I often get asked why doesn't legislation, that is patently unconstitutional on its face, ever get challenged in the courts? I have put that question to lawyer friends and they say that such happens quite frequently. SOX (Sock it to us) seems to be the next to be challenged. It has been proven to be a hasty and costly disaster response to ENRON.
I would hope the same will happen regarding any health care legislation which I believe will eventually pass. Its passage will not be because it is good legislation but simply because Democrats need to be seen accomplishing something after a year of debate etc. It is a 'come on something' mentality that often drives politicians - sometimes over the cliff along with those who are supposed to benefit.
Oh Lord save us from the do-gooders and PC crowd.(See 2 below.)
I get accused of always being depressing. An old friend and founder of one of America's most innovative and great companies recently e mailed me I had him turning to comedy TV for relief.
Here is some humor - my brand. (See 3 below.)
I hope my editing is better and isn't diversity just great?(See 3a and 3b below.)
Understanding Jihadists and Jihad. (See 4 below.)
From a friend regarding a Doctor's letter to his Senator. (See 5 below.)
Dick
1).The Welfare State and Military Power: Europe-style entitlements mean Europe-sized defenses.
For our money, one of the better parts of President Obama's speech at West Point this week was his connection between a healthy economy and U.S. national security. To quote: "Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy." We only wish Mr. Obama understood the link between the larger welfare state he is trying to build at home and the economic weakness that will undermine our military power.
The proof is right before his eyes in the U.S. struggle to get Europe to contribute more forces to Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has called on NATO to buttress the U.S. surge of 30,000 in Afghanistan with 5,000 or more European troops. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Brussels today to round up promissory notes. But except for the usual stalwarts—Britain and Poland—the allies are having trouble meeting even this modest goal. Germany and France are reluctant to contribute anything more to defeat the Taliban.
This is by now a familiar story, and a big part of the problem is the relative lack of military spending. Among the Western Europeans, only France and the U.K. spend more than 2% of GDP on defense, supposedly the NATO-mandated minimum. Nearly everyone else is below that. Germany, the continent's largest economy, stands at 1.3%. U.S. defense spending has been above 4% of GDP since 2004, having fallen to 3% after the Cold War ended.
No amount of pleading and shaming has worked on the continentals. NATO launched the "Defense Capabilities Initiative" in 1999, only to abandon it a few years later. Various attempts to stand up European "rapid reaction" forces have floundered.
Most European countries also commit more than half of what little they do spend on defense to soldier salaries and benefits. Equipment and training are shortchanged. Belgium devotes 74% to personnel; the U.S. 30.6%. Europeans lack cargo planes and helicopters to enable troops to get to, and move within, far-off conflict zones. In 2007, the U.S. deployed 14% of its troops in overseas operations, Europe 4%.
.Such relative strategic weakness has made the Europeans more dependent on the American security umbrella, even as they resent it. But it also makes Europeans more disposed to avoid confrontation with adversaries like Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Henry Kissinger has put it, European leaders are no longer able to ask their people to make major sacrifices.
The overlooked culprit here is the rise of the modern welfare state. Since World War II and especially from the 1960s, Europe has built elaborate domestic income-maintenance programs, with government-run health care, pensions and jobless benefits. These are hugely expensive, requiring high taxes and government spending that is a huge proportion of GDP. The nearby table compares the so-called tax wedge across nations, which is one measure of the relative burdens to finance cradle-to-grave entitlements.
One consequence has been slower growth in Europe, relative to the U.S. and China, with less tax revenue to spend on everything. Another result is that welfare spending has crowded out defense spending. The political imperative of health care and pensions always trumps defense spending, save perhaps in a hot war. Europe may never again be able to muster public support for a defense buildup of the kind the U.S. undertook to end the Cold War in the 1980s, or even the smaller surge after 9/11.
The tragic irony of this year is that Democrats are rushing the U.S. down this same primrose entitlement path. With ObamaCare certain to eat up several more percentage points of GDP as it inevitably expands, we will take a giant step toward European social priorities.
For many Democrats, this is precisely the goal. Many Europeans, such as those at the Financial Times, will also welcome America's relative decline. But we doubt the American people fully understand what such a gilded entitlement cage means for our national vitality, or for our ability to defend U.S. interests at home and abroad.
