Did you know that Sarah Palin-haters are still trying to prove she didn’t give birth to her youngest son, Trig? These tinfoil hat-wearers are as obnoxious and unhinged as the 9/11 Truth cultists who insist that America engineered the jihadi attacks on itself. The presidential campaign may be over, but there’s no expiration date on Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Jack Bogdanski, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, stirred up Trig Trutherism again this week with a post on his website exposing “Sarah Palin’s fake pregnancy belly.” Armed with frontal photos of Palin’s stomach, Professor Bogdanski declared: “The March 26 photo is the smoking gun. There really is no chance that there’s a baby in there who will be born 23 days later at six pounds birth weight. And there really is no chance that the child grew so suddenly over the following two weeks…Sarah Palin is not the mother.”

We’re all obstetricians now!

This nonsense began with left-wing Internet rumors that Gov. Palin was really Trig’s grandmother and that she was covering up for the “real” mother of Trig – her teenage daughter, Bristol. The conspiracy was hyped by The Atlantic’s resident excitable womb-chaser, Andrew Sullivan, and later amplified by “respectable” journalists like CNN/Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. As the fever swamps roiled, an Alaska TV reporter, Cherie Shirey, stepped forward to squash the paranoia with a statement to the liberal Huffington Post:

“These internet rumors are very bizarre. We worked with Governer Palin many times in 2008. Our reporters worked her on location and in the studio and I worked with her myself. She was definitely pregnant. You could see it in her belly and her face. The whole idea that Sarah Palin wasn’t pregnant with Trig is completely, absolutely absurd.”

Shirey was ignored. Profile shots of a heavily pregnant Palin taken in April 2008 didn’t satisfy the Fake Belly! mob, either. The disclosure that Bristol was in fact pregnant with her teenage boyfriend’s child did not quell the insanity. Neither did a health assessment from Gov. Palin’s personal physician affirming her five pregnancies nor did contemporaneous hospital accounts of the birth nor did Palin’s accounts of nursing Trig.

It’s only a matter of time before someone accuses Palin of planting fake breast milk on her pump.

The plain truth will never mollify a Truther. There’s always a convoluted excuse – some inconsequential discrepancy to seize on, some photographic “evidence” to magnify into a blur of meaningless pixels – that will rationalize irrationality. Palin could produce Trig’s umbilical cord and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Alas, Trutherism thrives on both the left and right. Which brings us to the spate of lawsuits challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court considers one of those suits filed by New Jersey citizen Leo Donofrio, who maintains that Obama is not a “natural born citizen” because his father held British citizenship.

There may be a seed of a legitimate constitutional issue to explore here (how is the citizenship requirement enforced for presidential candidates, anyway?) And at least Donofrio concedes that Obama was born in Hawaii. But a dangerously large segment of the birth certificate hunters have lurched into rabid Truther territory. The most prominent crusader against Obama’s American citizenship claim, lawyer Philip Berg (who, not coincidentally, is also a prominent 9/11 Truther), disputes that Obama was born in Hawaii and claims that Obama’s paternal grandmother told him she saw Obama born in Kenya.

Berg and his supporters further assert that the “Certification of Live Birth” produced by Obama was altered or forged. They claim that the contemporaneous birth announcement in a Hawaii newspaper of Obama’s birth is insufficient evidence that he was born there. (Did a fortune-teller place it in the paper knowing he would run for president?). And they accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being part and parcel of the grand plan to install Emperor Obama and usurp the rule of law.

I believe Trig was born to Sarah Palin. I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on U.S. soil. I believe fire can melt steel and that bin Laden’s jihadi crew – not Bush and Cheney – perpetrated mass murder on 9/11. What kind of kooky conspiracist does that make me?

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Here’s an excerpt of Philip Berg’s 9/11 Truther manifesto for all of you who have made him your new hero:

“It is time for the nations of the world to come forth and take the leadership because of the failure of the United States Government and the States where crimes were committed on 09/11/01, where no thorough investigation and indictments occurred, to investigate, arrest and prosecute the people responsible for the murders on 9/11/01, specifically including George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. ”

“Bush and his cronies made 9/11 happen or let it happen. And, if they let it happen, then they made it happen. Either way, they are responsible; and more important, they have completely and unequivocally covered-it-up!”

