Internet access is not a “civil right”

Lead Story
Internet access is not a “civil right”
By Michelle Malkin • December 22, 2010 10:00 AM

Meet the new Internet traffic cops

Internet access is not a “civil right”
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

When bureaucrats talk about increasing your “access” to X, Y, or Z, what they’re really talking about is increasing their control over your lives exponentially. As it is with the government health care takeover, so it is with the newly-approved government plan to “increase” Internet “access.” Call it Webcare.

By a vote of 3-2, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday adopted a controversial scheme to ensure “net neutrality” by turning unaccountable Democrat appointees into meddling online traffic cops. The panel will devise convoluted rules governing Internet service providers, bandwidth use, content, prices, and even disclosure details on Internet speeds. The “neutrality” is brazenly undermined by preferential treatment toward wireless broadband networks. Moreover, the FCC’s scheme is widely opposed by Congress – and has already been rejected once in the courts. Demonized industry critics have warned that the regulations will stifle innovation and result in less access, not more.

Sound familiar?

The parallels with health care are striking. The architects of Obamacare promised to provide Americans more access to health insurance – and cast their agenda as a fundamental universal entitlement. In fact, it was a pretext for creating a gargantuan federal bureaucracy with the power to tax, redistribute, and regulate
the private health insurance market to death – and replace it with a centrally-planned government system overseen by politically-driven code enforcers dictating everything from annual coverage limits, to administrative expenditures, to the make-up of the medical workforce. The costly, onerous, and selectively-applied law has resulted in less access, not more.

Undaunted promoters of Obama FCC chairman Julius Genachowski’s “open Internet” plan to expand regulatory authority over the Internet have couched their online power grab in the rhetoric of civil rights. On Monday, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps proclaimed: “Universal access to broadband needs to be seen as a civil right…[though] not many people have talked about it that way.” Opposing the government Internet takeover blueprint, in other words, is tantamount to supporting segregation. Cunning propaganda, that.

“Broadband is becoming a basic necessity,” civil rights activist Benjamin Hooks added. And earlier this month, fellow FCC panelist Mignon Clyburn, daughter of Congressional Black Caucus leader and Number Three House Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina, declared that free (read: taxpayer-subsidized) access to the Internet is not only a civil right for every “nappy-headed child” in America, but essential to their self-esteem. Every minority child, she said, “deserves to be not only connected, but to be proud of who he or she is.”

Calling them “nappy-headed” is a rather questionable way of boosting their pride, but never mind that.

Face it: A high-speed connection is no more an essential civil right than 3G cell phone service or a Netflix account. Increasing competition and restoring academic excellence in abysmal public schools is far more of an imperative to minority children than handing them iPads. Once again, Democrats are using children as human shields who provide useful cover for not-so-noble political goals.

The “net neutrality” mob – funded by billionaire George Soros and other left-wing think tanks and non-profits — has openly advertised its radical, speech-squelching agenda to crusade for “media justice.” Social justice is the redistribution of wealth and economic “rights.” Media justice is the redistribution of speech and First Amendment rights. The meetings of the universal broadband set are littered with Marxist-tinged rants about “disenfranchisement” and “empowerment.” They’ve targeted conservative opponents on talk radio, cable TV, and on the web as purveyors of “hate” who need to be managed or censored. Democrat FCC panelists’ have dutifully echoed their concerns about concentration of corporate media power. As the Ford Foundation-funded Media Justice Fund, which lobbied for universal broadband, put it: This is a movement “grounded in the belief that social and economic justice will not be realized without the equitable redistribution and control of media and communication technologies.”

For progressives who cloak their ambitions in the mantle of “fairness,” it’s all about control. It’s always about control.

Secret AIG bailout docs leaked; Update: Bernanke on the hot seat By Michelle Malkin

Eeenteresting. About a week ago, the SEC agree to cover-up bailout documents for AIG until 2018. The documents relate to the backroom bank bailout payments at top dollar to AIG counterparties — which know-nothing Tim Geithner was grilled about today on the Hill. The leak comes as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke heads to the Hill himself to secure a second term.

Zero Hedge has the scoop on the secret documents and uploaded some of the data for open-source analysis:

…the critical question is: since there is not one security rated A, and in fact the median rating is a high C, and since we know that Soc Gen had parked its securities with the Fed in November 2008, just what standards does the Federal Reserve have when accepting securities in the discount window to lend against? And the implication is that Bernanke will allow any toxic crap to be eligible collateral, likely at par.

We will continue analyzing the other firms’ securities as well, and solicit reader input in ideas on how to steer this analysis.

Stay tuned.

***

Update: Bernanke sent a buck-passing letter in response to questions about the AIG backroom bank bailout payments. Dealbook posts the Bernanke document and reports:

In a letter to Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Bernanke said he “was not directly involved in negotiations” over payments to A.I.G.’s trading partners to unwind tens of billions of dollars in credit default swaps. Instead, he said, these negotiations were handled primarily by the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (Read Mr. Bernanke’s letter on the jump.)

