Posted tagged ‘U.S. Congress’

Thank you, America!

June 25, 2016

Thank you, America! Wattsupwith that, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley via Anthony Watts, June 24, 2016

(This is by far the best address I have read thus far on Brexit. — DM)

head-for-the-brexit

“Your Majesty, with my humble duty, I was born in a democracy; I do not live in one; but I am determined to die in one.”

And now I shall die in one. In the words of William Pitt the Younger after the defeat of Napoleon, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”

The people have spoken. And the democratic spirit that inspired just over half the people of Britain to vote for national independence has its roots in the passionate devotion of the Founding Fathers of the United States to democracy. Our former colony showed us the way. Today, then, an even more heartfelt than usual “God bless America!”

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For my final broadcast to the nation on the eve of Britain’s Independence Day, the BBC asked me to imagine myself as one of the courtiers to whom Her Majesty had recently asked the question, “In one minute, give three reasons for your opinion on whether my United Kingdom should remain in or leave the European Union.”

My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament” is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision of that “Parliament” at will, and even to issue “Commission Regulations” that bypass it altogether.

Worse, the treaty that established the European Stability Pact gives its governing body of absolute bankers the power, at will and without consultation, to demand any sum of money, however large, from any member state, and every member of that governing body, personally as well as collectively, is held entirely immune not only from any civil suit but also from any criminal prosecution.

That is dictatorship in the formal sense. Good riddance to it.

I concluded my one-minute broadcast with these words: “Your Majesty, with my humble duty, I was born in a democracy; I do not live in one; but I am determined to die in one.”

And now I shall die in one. In the words of William Pitt the Younger after the defeat of Napoleon, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”

Indeed, No-way and Nixerland having already voted down the EU, Brexit may well be swiftly followed by Frexit, Grexit, Departugal, Italeave, Czechout, Oustria, Finish, Slovakuum, Latviaticum and Byebyegium.  At this rate, soon the only country still participating in the European tyranny-by-clerk will be Remainia.

The people have spoken. And the democratic spirit that inspired just over half the people of Britain to vote for national independence has its roots in the passionate devotion of the Founding Fathers of the United States to democracy. Our former colony showed us the way. Today, then, an even more heartfelt than usual “God bless America!”

All who have studied the Madison papers will grasp the greatness of the Founding Fathers’ vision. They were determined that no law and no tax should be inflicted upon any citizen except by the will of elected representatives of the people in Congress assembled.

They regarded this democratic principle as of such central importance that they wrote it down as Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States: “All legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Period. No ifs. No buts. No exceptions.

Except one. The Constitution establishes that foreign treaties ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate shall have the same force of law throughout the United States as enactments of Congress.

It is, therefore possible for any U.S. Government that can muster that Senate majority to ratify any treaty and thereby to thwart the central principle of Congressional democracy: that no Congress may bind its successors.

The Republicans, who are not always as lively in their understanding of the threat to democracy posed by supranational and global institutions such as the EU, the UN and its bloated climate bureaucracy, are too often snared or charmed by determined “Democrats” who fully understand and thirst to exercise the power to inflict perma-Socialism on their nation by bilateral, multilateral or global treaties.

It is astonishing how many of the GOP are willing to be cajoled and schmoozed into supporting monstrosities such as the Transatlatic Trade and Investment Partnership, which on its face sounds like a free-marketeer’s dream but is in its small print a series of outright Socialist measures which, once the Senate has ratified them, cannot be repealed. Its climate provisions, for instance, are highly dangerous.

It is no accident, therefore, that the bankers, the corporate profiteers, the Greens and the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Scotland – the corporatists and the communists together – made common totalitarian cause and heavily promoted the campaign to keep Britain in the EU, that paradise of vested interests and their poisonous lobbyists.

It is likewise no accident that precisely these same national and global vested interests heavily promote the campaign to subject Britain and the world to various unnecessary and damaging measures whose ostensible purpose is to control the climate but whose real ambition is to curb capitalism, fetter freedom, punish prosperity,. limit liberty and deny democracy.

The necessity to protect the flagile flower of democracy from the scythe of Socialism is now surely self-evident. Here are two modest proposals to ensure that the will of the people prevails over the power of the politicians, the Press, and the profiteers.

First, every new treaty, and as many pre-existing treaties as possible, should be made subject to repeal by a national referendum – and not just by a referendum called by the governing party because it thinks it can win it but by the people via the initiative procedure. Britain would have left the EU long before now if we, the people, and not those who govern us, had had the right to put referendum questions on the ballot.

Secondly, the governing bodies of all new supranational or global bodies exercising real sovereign power or spending taxpayers’ money from the states parties to the treaty that establishes them should be elected at frequent intervals by the peoples of those states parties.

Otherwise every international treaty, being a transfer of power from elected to unelected hands, diminishes democracy. Britain’s membership of the European Union effectively took away our democracy altogether, so that three new laws in five (according to the researchers of the House of Commons Library) or five in six (according to the German Government in a submission some years ago to the German Constitutional Court) are inflicted upon us solely because the unelected Kommissars require it.

Till now, our obligation has been to obey, on pain of unlimited fines.

The vote by the people of Britain to break free from this stifling, sclerotic tyranny has sent a shock-wave through every major international governing entity. It was no accident that the the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Corruption and Devastation, and various world “leaders” including Mr Obama, broke with democratic convention by openly promoting a “Remain” vote in a flagrant attempt to interfere in Britain’s decision.

