Add Napolitano to lunatics list

Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security secretary for Obama, was responsible for that silly report about the potential of veterans and single-issue voters to be recruited into right-wing extremism. She issued this hastily written document over objections by some of her advisors, and just before the Tea Parties, in an apparent attempt to intimidate conservative and other protesters. Then she made her infamous remarks about border security. She claimed falsely that the 9/11 terrorists got into the USA by crossing the Canadian border. She also implied falsely that there is no border security there. “The pattern at the Canadian border has been informality,” she went on to say. “The borders are going to be enabled with greater technology, but it’s not going to be going back and forth as if there’s no border anymore.” She knew nothing about the subject, but pretended that she did.

She even said that whatever is being done on our southern border should also be done on our northern border. So either we stop building a border security fence along the Mexican border, or else we build one along the Canadian border. (All 5000 kilometers of it? Another Great Wall of China?) Canadians are seeing and hearing these things and are wondering just how bonkers she really is.

Then she went on CNN and said, falsely, "And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil."

Last year, as governor of Arizona, she tried to cut off Sheriff Joe Arpaio's funding for cracking down on illegal immigration in Maricopa County. Apparently Obama thought that this made her the perfect candidate for heading up Homeland Security.

I hereby add Janet Napolitano to my list as Democrat Lunatic #8.

Note: Earlier entries on my Dem Lunatics List were Nancy Pelosi, RFK Jr., Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Harry Reid, Bill Clinton, and of course Barack Obama.

Shooting blanks

It is April 2010. Islamic terrorists have been caught attempting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge in New York with sophisticated high-explosives. The plot was recently uncovered by the CIA, and the FBI and New York law enforcement officials foiled the attempt to destroy the bridge in progress. Two of the terrorists committed suicide when caught, but two others were captured before they could explode their suicide vests. In the ensuing hours, the NSA picked up chatter indicating that one or more additional attacks were underway somewhere on the Eastern seaboard of the United States -- though when and where could not be ascertained. The two terrorists caught are immediately transported to an FBI holding cell. Using the tight rules for interrogation that the Obama administration has decreed, the FBI attempts to get them to tell authorities the operational details of the impending attacks. Neither will talk.  Interrogators are stymied by the fact that these terrorists know that the Obama administration has banned any enhanced interrogation techniques and they only need to stay silent. They do so, refusing to talk. As the clock ticks, Federal authorities raise the Homeland Security threat level and hope for the best -- knowing that they can do little to gain the information needed to prevent the additional attacks from happening.

Sound far fetched? Hardly. This is very real possibility that America could face in the future. The Obama administration has now created a situation where it has not only publicly banned the use of enhanced interrogation, but has made it abundantly clear that those officials who might -- in a moment of crisis -- issue an order to obtain information through the use of such techniques will be subject to future prosecution once the emergency has passed. In this environment, no one will be willing to cross any lines to ensure that we obtain the intelligence necessary to save American lives. The Justice Department will have issued directives making it clear that there is no gray area in questioning terrorist suspects, and that not even the "smoking gun" scenario that administration critics have warned about is justification for the use of harsh interrogation techniques. We have chosen our democratic values over our security, and it has been made clear that this is not a choice that is subject to interpretation. Terrorists get some hot coffee, a warm bed to sleep in and a government provided attorney. And the rest of us suffer the consequences.

This is a scenario that Barack Obama should think long and hard about. He needs to understand that the threat from Islamic terrorism remains grave, and that we need all the tools at our disposal to ensure our safety. Former CIA Director George Tenet and current National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair have made it clear that the now-banned interrogation techniques were extremely effective in gathering actionable intelligence that has saved American lives. We have now unilaterally disarmed ourselves in the fight against an existential terrorist threat -- like going into battle against AK-47 assault rifles with a single-shot pellet gun. Hardly a fair fight.

