Retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director David Petraeus wrote an article entitled “David Petraeus: Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists.”
Thank you, sir, for the clarification. Up until now, I had believed Barack Obama; that Islamic terrorism was caused by climate change.
Petraeus’ premise is that “inflammatory political discourse…against Muslims and Islam…including proposals from various quarters for blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion… will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens… directly undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims.”
Let us first dispel a universal myth and the fundamental flaw in Petraeus’ argument. There is no such thing as gratitude in foreign policy; only interests.
In every one of the “alliance” cases Petraeus cites: Sunni Muslims in al Anbar province, the Iraqi Shiite government, the Afghan Northern Alliance, the nation of Indonesia – all of them worked with the United States because of mutual interest, not happy talk.
NATO exists and operates on the basis of mutual interest and even after a decade of vitriol and their mutually exclusive ideologies, Hitler and Stalin still concluded the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact.
Petraeus is concerned that political rhetoric will inhibit our ability to root out entrenched terrorist, like in Libya, which would not have become entrenched with terrorists except for the foreign policy malpractice of the Obama Administration and CIA Director Petraeus, arguably compounding “the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens.”
The Islamic State, ISIS, has made no secret of its intention to infiltrate Europe and the United States through “refugee” migration or other means for the purpose of carrying out terrorist acts.
In his Congressional testimony, FBI Director James Comey admitted that there is no way to screen the tens of thousands of Muslim refugees the Obama administration plans to accept into the US.
Yet Petraeus considers any effort to halt uncontrolled Muslim immigration as “blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion,” “demonizing a religious faith” or “toying with anti-Muslim bigotry.”
Petraeus employs all the familiar false propositions made popular by Democrat Party operatives, the liberal media, and, more recently, by the Republican establishment as a not-so-well-disguised repudiation of potential courses of action outlined by Donald Trump.
It reads less like a valuable contribution to the foreign policy literature than a left-wing academic polemic or an audition for a cabinet position in the Administration of Hillary Clinton.
Petraeus equates prudent self-defense measures to hate-speech and considers potential ISIS infiltration an acceptable risk in order for “moderate” Muslims to feel good about themselves.
And just exactly who are these “moderate” Muslims Petraeus wishes to appease?
Is it the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, Muslim Brotherhood Qatar, or Sunni Islamist Turkish President Erdogan to whom, collectively, the Obama Administration has recklessly outsourced our Middle East policy?
Petraeus knows full well that it is not an issue of religion, but recognition of the potentially deadly consequences of thousands of violent migrants from a volatile region entering the US en masse.
In the end, the Petraeus argument provides little more than the tired clichés of Islamophobia, that Muslim hostility to the West is caused by verbal slights or other affronts to Islam.
No one is advocating gratuitous insults, but unwarranted appeasement or other emotionally satisfying liberal gestures are, in reality, construed by Muslim leaders as a weakness to be exploited.
In the world of realpolitik, it is preferable to be liked. It is advantageous to be respected. In the absence of those, fear will do. (For more from the author of “Petraeus’ Profoundly Silly Islamophobia Article” please click HERE)
By Jerome R. Corsi. Katherine Prudhomme O’Brien, the New Hampshire state legislator who confronted Hillary Clinton in a town-hall rally in Derry, New Hampshire, during the state primary on Jan. 3, explained to WND in an exclusive telephone interview why she was so upset at reporters who defend Mrs. Clinton by suggesting she should not be blamed for her husband’s infidelity.
“This is about rape, not infidelity,” O’Brien insisted, explaining that at the Derry rally her goal was to confront Hillary about Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who went public in an interview with Dateline NBC that broadcast on Feb. 24, 1999, that Clinton had raped her decades earlier, in 1978, while Clinton was yet Arkansas attorney general.
The YouTube video of O’Brien’s encounter with Hillary at the Derry town-hall rally on Jan. 3 shows O’Brien standing to shout her question at Hillary as Hillary at first ignores her and then declares that she does not intend to call on O’Brien for a question, charging that O’Brien was being “very rude.”
“I asked myself what kind of a wife stays with a man who raped Juanita Broaddrick?” O’Brien asked.