Mr Obama’s intervention was decisive. The moment he demanded that Britain should remain within the EU, the polls began to swing against it. It was only when, in his maladroit fashion, he had sought to interfere in Britain’s decision that so many undecided voters woke up to the danger that the maneuverings and posturings of the international governing class represent to democracy.

What will Britain’s decision mean for the climate debate? Of course, it will break us free from the EU, whose governing elite had seized upon the climate issue as a purported ex-post-facto justification for the now-hated bloc’s continued existence.

We are left with our own British governing class, which has until now been no less determined than the EU to damage our economic and environmental interests by shutting down vital coal-fired power stations and carpeting our once green and pleasant land with windmills.

Now that the EU and its devoted poodle Mr Cameron have been consigned to the trashcan of history, it is near-certain that any new British Cabinet will take a more alert and less acquiescent stance than the present lot on the climate question.

It may even occur to the new Cabinet to check whether the rate of global warming is anything like what the profiteers of doom had predicted; to count the number of downstream businesses – such as cinder-blocks made from fly-ash out of coal-fired power stations – that have been destroyed by the EU’s war on coal; and even to wonder whether the forest of windmills that infest our once beautiful landscape are now extracting between them so much kinetic energy from passing storms that they are slowing them down, causing far more flash flooding than slightly warmer weather would (if and when it happened).

In the past, there was no point in our politicians asking any such questions, for our policies on all matters to do with our own environment were set for us by the unelected Kommissars of Brussels, whether we liked it or not.

Now that our politicians are going to have to learn to think for themselves again, rather than acting as an otiose, automated rubber stamp for directives from Them in Brussels, perhaps the Mother of Parliaments will begin to calculate the enormous economic advantage that Britain will gain by abandoning all of the climate-related directives that have driven our coal corporations, our steelworks and our aluminum works overseas, and have killed tens of thousands by making home heating altogether unaffordable.

We, the people, are the masters now. Our politicians will have to reacquire the habit of listening not to Them but to us. Here, and in the rest of Europe, and eventually throughout the world, let freedom ring!

Thank you, America, and God save the Queen!

Donald Trump, NRA agree on gun-control scrutiny for terrorist watch list

June 20, 2016

Donald Trump, NRA agree on gun-control scrutiny for terrorist watch list, Washington TimesAndrea Noble and S.A. Miller, June 20, 2016

Trump NRARepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump is introduced by National Rifle Association executive director Chris W. Cox (left) and NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre as he takes the stage to speak at the NRA convention on May 20 in Louisville

Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association smoothed over a hiccup in their alliance Sunday, agreeing that the government’s terrorist watch lists are unreliable and should not be used to revoke Second Amendment rights, a position also being taken by liberal-leaning civil liberties groups not usually allied with the NRA or Mr. Trump.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee and the NRA synchronized their views as the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on Democrat-backed legislation that would do just that. The bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California would ban firearm sales to people on a terrorist watch list or no-fly list. The bill is one of four gun control measures going before the Senate on Monday in response to the terrorist attack last week in Orlando.

All four measures — two Republican and two Democratic — are expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed to advance. But the Orlando bloodshed and fresh calls for more gun control laws from President Obama promised to keep the issue at the forefront in Washington and on the campaign trail.

“There is not a difference between what Mr. Trump is saying and what the NRA’s position is. That’s a media-created diversion there,” NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“The FBI should investigate every single person who’s on a terrorist watch list if they try to buy a gun. That’s what they’re doing now,” he said. “If there’s a reason to believe in probable cause that they’re engaged in terrorist activity, they ought to not only be prevented from getting a firearm; they ought to be arrested.”

Mr. Trump raised eyebrows among gun rights advocates when, in response to the Orlando massacre, he pledged to work with the NRA regarding gun sales to people on the government’s famously inaccurate no-fly list.

House GOP Leaders Set To Endorse Obama’s Failed Anti-JIhad Strategy

June 16, 2016

House GOP Leaders Set To Endorse Obama’s Failed Anti-JIhad Strategy, BreitbartNeil Munro, June 15, 2016

Domestic-Islamic-Terrorists-Radical-Islam-San-Bernardino-Fort-Hood-Orlando-Boston-Chattanooga-AP-640x480

House GOP leaders are set to endorse President Barack Obama’s failed domestic anti-jihad strategy, according to Texas GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert.

The GOP’s Obama endorsement is hidden in a new bill, titled the ‘‘Countering Terrorist Radicalization Act.” The showpiece bill’s title and language is undermined by numerous exceptions that allow the president to continue his failed “Countering Violent Extremism” strategy,  Gohmert said. 

The bill is a post-Orlando showpiece that actually entrenches Obama’s harmful policies, he said. “All this is doing is giving more and more credibility to this ridiculous term ‘CVE’ instead of describing the killers that were behind 9/11, the Boston bombings, the San Bernardino attack, the Orlando shooting, the bomber in Times Square… all these people who are trying to kill us in America,” he said.

“We’re doing the same thing as the president… we’re not identifying radical Islam” as the enemy which nurtures and motivates attackers, Gohmert. “There is going to be more and more killings of Americans … until we can train our people to recognize radical Islam,” he said.