…That an event such as 9/11 was desired by powerful Administration figures, including Cheney and Jeb Bush, the President’s brother, is a matter of record, as the Project for the New American Century’s [PNAC] blueprint for worldwide U.S. dominance entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” stated that the program they advocated could win popular support only with the help of a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor” which (we are supposed to believe to be coincidence) came to pass just 8 months after many of the co-signers of the PNAC document assumed high positions in the new Bush Administration in January 2001.

As President John F. Kennedy stated, “Things do not just happen; they are made to happen.” There has never been an investigation of 9/11 that had not concluded, before it even began, that the Official Story convicting Osama bin Laden and absolving the Administration and the military of complicity of anything worse than “intelligence failures,” which thereby made the outcome a foregone conclusion.

It is time that the men who had the motive, means and the opportunity to commit the terrible crimes of 9/11, and who have profited by it politically as well as financially, be exposed for their role and held to account.

The world has suffered since the horrific acts of Bush and his cronies on 9/11, that being the events of 9/11 and the aftermath, the illegal act of war against Afghanistan and Iraq that has caused the death and injury of hundreds of thousands, including thousands of U.S. troops; the destruction of property and the enormous costs involved.

Saddam was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death after being convicted of murder in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from an Iraqi town where assassins tried to kill him in 1982. This number of killings that Saddam Hussein was found guilty of is far less than Bush and his cronies caused to die on 9/11.

The 148 Iraqi deaths for which Saddam was tried pales in number to the 750,000 dead at the hands of George W. Bush as a result of this illegal invasion of that country which includes babies, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, elderly grandmothers and grandfathers, killed without remorse by George W. Bush and his war profiteering supporters.

Bush continues the war in Iraq to keep the world’s attention there and not on the atrocities caused by him on 9/11, including the possibility of Bush sending up to 40,000 more troops to Iraq, even though a majority of the American people are against this increase.

The world must act now because our own government has failed us. We cannot relent until real justice is reached. Only by exposing the truth of 9/11 and revealing how it was used as the “trigger event” to justify the neocon’s imperial policy can we put these events in proper prospective.”

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More conspiracy-mongering: A Politico writer speculates that Justice Clarence Thomas distributed Donofrio’s application for conference as some sort of payback for Obama’s opposition to Thomas. Grow up already.

MichelleMalkin.com

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Bill Richardson, president-elect Obama's choice for Secretary of Commerce, has dismissed the idea that the Obama cabinet is a "team of rivals." Richardson is correct to this extent -- he does not rival Obama and never has. "Team of self-promoting hacks" would better fit Richardson's case, but it's not very catchy. If this really is, somehow, Lincoln's Cabinet redeux, then perhaps we can cast Richardson as Simon Cameron. This relatively undistingushed (to my knowledge) Pennsylvania Senator ran for president in 1860, threw his support to Lincoln at the convention, and was rewarded with the job of Secretary of War. He lasted a year.

If my assessment of Richardson seems harsh, consider that, despite being the nation's leading Hispanic politician, Obama had nothing better to offer him than Secetary of Commerce. You can also consult my past posts about Richardson.

The Washington Post notes that Richardson' selection "breaks with tradition" by "putting a longtime public servant in a position that has recently been held by private-sector executives." Stated differently, Obama has put the Commerce Department in the hands of someone who, as far as appears, knows little if anything about business. Richardson entered the political world straight out of college, becoming a staffer for a Massachusetts Congressman. He has never really looked back at the real world.

The Post notes that Richardson has considerable diplomatic experience, which includes face-to-face meetings with Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and "a host of North Korean officials." What these meetings accomplished is unclear. How they translate into a qualification for Secretary of Commerce is equally unclear, but also largely irrelevant. What matters is that Obama has found a place to park the modern-day Simon Cameron. 

PowerLineBlog

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BUY A DATE...WITH BILL AYERS?

by Michelle Malkin

Just thought you might be interested in what Barack Obama’s friendly neighborhood terrorist is up to these days.

