. in grip of 'Muhammad' baby boom

Number of Muslim-Americans born to Middle Eastern migrants 'off the charts'

Leo Hohmann
Published: 1/06/2016

So-called “home-grown” terrorists such as Syed Farook, who slaughtered 14 people last month in San Bernardino, or Muhammad Abdulazeez, who gunned down five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga last summer, were both second-generation Muslim-Americans whose parents emigrated to the U.S.

Most of the terrorists who attacked Paris in November, killing 130 people with guns and bombs, were also described by the media as “home grown jihadists” when in reality they still represented a foreign culture, born of Middle Eastern parents who migrated to Europe and never fully assimilated. And now there is fresh evidence that this segment of the U.S. population is growing exponentially.

Buried in the Social Security data is a count of babies born with the name Muhammad. While offering a small sample, the Social Security database is able to shed light on the growth of second-generation Muslims in America. It is highly reliable and accurate. It shows a huge growth pattern.

“A boy named Mohammed born here is likely to grow up in a Muslim environment and, at the same time, be a U.S. citizen,” North writes. “So we can get a rough proxy of the growth of the population of second-generation Muslim immigrants by noting how many of them carry these names. (Third-generation babies are also included.)”

The figures show the huge growth in this population over the last 50 years, starting in 1964 when only 29 baby boys were named after the Islamic prophet who lived in the seventh century. By 2014 the number had soared to 2,931, a more than 100-to-one ratio.

Please click here to read entire article at World Net Daily

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World Net Daily

Alabama 2nd state to sue feds over refugee resettlement

Suit claims program too secretive

 Leo Hohmann
Published: 01/07/2016
 
 Alabama has become the second state to sue the federal government alleging that it has failed to “consult” with state officials while secretly placing foreign refugees into communities. The suit claims the Obama administration has violated the terms of the Refugee Act of 1980, which says the federal government “shall consult regularly”  with states before placing refugees.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley told the Associated Press the lawsuit was filed Thursday, following a similar suit by Texas a month ago.

But an expert on the 1980 law governing refugee resettlement told WND that neither suit stands a chance of stopping the flow of refugees into Texas or Alabama. Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, said his organization is not involved in either the Texas or the Alabama cases because he believes there is a stronger case to be made on the grounds of the 10th Amendment.

“They filed a suit on the grounds that the feds have failed to consult with the state on the location of refugees in the state, and failure to consult is a term that has no real definition to it. Texas has filed a similar suit that thus far has not gone anywhere,” Thompson said. “Thomas More Law Center’s position is that there is a constitutional claim and that claim is based on the 10th Amendment.”

Bentley is one of more than two-dozen Republican governors who opposed the settlement of Syrian refugees in their states after the Nov. 13 jihadist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.

About 80 GOP congressmen have also signed on to co-sponsor a bill by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, which would halt all refugee resettlement until the program can undergo a full investigation into its costs and its risks to national security.

But the U.S. State Department has continued distributing Muslim refugees into more than 180 U.S. cities and towns. They come not only from Syria and Iraq, but from Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and other countries with active jihadist movements.

A stronger response is ready and waiting for a taker. The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center has been working since June to prepare a case that would challenge the constitutionality of federal authority over the refugee program. The program is administered by the U.S. State Department along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Please click here to read the article in it's entirety.

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 Expanding special rights to the 2% who choose the LGBT lifestyle in Jacksonville FL

 with excerpts from
Christopher Hong
Jan 13, 2016 
Jacksonville Florida Times-Union

"Jacksonville residents crowded Tuesday’s City Council meeting to voice their stance on the longstanding question of whether to expand discrimination protections to the LGBT community...
Tuesday’s meeting saw the formal introduction of two bills on the issue. Councilman Tommy Hazouri introduced a bill to expand the discrimination protections, while Councilman Bill Gulliford introduced a bill to let voters decide.

Next month, the council will begin debating those two bills.... the council defeated similar legislation in 2012. Tuesday’s discussion mostly remained civil, with council members hearing many of the same arguments voiced years ago and in a series of community meetings that (Mayor) Curry hosted late last year.

Supporters of expanding the law said the LGBT community deserves the same rights and protections afforded to other minority groups and urged the council to vote on it.

Opponents, many citing their religious beliefs that homosexuality is morally wrong, said expanded protections amounted to a special privilege that would interfere with small business and could allow men into women’s restrooms. Many urged council members to let voters decide the issue.

The full council will debate Hazouri’s and Gulliford’s bills during special meetings scheduled for Feb. 4, Feb. 18 and March 3."

Has your voice been heard about this expansion of Special Rights in Jacksonville FL?  Contact your  Mayor and your Council Representatives:

Mayor Curry

Phone: (904) 630-1776

Fax: (904) 630-2391

Email: MayorLennyCurry@coj.net

 

 Or your representatives on the City Council. Click their names for direct email, or telephone their offices:

District 1: Joyce Morgan         (904) 630-1389
District 2: Al Ferraro                (904) 630-1392
District 3 Aaron L. Bowman   (904) 630-1386
District 4 Scott Wilson             (904) 630-1394
District 5 Lori N. Boyer             (904) 630-1382
District 6  Matt Schellenberg   (904) 630-1388
District 7  Reggie Gaffney       (904) 630-1384
District 8   Katrina Brown         (904) 630-1385
District 9    Garrett L Dennis    (904) 630-1395
District 10 Reginald L Brown   (904) 630-1684
District 11  Danny Becton         (904) 630-1383
District 12  Doyle Carter           (904) 630-1380
District 13  Bill Gulliford            (904) 630-1397
District 14  Jim Love                 (904) 630-1390
Group 1    Anna Lopez Brosche   (904) 630-1393
Group 2    John R Crescimbeni   (904) 630-1381
Group 3    Tommy Hazouri           (904)630-1396
Group 4   Greg Anderson          (904)630-1398
Group 5   Samuel Newby         (904) 630-1387

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10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Alabama chief justice tells judges to halt same-sex 'marriages'

Posted By Bob Unruh On 01/06/2016
World Net Daily

Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the state’s probate judges, the only ones in the state who are allowed to issue marriage licenses, to follow the state’s Sanctity of Marriage Amendment and its Marriage Protection Act until the full state Supreme Court rules on the issue.

Please click here to read the article in its entirety

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 January 7, 2016
Subject: URGENT: Stop the LGBT Law

 

Dear Jacksonville Family,

This is URGENT.  Please forward this email to others.

Unless we do something about it, just 10 City Council members will force a LGBT favoritism law upon Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida – a law which will restrict Free Speech and religious liberties and which will allow men, claiming to be women, to enter women’s and children’s dormitories, and dressing, locker and rest rooms – to view them in all stages of undress.

And, much more harm will occur.  Get more details at DefendJaxFamilies.

But, you can help prevent this.  How?  LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE this issue.

●      Show your support for the Public Referendum proposed by Councilman Gulliford.  Complete and return the Petition found here, where there are instructions.  The Petition form can be filled out on your computer and returned by email.

●      Forward this letter.  Email it to as many people as possible.

●      Collect Petition signatures.  Download the Petition form, print copies and distribute them at churches and other venues.

●      Help fund the campaign.  And please urge friends to donate here .  They will understand that it takes funding to fight this battle.

●      Attend key City Council meetings.  The next City Council meeting is January 12, 2016 at 5:00 P.M. Followed by the Finance Committee meeting on Jan 19 at 9:30 A.M. Click here to view regularly scheduled City Council meetings and plan accordingly.

 

Please act quickly.  Time is short. Please act now to complete the forms and return.

Thanks for all your help, and for your support in the past.

                             Defend Jax Families

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Non-Muslims encouraged to wear Islamic head scarf at school

Click here to read a thoughtful piece posted by Leo Hohmann on WND  12/14/2015.This news occurred courtesy of American educational systems and Muslim Student Associations (M.S.A.), a known front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing trial ever held on U.S. soil.

Click here to fact check on Wikipedia

  (The above may more be correctly filed under "How Political Correctness is destroying our nation")

If your blood pressure is not high enough yet, click here to read about the Virginia high school Geography class that passed around the Koran and included a lesson practicing Arabic calligraphy, or the California School with the Muslim fight song. Wonder when is the last time they sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and passed around a Bible.  (Thanks again to wnd.com)

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Facebook censors Michael Savage post of Muslims protesting

Photos show demonstrators warning 'Behead those who insult Islam'

Published: 12/10/2015 at 3:38 PM
World Net Daily


When Muslims held a demonstration in London in 2006 in protest of cartoons depicting their founder, Muhammad, many bore signs warning of beheading and death for “those who insult Islam.”

Talk-radio host Michael Savage thought that amid a fierce national debate on whether or not to allow Muslims to immigrate to the United States, it would be worth considering what has been happening in Europe.

So, he posted on his Facebook page photographs of the Feb. 3, 2006, demonstration outside the Embassy of Denmark in London. The focus of protest was the publication of editorial cartoons depicting Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Snopes.com verified that the photographs were taken at the London demonstration, with the exception of one, which was from a protest in the English city of Luton (which is 33 miles away).

Wednesday night, Facebook removed Savage’s post, explaining the social media site “determined that it violated Facebook community standards.”

Read more and see the picture at http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/facebook-censors-michael-savage-post-of-muslims-protesting/#TU3MPU7fYsr0uGyf.99

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After Muslim Truckers Refuse to Deliver Beer… Obama Does the Unbelievable

From Top Right News on October 27, 2015

by Bill Callen | Top Right News

Barack Obama just sided with Muslims to enforce Islamic Sharia Law on an American business, leaving many outraged and two FoxNews anchors absolutely stunned.

Two Muslim truck drivers — former Somali “refugees” —  refused to make deliveries of beer to stores for their employer. So they were understandably fired.

They claimed it was a violation of their religious beliefs — even though Islam bars only the consumption of alcohol. And, as the employer pointed out, the workers knew they would have to deliver alcohol before they took the job.

So guess what Barack Obama did.

He SUED the employers it on behalf of the pair, Mahad Abass Mohamed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale, claiming religious discrimination.

Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) represented them in the case, providing tens of thousands of  taxpayer dollars in legal support, judicial filings and court appearances against the employer who was hopelessly outgunned by the Federal government.

And this week the Muslims were awarded a stunning $240,000 by a jury, presided over by an Obama appointee who stunned analysts by allowing the case to go forward at all.

Click here to view the article in its entirety at Top Right News.

Hard to believe, isn't it? Why would someone accept a job knowing he is unable to perform the work?? This has been fact checked  at this link and it is, sadly, true.

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from the Washington Post (which commentator and author Mark Levin colorfully refers to as the "Washington Compost":

San Bernardino suspects identified; probe turns to motive, planning

What we know about the shooting in San Bernardino

Police in San Bernardino, Calif., said heavily armed gunmen killed 14 people and injured 17 others during a holiday party for county employees. Here's what we know about the mass shooting. (The Washington Post)

 

By William Dauber, Sarah Kaplan and Brian Murphy December 3 at 9:46 AM

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Investigators grappled Thursday on two main fronts after the deadliest U.S. mass shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School bloodshed: Seeking clues on the motives and apparent commando-style planning by a couple who turned an office holiday party into a killing field with at least 14 dead.

“I don’t think they grabbed the guns and tactical gear on a spur-of-the-moment thing,” said San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan hours after Wednesday’s rampage and a police shootout that left both alleged shooters dead several miles from the attack.

In addition, at least 17 people were wounded, some critically.

Bit by bit, profiles emerged of the suspects: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, a former county health worker who was born in the United States, and a woman described as his Pakistani-born wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27.

As many as three people opened fire at a nonprofit facility in San Bernardino where a holiday party for county employees was underway, killing at least 14 people and injuring 17 others.