Under the CVE strategy, Obama has blocked FBI investigators from examining the supposedly non-political and peaceful networks of mosques that actually nurture jihadi attitudes, while redirecting FBI attention to less dangerous non-Islamic groups, such as small-government militias. The strategy has also put FBI agents under the supervision of an oversight panel influenced by Muslim political activists, including an immigrant who reportedly welcomed the slaughter of 3,000 Americans in 2001 by her Muslim co-religionists.  

Moreover, Obama’s tight restrictions on investigators have not earned the expected cooperation from Islamic groups. In fact, many self-segregating Islamic groups have rejected Obama’s proposal to allow local Imams to police their young men in exchange for sharing information about jihadi groups with the FBI.

The GOP endorsement bill is slated for a vote as early as Thursday, June 16.

Under a subtitle, “AMPLIFYING LOCAL EFFORTS TO ROOT OUT TERROR,” the bill simply authorizes extra training, the creation of a committee and establishes some conditional reporting requirements, according to the draft given to Breitbart. The bill does not reform Obama’s CVE strategy, training rules or investigative priorities.

The bill was drafted by staff working for Rep. Michael McCaul,  R-Texas, who is the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.  Press aides at the committee declined to comment on the bill, or even if the committee plans to hold oversight hearing on Obama’s failed CVE strategy in the run-up to the 2016 election.

In March, McCaul endorsed Obama’s tacit alliance with U.S-based Islamic religious groups, many of which share overlapping umbrella networks that are exempt from normal FBI anti-terror monitoring.

“The effective thing is … effective outreach to the Muslim community, so you can pull the religious leaders really on to our team, if you will, to protect us from radicalization from within those communities,” he said March 27. “I think we can get good intelligence from the Muslim communities in our outreach efforts, in our working with the religious leaders in the communities in the United States,” he said.

In contrast, federal prosecutors do not offer political favors to let the Catholic priests run law-enforcement tasks in Latino neighborhoods, for example, keeping track of MS-13 and various drug-gangs.

In practice, much of that hoped-for intelligence about emerging jihadis has been blocked by determined opposition from Islamist advocates. For example, Linda Sarsour, a prominent Islamic advocate who is called a “Champion of Change” by Obama’s deputies, is a strong opponent of the information-exchange.

The government’s practice of providing funds to Muslim community partners in the fight against violent extremism has also raised concerns about the true goal of these partnerships. Are they being formed in order to gather intelligence and information about community members, or to actually engage in valuable community outreach about civil rights protections? CVE programs can foster mistrust between government entities and community members.

In December 2015, George Selim, then the  director of the Office for Community Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security, told NPR that Muslim communities are not identifying emerging jihadis. 

The research and the statistics have all indicated that peers, people that are in close association with subjects that ultimately commit an act like this, see something that’s a little bit out of the norm, but they don’t necessarily report it. And so part of our goal is to create the type of partnerships in which peers know when and how to elevate those type of suspicions.

There’s growing evidence that wife of the Orlando jihadi knew of his pending attack, but did not warn Americans.

Gohmert is trying to reform the McCaul bill before the vote — but he’s skeptical the GOP leadership is willing to fight for an effective anti-jihad strategy.

“There are plenty of representatives who are concerned about this, but the Speaker [Rep. Paul Ryan] and the Majority Leader [Rep. Kevin McCarthy] control what comes to the floor for a vote. and they have no intentions of bringing a bill that says we’ll stop radical Islamists,” he said.

Anti-jihad groups are urging voters to protest the planned bill. “Congress is about to help President Obama whitewash his approach to Counterterrorism to hide any mention or focus on Islamists or their Jihad against the free world,” said Jim Hanson, an executive vice president at the Center for Security Policy. “The Countering Violent Extremism Bill ignores the very Islamic nature of the Sharia ideology that motivates our enemies to slaughter innocents from Paris to Orlando,” he added.

The problems in Obama’s CVE strategy, said Gohmert, include the tight curbs on FBI investigations and training, the gag order to prevent any discussion of Islamic ideas — such as ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia’ or ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ — an intrusive oversight panel staffed by Islamic advocates, the legal shield for Islamic networks and political groups, and an eagerness to direct stigma and investigations against non-Islamic groups, such as “right wing militias,” plus its failure to win cooperation from self-segregating Islamic political groups.

For example, the gag-order means “the FBI is not allowed to learn or discuss or look for the things that radical islamics read, or the type of activities they’re doing when they going through radicalization,” Gohmert said.

In contrast, GOP 2016 candidate Donald Trump has called for more oversight over the Islamic networks. “We have to maybe check, respectfully, the mosques and we have to check other places because this is a problem that, if we don’t solve it, it’s going to eat our country alive,” he said during his June 15 campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia.

Obama’s CVE strategy also created an advisory group of outsiders who have much influence over FBI investigations.

The committee has pushed for a FBI focus on non-Islamic groups, and just before the Orlando massacre, presented a report to top DHS officials asking for a gag-order that would prevent officials from studying, debating or even recognizing jihadi ideas. Officials should “reject religiously-charged terminology and problematic positioning by using plain meaning American English,” said the report, which also urged officials to use “American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma,” according to the The Daily Caller

That’s the equivalent of President Franklin Roosevelt and his generals and their soldiers waging war against National Socialist Germany without mentioning “Blitzkrieg,” “U-boat,” “Fuhrer,” “Lebensraum,” “Panzer,” “Stuka,” or “Untermensch” or “Flak,” “Panzerfaust” or “SS.”

