Anti-exceptionalism is forced on children at an early age. Libs think there should be no winners and losers. Just look at little Johnny’s medal for 137th place.

Losing is projected as failure, then fear of failure stifles development. Rational thinking suggests that competition builds character. I guarantee you, when my granddaughter loses in a track meet or softball game, she is resolved to work even harder the next time. I would never try to kill that spirit—liberalism does.

A.E. has infiltrated our culture, military and government. The current administration outlawed use of the word “terrorism,” as if that would make it go away.

President Obama took months to decide whether to appeal to his far-left base, or send our troops in Afghanistan additional help. As a state senator in 2002, he spoke out against the war in Iraq, saying Afghanistan was where we needed to focus. Now, after seven years as an expert on the subject, he had trouble coming up with a plan?

Here’s why. In an interview, the commander in chief said “I’m always worried about using the word victory…”. That’s just great. If he can’t even use the word victory, how are we possibly going to achieve it? We can debate whether or not to be in a “just war,” but one thing is certain—if we are afraid of winning, more soldiers will die.

Political correctness, protected Nidal Malik Hasan (a radical Muslim terrorist) as he rose to the rank of major in the U.S. Army. In lectures, Hasan said things like “non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.” Fear of reprisal prevented his superiors from reporting him. The FBI was aware that he was in contact with Al Qaeda via e-mails, but also did nothing. Hasan murdered 13 (unarmed) soldiers at Fort Hood. Unarmed?—P.C. suggests our military can’t be trusted with weapons!

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said, “It’s important for the country not to get caught up in speculation about Hasan’s Muslim faith” and “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

What a leader. Diversity is more important than the lives of his troops! Pvt. Gomer Pyle said, Goll-ee general, I sure don’t want to say anything about that nice man that would get him in trouble.

Casey instructed his commanders to be on the lookout for anti-Muslim reaction to the killings. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano chimed in with “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure there’s not a backlash against Muslim Americans in the United States.”

This is the same ignorance that contributed to the murders in the first place—scrutinizing the whistle blower, not the antagonist. Anti-exceptionalism, political correctness and diversity kill.

A side note: I applaud the legislators for repealing affirmative action in the state of Nebraska.

The author, Lou Pritchett, is a well-known public speaker who retired after a successful 36-year career as the VP World Sales for Proctor and Gamble.

Foremost Leader in Change Management

Lou Pritchett is one of corporate America’s true living legends- an acclaimed author, dynamic teacher and one of the world’s highest rated speakers. Successful corporate executives everywhere recognize him as the foremost leader in change management. Lou changed the way America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to be known as “partnering.” Pritchett rose from soap salesman to Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development for Procter and Gamble and over the course of 36 years, made corporate history.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me. You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.. You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

The Obama administration is preparing to reinstate a fraud-riddled immigration program that has brought over 36,000 Somalis into the United States under questionable circumstances, including two dozen Minneapolis men that the FBI fears may be planning a terrorist attack.

The FBI has launched an “aggressive” manhunt for the men, who have “gone to ground” and have mysteriously disappeared, terrorism experts tell Newsmax. Authorities fear the men may have been recruited by extremists to carry out suicide attacks inside the United States, or abroad.

Critics of the State Department programs that brought the Somalis to America express grave concerns about the practice of admitting refugees from failed nation-states known to harbor extremists. It can be difficult or impossible to verify a person’s identity in such a country, let alone obtain knowledge of their past associations, several experts tell Newsmax.

One Somali refugee who vanished in early November, Shirwa Ahmed, re-emerged in northern Somalia in February behind the wheel of a truck packed with explosives.

Ahmed, whose family immigrated to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, drove his truck into a crowd and triggered a massive explosion that left some 30 persons dead. Ahmed’s case marked the first known suicide bombing conducted by an American citizen, according to FBI director Robert S. Mueller III.

“It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota,” Mueller told the Council on Foreign Relations, warning that in the past two years, about two dozen Somali men have disappeared from their residences near Minneapolis.

Authorities say the men may have been recruited by al-Shabab, a terrorist group believed to have ties to al-Qaida. There has been speculation the men were radicalized at mosques in the area.

Ahmed’s recruitment and training, and the subsequent suicide attack, is especially worrisome for the FBI because of the other missing Somali-Americans. “It raised the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what might they undertake here,” Mueller said.