Reader Tom B., a student at Florida State University, e-mails: “Our Student Government passed a resolution tonight allocating $5000 of the University’s money to pay William Ayers to speak at our school under the guise of ‘education reform.’ Obviously he was chosen for his radical views and ‘activist’ fame, and I thought it was definitely newsworthy that a state school is giving money to a terrorist to spread his radical agenda. Hope you can help us college conservatives get the word out!”

Meantime, a community organizing group in Illinois lists some of its holiday auction items, including:

–Dinner for 4 from Bill Ayers at Bill and Bernadine’s house, starting at $30.

Proceeds benefit AREA Chicago, a grassroots activist/research organization committed to social justice.

Second Annual “Wants and Needs” Auction to Benefit AREA Chicago
December 6th, 2008 7-11pm; 511 N. Noble St.
$10 donation, or $20 for admission and a T-shirt
To RSVP or pre-pay for admission, e-mail areachicago@gmail.com
(Cost of admission includes one complimentary drink.)

Molotov cocktails, perhaps?

MichelleMalkin.com

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What the hell is going on in Russia? Hikind, Thompson Denounce Sunflower Seeds Package As Anti-Semitic.

Brooklyn, NY - Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) and New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson today denounced the Shnayder family, owners of the value import store, Net Cost Market, for stocking and selling dozens of packages of roasted sunflower seeds featuring a caricature of a greedy-and-sinister-looking Jew, complete with skullcap, on the label. The Cyrillic letters on the left of the label read, “Shalom, from Israel,” while the right side employs a slang phrase meaning “spit them out everywhere,” alluding to “dirty Jews.” The seeds are available in both 5.5 and 10.5 ounce bags. A survey conducted by Hikind’s office revealed that the seed bags are being sold in all four of Net Cost Market’s Brooklyn locations for a mere $0.99 to $1.99 per bag depending on size.

“I was absolutely appalled when I saw this label,” said an outraged Hikind. “Net Cost Market has become a complicit partner in the dissemination of hatred against Jews. With each bag sold, the Shnayders are literally sowing seeds of hate.” At three of the four locations, consumers who spent $50 or more were given the package of seeds as a promotional gift right at the checkout counter.

Net Cost Market bills itself as the “Costco of the ethnic Eastern European market,” and offers a wide assortment of imports from all over Eastern Europe. The roasted sunflower seeds are produced in the Former Soviet Union by Kremlin Kitchen. “I was not surprised to learn that this anti-Semitic product is being made in Russia,” said Hikind. “Recent reports indicate that attacks on Russia’s Jewish population and their property have increased in both number and severity. Kremlin Kitchen is trying to capitalize on this existing wave of anti-Semitic sentiment with the Russian-American community.”

Little Green Footballs

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CAIR'S MAKE-OR-BREAK MOMENT

Now that the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial has resulted in convictions, will the unindicted co-conspirators in the case still be treated by the media as legitimate “civil rights organizations?” Steven Emerson says this is CAIR’s Make or Break Moment.

Recently, we lightly mocked the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its quick condemnation of Al-Qaeda No. 2 man Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s slur of President-Elect Barack Obama as a “house Negro.” Way to take the hard stand, folks.

Our point was serious though. If CAIR wants to be accepted as the mainstream Muslim-American civil rights advocacy organization that it claims to be, it must take an unequivocal stand against terror from all actors, including those who kill, and those who enable the killers, in the name of Palestinian liberation.

It has never done so. And evidence unveiled at the Hamas-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) shows why. CAIR was born of an effort to support Hamas in America – its founders part of the Palestine Committee who agreed in 1993 that a prospective peace deal was bad and who saw the need for a new organization to bring their message, surreptitiously, to Washington.

HLF now stands guilty of routing more than $12 million to benefit Hamas through a series of Palestinian charities. As witnesses like Matthew Levitt and Bruce Hoffman testified, that support – even when channeled to humanitarian needs – is crucial in winning popular support for the terrorist group responsible for it.

And, as the evidence made clear, the view about HLF and the charities it supported was not merely an Israeli belief. Palestinian Authority security documents reach the same conclusion. That took away a key defense argument from the first HLF trial, which ended in a mistrial last year.

Quite simply, it is time to move past the reflexive and discredited denials. If CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) want to show that we’re wrong when we consider them terror apologists, they can start by offering unequivocal endorsements of the jury’s verdict and their respect for the justice system even when it disappoints them.

