SCOTUS Once Again Chips Away at Gun Rights

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While everyone is waiting with bated breath for the super legislature — aka the Supreme Court — to issue its opinions on cases involving abortion, affirmative action, and immigration, the big news from today is what it declined to consider. Following a disturbing pattern of allowing lower court decisions chipping away at the landmark Heller decision to stand, the high court declined to grant cert to petitioners in the case involving the sweeping gun and magazine bans in New York and Connecticut (New York State Rifle and Pistol Association el al. v. Cuomo).

Following the Sandy Hook shooting, states like New York and Connecticut banned a bunch of semi-automatic rifles containing cosmetic features that make them look scary. They also require forced registration of those firearms already owned by private citizens. Additionally, they banned magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and in the case of New York, mandated that they not be loaded with more than seven rounds. Initially, New York banned all magazines that hold more than seven rounds, but had to modify the law because most manufacturers don’t even make such small magazines except for sub-compact carry pistols.

While almost every circuit court found a constitutional right to gay marriage, none of them thus far have found a constitutional right to own common guns and ubiquitous magazines, thereby upholding the laws in the blue states. The Second Circuit upheld all the provisions of the New York and Connecticut laws except for the seven round load rule. Despite the Heller decision’s clear constitutional finding that individuals have a right to own and bear common self-defense weapons, the Second Circuit felt that a scary looking pistol grip on a commonly used weapon deems it a substantial governmental interest — enough to limit the individual right to own such a weapon. On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the Second Circuit’s decision.

Typically, one cannot read too much into the Supreme Court’s decision not to grant cert to those seeking to overturn a lower court’s decision. After all, justices have limited time and resources and cannot hear every appeal. Moreover, they often like to wait for a circuit split before rendering a final decision. But following the Heller decision affirming the plain meaning of the most sacred of inviolable rights, how can they continuously allow circuit after circuit to chip away at Heller — both by banning common guns and magazines and by categorically upholding plenary bans on right to carry? They have already refused to consider two other appeals on cases banning gun ownership and have not granted cert to any case where a circuit court has upheld bans on carrying outside one’s home. The Second, Third, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts have all ruled there is no right to self-defense outside the home — in contravention of the plain language of the Heller decision.

Indeed, in the case of lower courts upholding sweeping gun bans, the silence of more than three justices willing to grant cert (it takes four) is deafening. As Justice Thomas has noted in his dissent on the denial of cert on the two previous assault weapons bans, the other justices (presumably Roberts and Kennedy included) are clearly allowing the Second Amendment to become a second-class right. [1] How can Kennedy and Roberts decline to join in the vote to hear the appeal when the lower courts are vitiating the plain implications of Heller? In Heller, the Supreme Court made it clear that governmental interest cannot be factored in to mitigate an individual right to own or bear firearms because the Second Amendment “is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people,” and “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government… the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.” [2] How then can they allow the lower courts to uphold sweeping gun bans on the basis of a government interest for public safety, especially in the case of the Seventh Circuit which upheld the Illinois assault weapons ban simply on the basis that it “may increase the public’s sense of safety.” [3] Those pistol grips and picatinny rails on the rifle are sure scary. If looks could kill! Maybe we should limit the First Amendment’s right to assemble in large numbers because large crowds scare people.

The ongoing debate over gun rights in the courts demonstrates once again that even as the courts create new super rights for favored classes or for foreign nationals, they can’t be relied upon to protect the most basic rights of Americans. It also demonstrates that even if we succeed in filling the current Supreme Court vacancy, given that the lower courts are unanimously against gun rights, we can’t even count on five justices willing to overturn them. The judiciary is a dead end for those seeking preservation of constitutional rights in the long run. (For more from the author of “SCOTUS Once Again Chips Away at Gun Rights” please click HERE)

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Study Predicts Chance of 9+ Magnitude Mega-Earthquake in Alaska

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There’s a nine percent chance a magnitude 9 or larger earthquake will strike the Aleutian Islands in the next 50 years. That is the prediction offered by scientists from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa — made with the help of a newly designed computer model.