Responding to questions from Mr. Issa, Mr. Bernanke said the financial conditions of A.I.G.’s counterparties “was not a factor in the decision regarding the amount paid to the counterparties or whether concessions should be sought from them.”

Mr. Bernanke also said he was not involved in discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year about any disclosure issues involving A.I.G.

Hotline On Call has the whip count at 43-18:

Allies of Fed chair Ben Bernanke spent the weekend trolling for Senate support ahead of an expected reconfirmation vote this week, but Bernanke remains short of the votes he needs to win a second term, according to a Hotline OnCall tally.

Bernanke has public support from 43 senators, while 18 are publicly opposed to his reconfirmation. That leaves 39 senators uncommitted, and many have said they are concerned about Bernanke’s record during his first years in office.

The WH and Senate leaders have expressed confidence they will have the votes they need. Still, underscoring the trouble some members have with Bernanke’s renomination, even the top GOPer in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has refused to disclose how he would vote.

What was supposed to be an easy confirmation became more difficult recently as populist anger has surged across the nation. It has even cost Bernanke a certain vote; Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) voted for Bernanke when his nomination came before the Banking Committee, but Brown has said he is rethinking that vote.

Garden-Gate: A metaphor

Lead Story
Garden-Gate: A metaphor
By Michelle Malkin • January 15, 2010 09:55 AM

My column today uses the little Iron Chef-fuffle episode to examine the White House’s much larger phony fruit basket. The seeds of Candidate Barack Obama’s transparency pledges have instead yielded bottomless backroom deals.

Here’s the big lie about the Cadillac tax exemption for Big Labor. The Dems say the tax will take effect in 2018. Bullcrap. Andy Stern and every other union boss will spend the next eight years ensuring that the excise tax never touches their empire. There’s no such thing as a temporary entitlement — or a temporary buy-off.

Phony fruits in the Obama White House garden
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Hold on to your hoe. It turns out that the fruits and veggies used in a special edition of the popular Food Network TV show “Iron Chef America” featuring the First Lady did not, in fact, come from the White House garden. Could there be a more deliciously fitting symbol of Obama White House fakery than Garden-Gate?

Some may shrug at this tempest in a colander. But as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Hope and Change inauguration, the First Lady’s little horticultural hoax serves as a handy metaphor for a cornucopia of Obama fraud. They’ve stocked health care town halls with partisan goons and benefactors. They’ve provided lab coat to doctor donors to make their health care lobbying look more authentic. And they’ve treated soldiers, in President Obama’s own words, as “pretty good photo ops.”

Ringers are what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

East Wing apologists are whirling like KitchenAid salad spinners over the Iron Chef-fuffle: “Due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the ‘Super Chef Battle’ was not actually from the White House garden,” admitted a Food Network spokeswoman. But, they stress, the replacement produce consisted of the exact same types of sweet potatoes, tomatillos, broccoli, and fennel purportedly picked from the White House garden.

It’s the haute cuisine version of disgraced CBS News fabricator Dan Rather’s fake-but-accurate card. But this is just the latest Potemkin produce from a Potemkin presidency.

To wit: White House number-crunchers and Democrat fuzzy mathematicians have been cooking the books on stimulus jobs numbers and government health care takeover costs. They desperately ditched the “jobs saved or created” recipe for a jobs-funded concoction to salvage the illusion of economic recovery. They’ve inflated deficit reduction estimates and downplayed doctor reimbursement cuts. And they’ve done so behind a locked kitchen door.

Candidate Barack Obama whipped up a nutritious package of transparency pledges that has fallen flatter than a one-egg soufflé. Open government, he told us, was good for Washington and good for America – and the president promised to give us heaping doses of it on C-SPAN. But not a camera was in sight for the past week’s backroom health care among the White House, Democrat leaders, and left-wing special interests.

Now, President Obama is poised to deliver juicy tax exemptions for unions while squeezing middle-class taxpayers, employers, investors, and drugmakers to subsidize expanded government health care.

The liberal press became unhinged when former President George W. Bush posed with an artificial turkey on a surprise Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad in 2003. But on Thursday, when President Obama served up a fake populist turkey of a $90 billion bank tax – dubbed the “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” – much of the press corps dutifully chewed and swallowed. Feigning outrage at the very financial sector that loaded his campaign coffers and provided him with crony Treasury appointees, Obama demanded “our money” back.

But the tax will not apply to the Enron-rivaling financial black holes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (it would “not be productive,” says a White House filled with Fannie & Freddie-enriched advisors). Or to the bailed-out auto companies. Or to the bevy of non-banks that have soaked up taxpayer bailout money. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

Nor will any of the incompetent or complicit financial regulators who practiced self-admittedly “inadequate” oversight before the meltdown and during the government bailout structuring be fined or penalized (we’re looking at you, Tim Geithner).

With Year Two of the Obama administration barely under way, even its most loyal subjects are beginning to realize that Hope and Change were phony fruits. He promised new politics. We got the same old crony capitalism. He promised public accountability. We got the back of the hand. How ya like them rotten apples now?

