No double standards here, folks.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions.

A government watchdog organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), obtained hundreds of documents from DHS through the Freedom of Information Act and found details of the arrangement with General Dynamics. The company was contracted to monitor the Web for “reports that reflect adversely on DHS,” including sub-agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In testimony submitted to the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Ginger McCall, director of EPIC’s Open Government Project, stated that “the agency is monitoring constantly, under very broad search terms, and is not limiting that monitoring to events or activities related to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, or manmade disasters…. The DHS has no legal authority to engage in this monitoring.”

McCall added: “This has a profound effect on free speech online if you feel like a government law enforcement agency—particularly the Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to look for terrorists—is monitoring your criticism, your dissent, of the government.”

Rest assured that our beloved, baritone DHS secretary — and her ostensible boss, Eric “Fast ‘n’ Furious” Holder — would never, ever use this kind of information to go after private citizens. They’re just doing research.

As far as you know.

Consider this reason number 43,263 to kick this administration’s ample rear out of office in November.

 
Hat tip: BadBlue.com.

The message scrawled on a TSA notice read “Get your freak on girl.”

FOX News reports that upon discovering the note Filipovic uploaded a snapshot of it to Twitter with the comment:

Just unpacked my suitcase and found this note from TSA. Guess they discovered a ‘personal item’ in my bag. Wow.

The “personal item” in question was a vibrator—or more specifically, as Filipovic told New York Magazine:

It was a $15 bullet vibe from Babeland, about the most basic sex toy you can imagine. It has now been officially retired, since I have no idea if the TSA agents manhandled it.

She subsequently wrote about the incident on her blog, Feministe, calling the note “wildly inappropriate” but adding that she “died laughing” when she first happened upon it in her hotel room.

But, as FOX News writes, Filipovic stated in an email received late Monday that her amusement is giving way to perturbation:

[W]hoever left the note felt comfortable doing so (I also suspect that they believed most women would be embarrassed to be ‘caught’ with personal items and wouldn’t file a complaint). That is certainly cause for concern.

The TSA is claiming that there is no evidence to indicate that one of its agents was behind the note. No, of course not. It could have been any of the countless airport personnel with unfettered access to passengers’ personal belongings—perhaps a checkpoint gnome. (If the direction of the flight had been reversed and had originated in Ireland, the TSA could blame it on a leprechaun.)

Filipovic has stated her intention to file a formal complaint with the TSA when she returns to the U.S. Of course, she will have to get in line if she is expecting satisfaction. Although the number of complaints received by the TSA is not made public, the American Civil Liberties Union reports reports receiving more than 900 complaints from travelers during the month of November, 2010 alone. In one, a female passenger wrote:

The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone.

If I didn’t know better, I would say that agent was getting her freak on.

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Starting with this Sunday’s game at what football enthusiast John Kerry called “Lambert Field,”  fans will be wanded before being admitted to the stadium. The new procedures will not be instead of the previous bag searches and pat-downs but in addition to them.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette quotes Doug Collins, Packers director of security, as saying:

Be prepared for something different. It may take a few seconds longer, so if [fans] arrive a little earlier at the gates that would be helpful. I don’t anticipate there being any lines that are so long that people miss the game or anything like that. … But every officer in every line will have those wands.

“Something different” is likely a euphemism for insane delays, at least until security personnel get their act down. Now the groaning during the first quarter when the home team is behind won’t be coming only from the stands but from beyond them, as ticket holders play an incessant waiting game.

As with the formation of the Transportation Security Administration, the new security—which will ultimately extend to all 32 NFL stadiums—is reactive, not proactive. The sudden need for enhanced measures was suggested by a recent incident in which a Dallas Cowboys fan smuggled a stun gun into a game and proceeded to zap those seated around him.

“As usual,” writes the website The American Dream,“authorities have responded to a minor security incident by massively overreacting to it. In the post-9/11 world in which we live, paranoia is standard operating procedure.”

I’m not sure I’d agree that allowing a stun gun into a stadium is a “minor” security breach, but the second part of the statement is on point. “America is,” as the write further observes, “rapidly turning into a high-security prison.”

And one, moreover, where there is no time for the powers that be to think before acting. Consider that when the idea of advanced security screening was first broached two weeks ago, the initial recommendation was to replace the previous torso pat-downs with more comprehensive knees-to-ankles and above-the-waist pat-downs. Conspicuously absent from the inspection was the area from the waist down to the knees. Hard to imagine a would-be terrorist would have a weapon secreted in that area!

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That visitor knows a thing or two about travel. He is John Pistole, Administrator of the Transportation and Security Administration, which was created two months after the 9/11 attacks. On Pistole’s watch, the tactics of TSA agents have become more invasive and Draconian. Their heavy-handed pat-downs alone have spawned dozens of lawsuits and become the topic of vigorous debate.

For many, the debate is resolved. Another man who knows a thing or two about travel is Rafi Ron, former head of security at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and currently a consultant in the U.S. He is quoted in the NPR piece as saying:

What we have been and are still doing at the checkpoints is not necessarily providing us the level of security that is needed, and there is more that needs to be done.

Obviously, one of those things that needs to be done is to train screeners better: The current crop of TSA personnel has failed far too often to intercept real threats while embarrassing themselves by vigorously pursuing non-threats.

Another is to better screen the screeners. It was recently revealed that one former agent had a stash of 2,000 kiddie porn photos and videos on his home computer and an external hard drive. That man, Andrew Cheever, now faces federal charges. His apprehension is cold comfort to the thousands of parents who subject their young children to pat-downs by strangers at airports each year, any one of whom could be another  Andrew Cheever.

To its credit, the TSA recently implemented a program modeled on Israeli-style “behavioral profiling,” where agents are trained to look for “micro expressions” of malicious intent such as lack of eye contact. However, the training is limited to four days of classroom work and 24 hours of on-the-job experience. Let’s just hope that future terrorists are no brighter than the agents meant to spot them.

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Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

So speaks Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on the subject of privacy and the constant drumbeat of criticism she receives from not only Drudge, but many conservatives. In a rather wide ranging interview, (video to follow) she discusses the balance between privacy concerns and security.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is calling out web news aggregator Matt Drudge for suggesting that she’s an ogre eager to invade the privacy of Americans and in particular those who travel by air.

“I think my nickname is ‘Big Sis.’ I don’t think he means it kindly, actually,” Napolitano said Tuesday, accurately recalling the moniker that often accompanies scary-looking photos of her on Drudge’s popular news site.

“I think that what he means is we are watching too much—kind of an Orwellian view. He’s just wrong. I mean, he’s just wrong,” Napolitano declared during a POLITICO Playbook breakfast at the Newseum. She said the privacy impact of new airport screening technology and similar programs are thoroughly vetted before they are implemented.

“We want to be conscious of civil liberties and civil rights protections—and we are,” Napolitano insisted. “We don’t do anything without kind of running it through our own civil rights and privacy office. We’re one of only two departments in the federal government that actually has a presidentially-appointed privacy office and officer.”

While I’m obviously in the distinct minority on this side of the fence, I’m fairly sympathetic regarding the administration’s arguments on this score. Security and privacy are two of those teeter totter items on our plate which the voters can never seem to balance, along with many others.

The best example I can think of, oddly enough, is the current debate over entitlement programs. Americans have come to the reluctant conclusion that these programs are in trouble and changes are required. But at the same time, each and every poll shows that they want those changes to take place without any cuts to benefits. We seem to have mastered the fine art of wanting it all without having to give up anything in return.