In the YouTube clip, the CNN reporter interviewing O’Brien was clearly antagonistic, agreeing with Hillary that suggesting O’Brien was a Republican operative who only heckled Hillary to embarrass her politically. (Read more from “Women Confront Hillary: ‘It’s About Rape, Stupid'” HERE)
_______________________________________
Bill’s Sex-Assault Victim Lashes out Over Hillary’s Terrorizing
By Jerome R. Corsi. CNN reporter Chris Cuomo recently turned antagonistic in an interview with GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump for branding Hillary Clinton the “enabler” of her husband’s sexual crimes, prompting Kathleen Willey, a Clinton assault victim, to write an open letter to Cuomo.
The interview, broadcast Monday when Donald Trump phoned in to CNN’s “New Day” show, allowed Cuomo to confront Trump over his statements that Hillary Clinton enabled her husband’s sexual crimes by concealing the details, intimidating or harassing the other party, and more.
“[People see this] as potential proof that you don’t have anything to offer as president. What is your thinking on this line of attack?” he asked.
“Well, this is a nice way to start off the interview,” Trump responded, turning the table on Cuomo. “You should congratulate me for having won the race. I thought, you know, there’d at least be some small congratulations. But I’m not surprised with CNN because that’s the way they treat Trump. They call it ‘The Clinton Network.’” (Read more from “Bill’s Sex-Assault Victim Lashes out Over Hillary’s Terrorizing” HERE)
Pregnant, female, Navy SEALs was something many of us used to joke about as a way of exaggerating the absurd social engineering in the military. Yet, placing women in special operations and direct combat units has now become a reality under the Obama-led Pentagon. Sadly, not only have Republicans like John McCain refused to use their perches on the Armed Services Committees in the House and Senate to block this social engineering, they are now codifying it with a provision that could lead to a mandatory draft of all women.
Earlier this week, I noted that the final House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) contained a provision for the first time ever including young women in the requirement to register for Selective Service. However, this provision was only added because of a strategic mistake of the committee chairman who thought the members would vote down this absurdity. He was just trying to make a point. John McCain, on the other hand, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, deliberately placed that provision in his chairman’s mark of the NDAA, according to a Senate staffer.
I am further told by Senate staff that it is unlikely an amendment to strike this provision will even succeed on the floor of the Senate, which means a majority of that body now supports drafting women. The only hope to stop this is on the House floor. Have we gone mad as a society?
Any vestige of GOP opposition to Democrat social transformation is now gone. There is no floor. Battle lines that used to hold for decades are now plowed through by Democrats in a matter of one committee markup. A party that stands for nothing, indeed.
Update: A Summary of the NDAA from McCain’s office defends the provision to include women in Selective Service as follows: “Because the Department of Defense has lifted the ban on women serving in ground combat units, the committee believes there is no further justification in limiting the duty to register under the Military Selective Service Act to men.” Thus, McCain believes that because a few liberal social groups and Obama’s politically appointed generals want to include women in combat on a voluntary basis, the Senate should therefore require all women to potentially register for the draft. And instead of debating this earth shattering social transformation publicly in a standalone bill, McCain decided to slip in the provision to a 1,000-page bill authorizing all defense programs.
Another disturbing provision in this bill establishes an independent National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. The commission is tasked with, among other things, to “consider how to foster a sense of service and civic responsibility among the nation’s youth, improve military recruiting, and increase the pool of qualified applicants for military service and their propensity to serve.” While this provision sounds innocuous, some conservatives might be concerned that given McCain’s long record of support for Americorps and other public service programs, he will use this program to compel young adults (now including women) into some sort of public service.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who sits on the Armed Services Committee, was so vehemently opposed to this provision that he voted against the underlying bill. In a statement provided to Conservative Review, the Texas senator noted that although the committee adopted 12 of his amendments related to an array of foreign policy and national security issues, he could not “in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat.” “I will continue my efforts to speak out against the effort to force America’s daughter into combat,” wrote the former presidential candidate in a statement.
Update: Sens. Mike Lee and Deb Fischer also voted against final passage. Sen. Lee called this provision “misguided and ill-advised” in a statement he released tonight. He also opposed the bill because it continues the program funding the Syrian rebels. “The bill authorizes the continuation of the Syria Train and Equip program, which was suspended last year after expending hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to train only four or five fighters and finance the purchase of weapons that were ultimately seized by Al Nusra, the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate,” wrote Lee. “I firmly believe that the American counter-ISIS strategy must be reconsidered from the top-down and that we should not fund failing programs.” (For more from the author of “John McCain Slips in Provision to Draft Women in Defense Bill” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/F-15_pilots_Elmendorf-1.jpg19603008Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 23:17:532016-05-15 10:13:26McCain Slips Provision to Draft Women Into NDAA
Lisa Murkowski may not be a household name outside of her home state of Alaska, but she is known within the halls of the Senate for being among the most liberal lawmakers with an “R” by her name.