Clown alert: Janet Napolitano says the “system worked”

It has been, in the words of Queen Elizabeth II, an “annus horribilis” for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Beginning with her embrace of the impotent euphemism “man-caused disasters” to the hit job on conservatives and veterans that she was forced to apologize for, to her assertion that crossing the border illegally “isn’t a crime per se”, to her boneheaded claim that 9/11 terrorists came in through the Canadian border, Ja-No has confirmed time and again that she’s not ready for prime time.

Today, she caps off her horrible year by playing Big Pollyanna in the wake of the Flight 254. The botched bombing — foiled by a faulty detonator and brave passengers, not by homeland security bureaucrats or any preemptive measures by intel officials — shows that the in Ja-No’s fantasy world.

Transcript of Napolitano’s interview on CNN via CQPolitics:

CROWLEY: Secretary Napolitano, thank you so much for joining us. If I am about to get on a plane today in the U.S. or headed toward the U.S., I think my big question is, is this part of a larger plot, or do you think this is a lone wolf?

NAPOLITANO: Well, right now, we have no indication that it’s part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues. And we have instituted more screening and what we call mitigation measures at airports. So I would advise you during this heavy holiday season just to arrive a bit early, and to know that we are going to be doing different things at different airports. So don’t expect to do the same thing at one airport when you transfer through to another airport.

But the traveling public — this is my message for you, Candy. The traveling public is very, very safe in this air environment. And while we continue to investigate the source of this incident, I think the traveling public should be confident in what we are doing now.

CROWLEY: So, just to finish up on the question– I do want to talk to you about security measures — but do you think — has there been any evidence of the Al Qaida ties that this suspect has been claiming?

NAPOLITANO: Right now, that is part of the criminal justice investigation that is ongoing, and I think it would be inappropriate to speculate as to whether or not he has such ties.

What we are focused on is making sure that the air environment remains safe, that people are confident when they travel. And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight. We instituted new measures on the ground and at screening areas, both here in the United States and in Europe, where this flight originated.

So the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly.

If the “system” had “worked,” the U.S. consular officials who granted Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab a short-term visa last June would have revoked it immediately upon being informed by his father that he was a Muslim radical with al Qaeda ties.

If the “system” had “worked,” U.S. consular officials would have never granted Abdulmutallab — a rootless, young, single male — a visa in the first place in compliance with State Department visa regulation 214(b):

That law requires an applicant to show strong roots in his home country — such as a house, a spouse, and/or employment — in order to prove that he would be likely to return home when his visa expired.

Young, single, unemployed men are the people most often refused visas under 214(b) (when it is actually enforced) for the very reasons that al Qaeda recruits them so heavily: They are shiftless and have very little to stop them from packing up and moving to a new country. There’s also, sadly, very little to prevent them from committing terrorist attacks.

If the “system” had “worked,” Abdulmutallab would have been barred from the U.S. like he had been barred from Britain.

The “system,” like Napolitano, was an epic fail.

And as predicted, Napolitano also played the “lone nut” card — dismissing the Christmas Day jihadist as a single operator not part of “anything larger” despite his own testimony to the contrary.

She’s Obama’s biggest joker. And there’s no Blame-Bush loophole
to weasel through anymore.

***

Nothing to see here, move along:

An Al-Qaida operative in Yemen threatened the United States and said “we are carrying a bomb” in a video posted online four days before the botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight.

The video does not contain any clear evidence that the speaker was anticipating Friday’s attempt, but it has attracted scrutiny because of reports that the bombing plot may have originated in Yemen.

The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused in the attack claimed he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives there, U.S. law enforcement officials said, and a key American lawmaker has said there are “strong suggestions” of a Yemen connection.

In a Dec. 21 video, the al-Qaida operative delivered a eulogy for militants killed in a Yemeni airstrike on a militant training camp four days earlier. The speaker said he had no agenda against Yemeni soldiers, but warned them against cooperating with Americans.

“We are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God,” the speaker says.

“O soldiers, you should learn that we do not want to fight you, nor do we have an issue with you. We only have an issue with America and its agents, and beware of standing in the ranks of America,” he says. “You should not defend these regimes. The soldiers and even Obama cannot put out the light of Islam.”

***
Related from Andy McCarthy:

It sounds trite but it’s worth repeating: The object of terrorism is to terrorize, and obviously the mission has been accomplished even if the plane was not brought down.

In Willful Blindness, I recount the debacle of repeated entries into the United States by, among others, the Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman) and al Qaeda operative Ali Mohammed — the former permitted free entrance, egress and, finally, a green card (as a special religious worker) even though he was one of the world’s most famous jihadists and was on the terror watch lists for having authorized the murder of Anwar Sadat; the latter permitted to immigrate from Egypt and join the U.S. army despite having been caught trying to infiltrate the CIA. Now, nearly 20 years later — after 9/11, the 9/11 Commission, etc. — we have Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: He was in the terrorist “database” because we were warned by his own influential father of his radical ties and proclivities, and he was evidently notorious among associates in Africa and Europe for his jihadist leanings; yet, he was issued a multiple-entry visa. And he claims to have been trained in Yemen — the al Qaeda hub to which the administration has just sent a half-dozen trained jihadists previously detained in Gitmo, and where it hopes to send many more.

