The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

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Borrowing a page from Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s investigation of how elected officials funnel taxpayer dollars to projects that increase the value of properties they own, the Washington Post has conducted a study revealing that 33 members of Congress earmarked more than $300 million for projects within two miles of land they own.

After analyzing the holdings of all 535 members of Congress and comparing them to their earmarks for pet projects since 2008, the Washington Post found numerous eye-opening instances of potential self-enrichment at taxpayers’ expense, including:

• Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): obtained a $900,000 earmark to resurface roads where he and his daughter own two homes.  “I didn’t say, ‘Do the street that I live on,” Rep. Thompson protested when the Washington Post confronted him.  “The earmark went to the county.  It had no designation on it whatsoever, and that was it.”
• Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD): secured approximately $4.5 million for an interstate interchange that leads to Rep. Bartlett’s home, his 104-acre farm, and rental properties that earn him $150,000 annually.  “He was being an advocate for what was presented to him as the highest priority,” the congressman’s press secretary Lisa Wright said.  “Coincidentally, this was around two miles from his farm.”
• Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX): bagged $665,000 in taxpayer funds to expand a road 600 feet away from his family’s food processing plant, H&H Foods.  “It helps everybody,” Rep. Hinojosa told the Washington Post.  “The only way it made sense to handle this tremendous population growth and avoid problems for the school buses that go through that intersection was to widen it.”
• Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA): scored $750,000 for a new bridge three blocks away from a 7,000-square-foot building he and his wife own as well as Columbia Basin Paper & Supply, a janitorial supply company he previously owned that is now run by his brother.  “It never crossed my mind,” Rep. Hastings told the Washington Post.  “Every business in Pasco will benefit by that.”
• Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MA): landed a $187,000 earmark to replenish a shoreline 90 miles away from his home district near a beach that, coincidentally, he and his wife own two condominiums by that generate $15,000 in rental income.  Rep. Ruppersberger said questioning the proximity of his properties to the project was “ridiculous.”  “That’s a stretch to say that thing’s going to benefit me.”
• Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): secured $6.3 million to replenish a beach 900 feet away from a $142,900 cottage he owns.  “It’s absurd to suggest that this benefits me,” Kingston protested to the reporters.  “The beach doesn’t improve the real estate of a house, unless it’s on the beach.  The only thing that changes in value is the beachfront property.”
• Rep. John W. Olver (D-MA): obtained $5.1 million in earmarks to restructure a road 209 feet from Rep. Olver’s 15-acre home and several adjoining properties he and his wife own.  “I had no monetary interest whatsoever in this project,” Rep. Olver said.  “I had nothing to with the design.  I was never notified of any of the hearings.  I had no involvement whatsoever.”
• Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-MI): obtained a $486,000 earmark that helped add a 14-foot bike lane within walking distance of her house.  “People earmark for all kinds of things,” Rep. Miller said when asked about the project.  “I’m pretty proud of this; I think I did what my people wanted.  Should I have told them, ‘We can never have this bike path complete because I happen to live by one section of it’?  They would have thrown me out of office.”
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY): secured $7 million in earmarks, a portion of which went to overhaul streets around the corner from a bank where he is director emeritus and owns a $1-$5 million stake in the bank’s holding company and also narrowed the street he lives on to slow traffic.  “Congressman Rogers sees no conflict of interest in helping local community leaders achieve their goals for growth,” the congressman’s chief of staff Michael R. Higdon told the Washington Post.

The Washington Post report also concluded that 16 members of Congress directed taxpayer dollars to “companies, colleges, or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.”

The practice of earmarks continues to be a source of angst for conservatives and citizens concerned with out-of-control federal spending.  In 2010, a record high 11,230 earmarks accounted for $32 billion in federal spending.

Amid the controversy over Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime In America” Super Bowl commercial, a glaring question remains: if Chrysler is back on top and so strong, then why hasn’t it repaid taxpayers the $1.3 billion it still owes them?

“I was, frankly, offended by it,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

Already, Democrats have begun co-opting the “It’s Halftime In America” meme, and President Barack Obama’s campaign team has already signaled that “saving” Detroit and the American auto industry will be a central campaign theme in Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. Indeed, in June 2011, Mr. Obama proudly declared:

Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency–and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule.  And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake.  That means Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.

