Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers discusses the U.S. role in the European debt crisis: And see John Gizzi, at Human Events , “” Exclusive: IMF Chief Lagarde, Rep. McMorris Rodgers in Sitdown ,” and at Telegraph UK , ” Christine Lagarde: European financial crisis is too serious for eurozone countries to solve alone .”
Continued here:
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers on ‘The Kudlow Report’
Much has been made of this year’s revolutions across the Middle East. Many in our government and the media — on the Right and the Left — would have us believe the Arab Spring is cause for euphoria. More change we can believe in. But is it? Are the radical changes in Arab states just a set-up for radical Islamist rule across the region? In the December issue of The Blaze magazine , we confront the reality of where the Arab Spring is leading the Middle East — and the rest of the world. Those with eyes on taking down the West are loving the movement — and the threat the movement’s radical leaders and soon-to-be-elected officials pose to our way of life. What diplomatic course, then, do Western, democratic nations take when their decidedly positive, even euphoric, initial reaction to Arab Spring fever and its purported promise of increased freedoms and human rights is giving way like a line of dominoes to Islamist theocracies — and all allegedly at the behest of an oppressed citizenry “freely” voting them in? The American government’s response to the Arab Spring is rife with grudging political correctness: The Obama administration saying and doing all the “right things,” promising to work with freshly empowered Islamist regimes and providing assistance to rebel causes. But will the administration’s progressive, “forward thinking” ideology actually generate an in-kind response from the eventual seats of power across the Middle East? It seems more plausible that, as with most politicians, the Muslim Brotherhood and their theocratic allies across the Middle East will say whatever it takes to get elected — then once in office enact whatever policies they choose (e.g., Shariah law). Naguib Saweris, a business tycoon and Coptic Christian who leads and finances the most prominent liberal party, the Free Egyptians, declared, “They will pretend to be open-minded until they take power.” And what of Israel? The giant Muslim nations surrounding it were hostile toward Jews before the Arab Spring. What will happen to Israel after the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt or if “reforms” come to Syria and Jordan? The Obama administration’s support for the Arab Spring and waning allegiance to Israel is indeed an alarming combination with harrowing prospects. Our cover story takes up the challenge of revealing what’s going on in the many Arab nations currently undergoing so-called “democratic revolution.” What’s really going on? What’s next? What’s the end game? Order The Blaze magazine here today . You don’t want to miss it. If you’re wanting just the December issue, buy back issues of the magazine at The Blaze Store . More from The Blaze magazine: November 2011 : America’s ultra-Left movement has created a coalition of religious progressives to fight for their radical agenda. By working together – and with the Democratic Party – they’re hoping to take down to the Right. And in the November issue of The Blaze magazine, we expose the major players – from George Soros and Jim Wallis to the National Council of Churches and Faithful America. November also features a side-by-side comparison of typically liberal and conservative cities on issues such as crime, economy, education, health care and more. Guess which cities tend to do better? Get the facts to share with those who need convincing. Plus, don’t miss our exclusive interview with TV legend Chuck Woolery, the “Top 8 Little-Known Facts About Thanksgiving” and much, much more. ******************** October 2011: What will it take to keep mankind free? Sacrifice — from all of us. In the October 2011 issue, we examine the fact that, if we want to see liberty flourish, we have a job do to. It is the fight of our lives. Plus, we report how Egypt’s state-run press is rewriting history and equating Israelis to Nazis; interview Glenn Beck’s closest friend and on-air co-host, Pat Gray; uncover how the White House is once again circumventing Congress on immigration; detail how the Left disgracefully marked the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11; and much more. ******************** September 2011: It’s the premiere issue of the magazine created by the team that brings you TheBlaze.com, the site that has revolutionized online news. In this issue, we look back on the terrorist attacks and ask the tough questions: Are we safer? Can we stop the next attack? What are we doing about the existential threat of radical Islam? And meet fellow Americans whose lives were directly impacted by the events of that fateful day and learn how they’ve changed—for the better. We also offer an up-close-and-personal look at Glenn Beck’s fight for the Truth that is going to shake up the world. And you won’t want to miss our exclusive interview with best-selling author Brad Thor, our report on Al Gore and the out-of-control global-warming crusaders, and Top 10 smears about tea partiers. Did you miss previous issues of The Blaze magazine? No worries. You can have every issue of The Blaze, starting with the premiere issue. Click here to order. Be sure to subscribe to The Blaze magazine today so you don’t miss another issue. We offer print, electronic and combo subscriptions.
Continued here:
The Blaze Magazine: Liberty or Tyranny–What’s Next for the Arab Spring?