The same can be said for our security. We want to travel safe in the knowledge that our planes will not explode in mid-air or be commandeered by enemies and flow into buildings. But at the same time we prefer not to be overly inconvenienced, slowed down, scanned, probed or patted down. I do have some empathy for those who don’t want the “nudie pics” being taken by the latest generation of scanners, as modesty is a natural human trait. But to their credit, the TSA does offer an alternative for those who don’t wish to be scanned.

Are there failures and abuses taking place as a result of these policies? Without a doubt there are. But those are individual human failings to be ferreted out and addressed, not systemic problems. We have bad – read: “evil” – people who wind up being teachers and priests, too. That doesn’t mean we shut down all the schools and churches.

The irony,of course, is that some of the people screaming most loudly about these invasions of privacy are the same ones who will be lining up to decry a failed president the next time a plane comes down in a ball of flames. And yes, I’ve heard the arguments about how potential terrorists should have been caught long before the got to the gate at the airport. Perhaps that’s so, but given the insidious nature of potential attackers, do you really want to risk your life on that bet?

The same interview touches on the increasing use of cameras in the public square, recording our every move as we travel the streets of major cities. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that you have virtually no legal assurance of privacy when you step out of your house and onto the sidewalk, these tools have led to a lot of captures and convictions of bad guys of all stripes. Sadly, you don’t read much about those stories, since nobody writes about the dog who never bites anyone.

Homeland security has turned into a pretty thankless job these days. We want to eat our cake and have it too. But that’s the world we live in now. If you really oppose it, keep hammering it through the court system for a final resolution. But I suspect that Lady Justice, while blind, will also be deaf to these specific complaints.

Here’s the video of the full interview so you can judge for yourself.

I should point out up front that while I do not claim credentials as any sort of expert on this subject, I’m not approaching the story from complete ignorance. During six years in the United States Navy I not only experienced a wide variety of conditions seen by those in service, but did a T.A.D. stint with the Military Police where I supervised prisoners and became familiar with confinement facilities both on shore and at sea. And I’m here to tell you that some of these self-styled human rights experts and legal analysts have probably been smoking something which the authorities would also frown upon.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that PFC Manning may very well have done something which could amount to treason during a time of war, let’s look at some of the “shameful” conditions the young man is enduring.

His cell is approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length.

I’m sorry… did you say twelve feet long? Not only is that bigger than the cells in the brig on every ship I was on, but the task force admiral’s stateroom on the flag bridge of our carrier wasn’t twelve feet long. This guy is staying in the military equivalent of the Ritz-Carlton, if only terms of floor space. Oh… and he’s in jail, remember?

I would also remind Private Manning that if his release of classified information results in even a single soldier, marine, sailor, airman or civilian dying because of his actions they will be staying in a considerably smaller space. It’s called a coffin.

He is allowed to watch television during the day. The television stations are limited to the basic local stations. His access to the television ranges from 1 to 3 hours on weekdays to 3 to 6 hours on weekends.

Wait… what?

He’s watching TV for up to six hours per day on the weekends? Well, you’ve certainly got me there, particularly if you are limiting him to basic cable. I mean, sure, the guy may have betrayed the nation he took an oath to protect, but that’s no reason to make him miss the next season of Nurse Jackie, you cruel animals.

At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.

You’re only letting the poor bastard sleep for nine hours a night? I’m trying to remember the last time my family actually let me sleep for nine straight hours.

Must. Not. Smash. Keyboard. Or. Face.

From 7:00 p.m. to 9:20 p.m., he is given correspondence time. He is given access to a pen and paper. He is allowed to write letters to family, friends, and his attorneys. Each night, during his correspondence time, he is allowed to take a 15 to 20 minute shower.

On weekends and holidays, he is allowed to have approved visitors see him from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m.

He is only allowed to have one book or one magazine at any given time to read in his cell. The book or magazine is taken away from him at the end of the day before he goes to sleep.

I’m sorry… is this solitary confinement or Club Med?

He is prevented from exercising in his cell. He does receive one hour of “exercise” outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk.

Yes, that’s very sad. But guess what? You’re in jail for what effectively amounts to treason. This is not a spa. We’re very sorry if the tennis courts aren’t located conveniently close to your cell.

There are plenty of jails right here in the United States where conditions are tougher than this, and those are for civilians with their full slate of rights. (For those not familiar, when you enlist in the U.S. military you actually surrender a number of your constitutional rights and fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If you’re not used to it you might not like it. But that’s the way it is.)

And while we’re on the subject, forget American jails. Try spending some time in a jail in Mexico. Or Turkey. Or China.

For all you out there spending your nights wringing your hands over the confinement conditions of Private Manning, here’s a holiday suggestion. Why don’t you contact the U.S.O. and see if you can do something to brighten the days of service members who didn’t sell out their nation? Trust me, you’ll feel better about yourself after you do.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go catch up with all the episodes of Nurse Jackie I Tivo’d. Merry Christmas.

Now you can yell at Jazz for being a stupid, wrong-headed RINO even faster than by just leaving a comment. Follow him on Twitter! @JazzShaw

One of the most objectionable was her use of strong arm tactics to “persuade” manufacturers of empty-calorie foods to go on “an advertising diet,” adding that if they didn’t “come along peaceably,” she might use her clout to force the FCC to implement new rules on commercials in children’s programming. Another was peppering the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Report to the President with skewed data to make it seem as though the obesity problem in America is worse than it is.

But arguably nothing has been as disingenuous as her comments today, which included the observation that

when more than one in four young people are unqualified for military service because of their weight, childhood obesity isn’t just a public health threat, it’s not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well.

One might well wonder in what way childhood obesity could be construed as a threat to national security. It might be if everyone in the nation were conscripted into military service as a matter of course, but we haven’t had a compulsory draft since 1973. In addition, there are currently 75.2 million children living in the U.S., judging from the best available data. As of September 30, 2010, there were 1.4 million Americans on active duty in the military with another 850,000 on standby in the seven reserve components. Combined, those numbers come to 2.25 million, which means that discounting the “one in four”—or 18.8 million—American children who are obese leaves a pool of 56.4 million able-bodied future volunteers.

The bottom line is that, save for a smattering of concerns that have been voiced over the possibility that the new law will strain school budgets, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act has enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Attempting to curb childhood obesity is a goal one would be hard-pressed to quibble with regardless of political persuasion. Why the First Lady has seen fit to make idiotic statements like the one she did today to sell this idea is the big mystery.

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Cross-posted at Libertarian Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

The investigative arm of DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has seized and shut down several dozen websites that are suspected of facilitating or violating copyright infringement. The operative verb in the previous sentence is suspected. In our system of jurisprudence a person or entity is deemed innocent until proven guilty, no matter how compelling the evidence of wrongdoing.

And sometimes, as the blog TorrentFreak notes, proving guilt in these cases is hardly a slam dunk:

When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield—unless you’re ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is.

But ICE doesn’t seem to believe it is impelled to play by the rules. As the exasperated owner of the file-sharing site Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak, “My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!”

The strong arm tactic began almost simultaneously with the approval by a Senate Judiciary Committee of the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA). The bill, which would effectively give the U.S. Attorney General carte blanche to shut down a website without due process, has a long way to go before it becomes law—if in fact it ever does. It is already meeting criticism, including from some Democrats like Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who finds the legislation too heavy-handed and has vowed to block it.

