Egypt Gets a Gift of US F-16 Fighter Jets

by Sally Zahav

FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2013

On March 5, 2012, during the Israeli prime minister's visit to the White House, Obama famously said to Netanyahu, "We will always have Israel's back". There are those who may have been reassured by his declaration of support, but for many lovers of Israel, these were empty words.

There are simply too many examples to prove that either Obama doesn't care about Israel's defense, or misunderstands how to secure it, and the recent delivery of F-16s to Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt is just one of the most egregious cases. The four F-16s are apparently only the first installment of a total of 16 F-16 fighter jets and 200 tanks to be delivered by the end of next year. 

Watch a  video segment with Fox News' Sean Hannity about the gift of F-16 jets to Egypt, and the concern it arouses among some experts in Foreign Affairs.

Obama's choice for three of the most important roles: Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, John Kerry for Secretary of State and John Brennan for CIA director, all indicate how Obama chooses people who downplay the danger of radical Islam, while disregarding Israel's security needs. 

These three nominations, plus the naming of Jack Lew for Secretary of the Treasury, present the Republican members of Congress with a kind of "Sophie's Choice" dilemma. Traditionally, Congress allows a president to name his cabinet appointees and Supreme Court Justices with a minimum of objection, unless there are exceptional factors involved. Each of these four nominees poses difficulties for the Republicans, but they know that they cannot object vehemently to all of them. They will have to choose one, probably, if at all, to mount a campaign against. But choosing to object to any one of the nominees to these posts means that all three of the others will have to be abandoned. 

Another famous Obama utterance about Israel is: "Israel doesn't know what its own best interests are". This, because supposedly the decision to build housing units in areas that are considered part of a future State of Palestine will exacerbate Israel's isolation among the nations of the world. Are we to think that Obama knows better what Israel's interests are? The arrogance is truly breathtaking. But in Numbers (23:9) we are told that Israel "is a nation that will dwell in solitude and not be reckoned among the nations". Could Obama think that he knows Israel's best interests better than G-d?

Obama's conduct during the events of the ludicrously mislabeled "Arab Spring" is another very good indication that whatever his underlying motive, he is more interested in promoting warm relations with Arab or Muslim regimes than with Israel, even when those regimes have become dominated by Jew-hating, Christian-hating, war-mongering Islamists who plan to implement Shari'a law as soon as they can get away with it. 

For those of us who think that Islam is used as  a political ideology that poses a grave threat to personal freedoms, for those of use who are aware of what the Islamist leaders say in Arabic to their populace; for those of us who watch with dismay as these leaders trample on the most basic rights of their own citizens, (and in the case of Syria, rape and murder them with impunity) and call for genocide of Jews - not Israelis - Jews, President Obama's actions of the past two years, while the Arab-on-Arab intifadas of the interminable "Spring" have been played out, have been very disturbing. His administration has consistently misread the  political and religious maps in the Middle East. Since, for political purposes, they wanted to present a world where "al-Qaeda is on its heels", they were apparently oblivious to the repeated kicks in the behind to American interests from al-Qaeda in all of its various guises.
Or they were trying to hide these realities from the American public, which is probably worse. 

The Obama administration has repeatedly and vociferously denied the dangerous infiltration of the US governmental, military and educational systems. Some of the highest officials dismiss the potential dangers that the Muslim Brotherhood poses, both to the US and Israel. A glaring example of this is when US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood was "mostly secular". 

The question arises: Does Obama's behavior stem from misunderstanding of the realities of the Muslim world and the Middle East, or perhaps the delusional belief that his powers of leadership will create a new reality, or, does it stem from a deep understanding of the situation and simply reflects his vision for a New Middle East that many Americans and certainly most Israelis would find extremely disturbing.

After observing Obama's aggressive, bullying, hypocritical style in dealing with Republicans in Congress, I've concluded that Obama is an enemy of sincere discourse, an enemy of constructive compromise, in short, an arrogant autocrat, and because of the enormous power of his office, an extremely dangerous agent, both to Israel and to the United States. Never have I felt so concerned for my country of birth (the United States) and my adopted country (Israel).

Perhaps Obama imagines that with the gift of F-16s to Egypt, Israel will be forced into negotiations that will end in a Palestinian state. After all, he feels the responsibility, like a firm parent, to impose upon intransigent, misguided Israel what is best for it. This would be totally consistent with his style of "leadership". Perhaps he thinks that the threat to Israel that will be posed by this increased Egyptian weaponry will leave us no choice but to gamble out of desperation on the establishment of a Palestinian state. A state led by holocaust deniers and rabid anti-Semites, a state that a priori forbids any Jew to live within it. (Technically, that wouldn't be apartheid, would it, since there would not be a minority group to oppress and exclude - except for the Christians. ) All of our neighbors actually want nothing more or less than to erase Israel from the map, just as they have literally done in PA school books. If you don't believe it, have a look at the PLO Charterand the Hamas Charter. 