I wonder what the media would be saying if George Bush were still president.

Jonah Goldberg says, “Fire Napolitano.”

But her hapless first-responder mentality is simply a reflection of the man who hired her.

By Michelle Malkin

Who is subsidizing Obama’s illegal alien aunt (besides taxpayers, that is)?

She’s still here. She’s still appealing her deportation order. She’s still living in public housing in Boston.

Over and above whatever government subsidies she is receiving, someone else is paying her legal, living, and medical expenses.

Who?

President Obama’s illegal alien aunt chattered away with an Associated Press reporter, but she refused to say who’s paying her way:

President Barack Obama’s aunt buried her face in her hands and sobbed as she described her anguish over no longer having contact with him and his family after the revelation she had been living illegally for years in the United States in public housing.

Zeituni Onyango told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she is troubled that her immigration woes have made her a political liability to her nephew.

…Onyango helped care for the president’s half brothers and sister while living with Barack Obama Sr. in Kenya. She moved to the United States in 2000 and applied for asylum in 2002, but her request was rejected and she was ordered deported in 2004.

However, she did not leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston. She had been a health care volunteer but not since her status became public. She refused to discuss how she affords to live now or who is paying for her attorney.

Onyango said she previously had no trouble visiting Obama when he was a state senator in Illinois or after he became a U.S. senator, though she declined to discuss details of how often she had contact with Obama and his family. Her tiny apartment in a modest subsidized public housing complex for seniors and the disabled is adorned with photographs of her with Obama at the Illinois Statehouse, the president’s official portrait, his family, the inauguration, her children and African wildlife.

She is disabled and learning to walk again after being paralyzed for more than three months because of an autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Read More: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/01/who-is-subsidizing-obamas-illegal-alien-aunt-besides-taxpayers-that-is/

Bombshell: Obama bringing KSM to NYC for trial

It’s Friday. The president is flying off to Asia. Congress is not in session. Perfect time to drop a bombshell on the American people:

The Obama administration is bringing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York City for a civilian trial.

No, it’s not a joke. Via the NYT:

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.

The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Barack Obama’s plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

It is also a major legal and political test of Obama’s overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom. And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama’s agenda.

Here is the e-mail the DOD’s Director Victim Witness Program sent out to victims, survivors, and family members of jihadi attacks this morning (via Sgt. Tim Sumner, brother-in-law of FDNY Joseph G. Leavey, 45, Ladder 15, WTC):

You are receiving this email because you have been identified as a victim, survivor, or victim family member of an Al-Qaeda attributed attack and have requested to be kept informed of events involving detainees charged in military commissions or being held in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility in connection with those attacks.

We would like to inform you that the U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice will be making an important public announcement later this morning. At 10:30 am Eastern Standard Time, the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism will post information for victims about the announcement on its password protected victims’ website. At 11:00 am the Defense and Justice Departments will issue a joint press release notifying the public of the information, and there will also be a press conference. In addition, the Defense Department will notify victims about the information by email.

Both the Defense Department (Karen Loftus) and the Justice Department (Heather Cartwright) are sending out this e-mail to ensure that as many victims as possible receive it. We apologize if you receive duplicates. If you know of other victims who may be interested in the information, please pass this on to them.

Here’s what Tim sent in response:

We have an announcement as well: we will fight with every remaining breath in our bodies both their bringing KSM and the rest of the 9/11 conspirators to federal courtrooms within walking distance of where they slaughtered our loved ones. And whomever finds Manhattan’s federal courthouse near Ground Zero a “sentimental favorite” for the 9/11 trials is a damn fool and they ALL ought to be fired. Pass that message on, far, wide, and up and down the chain-of-command.

See here for a petition to the president.

If this White House thought Tea Party activists were an “angry mob,” wait until they see the backlash from 9/11 family members and their supporters nationwide. We’re not going to sit down and shut up about the reckless, security-undermining Obama 9/10 agenda and conflict-of-interest-ridden AG Eric Holder.

Call them out.

***

I’ve written extensively over the years on the perils of civilian trials for terrorists. See here and here and here for a refresher course in the Ally McBeal
approach to terror.

***

Andy McCarthy exposes the underlying Obama/Holder agenda:

We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Veterans Day 2009: Thank you

Happy Veterans Day to all who have served our great nation. Thank you for your courage and dedication. Thank you for our freedom. We can’t say it enough.

Applebee’s honors vets and active duty military with a free meal today. Krispy Kreme is doing the same. Or take a vet out to McCormack & Schmick’s or Golden Corral for a special dinner.

Must-read Veterans Day tributes at milblog Mudville Gazette and from Blackfive’s Matt Burden, who reminds us: “It’s about the living.”

To honor our wounded troops, make sure you pitch in at Project Valour-IT. Today’s the last day of the annual fundraiser.

A few years ago, I had the great honor and thrill of interviewing several of the surviving WWII Doolittle Raiders for Hot Air. Watch the clip here. I asked Lt. Col. Dick Cole, Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot, for his thoughts on America at war today. He answered bluntly:

“We’re at war. We ought to get on a war footing and get the job done.”

