In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

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Guess which elected officials are invited to the terrorist-linked Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center Annual Fundraising Dinner April 3 – and who, in spite of repeated requests, have not removed their names from the very public flyer for the event: Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, and Fairfax Supervisor Penny Gross, as our mini-documentary proves:

On Saturday, April 3, the terrorist-linked Islamic Center Dar Al Hijrah in the Washington DC suburbs will hold their annual fundraising banquet.  The original flyer headlined  that seven elected officials were “invited”: former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, now Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Sen. James Webb (D-VA), Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, Fairfax Supervisor Penny Gross, and Virginia State Delegate Kaye Kory.   We thought that those elected officials would not want their names associated Dar Al-Hijrah, long-known as an al-Qaeda linked Islamic center, on which we had posted at Biggovernment.com on February 14.  So on February 17, we mailed and faxed a letter to each of the seven elected officials, alerting them to the invitation using their names, and asking them if they would remove their names as invitees.

Within a few days, Senator James Webb and State Delegate Kaye Kory’s names were removed from the invitation.

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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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5. Hide the Decline: “Climategate” and the CO² ruling

Why it’s important: The unauthorized release in November of 61 megabytes of confidential files and emails hacked from the computers at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit – Ground Zero of the “anthropogenic global warming” racket – shocked nearly all sentient people into the realization that scientists could be just a corruptible as your average politician or, worse, your average “environmental journalists” as they sought to “hide the decline.” While each country’s capo di tutti capi was gathering in Copenhagen to hatch yet another scheme to beggar the industrialized West in the name of collective guilt, the scandal burbled along under the radar as rational people finally had the proof they needed that the Chicken Little alarmists were, well – crowing capons.  For years, skeptics had been derided by such barking lunatics as Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., as “deniers” – the word was deliberately loaded to evoke the Holocaust – even as the Man Who Flunked Out of Divinity School did his best to dodge all challenges to his newfound religion:

Meanwhile, with AGW going up in smoke like a fruitless sacrifice to a god that failed, and the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” extortion bill faltering in Congress, along came the EPA, right on schedule, with its “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide – you know, the stuff you breathe out when you exhale, and the same stuff that makes the good green plants happy, healthy and wise – is, of all things, a “pollutant.”  Still, the news for the Karbon Krazies just keeps on getting worse.

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