Is this Obama's intention? To manipulate Israel into a corner where (he thinks) we will have no other option? For us Israelis, it doesn't matter whether his actions stem from hostility or ignorance.  Israel will survive and thrive, because the Almighty has our back, and will prevail over any mischief that Obama may try to cook up for us.


Sally Zahav

Source: Middle East and Terrorism 

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel Expected To Boycott U.N. Rights Scrutiny Session

ISRAELI FRONTLINE

Friday, January 25, 2013

Source: Reuters 

By Stephanie Nebehay

Jan 24 (Reuters) - Israel is expected to boycott a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council next week despite the United States urging its ally to show up for an examination of its record, the U.S. ambassador said on Thursday.

The Jewish state is scheduled to be in the dock of the Geneva rights forum on Tuesday, Jan. 29 as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, the council's regular scrutiny of all United Nations member states.

"They (Israeli officials) signalled that they want it postponed. It is very unlikely they will participate on the 29th," Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, U.S. human rights ambassador, told reporters in Geneva.

If the review goes ahead, Israel would likely face criticism for its practices in the Palestinian territories, including treatment of detainees, settlement expansion and its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip which Palestinians say is collective punishment of the enclave's 1.6 million residents.

Arab states would be expected to denounce Israel's deadly air strikes on Hamas-ruled Gaza last November, launched with the declared aim of ending rocket barrages.

Israel's last review was in December 2008, when it attended. A boycott would be unprecedented and diplomats fear other countries might follow suit to avoid scrutiny of their own human rights records.

Israel suspended relations with the council last May because of what it called an inherent bias against it, and has informally told the council's president that it wants the session postponed, a U.N. spokesman said.

"A decision will be taken in the event Israel does not show up for its UPR, the council will decide on a course of action. States are working very hard behind the scenes to come up with a solution," council spokesman Rolando Gomez told Reuters.

A team of U.N. investigators, set up by the council last year, is due to report soon on whether Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories violate international human rights law. Washington cast the only vote against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians said on Wednesday they would complain about Israel to the International Criminal Court if the Jewish state proceeds with plans to build housing on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

"We see a strong bias against Israel that has not gone away," U.S. Ambassador Donahoe said.

"We have encouraged Israel to come to the UPR, to tell its story, to present its own narrative of its human rights situation. We think it is a good opportunity to do that." (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Andrew Roche and Robin Pomeroy)

Report: Major explosion hits Iran's underground Fordow nuclear facility after it crosses 'red line'

ISRAEL MATZAV
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2013

A major explosion has hit Iran's underground Fordow nuclear facility, where it was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. The explosion has trapped some 240 Iranian nuclear personnel underground. The source for the report is Reza Khalili, a former intelligence officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who acted as a spy for, and eventually defected to, the United States (Hat Tip: Ellen S via The Right Scoop).

An explosion deep within Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility has destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime.

...

The explosion occurred Monday, the day before Israeli elections weakened Netanyahu’s political control.

...

According to a source in the security forces protecting Fordow, an explosion on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Tehran time rocked the site, which is buried deep under a mountain and immune not only to airstrikes but to most bunker-buster bombs. The report of the blast came via Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security,

The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles, and the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast, the source said. As of Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers had failed to reach the trapped personnel.

The site, about 300 feet under a mountain, had two elevators which now are out of commission. One elevator descended about 240 feet and was used to reach centrifuge chambers. The other went to the bottom to carry heavy equipment and transfer uranium hexafluoride. One emergency staircase reaches the bottom of the site and another one was not complete. The source said the emergency exit southwest of the site is unreachable.

The regime believes the blast was sabotage and the explosives could have reached the area disguised as equipment or in the uranium hexafluoride stock transferred to the site, the source said. The explosion occurred at the third centrifuge chambers, with the high-grade enriched uranium reserves below them.

The information was passed on to U.S. officials but has not been verified or denied by the regime or other sources within the regime.

Though the news of the explosion has not been independently verified, other sources previously have provided WND with information on plans for covert operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities as an option before going to war. The hope is to avoid a larger-scale conflict. Israel, the U.S. and other allies already have concluded the Islamic regime has crossed its red line in its quest for nuclear weapons, other sources have said.