Sites that are barred by ICE carry a Prohibition-style label in place of content that reads “This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations.”

One question that comes to mind is “Why is this action being initiated by the Department of Homeland Security?” Granted, some of the illegal trafficking of copyrighted material originates overseas, but DHS was created expressly to deal with matters of terrorism and illegal border crossings. Doesn’t the department already have plenty on its plate without needing to dilute its resources to monitor the illegal sharing of popular media?

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Cross-posted at Libertarian Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

We’re doing two things wrong, and that’s why we’ve got this epidemic of junk-touching breaking out.

First, our airline security approach is to look for the bomb, when it should be to look for the terrorist.  Du-uh.  We’re not looking for the terrorist.  We’re looking for the bomb.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Any fool can hide the bomb.  If we start doing colorectal exams on airline passengers, the terrorists will just put the bombs in their stomachs.  The day’s not far off when just a pinch between your cheek and gum will be enough to blow an airliner out of the sky.  Hairspray applied two hours before the flight will be sufficient.  We can never keep up with the ingenuity of the terrorist.

That’s why we need to look for him or her, and that means profiling.  Profile early and often.  Profile, profile, profile ‘til we just can’t profile no more.  Granny heading for Christmas with the kids in Shreveport isn’t a threat.  25-year-old Mohammed from Yemen?  Give him the works.  How stupid can we be?

The other thing we’re doing wrong is thinking that we have to absorb all the pain of combating airline terrorism.  This attitude is flawed in general.  It’s easy to adopt, but a junk-touching epidemic is exactly what it leads to.  Maybe we’re finding out that there are things we’d rather do than endure increasingly intrusive personal inspections before we board airplanes.  Profiling is one, but staying on the offensive against terrorism and its sponsors overseas is another.

People have forgotten the extended debate, in the period 2001 to 2003, over how much to fight terror abroad so that we wouldn’t have to change our way of life to fight it at home.  For George W. Bush, the answer was to fight it abroad where feasible and necessary.  As little as we have the appetite for that, the impending junk-touching epidemic is about to set us a prioritization problem that we have postponed facing up to now.  It is going to change our way of life:  if we sit still for it, let our government treat us this way, we will have signed on to a precedent of serious government overreach that it will be very hard to reverse.  Government isn’t, in fact, our mother.  If we let it treat us like its children – like kindergartners being dressed by the teacher to go out on the playground, or supervised going to the potty – we will have only ourselves to blame.

The Semi-Serious Stuff

I would propose the following prioritized list of remedies for the situation we find ourselves in:

1.  Profile airline passengers and focus security inspection/investigation on those who meet more criteria than not.

2.  Maintain momentum in fighting both terrorism and Islamist extremism overseas.  Do not flag, do not lose steam, offer no “peace” to terrorists, and don’t give up on our fellow men.  None of them is fated by his nature or culture to live a short, miserable life hating “infidels” and then either blow himself up or be blown up.  Don’t give up on Iraqis.  Don’t give up on Afghans or Pakistanis.

3.  Do give up on the idea that there is any hope in accommodating sharia in our culture.  We can’t live side by side with it.  You can do as much sharia living as our law allows – but our law requires the public identification and equality before it of women, it excludes wife-beating and genital mutilation, it guarantees religious freedom, including the freedom to proselytize and to be agnostic or atheist, it tolerates homosexuality, it tolerates dissent, and it will not enforce your offense at dogs and pigs on your fellow citizens.  You come here, you live by our laws, and so do we.  We don’t accommodate your sharia requirements, period.  Note:  this measure and #2 require a moral confidence a lot of people in the West lack today.  Don’t lack it.  Figure out how to not lack it, because your life depends on it.  This is actually the most important priority of all, but its long-term effect, while very real and practical, is less direct on airline travel than the concrete measure of profiling.

4.  Change air travel/security fundamentally. Have the airlines handle the routine, non-zapping/junk-touching security.  Assign them civil liability and let them decide who flies and who doesn’t.  Schedule separate flights for people who are eager, for security purposes, to be zapped or junk-touched every time they fly.  Naturally, it will cost less for the flights on which the passengers have not been zapped or junk-touched, because there will be less TSA screening involved.  The non-zapping/junk-touching flights will not be open to passengers meeting the criteria of measure #5 below.

5.  Exclude all Muslims and anyone who’s been in one or more of a list of terror-plagued countries (Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc) – except on US government business – from flying internationally or in the US on commercial airlines.  Hey, they can still use charter services.

6.  …which people would be likely to do more and more.  Use charter services or learn to fly themselves.  Cease traveling by commercial air en masse. 

The TSA Theme Song

Most of you have heard the 1970s hit “Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)” by the group Parliament.  How could you not have heard it?  Apparently Glee has recorded it. Some of us heard it in its original incarnation, and used to play it on an old-timey turntable on 45rpm vinyl.

There’s never been much point in really “knowing the lyrics” to this iconic single. That works out nicely for the TSA theme song.  Get a picture in your mind, now:  uniformed TSA employees, hanging around the scanning machines, supervisor with his or her little walkie-talkie, the Hollering TSA Announcer calling out rote instructions to long lines of travelers in their socks, slinging shoes and laptops into plastic bins.

Suddenly the TSA employees all break out in full boogie.

“Owww, WE touch your junk!  We gotta touch that junk!

Ooww-ww, WE touch your junk!  Gotta touch that junk!

Lala la la la la LA la

Doo oo oo doo doo doo doo doo…”

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

Good evening. My fellow Americans, I speak to you this evening to address the controversy that has erupted over our enhanced screening techniques (ESTs), which were designed to ensure the safety and equal rights of all religions.

A little background may be in order. We all remember the tragic, man-caused disaster of 9/11. This resulted in new ESTs, including banning of small knives, childrens’ scissors, and other dangerous weapons.

Shortly thereafter, airline passengers were able to prevent a shoe-bomb from detonating. We upgraded our ESTs to include shoe removal and scanning.

Several months later, a plot was uncovered to bring down airliners using liquids carried on board in water bottles. We modified our ESTs to ban all fluid containers over 4 ounces in size.

Late last year, a passenger of an unspecified religious background used under-garments constructed with an explosive material to attempt to destroy an airplane. Reacting swiftly to this development, I ordered the deployment of full-body scanning technology and complete pat-downs of passengers.

Yesterday, a man was captured after boarding a plane with a specially constructed bomb that had been inserted into his rectum. This weapon’s plastic construction and use of PETN had evaded our screening process.

I’m therefore pleased to announce the addition of a new EST that will be added to our suite of counter-man-made-disaster measures. After your full-body scan or pat-down, simply grab your ankles, bend over and wait for the attendant to release your hips.

This is a small price to pay to ensure that we will never have to profile certain religions, no matter how obvious that need may become.

One more thing: you are required to bring your own lubricant — the container for which may not be over 4 ounces in size.

Thank you, and may secular Gaia bless this country.

Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.

The most pressing one seems to be national security. It’s all well and good to talk about eliminating the TSA for being a waste of money or chuckling at that antics of the Don’t Touch My Junk guy. But it’s pretty obvious that if we’re not taking enough precautions and another plane blows up in mid-air, many of the same people who are complaining the loudest today will be first in line to pillory the Obama administration for not doing enough to fight terrorism.