Researchers say an earthquake of that size could send a mega-tsunami in the direction of the Hawaiian Islands.

The Aleutian Islands, which stretch toward Russia from the coast of Alaska, sit along a subduction zone at the convergence of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. Scientists say the chance of a dramatic slip along the fault lines that make up the subduction zone is significant.

They detailed the threat of a mega-earthquake in a new paper, published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Solid Earth.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” lead study author Rhett Butler, a geophysicist at the UHM School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, explained in a news release. “Having no recorded history of mega tsunamis in Hawai’i, and given the tsunami threat to Hawai’i, we devised a model for Magnitude 9 earthquake rates following upon the insightful work of David Burbidge and others.” (Read more from “Study Predicts Chance of 9+ Magnitude Mega-Earthquake in the Aleutians” please click HERE)

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Michael Jackson’s ‘Shocking’ Child Pornography Collection Detailed in 2003 Neverland Ranch Police Report

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A Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department police report taken from a 2003 search at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch residence turned up a cache of photos of naked men and women, animal sex videos and child pornography, all allegedly used to seduce young boys.

Jackson’s alleged, never-before-seen, porn stockpile was the result of a search that was part of an ongoing child sex abuse investigation against the pop singer, according to Radar Online.

“The detectives’ report cites Michael even used sexy photos of his own nephews, who were in the band 3T, in their underwear to excite young boys.” a private investigator said, according to Radar.

At the behest of Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Detective Craig Bonner, an additional warrant was granted and investigators also searched a rented storage space. In it, police found audio and video tapes, photos, dairies, and several computer hard drives.

“The documents collected by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department paint a dark and frightening picture of Jackson,” one anonymous investigator working on Jackson’s case told Radar. “The documents exposed Jackson as a manipulative, drug-and-sex-crazed predator who used blood, gore, sexually explicit images of animal sacrifice and perverse adult sex acts to bend children to his will.” (Read more from “Michael Jackson’s ‘Shocking’ Child Pornography Collection Detailed in 2003 Neverland Ranch Police Report” HERE)

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Media Reports Reveal Reason Behind Trump’s Firing of Campaign Manager

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Corey Lewandowski helped convince Republicans across America that Donald Trump should be their next president.

But according to reports emerging in the news media, he could not convince the family members who make up Trump’s closest inner circle of advisers that he was still an asset to the campaign.

Lewandowski was dismissed on Monday as Trump’s campaign manager, even though much of the operational control of the campaign had been ceded to adviser Paul Manafort.

CNN’s Dana Bash tweeted that Trump’s daughter Ivanka was behind the decision.

The Washington Post reported that Lewandowski was ousted “at the urging of [Trump’s] three adult children and many key allies.”

“It just came to a head. There were a lot of voices that came together at once,” the Post reported, quoting an anonymous Republican official. “They were moving into a general election phase and wanted one coherent management style.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the transition reflects the reality of a presidential campaign.

Trump and his team are “rapidly learning the general election, 50 states simultaneously, is a much bigger, more complex system,” Gingrich said. “The general election is like a gigantic football team — it takes a whole different set of requirements both for the candidate and for the team.”

The Post quoted another unnamed GOP official as saying that Lewandowski was not opposed by Manafort, but by Trump’s children.

“What he is saying to operatives is that the critical mass was finally reached with Trump’s kids,” said the second official.

Members of the Trump family long ago soured on Lewandowski, the Post reported, citing another anonymous source.

“The kids do not like him, and they’re certainly happy with Manafort. Donald was Corey’s only supporter within Trump Tower,” this source told the Post.

When reached by the Associated Press, Lewandowski had little to say.

“Paul Manafort has been in operational control of the campaign since April 7. That’s a fact,” Lewandowski said without further comment.