However, this information was not revealed for security reasons until several days ago when sources said the regime’s intelligence agency, through an alleged spy in the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, had learned of the decision to conduct sabotage on Iran’s nuclear sites on a much larger scale than before.

As reported, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an urgent meeting Tuesday with the intelligence minister, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and other officials to discuss the threat, and now it’s clear the meeting included the sabotage at Fordow.

Read the whole thing. 

While this is obviously great news assuming that it's true, there is still a long list of other facilities that could potentially endanger countries within bombing range of Iran that need to be destroyed. But getting rid of this facility is definitely great news, because the others apparently can be bombed from the air. I wonder who did this.... Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:38 AM

Kerry Defends Weapons Giveaway to Muslim Brotherhood Terror Regime (VIDEO)

January 24, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield 
FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE

Secretary of State John Kerry promises to usher in a new era of aggressive nuance and moral equivalence for American foreign policy.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Thursday defended the Obama administration’s gift of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt despite Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s newly-surfaced comments referring to Israelis as “descendents of apes and pigs.”

“President Morsi has issued two statements,” Kerry said, “to clarify those comments and we had a group of senators who met with him the other day who spent a good part of the conversation in relatively heated discussion with him about it.”

“But not everything, and this is always the complication in dealings with the international sector, not everything lends itself to a simple clarity, black white, this that, every time.”

Of course it’s not black and white. There are many shades of color to clarify  in Morsi stating things such as…

“We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews,” Mr. Morsi declared. Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue,” he said. “The hatred must go on for Allah and as a form of worshiping him.”

or calling for the destruction of Israel…

The Zionists have no right to the land of Palestine. There is no place for them on the land of Palestine. What they took before 1947-8 constitutes plundering, and what they are doing now is a continuation of this plundering. By no means do we recognize their Green Line. The land of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, not to the Zionists.

Morsi then met with those Senators and told them that the negative coverage is only because the Jews run the media.

Kerry, during his confirmation hearing to be the next secretary of state, told Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) the foreign aid package was worked out in 2010 when Hosni Mubarak still ruled Egypt.

“The fact that sometimes other countries elect someone you don’t completely agree with doesn’t give us permission to walk away,” Kerry said.

Should the United States have gone on supplying weapons to Iran once Khomeini took over? Should it have supplied weapons to Germany once Hitler took over or to Cuba after Castro?

The talking point utilized by Kerry and nearly everyone defending the arms transfer is that it was a pre-existing commitment. Which is nice. When you’re dealing with a stable friendly country that can be counted on to remain so even after elections, then that’s fine. When you’re dealing with a dangerous part of the world where a change of government can mean the rise of a totalitarian terrorist power, then it’s madness to insist that the arms transfers must roll on because “we can’t just walk away.”

Final point. If the next Israeli Prime Minister were someone like Michael Ben Ari, do you imagine that Obama Inc. would be maintaining its arms transfers to Israel?

But he said despite Morsi’s words, Kerry said the U.S. has a “critical interest” in Egypt — hence following through on the aid package.

“Not everything lends itself to a simple classification, black or white,” Kerry said. “We have critical interests with Egypt, critical interests. Egypt has thus far supported, lived by peace agreements with Israel and has taken steps to deal with the problem of security in the Sinai. Those are vital to us, our security interests and the security interests of Israel.”

Thus far is a very short period and it’s profiting generously from that arrangement. It’s one thing to give Morsi money, which is dubious enough, but giving him dangerous weaponry, at a time when he’s drawing closer to Iran and throwing his weight around the region is just genuinely stupid.

*note. (Rand Paul’s claim that was funded Bin Laden is untrue.)

About Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

All The Difference in the World by Daniel Greenfield

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

All The Difference in the World

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 17 Comments

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived back in the Senate, after dodging a few falling safes, multiple banana peels and an ornery dog named Henry, to give a carefully prepared histrionic rant which can be summed up, "I do care a lot" and "None of this was my fault" and "What difference at this point does it make?"

The last isn't a sarcastic restatement. It's what she actually said.

It might make a difference to a Coptic Christian whose trailer was blamed by the leader of the free world for a series of Al Qaeda attacks against American diplomatic facilities and who was sent to prison on the orders of members of the administration.

That fellow of many names, now serving a year in prison, is the only one to actually get locked up. The ringleader of the attack walks the streets of Benghazi freely. A drone could make short work of him, but no drones are coming his way. Instead a car bomb, planted by Libyan enemies nearly took him out. Some of the other Benghazi attackers were killed by the Algerian military during the siege; doing the work that Obama won't do. If the Benghazi terrorists finally die, it will most likely be at the hands of the French, the Syrian army or Libyan rival militias.