Also being pieced together were the hour-by-hour events before police say the suspects stormed a conference center wearing black masks and armed with assault rifles and handguns.

Earlier in the day, the suspects dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with Farook’s mother, saying they had a doctor’s appointment, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles.

Later, Farook attended the office party hosted by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, where he had once worked as an inspector, earning more than $71,000 in salary and benefits in 2013. Farook then left the gathering “under circumstances described as angry or something of that nature,” said Burguan, the police chief.

Police said Farook then returned with Malik and the pair opened fire on the crowd before fleeing in a black SUV, which was later spotted about two miles from the shooting site with the area under near-total lockdown. Some unconfirmed reports quoted police saying the attackers also were outfitted with body cameras.

A shootout with police left both suspects dead and the vehicle peppered with bullet holes and with its windows shattered.

“They came prepared to do what they did, as if they were on a mission,” Burguan said.

Muslim community leader Ayloush described Malik as a Pakistani-born immigrant who lived in Saudi Arabia before marrying Farook. Two FBI officials told The Washington Post that Farook was not under FBI investigation. It’s not clear whether he had links to any other people under FBI investigation.

A third person seen fleeing the shootout was also taken into custody, but it remained unclear whether there was any link to the suspect.

“Right now, as we continue to drill down our information, it looks like we have two shooters,” Burguan said. “We are comfortable that the two shooters that went into the building are the two shooters that are deceased.”

But many other questions loomed.

Among them was whether the attack was pre-planned and why the suspects amassed assault-style gear and arms in a tidy residential neighborhood about 50 miles east of Los Angeles where the couple was often seen relaxing in their back yard.

Burguan declined to comment on what may have precipitated the attack. But, he said, the couple seemed too well-prepared for the shooting to be viewed as a spontaneous act.

He added: “We have not ruled out terrorism.”

“I have no idea why he would do something like this,” Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, said at a news conference. “I cannot express how sad I am today.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it recovered two rifles and two handguns and is conducting “urgent traces” on their origins.

An ATF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two of the weapons were purchased legally, and investigations continued into the other two.

“Whatever the results of this investigation ... one thing is clear: Violence like this has no place in this country,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch, speaking at a White House event on incarceration and poverty.

Recent mass shootings in the United States have typically involved a lone gunman, often someone mentally unstable or consumed with rage. Multiple-shooter events are extremely rare: According to a recent FBI report on 160 “active shooter incidents” between 2000 and 2013, all but two involved a single shooter.

 “One of the big questions that will come up repeatedly is: ‘Is this terrorism?’ ” said David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said at an earlier news conference. “It is a possibility. We are making some adjustments to our investigation. It is a possibility. But we don’t know that yet. And we are not willing to go down that road yet.”

The two left behind little in the way of a paper trail — no apparent criminal record, no Facebook page or Twitter account.

An online dating profile for a “farooksyed49” from Riverside, Calif., resembles the suspect described by law enforcement. The profile, on the “Indian matrimonial and dating service” iMilap.com, describes a 22-year-old man from a “religious but modern family.”

“I work for county as health, safety and environmental inspector,” it reads. “Enjoy working on vintage and modern cars, read religious books, enjoy eating out sometimes travel and just hang out in back yard doing target practice with younger sister and friends.”

The man in the profile picture is tall and bearded, posed jauntily in front of a nondescript building flanked by palm trees and a smooth, green lawn. He writes that he is interested in “matrimonial.”

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, co-workers who knew Farook described him as a quiet and polite man who held no obvious grudges against people in the office. They said he recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a woman he met online.

The officer had recently held a shower for the couple’s new baby, and the two seemed to be “living the American dream,” said Patrick Baccari, a fellow inspector who shared a cubicle with Farook.

Griselda Reisinger, who worked with Farook before leaving the agency in May, and other colleagues told the Los Angeles Times that Farook was a devout Muslim but not vocal about his religion.

The site of the shooting, the Inland Regional Center, is a three-building complex that houses a conference center and serves more than 30,000 people with developmental disabilities. Nearly 700 staff members work there, according to the organization’s Facebook page, promoting “independence, inclusion, and empowerment.” The organization says that it is committed to eliminating barriers for individuals with developmental disabilities so that they can “live a typical lifestyle.”

The center held its own holiday party Tuesday, and a brief video clip showed staffers and clients in wheelchairs dancing to the 1980 mega-hit “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang.

On Wednesday, the city’s public health department had rented out the conference center’s first-floor banquet room for a holiday party, complete with Christmas trees and other decorations. The event was in full swing when the first reports of gunfire came, at 10:59 a.m.

Click here to read the article in its entirety at the Washington Post website

Dauber is a freelance writer. Kaplan and Murphy reported from Washington. Freelance writer Martha Groves in San Bernardino and staff writers Joel Achenbach, Mark Berman, Adam Goldman, Lindsey Bever, Niraj Chokshi, Ann Gerhart, Sari Horwitz, Elahe Izadi, Wesley Lowery, Kevin Sullivan, Julie Tate, Justin Wm. Moyer, Yanan Wang and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.

Sarah Kaplan is a reporter for Morning Mix.

Brian Murphy joined the Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has written three books.

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November 19. 2015 

FROM A CONCERNED CITIZEN OF JACKSONVILLE

 

It's baaack!  It's the so-called “Human Rights Ordinance” (H.R.O.- not to be confused with the Holy Roman Empire which failed centuries ago), a second attempt to introduce another "SPECIAL" group with "SPECIAL" rights un-accorded to you- the average moral citizen of our city.

 

Evidently, it is not enough to have EQUAL rights and EQUAL justice... at least that is what the paid lobbyists trolling around city hall seem to indicate.

My consternation is that as a color-blind, sexual orientation-blind, class-blind person, now the city wants to FORCE me to look at the private sexual  inclinations of others, whether I choose to or not, and then may misinterpret my response, putting me at risk of criminal actions against me!

 

We have inalienable God-given rights- Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to mention a few. These are specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution which purpose was to limit the power and control of general government. As if that was not enough to confirm the “fully-worthy” status of all, there is also a Florida Commission on Human Relations, and Civil Rights. We need the city to spend time and our money on this also?

 

The Mayor of Jacksonville, Lenny Curry, has mandated three fact finding meetings, “Community Conversations”, so that all sides of the H.R.O. proposal can be heard.

 

The first meeting has taken place.... the topic was "Supporting the Needs and Well-Being of Families"-  not ALL families, evidently- not military families or racially mixed families or families with one partner living out of town, or single parent families. Why a meeting about this little LGBT segment of families?? Don't all families have challenges? All households? Is it the City’s balliwick to give this SPECIAL consideration, at the expense of our public safety, roads, and pensions for those who keep us safe?  

 

The first meeting was composed of a panel of six, four of whom were “for” the LGBT Special Privilege bill. The meeting was attended by several busloads of LGBT supporters who were shipped in from outside of the city. Arriving first, it was only they who were allowed to comment during the first-come-first served portion of the meeting. Needless to say, the first meeting did not prove to be a successful format to hear “all sides” of the proposal.

 

You may read more about the first meeting by clicking here, courtesy of Channel 4.

 

http://www.news4jax.com/news/mayor-lenny-curry-holds-first-meeting-addressing-lgbt-issues-in-jacksonville/36492002.

 

Two more meetings are scheduled:

 

Religious Freedoms, Thoughts & Beliefs, Dec.  3 at 6 p.m.

Edward Waters College Milne Auditorium at 1658 Kings Road, Jacksonville, FL  32209

 

and

 

Understanding the Law & its Effects on Business, Dec. 15 at 6 p.m.

Jacksonville University Policy Institute at 2800 University Blvd. N., Jacksonville, FL  32211.

 

 Jacksonville is a city struggling to pay the costs and pensions of our public safety professionals at JFRD and JSO, to maintain our infrastructure, and to promote the general welfare and safety of ALL of our citizens, yet our elected leaders are spending our resources discussing how you and I should respond to the sexual choices of others, allowing them into public restrooms frequented by my family and neighbors. If this should pass, will the city also spend my money to retrofit bathroom facilities so my kids will be safe? Will the city require private businesses to do likewise?

 

So give this some thought. It's your city and your tax money.  If you say No No! NO! to this, please contact your Mayor, Lenny Curry at

 

Phone: (904) 630-1776

Fax: (904) 630-2391

Email: MayorLennyCurry@coj.net

 

                                   

 

Or your representatives on the City Council. Click their names for direct email or telephone their offices:

District 1: Joyce Morgan         (904) 630-1389
District 2: Al Ferraro                (904) 630-1392
District 3 Aaron L. Bowman   (904) 630-1386
District 4 Scott Wilson             (904) 630-1394
District 5 Lori N. Boyer             (904) 630-1382
District 6  Matt Schellenberg   (904) 630-1388
District 7  Reggie Gaffney       (904) 630-1384
District 8   Katrina Brown         (904) 630-1385
District 9    Garrett L Dennis    (904) 630-1395
District 10 Reginald L Brown   (904) 630-1684
District 11  Danny Becton         (904) 630-1383
District 12  Doyle Carter           (904) 630-1380
District 13  Bill Gulliford            (904) 630-1397
District 14  Jim Love                 (904) 630-1390
Group 1    Anna Lopez Brosche   (904) 630-1393
Group 2    John R Crescimbeni   (904) 630-1381
Group 3    Tommy Hazouri           (904)630-1396
Group 4   Greg Anderson          (904)630-1398
Group 5   Samuel Newby         (904) 630-1387

This is the time to make your voice and your priorities for your city of Jacksonville, heard.

 

 

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WND EXCLUSIVE

Houston faith leaders gear up for new transgender fight

'We will work with Dallas pastors to determine how to appropriately respond'

Bob Unruh
11/11/2015
 
The coalition of pastors from Houston who defeated lesbian Mayor Annise Parker’s transgender-rights ordinance – a fight that included her subpoenas of sermons – now are volunteering to help pastors in Dallas oppose a similar measure.

“We will work with Dallas pastors to determine how to appropriately respond to the wholesale catering by city council to the radical, anti-faith, anti-family agenda of the LGBT Human Rights Campaign,” said Rev. Dave Welch, president of the Texas Pastor Council.

Welch said Dallas’ change to its existing nondiscrimination ordinance “not only opens but essentially removes the doors of women’s restrooms, showers and locker rooms in Dallas, as well as criminalizes businesses, employees as well as eventually, churches who attempt to keep men out.”

WND has reported extensively on the Houston fight, which took nearly two years. It ended last week when citizens, by order of the state Supreme Court, were allowed to vote on the measure and soundly rejected it, 62 percent to 38 percent.

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance would have banned discrimination against transgender people, allowing, for example, men who perceive themselves to be women to use women’s restrooms, locker rooms and other gender-specific facilities in the city. Anyone opposing or obstructing them could have been fined $5,000.

“Outlasting the Gay Revolution” spells out eight principles to help Americans with conservative moral values counter attacks on our freedoms of religion, speech and conscience by homosexual activists

The Texas Pastor Council’s Welch condemned the change in the Dallas ordinance as an attack on society’s foundation.

“There are many issues that our city governments should be focused on to improve the city, and this ordinance patently rejects cornerstones of our civilization that family is built upon the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, that our sex is embedded in our chromosomes, and this beautiful created order is a gift from God.”

Welch added, “A bad tree cannot produce good fruit and a law based on elevating gender confusion to being a protected class equal with race can only produce harm, not good.”

The Dallas law protecting “gender identity and expression” says the places of public accommodation that must grant a man who defines his gender as female full access to women’s facilities are any inn, hotel, temporary lodging, restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, soda facility, motion picture house, theater, concert hall, and retail or wholesale establishment selling goods or services.

The measure, Welch said, is a “bottomless Pandora’s Box.”