And yes, there is a perfectly valid argument to be made that the government’s proper role in preventing these disasters involves stopping terrorists long before they make it to the Jet Blue check-in counter with a couple of pounds of C4 shoved up their nether regions. But we also must be honest enough to admit that in this sort of unconventional warfare, attacks can and do come in all shapes and sizes from every possible direction. Our intelligence agencies can’t settle for catching 99.7% of the bombers because the attackers only have to get it right once. And given that premise, don’t we want one last chance to stop them just before they board the plane?

This isn’t to say that I don’t have a high degree of sympathy for those concerned over their privacy. This was brought keenly into focus for me this week when my wife shared a group of letters from rape survivors who absolutely rejected the idea of screeners touching their private areas or looking at scans of their bodies. Stories of these supposedly private images being leaked on to the web certainly add to their understandable discomfort.

But not everyone is quite as alarmed. Personally, I’m in the camp of those not much put off by it. But then again, I’m a 50+ gray haired, arthritic curmudgeon who has long since traded in his six-pack of abs for a pony keg. If you really want a peek at this dream package, help yourself. And I’m clearly not alone in this, since a recent CBS poll found that an overwhelming four in five Americans favor the full body scanning equipment.

Perhaps the question we should be looking at is who has the ultimate responsibility for preventing people from blowing up your plane, particularly on domestic flights. Is it the government or the airline? Some seem to be suggesting more of a free market approach to the problem. Remove the TSA and let each airline handle security as they see fit. That way you can either choose to feel more secure after long lines, some nudie pictures and an airline flunky copping a feel, or you can choose to get there faster with Speedy Sam and Discount Dan’s Airlines! (200+ seats on every flight and no waiting! But please leave your weapons at home. We’re on the honor system here.)

Or just maybe, in the end, we should examine the protests over these search policies in terms of people “having their rights violated.” Do you really have a right to fly? Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to get on the plane. There is virtually no place on the surface of this planet that you can’t get to through a combination of boats, trains, buses, taxis and/or rental cars, providing you have the time to do so and plan ahead. Precisely what “right” of yours is being violated if the airlines (and/or the TSA) specifically warn you in advance that you will be subject to these specific search practices before you are allowed to board the aircraft? That seems to be the attitude taken by the agency recently when they said you are welcome to not fly if you won’t submit to their searches.

As I said in the beginning of this missive, I’m not claiming to have all the answers here. But I can at least pose some of the questions which demonstrate that it’s a far more complex issue than can reasonably stuffed into one sound bite or a few one liners on the late night talk shows. I like my privacy as much as the next person, but I also like the idea of landing at my destination in one piece.

Oh, and I also like the idea of the already long wait times not being extended on the day before Thanksgiving by people simply trying to prove a point. With that in mind, all of you clowns behind the National Opt-Out Day scheme can bite me.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently implemented new supposed security measures, which include a mandated trip through a full body scanner that shows you in all your naked glory, or lack thereof. It’s all cool, though, because if you don’t wish to have your naked body ogled, you can always get felt up instead via the new “enhanced pat-down” option. It’s all about choice, baby! Whichever you prefer: leering or groping.

Surely, you’d think, this wouldn’t be done randomly, but would rather be a targeted measure. And, you’d also think, certainly the absolutely random subjection of children to such “pat-downs” wouldn’t occur. Well, you’d be wrong on both counts. Of course this isn’t targeted – that would be too profile-y and stuff! Because, tolerance. Or something. You see, because we must tolerate those who wish to kill us, we cannot offend them. We cannot be perceived to be singling out a certain group. We must, therefore, waste time and resources using terrorism countermeasures against, you know, NON-terrorists. And we are to pretend that 90-year-old grandmas from Nebraska flew planes into buildings on September 11th. Or that three-year-old girls strapped bombs to their shoes or in their underwear.

The TSA should change its name to Totalitarian Sexual Abuse. This child was terrified, tormented and assaulted. And we are supposed to find this acceptable, because it is allegedly For Our Own Good ™?  “Kids, do not ever let a stranger touch you. If they try,  scream, run away and tell someone immediately. Wait, whoops! Unless it’s government molestation. Then, shaddup.”

Hey, you know what would actually be for our own good? I’m no Janet Napolitano (thank goodness), but it seems to me that we should try out that whole using targeted security measures, based on actual suspicion and clues, like they do in Israel. Oh, silly me. That would mean acknowledging that it is a specific radicalized group of people who wants to kill us and not tea partiers. And it might even entail mentioning the word Islam. Oh, the horror.

As it stands now, we do nearly the opposite. We go out of our way to ass kissily show that we are not “profiling.” Which is why I now think that I’m giong to have to start putting my 7-year-old daughter in a burqa when flying.  It is clearly the only way that I can ensure that she won’t be groped by TSA.

The above video shows something else highly disturbing. Is the public so cowed by “government knows best” strong arm tactics that they are now willing to let some low-level,  government-employed flunky assault their children, as they merely stand by and film it? People say that you can’t know how you’d react until you are in a similar situation. That is often true. But it is not true when it comes to protecting one’s children. No threat to me, especially a stupid monetary threat of a fine, outweighs protecting my child from harm. I would not have allowed that to happen and I certainly would not have stood by passively and filmed my terrified child with my little cell phone.  The only way I’d have used a camera, were that my child, would have been to teach the TSA employee a little something about what happens when a camera goes where the sun don’t shine. I’m small, but I’m scrappy.

Where the sun don’t shine, by the way, is where any terrorists would attempt to smuggle stuff. So, these pat-downs aren’t just egregious, they are worthless. They want to kill us, stupid. Assaulting our personal liberty and taking naked scan pictures of moms from South Carolina or feeling up some dude from Tennessee’s junk won’t stop that. Nor will tormenting our own children. Political correctness moved from annoying to potentially deadly. It is now also abusive.

It’s bad enough the Government constantly condescends to the American public and treats us all like half-witted children. I think the past election showed them that we will no longer stand for that. Let this be another Teachable Moment for them: do not dare try to use – and worse, harm - our children to perpetuate your own demented quests for absolute power and pathetic “multiculturalism,” politically correct acceptance.

———

Cross-posted from NewsReal

Follow Lori  on Twitter and read more of her work at Breitbart’s Big Journalism,  Red State and Human Events.

The frantic 911 call a wife made after her husband was shot by Mexican pirates has been released. It’s a first hand account of those terrifying moments on the water as David and Tiffany Hartley came under attack. In the end only Tiffany would survive.

Dispatcher: Hello? Ma’am? Yes. Okay. Are you sure that your husband got shot?

Tiffany: Yes. In his head.

Dispatcher: Okay. Yeah. Was he thrown out of the jet ski that he’s in the water or something?

Tiffany: He was thrown off the jet ski and I couldn’t pick him up to get him on mine. (sobbing) Oh God.

Dispatcher: Ma’am? Were you shot at on the Mexican side or on the US side? So it was the Mexican Side. Okay, did you see anybody?

Tiffany: There were three boats.

Tiffany Hartley told deputies she and her husband David were jet skiing near the town of old Guerrrero. Hartley told investigators her husband was shot in the head and killed. She says she was forced to leave his body behind as the gunmen fired more bullets at her… Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. thinks those boats were pirates working for the drug cartel. He’s been warning residents for months to stay off the water. The pirates are patrolling the Mexican side of the lake and robbing boaters at gun point. Gonzalez wants authorities in Mexico to search for David Hartley’s body, however he thinks it may already be too late.