Benghazi, Obama said, during his appearance with Jon Stewart, the man of many grimaces, was a bump in the road. And that's all it was. The Obama campaign bus drove over four bodies and reached its destination in an armored parking garage somewhere in D.C. An irritated Hillary Clinton, who is prepping for her own bus tour in 2016, has every reason to demand to know what difference it makes now to discuss who lied about what and who failed to secure the Benghazi mission.

The election is over, and her testimony was delayed until after the fat lady held up her talking points at the debate and sang. Al Qaeda is dead, except for the parts of it rampaging across Syria, Iraq, Mali, Libya, Algeria and Pakistan, and a decade of war is coming to an end or just beginning. It makes no difference now which one of those it really is, just as it makes no difference, whether, as Clinton said, it happened "because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans?"

Dead is dead. The Benghazi four are dead. Stability in the Middle East is dead. Hope is dead. Victory is dead. It's time to discuss the serious stuff. Like finding the right title for Hillary's next biography, ghost-written and set for release around 2015, right after the Dems suffer a Congressional setback from angry NRA voters and just before the next election to position her as the new voice of hope.

"Bumps in the road" is one option. It really communicates that Hillary has been through a lot and driven over a lot of hard roads full of potholes and people who were only there because the Republicans refused to fully fund her infrastructure and outreach programs. But "What Difference Does It Make?" best captures the zeitgeist of the time. That sense that nothing matters once you've won.

What Difference Does It Make?: Hillary Clinton in Peace and War" will show up on shelves with a cover of her in some distant country looking out at the exotic landscape or surrounded by properly foreign children. It will be packaged along with a public speaking tour of colleges as Hillary promises to teach the leaders of tomorrow how they too can make a difference her way. The tour will use up Hillary's store of funny and inspiring stories from her meetings with foreign leaders and human rights activists, most of which will be made up, but what difference does it make?

Everyone will pretend to be inspired by her. Suddenly it will be of paramount importance (circa 2015) that young women have a president of their own to look up to. It'll all be fake, like her career, but what difference does that make. The real campaign slogan, at this point, might as well be, "Hillary, why not?" and "You know it's going to happen anyway."

Over in Cairo, leading senators visited Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohammed Morsi and tried to explain to him that ranting about Jews being the bloodthirsty spawn of apes and pigs who must be driven out of the Middle East is “inappropriate” if he expects to be considered a force for stability in the region. In response, Morsi told the senators that he respects all religions and that the only reason the New York Times belatedly mentioned the story a month later is because the apes and pigs control the media.

Afterward Senator McCain called for $480 million in economic aid to the Morsi regime and Obama sent him a bunch of tanks and jets, because really what difference does it make?

Morsi knows that he can say whatever he pleases and still get the F-16s and Abrams tanks and the billions of dollars in aid, and so it makes no difference at all what he says.

Sure at some point in the near or distant future, Morsi might use those weapons to, "free the land from the filth of the Jews”. And then the Christians. And when that happens, someone will sit down in front of a Senate panel and explain that they really do care a lot, that it wasn't their fault and that assigning blame makes no difference at this point.

Much as it might be nice to think that if Obama wasn't in office, that we wouldn't be sending planes and tanks and money to Morsi, that's wishful thinking. McCain would have embraced the Arab Spring in the White House, the way that he embraced it in the Senate. He would have bombed Libya and would probably have been bombing Syria last year. Romney might not have backed the overthrow of the Egyptian government if he had won in '08, but he would still be shipping the same goodies to Morsi in the name of maintaining regional stability if he had taken his inauguration oath this week. The difference is that unlike Obama, he wouldn't have known what he was doing or why.

Hillary Clinton knows it quite well. Most of her stories may as fake as her biographies, past and present, but she's served in the Senate and hung out in the White House. And if McCain had won, she would be sitting on a panel blasting whatever hapless McCain appointee was holding down the SOS desk for failing to properly secure whatever half-assed intelligence operation was taking place there.

This mutual hypocrisy makes any genuine concern difficult to sustain. It reduces all hearings to bouts of political investigations, to prospective 2016 candidates shouting at each other over what they would have done. And then there's nothing left, but to ask what difference would it make if she had secured the Benghazi mission, if Obama had dispatched timely rescue forces or if we had stayed the hell out of Libya. If would have made a large difference to the dead, but not a whole lot to Hillary 2016.