“Definition A plus Definition B equals exposing girls and women to violation of their privacy as well as their safety,” he said.

He said city officials in Dallas should have paid attention to the Houston vote and learned that pastors and citizens will react negatively to such a social agenda.

“As our very ethnically diverse coalition of pastors in Houston stated and showed for the last eighteen months, every one of us are for equal rights for all, however we cannot allow special rights for a tiny fraction of society to endanger the safety and freedom for the rest,” he said.

Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer wrote that Dallas didn’t pass an ordinance but “adjusted the language of an ordinance that’s existed since 2002 in a way that made very little change to how anyone in the city is treated.”

He said in Houston, voters denied “protection” to their fellow residents.

Young said the Dallas ordinance “doesn’t even have the word restroom in it, and the failed Houston law only allowed opposite-gender restroom use in a fantasy world in which trans people don’t exist.”

At the Advocate, Dawn Ennis explained that while “sexual orientation” has been a protected class for years, “gender identity” was a class left unprotected.

She noted there was no organized opposition to the expansion of the sexual identity protections, but critics say that was because there was very little notice to the public of the looming change.

Texas Values Action blasted the Dallas law and its quick adoption.

“This Dallas bathroom ordinance will allow men into women’s bathrooms and that’s why the Dallas city council is deliberately trying to avoid the people,” said a statement released by the group’s president, Jonathan Saenz.

“Their fast track method of passing this dangerous bill that threatens the safety of women and children is the same strategy used in Houston to disenfranchise voters with their failed bathroom bill. Creating law behind closed doors and forcing it onto the people the next morning is a recipe for disaster. These Obama and D.C. style tactics will not work in Texas. Get ready for a Texas-sized response.”

“Outlasting the Gay Revolution” spells out eight principles to help Americans with conservative moral values counter attacks on our freedoms of religion, speech and conscience by homosexual activists

The strategy in Houston was to move the ordinance through the city council quickly. City officials then tried to invalidate a petition demanding a public vote.

After a months-long court fight, the state Supreme Court stepped in and ordered the city to repeal the ordinance or put it on the election ballot in compliance with the city charter.

Some of the pastors who were targeted by the mayor’s subpoena have filed a lawsuit charging her with violating their rights.

Please click here to read on World Net Daily in its entirety.

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It is hard to know where to catalogue the following ... under Politics? Religious Liberties? Islamic Threat? Christian or Cult? Perhaps "Know They Enemy"? You be the judge.

40 Mind-Blowing Quotes From Barack Hussein Obama On Islam And Christianity

by Geoffrey Grider
nowtheendbegins.com
Oct 2, 2013

When someone shows you who they are, believe them

Since 2009, NOW THE END BEGINS has brought you story after story in detailed accounts of exactly how Obama feels about Islam, and how he views Christianity and the Bible. So today, in light of recent events in Washington, we feel it important that you know exactly where your president stands in regards to his faith and his god. Below are 20 quotes he has made about Islam, and 20 quotes he has made about Christianity. Nothing edited or mashed up, just exactly in the context he originally spoke them in with fully-sourced links so you can see where they come from.

Please click here to read article in its entirety

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Police Confiscate Mohammed Cartoons At Dutch Anti-Islam Rally

by Nick Hallett
9 Nov 2015

Police seized “offensive” Mohammed cartoons during a demonstration by the Dutch branch of the Patriotic European Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) movement in the city of Utrecht this weekend.

The rally, which attracted around 150 supporters, criticised the “Islamisation” of the Netherlands, with demonstrators also expressing their support for the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, a noted critic of Islamism.

DutchNews reports that police arrested 32 people at the demonstration for a variety of offences including failing to carry IDs, not following police orders and displaying “insulting banners”.

One such banner said the “Koran is poison”, while another claimed “Islamisation is EU-thanasia”.

Video footage emerged of police removing Mohammed cartoons, although their ultimate fate is unknown.

Utrecht City Council had banned the demonstrators from marching through the city so they gathered instead in a park on the outskirts of the city.

The PEGIDA marches started in Dresden, Germany last year as “evening strolls” through the streets every Monday to protest against militant and political Islam. The marches soon grew and spread across the country, but died down again at the start of this year to point where most commentators assumed the movement had petered out.

However, as the migrant crisis intensifies in Europe, especially thanks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s relaxed border policies, the marches have started again and are growing.

Authorities have hit back, however, charging founder Lutz Bachmann with hate speech for comments he made in Facebook posts back in 2014. State prosecutors in Saxony claim private posts in which Mr Bachmann uses terms such as “livestock” and “scum” to refer to migrants risked causing disturbances.

This weekend in the German capital Berlin, supporters of the anti-mass migration Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party also held a rally criticising Mrs Merkel’s immigration policy and calling for her to resign.

The rally passed off largely peacefully, although violent scuffles broke out between police and pro-migrant counter-demonstrators.

This article is from World Net Daily

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Thousands Of German People Chant ‘Merkel Must Go’ At Anti-Mass Muslim Migration Rally

by Geoffrey Grider
November 7, 2015

The AFD has seen its popularity surge as Germany struggles to deal with the huge influx of Muslim migrants, and is currently campaigning in local elections in the Saxony-Anhalt region that will be seen as an indicator of public sentiment on the issue.

The anti-mass Muslim migration Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party held a rally in the German capital Berlin this afternoon, demanding the resignation of Chancellor Angela Merkel and calling for the country to adopt a strong policy on immigration.

German paper Handelsblatt estimates that 5,000 people joined the rally this afternoon, calling for the immediate closure of Germany’s borders and introduction of visa requirements from migrants from the Balkan states, including Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.
Angry demonstrators chanted “Merkel must go” and “traitor to the people” under the banner “Asylum has its limits – red card for Merkel”.

Addressing the crowd, Beatrix von Storch, member of the European Parliament, accused the German chancellor of causing "asylum chaos” in Germany.

This was a rally in German from about two weeks ago, as the German people are being forced to rise up and do what their government refuses to do.

Although the main protest was largely peaceful, several counter-protests by pro-migrant activists descended into violence, with around 40 arrests. Around 800 counter-demonstrators showed up, far lower than organisers had hoped.

Yesterday, it was reported that the German government had agreed the downgrade the status of Syrian migrants, reducing the amount of time they could stay in the country and banning them from bringing their families. Today, however, the government did a U-turn on the plans.

Please visit
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/thousands-german-people-chant-merkel-must-go-at-anti-mass-muslim-migration-rally/
to see the original article, videos, and links to sources and related information.

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Court rules against Little Sisters of the Poor in Contraceptive Coverage Case

 By Nigel Duara
L.A. Times
 July 14, 2015

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that there is a limit to how far the government must bend to accommodate religious objections to the federal healthcare exchange.

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that if the Colorado-based Little Sisters of the Poor want to refuse contraceptive coverage to their employees, they must sign a waiver to be exempted, and that such a waiver is not a substantial burden on the nuns' religious freedom.

The 2-1 decision is one of the few victories the U.S. government can claim in defense of the healthcare law in the contraceptive mandate debate.

Hobby Lobby, a business run by evangelical Christians, successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last year that a mandate to provide contraception to female employees violated their belief that life begins at conception.

The high court agreed that for-profit organizations like Hobby Lobby required protection, but did not say how far such protections would go.

 In response, on Aug. 27, 2014, Affordable Care Act administrators created a waiver for religious nonprofits that would grant them an exemption from contraceptive coverage.

But the Little Sisters of the Poor, who run the Mullen Home for the Aged in Denver, argued before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit that the waiver itself both crosses the nuns’ moral boundary by endorsing contraceptives and gives control of their healthcare program to the government.

 “Most religious liberty claimants allege that a generally applicable law or policy without a religious exception burdens religious exercise,” according to the decision, noting that most cases begin with prisoners demanding a religious right.

But in the Little Sisters of the Poor case and accompanying suits by self-insured religious objectors and religious universities, the government made clear attempts to offer a religious exemption, the judges wrote.

“Although plaintiffs allege the administrative tasks required to opt out of the mandate make them complicit in the overall delivery scheme, opting out instead relieves them from complicity,” according to the opinion.

The judges said the difference between Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor is that Hobby Lobby faced fines for every day of noncompliance. Ihe Little Sisters of the Poor faced no such burden, the judges ruled.

10th Circuit Judge Bobby R. Baldock, the lone dissenter, agreed with the decision on the Little Sisters of the Poor but said other self-insured groups were indeed substantially burdened when they faced fines for refusing to provide contraceptives because of their religious belief.

View this copyrighted article in it's entirety at the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-little-sisters-of-the-poor-20150714-story.html

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PRESS RELEASE

May 9, 2015
Dr. Gene A. Youngblood, Pastor
First Conservative Baptist Church
12021 Old St Augustine Rd
Jacksonville, Florida 32258

It has come to my attention that there are some in our community, as well as, a few media that have expressed questions or concerns relating to our Church-Ministry campus/outdoor marquee, changeable copy sign and its current message. This marquee generally has a message change each week. Generally the message relates in some fashion to those things and events taking place in our city or nation. As a pastor and ministry we feel it needful to keep our citizens informed and at the same time be relevant through the Word of GOD.

FIRST: Let me state my deep love and concern for our great city, state, and nation.  I am a Bible believing patriot with a deep concern over the moral declension. I am deeply saddened to see the morals and family values under attack on a national basis. I have invested the past 50 years of my life in the defense of the WORD of GOD through religious-theological studies, pastoral, pulpit, and classroom academic instructional responsibilities.
SECOND: We are profoundly committed to the preaching-teaching of God’s Word. God’s Word commands that I “Preach the WORD” (11Tim 4:1-3) which in the text includes confronting sin. I do not have the authority OR permission to change any text of GOD’S Word-THE BIBLE.
THIRD: Our ministry marquee has been used as a tool to educate, inspire, and caution for over 30 years. We have dealt with multiple Biblical-Theological issues that caution and confront sin of whatever kind. Our prayer is that in our small way we may make a difference in the lives of all those who pass by. We do realize that any scriptural absolute may cause conviction resulting in the attack on the messenger as well as the message.
FORMALLY: The present message (caution) comes from the WORD of GOD, The BIBLE as found in a multitude of Scripture references:
•    Romans 1:24-32, deals with several kinds of Sin, with the focus on those believing that they are wise and God says that they are unwise. God then deals with the specific sin of homosexuality and firmly condemns it.
•    I Corinthians 6:9-10, warns that all (including homosexuals) that commit sin and DO NOT REPENT will die and go to HELL.
•    OTHER text include and is NOT limited to: Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22, Deuteronomy 23:17-18, Galatians 5:19-21, Revelation 21:8, Revelation 22:15
Needless to say, the Scriptures are replete with GOD’S warnings to all of us that SIN must be confessed and repented of or HELL is GOD’S judgment upon sin. The wonder of it all is that God through Jesus Christ will forgive “ANY” confessed sin that is repented of.
BECAUSE we love people (yet, as directed in Scripture to hate the sin), we therefore want to warn them of the coming Judgment of God on the sin of Homosexuality (and any other sin that is NOT repented of). ALL SIN that is not confessed and repented will cause a person to GO TO HELL (God says it, I did not originate the Word), God did. In fact, according to several of the heretofore mentioned Biblical text remind us of other sin specifically mentioned in Scripture including; “All Liars, Prostitutes, Sexually Promiscuous, Idolaters, Adulterers, Homosexuals, Revilers, Extortioners, WILL GO TO HELL unless they repent and seek God’s forgiveness.
It is my sincere prayer that perhaps “ONE” practicing Homosexual will have read our sign and will REPENT before it is too late and they are cast into HELL. HELL is a real place and anyone not believing in the reality of HELL will not change the temperature of the FLAMES a single degree.
I am eternally grateful to God for allowing me to preach HIS WORD at a time when our Religious FREEDOMS are being challenged and FREEDOM of speech is being challenged, as well as, our (all of us) Constitutional Liberties are under ATTACK.
Notwithstanding all of the above, I do understand and sympathize with SOME that are not well instructed or versed in the BIBLE and thus will consider our marquee’s message to be incorrect or un-spiritual. PLEASE allow me to state forthrightly; we stand on SOLID Biblical TRUTH, therefore we pray for each person that reads our message (changes weekly), and prayerfully considers its TRUTH and Caution.
FURTHERMORE, I pray that the media will NOT attempt to thwart or interfere with our FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS SPEECH. We also pray that the media will be cautioned NOT to in any way interfere with or disrupt ANY worship or other programs or services conducted in and through FIRST CONSERVATIVE BAPTIST CHURCH.