Committee co-chair Farah Pandith was born in the Muslim-vs.-Hindu battleground of Kashmir. For decades, that area has suffered from Muslim attacks, and many non-Arab Muslims consider that war to be as important as the Arab fight to destroy the Jewish state.

In 2012, co-chair Adnan Kifayat threatened this reporter with criminal charges for asking George Selim about the White House’s many quiet contacts with the Council on American Islamic Relations. “That was wrong… it is really bad form … You’re putting a career at risk by asking [questions] without telling him… you cannot ambush people and expect them to actually cooperate,” Kifayat told this reporter.

The CAIR group is so closely entwined with Islamists and with jihadis that court documents and news reports show that at least five of its people — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-related offenses. Critics show that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas-based criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the Jew-hating HAMAS jihad group, and that CAIR was founded with $490,000 from HAMAS.

Another member, Mohamed Elibiary, quit in 2014 after he tweeted that the Islamic empire, dubbed the “caliphate,” will return.

CAIR tweets

Obama’s deputies have recently appointed a young Muslim activist from Syria to the panel, Laila Alawa. She wears a hijab in observance to Islam, has tweeted a message supporting the 9/11 atrocity by her fellow Muslims, and tweeted a series of hateful messages about jihad opponents, according to a new report in The Daily Caller.

Alawa1

Alawa2

The new GOP bill eliminates any GOP oversight or leverage over Obama’s counter-productive CVE strategy by adding numerous loopholes in the weak GOP bill, Gohmert said. For example, the bill says;

COORDINATION.—The Secretary of Homeland Security shall, where appropriate, coordinate the efforts described in subsection (a) with the heads of other Federal departments and agencies, as appropriate, and, to the extent practicable, engage nongovernmental and international partners in the identification and use of testimonials described in such subsection.

But the phrase “to the extent practicable” really means “only if you want to … if it is not too much trouble,” Gohmert said. The phrase “where appropriate” really means “if you feel like you want to,” he said. 

“Shakespeare has the appropriate phrase— much ado about nothing,” he added.

“We all know most Muslims are not terrorists,” said Gohmert. “At the same time, it is ridiculous to not recognize there are radical islamists who are in America, who want to bring this country down and who think they go to paradise if they kill Americans.”

Congress to Compel Disclosure of $1.7B ‘Ransom Payment’ to Iran

June 1, 2016

Congress to Compel Obama Disclosure of $1.7 Billion ‘Ransom Payment’ to Iran Bill requires White House to reveal details about Iranian capture of U.S. sailors

BY:
June 1, 2016 4:58 am

Source: Congress to Compel Disclosure of $1.7B ‘Ransom Payment’ to Iran

Credit: Iranian state media

New legislation could force the Obama administration to disclose if it paid Iran $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds as part of a “ransom payment” earlier this year to secure the release of 10 U.S. sailors who were abducted at gunpoint by the Iranian military, according to a copy of the legislation and conversations with lawmakers.

The bill, jointly filed by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), comes on the heels of a Washington Free Beacon report disclosing that the Obama administration has been suppressing potentially “shocking” details related to the January abduction of the sailors, who were held at gunpoint by Iranian soldiers and forced to apologize on camera.

The legislation, dubbed the No Impunity for Iranian Aggression at Sea Act, would compel the Obama administration to issue a report to Congress detailing whether it paid Iran a $1.7 billion settlement as part of the hostage release. It also would level sanctions against Iran for possible breach of Geneva Convention rules governing legal military detainment.

Lawmakers and others have suspected for months that taxpayer money was partly used to secure the release of the sailors and other imprisoned Americans, though the administration has been adamant the issues are not linked.

The new legislation would require the White House to certify whether any federal funds, including January’s $1.7 billion payment, were doled out to Iran as part of a “ransom” to secure the release of these sailors and citizens imprisoned in Iran.

The legislation noted that the administration released the money to Iran just a day after it freed several U.S. citizens from prison.

The bill would further require the White House to determine if Iran’s treatment of the sailors—which included filming them crying—constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions or international laws governing innocent passage in international seas, according to the bill.

If it is determined that Iran violated either of these accords, the legislation would force the White House to list and sanction every Iranian complicit in the detainment.

Pompeo, a member of the House’s intelligence committee, told the Free Beacon on Tuesday that the White House continues to stonewall efforts to determine precisely what happened to the sailors.

“After the Iranians captured ten U.S. Navy sailors, President Obama mentioned these brave men and women only in passing in his last State of the Union address,” Pompeo told the Free Beacon. “Since then, instead of investigating whether the Iranians violated the Geneva Convention and the right of innocent passage, the Obama administration has only offered apologies and then fired an American Naval officer. There has been no criticism of the Iranians, no public explanation of why these Americans were forced on their knees, hands on their heads, or why they were forced to confess—nothing from President Obama that would send a signal that this is an unacceptable way to treat American sailors.”

Pompeo said that he and Cornyn are seeking to ensure there are “consequences on the Iranians responsible.”

“The Obama administration cannot just focus on its inherently flawed nuclear deal and hope inflammatory incidents like this blow over,” he said.” The implications for the safety of Americans and the U.S. military are too great.”