“This shows donors, activists and party officials that he is willing to make significant changes, even if it means parting ways with a trusted political aide,” said Republican strategist Ryan Williams. “Now Trump needs to demonstrate that he is willing to change his own approach by toning down his rhetoric and becoming a more disciplined general election candidate.” (For more from the author of “Media Reports Reveal Reason Behind Trump’s Firing of Campaign Manager” please click HERE)

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MEET THE “ISLAMOPHOBES”: From Bill Maher to Mark Levin

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What do talk show host Bill Maher, author and Eagle Forum Founder Phyllis Schlafley and Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin all have in common? They’re all Islamophobes, according to a new report released by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Tuesday.

“Confronting Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact on the U.S. 2013-2015” is a joint project of CAIR and the U.C. Berkeley Center for Race and Gender meant to outline the funding streams for, and cast aspersions on, what it calls “The U.S. Islamophobe Network.” This list boasts 33 “inner core” and 41 “outer core” groups, while offering “a four-point strategy designed to achieve a shared American understanding of Islam in which being Muslim carries a positive connotation.”

CAIR’s “inner core” consists of “[g]roups whose primary purpose is to promote prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims and whose work regularly demonstrates Islamophobic themes,” while the “outer core” is made up of “[g]roups whose primary purpose does not appear to include promoting prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims, but whose work regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes.”

Essentially, it’s a hit job on anyone who has ever dared say anything negative about radical Islam and has ever been willing to speak up against it. Such groups included on CAIR’s Islamophobe list include:

ACT! For America, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Center for the Study of Political Islam, Clarion Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Florida Family Association (Fla.), Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jihad Watch, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Tennessee Freedom Coalition (Tenn.), Adelson Family Foundation, American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), American Family Association, American Islamic Leadership Coalition, Christian Broadcasting Network, Concerned Women for America, Eagle, the Glenn Beck Program, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the Mark Levin Show, National Review, Really Big Coloring Books, Inc, The Washington Times, and WND.

Again, these are some. Not all.

But let’s not forget who’s throwing these labels around here.

We’re talking about CAIR. This is a group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case, in which the DOJ investigated and prosecuted a conspiracy to direct funding to Hamas. Ironically, or maybe not, this is also the same group that President Obama confers with on his “countering violent extremism” agenda.

The Ku Klux Klan is the oldest of America’s hate groups, and in 1925 the white supremacist group could boast four million members and enormous political influence and popular support. Today, however, their numbers and resources are vastly diminished, their bigoted views are socially and politically marginalized, and they are virtually irrelevant within the national landscape. This progressive erosion of the Klan’s social acceptability serves as a model for CAIR’s strategy toward contemporary Islamophobic groups.

So not only are critics of Jihadism to be labeled Islamophobes en masse, but they should also be delegitimized with the same scrutiny of the Ku Klux Klan.

From a tactical perspective, the move is brilliant. This is the same thing that the social left used to silence and browbeat social conservatives for years on every single issue even remotely related to marriage and the family, and it all began with the Southern Poverty Law Center similarly designating every pro-traditional marriage organization in existence as a “hate group.”

Once that happened, it wasn’t too long before it no longer mattered to many how compelling the argument for conjugal, stable, permanent families was and still is. Now, if you hold the position, you’re labeled a hate-mongering bigot and are not to be trusted.

CAIR’s “network” looks similar in scope. It doesn’t matter that many of the groups listed in this report have clearly made the distinction between peaceful interpretations of Islam that don’t seek to subvert our way of life and Jihadism. They’ve been branded; Saul Alinsky would be proud.

“Let’s nudge ourselves from our Religion of Peace’ slumbers for a moment and consider Muslim Brotherhood ideology,” writes Andrew McCarthy, author of “The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America,” in National Review. According to McCarthy, a key memo obtained by the FBI outlines how the Muslim Brotherhood’s “American tentacles,” like CAIR, envision themselves as waging:

[A] kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

However, the Muslim Brotherhood and its international affiliates aren’t like Al Qaeda (the Jihadist equivalent of Che Guevara) or ISIS (who operate more like Mao Zedong, both analogies courtesy of Dr. Sebastian Gorka). Rather, McCarthy explains, its vision of a “ground-up revolution” is one “in which the use of force plays a part but is just one aspect of a multi-faceted aggression arsenal.”