May God bless and use all in the MEDIA as an instrument to preserve society and help protect AMERICA and our great document THE CONSTITUTION.

Signed;

DR. GENE A. YOUNGBLOOD
Pastor

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Obama blocks Iraqi nun from describing Christian persecution

Posted By Leo Hohmann
World Net Daily
05/01/2015 @ 11:52 am
In Faith,Front Page,U.S.,World 

 Sister Diana Momeka is a Dominican Catholic nun who fled her home in Iraq last August along with 50,000 other Christians and religious minorities escaping ISIS.

A leading conservative is asking why the Obama State Department is barring a persecuted Iraqi nun from entry into the United States to share her message about the brutal treatment of Christians in her country.

Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, writes in a National Review op-ed that Sister Diana Momeka is “an internationally respected and leading representative of the Nineveh Christians who have been killed and deported by ISIS.”

Yet this nun is being “barred from coming to Washington to testify about this catastrophe?”

Sister Diana was the only Christian in the delegation and the only member blocked from the trip, the Washington Times reported, leading some of her American supporters to question why she was singled out.

Shea, in her op-ed titled “With Malice Toward Nun,” exposed the real reason why Obama denied the visa for Sister Diana.

    “Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena was informed on Tuesday by the U.S. consulate in Erbil that her non-immigrant-visa application has been rejected.

    “The reason given in the denial letter, a copy of which I have obtained, is:
    ‘You were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa.’”

Shea further explains:

    “She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an ‘IDP’ or Internally Displaced Person. ‘That really hurt,’ she said. Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver.”

Shea states that the State Department officials made the determination that the Catholic nun “could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk for claiming political asylum, and the U.S. seems determined to deny ISIS’s Christian victims that status.”

Shea then outlined Sister Diana’s reasons for her visit and the endorsements she received from two politicians – one Republican and one Democrat — among others:

    “In reality, Sister Diana wanted to visit for one week in mid-May. She has meetings set up with the Senate and House foreign-relations committees, the State Department, USAID, and various NGOs. In support of her application, Sister Diana had multiple documents vouching for her and the temporary nature of her visit. She submitted a letter from her prioress, Sister Maria Hana. It attested that the nun has been gainfully employed since last February with the Babel College of Philosophy and Theology in Erbil, Kurdistan, and is contracted to teach there in the 2015–16 academic year.”

Sister Diana also submitted an invitation from her sponsors, two respected Washington-area think tanks, the Institute for Global Engagement and former congressman Frank Wolf’s (R., Va.) 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.

None of this was good enough for the Obama State Department.

Yet, as Matthew Balan points out in an article for News Busters, even as the administration denies a visa to a persecuted Christian nun, it has created a “special envoy for the human rights of LGBT persons.”

“One wonders if any of the major news media outlets will pick up the story of Sister Diana,” Balan muses. Just over a month ago, on 60 Minutes, CBS’s Lara Logan refreshingly brought new attention to ISIS’s genocidal campaign against the ancient Christian communities in Iraq. But since then, there has been scant coverage of the Islamic extremist group’s persecution of the religious minority. ”

Sister Diana, along with the town’s 50,000 other, mostly Christian, residents, were forced out of their homes by ISIS in the second week of August and fled for their lives to Kurdish-controlled areas.

“Since then, the 30-something religious woman has served as a spokesperson for this community, as well as for the over 100,000 other Christians driven into Kurdistan under the ISIS ‘convert or die’ policy,” Shea writes.

“Mr. Wolf, who met her in Kurdistan a few months ago, explained, ‘We had hoped to facilitate her trip to the States so that she could speak with great candor, as is her custom, to policymakers. Perhaps just as significantly, we viewed her as a critical voice to awaken the church in the West to the suffering of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.’”

This article may be read in its entirety at http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/obama-blocks-iraqi-nun-from-describing-christian-persecution/

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Muslim congressmen try to boot Islam critic Geert Wilders

Posted By Art Moore On 04/30/2015 @ 7:38 pm In Front Page,Politics,U.S. 

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It's hard to say if the following somewhat abbreviated article should be filed under the truthsthatfree.com category of Freedom of Speech, Islamic Threat, Israel and the Land, Religious Liberty or perhaps Politics. So it is place in our monthly archive.

‘Killing Jews is Worship’ posters will soon appear on NYC subways and buses

Washington Post
Michael Miller
April 22, 2015

‘Killing Jews is Worship’ posters will soon appear on NYC subways and buses

New Yorkers are used to aggressive advertising. Banners for breast implants. Billboards for condoms. But a federal judge’s ruling has opened the door for far more controversial posters on buses and subways across the city.

“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” reads one such ad next to the image of a young man in a checkered headscarf. “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

The poster is at the center of heated legal debate over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot stop the controversial ad from running on scores of subway cars and buses.

The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.

MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover, there is no evidence that seeing one of these advertisements on the back of a bus would be sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore, these ads — offensive as they may be — are still entitled to First Amendment protection.”

Making the case all the stranger is that the posters are not the work of an Islamist group, but rather a pro-Israel organization.

“This is a triumph for liberty and free speech,” tweeted Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the group that purchased the ads and sued the MTA to run them.

New Yorkers are used to aggressive advertising. Banners for breast implants. Billboards for condoms. But a federal judge’s ruling has opened the door for far more controversial posters on buses and subways across the city.

“Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” reads one such ad next to the image of a young man in a checkered headscarf. “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”

The poster is at the center of heated legal debate over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot stop the controversial ad from running on scores of subway cars and buses.

The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.

MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover, there is no evidence that seeing one of these advertisements on the back of a bus would be sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore, these ads — offensive as they may be — are still entitled to First Amendment protection.”

Making the case all the stranger is that the posters are not the work of an Islamist group, but rather a pro-Israel organization.

“This is a triumph for liberty and free speech,” tweeted Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), the group that purchased the ads and sued the MTA to run them.

AFDI is not your traditional free speech organization, however. The “about” section on its Web site starts out pretty straightforward, then takes a very hard turn.

Whatever you make of the group, AFDI has been remarkably successful in bringing its message to America. AFDI has filed at least nine lawsuits across the country, often against cities or their contractors that refuse to display their messages.

Those messages include a poster depicting Adolf Hitler meeting with “the leader of the Muslim world” and demanding that the United States cut off all aid to Islamic countries. “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” reads another AFDI poster. “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

AFDI’s ads have also drawn objections from Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that promotes the rights of Muslims and better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, launched its own public relations campaign to combat AFDI. In 2012 and 2013, CAIR ran posters in several U.S. cities promoting peaceful versions of Islam. “‘#MyJihad is to build friendships across the aisle.’ What’s yours?” But the ads never ran in New York due to a disagreement between CAIR and MTA.

The poster attributes the “Killing Jews” quote to “Hamas MTV,” apparently a reference to the Palestinian group’s odd blend of violence and music videos. The ad also has a disclaimer at the bottom noting that it is “a paid advertisement sponsored by” AFDI and “does not imply MTA’s endorsement.”

But MTA Security Director Raymond Diaz worried that the poster would nonetheless incite violence, primarily against Jews. “What matters is not AFDI’s intent, but how the ad would be interpreted,” he wrote. The line “What is yours?” could be considered a “call to violence,” particularly because the CAIR posters it was mocking never appeared in New York. When AFDI pointed out that the exact same poster had not caused any problems in Chicago or San Francisco, Diaz argued that New York was different because it is “the prime terror target” and that the “terrorist security threat” had grown worse since 2013.

On Tuesday, however, Judge Koeltl tossed out those arguments and sided with AFDI. The ads could not reasonably be considered an incitement to violence, even if someone didn’t understand them.

“The defendants admit that the actual intention of the advertisement is not to advocate the use of force, but to parody the CAIR ‘My Jihad’ campaign and to criticize Hamas and radical Islam. However, they argue that a reasonable New Yorker would not read the advertisement this way, but would instead read it as advocating the killing of Jewish people,” Koeltl wrote. “The defendants’ theory is thoroughly unpersuasive.”

After AFDI’s victory, Geller posed for photos outside the federal courthouse while holding the “Killing Jews” advertisement.

“With our NY win, our ads will make their debut on New York buses in the coming weeks,” AFDI’s Web site promises above a “donate” button. “We want to run 100. Help us make that happen.”

But even if the ads don’t incite violence in New York City, they could overseas. Earlier this month, Egypt’s top religious authority called AFDI’s posters “racist” and issued a fatwa, or official edict, against them. “This hazardous campaign will leave the gate of confrontation and clashes wide open instead of exerting efforts towards peaceful coexistence and harmony,” according to the edict.

Hamas, the group cited on the ads, has not said whether it approves of the message.

to see the full article in the Washington Post, please follow this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/22/killing-jews-is-worship-posters-will-soon-appear-on-nyc-subways-and-buses/

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  Navy Official Bans Chaplain From Ministering To Bereaved Families And Sailors

GOOSE CREEK, S.C.,
March 24, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Liberty Institute announces that Chaplain Modder's commanding officer, Captain Jon R. Fahs, issued a "no contact" order to Chaplain Wes Modder (the military version of a restraining order), forbidding him from counseling or ministering to members of his unit. The order comes on the heels of a tragic death in Modder's unit, banning him from ministering to grieving sailors and the deceased sailor's family members.

After a sailor in his unit unexpectedly passed away, Chaplain Modder immediately sprung into action to fulfill his usual chaplain duties of providing comfort and support to the deceased sailor's grieving family. But just as Chaplain Modder was about to perform those duties, the Navy informed him of the "no contact" order, banning him from having any contact with any personnel from his unit, depriving him of the ability to comfort them during a time of grief and mourning. Captain Fahs also banished Chaplain Modder from the Naval base where Modder is stationed on the day of the memorial service for the fallen sailor. The order also comes just days after Captain Fahs denied Chaplain Modder's request for a religious accommodation to provide pastoral counseling in accordance with his faith. (See Captain Fahs' denial letter at https://www.libertyinstitute.org/ModderFacts)

"This Navy official is using the 'no contact' order as a weapon to punish and humiliate a decorated military chaplain," said Mike Berry, Liberty Institute Senior Counsel and Director of Military Affairs. "I am stunned that he would deny Chaplain Modder the ability to minister to a grieving family and other sailors."

Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackelford said, "Of the most critical times for chaplains, the death of a colleague is near the top of the list. For this Navy official to bar a chaplain from comforting and ministering to sailors and families is a reprehensible violation of religious freedom and common human decency."