…Hartley did tell authorities after the shooting she got help from a man on shore… The good Samaritan wants to remain anonymous because he fears for his life…

“Three boats approached them, waving guns talking in Spanish,” he said. “They got scared, spooked then they heard the gunshots going on. She could see they were hitting the water and the water was coming up at them…all of a sudden she sees her husband flying off.”

Tiffany told him she turned around to go take care of her husband but two pirates went after her jetski. One pirate held a gun to her head. Once he left she tried to pull her husband body onto her jetski but she didn’t have the strength.

…CHANNEL 5 NEWS has been tracking at least five violent incidents on the lake over the past 5 months.

-April 30th: Four heavily armed men boarded two boats near the Old Guerrero area demanding money.
-May 6th: Two armed men approached a boat near marker 14 and demanded cash.
-May 16th: Five armed men boarded a boat on the United States side of the lake near marker 7.
-Aug 31st: Falcon lake pirates, using a small boat marked “Game Wardin” tried to stop a Texas fisherman.

Then of course the worst violence incident to date happened on Thursday September 30th when David Hartley was murdered. Authorities say the robbers are believed to be members of a drug trafficking organization. They’re heavily armed using AK-47s or AR-15 rifles to threaten their victims.

Rather than sealing the border and shutting down Mexican drug cartels operating with impunity in the southwest, the Obama White House is instead suing Arizona and its law enforcement arms to prevent it from protecting American citizens.

Remember this outrage when you enter the voting booth in November.
 
 
 
* The left-wing loon Gloria Allred claims the term ‘illegal alien’ is demeaning.

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned.

The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, “Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.],” issued by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas, and obtained by FoxNews.com[...]

Each Afghan was issued a Department of Defense Common Access Card, an identification card used to gain access to secure military installations, with which they “could attempt to enter DOD installations,” according to the bulletin. Base security officers were encouraged to disseminate the bulletin to their personnel.

“I can confirm that 17 have gone missing from the Defense Language Institute,” said Gary Emery, Chief of Public Affairs, 37th Training Wing, at Lackland AFB. “They disappeared over the course of the last two years, and none in the last three months.”

That’s just great. We’ve got Afghanis running around this country somewhere who have access to our military bases, and God knows what their intentions are. And apparently, their visas are just now in the process of being revoked. Two years later.

Oh, and these seventeen have apparently been going AWOL one by one over the past two years, and the military is just now putting out a bulletin saying that this could be a problem. Seriously — the Be On The Lookout bulletin was distributed Wednesday night. TWO YEARS LATER.

And let’s not jump to possible terrorism or anything. This is just an illegal immigration problem. Nothing to see here, move along…

A senior law enforcement official said Friday that the Afghans’ disappearance was more of an immigration violation than a security threat, saying there are no “strong indications to any terrorism nexus or impending threat.”

Right. We’re fighting a war in Afghanistan, and 17 Afghan members of the Afghan military are currently AWOL in the CONUS, and they have access to DoD installations. What kind of possible terrorist threat could come from that?!

Welcome to the new Obama version of homeland security. Don’t you just feel so much safer??

Here are the names on the alert. If you see any of these people, contact the FBI or your local law enforcement.

Abdul Ghani Barakzai, born 8/8/1977

Mohd Ali Karimi, born 9/3/1982

Mohammad Nasim Fateh Zada, born 12/4/1966

Aminullah Sangarwal, born 8/27/1982

Mohd Ahmadi, born 5/5/1978

Ahad Abdulahad, born 5/5/1984

Sayed Qadir Shah Habiby, born 5/7/1985

Javed Aryan a.k.a. Aryan Javed, born 1/1/1987

Mirwais Qassmi, born 4/24/1974

Barsat Noorani, born 6/3/1981

Atiqullah Habibi, two dates of birth are listed on the alert: 6/2/1982 and 7/2/1982

Ahmad Sameer Samar, born 5/2/1983

Mohamed Fahim Faqier, born 6/1/1987

Obaiddullah Abrahimy, born 8/1/1979

Sayed Nasir Hashimi, born 4/5/1972

Shawali Kakar, born 12/31/1979

Khan Padshah Amiri, born 4/1/1978

—–

Follow Cassy on Twitter and read more of her work at CassyFiano.com and Hard Corps Wife.

The Left often pays lips service to, while actually doing nothing about, the  military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Yet, in regards to radical Islam, that is exactly what the left wants us to do. Don’t ask.  And, dear Allah, never tell!

Instead, they prefer to demagogue American citizens, while “bitterly clinging” to their insane politically correct worship of diversity and tolerance.  It’s funny how those who deride religion constantly, are actually zealots in their own right. They worship at the altar of Better Than You ™ multiculturalism.

It has never been more apparent than it is now. In just the past couple of months alone, examples of this attitude have uncovered that what was once perhaps just dangerous naivety, is now the purposeful ignoring of what should be basic knowledge. All in order to appease, accommodate and appear culturally sensitive. The fact that the very people for whom they are apologists want to, you know, kill them is somehow lost on them.

They have yet to realize, or are choosing to ignore in their moral vacuum, the fact that political correctness is no longer just incredibly annoying. It’s now deadly. The politically correct culture has been hurl-worthy to me for years, but it has recently reached gastric lows. First, there was the absurd narrative being pushed about the Fort Hood terrorist. Oh, he was “bullied” and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder – via osmosis, apparently, as he was never once deployed.

Flash forward to the attempted Times Square car bomb and the delusional narratives were even worse. Not only was the first thought of our alleged leaders and the mainstream media an attempt to demonize the new fall guy “someone upset about health care”, but even after the attempted bomber’s name and history was known, they were more concerned with being “culturally sensitive” than the actual bomb attempt itself.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says New York City “will not tolerate any bias” following the arrest of a U.S. citizen from Pakistan in the Times Square car bombing attempt.

Bloomberg said Tuesday that also applies to potential backlash against Muslim New Yorkers.

Like I said then, it’s rather telling that the only time the words Muslim or Islam ever appear is when the rest of us are being accused of being racist, bigoted half wits. Don’t ask! And don’t tell. That must explain the administration’s silence on two other recent developments. Firstly, Iran being appointed to the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women. I wrote the following when it was announced and, to my knowledge, they all still remain silent:

The United States Ambassador, Susan Rice, appointed by President Obama, was silent and did not even attend the vote. In fact, she wasn’t even in the building. Apparently, the administration believes that Iran will help shatter that glass ceiling with stray rocks, used as they stone women to death for being raped. A week later, and they remain mum. Not one word of denouncement from President Obama, who is too busy demonizing one of our own American states and and ignoring devastating floods. Too bad we can’t call ourselves “Los Women”. Maybe he’d give a hoot then. Ambassador Rice also refuses to comment, which is the status quo with her, evidently. The State Department, headed by Hillary Clinton, she of “not staying at home baking cookies” because that would be demeaning fame, is silent.

Not long after that affront to sane human beings everywhere, the American Academy of Pediatrics went one further in the “who can be the most vile in their attempts to appease” game. They decided that female genital mutilation should now just be called cutting (not as offensive sounding, you see) and that perhaps it would be okay to just allow doctors to perform a ritual “nicking”.  What’s a little nicking and all? As long as we can all get along and everyone feels nice and appeased. Well, except for the girls you are sacrificing and who are being barbarically maimed.

What is worse is that the left doesn’t just look the other way; they have actually become apologists for barbaric behavior under the guise of tolerance. They explain away all wrongs perpetrated by others by trying to equate them in some way, usually invented out of whole cloth, with some delusionally perceived American wrong or Christian wrong.