What’s one way to make this happen? Completely rid yourself of legitimate criticism. And if we’ve learned anything from the marriage debate that culminated in last year’s Obergefell decision, or even recent battles over Religious Freedom laws, the best way to do that is smear, smear, and smear. (For more from the author of “MEET THE “ISLAMOPHOBES”: From Bill Maher to Mark Levin” please click HERE)

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Department of Defense Proposes New Military Promotion System

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Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that he would end the “one-size-fits-all” promotion system for military officers, Military Times reported. This could open up more opportunities for diverse military career options.

Carter’s “Force of the Future” reform was announced June 9.

“It aims to help the military bring in more top talent, especially for high-tech career fields focused on cyber warfare and space,” according to a Military Times article. “Advocates say it will help the military fill important manpower shortfalls with highly skilled professionals and, more broadly, create greater ‘permeability’ between the active-duty military and the civilian sector.”

Many of the changes Carter intends to make will need Congress to change the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act, a law concerning most aspects of military promotion, according to Federal News Radio. Carter said the Defense Department will focus on four specific changes, “including a relaxation of the ‘up or out’ promotion process, which he said is fundamentally sound, but too rigid,” Federal News Radio reported.

Carter is requesting that the Pentagon waive all DOPMA-related rules for career fields, if necessary.

According to Carter, this will “ enable them to respond to an uncertain future, in ways that can be tailored to their unique capability requirements and particular personnel needs, without casting off a system that still largely meets our needs for most officers across the force”

One significant change is the opportunity for “lateral entry” into the upper ranks of the military. Promotions will be based on performance rather than tenure in a position. Military services would have the ability to do this, but it would not be required.

Lateral entry will also mean civilian professionals will not have to start at the bottom of the ranks, according to Military Times.

“Now, I have to say we can’t do this for every career field — far from it,” Carter said. “It will probably never apply to line officers, as they’ll always need to begin their military careers as second lieutenants and ensigns.”

These changes are not without controversy and opposition.

“For many in the rank-and-file military, it seems absurd, a bewildering cultural change that threatens to upend many assumptions about military life and traditional career paths,” wrote Andrew Tilghman for Military Times.

Military Times also reported that the U.S. Navy is the most enthusiastic about Carter’s proposal. The Army and Air Force have said they will consider lateral entries if the change is approved by Congress. The Marine Corps seems to be the most wary of the changes. One Marine personnel officer said he supports the proposal because it does not require services to make changes.

“We are prepared to observe the ‘experimentation’ efforts of other services and adopt the best practices where applicable and advantageous,” said Col. Gaines Ward, head of the service’s promotions and policy branch, as reported by Military Times.

Each military service would be able to work out which changes to implement for themselves.

“It’s up to the services. We’re not trying to bind them in, were offering to give them flexibility,” said a senior defense official. (For more from the author of “Department of Defense Proposes New Military Promotion System” please click HERE)

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Undercover Reporter Who Purchased an AR-15 May Have Broken Federal Law

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The CR Wire reported Thursday that CBS News was SHOCKED at how easy it was for an American citizen to purchase a firearm legally – as if there was no constitutional right to do so.

Well, it appears the CBS reporter who tried to ridicule gun laws may have committed a federal crime in unlawfully purchasing the gun, at least according to the gun store who sold it. The store, SpecDrive Tactical, contacted Virginia State Police and the ATF to report the possible crime.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

SpecDive said that when CBS News’ Paula Reid purchased the rifle she told the store’s general manager the gun was for her own use. However, when CBS reported on the story they revealed the gun was purchased for the story and transferred to a third party a few hours later. “The rifle we purchased was legally transferred to a federally licensed firearms dealer and weapons instructor in Virginia, just hours after we bought it,” the report said.

“Ms. Paula Reid came into the shop with cash, claiming she wished to purchase an AR-15 to, ‘undergo training,’” Ryan Lamke, SpecDive’s general manager, told the Washington Free Beacon. “She refused basic, free instruction of firearms safety under the pretense that she was using the firearm for training with a NRA certified instructor.”