The real issue here is that the decision not to provide immunity to those who approve the use of enhanced interrogation when the nation is under threat will have a chilling effect in the future. It will now be impossible to find anyone to recommend, approve or execute any technique that will create personal legal jeopardy. Even with a smoking gun or impending attack, Obama has tied the nation's hands. We are now shooting blanks.

Barack Obama, you may think you are the most moral man in America, above reproach and without any doubt of your wisdom. But someday it may be you who personally has to issue an order you have deemed illegal, because there is no one in the chain of command who is willing to do it for you. And it might be you who has to get face-to-face with a terrorist in order to glean the information you know will save American lives, because no interrogator will do more than ask for name, rank and serial number.

And if you cross the line, Mr. President, you might find a president in the future instructing the Justice Department to investigate you for breaking the law.

You should be careful what you wish for, Mr. President.

Murder motivations don’t matter much

Lately the media have been filled with news of particularly heinous crimes, such as the recent mass murders in Alabama and North Carolina. We should be neither jaded nor hysterical about these horrible events but I confess that the crime reported Monday about the young man in Milton, Massachusetts, who stabbed his 17-year-old sister to death and decapitated his five-year-old sister, nearly moved me to tears. The only good thing that occurred–or didn’t occur–was that he was prevented from killing his nine-year-old sister by a timely bullet fired by a police officer, whose chief described the situation as "a killing field."

In what has become routine in these cases, the writer of the AP story said that "There was no clear motive" for the crime, which occurred at the five-year-old’s birthday party "in a tony Boston suburb that also is home to Gov. Deval Patrick."

Doubtless readers wonder what difference the neighborhood or the residents make, but I question the sense in inquiring about the motive. Let’s be clear on this: murder is a heinous crime whatever the motive is.

The unstated assumption behind examining the shooter’s motive is that multiple murders require an explanation. Who in his right mind would do such a thing, right? Why, he must have been crazy. And once we establish that about the killer, you know what’s coming next. That’s right, the insanity defense.

Has there ever been a more useful way of dodging a murder charge, or at least of avoiding the death penalty? If 23-year-old Kerby Revelus had not been killed, he would have been judged insane, pitied more than condemned and sent away for "treatment" at a facility that provides room and board and three meals a day, and recreation too. Fortunately, justice was done on the spot.

The truth is, the motive, or lack of motive, doesn’t matter. A young man killed two of his sisters and he got what he deserved. Thank God we’ve been spared the charade provided by defense lawyers who specialize in diverting attention from the crime and concentrating on the perpetrator's alleged lack of deliberate motive.

The motive does not count so that we might "understand" why a murder was committed, but it does count when the police investigators or the district attorneys don’t not have solid proof. That is, when they are trying to link a suspect or a defendant with a crime, motive (along with time and opportunity) may be part of the web of circumstances which prove guilt.

Although motive is irrelevant except for proving guilt, it is relevant in determining the seriousness of the crime. Crimes of passion draw lesser penalities than those committed with malice aforethought. Deliberate, cold-blooded murder draws worse penalties than accessory to murder or manslaughter (or at least it should).

But there has been some equivocation in recent years. Those who drive drunk and cause fatal accidents are being treated like murderers in our courts. I’m not so sure this represents the exercise of judicial equity in supplying defects in legislative intent or is in response to understandable public outrage. But legislatures should make clear in well-framed statutes that repeat drunken drivers who leave death in their wake do in fact merit trial as murderers and not leave it up to the varying determinations of local judges.

It is in the area of racially or sexually related crimes where motives have caused the most confusion. Crimes with this link are judged as more serious than otherwise. But when victims become privileged by their identities, we are entering a thicket of moral pretentiousness. How is it worse when the victim is black or homosexual and (a necessary corollary to this politically correct indulgence) the suspect or defendant is white or heterosexual? Does this imply that when white kills white or black kills black, the crime, other things being equal, should be deemed less serious?