From Lt Col. Cole’s lips to the White House’s ears…

Read:http://michellemalkin.com

Lead Story The massacre at Fort Hood and Muslim soldiers with attitude

By Michelle Malkin

Scroll for updates…7:39am Eastern press conference…Ft. Hood officials disclose that the murder victims included 12 soldiers and 1 civilian…first responder heroine who shot Hasan is in stable condition…witnesses still being interviewed “all through the night”…they confirm that Hasan was wearing his uniform…

I was traveling to Wichita for a speaking event/fundraiser (which I’ll tell you more about later) when news of the Fort Hood massacre broke. Please continue to pray for the 12 murder victims [update 11/6: now 13 dead] and their families, and the 30 wounded and their families.

Allahpundit at Hot Air has a massive, blow-by-blow post on all the latest developments. The Christian Science Monitor profiles Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim soldier identified by the military as the shooter:

Terry Lee, a retired Army colonel who knew Hasan, told Fox News about a story he heard secondhand. He said a fellow colleague had told him that Hasan had made “outlandish comments” about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US involvement in them and that “Muslims had a right to rise up and attack Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“[He] made comments about how we shouldn’t be over there – you need to lock it up, Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor,” Lee added.

But the suspect’s cousin, Nader Hasan, gave Fox News a different picture. He said his cousin had never deployed but was affected by the war and had been concerned about his impending deployment.

“He would tell us how he would hear things, horrific things, things from war probably affecting him psychologically,” Nader Hasan said.

From AP:

His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.

There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances, are troubling.

“Troubling.” And familiar.

At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

Here’s the Scribd comment of Nidal Hasan:

There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” and Allah (SWT) knows best.

Those of you with long memories will remember all those who came before Hasan. Here is my column from March 2003 on Muslim soldiers with attitude:

Sgt. Asan Akbar, a Muslim American soldier with the 326th Engineer Battalion, had an “attitude problem.”

According to his superiors and acquaintances, Akbar’s attitude was bitterly anti-American and staunchly pro-Muslim. So how did this devout follower of the so-called Religion of Peace work out his attitudinal problems last weekend?

By lobbing hand grenades and aiming his M-4 automatic rifle into three tents filled with sleeping commanding officers at the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade operations center in Kuwait.

Akbar is the lone suspect being detained in the despicable attack, which left more than a dozen wounded and one dead. Surviving soldiers say Akbar, found cowering in a bunker with shrapnel injuries, was overheard ranting after the assault: “You guys are coming into our countries, and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.”

“Our”? At least there’s no doubt about where this Religion of Peace practitioner’s true loyalties lie.

Naturally, apologists for Islam-gone-awry are hard at work dismissing this traitorous act of murder as an “isolated, individual act and not an expression of faith.” But such sentiments are willfully blind and recklessly p.c.

Sgt. Akbar is not the only MSWA — Muslim soldier with attitude — suspected of infiltrating our military, endangering our troops and undermining national security:

– Ali A. Mohamed. Mohamed, a major in the Egyptian army, immigrated to the U.S. in 1986 and joined the U.S. Army while a resident alien. This despite being on a State Department terrorist watch list before securing his visa. An avowed Islamist, he taught classes on Muslim culture to U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., and obtained classified military documents. He was granted U.S. citizenship over the objections of the CIA.

A former classmate, Jason T. Fogg, recalled that Mohamed was openly critical of the American military. “To be in the U.S. military and have so much hate toward the U.S. was odd. He never referred to America as his country.”

Soon after he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1989, Mohamed hooked up with Osama bin Laden as an escort, trainer, bagman and messenger. Mohamed used his U.S. passport to conduct surveillance at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; he later pled guilty to conspiring with bin Laden to “attack any Western target in the Middle East” and admitted his role in the 1998 African embassy bombings that killed more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans.

Ain’t multiculturalism grand?

– Semi Osman. An ethnic Lebanese born in Sierra Leone and a Seattle-based Muslim cleric, Osman served in a naval reserve fueling unit based in Tacoma, Wash. He had access to fuel trucks similar to the type used by al Qaeda in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 U.S. airmen and wounded nearly 400 other Americans.

Osman was arrested last May as part of a federal investigation into the establishment of a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon. Osman recently pleaded guilty to a weapons violation, and the feds dropped immigration charges against him in exchange for his testimony.

Ain’t open borders grand?

– John Muhammad. The accused Beltway sniper and Muslim convert was a member of the Army’s 84th Engineering Company. In an eerie parallel to the Akbar case, Muhammad is suspected of throwing a thermite grenade into a tent housing 16 of his fellow soldiers as they slept before the ground-attack phase of Gulf War I in 1991. Muhammad’s superior, Sgt. Kip Berentson, told both Newsweek and The Seattle Times that he immediately suspected Muhammad, who was “trouble from day one.”

Curiously, Muhammad was admitted to the Army despite being earlier court-martialed for willfully disobeying orders, striking another noncommissioned officer, wrongfully taking property, and being absent without leave while serving in the Louisiana National Guard.