The chart nearby shows the change in the share of U.S. federal spending on defense and domestic programs across recent decades. The upward blips in defense outlays occurred during Vietnam, the Reagan buildup and post-9/11. But the overall trend has been to spend less of the budget on defense. Add the stimulus, ObamaCare, a new entitlement for college and other Democratic plans, and the defense squeeze will only tighten. Higher taxes and borrowing may allow guns and butter to co-exist for a while. But over time, the welfare state will defeat the Pentagon here, as it has in Europe.
President Obama's domestic agenda may well mean that his successors lack the option to deploy 100,000 troops to Afghanistan, or to some other future trouble spot. This is the way superpowers lose their superiority.
2)Sarbanes-Oxley on Trial :The hasty 2002 law gets a potent constitutional challenge.
Congress wants to wallop business with even more regulation in the wake of the financial panic, but perhaps the Members should pause on Monday and visit the Supreme Court. The Justices will hear arguments on whether major portions of the last great Congressional overreaction, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are constitutional.
Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was brought in 2006 by Brad Beckstead, whose small Nevada accounting firm endured a costly examination under Sarbox rules. At issue is whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, which supervises compliance with the law, violates the Constitution's separation of powers. Under the Appointments Clause, all "officers" of the United States must be appointed by the President and accountable to him—a condition PCAOB members do not meet.
The board's five members are instead hired by the commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who are appointed by the President. This arrangement passed muster in a 2-1 decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, on the dubious grounds that the members were "inferior officers" and accountable to the President through the SEC. Never mind that they are not "directed and supervised" by the SEC, the traditional requirement for inferior officers.
The dissenter on the D.C. Circuit panel, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, called the case the most important separation of powers case in 20 years and said the appeals court had created a constitutional hash. Though the PCAOB "performs numerous regulatory and law enforcement functions at the core of the executive power," he wrote, for the first time in U.S. history we have "an independent agency whose heads are appointed by and removable only for cause by another independent agency."
The PCAOB has indeed grown as a politically unaccountable entity with vast power to regulate business. Texas Senator Phil Gramm warned at its creation that Congress was setting up a board with "massive unchecked power" to "make decisions that affect all accountants and everybody they work for, which directly or indirectly is every breathing person in the country."
Massive is the right word. The accounting board's wide-open mandate—to make whatever rules "may be necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors"—has cost the economy nearly $1 trillion, according to a study by AEI and the Brookings Institution. The benefit is supposed to be investor protection. But despite these costs, the law did nothing to warn about the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities, much less expose Bernie Madoff or other fraudsters.
These realities contributed to the welcome 37-32 November vote in the House Financial Services Committee to exempt small businesses from section 404b of Sarbox, which governs audit requirements. Sponsored by Democrat John Adler and Republican Scott Garrett, both of New Jersey, the provision was supported by the Obama Administration and 10 Democrats joined Republicans in support.
As the Supremes now take their turn, the case has implications the regulation-loving press corps hasn't noticed. A decision to uphold the PCAOB would open the door for Congress to create any number of equally unaccountable regulators across the economy. However, a ruling against the PCAOB could bring down the whole law because Sarbox does not have a "severability clause," which means that if one part goes down the entire law may be invalidated.
Debates over the Appointments Clause haven't typically divided the Supreme Court along liberal and conservative lines, so the outcome is hard to handicap. As Hans Bader and John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute point out, in the 1995 case Ryder v. United States, the High Court ruled unanimously that "an individual or firm disciplined by a government agency can challenge that discipline if agency officials were improperly appointed."
At stake here isn't merely a poorly written law that has done great economic harm. The issue is whether Congress, in its haste, can ignore the Constitutional order that has ensured accountable government for 230 years.
3)Dear Tech Support,Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend to Husband and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance -- particularly in the flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend.
In addition, Husband uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance and Personal Attention and then installed undesirable programs such as Rugby , Football, Sailing and Continuous TV. Conversation no longer runs, and House cleaning simply crashes the system.
I've tried running Nagging to fix these problems, but to no avail.What can I do?Signed, Desperate
................................Dear Desperate, First keep in mind, Boyfriend is an Entertainment Package, while Husband is an Operating System. Please enter the command: 'http: I Thought You Loved Me. html' and try to download Tears.