Fox 9, a Minneapolis television station, reported that eight local refugees left the Twin Cities area on August 1, and 10 more departed on Nov. 4. The men’s families later found flight itineraries for travel from Dubai to Nairobi and on to Kenya. From there, it is believed they most likely entered Somalia by boat.

Counterterrorism experts worry that operatives who are already familiar with U.S. society and culture would be much more difficult to stop, if they were employed to attack the U.S. homeland.

Terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstien-Ross recently told CBN: “There’s a concern that … they’re going to training camps and receiving the kind of training they would need to carry out some kind of mischief in the United States.”

Critics of the program that grants immigrants their refugee status, even when their past activities and associations cannot be thoroughly documented, point out that since 1991 Somalia has exhibited the same type of failed-nation status associated with the rise of Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. That nation provided al-Qaida with a safe haven prior to 9/11.

They cite the spate of piracy off the Horn of Africa, including the dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips — who was freed after U.S. Navy SEAL sharpshooters shot and killed three Somali pirates — as evidence that Somalia is a dangerous hotbed of extremism.

Experts disagree over the level of cooperation between the pirates and Somalia’s radical Islamic warlords. A recent Der Spiegel report warned: “The pirates are increasingly working hand-in-hand with Islamists, who are allies of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida. It’s a terrifying alliance: the Pirates supply money and arms, while the Islamists have troops and the power on land.”

Jane’s Intelligence Review reports the pirate-Islamist alliance is “fragile.” In some cases, the pirates pay a percentage of their ransom money to al-Shabab units, in return for protection against land-based attacks on their bases.

Jane’s Intelligence also states that pirates have paid for military-style training at the hands of al-Shabab, conducted in terrorist boot camps.

Conservative foreign-policy expert Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, is among those who perceives a definite link between Somali’s pirates and its violent Islamic extremists.

“Shariah-adherent Somali pirates are a threat to the world’s shipping,” Gaffney tells Newsmax. “Their refugee counterparts being dumped into American communities are a threat to our country and its people. It adds insult to potentially enormous injury that, as the State Department has acknowledged, 80 percent of those refugees are here on the basis of fraudulent family-reunification grounds.”

Gaffney says the State Department “imports pirate/jihadist types into this country.”

One major concern: The pirates’ statements following the freeing of Phillips appeared to be couched in jihadist terms. They identified America as their “No. 1 enemy,” and one pirate leader told The Associated Press: “In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying.”

Don Barnett, a fellow with the Center for Immigration Services, tells Newsmax that it is clear some young refugees of Somali extraction have been recruited by extremists, and could now be working with al-Qaida or al-Shabab.

“I think that really should cause us to look at taking any refugees from Somalia with a much more fine magnifying glass,” Barnett says.

There are about 150,000 Somalis now living in the United States, and law-enforcement officials consider the vast majority of them to be peaceful and law-abiding.

Once resettled, the refugees are free to relocate and live anywhere they like.

A State Department official who asked not to be identified says refugees receive U.S. papers that identify them and their status. They are eligible to apply for a green card after residing in the United States for one year. Five years after receiving green cards, the source says, refugees are eligible to apply for American citizenship.

There are three State Department programs that vet and process refugees for admittance:

# The Priority One (P-1) program provides a means for individuals from Somalia and other nations to immigrate to the United States based on referrals from the United Nations, from a U.S. embassy, or from a non-governmental organization (NGO).

# The Priority Two (P-2) program gives refugee status to all members of a specific, persecuted group. In 1999, for example, the State Department granted blanket refugee status to some 12,000 persecuted Somali-Bantus who had been driven from their native country to Kenya.

# The Priority Three (P-3) program awards refugee status specifically for the purpose of family reunification with other refugees already legally residing in the United States.

When a family or individual qualifies for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a Department of Homeland Security agency, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), conducts an interview with the “refugee applicant” to verify their eligibility and establish they are “otherwise admissible to the United States,” according to a State Department fact sheet about the program.

One of the purposes of USCIA is to ensure “that no one is admitted who is a threat to public safety,” according to its Web site.

