On Saturday, February 13,  the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia – about 20 minutes from the White House -  held a fundraiser dinner to raise money for Sabri Benkhala’s various legal appeals.  (They’re holding an even bigger fundraiser in April, which may be attended by some well-known elected officials – more on that later….)  Benkhala is serving a 10-year term in a federal prison for perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.

According to a February 5, 2007 statement from the Department of Justice, “Benkahla was convicted of making materially false statements both in his grand jury appearances in 2004, as well as to the FBI in 2004. These false statements included his denial of his involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.”

If you want to fundraise for a jailed jihadist, Dar Al-Hijrah is definitely the $40-donation-for-a-halal-chicken-dinner venue of choice.  Dar Al-Hijrah’s  jihadist credentials are impeccable:

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It’s Not About the Recall, It’s About the First Amendment

Review of case briefs, case law research, and consultation with a number of attorneys, judges, and legal professionals contributed to the writing of this article.

Tea Party activists might be smarter than some would like to think.  And depending upon the outcome of a court case later this month, they might also play a role in setting legal precedent.

When New Jersey state election officials denied their submission to initiate a recall effort against U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, calling it unconstitutional, a grass-roots recall committee’s constitutional instincts kicked into full gear.  Attorneys for the committee, themselves Tea Party activists, filed to appeal the agency decision and began writing their supporting brief.

Meanwhile, seemingly everyone was now weighing in as a legal expert.  Some insist the decision is simple:  NJ has no constitutional authority to recall a US Senator; despite what its state constitution says, that authority is reserved for the federal government alone.  For weeks now, legal scholars, political pundits and the media have been chattering online about the case, now before the Appellate Division in the Superior Court of New Jersey, some treating it more like a sideshow and an outlet to take pot shots at Tea Partiers than a legitimate court proceeding with real constitutional significance.

But Dan Silberstein and Richard Luzzi, attorneys for the Committee to Recall Robert Menendez, a committee initiated by members of the Sussex County Tea Party, see this case in an entirely different light.  They insist this case is not about whether a recall order from the state is judicially enforceable against a United States Senator, rather, it’s all about protecting the first amendment right to free speech. And they are taking the matter very seriously.  Based upon recent developments in the case, apparently so are several others, including some high profile legal experts and the courts.

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To the People of the State of New York:

HAVING examined the constitution of the House of Representatives, and answered such of the objections against it as seemed to merit notice, I enter next on the examination of the Senate.

The heads into which this member of the government may be considered are: I. The qualification of senators; II. The appointment of them by the State legislatures; III. The equality of representation in the Senate; IV. The number of senators, and the term for which they are to be elected; V. The powers vested in the Senate.

I. The qualifications proposed for senators, as distinguished from those of representatives, consist in a more advanced age and a longer period of citizenship. A senator must be thirty years of age at least; as a representative must be twenty-five. And the former must have been a citizen nine years; as seven years are required for the latter. The propriety of these distinctions is explained by the nature of the senatorial trust, which, requiring greater extent of information and ability of character, requires at the same time that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages; and which, participating immediately in transactions with foreign nations, ought to be exercised by none who are not thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education. The term of nine years appears to be a prudent mediocrity between a total exclusion of adopted citizens, whose merits and talents may claim a share in the public confidence, and an indiscriminate and hasty admission of them, which might create a channel for foreign influence on the national councils.

II. It is equally unnecessary to dilate on the appointment of senators by the State legislatures. Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial with the public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems.

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The Chowdah Revolution is far from over, if recent reports are read critically.

And its scent has been picked up as far afield as Rhode Island and down on the Cape.

Delahunt with his "excellent friend"

This past week Congressman Patrick Kennedy announced that he will not be seeking reelection, ending 50 years of Kennedy incompetence in federal government. Like his father, the younger Kennedy had a strong penchant for strong drinks and driving — although he seems to have enjoyed pills as well.