Don't forget to install the Guilt update. If that application works as designed, Husband should then automatically run the applications Jewellery and Flowers. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband to default to Grumpy Silence, Garden Shed or Beer. Beer is avery bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.
Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources).
Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband.
In summary, Husband is a great system, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. It also tends to work better running one task at a time. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance.
We recommend Food and Hot Lingerie.
Good Luck,Tech Support
3a)Proofreading is a dying art, wouldn't you say?
Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this. It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day.
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
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Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
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Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
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Miners Refuse to Work after Death
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Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
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War Dims Hope for Peace
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If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
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Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
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Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
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Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
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Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
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New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
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Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft
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Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
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Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
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Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
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And the winner is....
Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
3b)Subject: FW: Gala Christmas Party
What kind of company Christmas parties is everyone having? Here are some ideas...
Subj: Gala Christmas Party
FROM: Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: October 1, 2009
RE: Gala Christmas Party
I'm happy to inform you that the company Christmas Party will take place on December 23rd, starting at noon in the private function room at the Grill House. There will be a cash bar and plenty of drinks! We'll have a small band playing traditional carols... feel free to sing along. And don't be surprised if our CEO shows up dressed as Santa Claus! A Christmas tree will be lit at 1:00 PM. Exchanges of gifts among employees can be done at that time; however, no gift should be over $10.00 to make the giving of gifts easy for everyone's pockets. This gathering is only for employees!
Our CEO will make a special announcement at that time!
Merry Christmas to you and your family,
Patty
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Company Memo
FROM: Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: October 2, 2009
RE: Gala Holiday Party
In no way was yesterday's memo intended to exclude our Jewish employees. We recognize that Hanukkah is an important holiday, which often coincides with Christmas, though unfortunately not this year. However, from now on, we're calling it our "Holiday Party." The same policy applies to any other employees who are not Christians and to those still celebrating Reconciliation Day. There will be no Christmas tree and no Christmas carols will be sung. We will have other types of music for your enjoyment.
Happy now?
Happy Holidays to you and your family,
Patty
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Company Memo
FROM: Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director
TO: All Employees
DATE: October 3, 2009
RE: Holiday Party
Regarding the note I received from a member of Alcoholics Anonymous requesting a non-drinking table, you didn't sign your name. I'm happy to accommodate this request, but if I put a sign on a table that reads, "AA Only", you wouldn't be anonymous anymore. How am I supposed to handle this?
Somebody?
And sorry, but forget about the gift exchange, no gifts are allowed since the union members feel that $10.00 is too much money and the executives believe $10.00 is a little chintzy.
REMEMBER: NO GIFTS EXCHANGE WILL BE ALLOWED.
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Company Memo
FROM: Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director
To: All Employees
DATE: October 4, 2009
RE: Generic Holiday Party
What a diverse group we are! I had no idea that December 20th begins the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which forbids eating and drinking during daylight hours. There goes the party! Seriously, we can appreciate how a luncheon at this time of year does not accommodate our Muslim employees' beliefs. Perhaps the Grill House can hold off on serving your meal until the end of the party or else package everything for you to take it home in little foil doggy baggy. Will that work?
Meanwhile, I've arranged for members of Weight Watchers to sit farthest from the dessert buffet, and pregnant women will get the table closest to the restrooms.
Gays are allowed to sit with each other. Lesbians do not have to sit with Gay men, each group will have their own table. Yes, there will be flower arrangement for the Gay men's table.
To the person asking permission to cross dress, the Grill House asks that no cross-dressing be allowed, apparently because of concerns about confusion in the restrooms. Sorry.
We will have booster seats for short people.
Low-fat food will be available for those on a diet.
I am sorry to report that we cannot control the amount of salt used in the food. The Grill House suggests that people with high blood pressure taste a bite first.
There will be fresh "low sugar" fruits as dessert for diabetics, but the restaurant cannot supply "no sugar" desserts. Sorry!
Did I miss anything?!?!?
Patty
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Company Memo
FROM: Patty Lewis, Human Resources Director
TO: All F*%^ing Employees
DATE: October 5, 2009
RE: The F*%^ing Holiday Party
I've had it with you vegetarian pricks!!! We're going to keep this party at the Grill House whether you like it or not, so you can sit quietly at the table furthest from the "grill of death," as you so quaintly put it, and you'll get your f*%^ing salad bar, including organic tomatoes. But you know, tomatoes have feelings, too. They scream when you slice them. I've heard them scream. I'm hearing them scream right NOW!