In 2010, she barely won re-election, taking a plurality of the votes in a three-way race, but Alaskan Republicans are watching with increasing angst, though some have given into resignation, as no viable conservative candidate has stepped forward to challenge her.
Roll Call reported that Murkowski in the last session of Congress was second only to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine among Republicans most likely to vote with President Obama, doing so 72 percent of the time.
Alaska’s senior senator scored below nearly all her Republican colleagues in the Heritage Action Scorecard of votes with 33 percent. The average for GOP senators was 59 percent, with Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio coming in at 100 and 90 percent, respectively. Murkowski also falls near the bottom of the American Conservative Union (the sponsor of CPAC) rating for all GOP senators (slightly above Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk), and was given an “F” grade by Conservative Review.
Yet Murkowski knows conservatism is still important to a significant percentage of the state’s Republican Party, so as in 2010, she is billing herself, incredulously, as “The Conservative Voice For Alaska.”
Make no mistake, there is a strong conservative base within the Last Frontier’s GOP, as evidenced in the presidential primary results earlier this spring. Cruz won the state in a upset, taking 36 percent of the vote, followed by Donald Trump with 33.5 percent, Rubio with 15 percent and Dr. Ben Carson with 11 percent. In other words, non-establishment Republicans accounted for at least 80 percent of the primary vote total in the state.
“People have been really grumbling about Murkowski,” since the 2010 race, said Bill Keller, who was the co-chairman of Cruz’s campaign in Alaska.
The Kenai Peninsula resident said the main thing that the senator has going for her, in the eyes of some Republican Party leaders in the state, is that she is the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; however, that carries little weight with Keller.
Keller finds it unacceptable the manner in which she flouts the state party platform, which is pro-life, pro-family and anti-big government.
Among the votes she has taken that anger pro-life Alaskans are to fund Planned Parenthood, to affirm Roe v. Wade as the “law of the land” (in a sense of the Senate resolution), and to strike down the Mexico City policy (first instituted under Ronald Reagan), which barred federal dollars from being used to fund abortions overseas.
For Dave Bronson, who serves on the board of the Alaska Family Council, it is not just Murkowski’s liberal votes on social issues that upset him, it his her support of “fixing Obamacare.” He pointed to a recent op-ed penned by the senator for the Alaska Dispatch, in which she wrote, “I will not ease up on my efforts to fix this unworkable law.”
“’We need to repair this thing and make it workable for Alaska.’ That’s a real insight into her thinking,” Bronson said. “She thinks Obamacare is workable and fixable. To a social conservative, libertarian like me, the whole notion of it is repugnant … because it compels people to do certain things. She thinks, tinker on the edges and all of the sudden magically Obamacare will work.”
Her 2010 Republican challenger, Joe Miller, hit Murkowski on this very issue, charging that the senator’s mindset was entirely in the wrong place regarding Obamacare. He pointed to a statement she made to a local news outlet that year shortly after the controversial law’s passage, indicating it was a work in progress. “Repealing this is not the answer, in my opinion,” she said.
In a 2009 town hall in the public debate leading up to the law’s passage, the senator also tipped her hand, when she told the audience she would not rule government run healthcare. “We have government-run healthcare now,” adding, “What we have to have is a government-run plan that actually works.”
Bronson said that Obamacare is in fact failing Alaskans. Like residents in many other states, the exchange offers residents few choices, and the costs keep going up. UnitedHealth Group announced it was leaving the market. Humana recently announced plans to pull out too.
Bronson stated that he would like Miller to challenge Murkowski again, seeing him as one of the few with the statewide name recognition and the moxie to do it.
After defeating the incumbent Murkowski in the GOP primary in perhaps the greatest upset in the 2010 election cycle, the newcomer candidate faltered in the general election, losing narrowly as the senator waged a write-in effort (as an independent) to hold on to the seat held by her family since the early 1980s.
Miller decided to give it another try in 2014, running for the senate seat occupied by Democrat Mark Begich. Miller beat expectations in the primary, finishing ahead of then-Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell, but losing to former Attorney General Dan Sullivan. The results were Sullivan 40 percent, Miller 32 percent and Treadwell 25 percent. Sullivan went on to topple Begich in the general election.
“In ’14, [Miller] ran an absolutely excellent campaign. As far as I can tell, not one misstep,” said Bronson.