“Due to the information provided in the CBS News report filed today, I suspect Ms. Reid committed a straw purchase and procurement of a firearm under false pretenses.”

If Ms. Reid did, in fact, mislead the store about her intentions to give the gun over to a third party immediately after purchase it is “in clear violation of the law,” SpecDrive owner Jerry Rapp made clear.

ATF told the Free Beacon that they are aware of the situation and considering opening an investigation. CBS News remains steadfast that their employee did not break any federal law.

Of course, we don’t wish any evil on people, but if Ms. Reid and CBS News were to be punished for their hit piece it would be something like poetic justice. (For more from the author of “Undercover Reporter Who Purchased an AR-15 May Have Broken Federal Law” please click HERE)

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Was This an Assassination Attempt at a Trump Rally?

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A man arrested at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas told authorities he tried to grab an officer’s gun so he could kill the candidate, according to federal authorities.

A complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada charges Michael Steven Sandford with an act of violence on restricted grounds. He’s expected to appear in court on Monday afternoon.

Authorities said Sandford went to a Trump rally on Saturday at the Treasure Island Casino and approached a Las Vegas police officer to say he wanted an autograph from Trump. The report says Sandford grabbed the handle of an officer’s gun in an attempt to remove it, and was arrested. (Read more from “Was This an Assassination Attempt at a Trump Rally?” HERE)

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Could the GOP Convention Put Democracy at Risk?

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Our nation is based on the idea of “consent of the governed.” When the people vote, they expect those votes will be respected and counted, not ignored.

There is an effort today to toss aside the will of the millions of voters in the Republican primaries to stop Donald Trump from becoming the Republican nominee for president. This effort is truly offensive to those who treasure democracy. If successful, it would guarantee that Hillary Clinton will be sworn into office next January. Even though some very smart people are leading the anti-Trump movement, this idea is very dumb.

Voters showed up in unprecedented numbers to vote for Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. He received over 13 million votes – the most ever for a Republican candidate. He ended up with 1,542 delegates, almost one thousand delegates more than his closest competitor. Trump drew in scores of new voters to the party, resulting in about two million more people voting in the Republican primaries than the Democratic.

Yet, some in the Republican Party toss aside those numbers because they wet the bed every time a head to head poll has Hillary ahead of Trump. These nervous Republicans need to chill and take a look at the calendar: it is June. The only metrics that matter are what people do on Election Day and Trump’s record during the Republican primaries was one for the books.

Sedition by some lifelong Republicans is afoot. The Washington Post reported on June 17, 2016 that a handful of trouble-making delegates are plotting to sabotage the Republican nominee at the convention next month:

Dozens of Republican convention delegates are hatching a new plan to block Donald Trump at this summer’s party meetings, in what has become the most organized effort so far to stop the businessman from becoming the GOP presidential nominee.

The plan is to secure a vote of “no confidence” in the expected Republican nominee Donald Trump, then to push for another candidate to take the nomination.

David French at National Review Online and Amanda Carpenter at Conservative Review have made the public case for a vote of “no confidence”—for delegates to ignore the will of Republican voters at the convention. I have great respect for Carpenter, but I do have to disagree with her analysis.

Carpenter argues at CR:

The convention’s Rules Committee should allow for a vote of “no confidence” in the GOP nominee. Should Trump not receive a supermajority vote then the delegates should be officially “unbound” and free to vote for the nominee of their choice, ideally a list limited only to those persons who ran for president in 2016.

Carpenter is arguing that after the delegates reach a vote of “no confidence,” they should move to a fight over which failed nominee should replace Trump. The problem is that this will completely destroy any chances Republicans have of winning this fall. The 13 plus million voters who cast a vote for Trump would feel like they have been ignored and disrespected.