The rest of you f*%^ing wierdos can kiss my *ss. I hope you all have a rotten holiday!
Drive drunk and die,
The B*tch from H*ll!!!
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Company Memo
FROM: Joan Bishop, Acting Human Resources Director
DATE: October 6, 2009
RE: Patty Lewis and Holiday Party
I'm sure I speak for all of us in wishing Patty Lewis a speedy recovery and I'll continue to forward your cards to her.
In the meantime, management has decided to cancel our Holiday Party and give everyone the afternoon of the 23rd off with full pay.
Happy Holidays!
Joan
4)Jihad,Inc: Domestic terrorism is not the end of the Islamists’ American project
By ALEX ALEXIEV
As we struggle to come to terms with the Fort Hood massacre, the first thing to do — if we want to prevent such terrorism from becoming a regular event — is to understand why it happened and who or what is to blame for it. Despite the mainstream media’s efforts to present Fort Hood as an unfortunate episode of random violence — a crazed gunman just happened to shout “Allahu akbar!” — there was nothing random about it.
Rather, it was the preordained, indeed inevitable, outcome of the cancerous growth of radical Islam in America. Nor is Major Hasan’s transformation into a jihadist willing to murder his fellow citizens an isolated case. In the last six months alone, at least 20 homegrown Muslim extremists were arrested by the FBI for planning terrorist attacks in Colorado, Detroit, New York City, Dallas, and Newburgh, N.Y. Like Major Hasan, who was radicalized in Islamist mosques in Falls Church, Va., and Silver Spring, Md., these American Muslims embraced terrorism upon being radicalized by American imams and mosques.
So we must begin by trying to understand what radical Islam is, what it’s not, and how it turns American-born Muslims into jihadist time bombs. The problem is not simply that in radical Islam this country faces a well-entrenched domestic enemy, but that the current administration, like the three that preceded it, has not shown any sign of understanding this reality, let alone a willingness to confront it.
Simply put, radical Islam, though operating under the guise of religion and claiming to work in religion’s behalf, is less a religious movement than a revolutionary ideology akin to 20th-century totalitarian creeds like Nazism and Communism. It seeks religious legitimacy by embracing violent, reactionary, and obscurantist sharia doctrine — along with extremist interpretations of Islam, such as Wahhabism and Salafism — but it is quintessentially totalitarian in that it denies the legitimacy of Western civilization and the secular democratic order; these it considers to be jahiliyya — “barbarism”— in the words of the patron saint of Islamism, Sayyid Qutb.
What is new in the Islamists’ presentation of the West as the implacable enemy of Islam is the framing of Islam’s conflict with it in apocalyptic, Manichean terms. The result is the demonization of the West as a subhuman civilization that must be destroyed if Islam is to survive and triumph. This demonization is coupled with the outright rejection of the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Islam and any other religion or ideology in the long term. Here it is important to note that radical Islam sees itself as the perfect, God-ordained fusion of state and religion (din wa dawla) and, therefore, non-religious doctrines such as nationalism, socialism, and capitalism are seen as threats equal to those presented by other religions.
Like its erstwhile totalitarian confreres, radical Islam advocates a millenarian utopia — to take the form, in this case, of worldwide Muslim rule by the “Caliphate.” Interestingly, the concept of the Caliphate is nowhere to be found in either the Koran or the Sunna; it bears more resemblance to the perfected societies dreamed of by Western dictators. Another concept borrowed by Islamism from European totalitarianism is the Leninist doctrine of the vanguard party. Much like Lenin vis-à-vis the proletariat, Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), who first applied Lenin’s vanguard theory to radical Islam, did not put much stock in the revolutionary potential of the Muslim masses. He believed that a small core of professional Islamic revolutionaries was essential to the success of the Islamist movement. Qutb’s Islamist-vanguard theory, as further developed by today’s leading Islamist ideologue, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is a key to understanding the role of Muslim Brotherhood activists and affiliated organizations in making radical Islam the dominant idiom of the Muslim establishment in America.