The P-3 program was suspended in October, after reports of fraud led the State Department and DHS to conduct DNA testing on 3,000 applicants. Those tests revealed that as many as 80 percent of the family-reunification claims were false and did not involve relatives.

Officials suspended the program until new procedures — such as DNA testing — could be developed to verify claims of a family relationship. The P-1 and P-2 programs continue to be in effect.

Barnett tells Newsmax that the State Department is prepared to resume the troubled P-3 program in June. He also criticizes the P-1 program, due to U.N. refugee programs he describes as “one big long running fraud.” He adds: “The U.N. referral program itself has been subject to bribery and fraud.”

The State Department spokesman tells Newsmax it is unclear if the P-3 program will be reinstated by June, adding, “We do anticipate that the program will restart. A little later this year, we will have this program reinstated.”

Most critics of the program recognize that some resettlement in the United States is inevitable and probably beneficial. The problem, they say, comes when large numbers of immigrants arrive from chaotic nations known to harbor extremists. It is very difficult or impossible to review the backgrounds of people living in such countries, they say, because documentation and even birth certificates may be nonexistent. Advocates for refugees, on the other hand, point out that those are the very situations where resettlement may be most urgent.

Fred Burton, vice president of counterterrorism and corporate security for Stratfor, a global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas, tells Newsmax: “Across the spectrum, when you attempt to vet the identify of that person, you have nothing to cross reference it to.”

Burton participated in the arrest of 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef, and says the lack of intelligence about Somali extremists is quite serious.

“Whenever you have a suspected intelligence operative, whether it be from an espionage side or the terrorism side — and it’s more foreboding from the terrorism side — you really get a sense of dread, not knowing what he is up to,” he says.

Burton says the FBI is sparing no effort to locate the men who have gone missing in Minneapolis, but adds that it may be difficult.

“Knowing how the process works from a domestic terrorism perspective, there is no doubt the FBI is looking for the individuals involved, and probably very, very aggressively,” Burton tells Newsmax. “But then you go back to what has always been the Achilles’ heel in the counterterrorism business, your lack of human intelligence to tell you where that person is, because you lack the human sources to identify him.”

Burton states “I would certainly say the program appears to be a failure at this juncture.”

He says verifying identity is essential before admitting any refugee into the United States, and adds: “Having participated in several of those State Department meetings for many years, I would say, ‘Well, I’m sure we followed whatever process is in place, but what guarantees do we have that this process is not broken?’”

President Obama will deliver a speech June 4 in Egypt on America’s relationship with the Muslim world, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced Friday.

Egypt is “a country that in many ways represents the heart of the Arab world,” Gibbs said.

Obama chose Turkey, a more secular state, as the site of his first presidential speech to a Muslim majority nation, on April 6. He told the Turkish legislature in Ankara that the “United States is not and will never be at war with Islam.”

The president appears to be taking his Middle Eastern cues from some unlikely sources.

President Obama last Friday reiterated for the umpteenth time his determination to develop a “new relationship” with the Muslim world. On this occasion, the audience were the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that, in so doing, he will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization dedicated to promoting the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah and that has the self-described mission of “destroying Western civilization from within.”

As part of Mr. Obama’s “Respect Islam” campaign, he will travel to Turkey in early April. While there, he will not only pay tribute to an Islamist government that has systematically wrested every institution from the secular tradition of Kemal Ataturk and put the country squarely on the path to Islamification. He will also participate in something called the “Alliance of Civilizations.”

The Alliance is a United Nations-sponsored affair that reflects – as, increasingly do most things the United Nations is involved in – the views of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC is made up of 57 Muslim-majority nations. Thanks to support from Saudi Arabia and its proxies, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a driving force within the Conference and their agendas largely coincide.

For example, in 2005 a communique issued after a summit in Mecca declared: “The Conference underlined the need to collectively endeavor to reflect the noble Islamic values, counter Islamophobia, defamation of Islam and its values and desecration of Islamic holy sites, and to effectively coordinate with states as well as regional and international institutions and organizations to urge them to criminalize this phenomenon as a form of racism.”

Ominously, as part of its bid to “criminalize” Islamophobia, the OIC is seeking “deterrent punishments.” It insists that not only freedom of expression but all human rights be circumscribed by the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which concludes with the caveat that, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shariah.” Translation: Liberties enshrined in the United Nations’ foundational Universal Declaration of Human Rights are largely rendered null and void.