Rep. Randy Forbes (R., Va.) disclosed to the Free Beacon earlier this month that classified details surrounding the incident are being withheld by the administration. It could be more than a year before this information becomes public, Forbes said.

“I think that when the details actually come out, most Americans are going to be kind of taken aback by the entire incident, both how Iran handled it and how we handled it,” Forbes said. “I think that’s going to be huge cause for concern for most Americans. That’s why I’ve encouraged members of Congress to get that briefing so they do know exactly what did take place.”

Obama Admin Will Not Commit to Barring Iranian Access to U.S. Dollar

May 19, 2016

Obama Admin Will Not Commit to Barring Iranian Access to U.S. Dollar, Washington Free Beacon, , May 19, 2016

(On and on it goes; where it stops or if it will nobody knows. — DM)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, May 19, 2016. NATO foreign ministers this week will discuss how the alliance can deal more effectively with security threats outside Europe, including by training the Iraqi military and cooperating with the European Union to choke off people-smuggling operations in the central Mediterranean. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, May 19, 2016.  (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

The Obama administration will not commit to halting its effort to help Iran access the U.S. dollar, despite past commitments to do so, according to a new congressional inquiry obtained by the Washington Free Beacon into the Treasury Department’s refusal to uphold its promises.

Leading senators are threatening to block all consideration of Treasury Department nominees until the administration ends its bid “to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars” throughout the international financial system, according to a letter sent Thursday to the Treasury Department by Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Mark Kirk (R., Ill.).

Potential Iranian access to the U.S. dollar has caused friction between Congress and the Obama administration, which initially vowed during negotiations with Iran that such a move was out of the question.

However, senior administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have publicly sought to encourage Europeans to reengage in business with the Islamic Republic following last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement.

“We want to make it clear that legitimate business, which is clear under the definition of the agreement, is available to banks,” Kerry said in London last week.

The administration has been intentionally side-stepping questions about methods to give Iran backdoor access to the U.S. dollar, according to senior congressional sources informed of the matter.

The administration has assured lawmakers it will not grant Iran direct access to the U.S. financial system. However, it will not discuss backdoor methods in which U.S. dollars are given to Iran via international banks, source said.

“Whenever the administration gets asked whether it’ll allow Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime access to dollarized transactions outside of the U.S. financial system, a transaction that some people are starting to refer to as ‘Z-turn’ transactions, it flat-out avoids the question and instead says it doesn’t plan to allow Iran to engage in so-called ‘U-turn’ transactions or direct access to the U.S. financial system, something which lawmakers already know,” the source explained.

“This is the equivalent of giving an answer about oranges when you’ve been repeatedly asked about apples, and doesn’t change the fact that the critical questions about ‘Z-turn’ transactions for Iran really need to be clearly answered by the Treasury Department, once and for all,” the source said.

The apparent shift in the administration’s rhetoric on the issue has deepened concerns on Capitol Hill about alleged White House efforts to mislead Congress and the American people about the contents of the nuclear deal.

Rubio and Kirk are threatening to block all Treasury Department nominees from Senate consideration until the Obama administration answers questions about efforts to help Iran get access to U.S. dollars in the international marketplace, according to the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

“We are disappointed that you ignored the request in the March 30th letter from Senators Rubio and Kirk to provide ‘assurances that the United States will not work on behalf of Iran to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars elsewhere in the international financial system, including assisting Iran in gaining access to dollar payment systems outside the U.S. financial system,’” the senators wrote. “We do not support the consideration of Treasury Department nominees until our request is directly answered.”

Kirk and Rubio initially petitioned the Treasury Department in March to seek firm assurances that officials would commit to blocking Iranian access to the U.S. dollar.

The Treasury Department, in a May 11 response to Kirk and Rubio’s initial inquiry, declined to address specific questions regarding efforts to promote Iranian access to the U.S. dollar via foreign transactions outside the American financial system.

A month ago, the Obama administration launched a quiet push on Capitol Hill to reassure lawmakers that it would not grant Iran any access to the U.S. dollar or American financial markets, according to a Free Beacon report at the time.

That stance appears to have shifted in recent weeks, prompting concern from Iran deal critics such as Rubio and Kirk.

The Obama administration is now going above and beyond the purview of the nuclear agreement to help boost Iran’s economy, the senators allege.

“In its determined effort to provide Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime with benefits that were not expressly included in the ill-conceived Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Administration is on a path toward undermining the reputation of the United States as a global leader in antimoney laundering and countering terrorism financing,” they write.

“Access to the U.S. dollar is not an international right. But if Tehran wants access, the onus should be entirely on Iran to clean up its act—including by verifiably ending its sponsorship and financing of terrorism, its ballistic missile program, and its human rights abuses against the peoples of Iran and other nations—and reduce the risks that any financial transaction with Iran poses to the global financial community,” the letter states.

The outgoing Obama administration is waging a public campaign to encourage businesses to reenter the Iranian market place, which has been known as a key front for money laundering and terrorism funding, despite Iran’s continued pursuit of ballistic missile technology, which could carry a nuclear payload over great distances.

“Sadly, the Administration appears to be more focused in capitulating to Tehran than in forcing Iran’s terror regime to fundamentally change its behavior,” the lawmakers write. “It’s high time for the U.S. to stop making unreciprocated concessions and to start holding Iran fully accountable for continuing its dangerous and destructive behavior.”