The Washington Post fact checker, however, disagreed–strongly. (more…)

John Podesta, Center for American Progress

The Washington Post has just published an article reporting that the Center for American Progress, the left-wing think tank whose policies and personnel have close ties to the Obama White House, has been “accused of anti-Semitic language.”

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank closely aligned with the White House, is embroiled in a dispute with several major Jewish organizations over statements on Israel and charges that some center staffers have used anti-Semitic language to attack pro-Israel Americans.

The controversy reflects growing divisions among important allies of President Obama over Middle East policy that could complicate the president’s reelection outreach to some Jewish voters, just as he is seeking to assure them of his commitment to Israel’s security amid fears of an Iran nuclear threat.

Among the points of contention are several Twitter posts by one CAP writer referring to “Israel-firsters.” Some experts say the phrase has its roots in the anti-Semitic charge that American Jews are more loyal to a foreign country. In another case, a second staffer described a U.S. senator [Mark Kirk of Illinois] as showing more fealty to Israel and the prime U.S. pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, than to his own constituents, replacing a standard identifier of party affiliation and state with “R-AIPAC” on Twitter….

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In an editorial board interview with Breitbart.com, Rick Tyler, a former spokesman for Newt Gingrich and current senior adviser to Mr. Gingrich’s Winning Our Future Super PAC, told Editor-in-Chief Joel Pollak he was unsure whether the Gingrich Super PAC would return and refuse any contributions it has or will receive from employees of Bain Capital, the company Mitt Romney previously ran.

“I’m not prepared to comment on that right now,” said Mr. Tyler. “I hadn’t even contemplated that idea… I don’t know. I don’t know that there are any Bain employees giving money. I don’t really have an answer for you. I don’t have an adequate answer for you.”

Pollak raised the question as Gingrich and his Super PAC have targeted Romney’s tenure as CEO of Bain Capital, casting Bain as a firm of corporate raiders whose business model was allegedly to “loot” American companies and ship jobs overseas. Logically, Pollak implied, if Bain is evil, then Winning the Future should return and refuse contributions connected to Bain.

It is unknown whether Gingrich’s Super PAC, “Winning the Future,” has in fact received donations from Bain employees or investors, since it is not due to report its contributions to the Federal Election Commission until January 31.

On Wednesday, Winning Our Future is set to release a movie titled When Mitt Romney Came to Town in advance of the Republican South Carolina primary. The Washington Post says the film, which was made by a former Romney advertising adviser, “savages” Mr. Romney’s record as head of Bain Capital. The film’s website describes Mr. Romney as a “predatory corporate raider” who “looked for businesses he could pick apart.”

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The 25 richest members of Congress and the 25 “poorest” members of Congress break fairly evenly along partisan lines, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Of the top 25 wealthiest members of Congress, 13 were Republicans and 12 were Democrats.

As for the “poorest” members of Congress, 10 were Republicans and 15 were Democrats.

The findings, which were based on the lawmakers’ 2010 financial disclosures, list Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) as having a net worth of – $4,732,002, making him the poorest member of Congress.

At the opposite end of the financial spectrum is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) whose listed net worth of $448,125,017 puts him at the top of the Congressional wealth chart.

Recent studies have shown that the wealth gap between elected officials and average Americans has widened considerably in recent years.

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Today, PJ Media breaks a bombshell that an employee in the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) Voting Section, where I used to work, has admitted to lying three times under penalty of perjury during a DOJ Inspector General’s investigation.

The revelation may well affect congressional redistricting, because of the key role Voting Section staff play in approving state legislative plans, including the staffer in question.

For example, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott might use these allegations of perjury involving Texas redistricting to fight the ongoing redistricting litigation. Impeachment of a different sort–that of a testifying witness–is his for the taking.

The wide ranging DOJ Inspector General investigation is examining the harassment of conservative leaning DOJ employees who were willing to enforce civil rights laws equally against all wrongdoers, such as the New Black Panther party.  You read that right–the harassment of employees who were willing to enforce the law against the New Black Panther Party.