Don’t hold your breath. On Wednesday, CAIR issued a brief statement...

Read the whole thing...

Little Green Footballs

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WILLFUL BLINDNESS, FROM MINNESOTA TO MUMBAI

by Scott Johnson

Andrew McCarthy takes a look at the story of the Somali immigrant who moved to Minnesota, only to return to Somalia to wage jihad. On a mission from Minneapolis, Shirwa Ahmed killed 29 people in a suicide bombing in northern Somalia last October.

McCarthy finds the FBI coming "to the aid of the jihadist's family: retrieving the the bits to which Shirwa blew himself and transporting them -- apparently on your dime -- so that he could be buried here" at "home" in Minnesota. McCarthy quotes the local FOX News story on the funeral:

During the funeral Wednesday, Shirwa Ahmed was neither celebrated as a martyr, nor condemned as a killer. He was buried simply as a Muslim man, who died so close, yet so far, from home.

The FBI is also busy with other pursuits related to Ahmed, noted in the story quoted by McCarthy. Federal authorities are investigating whether other young Somali men who have disappeared in the Twin Cities metro area in recent months have been recruited to fight for terrorist groups in Somalia. (The Star Tribune story is here.) That's one theory.

The Star Tribune doesn't consider the possibility that they might have been recruited to fight somewhere closer to "home." Ed Morrissey comments here.

In her Jerusalem Post column "The jihadist-multicultural alliance," Caroline Glick examines the apologetics of commentators such as Fareed Zakaria and Martha Nussbaum that we previously noted regarding the Mumbai massacres. McCarthy himself describes the phenomenon Glick explicates as Willful Blindness. There seems to be a lot of it going around.

PowerLineBlog

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VIRGINIA DISENFRANCHISES OUR MILITARY

by The Heritage Foundation

The liberal political establishment is always expressing its concern over the possible “disenfranchisement” of voters (claims that almost always turn out to be completely exaggerated), but their concerns seem to disappear when the disenfranchised are military voters. How else can one explain the almost total lack of interest expressed over the pending disenfranchisement of possibly thousands of overseas voters in Virginia, mostly military personnel?

Just prior to the Nov. 4 election, the McCain-Palin campaign filed a federal lawsuit in Richmond against the Virginia State Board of Elections under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. UOCAVA guarantees the right of military personnel and overseas civilians to vote by absentee ballots in federal elections. The lawsuit claimed that some Virginia counties had mailed absentee ballots too late to be received and returned by military personnel stationed overseas by the Nov. 4 deadline. One of the examples given was a U.S. marine stationed in Western Anbar Province who requested an absentee ballot in August, but did not receive it until October 29. This was far too late to mail it back by the Nov. 4 deadline for receipt by Virginia election officials. The lawsuit requested the federal court to order Virginia to accept as valid all overseas absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 4 and received by Nov. 14.

Unfortunately, on Nov. 4 the court inexplicably refused to enforce UOCAVA and would not grant any such remedy. It only ordered election officials to record the date and time of receipt of all absentee ballots received after Nov. 4 and to store them in sealable container until further order of the court.

On Nov. 17, the McCain-Palin campaign was dismissed as a party and the U.S. Department of Justice, which enforces UOCAVA, was allowed to intervene in the lawsuit. DOJ claimed in its motion that some counties had waited until less than two weeks before Nov. 4 to mail out the requested absentee ballots. Thirty days is the absolute minimum time before the election that postal authorities and other experts recommend that such absentee ballots be mailed to overseas voters, particularly military personnel, because of the long delays in overseas mail service. Forty-five days is what is actually recommended, including by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The Virginia election board had previously embraced this 45-day standard, issuing guidelines to service members saying that “Virginia requires ballots be mailed no later than 45 days before the November 4, 2008 Presidential Election.” But the court again in another order on Nov. 17 denied the Justice Department’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have ordered the counting of these late received absentee ballots.

There is another hearing this coming Monday. The Virginia election board is not being represented by the Virginia attorney general, but by a private law firm. Instead of doing everything they can to enfranchise these voters, they are asking that the case be dismissed. The Virginia election board, headed by Jean Cunningham and including two other members, Nancy Rodriguez and Harold Pyon, are now arguing that UOCAVA does not require states to mail out absentee ballots in time for voters to receive them prior to the election because voters can use a federal write in absentee ballot if they do not receive their state ballot.