Keller would also like to see Miller run, saying but for Treadwell being in the race playing the spoiler, he believes the decorated combat veteran would have won, despite being outspent over 10-to-1.
Judy Eledge, who serves on the board of the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club and is a delegate to the national convention, thinks Miller could beat Murkowski again in a primary, and the senator knows it.
She said in some ways it is the “rematch that people have been waiting six years for.” Her only question is whether Miller could win in the general election. There, she is less sanguine, sensing Alaska is drifting left of center politically, based on recent state and local election results.
So far, the Democrats have not named a challenger to take on Murkowski. In Bronson’s estimation, they do not feel the need to, given the senator’s liberal voting record. Her 2010 plurality victory was fueled in fact by Democrat voters, who knew their candidate was not viable.
What does Miller himself himself think of taking on his old nemesis again? So far he has not ruled out the possibility. The filing deadline of June 1 is quickly approaching, with the election slated for Aug. 16. The West Point graduate defeated Murkowski the first time, announcing just four months from Election Day and starting with zero statewide name recognition. It is conceivable he could do it again with just short of three months, and an army of volunteers likely ready to stand up statewide.
Fairbanks Assemblyman Lance Roberts looks back at what Miller was able to accomplish in 2010 with a sense of wonder. “It is amazing to me that he did it in a short time, and he had not had a political office before,” he said. “He did a yeoman’s job.” However, Roberts also warned that this time around, Murkowski is doing everything she can to avoid a repeat of 2010.
If Miller decides to enter the race, it will be based on the principled belief that propelled him into the race in 2010: Politicians, regardless of family name or longstanding position, should not get a pass from answering to the voters for their record. And if anything in the case of Lisa Murkowski, that record in the ensuing six years has only become more liberal.
(For more from the author of “This Liberal GOP Senator Votes With Obama More Than Any Other up for Re-Election” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/48414424_1280x960.jpg9601280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 23:16:092016-05-14 23:46:06This Liberal GOP Senator Votes With Obama More Than Any Other up for Re-Election
A state agency wants to remove a small-town judge in Wyoming from two posts because she told a reporter that her religious beliefs would prevent her from solemnizing same-sex marriages.
In her full-time responsibilities, Municipal Judge Ruth Neely isn’t authorized to preside over marriages. In part-time duties on the local Circuit Court, though, she could be asked to do so.
Now supporters across Wyoming and the nation are siding with Neely as she asks the Wyoming Supreme Court to prevent the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics from ending her 21-year career as a municipal judge in Pinedale, a town with a population of 2,030 just south of Yellowstone National Park.
The commission also seeks to impose a fine of up to $40,000 on Neely for saying her religious beliefs preclude her from doing gay marriages—nearly twice the $22,914 annual salary she made three years ago as a municipal judge with an office in Pinedale Town Hall.
“The fundamental principle that no judge should be expelled from office because of her core convictions unites a diverse group of Wyoming’s citizens, including members of the LGBT community who have expressed dismay at the commission’s actions here,” Neely’s lawyers argue in a brief filed at the state’s highest court.
Pinedale resident Kathryn Anderson—whom they identified as part of that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community—said in an affidavit that “it would be obscene and offensive to discipline Judge Neely for her statement … about her religious beliefs regarding marriage.”
Anderson, a lesbian, was married to another woman in 2014 by one of at least nine other public officials in Pinedale, besides clergy, empowered to officiate at weddings, Neely’s lawyers said in court papers. She said she didn’t ask Neely because she knew of the judge’s religious views.
In a formal statement on the case, Daniel Blomberg, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said:
In America, the government doesn’t get to punish people for their religious beliefs—especially not for beliefs that the U.S. Supreme Court itself, in the very opinion that recognized same-sex marriage, said were ‘decent and honorable’ and held ‘in good faith by reasonable and sincere people.’
The Becket Fund, which this week filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Neely, is one of the most well-known organizations to rush to her defense.
‘Serve the Community’
Other groups and individuals filing briefs on her behalf include the Hispanic Leadership Conference; National Black Church Initiative; Coalition of African American Pastors USA; National Black Religious Broadcasters; Alveda King Ministries, led by a niece of Martin Luther King Jr.; and Heritage Foundation scholar Ryan T. Anderson.
Neely is one of a growing number of judges and other officers of the court targeted by self-identified progressives who argue that religious convictions about marriage are trumped by the political goals of those who successfully sought to redefine marriage in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year.