Case Background: Chaplain Wes Modder is a Navy chaplain and former Marine who previously served as the Force chaplain for Naval Special Warfare Command. He has deployed overseas multiple times during the War on Terror, including in support of Navy SEAL Teams. In October 2014, Chaplain Modder's commander called him a "consummate professional leader," "the best of the best," and said he sets the "clear benchmark" for chaplain professionalism. Now, the Navy is threatening Chaplain Modder with career-ending punishment because, when asked, he expressed faith-based views on marriage and human sexuality in private counseling sessions. Liberty Institute is defending Chaplain Modder and asserts that censoring his religious expression is unconstitutional religious discrimination. The "no contact" order comes only days after the Navy officially denied Chaplain Modder's request for religious accommodation, in violation of federal law and Department of Defense (DoD) regulations. (Read more about Modder's case at https://www.libertyinstitute.org/ModderFacts)

About Liberty Institute
Liberty Institute is the largest nonprofit legal organization in the nation dedicated solely to defending religious liberty in America. Liberty Institute protects freedom of religious expression in our military, schools, churches, and throughout the public arena. For more information, visit www.LibertyInstitute.org.


March 12, 2015
In mid February of this year Navy Chaplain Wesley Modder received a "detachment for cause" letter after commanders concluded he was "intolerant" and "unable to function in the diverse and pluralistic environment" of his current assignment. Lt Cmdr. Modder has served more than 19 years  with commendations as "best of the best" and a "talented and inspirational leader. Click here to read the March 11 article in the Military Times.

To take concrete action, here is a link to urge your congressional representatives to get personally involved to protect the religious rights (and responsibilities) of this chaplain (and all Americans):
http://www.afa.net/action-alerts/decorated-chaplain-threatened-by-navy-take-action/

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Muslim Brotherhood princess' used Clinton email server

03/11/2015 @ 9:10 pm
WND.com In Front Page,Politics,U.S.

Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin

At least three of Hillary Clinton’s top aides – including one with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – used emails hosted on Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state, according to several reports.

At a news conference Tuesday at the U.N., Clinton directly addressed media about the revelation that she conducted her business as secretary of state using a private email account instead of the secure and archived government system.

She acknowledged she deleted thousands of personal emails and said she turned over hard copies of messages to the State Department that she deemed to be work related.

But Clinton apparently wasn’t the only one at the State Department using private email.

Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen Hayes told Fox News, “Two of Hillary Clinton’s top aides used personal email while they were employed at the State Department.”

Hayes specifically named Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, who served as Clinton’s longtime deputy chief of staff. Abedin and Clinton worked closely together for nearly 20 years.

“The State Department has evidence of this,” he said.

In another report, the gossip website Gawker claimed both Abedin and Phillippe Reines, Clinton’s communications strategist, used the private email addresses.

The London Daily Mail confirmed one of Abedin’s email addresses was listed as Huma@clintonemail.com.

Abedin’s emails would be of particular interest because she has known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group that’s bent on “destroying Western civilization from within” – and other Islamic supremacists.

Hayes said, “The question, I think becomes: Were they emailing with Hillary Clinton from their personal email addresses to her personal email address about State Department business, about Benghazi, including sensitive classified information?

“Those are questions that I think (Rep.) Trey Gowdy and the House Benghazi Committee is going to want to look at very carefully.”

What do YOU think? Will Hillary’s email troubles delete her run for president? Sound off in today’s WND poll

Government watchdog Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against the State Department seeking all emails from 2009 to 2013 between Clinton, Abedin and Nagla Mahmoud, wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi.

“Now we know why the State Department didn’t want to respond to our specific request for Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s communications,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The State Department violated FOIA law rather than admit that it couldn’t and wouldn’t search the secret accounts that the agency has known about for years. This lawsuit shows how the latest Obama administration cover-up isn’t just about domestic politics but has significant foreign policy implications.”

Get the details about what really happened in one of America’s biggest foreign operations failures, in “The REAL Benghazi Story.”

Transforming America

Abedin and Clinton worked closely together for nearly 20 years. As WND has extensively reported, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic supremacist connections not only extend to Abedin’s mother and father, who are both deeply tied to al-Qaida fronts, but to Abedin herself.

Major news media profiles of Abedin report she was born of Pakistani and Indian parents, without delving much further into her family’s history.

As WND reported, a manifesto commissioned by the ruling Saudi Arabian monarchy places the work of an institute that employed Abedin at the forefront of a grand plan to mobilize U.S. Muslim minorities to transform America into a Saudi-style Islamic state, according to Arabic-language researcher Walid Shoebat.

Abedin was an assistant editor for a dozen years for the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs for the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs. The institute – founded by her late father and currently directed by her mother – is backed by the Muslim World League, an Islamic organization in the Saudi holy city of Mecca that was founded by Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

The 2002 Saudi manifesto shows that “Muslim Minority Affairs” – the mobilizing of Muslim communities in the U.S. to spread Islam instead of assimilating into the population – is a key strategy in an ongoing effort to establish Islamic rule in America and a global Shariah, or Islamic law, “in our modern times.”

WND reported Abedin also was a member of the executive board of the Muslim Student Association, which was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group in a 1991 document introduced into evidence during the terror-financing trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation.

At her father’s Saudi-financed Islamic think tank, WND reported, Abedin worked alongside Abdullah Omar Naseef, who is accused of financing al-Qaida fronts.

Naseef is deeply connected to the Abedin family.

WND was first to report Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin, was the official representative of Naseef’s terror-stained Muslim World League in the 1990s.

Shoebat previously reported that as one of 63 leaders of the Muslim Sisterhood, the de facto female version of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saleha Abedin served alongside Nagla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Muslim Brotherhood figure Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s now ousted president.

Saleha Abedin and Morsi’s wife both were members of the Sisterhood’s Guidance Bureau, Shoebat found.

Huma worked with al-Qaida front man

Abdullah Omar Naseef is secretary-general of the Muslim World League, an Islamic charity known to have spawned terrorist groups, including one declared by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaida front.

The institute founded by Huma Abedin’s father reportedly was a quiet, but active, supporter of Naseef.

The institute bills itself as “the only scholarly institution dedicated to the systematic study of Muslim communities in non-Muslim societies around the world.”

Huma served on the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs’s editorial board from 2002 to 2008.

Documents obtained by Shoebat revealed that Naseef served on the board with Huma from at least December 2002 to December 2003.

Naseef’s sudden departure from the board in December 2003 coincides with the time at which various charities led by Naseef’s Muslim World League were declared illegal terrorism fronts worldwide, including by the U.S. and U.N.

The MWL, founded in Mecca in 1962, bills itself as one of the largest Islamic non-governmental organizations.

But according to U.S. government documents and testimony from the charity’s own officials, it is heavily financed by the Saudi government.

The MWL has been accused of terrorist ties, as have its various offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, and Al Haramain, which was declared by the U.S. and U.N. as a terror financing front.

Indeed, the Treasury Department, in a September 2004 press release, alleged Al Haramain had “direct links” with Osama bin Laden. The group is now banned worldwide by U.N. Security Council Committee resolution 1267.

There long have been accusations that the IIRO and MWL also repeatedly funded al-Qaida.

In 1993, bin Laden reportedly told an associate that the MWL was one of his three most important charity fronts.

An Anti-Defamation League profile of the MWL accuses the group of promulgating a “fundamentalist interpretation of Islam around the world through a large network of charities and affiliated organizations.”

“Its ideological backbone is based on an extremist interpretation of Islam,” the profile states, “and several of its affiliated groups and individuals have been linked to terror-related activity.”

In 2003, U.S. News and World Report documented that accompanying the MWL’s donations, invariably, are “a blizzard of Wahhabist literature.”

“Critics argue that Wahhabism’s more extreme preachings – mistrust of infidels, branding of rival sects as apostates and emphasis on violent jihad –laid the groundwork for terrorist groups around the world,” the report continued.

An Egyptian-American cab driver, Ihab Mohamed Ali Nawawi, was arrested in Florida in 1990 on accusations he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent and a former personal pilot to bin Laden. At the time he was accused of serving bin Laden, he also reportedly worked for the Pakistani branch of the MWL.

The MWL in 1988 founded the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, developing chapters in about 50 countries, including for a time in Oregon until it was designated a terrorist organization.

In the early 1990s, evidence began to grow that the foundation was funding Islamist militants in Somalia and Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report detailed its Bosnian militant ties.

The U.S. Treasury designated Al Haramain’s offices in Kenya and Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their role in planning and funding the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The Comoros Islands office was also designated because it “was used as a staging area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings.”

The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain had provided funds to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. The Indonesia office was later designated a terrorist entity by the Treasury.

In February 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department froze all Al Haramain’s financial assets pending an investigation, leading the Saudi government to disband the charity and fold it into another group, the Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad.

In September 2004, the U.S. designated Al-Haramain a terrorist organization.

In June 2008, the Treasury Department applied the terrorist designation to the entire Al-Haramain organization worldwide

Bin Laden’s brother-in-law

In August 2006, the Treasury Department also designated the Philippine and Indonesian branch offices of the MWL-founded IIRO as terrorist entities “for facilitating fundraising for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.”

The Treasury Department added: “Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil, a high-ranking IIRO official [executive director of its Eastern Province Branch] in Saudi Arabia, has used his position to bankroll the al-Qaida network in Southeast Asia. Al-Mujil has a long record of supporting Islamic militant groups, and he has maintained a cell of regular financial donors in the Middle East who support extremist causes.”

In the 1980s, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, ran the Philippines offices of the IIRO. Khalifa has been linked to Manila-based plots to target the pope and U.S. airlines.

The IIRO has also been accused of funding Hamas, Algerian radicals, Afghanistan militant bases and the Egyptian terror group Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya.

The New York Post reported the families of the 9/11 victims filed a lawsuit against IIRO and other Muslim organizations for having “played key roles in laundering of funds to the terrorists in the 1998 African embassy bombings” and for having been involved in the “financing and ‘aiding and abetting’ of terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”

‘Saudi government front’

In a court case in Canada, Arafat El-Asahi, the Canadian director of both the IIRO and the MWL, admitted the charities are near entities of the Saudi government.

Stated El-Asahi: “The Muslim World League, which is the mother of IIRO, is a fully government-funded organization. In other words, I work for the government of Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government.

“Second, the IIRO is the relief branch of that organization, which means that we are controlled in all our activities and plans by the government of Saudi Arabia. Keep that in mind, please,” he said.

Despite its offshoots being implicated in terror financing, the U.S. government never designated the MWL itself as a terror-financing charity. Many have speculated the U.S. has been trying to not embarrass the Saudi government.

Huma’s mother represented Muslim World League

Saleha Abedin has been quoted in numerous press accounts as both representing the MWL and serving as a delegate for the charity.

In 1995, for example, the Washington Times reported on a United Nations-arranged women’s conference in Beijing that called on governments throughout the world to give women statistical equality with men in the workplace.

The report quoted Saleha Abedin, who attended the conference as a delegate, as “also representing the Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim NGO Caucus.”

The U.N.’s website references a report in the run-up to the Beijing conference that also lists Abedin as representing the MWL at the event.

The website posted an article from the now defunct United States Information Agency quoting Abedin and reporting she attended the Beijing conference as “a delegate of the Muslim World League and member of the Muslim Women’s NGO caucus.”

In the article, Abedin was listed under a shorter name, “Dr. Saleha Mahmoud, director of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.”

WND confirmed the individual listed is Huma Abedin’s mother. The reports misspelled part of Abedin’s name. Her full professional name is at times listed as Saleha Mahmood Abedin S.

Hillary praise

Saleha Mahmood formerly directed the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in the U.K. and served as a delegate for the Muslim World League, an Islamic fundamentalist group Osama bin Laden reportedly told an associate was one of his most important charity fronts.

In February 2010, Clinton spoke at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Abedin was an associate professor of sociology at the time.

Clinton, after she was introduced by Abedin, praised the work of the terror-tied professor.

“I have to say a special word about Dr. Saleha Abedin,” Clinton said. “You heard her present the very exciting partnerships that have been pioneered between colleges and universities in the United States and this college. And it is pioneering work to create these kinds of relationships.