France is fighting in Mali now and it's getting about as much support from Washington, as the dead of Benghazi did. The drones aren't flying here either and neither is much of anything else. Obama Inc's people have said that they support the French operation but that they're still waiting to get a "clear picture" of the mission, the enemy and how much this will offend the Morsis of the Muslim world.

The quest for a clear picture was also the pitch made by Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Barack Obama whenever they were asked about the Great YouTube Trailer Terrorist Attacks of 2012. What some cynical people might see as lies or calculation inaction, was just an effort to fiddle with the rabbit ears of intelligence agencies to get a clearer picture.

The picture will never come in crystal clear, but then it's not meant to. Like one of those artfully stylized big box TVs showing test patterns in the window displays of retro boutiques, it just adds a little style and mystery to the careers of those responsible. The real story will go on dripping out bit by bit, and it will go on not making a difference.

This really isn't about Benghazi, which could have been secured for a fraction of the $16 million that her State Department spent on overpriced Kindle book readers and the $4.5 million it spent on art in embassies. You could have dropped the cost for fully protecting the Benghazi mission into the billion that State spent on global warming. Or the dough that Howard Gutman, campaign contributor and Ambassador to Belgium who shares some of Morsi's views, spent renovating his embassy into a shining example of Green Sustainableness could have instead been spent on fortifying the mission.

This isn't even about Hillary 2016. It's about the Middle East where bad policies make a world of difference. And it's about a political establishment that rewards the Hillary Clintons for the disasters they make while punishing the Michele Bachmanns for the truth that they tell, because it is unable to come to terms with its own mistakes.

Carter gave us the Mullah-ridden Iran and began pouring money into the Pakistani terror machine of the ISI. Obama gave us a North Africa that is beginning to look like Iran and has shoved handfuls of cash, weapons and support at any Islamist whose views and affiliations stop just short of Al Qaeda, even if he happens to be Al Qaeda's best friend.

But what difference does it make when few Republican senators can discuss what the Brotherhood really stands for and its impact on the Middle East and the West? What difference does it make when Romney could not even begin to explain what was really going on in the region beyond a few talking points that he had memorized? What difference does it make when Hillary Clinton can give her performance, knowing it will get rave reviews from the media, and then look over her ghostwriters'  latest proofs from the chapter on Pakistan that focus on microfinance and sustainable energy?

Crimes don't make a difference unless there are people who can expose them for what they are. Many of the things that we consider unacceptable behavior today had to be criminalized.Democrats have criminalized many ordinary things, such as buying cough syrup without a photo ID or making a movie that offends Muslims, but they have decriminalized other things, such as funding and arming terrorists and endangering the survival of the free world.

Reversing this process and reversing Hillary 2016 requires men and women who can show why what happened in Benghazi, in Cairo and across the region makes a difference. Why it's more than just another random occurrence that can be shelved until the end of time when the clear picture that Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and assorted administration officials talk about finally develops. It will make a  difference when there are enough people who realize that in the last four years, these policies have made all the difference in the world and paved the way for replacing the war of drones and hijackers with a global war on the scale of the first two.

Then the difference that Hillary dismissed and that her colleagues in Obama Inc. have held at bay for another four years will finally be made.

Sultan Knish blog/by Daniel Greenfield

Liberals vs. Conservatives: When Can We Kill Our Neighbor?

Holger Awakens   

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013

An outstanding article from over at American Thinkerthat poses the stark reality of differences between Liberals and Conservatives in America.

Libs won't like this one.  Tough shit.

When can we Kill our Neighbor?

The current fight for the soul of America is so very intense because for the first time since the Civil War some of the issues dividing Americans are truly about life and death.

The deepest point in the chasm that separates liberals and conservatives today is defined by each group's beliefs on when it's okay to kill your neighbor.

Your neighbor is, as Jesus said, everyone. America has always hewed to the Christian belief that we can only kill our neighbor in self-defense. Liberals believe that they can kill those who burden them.

Liberals believe that it's okay to cause their mom to die of thirst if she's confused and a burden to them. Conservatives believe that we have a debt to our mother and that executing her to avoid our responsibilities is wrong.

Liberals believe that killing their daughter is okay so long as she's young enough. Conservatives believe that killing our children is always wrong.

Liberals believe it's wrong to kill terrorists without a trial while conservatives don't believe that everyone who is trying to commit mass murder should be allowed to continue until their public defender loses in court.

Liberals believe it's wrong to even try to kill terrorists if they surround themselves with human shields while conservatives believe that you can't let evil run amok at any cost.

The liberal philosophy would seem to be straightforward:; it's okay to kill your neighbor if they are a burden to you. But the reality is much more complex, and more sinister.