And it is impossible to grasp Islamist ideology without understanding that Islamic extremists consider Muslims who do not share their radical views no less the enemy than the infidels. The practice of declaring a practicing Muslim who does not agree with you an apostate (takfir) was first propounded by the founder of Wahhabism, Abd al-Wahhab, in the 18th century, but it was Sayyid Qutb who developed the theory of a “Muslim jahiliyya” and proclaimed that Muslim rulers and societies that have not imposed sharia rule are apostates to be treated accordingly. This not only stands the Koran on its head but is largely responsible for the fact that the vast majority of the victims of Islamic violence in the past decades have been other Muslims — a fact whose continuing truth is lamentably demonstrated, on a daily basis, by the Taliban.
Islamists believe that to achieve their objectives they must first destroy Western civilization —beginning with the United States, its most powerful protector. This does not mean that violence is always the first resort. Violence is invariably seen as an essential instrument in the Islamist arsenal, but, in the current state of Islamic weakness and American strength, the preferred tactics are proselytism, indoctrination, infiltration, and undermining American society from within. Islamists seek to destroy the West “with their [i.e., the West’s] own hands,” as one Muslim Brotherhood document put it — which is to say, by exploiting the rights and freedoms our democratic system guarantees.
It is important to keep in mind that while terrorism is the inevitable outcome of Islamic extremism in America, it is not the primary objective — or even a very important objective — of the organized Islamist networks insinuated into our society. Terrorism takes place, and will continue to take place, because individuals who have been indoctrinated by radical imams to hate their country and compatriots as the very incarnation of evil will often take things into their own hands. But for the leaders and ideologues of radical Islam, domestic terrorism could prove tactically counterproductive to the achievement of their larger objectives; they do not, as rule, encourage it explicitly.
This is not to say that leading U.S. Islamists and Islamist organizations disapprove of violence or suicide terrorism at all. On the contrary, most of them wholeheartedly support virtually all overseas terrorist groups, such as Hamas and the Taliban, both morally and financially, as testified to by the large number of American Islamists already sitting in jail. To judge the role of radical Islam in America on the basis of whether it is involved in direct support for domestic terrorism is to dramatically underestimate a vastly greater threat this fifth column represents to our security. Terrorism is only a symptom of the underlying malignancy of Islamic extremism, and to deal with it while ignoring the malignancy is akin to fighting cancer by alleviating the pain it causes.
Armed with their radical ideology and amply endowed with Saudi funds, committed cadres of professional revolutionaries from the Muslim Brotherhood descended on America in the early 1960s and, as they did throughout the West, began to build an infrastructure for radical Islam, starting with the Muslim Students Association (MSA) in 1963. In short order, a great number of Islamist organizations, professional associations, youth groups, publishing houses, and charities were spun off from this “student” association, allowing it to boast that, under its auspices, “nearly every other major Muslim organization (in America) was formed.” Their formation was anything but haphazard. They were conceived as integral parts of a larger network designed to serve a clearly defined purpose. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), for example, was envisioned as an umbrella organization that would become the “nucleus for the Islamic Movement in North America.” The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was vested with control of Wahhabi-funded institutions, while the Islamic Circle of North America was designed to be the primary outreach agency for Subcontinental Muslims, with Urdu its official language.
The network has expanded greatly since then, with the MSA alone boasting 1,000 chapters in North America. ISNA and NAIT directly control many hundreds of mosques. Each of these groups is part of the same radical-Islamic construct. What all have in common, apart from their common roots and the ideology they share, is their persistent claim to be independent and mainstream representatives of American Muslims, a claim that is all too often accepted uncritically by government institutions and even law-enforcement agencies. And while all these groups routinely deny having sympathy for or ties to radical Islam, they don’t go out of their way to hide their true beliefs or their intimate ties to other members of the network. This is evident in their identical policy positions, their close and synergistic cooperation, and their vehement opposition to all U.S. policies seen as detrimental to Islamist objectives. It is especially evident in the network of interlocking directorships that links their close-knit leaders (or “vanguard,” in Qutb’s terms) — a network that leaves no doubt that they are indeed one and the same organization.