David French argues at NRO that not one delegate is legally bound to vote for the candidate they are being sent to Cleveland to vote for:

As a matter of law and history, there is not a single “bound” delegate to the Republican National Convention. Not one delegate is required to vote for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or any other individual who “won” votes in the primary process. Each delegate will have to make his or her own choice. They — and they alone — will choose the Republican nominee.

Really? So the delegates are an elite team that can overturn the will of Republican voters? As a political argument, this is folly because all of the Trump voters would be so angry that they would do everything possible to secure defeat for the illegitimate nominee the elites put up. As a legal argument, this is of questionable analysis, because French is saying that the state laws binding delegates are somehow unconstitutional because of the First Amendment. This is one of those legal arguments that will probably never be resolved, because the French wing of the Republican Party will probably lose that fight and the argument will be rendered moot.

But if French is correct, the same can be said of the presidential election. The Electoral College was set up as an indirect way to elect a president. How would French feel if John McCain had won the 2008 election, yet the Electoral College decided that Barack Obama would make a better president? I bet he would have had a different opinion of the faithless delegate/elector had that happened.

Donald Trump won fair and square. Delegates need to suck it up and vote for him. It would be immoral and an undemocratic power grab by the elites if they were to overturn the will of 13 million plus Republican primary voters so they can get revenge against Donald Trump. And it would lead to the three words that should instill fear in any self-respecting Republican: President Hillary Clinton. (For more from the author of “Could the GOP Convention Put Democracy at Risk?” please click HERE)

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YOUR ANTIQUE MEDIA: Islamic Terror Attack in Orlando Completely Unrelated to Islamic Terror

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The mainstream media are desperate to distract from the facts of the Orlando shootings, choosing instead to blame Republicans and conservatives for the deaths of 49 individuals at a gay bar called Pulse. In reality, the attacks were perpetrated by an American-born Islamic jihadist who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during the attack, and had in the past “boasted of ties to the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.”

Instead of discussing the ramifications of terror worldwide and in our midst, the liberal media have reignited their quest for new gun control legislation and have sought to blame this attack on Republicans in general, and presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump in particular.

Omar Mateen’s “bullets and the blood he left behind that early morning were a reminder that in many corners of the country, gay and transgender people are still regarded as sinners and second-class citizens who should be scorned,” wrote The New York Times editorial board in a scathing piece aimed squarely at Republicans. They write that the “precise motivation for [Mateen’s] rampage remains unclear.”

“So far this year, more than 200 anti-L.G.B.T. bills have been introduced in 34 states,” writes the Times editorial board, focusing on the politics of Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “The 49 people killed in Orlando were victims of a terrorist attack. But they also need to be remembered as casualties of a society where hate has deep roots.”

As Bernard Goldberg notes, this editorial is completely ridiculous. “If the killer were Christian the Times would have connected the dots and concluded he was driven by his religion,” he writes. Yet the Times failed to mention Islam or ISIS when discussing an Islam-inspired attack on U.S. soil.

“So, he [Mateen] was a gay Muslim Democrat,” notes Jim Treacher for The Daily Caller. “He hit the trifecta of victimhood.” Mateen belonged to too many minority groups, so many that liberals claim at all costs that he cannot be blamed for his own actions. “That means it has to be the gun’s fault, and the NRA’s fault, and the GOP’s fault, and Christians’ fault, and white people’s fault,” writes Treacher.

The Times editorial is not a reflection of the paper’s denial of jihadist terror. Rather, it is a deliberate attempt to deflect blame from the very ideology that repeatedly spawns this sort of activity, and the Times has to know that.

From Nidal Hasan, to the Boston Bombers, the Underwear bomber, the San Bernardino shooting, and now Orlando, the perpetrators of these attacks have drunk from the same poisonous well of sharia-compliant jihadist ideology demanding death to the infidels. Many warnings were ignored or overlooked in these cases. It doesn’t matter whether these were lone wolf terrorists or ISIS-inspired: all of these attacks were carried out in the name of Islam. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of Muslims would never consider committing such an act, and are opposed to such actions.