The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to hold two hearings on Iran next week and sources disclosed that this issue will be a primary focus for Congress.

Dems Seek Quicker Admission of Syrian Refugees Despite Terrorism Concerns

May 18, 2016

Dems Seek Quicker Admission of Syrian Refugees Despite Terrorism Concerns, Washington Free Beacon, May 18, 2016

Syrian-refugee-family-in-eastern-Lebanese-town-APSyrian refugee family in eastern Lebanese town / AP

Senate Democrats sent a letter to President Obama Wednesday pressing the administration to accelerate the admission process for Syrian refugees to settle in the United States.

Obama vowed last year that the U.S. would resettle up to 10,000 individuals seeking haven from the Syrian civil before September, but according to Reuters only 1,736 refugees have been admitted.

27 senators, including the No. 2 Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.), signed the letter urging the Obama administration to “devote the necessary resources to expeditiously and safely resettle Refugees from Syria.”

“We are deeply concerned about the slow pace of admissions for Syrian refugees in the first seven months of the fiscal year,” the senators wrote in the letter obtained by Reuters.

The letter arrived three weeks after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the Islamic State terrorist group has “taken advantage” of the migrant crisis in Europe, advising E.U. nations to maintain awareness.

One of the suicide bombers who conspired in the November Paris attacks that killed 130 people entered Greece using a fake Syrian passport posing as a refugee. He then traveled the same route fleeing migrants use to make his way into Western Europe.

The revelations have ignited criticism from Republicans who contend that the president’s plan would lead to similar attacks in the U.S. without a stringent vetting process in place.

More than 30 governors have called on the U.S. to halt the refugee resettlement program and have tried implementing restrictions to prevent them from entering their states. Only one of those states was home to a Democratic governor.

The Democratic signatories demanded in their letter that the administration provide specific details as to how the nation would carry through on its vow to resettle the remaining 8,264 Syrians during the next five months.

“Other nations, including ours, can and should do much more,” the senators wrote.

The U.S. has so far resettled more than 6,000 refugees from Myanmar and more than 5,000 from Iraq.

Democrats Try to Outlaw Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban

May 16, 2016

Democrats Try to Outlaw Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, May 16, 2016

(Since Islamic jihad has been deemed un-Islamic, and is therefore claimed to have no nexus with Islam, there is presently no effective way to bar Islamic terrorists from entry. Perhaps those who oppose Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslim immigration until ways are found to keep jihadists out should try to find ways. — DM)

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Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has certainly turned American politics on its head. Has it ever happened before in American history that a political party began to frame legislation against an opposing candidate’s proposals before he was even elected – much less one whose election was as inconceivable as the mainstream media would have us believe about Donald Trump? Yet that is exactly what the Democrats are doing: Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) is spearheading a bill that would block a President Trump from instituting the temporary halt on Muslim immigration into the United States that he has proposed.

“It’s very narrow in scope,” says Beyer of his Freedom of Religion Act. “We’re not going to discriminate when it comes to immigration based on religion.” He added that his bill was intended to “appeal to hope rather than fear.” In our pusillanimous and puerile age, “fear” is not just a weakness of character, but a moral flaw: if you fear being beheaded or blown up by Islamic jihadists, you’re an evil person. And to be sure, fear is never to be encouraged or given into, but its opposite is not hope, it’s courage and resoluteness.

Beyer is not offering courage or resoluteness. He is proposing a ban on using someone’s religion as a reason for blocking them from entering the country based on the politically correct fiction that Islamic jihad terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, and that therefore to be concerned about jihad terrorists entering the country along with peaceful Muslim refugees is simply a manifestation of bigotry, racism and “Islamophobia.”

What Beyer is offering is “hope” and a rejection of “fear.” We should “hope” that there will be no jihadis among the immigrants. We should “hope” that there will not be another jihad attack a la San Bernardino perpetrated by another refugee like Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino jihad murderer who had passed five separate background checks from five separate U.S. government agencies. We should “hope” that the Islamic State will not make good on its threat to send jihadis into Europe and North America among the refugees. We should “hope” that we can continue to pursue self-destructive and suicidal policies without suffering any negative consequences.

To reject all of Beyer’s “hopes” would be, in his view, to succumb to “fear,” and remember: fear is morally wrong. Trump, after all, is like Hitler for even suggesting this temporary moratorium: hard-Left journalist Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill told Bill Maher on Real Time Friday: “I believe that what we’re seeing with Trump has whiffs of how Hitler rose to power.” Yes, of course: Hitler stopped emigration of Jews and kept them in Germany so he could kill them, while Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigration so that jihadis won’t kill us — clearly they’re the same thing, if you’re a hardcore doctrinaire Leftist.

Meanwhile, those who vilify Trump for proposing this have never actually come up with any viable alternative proposal for keeping jihadis out of the country. We’re just supposed to reject “fear” and rely on “hope” that it won’t all blow up on us – you know, the “hope” that prevented the jihad attacks in Paris and Brussels and San Bernardino and Garland and Chattanooga and Boston and Fort Hood. The “hope” that leaves us defenseless in the face of the advancing jihad, for fear of appearing “Islamophobic.”