The particulars of the DOJ perjury, as reported by Has von Spakovsky at PJ Media, are even more troubling. They involve the leaking of internal memos about Congressional redistricting to the Washington Post by leftist DOJ staff who hoped to hurt the Bush administration. The current Texas redistricting plans are being litigated in both San Antonio and Washington D.C. courtrooms.

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There is a long 20^th century history of Wall Street protests in America.  After all, Wall Street is the financial center of the country. Today, we’re in a financial crisis so Wall Street (or its financial center equivalent in other cities) is the logical place to protest, right?

Actually, we think it’s a poor second to Lafayette Park across from the White House — where the current crisis was hatched and nurtured.  No, this isn’t an anti Obama screed.  His predecessors (several of them) are far more to blame for the current economic disarray in which we find ourselves, although we think his proposed remedies are anything but remedial.

“Occupy Wall Street” and “Wall Street Greed” are great memes.  They are highly memorable and easily passed on as a rallying cry. Unsurprisingly, President Obama and the left has sought to adopt them.  Of course, the protestors are an outgrowth of the wider sense of entitlement many young people have developed (including quotas disguised under the term “diversity”).  As George Will stated in his column in The Washington Post on October 13, 2011:

“Demands posted in [Occupy Wall Street’s] name include a ‘guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment’; a $20‑an‑hour minimum wage (above the $16.00 entry wage the UAW just negotiated with GM); ending ‘the fossil fuel economy’; ‘open borders’ so ‘anyone can travel anywhere to work and live’; $1 trillion dollars for infrastructure; $1 trillion dollars for ‘ecological restoration’; ‘free college education’, and forgiveness of ‘all debt on the entire planet.”

But abuses by Wall Street are an affect, not the cause of the current economic disarray. As anyone who has read our essays knows, we carry no brief for Wall Street excesses or those of the various Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE’s) that are the real culprits. But Wall Street was simply the vehicle by which the White House, Congress, the Fed and the Washington bureaucracy carried out very ill advised objectives. As is well known by now, the seeds of our current discontent were sowed a quarter century ago when President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).  This legislation and the regulatory policies that it set in motion may have been well intentioned, but as history teaches, roads paved merely with good intentions often lead where no one wants to go.

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Bloomberg and The Washington Post are scheduled to start trying to smear the candidates at 8pm EDT. Whomever “wins,” the GOP has already lost by allowing their enemies in the press to vet their candidates. Will the other candidates (and the moderators, of course) try to “finish off” Rick Perry or shift their attention to the surging Herman Cain? Will Romney or Cain ever criticize each other? Will Ron Paul still look at Iran and say, “meh, live and let live”?

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From the Associated Press:

Public support for both President Barack Obama and the US Congress has hit news lows, as a pair of polls Tuesday reflected Americans’ frustration with the stalled economy and rancorous partisan squabbling.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll, released just days ahead of Obama’s planned major address on job creation, found that 53 percent disapprove of his job performance and 77 percent think the country is on the “wrong track.”

The poll found 35 percent of Americans believe they have become worse off financially under Obama’s presidency, the highest since the 1980s.

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Chatter began to emerge on Thursday about the unique treatment received by the bankruptcy-declaring Solyndra, a government-dependent maker of solar panels whose scheme, shaped somewhere between a pyramid and a trapezoid, was described in the Washington Post no less the following way:

“You make something in a factory and it costs $6, you sell it for $3, but you really, really need to sell it for $1.50 to be competitive,” Lynch said of Solyndra. “It was an insane business model. The numbers just don’t work, and they never did.”

And yet, as the LA Times editorialized:

“Solyndra was the first company to be awarded a federal loan guarantee under the stimulus, worth $535 million. Taxpayers are likely to end up on the hook for much if not all of that amount, a highly embarrassing development for President Obama because he was among the company’s biggest cheerleaders. He visited its Fremont plant in May 2010 even though PricewaterhouseCoopers had weeks earlier raised doubts about its plans for an initial public offering by questioning whether it could continue as a going concern. …”

Also, “Other flags have been raised about how the Energy Department pushed the deal forward. The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News and ABC disclosed that Energy Department officials announced the support for Solyndra even before final marketing and legal reviews were in. To government auditors, that move raised questions about just how fully the department vetted the deal — and assessed its risk to taxpayers — before signing off.”