The demand that no criticism of Islam be permitted is the pre-eminent feature of the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in the West. In fact, it is but the leading edge of the Brothers’ bid to suppress public awareness of the threat posed by their program in societies that pride themselves on religious tolerance, thereby facilitating seditious penetration and influence operations by the Shariah-adherent.

A playbook for the latter can be found in a publication issued last fall by the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project being aggressively promoted to the Obama administration and Congress by a number of its non-Muslim participants. Notably, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently effusively presented to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Project’s book titled “Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World.” Former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber did the same at Grover Norquist’s weekly meeting of conservative activists last week.

Underwritten largely by George Soros’ and other left-wing foundations, “Changing Course” seems to reflect predominantly the recommendations of groups the government has established are Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Both are represented in the Engagement Project’s “Leadership Group.” Accordingly, its book calls for:

• “Engagement with groups that have clearly demonstrated a commitment to nonviolent participation in politics” (read, the Brotherhood).
• “Not equat[ing] reform with secularism, nor … assum[ing] that reformers who advocate some form of Shariah as the basis for the rule of law will inevitably abuse human rights or adopt anti-American policies.”
• “Not supply[ing] additional ammunition to extremists by linking the term ‘Islam’ or key tenets of the religion of Islam with the actions of extremist or terrorist groups.”
• Launching “an education program comparable in scale” to “the more than $7 billion” invested in the “post-Sputnik U.S. commitment to math and science education” to “education on Islam and Muslims, sustained over a decade or more, focused on teacher training and curriculum in middle and high schools, and colleges.”

Emboldened by the promise of this influence operation and the apparent willingness of the Obama administration to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda – in part, if not in its entirety – the organization’s assorted fronts in America are becoming ever more audacious.

In response to a long-overdue decision taken by the FBI last year to terminate “sensitivity training” of its agents by one of the most prominent of these fronts, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), assorted Brotherhood groups and operatives reportedly intend to announce that Muslims will henceforth cease any and all cooperation with U.S. law enforcement until CAIR is rehabilitated.

Such a step would call into question the patriotism of the many Muslims in America who do not embrace the Brotherhood’s Shariah agenda – something that would, presumably, be as offensive to them as it would be troubling to the rest of us. It could also expose those engaged in it to criminal charges of “misprision of felony,” conspiring to withhold information from the authorities concerning terrorist operations and activities in the Muslim community.

The message should go forth: Friends of the Muslim Brotherhood are no friends of America. We follow their guidance at our peril.

by Geert Wilders

Why I am in America Fighting for Free Speech?

Freedom of expression is under attack. This is a theme I am addressing here in America this week as part of the Free Speech Summit being held in Florida under the sponsorship of the Florida Security Council. And it is clear that a serious discussion of the threats to our freedoms in the West cannot come too soon.

For example, my friend Rep. Adam Hasner, the majority leader of the Florida House of Representatives was attacked in a press release issued by the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday for daring to appear at a private event with me this past weekend. Because of that appearance, CAIR is demanding that Rep. Hasner step down or be removed from his position.

This attack on a friend and fellow legislator is of grave concern to me. CAIR’s assault on Rep. Hasner strikes at the very heart of our most basic freedoms. In fact, it is but the latest episode in that organization’s long-running and determined effort to silence its critics. Indeed, CAIR seeks to suppress all those who dare to challenge the theo-political-legal program that authoritative Islam calls “Shariah.” In so doing, they are seeking to impose what amount to Shariah blasphemy codes.

It is especially important to note that Adam Hasner is not only being attacked for comments he made that are deemed offensive by those who seek to impose Shariah in America. His career is now being threatened for comments made by others in his presence – in this case, by me. Thus the Islamists are infringing not only on this country’s constitutionally protected freedom of expression but also freedom of association.

If a high-ranking public official – elected by the people and appointed to his leadership position by his peers – cannot speak honestly and openly about his concerns, and do so in places and the company of his choosing, without fear of suppression or other retribution, who among us is safe?