**Written by Doug Powers Instead of thanking Jason Mattera of Human Events for giving him an opportunity to reiterate his assertion that robberies, rapes and murders will go up if Congress fails to pass the “jobs bill,” Sheriff Joe Biden’s office is instead complaining that Mattera broke the rules : Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill. Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter. Jason Mattera, who works for Human Events, a conservative magazine, used a pretext to catch Biden off guard in a Senate hallway and grill him on claims the vice president has made about jobs legislation. Biden’s office has also contacted the standing committee of correspondents, which oversees the gallery, regarding whether Mattera broke the rules by ambushing him. Heather Rothman, the chairwoman of the gallery’s standing committee, said the matter is under review. “We’re aware of the concerns,” said Rothman, a reporter for BNA. “It’s being discussed. “We’re aware this occurred and the vice president’s office [has made] contact,” she added, noting the standing committee itself hasn’t met to deliberate the issue. If they start banning any reporter with the potential to make Joe Biden look silly, the press gallery is going to be as sparsely populated as Capitol Hill’s next “I quit earmarks, ask me how” seminar. Here’s the “confrontation” in question, in case you missed it: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
See the original post here:
Biden Complains After Reporter ‘Ambush’
At NYT , ” 10 Years Into Afghan War, a Thunderous Duel .” FORWARD OPERATING BASE TILLMAN, Afghanistan — The sun had been up less than a half-hour on the 10th anniversary of the start of the American-led war in Afghanistan when the first rocket struck. Flying in from near the border with Pakistan, it shook this outpost with an explosion that hinted at the long day ahead. Soon insurgents near the border were firing on four Afghan-American outposts simultaneously — a coordinated barrage and assault that included dozens of 107-millimeter rockets, and at one post, a suicide truck bomber, American military officers said. Only one American soldier was wounded in the insurgent attack, which the American regional command called the largest in Paktika Province since 2009. His wounds were not life-threatening. But the events on Friday demonstrated that as the war begins its second decade and the Pentagon plans to start sending tens of thousands of soldiers home after a buildup that since last year has made significant gains, the United States remains bedeviled by a bold, resilient foe. Most of the high-explosive rockets striking the outposts were fired from just inside Afghanistan, suggesting that the attack had been prepared and launched from Pakistan, and the rocket crews withdrew to sanctuaries there as the Americans fired back. And the relative weakness of Afghan soldiers and police officers living and working on the American-built bases was equally clear. As the attacks escalated in the morning, only the American military possessed the firepower, communications and skills to fight back in what developed into a long-range, artillery-and-rocket duel — raising once more the familiar questions about how Afghan forces, underwritten at tremendous expense, will fare when the United States pulls back. More at the top link. And at USA Today , ” Afghanistan: A decade of war .”
See the original post here:
Insurgents Strike U.S.-Afghan Outposts Near Pakistan
At New York Times , ” Christie Team Assessing How Fast a 2012 Campaign Could Be Mounted .” The question isn’t should Christie run, but what are his chances of beating Mitt Romney? Might be tough, at this point, and he’s vulnerable on the issues just like Rick Perry, who’s now kinda crashing after the big debut. And of course Christie will face endless attacks for his weight, which isn’t just unfair, but genuinely cruel. The Los Angeles Times asks, ” Is Christie’s weight fair game, or did Letterman cross the line? ” And do we even need to ask? RELATED : From Andrew Breitbart, at Human Events , ” Man, I Like That Guy: Chris Christie’s Dude Factor .”