Americans believe in the rule of law not the rule of men; all men are subject to the same law irrespective of their wealth or power. The reality is that those with power have always been given more leeway than the average Joe or Jane but that reality did not change the ideal that most Americans endorsed.

Liberals however have clearly taken a stand in defense of the rule of men; different laws for different people.

Mild versions of that were seen when liberals declared that perjury wasn't that big a deal so long as the perpetrator was one of their own -- Bill Clinton -- and in the concept of hate crimes where a black killing a white is not as serious as a white killing a black. Conservatives believe that murder is murder irrespective of who the killer or victim happens to be.

Liberals love for the rule of men can be seen in cases involving self-defense. Compare how liberals treated George Zimmerman and Carl Rowan. Most people are unfamiliar with the Rowan case because of the liberal rule of men.

Rowan was a very liberal columnist for the Washington Post. He fervently advocated gun control and went so far as to advocate"a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail-period.".

Yet on the night of June 14, 1988 Rowan used an unlicensed handgun to shoot an unarmed teenager who was trespassing in Rowan's backyard.

Liberals attacked Zimmerman because they thought he was white based on his name -- hence the frantic discovery of the new White-Hispanic race when liberals learned that Zimmerman was Hispanic -- even though the evidence indicated that Zimmerman was, in fear for his life. Liberals initiated no crusade against Rowan because Rowan was a liberal. Liberals believe a liberal with an illegal gun shooting an assailant is okay but a conservative with a legal gun shooting an assailant is not; according to liberals right and wrong depend on who you are.

Compare how liberals treat the use of drone strikes by Obama to drone strikes by Bush; silence vs. frantic protests. It is apparently okay for liberals to kill terrorists but illegal and immoral for conservatives to do so.Once again the rule of men rather than the rule of law on a matter of life and death.

Liberals often condemn conservatives as being "uncaring" because conservatives don't believe that the government should pay everyone's medical bills.

But it's liberals who believe that killing people to save money is a perfectly reasonable philosophy. Liberals advocate aborting the differently abled in order to avoid the expense of caring for them. Liberals tell the elderly to die rather than cost America money for their health care. Liberals encourage the sick, or even just the depressed, to kill themselves to avoid burdening others.

The lliberal utilitarian approach to deciding who lives and who dies is extremely frightening in light of liberal views on how health care should be run in America.

Liberals believe in the government being in charge of all medical care, and ObamaCare is a major step in that direction. Liberals also believe that the government, which in their mind is run by liberals, is empowered to decide who should live or die based on economic considerations -- the death panels. To see how deeply the liberal double standard is compare how liberals treat people with lung cancer due to the lifestyle choice of smoking compared to how liberals treat people with AIDS due to the lifestyle choice of homosexual promiscuity. While disproportionate amounts of money are constantly directed towards AIDS little is done to help smokers survive.

Liberals adhere to a dual track system of morality to define when killing one's neighbor is acceptable in foreign affairs. Let Hamas fire a missile at a school bus full of Israeli children and nothing is said except to bemoan the occupation of Palestine by Jews. But when Israel retaliates and accidentally kills civilians, civilians amid whom the terrorists purposely hide, liberals cry to the high heavens.

To summarize; conservatives believe that we can kill our neighbors only when our neighbors are trying to kill us, while liberals believe that they, and in some cases like self defense only they, can kill their neighbors whenever those neighbors become a burden to them.

The fight for America's future then is between "compassionate" liberals who believe they have the right to kill people who "burden" them and "hard hearted" conservatives who believe that all human life is sacred and can only be taken to protect one's own life.

Because all aspects of a society reflect how society treats the least among us, the two possible future Americas are drastically different. In the liberal future the value of a person's life is measured by her utility or political power while in the conservative future everyone has, as the Declaration of Independence says, a right to life.

Without an inalienable right to life no one has any rights. If we can be killed because we are "burdens" then what rights do we have that cannot be cast aside for the "right" reason?

While in the past the stakes were what sort of life we would live as Americans, our current fight is about who will live and who will die. Conservatives can either defend the most defenseless or we can sit back and watch liberals remold America into a centrally controlled state where everyone is judged based on their utility to the liberal establishment and their political power.

VIDEOS: Paul to Clinton: 'I would have relieved you of your duty.'

A cloud hangs over the White House

Paul to Clinton:

Clinton on talking points: 'What difference at this point does it make?'

McCain challenges Clinton at the Benghazi hearing

Watergate-era Judiciary chief of staff: Hillary Clinton fired for lies, unethical behavior

Bee's Note: This is a great piece by Dan Calabrese!!!  Politics: Watergate-era Judiciary chief of staff: Hillary Clinton fired for lies, unethical behavior.  