Even when an arrangements can be made for someone else to officiate at a same-sex wedding, the Becket Fund and other organizations argue, judges who decline to do so on First Amendment grounds face campaigns to remove them.
Neely, in her early 60s, has been an active member of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Pinedale for 38 years, during most of which she taught Sunday school. For the past 24 years, she has directed the church’s tone chime choir.
“I believe it to be part of my duty as a follower of Jesus Christ to use my talents to serve the community,” Neely said in an affidavit, adding:
I truly care about all the people whose cases I preside over, and in deciding their cases, I seek not only to ensure that justice is achieved, but also to help those individuals better themselves in the local community.
‘Choices Have to Be Made’
The Neely case began in December 2014, shortly after a federal judge in Casper, Wyo., struck down a state law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. A reporter from a local newspaper asked Neely whether she would be “excited” to officiate at same-sex marriage ceremonies, her lawyers said.
Neely, who used to work at the same newspaper, told the reporter that because of her religious beliefs, she would “not be able to do” same-sex marriages. She had not yet been asked to perform one, and other magistrates were available, she told the reporter, who quoted her in a story published Dec. 11, 2014.
“When law and religion conflict, choices have to be made,” she was quoted as saying.
The chairwoman of the Wyoming Democratic Party forwarded the article to the Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics, according to a sequence of events published in the Casper Star Tribune.
The Democratic official, Ana Cuprill, told the Star Tribune:
My concern in passing on that information was that I felt that any judgment that Judge Neely would have in the future might be challenged if there was some sort of an issue with someone who is LGBT and felt prejudiced, and that would be a liability in our town. … I was concerned when she said she was not going to follow the law.
In March 2015, the commission notified Neely that it was beginning formal disciplinary proceedings, alleging she had broken rules of judicial conduct, her lawyers said.
The agency alleged that by communicating her religious beliefs about marriage and her inability to solemnize same-sex marriages, Neely failed to follow the law and showed bias or prejudice based on sexual orientation.
‘Tremendous Asset’
Judge Curt Haws, the only full-time magistrate of the Circuit Court for the 9th Judicial District, suspended Neely from her part-time duties there in January 2015, telling her in a face-to-face meeting that it would be best, her lawyers say.
Neely volunteers on the steering committee of the local drug treatment court and was part of the committee that reviewed the same procedural rules now being used against her, according to court papers.
The judge and her husband, Gary, co-owned Bucky’s Outdoors, a popular “big boy toy store” offering snowmobiles and other gear, for many years before selling it. He continues to work there.
Pinedale Mayor Bob Jones called Neely a “tremendous asset to the community” in an affidavit, adding:
I know Ruth and Gary to be solid, unselfish, and caring people who are always willing to help those in need, especially the down-and-out in the community.
Neely worked as a schoolteacher in Fulda, Minn., after graduating from Gustavus Adolphus College, a 134-year-old liberal arts school in St. Peter, Minn., founded by Swedish Lutheran immigrants.
The couple married in St. Peter in 1977, just before moving to Pinedale. They have one grown daughter and two grandchildren.
‘Extreme Position’
According to the brief Neely’s lawyers filed April 29 with the state Supreme Court, the judicial ethics commission told the judge it would drop the proceedings if she agreed to resign as both a full-time municipal judge, where her duties don’t include marriages, and as a Circuit Court magistrate, where she “may” perform marriages.
In addition, the commission wanted Neely to admit wrongdoing and agree not to seek judicial office again in the state. The judge turned down the deal, her lawyers said.
This past February, the judicial ethics commission asked Neely to make a public apology and agree to officiate at same-sex weddings. She replied that to do so would violate her religious beliefs, the judge’s lawyers said.
The commission then recommended to the Wyoming Supreme Court that Neely be removed from both judgeships.
Neely is represented by Wyoming lawyer Herbert K. Doby and by three lawyers from the Arizona-based Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom—James A. Campbell, Kenneth J. Connelly, and Douglas G. Wardlow.
In court papers, they skewer the commission for insisting that Neely cannot remain a judge, even though her main job as a municipal judge gives her no authority to perform weddings:
By adopting this extreme position, the commission has effectively said that no one who holds Judge Neely’s widely shared beliefs about marriage can remain a judge in Wyoming.
‘Find Another Line of Work’
Jason Marsden, a former Wyoming resident who is executive director of the Denver-based Matthew Shepard Foundation, told the Associated Press that Neely can’t do her job:
You can’t have a piecemeal government, or government by checkbox for the personal beliefs and bias of people who for a time hold a public office. If you want to hold a public office, you have to serve the public under the law, and if you can’t do that, you need to find another line of work.