Today, The Boston Globe reports that Cape Cod congressman Bill Delahunt (MA-10) might be the next to go. The Boston Globe seems to think that Delahunt’s ties to Chavez and a controversial home heating program will be helpful to him in his possible re-election bid. I have my doubts.  Two weeks ago, I wrote an analysis of Delahunt’s weaknesses. Here’s an exercept:

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A recent Pew survey revealed the nation’s big banks are drawing the most ire from the American public, and now that the Federal Reserve is poised to hand them another victory, it’s easy to see why Main Street’s anger burns deep.

Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke released a statement to the House Committee on Financial Services which detailed the accommodative policy the Fed implemented as a result of the Great Recession and outlined its exit strategy from that policy.

The objective of the Fed’s intervention was to alleviate the pressure on the balance sheets of the banks, which would provide them with the financial flexibility necessary to begin lending to consumers and businesses once again. To meet such an end, the Fed increased the size of its balance sheet through purchases of securities and real-estate loans from the banks, and decreased the interest-rate for interbank lending to nearly zero percent.

The banks’ first ‘Win’ came as a result of those sales to the Fed which produced billions of dollars in revenue. Afterwards, many of us were wondering why the banks weren’t lending again, despite raking in record profits, but the answer was simple. They quickly realized they had found themselves with a can’t lose proposition, as they could make guaranteed money instead of taking on more risk from lending to consumers and businesses during a period of economic uncertainty.

How could they do that?

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Today, in 1989, Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, encouraging Muslims to kill the author, because we wrote a book. (Also today, Al Capone delivered his own fatwa on the North Side Irish gang of Bugs Moran.) Happy Valentine’s Day.

Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery, so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more. (more…)

In the wake of yesterday’s terrible tragedy outside of Vancouver at the Whistler Sliding Center, where Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili sadly lost his life, safety is on the minds of many.  Only hours before the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, the 21-year old lost control of his sled at 88mph and was catapulted over the track wall into a steel support column.  All throughout the week, coaches, commentators, and even other Olympians have questioned the safety of the track, as nearly a dozen other athletes have also crashed during practice runs, including a Romanian women’s slider who was knocked unconscious and defending Olympic luge champion Armin Zoeggeler of Italy.

The President of the World Luge Federation said the track is too fast and thinks it is a planning mistake, while Australian luger Hannah Campbell-Pegg questioned whether athletes were being treated as “crash test dummies“.  The shocking footage of the accident was replayed all throughout the day and evening yesterday, leaving horrified viewers focused on discussion about the safety of the track.

But in all of this shock, horror and sadness over the tragic death of an athlete in his prime and the dangers of the track on which he lost his young life, what has the SEIU focused on?

Food safety. (Translated =  unionizing)

Reports of the horrible accident in Vancouver began surfacing in the press as early as 12:30 pm EST  Friday.  Yet, the SEIU still felt their unionization Food Safety concerns were so paramount that they went ahead and issued a press release anyway, after 5:00 pm EST:

“PRESS RELEASE:  Healthcare Union Raises Concerns Over Safety Of Food to be Served to Olympic Athletes at Vancouver Olympics“

“Sodexo is providing catering services for athletes during this key moment in their sporting careers, and we’re concerned about the food they will be providing,” charged the SEIU in Friday’s press release.

It’s not as though the SEIU could not have known about the tragedy  – the story had been broadcast all over the news for at least five hours before SEIU pushed out its attack.  If they didn’t know, then they’re even more disconnected from reality than we thought they were.

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It was a busy week for the global jihad. Thursday the mullahs’ mouthpiece, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that the Islamic Republic of Iran had enriched uranium and was now a “nuclear state.”

I cannot believe the impotent West allowed this to happen. Someone padlock the UN – what’s the point? Just to fleece us? There was supposed to be some benefit to our putting up with all the thieving and embezzling, not to mention the raping and human trafficking of the UN “peacekeepers.”