Although Muhammad was led away in handcuffs and transferred to another company pending charges for the grenade attack, an indictment never materialized. Muhammad was honorably discharged from the Army in 1994. Eight years later, he was arrested in the 21-day Beltway shooting spree that left 10 dead and three wounded.

Ain’t tolerance grand?

– Jeffrey Leon Battle. A former Army reservist, Battle was indicted in October 2002 for conspiring to levy war against the United States and “enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America.” According to the Justice Department, he planned to wage war against American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Ain’t diversity grand?

“It’s bad enough we have to worry about enemy forces, but now we have to worry about our own guys,” Spc. Autumn Simmer told the Los Angeles Times this week after the assault on the 101st Airborne. The Islamist infiltration of our troops is scandalous. Not one more American, soldier or civilian, must be sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism, diversity, open borders, and tolerance of the murderous “attitude” of Jihad.

FYI: Convicted Beltway sniper John Muhammad is scheduled to be executed next week. No doubt the families of the Muslim sniper victims are re-living the horror tonight.

FYI: Muslim US soldier Hasan Abujihaad was convicted last year on espionage and material terrorism support charges
after serving aboard the USS Benfold and sharing classified info with al Qaeda financiers, including movements of US ships just six months after al Qaeda operatives had killed 17 Americans aboard the USS Cole in the port of Yemen.

***

Clarice Feldman notes President Obama’s “odd” — to say the least — reaction to the attack on Fort Hood soldiers:

On Thursday, 11 soldiers and civilian police at Fort Hood were slaughtered execution-style at close range and over 30 others wounded, allegedly by a U.S. Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan. The President immediately addressed the nation concerning this horrific event.

However, his expression of grief was very odd. He spent the first two minutes of the four-and-a-half minute address in a light-hearted discussion of his earlier “Tribal Nations Conference” on Native American rights, including a “shout out” recognition of a conference attendee.

When he finally got around to the purpose for his public appearance, he gave an uninspired and rambling dissertation on the tragedy. Even then, he could not keep the topic focused on sympathy for the pain of others:

I want all of you to know that as Commander in Chief, that there’s no greater honor, but no greater responsibility for me (emphasis his) than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for…

Poor soul, it’s so saddening to know how this tragedy affects him. Listening to this address provides some insight into Obama’s character and how he ranks his priorities.

***

Business as usual: The whitewashing of jihad by the MSM. See here and here.

I’ve said it many times over the years and it bears repeating again as cable TV talking heads ask in bewilderment how all the red flags Hasan raised could have been ignored: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.

***

Crikey:

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Austin, was briefed by military officials and said Hasan had taken some unusual classes for someone studying about mental health.

“He took a lot of extra classes in weapons training, which seems a little odd for a psychiatrist,” McCaul said.

McCaul said Hasan had received poor grades for his work at Walter Reed and was not happy about his situation in Fort Hood, where Hasan apparently felt like “he didn’t fit in.”

“He’s disgruntled because he had a poor performance evaluation, he doesn’t believe in the mission, he’s looking at getting transferred to Afghanistan or Iraq,” McCaul said. “He’s not happy about all that.”

McCaul added that officials planned to interview Hasan to try to determine for sure that he was not working with foreign agents.

“From an intelligence standpoint, that’s key, finding out if he talked to anyone overseas,” McCaul said.

***

Bruce Bawer has a brilliant essay on the MSM whitewashing of jihad:

CNN (ditto the New York Times website) was considerably less useful than the tidbits I picked up online by following links on various blogs and in Facebook postings. They led me to (among other things) an AP story, a Daily Mail article, and a Fox News interview that provided telling details: Hasan had apparently been a devout Muslim; Arabic words, reportedly a Muslim prayer, had been posted on his apartment door in Maryland; in conversations with colleagues he had repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers; on Thursday morning, hours before the massacre, he had supposedly handed out copies of the Koran to neighbors. A couple of these facts eventually surfaced on CNN, but only briefly; they were rushed past, left untouched, unexamined; the network seemed to be making a masterly effort to avoid giving this data a cold, hard look. Meanwhile it spent time doing heavy-handed spin — devoting several minutes, for example, to an inane interview with a forensic psychiatrist who talked about the stress of treating soldiers bearing the emotional scars of war. The obvious purpose was to turn our eyes away from Islamism and toward psychiatric instability as a motive.

…after [the Anderson Cooper show] was over, we got a “special edition” of Larry King Live hosted by Wolf Blitzer. This one really took the cake. By way of “illuminating” Hasan’s actions, Blitzer interviewed a panel of — no, not experts on Islamic jihad, but psychiatrists. Blitzer endlessly repeated the mantra that Hasan had been “taunted” for being Muslim, had feared going to a war zone, and had ultimately gone “berserk,” and the docs echoed this line. “He did not reach for help when he should have,” lamented one panelist. Another opined: “It sounded like it got to be too much for him.” Yet another told us: “All kind of people need help who aren’t getting help. … He was feeling picked on by his colleagues. … He was strained. He was scared.”