They also share a source of funding. It is impossible to understand the explosive growth of these radical networks — in both the U.S. and Europe, at a time when Muslim populations were still relatively small — without considering the role of Saudi money. Flush with cash after the 1973 oil embargo, which resulted in a nearly hundredfold increase in the kingdom’s oil revenues over the following ten years, the Saudis dramatically boosted their financial support for radical Islam worldwide, especially in the West. According to Saudi government figures, Riyadh provided $48 billion to support Islamic activities abroad between 1975 and 1987, or some $4 billion per annum. All in all, these figures show that in the period between 1973 and 2002, Saudi Arabia spent more than $80 billion to promote Islamic activities in the non-Muslim world alone. This truly colossal sum has built a huge network of radical Wahhabi-controlled institutions, including more than 1,500 mosques, 150 Islamic centers, 202 Muslim colleges, and 2,000 Islamic schools — all of these in non-Muslim countries. As a result, there is hardly a city of any size in America or Europe today that does not have a Saudi-controlled institution preaching extremism and spewing hatred against Western civilization, directly or indirectly advocating its destruction.
In practical terms, the Islamist networks in America have focused their efforts on several areas and produced results that, taken together, account for much of the radicalization of American Islam over the last three decades. These efforts included imposing their ideology on American Islam, taking over moderate Muslim institutions, radicalizing mainstream believers, indoctrinating the young, aggressively proselytizing among the infidels, infiltrating government institutions and the political establishment, and organizing support for extremist causes and jihad overseas.
In many of these areas, the Islamists have been hugely successful. On the issue of ideological penetration, Hudson Institute scholars Nina Shea and Paul Marshall have documented the universal spread of Wahhabi/Salafist ideology and literature in American mosques. Here are a few examples of the kind of religious wisdom they found disseminated:
— “Democracy is an evil system” and the “very embodiment of unbelief,” so Muslims must reject it.
— Interfaith dialogue is a “sinful call” because it “breaks down the wall of resentment between Muslims and unbelievers.”
—Freedom of religion is forbidden because “it allows denial of Islam.” Accepting any religion other than Islam makes you “an apostate, and you should be killed because you have denied the Koran.”
—“Believers must hate [the infidels] for their religion . . . and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.”
—“Whoever believes that Christians and Jews worship God is an infidel.”
—“Innovative” imams are “heretics and their prayers are invalid.”
—“Muslims must be protected from the barbarian culture of Europe.”
Indoctrination (known as tarbiya) in Islamist ideology has been a main concern of radical groups. They seek to spread their ideas across all levels of Muslim society, with a special emphasis on children and youth. Today, unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, there are schools in the United States that start their morning Pledge of Allegiance with “I pledge allegiance to Allah and his Prophet.”
The proselytistic effort to convert the infidels to Islam, known as dawah in Islamic jargon, is an important enterprise for the radical networks, and special dawah departments exist in virtually all Islamist organizations. Proselytizing campaigns are far from random; some social groups are deemed more responsive to the Islamist message than others and accordingly subjected to special attention. They tend to be groups seen as aggrieved and alienated from society, such as minorities and prison inmates. Black Americans became an early focus and were considered especially promising. Two subgroups of the black population were targeted in particular: those in the penitentiary system, and members of the Nation of Islam. Reliable figures about the success of this campaign are difficult to obtain, but circumstantial evidence seems to point to significant progress of dawah efforts among blacks. Prison officials, for instance, estimated in the mid-1990s that between 10 and 20 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million inmates — who are disproportionately black — identified themselves as Muslims, and some 30,000 black Americans were reported to convert to Islam in prison every year.
Last and most disturbing, radical Islam has without a doubt made significant inroads in its quest to infiltrate our government and institutions. Consider the case of Abdurahman Alamoudi, which is typical of the Islamist modus operandi. In October 2004 he was sentenced to 23 years in prison for terrorism-related activities, and he is currently in a federal penitentiary. Prior to that, he had been a kingpin of the Islamist network: He was a top official in a dozen major Islamist organizations and in five charities suspected of funding terrorism. Despite that, he evidently enjoyed unimpeded access to the White House under Presidents Clinton and Bush (43). He also served as a State Department “goodwill ambassador” in the Middle East and as a U.S. Information Agency speaker abroad. Most important, he founded an organization called the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and established it as the exclusive authority for endorsing Muslim chaplains in all branches of the U.S. armed forces, enabling it to place extremists in the military virtually at will.
It was within this vast subversive enterprise that Major Hasan, like thousands of others, became radicalized — long before the war in Iraq came along. It is not difficult to trace his transformation into a mass murderer by simply looking at the institutions in which he was indoctrinated: First, Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Va., one of the largest and most radical mosques in the country, where his mentor was Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, an American-born advocate of jihad and suicide bombing; then the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., under Imam Faizul Khan, another Muslim extremist, an influential figure in the Washington Islamist scene and an official at both the Islamic Society of North America (an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-finance trial) and the Saudi-backed Muslim World League.