“But I have to confess something that Dr. Abedin did not,” Clinton continued, “and that is that I have almost a familial bond with this college. Dr. Abedin’s daughter, one of her three daughters, is my deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who started to work for me when she was a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.”

Article was originally posted on wnd.com at http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/muslim-brotherhood-princess-used-clinton-email-server/print/

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NUKES FOR IRAN??

The Clarion Project was founded in 2006 by Raphael Shore. It is dedicated to "exposing the dangers of Islamic extremism while providing a platform for the voices of moderation and promoting grassroots activism." Shore produced the 2008 documentary The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America.. (View at this link.)
The main web page of the Clarion Project is www.clarionproject.org. They are currently sponsoring an email campaign to your elected officials "No Nukes For Iran".
As Prime Minister Netanyahu stated in his speech to the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015,  "for over a year, we've been told that no deal is better than a bad deal (with Iran). Well, this is a bad deal. It's a very bad deal. We're better off without it."    Visit this link to quickly send an email  to your elected officials in Washington  www.acttoimpact.com.
~>~>~>~>~>~>~>~>

File Under the category of "Unintended Consequences"

Side effects of a Nuclear Deal with Iran:
A Middle East Arms Race?:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/saudi-nuclear-deal-raises-stakes-for-iran-talks-2015-03-11-21103596

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  According to two FCC commissioners, those new regulations are bad all around

By Brad Matthews
Watchdog.org
March 4, 2015

The Obama administration and proponents of the FCC’s version of net neutrality may be ecstatic at the passing of regulations that make the Internet a public utility on Feb. 26th, but not all FCC members are so sunny in their outlook for the future.

TechFreedom held a fireside chat on Feb. 27th with two FCC commissioners, Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, and the two of them concurred that the new regulations are far-reaching, largely unchecked and pose a threat to consumer bills and to innovation in the industry.

Ajit Pai openly questioned what the problem was, saying, “There’s never been a systemic analysis of what the problem with the Internet is. In this order, you see scattered niche examples [Comcast and BitTorrent, Apple and FaceTime, others] all of which were resolved, mind you, through private sector initiatives.” He continued, saying that the FCC’s net neutrality regulatory regime is a solution that won’t work in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.”  Essentially, this is, contrary to the assertion of activists and others, a vaguely justified power grab by a government agency.

Mike O’Rielly added, in a bit of humor that “there is a problem, and it’s the document we adopted [Feb. 26].” Neither of them were reticent in explaining exactly how and why the document was the problem. For one, the document was, as Commissioner Pai pointed out, written to solve a problem that wasn’t readily apparent. O’Rielly said the document is “guilt by imagination, trying to guess what will go wrong in the future”; instead of tackling a readily apparent and current issue, the FCC proposal is instead stumbling forward, trying to find future, hypothetical transgressions to retroactively justify its own regulations.

This conspiratorial and wide-ranging thinking on the part of FCC is not a bug, but rather a feature. O’Rielly openly said that “it’s intended to catch everybody”. Pai noted that the FCC was going to centralize powers over what infrastructure was deployed and where through the use of statutes and other laws; O’Rielly mentioned specifically that the FCC was going to “use Section 201 [of the Communications Act] to do it’s dirty work.”

Pai continued, saying that the FCC was largely focused on the ends of Internet regulation rather than the means, and that “a lot of these promises of regulatory restraint are pretty ephemeral.” O’Rielly mentioned that mobile data policies were likely to be subsumed by the new regulations into policies on the wider Internet as a whole. This one-size-fits-all approach ignores the differences in how mobile data is used versus the way the Internet is used by a normal computer or other devices. Many features of mobile service, the two said, could be construed as a company favoring one app or one site over another in terms of data, which would violate the FCC’s standards.

The consumer will inherit many of these new costs and burdens. O’Rielly outright told the audience that “Rates are going to go up because of this.” The new regulations also fail to recognize the burden of local telecommunications taxes, especially in major cities where tax rates on mobile service are often incredibly high. The new regulations, combined with the laws of local governments, stand to impose even more costs onto consumers.

The outlook the two gave was anything but bright–the worries of small government advocates seem justified. The new FCC regulations will, in concert with other laws and under the directive of an organization looking for future problems rather than current problems, give more power to government, more restrictions to innovators, and more costs to the people.

Commissioner Pai summed it up best: “This issue has been largely fact-free for the better part of a decade, and I think it’s frankly shocking that decision-making on something as important as this has been thrown by the wayside in favor of what I consider to be an ideological agenda.”

The net may be “neutral” but the FCC is most certainly not.

This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.
Click here to view the article at http://watchdog.org/203631/fcc-commissioners-regulations/

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 Islamic state: Fears Grow For Abducted Syrian Christians
United Kingdom
BBC
Wednesday 25 Feb 2015

There are fears that more members of an Assyrian Christian community in north-eastern Syria were abducted by Islamic State militants than at first thought. Initial reports had put the number of missing at 90, but one activist said as many as 285 people had been seized on Monday in Hassakeh province. Efforts to try to negotiate their release are reported to be under way.

Some 1,000 local Assyrian families are believed to have fled their homes in the wake of the abductions.

Kurdish and Christian militia are battling IS in the area, amid reports of churches and homes having been set ablaze.

Thousands of Christians in Syria have been forced from their homes by the threat from IS militants.

In areas under their control, Christians have been ordered to convert to Islam, pay jizya (a religious levy), or face death. IS militants in Libya also recently beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians.

The Assyrians were seized by the militants as they swept into 12 villages along the southern bank of the Khabur river near the town of Tal Tamr before dawn on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said at least 90 people had been abducted, most of them women, children and the elderly.

However, the Syriac National Council of Syria put the figure as high as 150, while Afram Yakoub of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden said sources on the ground had told him that up to 285 people were missing, including 156 from the village of Tal Shamran and 90 from Tal al-Jazira.
 
"These were peaceful villages that had nothing to do with the battles," Nasir Haj Mahmoud, a Kurdish official in the YPG militia in north-eastern Syria, told the Reuters news agency.

There are conflicting reports as to where the families have been taken.

Kino Gabriel, a spokesman for the Syriac Military Council - a Christian militia fighting alongside the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG) - told the BBC that it believed the captives had been taken to Abdul Aziz mountain.

Osama Edward of the Sweden-based Assyrian Human Rights Network told the AFP news agency that the captives had been taken to the IS stronghold of Shaddadi, as did Syria's state news agency, Sana.

Another report said they were in Raqqa, 145km (90 miles) to the west, the de facto capital of the "caliphate" declared by IS last June.
 
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Beirut says the motive for the seizure of so many Assyrians is not yet clear. Our correspondent says it may be that the captives are to be used as part of a swap with the Kurdish forces.

Hundreds of Assyrians who were living in villages on the north bank of the Khabur river and elsewhere are reported to have fled following the attack to the largely Kurdish-controlled provincial capital of Hassakeh, to the south-east, and Qamishli, another city to the north-east.
 
Mr Edward said two historic churches had been burned down in captured villages - one in Tal Hurmiz and the other in Qaber Shamiya. The Syrian Observatory also reported that a church in Tal Shamran had also been damaged.

Mr Gabriel said IS had moved a big force into the area and were trying to take control of Tal Tamr.

The Syriac Military Council had about 400 fighters in the area and at least four had been killed in clashes with the jihadists, he added. The YPG has deployed between 1,000 and 1,500 fighters.

The YPG is also continuing a major offensive launched on Sunday against IS some 100km (60 miles) to the east, near the border with Iraq - an area of vital importance to the jihadists.

Click here to read the article and associated links on the BBC News Middle East page

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 ISIS beheading of Coptic Christians on Libyan beach brings Islamists to the doorstep of Europe

United Kingdom
The Independent,
Thursday 19 Feb 2015

The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya has brought ISIS to the doorstep of Europe.

The mass murder, which provoked a volley of Egyptian air strikes on the group’s Libyan stronghold of Derna, realised long-held fears of militants reaching the Mediterranean coast.

ISIS started in Iraq and now controls swathes of adjoining Syria, including along the Turkish border, as part of its so-called Islamic State.

Its ideology has spread much further, with pledges of allegiance from terrorist groups in Egypt, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen and now Libya.

Days before ISIS released its gory video depicting the Egyptians’ beheadings, Libya’s former Prime Minister warned that the group would soon reach the Mediterranean and even Europe if order was not restored in the country.

Ali Zeidan said Libya’s fractured government and easy access to weapons seized during the fall of Colonel Gaddafi made it more susceptible to the activities of jihadists, according to The Times.

“(ISIS) are growing. They are everywhere,” he added.

“In Libya, the situation is still under control. If we leave it one month or two months more I don’t think you can control it.

“It will be a big war in the country and it will be here in Europe as well.”

Libya has seen fierce fighting between rival militias since Gaddafi was overthrown during the 2011 Arab Spring.

Mr Zeidan, who fled to Europe after losing a parliamentary vote of confidence, reported that ISIS had a growing presence in some of the bigger cities and was trying to recruit fighters from rival Islamist groups.

Libya's former Prime Minister Ali Zeidan warned that Isis would reach the Mediterranean Aref Ali Nayed, Libya’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, also said Isis’s presence in Libya was increasing “exponentially”.

Its military gains last summer sparked a rush by other Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa to ally themselves with the group by pledging allegiance and changing their names.

The jihadists behind the beheadings in Libya call themselves the Tripoli Province of the Islamic State.

As the turmoil in Libya continued last year, they gained control of the port city of Derna and nearby Sirte, where Isis seized the murdered Coptic hostages in December and January.

The location of their murders could not be confirmed but footage showed them dressed in orange jumpsuits kneeling on a beach. Behind each of them were masked militants who wielded their knives to kill the bound hostages simultaneously.

ISIS affiliates have also claimed responsibility for attacks on the Egyptian military and police in the Sinai Peninsula, further along the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Gaza.

England and Europe's greater concern than the United States is evident in this article, due to their proximity to the menacing Radical Islamic peril. Learn more about this with accompanying links at the UK's INDEPENDENT website by clicking here.

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ISIS burn 45 people to death in captured Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi as Islamists attack the homes of security forces' families

United Kingdom's Daily Mail
Dailymail.com
Karen Pickles for Mailonline
February 17, 2015

ISIS burn 45 people to death in captured Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi as Islamists attack the homes of security forces' families
    Western town al-Baghdadi captured by ISIS fighters last week
    Victims thought to be members of security forces and their families
    Follows barbaric video of Jordanian pilot Lieutenant Muath al-Kaseasbeh
    Attack is only five miles from air base with 320 US Marines

Militants from Islamic State have burned 45 people to death in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, according to the local police chief.

Col. Qasim al-Obeidi said the motive was unknown but he believed some of the victims were members of the security forces.

He has pleaded for help from the government and international community and said the compound, which houses the families of security personnel and local officials, was now under attack.

It follows the capture of al-Baghdadi, near Ain al-Asad air base, by ISIS fighters last week.

The unconfirmed reports have haunting similarities to the video published earlier this month, showing militants burning alive a Jordanian air force pilot, whose plane crashed in Syria in December.

Al-Baghdadi had been besieged for months by Islamic State fighters before its fall. It had been one of the few towns to still be controlled by the Iraqi government in Anbar province, where IS and allied Sunni Arab tribesmen launched an offensive in January 2014.

On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby, played down its capture, telling reporters it was the first time in the last couple of months that the jihadist group had taken new ground.

But with 320 US Marines stationed just five miles away at the Ain al-Asad air base, training members of the Iraqi army's 7th Division, it will cause concern.

The base was attacked by several suicide bombers, on Friday with the militant repelled by Iraqi troops backed by US-led coalition aircraft.