Could there be a more bitter contrast? At Fort Hood, so many courageous GIs, all of them prepared to risk their lives fighting the Islamic jihadist enemy in defense of our freedom, several of them now dead. And, on our TV screens, so many apparently craven journalists, public officials, psychiatrists, and (alas) even military brass — all but a few of whom seemed unwilling to do anything more than hint obliquely at the truth that obviously lies at the root of this monstrous act.

And now: Reports that Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar!” during the attack.

Nothing to see here. Move along…

An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing

By Michelle Malkin • October 16, 2009

Yes, it’s time for the upside-down elephant. The Stupid Party is at it again. The subject of today’s column: An abomination in the NY23 special congressional race to replace former GOP Rep. John McHugh, who accepted President Obama’s Army Secretary position. Way to go, Beltway GOP establishment. Grass-roots fiscal conservatives are fired up over ACORN, the SEIU, tax-and-spend radicals. Grass-roots social conservatives are battling radical abortion and gay marriage policies. You have been asking movement conservatives to give you money to fight the ACORN-friendly, union-pandering, tax-and-spend, radical Democrats.

Then you use their money to try and elect Dede Scozzafava, an ACORN-friendly, union-pandering, tax-and-spend radical Republican. And you use that money to fight Doug Hoffman, a viable, bona fide conservative candidate in the race who is closing the gap in the polls.

Watch your campaign coffers dry up, NRCC.

The GOP establishment: Always, always its own worst enemy.

Get out your air sickness bags. Guess who endorsed Scozzafava this morning? Newt Gingrich. I hear Al Sharpton and Nancy Pelosi approve!

Fight the GOP Beltway establishment. Contribute to Doug Hoffman today.
****

An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Here’s the dirty little secret about political candidates and officeholders labeled by the mainstream media as “moderate Republicans”: There’s usually nothing moderate about them. Consider the case of “moderate Republican” Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee in the New York 23rd congressional district’s special election.

Handpicked by local party pooh-bahs and supported by Beltway GOP leaders, Scozzafava is vying to replace former GOP Rep. John McHugh, who abandoned his seat to accept President Obama’s nomination as Army Secretary. There’s certainly no urgency to tack left. The upstate New York district is as safe a Republican district as they come. The GOP has triumphed in every election there since 1871. Obama eked out a victory in the district last fall, but the Democrats have no real traction on the ground.

And the mood of the electorate near and far is far from electric blue. It’s not just Tea Party activists and health care town hall protesters displaying discontent with Big Government in Washington. A recent Gallup Poll reported that self-identified conservatives now outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states — and that more Americans nationwide now say they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

Scozzafava is an abortion rights advocate who favors gay marriage. It would be one thing if Scozzafava balanced that social liberalism with fiscal conservatism. But as a state assemblywoman, she voted for massive tax increases, Democratic budgets and a $180 million state bank bailout. She also supported the trillion-dollar federal stimulus package — which every House Republican voted against.

More troubling, Scozzafava in past elections has embraced the ballot line of the Working Families Party — a socialist outfit whose political DNA is intertwined with scandal-ridden ACORN. ACORN and the WFP have shared office space in New York City, Arkansas and Illinois. ACORN head Bertha Lewis, a close Scozzafava friend and political supporter, wears a second hat as vice chairman of the WFP. The WFP has been listed in ACORN documents dating back to 2000 as an “affiliate.”

Under fire for her cozy relations with organizations that have shown lifelong hostility toward the Republican Party, Scozzafava now claims she would have voted to de-fund ACORN in the wake of the multiple BigGovernment.com sting videos showing ACORN employees advising undercover journalists on how to evade tax laws, lie on housing applications and smuggle underage illegal alien prostitutes.

But there’s another inextricably linked ACORN and WFP affiliate that Scozzafava would not likely disavow: Big Labor.

Refresher: The Service Employees International Union is co-located with several key ACORN offices across the country. ACORN founder Wade Rathke founded influential SEIU Local 100. As John Wilson reported in the New York Post this spring, the WFP’s largest donors are the SEIU, which pitched in more than $300,000, and the teachers union, which donated $200,000. These organizations have worked together to increase left-wing political clout, undermine capitalism and ensure “social justice” on the public’s dime.

Scozzafava’s husband is a leading upstate New York union organizer. She supports the federal “card-check” legislation that would massively boost union rolls — and Democratic voting rolls — at the expense of rank-and-file workers’ free choice. And for that matter, at the expense of Republican electoral prospects. Card check is the key to a Democratic majority in perpetuity. Big Labor bosses have said as much.

Movement conservatives and limited government activists are battling the establishment GOP over its endorsement of Scozzafava’s candidacy. The Club for Growth, former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson and others have lined up behind a truly mainstream and viable candidate — Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman.

Meanwhile, “moderate Republican” Scozzafava has earned the enthusiastic endorsement of far-left blog entrepreneur and political strategist Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who runs the Daily Kos website. He enthused that Scozzafava has “been willing to raise taxes when budgets require it, and is to the left of most Democrats on social issues.”

That’s not moderation. That’s extremist fringe. This race isn’t a fight over the heart and soul of the Republican Party. It’s a battle over its brain.