Phyllis Chesler recently published an article entitled Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings. When the American Academy of Pediatrics released their “nicking” opinion, I said that it was the same as saying “well, don’t actually behead your wife in an honor killing. Just slit her throat a little.” Turns out, that actually is how the left thinks, as Chesler explains:

Former National Organization for Women (NOW) president Kim Gandy compared the battered and beheaded Aasiya Hassan[9] to the battered (but still living) pop star Rihanna and further questioned whether Hassan’s murder was an honor killing:

Is a Muslim man in Buffalo more likely to kill his wife than a Catholic man in Buffalo? A Jewish man in Buffalo? I don’t know the answer to that, but I know that there is plenty of violence to go around—and that the long and sordid history of oppressing women in the name of religion surely includes Islam, but is not limited to Islam.[10]

At the time of the Hassan beheading, a coalition of domestic violence workers sent an (unpublished) letter to the Erie County district attorney’s office and to some media stating that this was not an honor killing, that honor killings had nothing to do with Islam, and that sensationalizing Muslim domestic violence was not only racist but also served to render invisible the much larger incidence of both domestic violence and domestic femicide.

Misogyny apologizing again, under the guise of tolerance. Only now, that apologist position may end up being complicit in murders. Don’t ask! And don’t tell!

The Left’s default position is that other cultures, no matter how barbaric, must be revered and honored. But American traditions, must be eradicated and are the true root of all evil. Anyone who doesn’t do the same, must be a redneck-y rube. And a racist, of course.

My hometown in New Jersey, for instance, no longer has an Easter Egg Hunt. It is now called Spring Celebration with Bunny.  A town that is lily white and primarily Christian and Jewish. In all my 39 years, I’ve yet to come across a person of the Jewish faith who was offended by Easter bunnies or Christmas for that matter. And, even if offended, they’d never threaten to set off a bomb in the town or commit acts of violent intimidation as seen in this video after the assault on Lars Vilks. But, I suppose my “rich life experiences” don’t count, since I’m plain old Caucasian and all.

Finally, most recently our own Attorney General, Eric Holder, could not even bring himself to utter the word Islam when being questioned about the Faisal Shahzad investigation.

See, it’s not about truth or even common sense. It’s about furthering an agenda, always. That agenda relies on identity politics and is more important to them than actual human beings.

Apologizing for evil, violent acts is not embracing diversity. It’s embracing insanity. It’s not just condoning barbarism; it is complicit in it’s perpetuation.

So, I am asking. And I am telling. Because, as George Washington said, “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

—–

(cross-posted from NewsReal, RedState)

You don’t think liberals are watching our backs? You’re wrong, and I’ll prove it. Consider the swift and decisive action officials took last week in Staten Island, New York, in the apprehension of Patrick Timonthy. On Friday, Timonthy showed up a P.S. 52, a local elementary school, brandishing an automatic assault rifle. There is no telling what might have transpired had it not been for the quick reflexes and courage of principal Evelyn Matroianni, who at great personal sacrifice, forced Timonthy to the ground in the school cafeteria and wrested the weapon away from him.

After which she frog-marched Timonthy, by this point in tears, to her office, where she promptly phoned his mother.

Oh, did I omit the fact that Patrick Timonthy is a fourth-grade student in the school? Or that the rifle in question is two inches long and manufactured by the makers of LEGOs?

If so, I probably also neglected to mention that the New York City Board of Education enforces a strict zero-tolerance policy toward bringing weapons onto the school grounds. Now there is something in that by-law about a school employee’s use of personal discretion in sizing up a “situation” and about the disciplinary measures that follow a breach.

Now some may feel that Principal Matroianni overreacted to the threat potential of a two-inch long weapon. Others may feel that a suspension of Patrick Timonthy — which hasn’t been ruled out yet! — is perhaps extreme.

I say, “Do the crime, do the time.” I don’t care if the perp is 9 or 90. (Actually, those ages have much in common when it comes to comparative threat potential.) I say throw the book at him.

My only caveat is to be sure to read Timonthy his Miranda rights. That’s what the Justice Department under Eric Holder does when they capture someone who poses a threat to homeland security arises. And look how safe we are with that bunch watching our backs!

Presumably, the comment was supposed to make Americans feel all warm and cuddly inside, knowing that their leader is a man of principles—someone who is willing to take his medicine when the system goes down on his watch. That view might not ring quite so hollow if Obama hadn’t spent every day of his administration previous to this one whining about the “mess he inherited” and blaming FOX News Channel or certain pollsters for his falling approval ratings.

But whether Obama’s self-recrimination is credible is really beside the point. The more important issue about the sentiment is what does he mean by it? In the same speech, Obama allowed as how “America’s first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively.” But taking quick and decisive action in the face of accurate intelligence is precisely the opposite of he ordered done when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was seized by authorities. Rather than grill the Nigerian for information on who had trained him, where he had acquired the explosive materials used in the would-be attack, and whether, where, and when other attacks were imminent, Obama’s security team read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and allowed him to lawyer up.

Obama also gave assurances in his speech—or at least the impression thereof—that he understood the enemy we as a nation are up against. He described al Qaeda as “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred … that offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death … while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” As Charles Krauthammer has noted, this views is disingenuous for many reasons. Chief among these is that al Qaeda is not out for justice or progress. On the contrary, they deplore both, which is what they despise the West. When Osama bin Laden or other Islamofascist leaders speak, they wax nostalgic about a worldwide caliphate; they pine for the glory that was Andalusia, the Latinized version of the name Al-Andalus that Muslims gave Spain in the Middle Ages, when the entire Iberian peninsula was under Islamic control.

A second problem with Obama’s statement is his identity of al Qaeda as the enemy. Indeed al Qaeda is an enemy and perhaps a prominent one. But they are not alone in the desire to bring death and destruction to the West. There are countless other sects and splinter groups dedicated to the same fanatic ideology, which is religious in nature. In short, we are at war with worldwide jihadism. Obama’s continuing to go out of his way to excuse Islam, as he did again in this speech, is to dismiss the problem, which is squarely grounded in Islamic doctrine.

Ultimately, this speech, like virtually every other one Obama has given, reveals a man who is more interested in appearances than he is in substance. The problem we as a nation face going forward with Barack Obama as our leader is that when you peel away the layers of fluff and bravado, there may be little inside.

Cross-posted at Manhattan Conservative Examiner

Also in favor of the administration’s foolhardy decision was senior U.S. senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. At least he was gung-ho till he got a look at the likely bill for securing the city during the months the trial will take. As reported in mid-Novemeber by WCBS , the New York CBS affiliate, Schumer claimed the costs would run “somewhere in the ballpark of $75 million.”

Wrong ballpark, it now appears. According to The Hill, Schumer this week asked the White House to add a separate line item to its 2011 fiscal year budget to reimburse the city of New York for its law enforcement expenditures during the trial. How much is needed? Several hundred million dollars should do the trick.

Just like that, the adminstration that does nothing so well as it spends taxpayers’ money is being encouraged by one of its most ardent supporters to zap it to the American people again—all in the interests of conducting a show trial to demonstrate mainly that Barack Obama is someone other than George W. Bush.

Schumer, who inexplicably continues to maintain that “these are federal terror cases that will bring to justice . . . the evil men behind the attack on our nation on 9-11,” understands that his political hide is up for grabs if the city ends up footing the bill.