Given the obvious rat-hole nature of the lost half-billion, LAT piquantly inquired, “is Obama using stimulus funds to reward his political contributors?” By all means, follow the odor of the ties between major Solyndra backer, key Obama fundraiser George Kaiser of Tulsa.

But there is another question about what political deal may have been involved in the Solyndra boondoggle.

Solyndra resides in Fremont, California, which in turn rests within the then-cozy confines of California’s 13th Congressional District, represented by Fortney “Pete” Stark. As chairman of the tax-writing Ways & Means Committee’s Health Subcommittee during Obama’s push for Obamacare, Stark was critical to Obama’s signature step in ‘fundamentally transforming America.’

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WaPo reports on the back of its A section Saturday that

An Interior Department scientist returned to work Friday, six weeks after he was suspended in connection with a probe of whether he improperly assisted another polar bear researcher in obtaining a federal contract….

Monnett was being investigated for improperly helping a researcher at Canada’s University of Alberta draft a response to a federal request for proposals on a polar bear study. Monnett chaired the committee that eventually awarded the contract to the university.

In the letter, the special agent in charge quotes the contract officer as saying that if Monnett had informed her about his collaboration with the University of Alberta researcher, “she would have warned you that such actions would have been highly inappropriate under procurement integrity policies and procedures.”

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz wrote in an e-mail that Monnett “was informed that he will have no role in developing or managing contracts of any kind, and will instead be in our environmental assessment division.”

Because, apparently, integrity is not so much a concern there.

Although I do think I recall other such problems arising when such foxes guard the hen house. Oh, yeah, then there was this, too. Er, and this. A whole pattern of isolated incidents.

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After 14 days of a Minnesota government shutdown Governor Dayton issued a letter offering to accept the tax-free Republican budget as put forward before the shutdown, with some modifications.

The shutdown has been costing the state millions of dollars every week. According to the Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus, each week the state is shutdown we are unnecessarily keeping thousands of Minnesotans unemployed, and costing the taxpayers millions. Between the estimated unemployment benefits, lost revenue, uncollected audits, delays in construction projects, and lost private sector the total spending could top $65 million a week.

After foregoing pressure from constituents during a state fly-around to make a deal, the Governor released the letter in attempt to make a deal with the Republicans. An article from the Washington Post quotes the Governor’s letter saying, “[D]espite my serious reservations about your plan, I have concluded that continuing the state government shutdown would be even more destructive for too many Minnesotans..  Therefore, I am willing to something I do not agree with — your proposal — in order to spare our citizens and our state from further damage.”

The letter specifically outlined three conditions of a compromise. First, all of the policy proposals are off the table. For example the voter ID laws and abortion/stem cell research restrictions will not go through. Second, Republicans must let go of their “arbitrary” across-the-board 15 percent cuts in the number of employees in all state government agencies. Finally, after the budget is completed in the special session, Republicans must help pass a bonding bill of no less than $500 million.

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WaPo has a front page piece titled (in the print edition, and teased as such on the home page), “The climate issue takes a back seat”. It begins by noting that “Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate-change policy, makes a forceful case for the need to slash greenhouse-gas emissions and boost the efficiency of cars and small trucks: The moves will cut America’s oil consumption, foster the nation’s energy independence, save consumers money at the pump and help revive domestic auto manufacturers.”

Its second paragraph is an intended-to-be-impactful, lone sentence, isolated in the physical layout: “What she doesn’t volunteer is that they will curb climate change”.

WaPo’s best defense for this stunt is that it wasn’t really saying the ‘global warming’ rules would curb climate change, but just saying the White House aide doesn’t volunteer that they do (the reason for this being a Stan Greenberg poll “urging Democrats to play down ‘global warming’“, dropping “warming”, “climate” and “cap-and-trade” in favor of re-branding the effort as “clean energy”. That is, in effect counseling Dems to be even less candid than their Plan A of an end-of-days  fear-based campaign aimed at attaining public acquiescence for state-created energy scarcity).