Imagine Islam with nuclear weapon in a post-American world. What a time for America to have such a weakling in the White House.

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I come bearing bad news.  Reform of our financial services industry is going to be a failure.  Leave aside the preconceived notions that politicians will come up with faulty or halfhearted regulations, that they are writing bills in cahoots with the big banks or conversely ACORN & Co. or that the Obama administration in general is anti-business.

While these ideas may all have merit, the reason that financial reform will be disastrous is that all legislation points towards dealing with symptoms rather than addressing the root causes of our financial collapse. While of course the narrative in the MSM centers on greedy “fat cat” bankers taking big risks and predatory lenders taking advantage of hapless borrowers, the fact of the matter is that in every aspect of this crisis government was the major enabler.  Ironically all financial reform centers around giving government more power.

Consider housing.  As we know, under the CRA and due to the “activities” of ACORN and subsidization from our taxpayer-owned siblings Fannie and Freddie, banks granted mortgages to borrowers far riskier than they would have in an uninhibited mortgage market.  That one of the innovations to meet the demand for mortgages was, for example, the adjustable-rate mortgage which reset to sky-high rates after a specified amount of time was not predatory but rather the natural way for banks to compensate for the massive incremental risk being taken by lending to uncreditworthy borrowers.

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As he prepared “Notes on Government” for publication in 1791, Congressman James Madison wrote a note to himself. “In proportion as slavery prevails in a State, the Government, however democratic in name, must be aristocratic in fact. The power lies in a part [of the people] instead of the whole, in the hands of property, not of numbers.” He drew a telling conclusion: “The Southern States of America,” very much including his native Virginia, “are on the same principle aristocracies.”

As an architect of the new Constitution, Madison knew that Article IV, Section 4 says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” He knew, therefore, that the American regime contained a self-contradiction. With most Americans of his generation, he hoped that the eventual removal of slavery would remove this potentially fatal flaw. In fact many states did abolish slavery in that first, founding generation. But his “Southern States” did not. It took civil war and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to continue the liberation that the founders had begun.

Lincoln came to the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg to say in public what Madison in prudence could not say some seventy years before. In declaring their independence, their self-government, in 1776, “our fathers,” the founders, “brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Conceived, brought forth: this is the language of fertility, of childbirth. It is a paradoxical conception and childbirth—the work of fathers not of mothers. Somehow the signers of the Declaration of Independence were fathers and mothers, men who conceived and gave birth.

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Today, in 1990, West and East Germany agreed to a plan to reunite as one country. It marked the definitive end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, the West went on to squander the victory.

Glenn Reynolds in Saturday’s WSJ:

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

These weren’t the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

Mr. Obama made those promises because the ideas they represented were popular with average Americans. So popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention. The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack.

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The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different outcomes.  The different versions of the jobs bills circulating in Washington DC these days are perfect example of that point.

See for instance, the  jobs tax credit for hiring new workers idea. What a brilliant example of bipartisan nonsense that is. Pushed by President Obama during his State of the Union address earlier this month and most recently picked up by Senators Schumer and Hatch.

Still no one seems to wonder, why would employers pay a new worker $40,000 to earn a $5,000 credit unless that worker generates at least $35,000 of revenue? Even when the advice comes from economists at the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the largest association of small business owners in the country, it is ignored by the President and Congress.

This about it this way:

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Despite reports last fall that the Census Bureau had severed ties with community-organizing group known as ACORN, Americans might want to think twice before opening their doors to canvassers for the 2010 Census after reading what I discovered this morning.

According to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office Oct. 7, approximately 785 employees with disqualifying criminal records could still end up working for the Census Bureau this year. Excerpts (below) show the exact wording of the agency’s frightening information about the people who go door to door conducting interviews and collecting information for the 2010 Census:

The Bureau’s efforts to fingerprint employees, which was required as part of a criminal background check, did not proceed smoothly, in part because of training issues. As a result, over 35,000 temporary census workers — over a fifth of the address canvassing workforce — were hired despite the fact that their fingerprints could not be processed and they were not fully screened for employment eligibility.