The new cost projections have touched off a firestorm in Congress, with Republicans pointing out how much less expensive it would be to conduct the trials at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, where a tribunal apparatus is already in place, than to bring the suspects here.

New calls are also being made to reverse Holder’s and Obama’s decision on the grounds of general logic. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued harsh words for the administration’s overall anti-terrorism policy, following Obama’s botched handling of the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a plane en route to Detroit. Said Boehner:

The Administration’s response following this attempted attack is consistent with its dangerous decision to close the terrorist prison at Guantánamo Bay and bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists to trial in the United States through civilian courts, rather than the military commissions already in place.

We know the decision to close this prison has not stopped al Qaeda from plotting attacks on Americans, turning these terrorists over to other countries is not working, and we shouldn’t import them into the United States.

See my newest blog at Manhattan Conservative Examiner

1. That Abdulmuttalab meant to murder the passengers on the Delta flight he was on and anyone on the ground in the general vicinity of the approaching flight, and
2. That America — and, indirectly, the Obama administration — lucked out in that the explosives failed. (Consider Obama’s likely approval ratings change had the attack succeeded on “his watch,” after 7 years of vigilance under the Bush administration.)

Another reality that is inescapable is the patent falsity of Obama’s claim (upon finally making a statement) that the government is doing everything in its power to keep the homeland safe. Everything in its power would not include reading Abdulmuttalab his Miranda rights and permitting him to lawyer up within minutes of his capture. On the contrary, when a combatant is captured on the battlefield — as he was — he should be considered a critical resource, as was the case during the Bush years. Abdulmuttalab should immediately have been isolated and questioned on details of the operation, who else was involved, and what other plans are in the works.

A final reality is that Obama and his attorney general are systematically leading the country toward, not away from, another attack on the Homeland. The longer they remain in denial, the greater that likelihood becomes.

We all lived through one 9/11. No one needs another one to prove Obama wrong.

AG Eric Holder made a statement to the press yesterday in which he expressed his confidence in a “successful” verdict in the case. Most analysts interpreted the comment to mean Holder believes the case will end with convictions. I wish I shared their optimism. I’m not a lawyer, but to most lawyers a successful case is one in which relevant evidence is presented and fairly weighed by the judge and jury in arriving at a verdict. Could it be that Holder would be perfectly fine with acquittals across the board so long as rules of jurisprudence were followed?

Even more troubling is the history of civilian trials in this country, and specifically one: O. J. Simpson’s. What happens if KSM is found not guilty? As a resident of New York, I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of this man being turned lose on the streets of my city to vanish among the teeming crowds.

I know the liberal arguments on behalf of this decision. Patrick Leahy said it best when he said, “[B]y trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system — a system respected around the world.” How much trust will the world or Leahy, for that matter, have in our judicial system if the trial backfires and four of the guiltiest men alive walk?

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

This is the question we have to answer for ourselves, the true test of the values of Western liberalism: do we believe it is necessary, out of an abundance of caution, to make an earlier designation of “enemy” when it comes to the fellow citizens living among us? And equally important – indeed, more important – have we fully understood the consequences, and are we really sure we want to pay them?

J. E. Dyer – “The West’s Biggest Test” – Theoptimisticconservative’s Blog

In a justly praised blog post, our friend and colleague J. E. Dyer has written thoughtfully and informatively on the issues raised by the Fort Hood Massacre that bear on Muslims in uniform, by extension on all Muslims among us, and by further extension on all our most essential values as Americans. She argues strongly against leaping from the incident to investing further power in the state, through the Army or any other institution, to “administer… invidious suspicions about our fellows,” because “if we endow it with such power, that power will, eventually, be turned on us” (emphasis in the original). To J.E., allowing such a turn of events would amount to forgetting “why we are ‘America’ in the first place.”

I can only sympathize with such views, but, even if we peremptorily reject any violation of our first and most fundamental freedoms, we may fail the test anyway. The state should not inquire into the nature of Islam as an end in itself, but inquiring into the nature of Islamism remains a task that we probably cannot escape, and that we cannot accomplish without the other. Furthermore, if we, especially the most sensitive among us (people like J.E., for instance), instead search everywhere else for answers, and finally consent just to endure whatever injuries, we heighten the risk of a compensatory reaction even more harmful to that which we hoped to protect. Put simply: We stoke rage, even as we undermine confidence in our public institutions – a dangerous and volatile formula even times of peace and plenty, and even in the absence of extreme provocations.

Looking at the evidence piling up about Nidal Malik Hasan, it becomes increasingly difficult to see him as a killer whose religion-based ideology merely provided the convenient language, as if by happenstance, for his psycho-pathological inclinations, though even admitting said ideology as a pretext seems too much for some. Apparently, he saw himself very much as a “Soldier of Allah,” as in the initials “SA” on his business card – to cite one of many stubborn pieces of evidence flying around and helping to perforate the preferred media narrative. The reticence to take seriously the ideological and political intentionality of Hasan’s murderous violence seems almost comical when, even before the testimony and evidence are assembled, the stubbornly uncomfortable truth seems to shout at us in the killer’s very name.

Middle East expert and trenchant commentator Barry Rubin, blogging in Israel on the day of the massacre, was pessimistic about our ability simply to face such facts:

Jihadist attacks in the United States have been defined out of existence. No matter what happens–a planned attack on Ft. Dix, the murder of two people standing in line at the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport, a driver deliberately running down people or two others with a trunk full of weapons in the Carolinas, or honor killings all over the place–we will be told this has nothing to do with Jihad or Islamism or an interpretation of Islam.

Afterward, there will be a different type of a cover-up in pretending that this had nothing to do with Islamism or Jihad but is merely a matter of an individual’s mental illness. …[T]hose who speak out on these points won’t be killed but merely will have their characters assassinated.

Reactions in most of the media as well as, in an apparently coordinated set of responses, from the Obama Administration, seemed to bear out Rubin’s predictions. In an easy to misunderstand essay on the Hasan killings, however, David Warren refuses to look away, arguing that “the words and attitudes conveyed in the reporting of a massacre can be, and in this case are, more consequential than the massacre itself.” Warren’s phraseology in this instance lacks his usual moral sensitivity – as a religious man, Warren might have left it to God to determine how comparatively “consequential” the deaths and injuries really are – but the point he’s trying to make shouldn’t be lost. He sums it up as follows:

Getting at Islamist cells, to say nothing of lone, self-appointed jihadis within our society, means getting over the false sentimentality that turns a terrorist incident into an “incomprehensible tragedy” when it is not incomprehensible, and not a theatrical event.

It also means ripping through the politically-correct drivel that is put in the way of investigators. They should surely be allowed to assume that every loyal Muslim will be eager to give information to help them identify any potential killers in their midst.

We’ll have much opportunity in the months and, oh yes, the years to come to learn about every aspect of Hasan’s life and madness, but whether we continue to pay attention is another question, especially on the day of the scheduled execution of one John Allen Muhammad, whose little-known plans for a larger Jihadist rampage against the USA never were very likely, but whose murders no doubt provided useful lessons to potential emulators on the effectiveness of terror by sniper-infiltrator. In the meantime, in refusing to discuss Islamism out of a supposed (indeed, transparently feigned) respect for Islam, we concede the Islamists’ central argument that they are one and the same. Rather than squelching any tendency among hardcore anti-Islamists to proceed on the same assumption, we tend to inflame it, as any perusal of internet discussion, including at HotAir and my own home-blog, will demonstrate. If there was nothing to fear, the anti-Islamists wonder, why would merely pointing to the apparent links between the religion and the political ideology be justification for character assassination?