In a separate development on Tuesday, the influential Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr announced he was withdrawing his forces from an umbrella group of Shia militia fighting IS alongside the Iraqi army.

He cited what he called the bad behaviour of other militia within the Popular Mobilisation Forces, whom he accused of 'wreaking havoc through murdering, kidnapping and violating sanctuaries'.

Shia militia have been accused of kidnapping and killing scores of Sunni civilians since Islamic State launched an offensive in northern Iraq last June that saw it seize large swathes of the country.

 Elsewhere, there are reports at least 35 more Egyptian Christians are feared to have been kidnapped by jihadists in retaliation for air strikes on targets in Libya.

Militants from the Islamic State and Ansar Al-Sharia are understood to have rounded up dozens of farm workers in the wake of bombings by Cairo, it was reported by local media.

The move is believed to be a direct response to strikes by Egyptian warplanes yesterday which came after fanatics released a horrific video showing the beheading of 21 Christians on a beach.

Click here to read the article in its entirety with maps and links at The Dailymail.co.uk

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Netanyahu: Israel is standing by Europe, Europe must stand by Israel

January 8, 2015
The Jerusalem Post
By HERB KEINON

In meeting with Norwegian FM, Netanyahu says radical Islam is a "threat to our common civilization." 

Israel is being attacked by the same forces attacking Europe, and just as Israel stands with Europe, so too Europe must stand with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.

Netanyahu, speaking following a meeting with visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende, said that Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Paris “clearly demonstrates the disdain of radical Islam for the values we hold dear. We cherish freedom and tolerance; they worship tyranny and terror. And through this terror they seek to impose a new dark age on humanity.”

Netanyahu said the terrorists were “part of a global movement and this necessitates a global response. I believe that with the strength of our resolve and the unity of our action, we can defeat this threat to our common civilization. And what the battle against terror requires is courage, clarity and consistency.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said in an Israel Radio interview that precisely that type of determination has been missing up until now in France and elsewhere in Europe in the battle against terrorism.


Hanegbi said the French in the past tried to delude themselves regarding the true nature of threat, saying “maybe it was only sporadic incidents, maybe it is only anti-Semitism, maybe it is only against the Jews.”

He said that the French at times tried to understand the terrorists motivations, and at other times tried to downplay their ties to Islam. The sheer brutality of Wednesday attack, especially the murder of the policeman on the sidewalk, will compel the French government to “look at the reality square in the face” and realize there is a serious danger at their gates, he said.

Hanegbi predicted that France will be forced, like the US was after the September 11, 2001 attacks, to empower the security establishment with tools to effectively deal with the threats.

“France must deal with the threat coming from within,” he said. Hanegbi added that Israel,  unfortunately, has quite a deal of experience dealing with terrorism, and that “anyone who cooperates with a county as experienced [in dealing with terrorism] as Israel, only benefits.”

He said that Israel has the capability to help France a lot more than the French have requested in the past. Now, he said, France “ will have an interest in being helped by anyone who can help them, including israel.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, meanwhile, took the Paris attack and used it to prove a point regarding domestic Israeli policies.

If there was an important lesson to be learned from the attack, he said, it is that extremist movements must be dealt with early, and that there are only small legal and semantic differences separating those organizations from terrorist groups.

Those who demonstrate tolerance toward those organizations, he said, will ultimately pay a high price in blood, as well as in threats to their very democracies that allows those organizations to work.

Israel's lesson, he said, must be not to tarry and to stop the activities of Raed Salah and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

Liberman said Salah's organization was an inseparable link in the chain of terrorist organizations that includes Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida and the Islamic State. He said the organization “shares exactly the same values of the perpetrators of the massacre in Paris and its intolerance of criticism and of anything inconsistent with its extreme world view.”

Liberman said the the northern branch is a threat to Israeli democracy and the country's citizens, and that it needed to be outlawed.

Please click here to see the article in the Jerusalem Post

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Netanyahu-Israel-is-standing-by-Europe-Europe-must-stand-by-Israel-387083

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Houston Subpoenas Pastors’ Sermons in Gay Rights Ordinance Case

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Religion News Service
October 15, 2014

Evangelical leaders are angry after city officials in Houston subpoenaed sermons given by local pastors who oppose an equal rights ordinance that provides protections to the LGBT community.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who drew headlines for becoming the first openly lesbian mayor of a major American city, led support for the ordinance. The measure bans anti-gay discrimination among businesses that serve the public, private employers, in housing and in city employment and city contracting.

Under one of the hotly contested parts of the ordinance, transgender people barred access to a restroom would be able to file a discrimination complaint.

The ordinance, which exempted religious institutions, was passed in May, though its implementation has been delayed due to legal complaints.

Opponents were hoping to repeal the ordinance through a ballot measure and claimed the city’s attorney incorrectly determined they had not gathered enough signatures to qualify for a ballot. Supporters of the repeal reportedly gathered 50,000 signatures, well over the 17,269 needed for inclusion on the November ballot. Opponents of the repeal have questioned the validity of the signatures.

A group of Christians sued the city. In response, city attorneys issued subpoenas to five local pastors during the case’s discovery phase, though the five pastors were not involved in the lawsuit.

The subpoenas sought “all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

“The subpoenas were issued to pastors who have been involved in the political campaign to organize a repeal of Houston’s new equal rights ordinance,” said Janice Evans, chief policy officer to the mayor, in a statement. “It is part of the discovery process in a lawsuit brought by opponents of the ordinance, a group that is tied to the pastors who have received the subpoenas.”

An Arizona-based religious liberty group, Alliance Defending Freedom, has filed a motion on behalf of the pastors seeking to halt the subpoenas. The ministers call the subpoenas “overbroad, unduly burdensome, harassing, and vexatious.”

“The pastors made their sermons relevant to the case by using the pulpit to do political organizing,” Evans said in her statement. “This included encouraging congregation members to sign petitions and help gather signatures for equal rights ordinance foes. The issue is whether they were speaking from the pulpit for the purpose of politics. If so, it is not protected speech.”

The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in January.

“It’s procedural — it’s common to ask for a wide range of documents — but the mayor is playing real hardball,” said David Skeel, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. “The fact that she’s subpoenaing pastors seems quite unusual in a case that’s mostly about politics, and the fact that she’s going inside the church is even more radical. It would be easy enough to get sermons, of course, but asking for them is clearly meant to send a signal.”

City Attorney David Feldman argues the subpoenas are justified because the churches are where opponents of the ordinance met to organize.

“We’re certainly entitled to inquire about the communications that took place in the churches regarding the ordinance and the petitions because that’s where they chose to do it,” Feldman told KTRH News. “It’s relevant to know what representations and instructions were given regarding these petitions.”

The issue has angered evangelicals nationwide, prompting outcry from people such as Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“The separation of church and state means that we will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and we will,” Moore wrote. “But the preaching of the church of God does not belong to Caesar, and we will not hand it over to him. Not now. Not ever.”

More than 1,800 pastors participated in ADF’s seventh annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday event on Oct. 5, daring the Internal Revenue Service to prosecute them for endorsing political candidates. Under IRS regulations, tax-exempt churches are not allowed to engage in partisan politics.

Copyright: For copyright information, please check with the distributor of this item, Religion News Service LLC. Visit http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/14/houston-subpoenas-pastors-sermons-equal-rights-ordinance-case-prompting-outcry/ the source of the above article by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and updates and comments regarding this attempted overstep by Houston government.

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Food for thought from-

The Khaleej Times - a daily U.S. language newspaper published in United Arab Emirates.  It is the second most popular English language newspapers published in the UAE.

Armageddon Can Wait

Mahir Ali

Kaleej Times

3 September 2014

Global threat is used to deflect attention from domestic woes

Barack Obama’s recent confession that his country did not so far have a strategy as far as the so-called ISIS is concerned has been pilloried as a gaffe. It could, however, also be seen as the plain truth.

The United States did not really have a strategy a decade or so ago either, when the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq, evidently expecting that the various pieces would magically fall into place once Saddam Hussein was toppled. The tactic represented a disastrous combination of hubris and ignorance.

The extent to which the subsequent implosions and explosions in the region are a direct consequence of that particular debacle is arguable, but there can be little doubt that the big picture would have been decidedly different, and in all probability considerably less unpleasant, in the absence of that monumental neoconservative folly.

Of course, what’s done cannot be undone, and the present crisis demands a resolute response. It’s by no means undesirable, however, for that response to take account of all that has gone wrong in the recent past.

Obama has come under attack, for instance, for hesitating to strike Syria in the early days of the revolt against the Bashar Al Assad dictatorship, and thereby purportedly facilitating the expansion of Islamist outfits such as ISIS and Jabhat Al Nusra. Too many of the critics are inclined, however, to ignore in this context the consequences of NATO’s role in Libya.

Washington allowed itself to be catapulted into that conflict, partly on the basis of Paris and London’s aggressive enthusiasm, and NATO’s mission was a success in terms of achieving the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. But Libya today is being torn apart by rival militias, many of them distinguishable not so much by ideology as by tribal affiliations.

Under similar circumstances, would the outcome the Syria have been remarkably different? Who can claim with any confidence that Assad’s early overthrow would have prevented Islamist forces from sooner or later gaining the upper hand?

The US has lately been thinking aloud about launching airstrikes in Syria with the ostensible aim of undermining ISIS rather than Assad, based on the assumption that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s troops cannot be quelled by focusing on Iraq alone. That may be so, but there is the wider question of whether they can effectively be tackled at all mainly through air assaults.

There have evidently been some tactical successes in Iraq in this respect, beginning with the besieged Yazidis stranded on Sinjar Mountain — most of whom appear to have made it to relative safety in Iraqi Kurdistan, although the reported numbers are open to question. Then there was the recapture of Mosul Dam, and most recently the apparent rescue of Amerli.

In the latter instance, the US airstrikes were effectively in aid of Shia militias spearheading the assault against ISIS — the same militias, with links to Iran, that not many years ago were dedicated to undermining the American occupation of Iraq. “Should such military actions continue,” The New York Times noted on Monday, “they could signal a dramatic shift for the United States and Iran, which have long vied for control in Iraq.”

Naturally, neither Washington nor Tehran is keen to emphasise this aspect of the emerging situation. Matters are further complicated by the fact that some of the militias betray a penchant for sectarian brutality that, although no match for the revolting atrocities that ISIS is so keen to broadcast, nonetheless provides cause for concern.

The United Nations this week decided to investigate “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale” by ISIS, as well as atrocities by Iraqi government forces. Whether or not such an investigation serves any practical purpose in the murkily unfolding circumstances, the ostensible even-handedness of the approach is interesting.

Meanwhile, there has been considerable concern across several nations in Europe as well as in the US and Australia over young Muslim citizens’ tendency towards jihadist adventurism, with thousands — the numbers are again uncertain — travelling to Syria or Iraq as Islamist volunteers.

This is hardly a novel trend — it can be traced back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s. The worries over it are understandable, although there is thus far no clear evidence of returnees planning domestic acts of terrorism. It is at the same time difficult to altogether dispense with the notion that projecting ISIS as an unprecedented global threat helps some Western governments to deflect attention from domestic woes.

The ISIS threat should not be underestimated, but exaggerations can have the perverse effect of increasing its cachet both within and outside the region. Nobody has a clear idea of precisely how this story will unfold, let alone end. But there’s not much value in pretending it portends some kind of Armageddon.

The Western insistence on “no boots on the ground” is open to interpretation as insufficient commitment or even cowardice. But in fact it’s a welcome augury, not least in the light of recent experience. When, since the Second World War, have Western boots on the ground produced positive consequences in the Middle East (or, for that matter, anywhere else)?