The foundation is named after Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming whom attackers beat, tied to a fence, and left to die in 1998. A federal hate crimes law now bears his name.
In her full-time duties of nearly 21 years, Neely hears cases arising under the ordinances of the town of Pinedale, which generally involve traffic and parking violations, animal control issues, and minor misdemeanors such as public intoxication and underage drinking.
For about 14 years, Neely also has served part time as a Circuit Court magistrate. Her lawyers say her authority extends to administering oaths, issuing subpoenas and search and arrest warrants, conducting bond hearings, and solemnizing marriages.
The law, however, appears to give a magistrate discretion in exercising that authority, saying he or she “may” officiate at wedding ceremonies.
Wendy Soto, executive director of the Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics, said in an email Wednesday that the agency “will not respond” to The Daily Signal’s questions about why it pursued the case after the Democratic official brought it to the agency’s attention.
Soto referred The Daily Signal to procedural rules on the commission’s website and said the agency will not provide the names of individuals and organizations that support its actions against Neely.
Doby, the judge’s local attorney, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. A spokesman for Alliance Defending Freedom told The Daily Signal on Thursday that its lawyers will not comment on the case.
‘Readily Accommodate’
In court papers, her lawyers specify two alternatives that would allow Neely to remain a magistrate without compromising her religious beliefs.
In one, the state could allow her to refer same-sex marriage requests to other magistrates. Or, magistrates could route all wedding-related requests to a clerk, who would get details from the couple and then connect them with a “willing and available” magistrate.
Neely’s lawyers remind the Supreme Court that magistrates may decline to officiate at weddings for secular reasons, and other judges may disqualify themselves from other proceedings because of strongly held views or beliefs:
Indeed, just as the state could easily accommodate a judge who, for conscience reasons, needs to recuse [himself] from death-penalty cases or a judge who, after experiencing sexual assault, cannot preside over rape cases, the state could readily accommodate Judge Neely here.
The judge’s lawyers ask the Supreme Court to reject the commission’s recommendation to expel her, and to “allow her to continue serving her community with excellence as she has done for more than two decades.”
The conclusion of the brief reads:
Our society asks a lot of judges, but we do not ask them to abandon their convictions, whether religious or secular. Removing Judge Neely from the bench would send a clear message that anyone who shares her honorable and widely held religious beliefs about marriage is not fit for the judiciary (even for a position without authority to solemnize marriages).
Worse yet, it would jeopardize the career of any judge who holds a belief about any potentially divisive issue, because once the [judicial ethics] commission learns that a judge holds a view it does not like, it can invoke the machinery of the state to pursue that judge’s demise. Thus, a ruling for Judge Neely would protect not just her conscience rights, but those of every judge in Wyoming.
(For more from the author of “Judge Faces Removal, $40K Fine Because of Her Beliefs About Marriage” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Leaving_Seattle_City_Hall_on_first_day_of_gay_marriage_in_Washington_2.jpg19362936Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 23:15:222016-05-14 23:45:26Judge Faces Removal, $40K Fine Because of Her Beliefs About Marriage
Every notion we in the West have adopted in terms of dealing with Muslims, both individually and collectively, is wrong.
It is a policy based more on political correctness than on rational analysis, more on a misunderstanding of culture than religion.
The term “Islamophobia” was invented and promoted in the early 1990s by the International Institute for Islamic Thought, a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was designed as a weapon to advance a totalitarian cause by stigmatizing critics and silencing them, similar to the tactics used by the political left, when they hurl the accusations of “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobe” and “hate-speech.”
It became the role of Islamist lobby organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to depict themselves as civil-rights groups speaking out on behalf of a Muslim American population that was allegedly besieged by outsiders who harbored an illogical, unfounded fear of them and regularly accusing the American people, American institutions, law-enforcement authorities, and the U.S. government of harboring a deep and potentially violent prejudice against Muslims. Of course, FBI data on hate crimes show that such allegations are nonsense.
Contrary to the propaganda, Islamophobia is not what Muslims feel, but what radical Muslims hope to instill politically and culturally in non-Muslims cultures, that is, intimidation and fear. Thereby, they can, not only further their goal of a global Caliphate, but gain a type of “respect” to which they would otherwise not be entitled based on an absence of convincing arguments or constructive contributions to society.