This is a complete misreading of the requirements of the federal statute and prior court decisions. The federal write-in ballot is a failsafe that is provided in case there is a problem receiving the state ballot; it does not excuse a state from failing to mail a requested absentee ballot in time for it to be received by the voter. This is particularly true because a write-in ballot does not contain a list of all of the candidates that are running for office in a particular county and a particular state, making it much more difficult for a military voter to cast a vote in all of the different races he is entitled to vote in.

If the court decides in favor of Virginia and dismisses the lawsuit, it will be a bad precedent for future UOCAVA enforcement cases, since it will sanction states essentially ignoring requests for absentee ballots from overseas voters. It will also result in the disenfranchisement of thousands of overseas voters in this election, including many members of our military who are in dangerous places around the world putting their lives on the line for this county. Such a decision would be shameful, and the members of the Virginia Board of Elections should be ostracized for taking such a legal position in this matter.

It is vital that the Department of Justice continue to pursue this matter, including an appeal if it is wrongly decided at the trial court level. The state attorney general should also intervene to protect Virginia’s military and overseas voters and dispute the position being taken by the Virginia Board of Elections. And Gov. Tim Kaine should repudiate the claims being made by the individuals he has appointed to this board.

The Foundry Blog

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GREENPEACE BEHIND THE SARK/OBAMA POSTERS

by Sweetness & Light

MOVING FORWARD WITH MISSILE DEFENSE

by The Heritage Foundation

Sometime today a missile will be fired from Kodiak, Alaska. As it sails over the Pacific, it will be followed by four target-tracking sensors that will help guide a long-range interceptor fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile from Kodiak will be representative of the type we would expect from a country such as North Korea or Iran. It will be similar in terms of distance involved, trajectory, speed and flight time (33 minutes). A successful test today would join a growing body of evidence that missile defense technology can protect America. To date, the core ground-based defense system has destroyed its target in six of nine attempts, and overall, there have been 36 intercepts in 46 tries across all elements of the evolving shield.

President-elect Barack Obama’s “Blueprint for Change” states: “In a world with nuclear weapons, America must continue efforts to defend against the mass destruction of its citizens and our allies.” A national survey reveals 87% of Americans think the U.S. should have a missile defense system capable of protecting America against missiles that may contain weapons of mass destruction warheads. Yet the Obama blueprint also says his administration will support missile defense that is “pragmatic and cost-effective” and “does not divert resources from other national security priorities until we are positive the technology will protect the American public.” These statements imply that ballistic missile defense technology is not proven. As the growing body of evidence mentioned above demonstrates, this is not true.

It is important, therefore, that Obama clear up ambiguities in his position on missile defense. Allies like Poland are watching and will need to be sure of our commitment to them. At the same time, Russia will try to take advantage of any uncertainty. It is critical that Obama move ahead quickly on his promise to “spare no effort to protect Americans from the threats posed by nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.”

In order to fulfill the fundamental commitment to protect and defend the people, territory, institutions and infrastructure of the U.S. and its allies, Obama will need to propose a defense program that includes a dedicated and robust ballistic missile defense enterprise. In order to realize this vision, Heritage’s memo to Obama recommends:

• A commitment to spend between 2% and 3% of the defense budget on ballistic missile defense.
• A consistent program of development and testing.
• A layered missile defense concept.
• A plan to expand the role of the services in ballistic missile defense.
• The development and fielding of space-based elements.
• A program for cooperation with U.S. allies.
• Recognition that ballistic missile defense has been the least developed component of the forces necessary to protect and defend the U.S. and its allies.

The requirements of today’s world demand a strategy to protect and defend the U.S. and its allies. The Cold War strategy of retaliation-based deterrence is insufficient. Ballistic missile defenses are an essential component of a protect-and-defend strategy for the 21st century.