Read more here:
Christie Team Considering the Possibilities for Presidential Run
Have you seen the new mini-documentary, “Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution,” highlighting the Days of Rage protests and delving into the reasons why people continue to “occupy” Wall Street? Allow me to recap. The video, which was created by Iva Radivojevic and appears to praise the leftist protest, starts with a voiceover that rails against American actions, both domestically and abroad: “I see corporatism, fascism, crony capitalism. I don’t see a free market. I see a police state. I see an American empire. I see 700 military bases in a 135 foreign countries. I see 5,000 dead bodies in Iraq — a welfare, warfare state which gives out billions of dollars in foreign aid for dictators to build up huge armies. I see, uh, America that’s lost its way…Finally, we’ve risen up.” Following this “uplifting” message, individuals are shown throughout the video, as people, both young and old, who attempt to explain and legitimize the protests. One young woman says, ”It’s a model for a new society…it’s not a protest in the sense of being against something. It’s a way to formulate, um, something new.” Another young main described it as, “A mass awareness. A mass realization…an awakening of the masses, to the, to the, to the…obstruction of justice that has been a part of our lives for too long now.” Confused? We don’t blame you. Below, watch the full video for more: Also, there’s a new online space for the “Occupy Wall Street” movement — OccupyTogether.org . This web site, which is apparently intended to aggregate all of the protest content, describes itself as follows: Welcome to OCCUPY TOGETHER, a hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. As we have followed the news on facebook, twitter, and the various live feeds across the internet, we felt compelled to build a site that would help spread the word as more protests organize across the country. We hope to provide people with information about events that are organizing, ongoing, and building across the U.S. as we, the 99%, take action against the greed and corruption of the 1%. In what proponents are dubbing “a leaderless resistance movement,” Americans who are angry with Wall Street continue to “occupy” downtown Manhattan. We’ll leave you with another (borderline creepy) protest video:
See the original post:
New Video Praises Days of Rage: ‘I See Corporatism, Fascism, Crony Capitalism…a Police State’
Some of you may remember last December when a young man stripped down in the airport with the Fourth Amendment written across his chest and was detained by the TSA for 90 minutes . That ‘human billboard’ for the 4th Amendment, Aaron Tobey , filed a federal lawsuit against the TSA and federal officials to include DHS Chief Janet Napolitano and TSA head John Pistole for, among other things, violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights. Unfortunately, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia has just tossed out almost all of the case. The judge dismissed the passenger’s claims against the Capital Region Airport Commission, a few Richmond airport police officers, Napolitano, and Pistole. At the core of the judge’s decision was the lack of senior officials’ proximity to the events. Basically, you can’t blame Napolitano for what a couple of underlings did at one airport in the U.S. As the judge wrote in his decision: “Plaintiff does not allege that [Napolitano and Pistole] were directly involved in any way in the events, nor does he allege any facts suggestive of deliberate indifference.” The judge also decided that the TSA guidelines alone could not constitute a rights violation, which absolved those same senior officials from any liability in their creation or implementation. The court did, however, leave open the possibility that the screeners themselves could be personally liable. The judge wrote: “The question is whether the TSOs in fact radioed for assistance because of the message plaintiff sought to convey… Because plaintiff’s unrebutted claim facially states a cause of action, the question of qualified immunity must await further discovery.” So while the judge protected those at the top of the federal food chain, he left open the possibility that the screeners may be individually liable for violating Tobey’s civil rights. That will provide little comfort to the plaintiff, who by all accounts just wanted to put his Constitutional rights on display– literally– and force the federal government to stop its invasive airport pat-down policies. Perhaps it may have worked against Tobey that, unlike the rest of us, he made his flight despite the TSA security delay. (h/t consumerist )
Read more:
Federal Judge Dismisses Fourth Amendment ‘Human Billboard’ Lawsuit Against TSA
[Written by guest blogger emeritus See-Dubya] Hello—I go by See-Dubya on the web, and I used to guest-blog here for Michelle back in 2008. Then I retired from blogging, but I’m coming back just this once to tell you about my trip to 7-11. It was actually only near 7-11; I didn’t go in. The parking lot was too crowded. It was raining and it was early in the morning and my windows were fogged up but I pulled in across the street, turned my headlights off, and one of the three or four dozen men who were hanging around the lot (despite the miserable downpour) came out to see me. One little guy in an orange shirt and a ball cap, who looked to be in charge, came up to my window, but I just smiled and waved him off and fooled with my phone. So he smiled and went back to leaning on his truck. I think he thought I wanted to pick up some day labor. I wasn’t, but hat’s understandable: this particular 7-11 has a reputation as a place to pick up day labor. It has had that reputation for at least ten years, probably longer. Every time I’ve driven by there, there the laborers are. There’s a lot of places like this in America today, probably some of them 7-11s, where day laborers gather in hopes they’ll get picked up for a job. This particular 7-11 (you can see the sign, and the workers, in the background, through the monsoon) is in Falls Church, Virginia, on the Leesburg Pike, just down the road from the Dar al-Hijrah mosque. Ten years ago, a charismatic imam named Anwar