Danish psychologist, Nicolai Sennels, who treated 150 criminal Muslim inmates found fundamental and largely irreconcilable psychological differences between Muslim and Western culture, which makes effective assimilation at best serendipity and at worst urban myth.
For example, Muslim culture has a very different view of anger. In Western culture, expressions of anger and threats are probably the quickest way to lose face leading to a feeling of shame and a loss of social status. In Muslim culture, aggressive behaviors, especially threats, are generally seen to be accepted, and even expected as a way of handling conflicts.
In the context of foreign policy, peaceful approaches such as demonstrations of compassion, compromise and common sense are seen by Muslim leaders as cowardice and a weakness to be exploited. In that respect, anger and violence are not reasons to begin negotiations, but are integral components of the negotiation process itself.
According to Sennels, there is another important psychological difference between Muslim and Western cultures called the “locus of control,” whether people experience life influenced by either internal or external factors.
Westerners feel that their lives are mainly influenced by inner forces, our ways of handling our emotions, our ways of thinking, our ways of relating to people around us, our motivations, and our way of communicating; factors that determine if we feel good and self-confident or not.
In Muslim culture, however, inner factors are replaced by external rules, traditions and laws for human behavior. They have powerful Muslim clerics who set the directions for their community, dictate political views, and provide rules for virtually all aspects of life.
The locus of control is central to the individual’s understanding of freedom and responsibility. When Westerners have problems, we most often look inward and ask “What did I do wrong?” and “What can I do to change the situation?” Muslims look outward for sources to blame asking: “Who did this to me?” Sennels noted that a standard answer from violent Muslims is often: “It is his own fault that I beat him up (or raped her). He (or she) provoked me.”
As a result, Muslim culture offers a formula for perpetual victimhood.
With a decrease in feelings of personal responsibility, there is a greater tendency to demand that the surroundings adapt to Muslim wishes and desires, infiltrating rather than to assimilating into a Western culture.
All of this does not bode well for the logic of any proposal to increase Muslim immigration into non-Muslim cultures or the success of any foreign policy involving Muslim nations by applying current Islamophobia-based misconceptions.
Sennels offers a harsh, but realistic prescription:
“We should not permit the destruction of our cities by lawless parallel societies, with groups of roaming criminal Muslims overloading of our welfare system and the growing justified fear that non-Muslims have of violence. The consequences should be so strict that it would be preferable for any anti-social Muslim to go back to a Muslim country, where they can understand, and can be understood by their own culture.
It is not Islamophobia from which the West suffers, but Islamonausea, a natural reaction to something culturally abnormal. (For more from the author of “Muslims Don’t Assimilate, They Infiltrate” please click HERE)
Conservatives have been complaining about Facebook being biased against them for years. According to a new report, those claims are more than just paranoia.
Michael Nunez at Gizmodo reports that according to a former journalist who worked on the project, “Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential ‘trending’ news section.” The report lists specific topics that were prevented from trending, including former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused of targeting conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was killed in 2013.
Furthermore, several former Facebook news curators informed Gizmodo they were explicitly ordered to “inject” certain topics into the trending column even if they weren’t popular, insinuating that liberal topics were given preference based on the company’s ideological bias.
According to Gizmodo’s source, Facebook’s trending team — a small group of young writers, largely from Ivy League or private East Coast universities — prioritizes which stories trend on the website and wields an incredible amount of influence over what the company’s billion-plus users see.
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” the source said, adding, “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”
Gizmodo’s source, who is conservative, was so troubled by these topics being suppressed that he kept a journal of examples, which included conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.
“I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news,” the source said.
In addition, curators were told to insert stories as “trending” even when they weren’t organically trending, according to a former curator.
One example was “Black Lives Matter,” which the former curator says wasn’t getting much Facebook attention until it was injected into the trending topic by the curators.
“Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for ‘Black Lives Matter,’” the source said. “They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, ‘Yeah, now I’m seeing it as number one.’” (For more from the author of “Former Employees Confirm Disturbing Political Bias on Facebook” please click HERE)
After the Paris terrorist attack, House Speaker Paul Ryan declared that the United States cannot turn away the hundreds of thousands of Islamist migrants now being approved for visas to enter the United States. Ryan declared that it is not “appropriate” to consider the religious attitudes of would-be migrants seeking admission.
After the San Bernardino terrorist attack, Ryan echoed President Obama in condemning what was described as Donald Trump’s “religious test.” However, a Breitbart News investigation now reveals that while Paul Ryan wants no ‘religious test’ for who gets admitted into America, Ryan sends his children to a private school that uses a “religious test” in its admissions process.