Quick Hits:

• With Obama and Democrats proposing spending billions of dollars on alternative-energy programs to create jobs, some economists, including Obama’s new budget chief Peter Orszag, are saying alternative-energy spending is “totally impractical” for stimulating the economy and “could end up making the economic situation worse.”
• Many states that adopted renewable energy goals “have fallen behind on the aggressive goals they set several years ago.”
• Obama’s choice for U.S. trade representative, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), is an ally of Big Labor and skeptic of trade agreements.
• According to Rasmussen Reports, 74% of U.S. voters continue to believe the federal government is not doing enough to secure the country’s borders.
• People across America will take time out today to toast the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition.

The Foundry Blog

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PREPARING FOR THE NEXT AMNESTY BATTLE

by Michelle Malkin

Bay Buchanan at Team America PAC sends a memo on the upcoming illegal alien amnesty battle. You know it’s coming. You knew it would come whether Barack Obama or John McCain took office. It was only a question of how fast it would get on the table. The question now is whether you are prepared to stave it off again.

Bay writes:

Guess who is to blame for the Republican routs in 2008? According to the establishment, YOU ARE! Since the election, the pointy heads have been parroting the line that “nativists” in the GOP cost the party the Hispanic vote and the election.

The Wall Street Journal–whose editorial page promotes a constitutional Amendment entitled “There Shall Be Open Borders”-had an editorial yesterday called “immigration losers” where they gloated that five members of Tom’s Immigration Reform Caucus lost as proof that immigration fails. They didn’t bother to mention that the 22 Republican seats went down with the GOP ship.

I’d like to ignore these mutterings, but we can’t. These guys have an agenda. They want the party leadership to believe what the media keeps saying-that the only way to electoral victory is through amnesty. It doesn’t matter that it is total nonsense-all they care about is getting amnesty passed and our borders open even wider!

We stopped amnesty in 2006 and 2007, because we convinced enough politicians that if they listened to their lobbyists and not their constituents, they’d be out of a job. To do it again we must expose the lies of the open border crowd.

The Facts: Yes, some anti-amnesty Republicans lost, but so did pro-amnesty politicians, not least of them being John McCain. The truth is Tancredo style Republicans did better than the average Republicans. Members of Tom’s immigration reform caucus make up 51% of House Republicans, but only 39% of losing incumbents.

Our two top candidates this election cycle were Lou Barletta of PA and Wayne Parker of Alabama. In both races the Democrats ran as if they were as tough as our guys on immigration!! Both were flat out lying but if the Tancredo stand on immigration is so politically damaging, I’d like to ask my friends at the Wall Street Journal, why are the Democrats wrapping themselves in it to win?

The constant droning about the Hispanic vote is insulting to Hispanics and to all Americans. Our democracy is one person, one vote; not one ethnic group, one vote. I value the vote of a Hispanic just as much as a vote of White, Black or Asian American. But that’s not what it’s about. It is supposed to be about what’s best for America, not best for our party.

It’s back to the old battle lines. And we can win again-we stopped the President, party leaders, Corporate America and the powerful ethnic lobbyists from passing amnesty and we whooped them in the states!! Now we have to re-up and re-arm because they are coming at us again.

The new Congress takes office January 6, E-Verify is set to expire in March, and the push for an Obama-Reid amnesty could come by then. This week I am contacting the other immigration leaders in town and asking them to join me at a meeting to begin pulling together the great coalition we had to defeat amnesty in the past. But your help is needed if we are to succeed.

We will need you to get on the phones, to write letters, e-mail, and fax Congress-and to recruit friends to do the same. Republicans need to be informed that they will never get out of the wilderness unless they become bold and tough on immigration. And as for the Democrats they need to see and feel the anger that talk of amnesty generates among Americans-only then they will back away. They want a smooth couple years until the off year elections and will not risk a popular uprising in the early days of the Administration.

Our job-let them know this is just what they’re going to get if amnesty is on the table.

More at Team America PAC’s website here.

MichelleMalkin.com

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OBAMA'S UNDEMOCRATIC PLAN FOR CENTRAL PLANNING ON CARBON

by The Heritage Foundation

It is looking more and more likely that President Obama will not try to pass any new cap and trade legislation through Congress. This is not the good news it appears to be. Instead, Obama will try and marshal legal authority from existing statutes, primarily the Clean Air Act, to force the reorganization of the entire U.S. economy (all businesses use energy) without any meaningful input from the American people.

