The Left’s valentine to defiant jihad-enabler Lynne Stewart

By Michelle Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/

February 7, 2014

Lynne Stewart outside of Federal Court in 2009.

What are you doing for Valentine’s Day? Bleeding-heart progressives across the country are raising money for “an evening of music, song and sharing love for recently released People’s Lawyer Lynne Stewart.” Warm fuzzies for one of the world’s most notorious terrorist helpers? I can’t think of a more stomach-turning way to mark the holiday.

Thanks to the Obama administration, Stewart walked out of prison on New Year’s Eve. She is reportedly suffering stage-four breast cancer. Now she’s passing the plate among her supporters, asking them to foot the bill for her health insurance deductibles and co-pays, as well as for a “special diet, vitamins and other healing methods.” What, no Obamacare?

Has Stewart shown exceptional remorse or good behavior to warrant such compassion? Don’t forget: Both the Bureau of Prisons and a federal judge previously had denied Stewart’s petition for a compassionate release, but a U.S. Attorney intervened. This preferential treatment is extraordinary: Since 1992, the annual average number of prisoners who receive compassionate release has been less than two-dozen.

Let me remind you of what she did, who benefited, who died and how she has acted since being caught red-handed and freed.

Stewart was convicted in 2005 of helping terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman — the murderous Blind Sheik — smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client’s court-ordered isolation. Rahman, Stewart’s “political client,” had called on Muslims to “destroy” the West, “burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air or land.” He issued bloody fatwas against U.S. “infidels” that inspired the 1993 WTC bombing, the 1997 massacre of Western tourists in Luxor, Egypt, and the 9/11 attacks.

Stewart ignored a judge’s communications ban, transmitting Rahman’s edicts of violence to fellow jihadist Rifa’l Ahman Tara in Egypt. She smuggled out a coded order to his followers lifting a ceasefire between his terrorist group and the Egyptian government. She personally delivered one of the messages to a Reuters reporter.

Far from the innocent grandma her supporters continue to portray her as, Stewart was caught on video making distracting “covering noises” — tapping the table, shaking a water jar — for the Blind Sheik’s translator to evade the communications ban.

After receiving a measly initial sentence of 28 months for abetting terrorism, the disbarred civil rights attorney was re-sentenced to 10 years in jail. A federal panel of judges felt the need to spotlight her smugness. “From the moment she committed the first act for which she was convicted, through her trial, sentencing and appeals,” Judge Robert Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, “Stewart has persisted in exhibiting what seems to be a stark inability to understand the seriousness of her crimes.”

Stewart failed to understand “the breadth and depth of the danger in which” her crimes had “placed the lives and safety of unknown innocents, and the extent to which they constituted an abuse of her trust and privilege as a member of the bar,” the panel concluded.

This jihad-coddling grandmother remains defiant. She called 9/11 an “armed struggle.” Upon her initial sentencing, she boasted that she could serve the term “standing on her head.” After she was convicted of aiding and abetting Rahman, she told an interviewer she “would do it again.” She has repeatedly told liberal sycophantic journalists that she would not have done anything differently.

After a jubilant return to New York City upon her release last month, Stewart thanked Louis Farrakhan, bragged about her (convicted cop-killer) Mumia Abu Jamal pin, condemned the government that had just released her and vowed to continue her radical advocacy of “political prisoners.” No regrets, no remorse, no repentance.

Stewart doesn’t need to solicit President Obama and the White House for a Valentine’s Day donation. They delivered her the biggest “LUV YA” candy heart a terror-enabler could ask for: her release papers sealed with a kiss. XOXO.

Thank you, Hobby Lobby

by Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/

November 27, 2013

David Green, the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Religious liberty is front and center on the nation’s Thanksgiving table. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. The family-owned craft store company is intrepidly challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare’s abortion coverage mandate. Hobby Lobby’s faithful owners deserve our thanks and praise as they defend freedom of conscience for all Americans.

The privately held retail chain’s story is the quintessential American Dream. Founder David Green started out making mini picture frames in his Oklahoma garage in 1970. He recruited his two sons, Mart and Steve, to pitch in at an early age. The family’s first establishment took up a tiny 300 square feet of retail space. Hobby Lobby now runs nearly 600 stores across the country, employs 13,000 people and topped $2 billion in sales in 2009.

The Greens’ Christian faith is at the heart of how they do business. They are dedicated to integrity and service for their customers and their employees. The debt-free company commits to “honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles,” as well as “serving our employees and their families by establishing a work environment and company policies that build character, strengthen individuals and nurture families.”

The company donates more than 10 percent of its income every year to charity. All stores are closed on Sundays to allow employees more family and worship time. It’s the company’s dedication to biblical principles that led Hobby Lobby in April to raise full-time employees’ starting minimum wage to $14 an hour at a time when many other firms have been forced to slash both wages and benefits.

“We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees,” CEO David Green pointed out. “We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy; we’ve raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80 percent above minimum wage.”