I know these threats firsthand. Even before the international release last year of my short documentary film, Fitna, I have faced constant death threats and protests. My name has appeared on assassination lists. I have been subject of an Al-Qaeda death fatwa. I will be charged with blasphemy and contempt of Muslims by Jordanian prosecutors. I face prosecutions in my own country and elsewhere. I was recently banned from the United Kingdom because the Home Secretary believed my mere presence in the country constituted a national security threat.

In this trying time let us recall that in the darkest hours of World War II, when the world faced a global threat from German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese Imperialism, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill challenged his people to rise to the occasion and fight. He told them, “Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

This is why I am in America this week talking about the fight we now must wage in the West to defend our liberties. Freedom of association is one of the basic liberties guaranteed not only by the US Constitution but by the European Convention of Human Rights. And yet CAIR wants to silence and punish Rep. Hasner for associating with me. If America needs a poster child for the threat to our freedoms from Islamic extremism, no better example than CAIR could be found.

This episode underscores that the threat to freedom posed by creeping Shariah imposed by CAIR’s type of stealthy jihad is not just a problem in the Middle East, or Europe. It is also a problem in America.

I will not be bullied by Islamic thugs who want to use our freedoms to destroy those very same freedoms. And I will not stand by as they seek to do it to others.

Founded and directed by members of the international network of the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR has an explicit agenda to subvert our freedoms and impose Islamic Shariah law on non-Muslims. This is not speculation on my part. This is the testimony of one of CAIR’s founders and chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmed, who told a California audience in 1998 that this was their agenda. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” he said. “The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” When CAIR officials say that this is their ultimate objective, we should believe them.

In just the past few weeks, the Council on American Islamic Relations has sought to silence another courageous lawmaker, Rep. Peter King, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives. His “offense”? Rep. King correctly observed that CAIR and other Muslims were not providing enough assistance to the law enforcement authorities in combating terrorism-related activities in American mosques.

CAIR has attempted to silence other critics, as well. They have sued bloggers; they have defamed journalists who have asked too many questions about their terrorist ties; and they have tried to intimidate publications that have published articles challenging their putative “civil rights mission.” If they get away with it, CAIR will seek to threaten the careers of more politicians with the courage to say things and associate with those of challenge Shariah and the effort to impose it in this country.

It is utterly hypocritical that, on the one hand, CAIR claims to be defending freedom of religion in attacking Rep. Hasner when, on the other, they actively seek support from Islamic regimes that are among the worst of the worst human rights abusers on the planet – and notorious for suppressing religious freedoms.

I have been told that in an Arabic News article that CAIR officials have solicited and received financial support from Saudi Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal, whose country outlaws any religious expression except its own Wahhabi strain of Islam. You can’t even own a Bible or wear a cross in the country run by their patrons, and yet CAIR wants to lecture us about religious freedom?

The land for CAIR’s Capitol Hill office in Washington D.C. was purchased with a $250,000 donation from the Saudi-backed Islamic Development Bank and the deed to their headquarters is held by the foundation of United Arab Emirates Defense Minister Gen. Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. Sheik al-Maktoum’s country prohibits any non-Islamic religious proselytizing and threatens anyone caught with distribution of non-Muslim religious literature with imprisonment.

In September 2006, CAIR hosted an exclusive dinner with former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami. Under Khatami’s regime religious minorities were severely persecuted, non-Muslims were regularly harassed, and hundreds of student protestors murdered. The fact that CAIR chose to honor this dictator who is still a senior member of the Islamic theocracy in Iran tells us much.

Whether it is in America or back home in my own country, we are under attack by groups like CAIR who aim to silence their critics. This is why I am here in America. I aim to continue to fight regardless of the threats and intimidation and I am asking Americans to join with us. And when they attack good men like Rep. Adam Hasner, we must realize that they are attacking each and every one of us and the freedoms that we hold dear.

“We will convey,” said Barack Obama to the Turkish Parliament Monday, “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.”

Undeniably the Islamic faith has done a great deal to shape the world – a statement that makes no value judgment about exactly how it has shaped the world. It has formed the dominant culture in what is known as the Islamic world for centuries. But what on earth could Obama mean when he says that Islam has also “done so much” to shape his own country?