The article was posted to my Facebook by a group of Conservatives: "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children". 

Dan Calabrese may help you understand that lying does come easy for those who have much to "cover-up" - and the Benghazi hearings is a demonstration of what is wrong with our government.  Lies, lies and more lies.

Published by: Dan Calabrese on Wednesday January 23rd, 2013


By DAN CALABRESE -

 Bet you didn't know this.

I've decided to reprint a piece of work I did nearly five years ago, because it seems very relevant today given Hillary Clinton's performance in the Benghazi hearings. Back in 2008 when she was running for president, I interviewed two erstwhile staff members of the House Judiciary Committee who were involved with the atergate investigation when Hillary was a low-level staffer there. I interviewed one Democrat staffer and one Republican staffer, and wrote two pieces based on what they told me about Hillary's conduct at the time.

I published these pieces back in 2008 for North Star Writers Group, the syndicate I ran at the time. This was the most widely read piece we ever had at NSWG, but because NSWG never gained the high-profile status of the major syndicates, this piece still didn't reach as many people as I thought it deserved to. Today, given the much broader reach of CainTV and yet another incidence of Hillary's arrogance in dealing with a congressional committee, I think it deserves another airing. For the purposes of simplicity, I've combined the two pieces into one very long one. If you're interested in understanding the true character of Hillary Clinton, it's worth your time to read it.

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigatio

Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.

“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.

The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?

“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.

The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.

But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.

Franklin Polk, who served at the time as chief Republican counsel on the committee, confirmed many of these details in two interviews he granted me this past Friday, although his analysis of events is not always identical to Zeifman’s. Polk specifically confirmed that Hillary wrote the memo in question, and confirmed that Hillary ignored the Douglas case. (He said he couldn’t confirm or dispel the part about Hillary taking the Douglas files.)

To Polk, Hillary’s memo was dishonest in the sense that she tried to pretend the Douglas precedent didn’t exist. But unlike Zeifman, Polk considered the memo dishonest in a way that was more stupid than sinister.

“Hillary should have mentioned that (the Douglas case), and then tried to argue whether that was a change of policy or not instead of just ignoring it and taking the precedent out of the opinion,” Polk said.

Polk recalled that the attempt to deny counsel to Nixon upset a great many members of the committee, including just about all the Republicans, but many Democrats as well.

“The argument sort of broke like a firestorm on the committee, and I remember Congressman Don Edwards was very upset,” Polk said. “He was the chairman of the subcommittee on constitutional rights. But in truth, the impeachment precedents are not clear. Let’s put it this way. In the old days, from the beginning of the country through the 1800s and early 1900s, there were precedents that the target or accused did not have the right to counsel.”

That’s why Polk believes Hillary’s approach in writing the memorandum was foolish. He says she could have argued that the Douglas case was an isolated example, and that other historical precedents could apply.

But Zeifman says the memo and removal of the Douglas files was only part the effort by Hillary, Doar, Nussbaum and Marshall to pursue their own agenda during the investigation.

After my first column, some readers wrote in claiming Zeifman was motivated by jealousy because he was not appointed as the chief counsel in the investigation, with that title going to Doar instead.

Zeifman’s account is that he supported the appointment of Doar because he, Zeifman, a) did not want the public notoriety that would come with such a high-profile role; and b) didn’t have much prosecutorial experience. When he started to have a problem with Doar and his allies was when Zeifman and others, including House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill and Democratic committee member Jack Brooks of Texas, began to perceive Doar’s group as acting outside the directives and knowledge of the committee and its chairman, Peter Rodino.

(O’Neill died in 1994. Brooks is still living and I tried unsuccessfully to reach him. I’d still like to.)

This culminated in a project to research past presidential abuses of power, which committee members felt was crucial in aiding the decisions they would make in deciding how to handle Nixon’s alleged offenses.

According to Zeifman and other documents, Doar directed Hillary to work with a group of Yale law professors on this project. But the report they generated was never given to the committee. Zeifman believes the reason was that the report was little more than a whitewash of the Kennedy years – a part of the Burke Marshall-led agenda of avoiding revelations during the Watergate investigation that would have embarrassed the Kennedys.

The fact that the report was kept under wraps upset Republican committee member Charles Wiggins of California, who wrote a memo to his colleagues on the committee that read in part:

Within the past few days, some disturbing information has come to my attention. It is requested that the facts concerning the matter be investigated and a report be made to the full committee as it concerns us all.