The ideal response to the regional dilemmas of the moment would be an unprecedented level of cooperation, coordination and collaboration between Middle Eastern states, notwithstanding longstanding rivalries in some cases. That, unfortunately, cannot be described as an imminent prospect, despite the tentative emergence of intriguing alliances. But there’s never been a better time for it.

Article in full at Kaleej Times

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Iraq's largest Christian town abandoned as Isis advance continues

UN officials say an estimated 200,000 new refugees are seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic extremists

US considering humanitarian relief to Iraqis trapped by Isis

    by Martin Chulov  
    at theguardian.com
    Thursday 7 August 2014

Thousands of Yazidi and Christian people flee to Erbil after the latest wave of Isis advances. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Iraq's largest Christian city was all but abandoned on Thursday as the jihadist advance through minority communities in the country's north-west rampaged towards the Kurdish stronghold of Erbil.

UN officials said an estimated 200,000 new refugees were seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic extremists who had pursued them since the weekend. The city of Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul, home to around 50,000 Christians was the latest to fall, with most residents fleeing before dawn as convoys of extremists drew near.

Other Christian towns near Mosul, including Tel Askof, Tel Keif and Qaramless have also largely been emptied. Those who remained behind have reportedly been given the same stark choice given to other minorities, including Yazidis: flee, convert to Islam, or be killed.

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen have been at the frontlines of Iraq's war with the Islamic State (Isis) ever since the jihadist group stormed into Mosul and Tikrit and mid-June. The Iraqi army capitulated within hours, with at least 60,000 officers and soldiers fleeing on the first day of the assault alone.

Ever since, the jihadists have continued to make advances, while Iraqi troops have concentrated on defending Baghdad and the Shia south, leaving the defence of minorities in the north to the Kurdish peshmurga.

However, even the much vaunted Kurdish forces were no match for the heavy weapons wielded by the jihadists as they advanced in recent days. Peshmurga officers ordered troops to withdraw to areas administered by the Kurdish regional government – a clear sign of priorities and of where the battle lines are being drawn.

Without any protection, Yazidis, Christians and Turkmen are being uprooted from communities they have lived in for millennia and the geo-social fabric of Iraq is being rapidly shredded.

While those who have managed to flee the Christian areas have so far had a relatively safe passage to Erbil, tens of thousands of Yazidis remain besieged on a mountain top near Sinjar, with little food or water.

The UN said on Thursday it was able to get some supplies overland to the stranded hordes – avoiding Isis fighters who have surrounded most of Mount Sinjar. Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced that Turkish helicopters had dropped food and water on the mountain top. Iraqi helicopters have also made food drops, but stranded Yazidis say they do not have enough to survive.

The Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk, Joseph Thomas, described the situation in northern Iraq as "catastrophic, a crisis beyond imagination". He demanded urgent intervention to save what remained of the area's Christian heritage.

Kurdish officials on Thursday demanded more help in catering for refugees. The Kurdish administered areas have seen staggering numbers cross their notional border since the original Isis onslaught two months ago. In the first week alone, some 500,000 people are thought to have fled towards Erbil.

The capital of the Kurdish north is already home to a new Chaldean Christian community, which fled Baghdad in the wake of an Isis-led massacre inside a cathedral in October 2010. Many fleeing Christians have headed for the Ainkawa neighbourhood, which is home to Baghdad's Christian exiles.

The past 11 years of war and insurrection since the US invasion have led to most of Iraq's Christians fleeing. Numbers have plummeted starkly from an estimated one million before 2003 to around 150,000 now. A large number of those who remain are now displaced.

Miriam Dagher, 53, from Qaraqosh, said churches in the city had already been torched and religious insignia smashed. "We stayed as long as we could," she said. "But nothing could save us. This is the end of our community.

Click here to read the article at the Guardian

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Amnesty On Trial

May 28, 2014
By KrisAnne Hall

If the federal government were a person, if Congress were subject to the laws they create, they would face fines, prison or both for many of their actions. The ENLIST Act, being touted as a “pathway” to citizenship for illegal aliens may be one of those actions. It could be argued that the very act itself violates federal law. Consider this:

Immigration law, 8 US Code 1324 states that it is a crime to, either knowingly or recklessly, “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, or attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection… transport, or move or attempt to transport or move” or to even “encourage or induce” an illegal alien “to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowingly or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.”

It is not only a crime to actually commit these offenses, but it is a crime to even attempt to do so. Anyone found guilty of violating 8 US Code 1324 is subject to fines, prison or both. However, if it can be proven that this person has committed this act for personal gain, the fines go up and the prison sentence can be as much as ten years.

The Act also appears to violate 8 US Code 1611 which sets forth specific federal benefits that cannot be given to illegal aliens.
- See more at: http://krisannehall.com/amnesty-trial/#sthash.9AOkP6WK.dpuf
 

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 May 8, 2014 2:19PM

Is the Constitution Relevant Today?

By David Boaz
From The Cato Institute
  May 8, 2014 2:19PM
 
In the Washington Post, Paul Kane reports that recent experiences with ultra-conservative Senate candidates have made Republican leaders fearful of candidates like Rep. Paul Broun in Georgia. There may be reasons for party leaders or voters to have doubts about Broun, but I hope they aren’t actually concerned about the purported problem that Kane identifies:

Broun is prone to fiery speeches invoking the Founding Fathers and applying those 1789 principles to issues 225 years later.

Seriously? He thinks the Constitution is still the law of the land? And that the framework it established for individual rights and limited government is still relevant today? Do Republican leaders really think that’s a bad message? Or does the Washington Post?

Thomas Jefferson and his followers hailed “the principles of ‘76” or “the spirit of ‘76” in their battles with Federalists. As historian Joseph Ellis put it, “Jefferson’s core conviction was that what might be called ‘the spirit of ‘76’ had repudiated all energetic expressions of government power, most especially power exercised from faraway places, which included London, Philadelphia or Washington.” Good thing there isn’t an actual Jeffersonian running!

But the principles of 1789, or actually of 1787, also protect freedom from government power and are just as essential today as they were at the Founding. The Framers knew their history. They knew that people with power tend to abuse it and to restrict freedom. In his last letter, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote:

    All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Because they feared the exercise of power, the Framers wrote a Constitution that established a government of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers. Then the people insisted on a Bill of Rights to further protect their rights even from the very limited federal government established in the Constitution. Then, after identifying specific rights that individuals retained, they also added, “for greater caution,” as James Madison put it, the Ninth Amendment to clarify that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

One would hope that all members of Congress – and voters, and political reporters – believe that those principles and those constitutional rules should be applied to issues of today. Surely the First Amendment remains relevant. And the Fourth. And the limits on unconstrained power in the basic structure of the Constitution. The merits of any particular candidate aside, support of the Constitution and the principles it embodies seems like a good, even minimal, qualification for public office.

Click here to read the article in its entirety at The Cato Institute

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A Timeless Message
PAYDAY - SOMEDAY

 
"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."
Jeremiah 6:16

Dr. Robert G Lee was the pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee for thirty-two years. During his lifetime he was a strong leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, known as a preacher’s preacher, and was highly respected among his peers. This sermon has been accepted as a classic by all that have heard and read it, and through its message, the Lord still speaks to mankind.

Dr. Lee originally published the following message in 1926. It is said that he developed it following the suggestion of a deacon at a prayer meeting in 1919 and that he preached it at least once a year at his home church. All total, it is related that he preached the messsage over 1,000 times. Like many Baptists, Lee was known more as a preacher than a theologian but his doctrine was sound to the core. Lee believed in and preached a doctrine often overlooked in our day, that of the necessity of regeneration.

If you have 60 minutes to listen to Dr Lee's sermon "PAYDAY- SOMEDAY", Click here.

Or if you're a reader with time to read 17 pages, Click here.

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Ala. Supreme Court: 'Unborn Child Has Inalienable Right to Life From its Earliest Stages

By Michael W Chapman

CNSNews.com | Apr 23, 2014

   In a case about a pregnant woman who used cocaine and endangered her unborn child, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed (8-1) that the word "child" includes "an unborn child," and that the law therefore "furthers the State's interest in protecting the life of children from the earliest stages of their development."
In his concurring opinion, Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore wrote that "an unborn child has an inalienable right to life from its earliest stages of development," and added, "I write separately to emphasize that the inalienable right to life is a gift of God that civil government must secure for all persons - born and unborn."
The court decision on April 18 was in reference to Sarah Janie Hicks v. State of Alabama. Hicks had been charged in 2009 with violating Alabama's chemical-endangerment statute, which in part says that a "person commits the crime of chemical endangerment" by "knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia," a felony.
In Hicks' case, she was charged with using cocaine while pregnant. Her child, "J.D.," tested positive for cocaine "at the time of his birth," reads the court document. 
In January 2010, Hicks pleaded guilty to the crime but also "reserved the right to appeal the issues" she and her attorneys had presented earlier in trying to get the charges dismissed. Hicks got a three year suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation.
Hicks appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals in Alabama, arguing that because the chemical-endangerment statute did not specifically use the words "unborn children" or "fetuses," the law was ambiguous and could not have applied to her unborn child.
The Appeals Court ruled against Hicks, stating that "the plain language of 26-15-3.2 [chemical-endangerment statute] was clear and unambiguous and that the plain meaning of the term 'child' in [the statute] included an unborn child or viable fetus.'"
Hicks then petitioned the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012 to review the Appeals Court decision.  Last Friday's ruling affirmed the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
In their conclusion, eight of the nine Alabama Supreme Court justices said: "Consistent with this Court's opinion in Ankrom [a similar chemical-endangerment case], by its plain meaning, the word 'child' in the chemical-endangerment statute includes an unborn child, and, therefore, the statute furthers the State's interest in protecting the life of children from the earliest stages of their development."
The law to protect the life of unborn children "is consistent with many statutes and decisions throughout our nation that recognize unborn children as persons with legally enforceable rights in many areas of the law," said the justices.
In his own concurring opinion, Chief Justice Moore argued that natural rights come from God, not from the government. He cited the Declaration of Independence that there is a "self-evident" truth that "all Men are created equal, [and] that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," particularly "life."
The Declaration of Independence "acknowledges as  'self-evident' the truth that all human beings are endowed with inherent dignity and the right to life as a direct result of having been created by God," said Chief Justice Moore.
He also cited Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, which says, "This law of nature, being co-eval [beginning at the same time] with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this."
Chief Justice Moore went on to explain how at the Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War II, Nazi criminals could not argue that they were only following orders or just following the laws of the German government because there is a higher law, the "very law of nature."
"Although the Nuremberg defendants were following orders and the laws of their own officials and country, they were guilty of violating a higher law to which all nations are equally subject: the laws of nature and of nature's God," wrote Justice Moore.
That law binds all nations, including the State of Alabama, said Justice Moore. "In 2006, the AlabamaLegislature amended the homicide statute to define 'person' to include 'an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability," he wrote, "thus recognizing under the statute that, when an 'unborn child' is killed, a 'person' is killed."
In conclusion,  he wrote, "The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment provides that a state may not 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Unborn children are a class of persons entitled to equal protection of the laws."
"States have an obligation to provide to unborn children at any stage of their development the same legal protection from injury and death they provide to persons already born," wrote Justice Moore. "Because a human life with a full genetic endowment comes into existence at the moment of conception, the self-evident truth that 'all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' encompasses the moment of conception." 
"Legal recognition of the unborn as members of the human family derives ultimately from the laws of nature and of nature's God, Who created human life in His image and protected it with the commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill,'" wrote Chief Justice Moore.  "Therefore, the interpretation of the word 'child' in Alabama's chemical-endangerment statute, § 26-15- 3.2, Ala. Code 1975, to include all human beings from the moment of conception is fully consistent with these first principles regarding life and law."

Click here to view this article at cns news where we found this affirmation of God's truth.

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