But it is ludicrous to claim that these attacks have little or nothing to do with Islam, or come from a bastardization of that faith. After all, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has a Ph.D. in Koranic studies from Iraq’s Saddam University for Islamic Studies. These attacks clearly originated from a jihadist interpretation of Islam.

The media should be asking how the Obama administration, once again, has failed to protect Americans from another Islamic attack. According to the Daily Beast, Mateen was placed on two FBI watch lists, but the FBI’s 10-month investigation into his activities was closed after no terror ties or plans were discovered. In fact, Mateen was the subject of three different FBI investigations from 2013 to 2015, and they always came up empty.

Clarice Feldman, writing for American Thinker, pointed out that “Internal operating instructions of the FBI limited the amount of time they could keep watch on him and both the local and federal authorities were paralyzed by fear of being dubbed Islamophobic. So chilling accounts by his fellow workers were discounted as the result of prejudice, and a report by a local gun shop that he’d tried without success to purchase ‘body armor and bulk ammunition from the store’ was ignored.”

Also, the security company, G4S, that Mateen worked for from 2007 until the night of his terrorist rampage, should be called before Congress for its actions regarding how it handled concerns about his fitness for the job as an armed security guard. G4S is a British-based company that has contracts with the U.S. government to guard airports, most of our nuclear facilities, and to transport illegal aliens to sanctuary cities and other locations, once they have crossed over into the U.S.

According to NBC News, FBI Director James Comey said that “colleagues said Mateen claimed to have family connections to terror groups al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and that he hoped law enforcement would raid his home ‘so he could martyr himself.’” Yet as a result, his employer simply moved him to a less sensitive job. They didn’t take away his company-issued service weapon, a .38 handgun, nor did they fire him. In fact, while the company filed a psych evaluation form with the State of Florida to pass Mateen for firearm clearance, the doctor whose name was on the form says he was never evaluated, certainly not by her. The company now claims it was done by a different, unnamed doctor.

President Obama’s lack of passion over the victims was striking when he first discussed the attack. But when he was criticized by Trump, Obama became passionate and angry, and explained why using the term “radical Islam” was nothing but a talking point—which is why he doesn’t use it.

“So there is no magic to the phrase of radical Islam. It is a political talking point. It is not a strategy,” said Obama. “And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.”

However, as National Review’s Andy McCarthy writes, the point of using the term “radical Islam” is not to convince or deter Islamic radicals—it is to understand our own mindset and identify “whether we understand what we are fighting.”

“Sharia supremacists have their own civilization and cultural norms by which they judge themselves,” argues McCarthy. “They couldn’t care less what we think.”

Al-Baghdadi is convincing to Muslims around the globe because he understands the Koran and preaches an ideology derived from the Muslim faith. Yet the Obama administration has worked to cleanse the FBI counter-terrorism analytic lexicon of words such as “Muslim, Islam, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and sharia.”

Obama administration officials continue to blindly ignore the ongoing threat of jihadists. “One month after the San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 innocent people dead, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told advisors that right wing extremists pose just as much of a threat to the country as Islamic extremists.”

And just days before the Orlando attack, the Homeland Security Advisory Council cautioned the Department of Homeland Security that it should avoid terms such as “jihad,” “sharia,” and “takfir.”

Political correctness, whether by the media or by administration officials, is not going to protect American citizens from future terrorists. Both the NRA and the ACLU believe further reforms to the terrorist watch list, such as a way to redress inclusion on the list, are still necessary. But the discussion about gun rights—and using the list to prevent potential terrorists from accessing guns—is a distraction from the greater threat of Islamic terror.

Future terrorists will find a way to access guns regardless of the law. The Obama administration is well on its way to issuing green cards to over one million immigrants from majority-Muslim countries before he leaves office. Is anyone confident in the vetting process for all of these people? If the Obama administration and the complicit media continue to deny the real cause of terror, many more Americans will fall victim to terrorists like Omar Mateen. (For more from the author of “YOUR ANTIQUE MEDIA: Islamic Terror Attack in Orlando Completely Unrelated to Islamic Terror” please click HERE)

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