For Leftists like Don Beyer and Jeremy Scahill, the mass murder of innocent non-Muslim civilians in the U.S. is preferable to taking any effective action to defend our nation – for to do so would be to succumb to “fear,” that fear that our Leftist moral superiors insist is a character defect. Why did the U.S. declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor? Instead of giving in to “fear,” it should have laid down its arms and opened the door to unrestricted Japanese immigration. Britain should have done the same thing after Hitler invaded Poland: instituted a ban on anti-Nazi legislation and opened its arms and its shores to the Germans. What could possibly have gone wrong? Primitive man should never have fashioned a spear; he should instead have let the lion maul him; instead, he gave in to “fear.”

Don Beyer and the Democrats are, for the umpteenth time, demanding that the nation choose defeat and suicide.

D.C. ‘Terror Analyst’ Still Thinks Muslim Brotherhood a ‘Firewall Against Violent Extremism’

May 6, 2016

D.C. ‘Terror Analyst’ Still Thinks Muslim Brotherhood a ‘Firewall Against Violent Extremism’ PJ MediaRobert Spencer, May 5, 2016

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Is the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, or one of the world’s foremost bulwarks against terrorism? Numerous mainstream terror analysts in Washington contend that it is the latter.

They have to ignore a mountain of evidence to do so.

Arguing in the Washington Post that Congress should not designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, Mark Lynch of George Washington University and the Project on Middle East Political Science asserts:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s firewall against extremism [was] a very real thing in the decade following 9/11.

However, Lynch thinks that, because of the al-Sisi government’s crackdown on the Brotherhood:

… the key mechanisms by which the firewall operated have now dramatically eroded.

More from Lynch:

Prior to the Arab uprising, I argued that mainstream Islamists served as a firewall against more violent extremists … [because] the Brotherhood publicly articulated an ideology of nonviolence and democratic participation. It competed with al-Qaeda for recruits and for public influence, and kept its members tightly embedded within its institutional structures. The Brotherhood could compete with al-Qaeda and other extreme groups in ways that liberals and state elites could not.

Hmm.

Lynch is apparently unaware that al-Qaeda founders Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, as well as its current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, were all members of or trained by the Muslim Brotherhood. Even more importantly, in building his case that the Muslim Brotherhood is a competitor to and bulwark against al-Qaeda and other jihad terror groups, Lynch ignores the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda have exactly the same ultimate goal.

In his 2002 letter to the American people, Osama bin Laden wrote:

The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam. … You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

The Muslim Brotherhood shares the goal of replacing democratic rule with Sharia, as even CNN acknowledged in 2013:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a religious and political group founded on the belief that Islam is not simply a religion, but a way of life. It advocates a move away from secularism, and a return to the rules of the Quran as a basis for healthy families, communities, and states.

The key difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda — and other jihad groups — is that the Brotherhood works through the democratic process in order to undermine that process and ultimately destroy it. The jihadis choose the path of violently attacking the installations of democratic governments, but with the same goal of ultimate destruction.

For Lynch and other Washington policy analysts, this is an all-important distinction. In reality, it is a distinction without a difference. The Brotherhood and the jihad groups are two sides of the same coin, working for the same goal via different means.

What’s more, the assertion that the Brotherhood eschews violence is egregiously false.

Lynch writes:

[D]espite post-coup propaganda and arrests by the Egyptian regime, there is very little to substantiate the charge that the Brotherhood behaved like a terrorist organization during Egypt’s transition or embraced violence either ideologically or strategically.

Beltway fantasy, meet reality: Egypt’s El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence documented 359 cases of torture by the Muslim Brotherhood regime during its one year in power. By way of comparison, this was ten times more than the number of cases documented annually during the notoriously brutal Mubarak regime — the regime Obama and his Beltway terror analysts helped replace with the Brotherhood.

Even worse, when the Brotherhood was toppled from power, it blamed its failure on Egypt’s Christians – and that’s when Lynch’s “bulwark” against terror really began its campaign of, yes, terror.

Brotherhood members and supporters burned and looted nearly seventy churches, and destroyed 1,000 Christian businesses and homes. According to the Rev. Khalil Fawzi of Kasr El Dubarrah Evangelical Church, the Middle East’s largest evangelical church:

The Muslim Brotherhood were the ones who called for aggression. They are responsible.

In light of the Brotherhood’s willingness to engage in violence to further its ends, and the Sharia goal it shares with violent jihad organizations, Lynch’s recommendation that the U.S. work to strengthen the Brotherhood as a bulwark against al-Qaeda is the height of folly. It would be tantamount to aiding Mussolini in order to defeat Hitler, or electing Hillary Clinton to roll back the policies of Barack Obama.

By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act is more realistic. It quotes testimony from former FBI Director Robert Mueller:

[E]lements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism.

Supporters of terrorism richly deserve the terrorism designation. Mainstream analysts such as Mark Lynch have led the U.S. down numerous policy blind alleys. His viewpoint needs to be decisively rejected now.

Top Senate Democrat chides Netanyahu over ‘untimely’ Golan remarks

April 22, 2016

Top Senate Democrat chides Netanyahu over ‘untimely’ Golan remarks, Jerusalem Post, April 22, 2016

(So Netanyahu should remain silent when Obama and Putin propose to give Golan to Israel’s long time enemy, Syria? — DM)

Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, counseled Israel to focus more on peace with the Palestinians.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said declaring Israeli ownership of the Golan Heights was not “timely” while Syria was mired in civil war.