For the rest of us, we can remain unwilling to accept any inherent and essential connection between the religion of peace and ideologies of terror, without disclaiming the need – perhaps a survival need – to examine the complex links between them in practice, in the real world. It may be that any frank, full, and sober public discussion of Islamism would be painful, especially for the Muslims among us, including patriotic Muslims in uniform. It might lead to social tensions, difficult confrontations, and worse, but freedom of conscience has little meaning except alongside freedom of speech and inquiry, and little chance of surviving without them.

The only other choice would be to remain under the harsh regime of the mechanism known to psychoanalysts as the “return of the repressed,” familiar also to any student of history and to any mature observer of everyday human life: To refrain from this investigation, and from meeting the implications that Warren points to and that Rubin seems to doubt we can bring ourselves to face, ensures displacement to other targets in the short-term (including, observably, ourselves), and, in the long term, likely to a much greater backlash, propelled by the explosive energies for now still being stored up, their expenditure proscribed by fear and social taboo, but not containable forever.

cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

The story follows the first military campaign launched in the wake of these events, and mainly consists of combat amidst converging stratagems in the contaminated environs of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. It becomes clear that the only people standing in the way of a global war of annihilation and the end of American democracy are in fact the soldiers and officers of the old US armed forces, originally assigned merely to support the new US Christian forces. Since Peters is, it seems, determined to tell a cautionary tale rather than an entertaining or inspiring one, the good guys, represented by assorted front-line grunts and especially by a crusty old school general, must fail, and fail they do – comprehensively.

That’s not a spoiler: We know from the first few pages that the conniving Christianists direct from left-world central casting, at the head of their own “Military Order of Brothers in Christ,” are going to triumph, to all our woe. The only questions the narrative leaves open are secondary ones: How miserably and explosively the catastrophe will unfold , whether some at least symbolic seeds of hope happen to be planted along the way, and, incidentally, what the rest of the world is doing with itself while the flower of America’s youth and the flower of Islam’s are busy annihilating each other and countless innocents .

Peters has retained the skills he’s honed over the course of writing 23 previous books, including an ability to render character and combat economically and vividly, but I won’t pretend the results held my interest long enough to prevent me from starting to skim – a fact that may have to do with why I missed any explanation, I’m guessing a religious one, of what happened to all the women in American uniform. (This is a nearly 100% all-boy novel.) Eventually, I found myself skipping all the way to the obscenely violent final massacres and dreary epilogue – during which latter, while looking back from twilight years on the main storyline and subsequent horrors, our narrator finally reveals his own decisive role in the unhappy events, and helpfully informs us that “killing a billion people was difficult” (italics in the original). 

Revealed as a traitor to his own highest values and aspirations, he lives in a world defined by faith but utterly unredeemable – in a word, hopeless. I can’t help but wonder whether, at bottom, Peters sees our own world, and his own place within it, any differently.

cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

That’s a pretty pressing agenda. So what’s the ol’ boy up to these days? Which of these many key issues is he doubling down on? I’m afraid the answer is “None of the above.” Obama, with the Mrs. in tow, is on his way to Copenhagen to try to persuade the Olympic Committee to choose the Prex’s adopted hometown of Chicago as the site of the 2016 Olympic Games.

Sounds pretty important to me. Here he’s got decisions awaiting him with respect to sending more troops to Afghanitan, unemployment reaching double digits in several states, and he’s got time to fly to Denmark to try to get the Olympics for his hometown? I say why not? Whether he succeeds or not, 2016 will be an occasion for Americans to recall what an astonishingly, mindbogglingly bad choice the country made when it elected this bum in 2008.

As to the likely success of his pitch, Chris Lehane, a staffer to former Vice President Al Gore, said the expectations will be high for Obama’s trip: “If they don’t come back with the gold, clearly there will be the same questions that American basketball would get if they don’t come back with the gold — they are expected to win.”

Speaking of Gore, doesn’t he have the least bit of concern over the amount of carbon Obama will be spewing jetting to Copenhagen and back the next day?

The first act, of course, was a straight man, whose somber tone and humility set the stage for the clowns (one in full makeup) to come. In all fairness, the straight man — Barack Obama — did deliver his share of yuks. Although he never referred to the U.N. as an “august body,” which would have had the tears streaming down delegates’ faces, he did say that “No nation can or should try to dominate another nation,” which produced knowing waves of laughter from the delegations from Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Obama’s best line of the day? “We’ve re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council.” The delegates from Israel, a nation that has been condemned by the hilariously named council more than a dozen times while the actions of its neighbor have been ignored, got the joke.

Next on the bill came Muammar Khaddafi, known simply to his friends as “Daffi.” Although he didn’t bring along his trademark mallet and melons to smash, he was introduced as the “King of Kings of Africa,” which brought the house down. His act, which was slated to run 15 minutes, was so hilarious that, with curtain calls, he occupied the stage for closer to an hour and a half, riffing about Israel being behind the assassination of JFK and subsequent killing of “Lee Harvey” by Jack Ruby and about the “true origins” of the swine flu. Wearing tons of clown makeup, including a zany under-the-lip mustache, he riffled through reams of scribbled paper scraps as he spoke for added comedic effect.

Finally came the part of the bill everyone had been waiting for, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Again, the spotlight was on the Israelis present — well, who would have been present if they hadn’t so rudely walked out of the hall in the middle of the performance — as Mahmoud read them the riot act for staging “barbaric” attacks in the Gaza Strip last year. He also took a friendly jab at the U.S. for its wars “on Islam” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is now talk of a joint performance by Obama and Ahmadinejad, which should be a screamer. The Obama administration refuses to give a glimpse of what the show may contain, though I am willing to bet that Obama apologizes up and down for the U.S.’s past transgressions, which ought to have world leaders rolling in the aisles.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

Should you have the stomach to watch it — and, viewer warning, it will make your blood boil — Ed Driscoll was able to retain a copy of the video, which he embedded at his site before it was pulled.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

Several weeks ago, in a secret bunker at SEIU headquarters near K Street:

I understand you’re upset, Leon. Rest assured, this investigation is in the best interest of the country.

What the hell are you talking about? Starting investigations of the CIA officers who kept this country safe after 9/11? What are you thinking??

Leon, how do you expect us to regain credibility with the Arab Street until we adhere to the lawful principles of prisoner detention?

Frankly, Eric, I don’t give a damn! Now that I’ve been in this job a while and seen the results of waterboarding, it’s crystal clear we saved scores of innocent American lives. Civilians, dammit, civilians!

I guess we’ll just have to agree t–

Dammit, Eric, this is no game! You’re a real piece of work, you know that? Freeing the FALN terrorists, freeing Marc Rich, and even defending the Gitmo terrorists –

Hey! That wasn’t me, that was my law firm!

No matter, I’m lodging a complaint with the President. You’re undermining my authority!

CUT!!

Beautiful, guys, beautiful performance.

Axe is going to leak this tape to the useful idiots at ABC and *voila* … the health care debate is out of the news and Bush is back!

Mr. President, if you don’t mind me asking, how much do you pay Axelrod to come up with this stuff?

Ha! That, my friend, really is classified information!

Cross-posted at: Doug Ross @ Journal.