Unless he considers himself an Indonesian, Obama’s statement was extraordinarily strange. After all, how has the Islamic faith shaped the United States? Were there Muslims along Paul Revere’s ride, or standing next to Patrick Henry when he proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death”? Were there Muslims among the framers or signers of the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men – not just Muslims, as Islamic law would have it – are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Were there Muslims among those who drafted the Constitution and vigorously debated its provisions, or among those who enumerated the Bill of Rights, which guarantees – again in contradiction to the tenets of Islamic law – that there should be no established national religion, and that the freedom of speech should not be infringed?

There were not.

Did Muslims play a role in the great struggle over slavery that defined so much of our contemporary understandings of the nature of this republic and of the rights of the individual within it? They did not. Did the Islamic faith shape the way the United States responded to the titanic challenges of the two World Wars, the Great Depression, or the Cold War? It did not. Did the Islamic faith, with its legal apparatus that institutionalizes discrimination against non-Muslims, shape the civil rights movement in the United States? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated equality of access to public facilities – a hard-won victory that came at a great cost, and one that Muslim groups have tried to roll back in the United States recently. One notable example of such attempts was the alcohol-in-cabs controversy at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport, when Muslim cabdrivers began to refuse service to customers who were carrying alcohol, on Islamic religious grounds. The core assumption underlying this initiative – that discrimination on the basis of religion is justified – cut right to the heart of the core principle of the American polity, that “all men are created equal,” that is, that they have a right to equal treatment in law and society.

Surveying the whole tapestry of American history, one would be hard-pressed to find any significant way in which the Islamic faith has shaped the United States in terms of its governing principles and the nature of American society. Meanwhile, there are numerous ways in which, if there had been a significant Muslim presence in the country at the time, some of the most cherished and important principles of American society and law may have met fierce resistance, and may never have seen the light of day.

So in what way has the Islamic faith shaped Obama’s country? The most significant event connected to the Islamic faith that has shaped the character of the United States was the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Those attacks have shaped the nation in numerous ways: they’ve led to numerous innovations in airline security, which in generations to come – if today’s politically correct climate continues to befog minds — may be added to future versions of the fanciful “1001 Muslim Inventions” exhibition. The Islamic faith has shaped the U.S. since 9/11 in leading to the spending of billions on anti-terror measures, and to the ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to Guantanamo, and to so many features of the modern political and social landscape that they cannot be enumerated within the space of a single article.

Of course, it is certain that Obama had none of that in mind. But what could he possibly have had in mind? His statement was either careless or ignorant, or both – not qualities we need in a Commander-in-Chief even in the best of times.

ABC News: Buried in Eloquence, Obama Contradictions About Pastor
Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America’s racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial sermons.
Video
Is Obama’s Pastor a Liability?

Similarly, Obama also has only recently given a much fuller accounting of his relationship with indicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a longtime friend, who his campaign once described as just one of “thousands of donors.”

Until yesterday, Obama said the only thing controversial he knew about Rev. Wright was his stand on issues relating to Africa, abortion and gay marriage.

“I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial,” Obama said at a community meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio, earlier this month.

“He has said some things that are considered controversial because he’s considered that part of his social gospel; so he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that,” Obama said on March 2.

His initial reaction to the initial ABC News broadcast of Rev. Wright’s sermons denouncing the U.S. was that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-U.S. until the tape was played on air.

But yesterday, he told a different story.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary » The Hamas, MI6, BBC axis
n the past few days, the BBC appears to have turned itself into a mouthpiece for Hamas. From a steady procession of talking heads has issued a stream of Arab propaganda, along the lines that what has happened in Gaza is an inevitable outcome of the Israeli/western collective punishment of Palestinian voters for democratically choosing a party of which the west disapproves, along with the Israeli/western refusal to ‘engage’ with Hamas, a situation which must now be remedied forthwith. If we look a little more closely at these interviewees, however, it seems that such a consistent line may not be altogether coincidental. The casual listener and viewer has been led to assume that all these ‘experts’ are random, if well-informed, observers of the Middle East scene. But a rather different picture emerges if one joins up some of the dots.

MyFox Rev. Sharpton Meets Today with Sheriff on Paris’ Treatment

What the holly hell does this nigger have to do with the dumb slut?

LOS ANGELES — Paris Hilton is safely behind bars, instead of in them, but she continues to make waves — for Sheriff Lee Baca, who reassigned her to home confinement before a judge ordered her back to jail.