He counseled Israel to focus more on peace with the Palestinians.

“Syria is in a state of war, the whole area is in flux,” Cardin, D-Md., said Thursday when he was asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration this week that “the Golan Heights will forever remain in Israel’s hands.”

“I don’t think it’s timely to figure out what’s happening in the north when there is an active war in Syria,” Cardin said of Netanyahu.

“Ultimately you’re going to need to have some type of recognition factor and you don’t have a government you can negotiate with and talk with in Syria,” said Cardin, who was meeting foreign policy reporters during a break from Senate votes.

The Obama administration this week reiterated longstanding US policy that the strategic plateau captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War was not part of Israel, and that its fate should be determined through negotiations.

“I would love to see a peace process and deal with the West Bank and Gaza,” he said. “And that to me is the most important chapter for Israel right now, is to advance the peace process toward a two-state solution for the Palestinians and Israelis. That to me is the most urgent need.”

Cardin is close to pro-Israel groups and has made clear in the past that he believes it is wrong to place the burden on Israel to renew talks, saying that the Palestinians must end incitement and return to talks with Israel suspended in 2014.

He was one of just four Senate Democrats who voted last year against the Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu vehemently opposed, and the senator was in the region just weeks ago, and met with Netanyahu.

Cardin also said he favors renewing the Iran Sanctions Act, due to expire this year, although Obama administration officials fear its renewal would rankle Iran and undercut the sanctions relief for nuclear rollback deal.

Cardin said there was broad agreement in Congress that the act needs renewing in order to keep in place sanctions that would be revived if Iran violates the deal. Obama administration officials say the president has the discretion to kick in sanctions should he need to.

The senator said he also hopes to pass new sanctions against Iran for testing ballistic missiles, a violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Current Republican proposals to renew the Iran Sanctions Act or to sanction Iran for its missile testing seem aimed at undercutting the Iran deal, Cardin said, a path he opposes even though he voted against the deal.

Muslim Brotherhood Orgs Gather on Capitol Hill

April 19, 2016

Muslim Brotherhood Orgs Gather on Capitol Hill, Front Page MagazineRobert Spencer, April 19, 2016

(Please see also, Will vs. Way Explains Islam vs. West. — DM)

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[A] May 1991 internal Muslim Brotherhood document . . .  states that Brotherhood operatives in the U.S. “must understand that their work in America is 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.” 

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The US Council of Muslim Organizations said that its 2nd Annual National Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill Monday was “designed to connect national, regional and state Muslim organizations, community members with their elected representatives in Congress.” However, the ties that some of the foremost organizations making up this coalition have to the Muslim Brotherhood reveal the sinister aspect of this agenda – and underscore the necessity of passing S. 2230, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.

Among the principal members of the US Council of Muslim Organizations is the Muslim American Society, which the Chicago Tribune reported in 2004 was one of the chief arms of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.”

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which openly states its goal of establishing a global caliphate and was listed in a May 1991 internal Muslim Brotherhood document that was later discovered by law enforcement officials. Entitled An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, the document lists ICNA as an allied group and states that Brotherhood operatives in the U.S. “must understand that their work in America is 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.”

Also listed in this document among the “organizations of our friends” is the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the parent group of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). FBI officials ended ties with CAIR in 2008 after evidence in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial – the largest terror financing trial in U.S. history – revealing links between the HLF’s founders including CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad and the terrorist group Hamas, which describes itself in its charter as “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.”

There is much more than its links to Hamas to establish that the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. The Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act itself sets out ample evidence that the Brotherhood richly deserves the terror designation, including February 2011 testimony by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who declared that “elements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism.” Al-Qaeda founders Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden and its current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, were all members of or trained by the Muslim Brotherhood.

This support for jihad terror is in line with the Brotherhood’s goal since its founding. Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna’s  ambition was to restore the caliphate (which had been abolished in 1924, four years before he founded the Brotherhood), creating a global Islamic superstate instituting Sharia as a universal law. Al-Banna insisted that it was a “duty incumbent on every Muslim to struggle towards the aim of making every people Muslim and the whole world Islamic, so that the banner of Islam can flutter over the earth and the call of the Muezzin can resound in all the corners of the world: Allah is greater [Allahu akbar]!”

That includes the United States. Brotherhood leader Muhammad Mahdi Othman Akef said in 2004: “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America.” He was referring not to a military invasion, but one driven by propaganda. Five years later, a powerful friend of the Brotherhood entered the White House. Barack Obama made sure that Muslim Brotherhood members were in the audience when he gave his Cairo speech in June 2009, and came out in favor of the uprisings against Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak even when it became clear that the Brotherhood stood to be their chief beneficiary. Protesters against the Brotherhood regime in Egypt as it was driven from power in 2013 accused Obama of supporting terrorism.

If anyone should know whether or not the Brotherhood is a terrorist group, those protesters should: they lived through the Brotherhood’s rocky year in power, and saw its abuses up close. Likewise Coptic Solidarity, a group dedicated to defending the rights of one of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s chief terror targets, last week began an advocacy campaign in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.

Coptic Solidarity President Alex Shalaby declared: “It is unconscionable that the US still has not taken this action when countries such as Egypt, Syria, Russian, UAE, and Saudi Arabia have all declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.” Indeed it is. The designation will enable the next President and Congress to move decisively against the Brotherhood – maybe just in the nick of time.