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Dale Robertson is a racist and a kook.

Robertson carried this “n*gg*r” sign at a Texas tea party in March of 2009 and was asked to leave… But he won’t go away.

Andrew Ian Dodge wrote about the Robertson problem at Pajamas Media:

Dale is very much not a hero to those who first encountered him in February of last year. He has been described as a fake, a con artist, and worse by frustrated tea party groups across the land. Houston’s, in particular, is so upset at being associated with the man that they sent out the following press release:

1. He is NOT a member of our Leadership team.

2. He owns a website with which we have never been affiliated.

3. He has never been a part of organizing any of the Tea Party rallies in the Houston area, or any other area that we can find.

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If you followed the news out of Nashville, you probably heard that some Tea Party folks are creating a Political Action Committee that will win 15 to 20 key Congressional races in 2010 and, perhaps, in years beyond. What you didn’t hear at the press conference was that several grassroots tea party organizers are so strongly in favor of this move that we have agreed to serve Ensuring Liberty PAC through its organizing parent, the Ensuring Liberty 501.c(4). Our local tea parties will continue unchanged.

Who Comprises the ELPAC

Very simply, ELPAC is led by six people from some of the most effective local Tea Party organizations in America:

• Mark Skoda of The Memphis Tea Party
• Steve McQueen of The Quincy Tea Party
• State Sen. John Loudon (MO-Ret.) of St. Louis Tea Party
• Rose Corona, a California farmer and Patriot
• Brad Ehmen of The Quincy Tea Party
• Bill Hennessy of St. Louis Tea Party

While you might not recognize all of these names, I do. These are the people who have been in the fox holes with us since day one. They are bold and resilient fighters for freedom. They are the men and women we turn to for counsel, support, advice, strength, and help across the Mid-West and across the the nation. We share mutual faith in each other. The men and women on this list have skills to win elections with grassroots activism. They embody what happened in NY-23 and Massachusetts.

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If you want to get depressed or angry, the New York Times has an article celebrating the effort by politicians at all levels of government to lure more people into the food stamp program. New York City is running ads in foreign languagues asking people to stick their snouts in the public trough. The City is even signing up prisoners when they get out of jail. The state of New York, meanwhile, actually set up quotas for enrolling new recipients. And on the federal level, there apparently is a program that gives states “bonuses” for putting more people on the dole. No wonder one out of every eight Americans is receiving food stamps.

By the way, this is not just the fault of Democrats. The ranking Republican on the Agriculture Committee is a big defender of the program, in part because of the sordid pact among urban and rural politicians to support each other’s handouts. And President George W. Bush’s food stamp administrator actually had the gall to assert “food stamps is not welfare.” No wonder the burden of federal spending skyrocketed during the reign of so-called compassionate conservatism.

The correct policy, of course, is to get the federal government out of the welfare business. If Mayor Bloomberg thinks it is a “civic duty” to expand food stamps, he should see whether New York City voters agree with him – and want to foot the bill.

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It has been reported, a company by the name of PharmAthene, which is closely tied to the late Congressman John Murtha and Tara O’Toole, an Under Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has received preferential treatment by our good friends in the federal governmenat the expense of Joe Taxpayer.

BIG GOVERNMENT has learned that a little known entity named the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is adding millions of dollars to a contract awarded way back in 2003 that PharmAthene inherited, rather than conducting a fair and open competition. In government speak, that means PharmAthene is about to get huge sums of additional cash without ever having competed for it. Coverage of this sole-source award has already received significant news coverage and attention from numerous outlets, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

But it’s not as if PharmAthene is hiding it. They’re actually promoting the fact that they’re getting sole-source contracts that do away with any competition and fatten their bottom line.

According to a recent PharmAthene press release:

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