Later in the piece, WaPo quotes a greenie as saying “I don’t blame the president for the failure of climate legislation, but I do hold him accountable for allowing opponents to fill the void with misinformation and outright lies about climate change”.

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“No it wasn’t deceptive, that’s what everybody’s saying about it. I saw the first version of it, and it told pretty much the whole story, of how that woman had gone through an epiphany of understanding how race works.”

Related:
Nolte: Who Got to Chris Matthews?: ‘Hardball’ Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed (July 30, 2010)
Marlow: WaPo’s Kurtz “dishonestly suggests Matthews had gotten his facts wrong regarding Breitbart including footage of Shirley Sherrod’s redemption” (August 3, 2010)

The Washington Post has a predictable, propagandistic lead Monday editorial — “Climate change underscored: A new report leaves little room for doubt” — that merits a fisking for the prominence given such admittedly non-newsy, if wildly spun and internally inconsistent, repetitiveness (emphases added throughout):

“CLIMATE CHANGE is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

So says — in response to a request from Congress — the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the country’s preeminent institution chartered to provide scientific advice to lawmakers.

Ah, so — the implication is clear — it is a panel of scientists; wait, not just scientists, but climate scientists, and worthy of description as ‘preeminent’. But, then, the piece continues oddly without elaboration on this hint:

In a report titled “America’s Climate Choices,” a panel of scientific and policy experts also concludes that the risks of inaction far outweigh the risks or disadvantages of action.

Well, as Hoover fellow Paul Gregory notes, prompted by similar slop from the New York Times, “Of the first eight names, only one appears to be a climate scientist. The others are engineers, lawyers, and public policy types”.

But of course, we’re used to these gents being railroad engineers (the IPCC’s chief scientist, Rajendra Pachauri) and anthropology teaching assistants (see the IPCC ‘world’s leading climate scientists’). By the next paragraph, however, surely the reader would begin wondering what is such a panel of scientists doing making these recommendations, which are in fact policy calls?

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The New Black Panther fix came in just as we suspected.  Yesterday the Department of Justice completed its 19 month internal investigation into whether Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King, the political appointee attorneys who ordered the dismissal of the voter intimidation case, acted unethically.  No surprise, DOJ found that DOJ acted ethically.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have heard about the conclusion.  The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report was the narrower of the two DOJ investigations of the matter, and Congress will be sure to conduct a far broader, and more competent, inquiry.

Of course the American people will be the judge of the black panther dismissal, not the DOJ OPR.  Anyone with eyes can see what happened.  Americans have a right to vote without armed racist jackbooted thugs lurking at the entrance to their polling place with a weapon.  That offends nearly every American, but not the lawyers at Eric Holder’s Justice Department.

The fix was in early in the DOJ investigation.  Holder appointed Robin Ashton, the head of OPR, last Christmas Eve.  She worked for Senator Patrick Leahy and was known for rifling through coworker’s desks according to a well sourced National Review article. A week after she was appointed, Attorney General Holder told the New York Times that there was “no there, there” and the black panther scandal was “made up.”  Even former Attorney General Michael Mukasey was shocked at the comments of his successor.  So was the conclusion of the OPR report newsworthy?

Apparently to the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and Associated Press it was.  For the first time ever, all four outlets had stories about the black panther scandal on the same day.  Naturally the fact the report defended Eric Holder caused the sudden synchronicity of interest in the long ignored story.

It is no accident that Loretta King, one of the central figures in the black panther dismissal, is also behind other nutty DOJ policies, including forcing the Dayton, Ohio police to hire cops that failed the test as well as signing a complaint to sue a school district for refusing to give 19 days of leave to go to Mecca.  King emerges as the engineer who regularly sends Holder’s Civil Rights Division off the rails.