al-Awlaki manned the pulpit there, and a U.S. soldier named Nidal Hasan listened to his sermons in the congregation. In fact just a little over ten years ago a couple of worshipers from Dar al-Hijrah drove up to this particular 7-11. They weren’t really interested in hiring the day laborers so much as getting someone to help them acquire forged identification. That turned out to be a fellow named Luis A. Martinez-Flores, himself an illegal immigrant, and he walked the two Arabs, Hani Hanjour and Khaled Almidhar, through the process of getting Virginia ID cards—after which they returned to this particular 7-11, withdrew $100 from the ATM, and handed it to Mr. Martinez-Flores. Around five years ago Michelle went to this particular 7-11 . She talked about what had happened there on her then-new website called Hot Air. Her video isn’t there anymore, but it made quite an impression on me. Now that I live in Northern Virginia, every time I drive past that particular 7-11 I point it out to my family. I don’t want them to forget why that particular 7-11 is special. That’s where Hani Hanjour and Khaled Almidhar ten years ago used the ID’s they bought so easily at this day labor bazaar to board American Airlines Flight 77 out of Dulles, and then to take it over and fly it into the Pentagon. They had also, according to Martinez-Lopez’s federal indictment, used these ID’s to procure ID’s in turn for three other 9/11 hijackers. “In all,” notes the 9-11 Commission report , “the five hijackers based their Virginia identification documents on the residency information of one bribed Salvadoran.” You would think the first thing that the newly-formed Department Homeland Security would have done would be to raid this particular labor market, frequented by illegal aliens and the document fraudsters that enable them to feign legitimacy, and shut it down for good. This is the site of our immigration policy’s greatest, most shameful failure, after all. Of course, ten years on, it’s just business as usual and the shame and failure continue unabated. There’s no marker to commemorate what happened there. You’d never know anything historically significant had happened there ten years ago. You’d have no indication at that particular 7-11 what a petty, commonplace, wretched little conspiracy was committed, and what a dreadful, monstrous crime was thereby abetted. That was where and when our self-deception about the illegal labor market and the security risks it presents caught up to us. Everyone should know this place. Everyone should vow that what happened there will never be permitted to happen again. But everyone won’t know; the memory is fading. Like the pictures of the man jumping from the Twin Towers, like the pictures of the rejoicing Middle East, this is one story that you never see in the “respectable” media accounts of what happened a decade ago. I just drove by there the other day to remind myself. And ten years later it looks like nothing has changed, especially not the policy permitting this market to occur. When Michelle made her video for Hot Air five years ago we were in the midst of debating President Bush’s new policy of amnesty for illegal immigrants, a policy which was just beginning to erode the support of his conservative base. And today the current President has just recently opened yet another door to illegal alien amnesty. One more thing remained the same: Writing in Human Events about that particular 7-11 in November of 2001, Timothy Carney and Terence Jeffrey noted that Fairfax County police cars often stopped there in the mornings and kept an eye on the crowd. And sure enough, this week, right there in front of that particular 7-11, in the midst of the mob of day laborers (no doubt enjoying Fairfax County’s ongoing status as a “ sanctuary city ” for illegal immigrants,) there was parked a Fairfax County police cruiser, just waiting, watching the traffic. Hoping, perhaps, to find some illegal activity going on. Keep watching! Another ten years, and you may start to see something. [This post was written and researched on my own time, on my own equipment. Opinions are strictly my own.]
Originally posted here:
Ten years on at the 9-11 7-11
President George W. Bush took some heat in the years following the September 11th attacks over his actions (or inactions, rather) during the moments after he learned that the Twin Towers had been attacked. On that morning, Bush was in a classroom at Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. When Chief of Staff Andy Card whispered news of the attacks into his ear, the president sat in front of the class silently, with a pensive look on his face. It was this moment and the minutes that followed that many of his opponents seized upon to claim that he was weak, inefficient and unable to act without assistance. But the children who were present that day — now seniors in high school — have come together with their second-grade teacher, Sandra Kay Daniels, to paint a very different picture of the president’s reaction. ABC’s “Good Morning America” spoke with them to get their take on the events that unfolded in the classroom that day. Below, watch the students and the teacher praise Bush’s calmness: After the event, Clesha Henry, another teacher at the school, recalls sitting in the media room and waiting for the president to make a statement about education. Instead, after leaving the second-grade classroom, he informed the media that the nation was under attack. William Mansell of Sarasota Patch has more : “I did not sense fear in him as much as I sensed concern,” Henry said. After making a brief speech, Bush was whisked away by Secret Service to board Air Force One to head to Washington. “It was absolutely silent, it was fear, we were afraid,” Henry said. “We couldn’t even soak it all in.” After that, Henry said she’d never seen a room cleared so quickly. The school went into emergency mode and got students into secure rooms. In contrast to these accounts, here’s Michael Moore’s view from his film, “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in which he claims that Bush sat dumbfounded, “Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do.”:
Read the rest here:
10 Years Later: Students & Teacher in 9/11 Classroom Praise George W. Bush’s Calmness