And this is not merely academic. There is a lot more black on black crime than white on black. Law-abiding blacks unfortunate enough to be living in high crime areas are forgotten victims to our major media. That, after all, doesn’t support the well-worn liberal thesis that America is a racist country. And we’re supposed to believe we’re a homophobic country too when straight men murder gay men.

Motivation matters most to authorities trying to solve crimes or convict defendants, but it is hardly an excuse for crime. Degrees of culpability or responsibility are certainly relevant in fixing penalties, but they matter not at all just because crimes are committed across racial or sexual lines.

Muslim Brotherhood seeks US downfall

I recently attended a private briefing by a former FBI counter-terrorism agent who retired early after being marginalized on the job because his concerns about radical Islam were deemed politically incorrect. We'll call him Don Doe. He now works for an outside group, advising leaders at the federal level and seeking to alert local law enforcement about domestic subversion. Doe's partner is a former expert on such issues for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was also fired from his position for being too insensitive. He had run afoul of a key DOD aide, Hasham Islam, who accused him of being a Christian zealot or "extremist with a pen," according to defense officials.

Doe's presentation to my group was based on years of intelligence work as well as strategic documents which they obtained during an FBI raid from a hidden sub-basement in the Washington-area home of a Muslim leader -- many excerpts of which he showed us. The latter became official court records in last year's Dallas terrorism trial. Much of Doe's information actually comes from published newspaper and TV stories, though these tend to be ignored by the dominant media and high officials. He argued six main conclusions:

(1) Islam in general is a much bigger threat than commonly accepted.

(2) Through its unchangeable holy book, the Koran, Islam mandates, in unqualified terms, active efforts to convert non-Islamic people or to subjugate them and gain submission to Allah.

(3) Religion and politics are so fundamentally tied together in Islam that Muslims cannot peacefully co-exist with other people under a different legal system.

(4) Consequently there are no "moderate" true Muslims.

(5) There is a very well organized movement in America to install Islam and Sharia law.

(6) The Muslims are winning the propaganda war and have positioned their leaders very well and gained tremendous positions and influence in our popular culture while distorting the public perception of their intent while our leadership grossly underestimates the threats.

Don Doe's major points in support of these conclusions were as follows:

The Koran and the Muslim "religion" is more than a religion, it is a complete way of life and the Koran dictates a legal, political, religious and social system that is completely intertwined. One cannot be a true Muslim without believing in Sharia law, and only Sharia. Separation of church and state is not possible in the Muslim world. Islam has had an essentially political character from its very foundation to the present day. An intimate association between religion and politics, between power and cult, marks a principal distinction between Islam and other religions. In traditional Islam and therefore also in resurgent fundamentalist Islam, God is the sole source of sovereignty. God is the head of the state. The state is God's state. The army is God's army. The treasury is God's treasury, and the enemy, of course, is God's enemy.

The clear, expressed, fundamental goal of Islam is world domination. "Jihad" only means "struggle" in propaganda to the West -- in the Koran, it clearly means "Holy War".

Despite propaganda and popular media and liberal advocacy, there are not many interpretations of the Koran -- it is taken by Muslims as Allah's direct words (like the Ten Commandments given directly by God -- word for word). It is quite clear that killing infidels is encouraged and being devious or deceptive in pursuit of Jihad is holy work. There are translations of the Koran devised for Western consumption that distort true provisions and make it appear much more peaceful. There are inconsistencies in the Koran but there is a clear method of interpretation called "abrogation" which means that the provisions which were set out later in time (as Mohammed made his way from Mecca to Medina) completely overrule prior passages. The peaceful passages all came earlier in time, the later, and controlling provisions, are very hostile. Many people who try to understand the Koran and Islam do not understand the timeline of its creation and the fact that the passages are sequenced by length of writing, not chronologically, so they can't easily decipher the controlling passages and see it as inconsistent and subject to many interpretations. There is one university in Egypt that is the recognized ultimate world wide authority on the Koran and Sharia law and it's interpretations and translations are not questioned by the 85% of the World's Muslims who are Sunni disciples.