This troubling picture will surely get worse unless the U.S. government, at long last, decides to take a close look inside radical Islam within the United States.
Mr. Alexiev is is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
5)Dear Senator Bayh,
As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the health care bill before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the brazenness of the government's proposed involvement in the patient-physician relationship. The very idea that the government will dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in designing a health care system that works for all. Every physician I work with agrees that we need to fix our health care system, but the proposed bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if passed.
I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.
Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self-insure!!
Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.
Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!
Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC benefits for you. You have no choice!
Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise.
Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals' finances & a 'National ID Health card' will be issued!
Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for elective funds transfer.
Page 65 Sec 164: Is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in unions & community organizations: (ACORN).
Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the 'Exchange.'
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans -- The Govt will ration your health care!
Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. (Translation: illegal aliens.)
Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups (i.e. ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.
Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. (AARP members - your health care WILL be rationed!)
Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid eligible individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. (No choice.)
Page 124 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt monopoly.
Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association - The Govt will tell YOU what salary you can make.
Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto-enroll employees into public option plan. (NO choice!)
Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part-time employees AND their families. (Employees shouldn't get excited about this as employers will be forced to reduce its work force, benefits, and wages/salaries to cover such a huge expense.)
Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option will pay 8% tax on all payroll! (See the last comment in parenthesis.)
Page 150 Lines 9-13: A business with payroll between $251K & $401K who doesn't provide public option will pay 2-6% tax on all payroll.
Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesn't have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.
Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay.)
Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of the GOVT HC Admin.. will have access to ALL Americans' finances and personal records.
Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax." (Yes, it really says that!)
Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors. (Low-income and the poor are affected.)
Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors: It doesn't matter what specialty you have trained yourself in ---you will all be paid the same! (Just TRY to tell me that's not Socialism!)
Page 253 Line 10-18: The Govt sets the value of a doctor's time, profession, judgment, etc. (Literally-the value of humans.)
Page 265 Sec 1131: The Govt mandates and controls productivity for "private" HC industries.
Page 268 Sec 1141: The federal Govt regulates the rental and purchase of power driven wheelchairs.
Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!
Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever the Govt deems preventable (i.e.re-admissions).
Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors: If you treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission the Govt will penalize you.
Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. (The Govt tells doctors what and how much they can own!)
Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion. (The Govt is mandating that hospitals cannot expand.)
Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have the opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. (Can you say ACORN?)
Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: The Govt mandates establishment of=2 outcome-based measures. (HC the way they want -- rationing.)
Page 341 Lines 3-9: The Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. (Forcing people into the Govt plan)
Page 354 Sec 1177: The Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of 'special needs people!'
Page 379 Sec 1191: The Govt creates more bureaucracy via a "Tele-Health Advisory Committee." (Can you say HC by phone?)
Page 425 Lines 4-12: The Govt mandates "Advance-Care Planning Consult." (Think senior citizens end-of-life patients.)
Page 425 Lines 17-19: The Govt will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. (And it's mandatory!)
Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: The Govt provides an "approved" list of end-of-life resources; & nbsp; guiding you in death. (Also called 'assisted suicide.')
Page 427 Lines 15-24: The Govt mandates a program for orders on "end-of-life." (The Govt has a say in how your life ends!)
Page 429 Lines 1-9: An "advanced-care planning consultant" will be used frequently as a patient's health deteriorates.
Page 429 Lines 10-12: An "advanced care consultation" may include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. (AN ORDER TO DIE FROM THE GOVERNMENT?!?)
Page 429 Lines 13-25: The GOVT will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order. (I wouldn't want to stand before God after getting paid for THAT job!)
Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end-of-life! (Again -- no choice!)
Page 469: Community-Based Home Medical Services = Non-Profit Organizations. (Hello? ACORN Medical Services here!?!)
Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover marriage and family therapy. (Which means Govt will insert itself into your marriage even.)
Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, and rationing those services.
Senator, I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.
Furthermore, if you vote for a bill that enforces socialized medicine on the country and destroys the doctor-patient relationship, I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose your job in the next election.
Respectfully,
Stephen E. Fraser, MD
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