Yes, there will be new legislation with tons of pork barrel spending for ‘green jobs’ that will be part of whatever stimulus the Democratic Congress puts on Obama’s desk on January 20th. But this is only the spending side of the equation. After that look for the Obama administration to abandon the democratic process and focus on a 100% bureaucrat generated plan to cap carbon. Three pieces of evidence for you:

1) Obama appointed Georgetown law professor Lisa Heinzerling as co-chair of EPA transition team. She authored one of the key briefs for the Mass v. EPA Supreme Court case. She is also a big proponent of using the CAA to sanction state based regional cap and trade programs:

She and many other legal experts believe that under the Clean Air Act, the EPA can also administer a national cap-and-trade program by writing federal rules to unify independent regional carbon markets. Already, 23 states and four Canadian provinces are forming such markets, with 10 additional states being brought into the process as observers. Experts believe the EPA can promulgate an additional set of regulations that would control transportation emissions — everything from cars and trucks to boats and airplanes.

2) Obama appointed Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman as the other co-chair. Sussman is also big proponent of using the CAA to sanction state based regional cap and trade programs:

In fact, a new administration could enforce new global warming regulations with common sense, focusing on large emitters of greenhouse gases to achieve reasonable reductions while spurring trillions of dollars worth of economic growth and green-collar jobs.

3) This roadmap for administrative climate action has been widely circulated on the left too:

Understandably, in the absence of leadership from the present administration, a great deal of attention has focused on Congressional proposals to address climate change. Yet statutes already on the books provide much legal authority for swift action on this most pressing environmental problem. In this essay, we propose a wide and effective array of actions that the new administration could take – without new legislation – to begin to tackle climate change.

When the carbon capping debate is held out in the open, we crush the left every time. Open debate exposes the facts that carbon capping will kill the economy, will probably not reduce carbon emissions, and, even if it did, the emission reduction targets would not have any consequential effects on global temperatures. The left can net get away with sneaking this policy past the American people.

The Foundry Blog

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IRAN: AN INSANE ASYLUM GOES NUCLEAR

by Roger L. Simon

Does Mumbai give the Israelis license to bomb Iranian nuclear installations? That thought certainly want through my head in the last few days. And I imagine I am not the only one. Mumbai was a true act of religious mania and what we are witnessing in Iran is the same thing writ large. Does anyone want a country where police go around cracking down on “satanic dress“and closing un-Islamic barber shops to have nuclear arms? Sure, not all the mullahs are religious lunatics. Some are merely Mafioisi profiteering on religious lunatics (a relief!), but enough of them believe their psychotic ideology to take this really seriously. A nuclear armed Iran would be liking giving a loaded gun to an infant. No wonder the Israelis are preparing. Wouldn’t you under the circumstances?

Now, I am not advocating the “Barbara Ann” solution. But I am sure the Israelis are doing their saber rattling to wake everyone up, increase the sanctions. Will this happen? In this greedy world, I doubt it. But you gotta try.

Roger L. Simon

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A SETBACK IN THE WAR ON TERROR, FROM OVERSEAS

by The Heritage Foundation

A European Union court yesterday annulled a new move by the E.U. to freeze the assets of an exiled Iranian opposition group in the latest in a string of legal setbacks to its blacklist of suspected terrorist groups. This is a setback for European efforts to fight terrorism. The group that was involved, the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), has a long history of supporting terrorism and has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

The PMOI is a non-democratic Marxist terrorist group that was part of the broad revolutionary coalition that overthrew the Shah of Iran but then was purged in 1981, after which it aligned itself with Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. While this cult-like group is one of the best-organized exile organizations, it has little support inside Iran because of its alliance with archenemy Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War.

Moreover, the PMO resorted to terrorism against the Shah’s regime and was responsible for the assassinations of at least four American military officers in Iran during the 1970s. It organized demonstrations in support of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and against the release of the American hostages in 1981. Although the group did perform a useful service when it provided information that helped to expose Iran’s covert nuclear program in 2002, it remains a radical group with a proclivity for violence.

The Foundry Blog

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CHRISTMAS OUT, MUSLIM HOLIDAY IN

by Sweetness & Light

A MODERN MANTRA FROM CHAIRMAN BILL

by InsiderOnline