Early last spring when it became obvious that the committee was considering presidential "abuse of power" as a possible ground of impeachment, I raised the question before the full committee that research should be undertaken so as to furnish a standard against which to test the alleged abusive conduct of Richard Nixon.

As I recall, several other members joined with me in this request. I recall as well repeating this request from time to time during the course of our investigation. The staff, as I recall, was noncommittal, but it is certain that no such staff study was made available to the members at any time for their use.

Wiggins believed the report was purposely hidden from committee members. Chairman Rodino denied this, and said the reason Hillary’s report was not given to committee members was that it contained no value. It’s worth noting, of course, that the staff member who made this judgment was John Doar.

In a four-page reply to Wiggins, Rodino wrote in part:

Hillary Rodham of the impeachment inquiry staff coordinated the work. . . . After the staff received the report it was reviewed by Ms. Rodham, briefly by Mr. Labovitz and Mr. Sack, and by Doar. The staff did not think the manuscript was useful in its present form. . . .

In your letter you suggest that members of the staff may have intentionally suppressed the report during the course of its investigation. That was not the case.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Doar was more concerned that any highlight of the project might prejudice the case against President Nixon. The fact is that the staff did not think the material was usable by the committee in its existing form and had not had time to modify it so it would have practical utility for the members of the committee. I was informed and agreed with the judgment.

Mr. Labovitz, by the way, was John Labovitz, another member of the Democratic staff. I spoke with Labovitz this past Friday as well, and he is no fan of Jerry Zeifman.

“If it’s according to Zeifman, it’s inaccurate from my perspective,” Labovitz said. He bases that statement on a recollection that Zeifman did not actually work on the impeachment inquiry staff, although that is contradicted not only by Zeifman but Polk as well.

Labovitz said he has no knowledge of Hillary having taken any files, and defended her no-right-to-counsel memo on the grounds that, if she was assigned to write a memo arguing a point of view, she was merely following orders.

But as both Zeifman and Polk point out, that doesn’t mean ignoring background of which you are aware, or worse, as Zeifman alleges, confiscating documents that disprove your argument.

All told, Polk recalls the actions of Hillary, Doar and Nussbaum as more amateurish than anything else.

“Of course the Republicans went nuts,” Polk said. “But so did some of the Democrats – some of the most liberal Democrats. It was more like these guys – Doar and company – were trying to manage the members of Congress, and it was like, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ If you want to convict a president, you want to give him all the rights possible. If you’re going to give him a trial, for him to say, ‘My rights were denied,’ – it was a stupid effort by people who were just politically tone deaf. So this was a big deal to people in the proceedings on the committee, no question about it. And Jerry Zeifman went nuts, and rightfully so. But my reaction wasn’t so much that it was underhanded as it was just stupid.”

Polk recalls Zeifman sharing with him at the time that he believed Hillary’s primary role was to report back to Burke Marshall any time the investigation was taking a turn that was not to the liking of the Kennedys.

“Jerry used to give the chapter and verse as to how Hillary was the mole into the committee works as to how things were going,” Polk said. “And she’d be feeding information back to Burke Marshall, who, at least according to Jerry, was talking to the Kennedys. And when something was off track in the view of the Kennedys, Burke Marshall would call John Doar or something, and there would be a reconsideration of what they were talking about. Jerry used to tell me that this was Hillary’s primary function.”

Zeifman says he had another staff member get him Hillary’s phone records, which showed that she was calling Burke Marshall at least once a day, and often several times a day.

A final note about all this: I wrote my first column on this subject because, in the aftermath of Hillary being caught in her Bosnia fib, I came in contact with Jerry Zeifman and found his story compelling. Zeifman has been trying to tell his story for many years, and the mainstream media have ignored him. I thought it deserved an airing as a demonstration of how early in her career Hillary began engaging in self-serving, disingenuous conduct.

Disingenuously arguing a position? Vanishing documents? Selling out members of her own party to advance a personal agenda? Classic Hillary. Neither my first column on the subject nor this one were designed to show that Hillary is dishonest. I don’t really think that’s in dispute. Rather, they were designed to show that she has been this way for a very long time – a fact worth considering for anyone contemplating voting for her for president of the United States.

By the way, there’s something else that started a long time ago.

“She would go around saying, ‘I’m dating a person who will some day be president,’” Polk said. “It was like a Babe Ruth call. And because of that comment she made, I watched Bill Clinton’s political efforts as governor of Arkansas, and I never counted him out because she had made that forecast.”

Bill knew what he wanted a long time ago. Clearly, so did Hillary, and her tactics for trying to achieve it were established even in those early days.

Vote wisely!