***

Jeri Thompson nails it: “The fact that Republican Party leaders in NY-23 and the NRCC ignored just about everything that has taken place over the past six months — the fight over the Obama stimulus package, the tea party rallies, the health care debate — and put Scozzafava on the ballot, indicates that we need more, not less, common sense and conservative values in the Republican Party. Hoffman represents conservatives’ best chance to send a national message to the Republican Party that they are a force to be reckoned with, and that Hoffman appears to have the energy from the grassroots to pull off a win and help lay the groundwork for a successful 2010 election cycle. As one Hoffman supporter told me yesterday, ‘The feeling of momentum is palpable. The race is between Doug and the Democrat…we hope Dede won’t be a spoiler for conservatives in this race.’”

The Washington Times spotlights the battle: Tea Party conservatives vs. the GOP.

Bill Kristol:

A new poll in the November 3 special election for the congressional seat, NY-23, vacated by Army Secretary John McHugh, confirms what knowledgeable observers have suspected for a while: The candidacy of the official Republican nominee, liberal Dede Scozzafava, selected by local party officials and supported by the national Republican establishment, is collapsing. The Republican who has a real chance to defeat Democrat Bill Owens is Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate—a Republican with a profile far more like the popular McHugh, and one far more in sync with the district. What’s more, if elected, Hoffman would caucus in Congress with Republicans—whereas Scozzafava could well pull an Arlen Specter and defect to the Democrats.

Two weeks ago, the Siena poll had Scozzafava at 35%, Owens at 28%, and Hoffman at 16%. Now Scozzafava, at 29%, trails Owens by 4—and leads Hoffman, who has risen to 23%, by only 6, compared to her 19 point lead over Hoffman two weeks ago. This despite a full-court press for Scozzafava by the state and national GOP establishment—including press releases from the National Republican Congressional Committee attacking Hoffman.

The new poll shows Democrats are coming home to Owens, and that Hoffman is leading among independents. (Scozzafava is running third among independents.) This suggests he’s a far more viable candidate than Scozzafava in the stretch run, especially if Republicans were to begin to coalesce around him—which might well happen if the GOP establishment stopped propping up Scozzafava.

Wealth redistributor-in-chief: Hey, let’s spread around another $13 billion!

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me:

President Obama on Wednesday attempted to preempt the announcement that Social Security recipients will not get an increase in their benefit checks for the first time in three decades, encouraging Congress to provide a one-time payment of $250 to help seniors and disabled Americans weather the recession.

“One-time payment” my foot.

Reminder: There is no such thing as a temporary government entitlement.

Obama endorsed the idea, which is expected to cost at least $13 billion, as the administration gropes for ways to sustain an apparent economic rebound without the kind of massive spending package that critics could label a second stimulus act.”

“$13 billion” my foot.

Reminder: There is no such thing as a temporary entitlement that ever costs less than the government estimates.

An increase in benefit checks each January has been a yearly ritual since the mid-1970s, when the government moved to ensure that its subsidies to retirees, pension recipients and others who receive Social Security benefits kept pace with inflation. Thursday’s announcement by the Labor Department will mark the first time that the federal formula used since then, which is tied to the consumer price index, will translate into no increase at all. That is because consumer prices have remained stagnant in the weak economy — a sharp reversal from this past year, when Social Security checks grew by 5.8 percent, an unusually large amount.

Why bother with the charade of inflation-indexed COLAs if the government is going to redistribute wealth away from younger generations to the elderly whether there’s inflation or not?!

…Congress has already enacted a stimulus package that included a similar $250 payment to retirees and others who depend on Social Security, veterans’ benefits and federal pensions.

Repeat: Congress has already doled out payments to retirees and others.

This new round is a bailout for seniors who have lost money in the stock and housing markets. Obama said so:

The new payments would cost an estimated $14 billion, according to legislative sources, although the White House said the price tag would be $1 billion less than that.

In urging lawmakers to provide a second round of payments to older Americans, the president said the extra help would “not only make a difference for them, but for our economy as a whole,” adding that it would “be especially important in the coming months, as countless seniors and others have seen their retirement accounts and home values decline as a result of this economic crisis.”

This isn’t about compassion. It’s a naked $13-14 billion bribe for the seniors lobby during the contentious Obamacare debate at the expense of everyone else.

Shame.

***

The American Spectator’s Philip Klein reports:

“We generally think proposals should be paid for, but in this case, we’re providing temporary essential help to people as an extension to the Recovery Act,” the official said. “We plan to work with Congress to discuss financing, but the President is not going to go into those discussions insisting that this be paid for.”

The announcement comes a day before the Social Security Administration is set to announce its cost of living adjustment to beneficiaries. Last year, beneficiaries received a 5.8 percent boost because soaring energy costs pushed up consumer prices, but given the sagging prices in the currently weak economy, beneficiaries aren’t going to receive any raise this year. The proposed $250 payments would represent a 2 percent increase to the typical beneficiary.

The official was quick to push back against the suggestion that this proposal — likely to be financed through deficit spending — represented a second stimulus package. Instead, the official argued that it was merely extending a provision of the $787 billion stimulus bill that is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.