Ryan sends his children to a Catholic school connected to the parish where he was an altar boy as a child.
Breitbart News reached out to the school as a perspective applicant and obtained a copy of the school’s 2015-2016 registration papers and tuition contract. The document inquires specifically into the applicant’s religious background — in particular, it asks whether the applicant is a parishioner at the associated Catholic parish. The school recruits through the parish by offering a tuition discount to those who have been baptized and are members of the parish. (Read more from “Paul Ryan Says U.S. Must Admit Muslim Migrants, Sends Kids to Private School That Screens Them Out” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/5446843914_9b8054ec83_b-1.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 23:12:092016-05-14 23:42:59Paul Ryan Says U.S. Must Admit Muslim Migrants, Sends Kids to Private School That Screens Them Out
Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta would “probably not” believe that President Barack Obama was serious about his promise to take action to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb if Panetta could make his assessments over again, he conceded in a New York Times Magazine article published on Thursday.
Panetta, who was the director of the CIA from 2009-2011 and then served as defense secretary until 2013, told reporter David Samuels that one of his most important jobs in the Pentagon was preventing Israel from launching a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak wanted to know if the president was serious about his commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
“They were both interested in the answer to the question, ‘Is the president serious?’” Panetta recalls. “And you know my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops.
“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him.
“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”
Panetta explained that defense and foreign policy veterans like him and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be asked for policy opinions, only for White House staffers such as Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and the subject of Samuels’ piece, to narrow them down to “to where they thought the president wanted to be.”
They’d say, ‘Well, this is where we want you to come out.’ And I’d say ‘[expletive], that’s not the way it works. We’ll present a plan, and then the president can make a decision.’ I mean, Jesus Christ, it is the president of the United States, you’re making some big decisions here, he ought to be entitled to hear all of those viewpoints and not to be driven down a certain path.”
Rhodes disputed this, saying that the president rejected policy options that he didn’t like was because he didn’t agree with the traditional foreign policy establishment, of which Panetta was a part. But Rhodes did not dispute the process that Panetta described.
Panetta also said that in his capacity as CIA director, he never assessed that there was a meaningful difference between Iranian moderates and hardliners. “There was not much question that the Quds Force and the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any traction,” he said.
Rhodes, the White House’s chief foreign policy communications manager, promoted the narrative that the election of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani presented an opportunity to engage with moderates to limit Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program. But he admitted to Samuels that “we are not betting” that Rouhani or foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are actually moderates.
Wendy Sherman, who served at the administration’s lead negotiator with Iran, made a similar statement earlier this year in a speech at Duke University, admitting that “there are hardliners in Iran, and then there are hard-hardliners. Rouhani is not a moderate, he is a hardliner.” (For more from the author of “FORMER OBAMA DEFENSE SEC: Yeah, Obama Was Never Serious About Stopping Iran From Getting Nukes” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/8051267396_cc912979e4_b.jpg7311024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 23:11:492016-05-14 23:42:01FORMER OBAMA DEFENSE SEC: Yeah, Obama Was Never Serious About Stopping Iran From Getting Nukes
Less than three weeks into Target’s new, transgender affirming policy of allowing men in girls’ bathrooms and changing rooms, a peeping Tom recorded a girl changing clothes at a Target.
While trying on clothes at the Frisco, Texas, Super Target store last Tuesday, the girl noticed a man looking into the stall and recording her with his cellphone.
The Frisco police released a surveillance photo of the man and put out a call to the public for help in finding him. The police say the suspect is “a skinny, white, male, approximately 5’11 in height, with dark hair,” and that he wore “a dark color baseball style hat” . . .
On May 3, shortly after Target announced, in the name of transgender accommodation, that their girls’ and women’s bathrooms and changing rooms are open to men and vice versa, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to Target asking about their safety practices.
“It is possible that allowing men in women’s restrooms could lead to criminal and otherwise unwanted activity,” A.G. Paxton wrote. “As chief lawyer and law enforcement officer for the State of Texas, I ask that you provide the full text of Target’s safety policies regarding the protection of women and children from those who would use the cover of Target’s restroom policy for nefarious purposes.” (Read more from “Texas Police Seeking Man Who Videotaped Girl in Target Changing Room” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Target_Greatland_Laredo.jpg17672651Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-14 23:10:532016-05-14 23:41:17Texas Police Seeking Man Who Videotaped Girl in Target Changing Room