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Washington Post, “Hidden workforce challenges domestic economic recovery,” March 15, 2011:

“Adding These Workers to February’s Jobless Rate Pushes It Up to 10.5 Percent”

“Overshadowing the nation’s economic recovery is not only the number of Americans who have lost their jobs, but also those who have stopped looking for new ones.  These workers are not counted in the Labor Department’s monthly unemployment rate, yet they say they are willing to work. Since the recession began, their numbers have grown by 30 percent, to more than 6.4 million, amounting to a hidden labor force that could stymie the turnaround. Adding these workers to February’s jobless rate pushes it up to 10.5 percent, well above the more commonly cited 8.9 percent rate.”

The following is a chart that has been regularly updated by Ways and Means Republicans, displaying the unemployment rate including unemployed people the Washington Post calls the “hidden labor force.” This same group was dubbed the “invisible unemployed” by Austan Goolsbee, the Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, in an article he wrote in 2003 assailing the prior Administration.  According to Goolsbee, the “invisible unemployment rate” back then “probably pushed 8 percent” – well below the current level.

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Washington Post owned Slate.com used a crude misogynist wordplay to call Sarah Palin a c*** in a headline for an article published Tuesday about a supposed secret Sarah Palin Facebook account.

The headline read: Sarah Palin Uses Alternate Facebook Accunt to Praise Sarah Palin.

The article, posted in Slate’s “Slatest” section, is based on an article from Wonkette titled, Sarah Palin Has Secret ‘Lou Sarah’ Facebook Account To Praise Other Sarah Palin Facebook Account, that in a rare show of class for Wonkette does not use the sexist slur in the article.

Several commmenters at Slatest criticized Slate for the slur. Others, however, cheered: “”Accunt” lol, Perfect. No accident.” And “Accunt is a just made up word — like refudiate.”

Given Slate’s prominence as a respected part of the mainstream media with professional standards to uphold, an innocent typo of this magnitude with this subject is highly unlikely. (For the benefit of Media Matters senior blogger Eric Boehlert, try to imagine Slate “accidentally” doing the same to Michelle Obama or Nancy Pelosi. It wouldn’t happen.)

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The Progressive left is in full attack mode against Glenn Beck for his assertion that what’s happening in Egypt is not about democracy, rather it is about re-establishing a Muslim supremacist Caliphate.

Gaurdian
Middle East unrest according to Glenn Beck and friends

Media Matters
Yes, Tantaros, “Lunatic Theories” About Egypt Have Aired On Fox

Business Insider
Chris Matthews: Glenn Beck Is Today’s Number One ‘Exporter Of Fear’

US News and World Report
Glenn Beck’s Egypt Protest Theories Show He’s Finally Lost It

Media Matters
In Egypt Protests, Beck Sees … A New Islamic Caliphate And Communist Revolution?

Sad. Even these leading progressives don’t read the Washington Post! From 2006:

Come the caliphate
Saturday, January 21, 2006

The idea of restoring the body that governed and united the world’s Muslims for more than 1,000 years is beginning to resonate again. Karl Vick explains. The plan was to fly a hijacked plane into a national landmark on live television. The year was 1998, the country was Turkey, and the rented plane ended up grounded by weather. Court records show the Islamic extremist who planned to commandeer the cockpit did not actually know how to fly.

But if the audacious scheme prefigured September 11, 2001, it also highlighted a cause that, seven years later, President George W Bush has used to define the war against terrorism. What the ill-prepared Turkish plotters told investigators they aimed to do was strike a dramatic blow toward reviving Islam’s caliphate, the institution that had nominally governed the world’s Muslims for nearly all of the almost 1,400 years since the death of the prophet Mohammed.

…….

Al-Qaeda named its Internet newscast, which debuted in September, The Voice of the Caliphate.

Yet the caliphate is also esteemed by many ordinary Muslims. For most, its revival is not an urgent concern. Public opinion polls show immediate issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and discrimination rank as more pressing.

…….

But while Turks won self-rule, most of the former caliphate was divided among European colonial powers. One Arab scholar called it “the division of Muslim lands into measly pieces which call themselves nations.”

This is what inspired the group most directly focused on the push for a new caliphate, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), or Party of Liberation. The group, which claims to be active in 40 countries, began in 1953 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. But while the Brotherhood, which also favors a caliphate, embraced realpolitik, growing into a potent opposition force in Syria and Egypt, Hizb ut-Tahrir charted a more subversive path.

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