Virtually every Muslim organization in the US traces its leadership to the Muslim Brotherhood which is working towards world domination (I know, this sounds like a wild "conspiracy theory" -- but the evidence and facts Doe laid out were compelling).

The Muslims are winning the propaganda war and imposing their standards on the West and we, in our spirit of tolerance, are falling right in line -- from trivial things like foot-baths in public places to allowing Muslims to wear full headdresses in banks and through airport security (in an essential disguise that would not be tolerated if worn by anyone else) to allowing Muslim combat training compounds in the US. The Danish cartoon controversy (over which people died) is another example as is the hysteria that accompanies anyone who defaces the Koran or a picture of Mohammed.

The Saudis contribute over $4 billion per year to Islamic expansion (for both violent terrorism and less violent training, indoctrination and insertion). This is four times what the USSR spent on similar efforts at the height of the Cold War.

These terrorist groups often describe their actions as Islamic jihad. Self-proclaimed sentences of punishment or death issued publicly as threats often come in the form of fatwas (Islamic legal judgments). Both Muslims and non-Muslims have been among the targets and victims, but threats against Muslims are often issued as takfir (a declaration that a person, group or institution that describes itself as Muslim has in fact left Islam and thus is a traitor). This is an implicit death threat as the punishment for apostasy (conversion away from Islam) is swift death under Sharia law.

Federal leadership is reluctant to act against these Islamic organizations due to political correctness concerns and the threats of lawsuits by CAIR and others. Doe said that Muslim groups will demand concessions on matters by saying, "You have to do this; you have to do this or I will be offended." The group CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which protests and sues every chance they get to enforce acceptance of Islamic laws and value (such as colleges forced to have separate swimming times for Islamic men and women so not to offend Muslims), is actually a front for the terror group Hamas.

"They're having great success of implementing Shariah law, I could give you a thousand examples," the former FBI agent said.

He also said to watch what is happening in Great Britain, where Islamic radicalism has taken root. He noted that a member of the Dutch Parliament was recently denied entry into the United Kingdom for fear that it would offend Muslims. "They denied him access while at the same time, Islamic law is being instituted on the streets of Great Britain."

In this country, Doe gave the example of Grover Norquist as a prominent conservative activist, married to a Palestinian woman, who has gotten many prominent Muslim leaders into close relationships with high ranking US officials, including Clinton and Bush.

"If you are looking to DHS, the FBI and Congress to solve this," the briefer said, "you're going to be woefully disappointed." FBI agents in the field "are working good cases," but the FBI leadership "is unwilling to do what the agents are asking them to do, which is to pony up and use some courage and start stepping on these people."

We were told of a terror group is called Jamaat ul-Fuqra, known here as Muslims of America, which is a front organization for Pakistani Islamic cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani.

Muslims of America has several training compounds, one is near Dover, Tennessee. They cite a Justice Department document from 2006 that exposed 35 compounds in the U.S., which the group alleges are used for terrorist training. The document was marked "Dissemination Restricted to Law Enforcement" and was not supposed to be released to the public.

There are claims that all copies of Sheik Muburak Gilani's terrorist training video, "Soldiers of Allah," had been confiscated and sealed except for one copy. In the documentary, Gilani is shown saying "We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America." The training video also shows men taught how to use AK-47s, rocket launchers, and machine guns, as well as how to kidnap and kill Americans, how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations, and instructions on the use mortars and explosives. They want to have Jamaat ul-Fuqra placed on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization Watch List, which would shut down the camps.

Don Doe said that "cowardice" has prevented officials from taking action about the camps scattered across the country.

"We see at the local and state level, a lot of anger towards the federal government, and that anger is well placed."

"We can't ignore it, it's not going to go away," concluded the former FBI agent.

The author is a businessman and investor who studies national security issues. His pen name honors the Gallic leader who saved Europe from Muslim conquest 1300 years ago.