Many of Hobby Lobby’s employees are single moms working two jobs. Green doesn’t need federal mandates to tell him how to treat and retain good employees. He does it because it is the “right thing to do.” While countless businesses have been forced to drop health insurance for their shrinking workforces during the Age of Obama, Hobby Lobby headquarters opened anonsite comprehensive health care and wellness clinic in 2010 with no co-pays.

Hobby Lobby employees are covered under the company’s self-insured health plan, which brings us back to the company’s legal case. Last September, Hobby Lobby sued the feds over Obamacare’s “preventive services” mandate, which forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, abortion-inducing drugs including the “morning after pill” and “week after pill” in their health insurance plan. The company risked fines up to $1.3 million per day for defying the government’s coercive abridgement of their First Amendment rights.

As Lori Windham, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby in its court battles, said at the time: “Washington politicians cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living. Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs.” Amen.

This summer, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals exempted Hobby Lobby from the abortion mandate and allowed the business to avoid those crippling fines while pursuing its case. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether Democratic Party pandering trumps bedrock constitutional principles.

Planned Parenthood femme-a-gogues, Senate Democratic leaders, Christian-bashing celebs and atheist bullies immediately attacked Hobby Lobby for “denying women access to birth control.” The lies and religious persecution, especially on the eve of America’s national holiday commemorating the pilgrims’ escape thereof, are unconscionable. Hobby Lobby’s company health insurance plan covers 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives required under the Obamacare mandate — at no additional costs to employees. What Hobby Lobby refuses to do is to be forced to cover abortifacients that violate the owners’ faith and conscience.

Every employee is aware of the founders’ history, devout work ethic and faith. No one is forced to work at Hobby Lobby. If workers want birth control, they can pay for it themselves. (And unlike so many other service workers, they have more take-home pay to spend on the “preventive services” of their choice.)

The intolerant control freaks at the White House took to Twitter right after the Supreme Court announcement to pile on the pander to the Sandra Fluke/Lena Dunham wing of the Democratic Party. “Birth control should be a woman’s decision, not her boss’s,” Team Obama tweeted. That’s precisely the argument against federally mandated health care benefits enforced by government in violation of religious liberty and subsidized by employers and taxpayers against their will. Let’s pray the Supreme Court sees the light.

Taxpayers Revolt Against Park Closures

Park visitors are choosing to disregard barriers and Beltway gamesmanship. 

By Michelle Malkin

http://www.nationalreview.com/

October 9, 2013

(Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Could this be the end of Monument Syndrome? Across the country, ordinary Americans are rising up in revolt against the old Washington tactic of closing public parks and memorials during selective government “shutdowns” to score political points. Tax-paying tourists are tossing off the orange traffic cones and “Barrycades.” Enough is enough.

The movement started with waves of World War II veterans who flew to D.C. last week as part of the Honor Flight Network. (The nonprofit group brings our surviving heroes to visit the memorials that honor their service and sacrifice.) The vets and volunteers breached the fences last week, exposing the tone-deaf tactics of President Obama’s Spite House. Honor Flight visits continue this week, and more vets vowed to defy the cynical closures.

They are not alone. At Gettysburg National Military Park, tourists broke through barriers and posed for pictures on the battlefields with notes reading, “Catch us if you can.” One visitor reported that motorists formed impromptu caravans as rangers chased them. “Strength in numbers,” they tweeted.

At Mount Rushmore and in the Badlands of South Dakota, families barreled over hazard cones. Their photos went viral on Facebook. In Wisconsin, GOP governor Scott Walker defied the National Park Service and opened state parks that Obamacrats wanted closed because they receive some federal dollars. At the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Missouri, a group of 20 protesters defied threats of arrest to enter the park.

“This is to get some knowledge out there that the federal government has its fingers in everything, including our own land in our own states, and, out of spite, they’ll shut it all down,” Jackson resident Brian Bollmann told the local press.

In Michigan, tourists crossed police-style yellow tape and construction barrels to get to Munising Falls in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Twitter users posted photos of the broken barriers over the weekend. The Mining Journal reported on one visitor who simply stepped over the tape: “‘Well, that worked, huh?’ she asked rhetorically.” Take that, manipulative federal overlords.

At Zion National Park in Utah, hikers scaled the fences and wondered why so many supposedly furloughed workers were working to keep them out. One visitor, highlighted at my Twitter aggregator Twitchy.com, described her experience to me last week at the scenic tourist spot:

We were advised by the park ranger at the gate that we couldn’t stop our car at any time in the next 12 miles. To ensure that we didn’t pull over at any of the scenic viewpoints, cones were placed at every turnoff. That didn’t stop people, however, as many were getting out, moving cones and quickly taking pictures. People were incredulous at that restriction, as if they could somehow shut down our ability to enjoy our surroundings. . . . I did enjoy seeing an elderly couple, in a display of civil disobedience, leave their car and walk hand in hand on the red rock.

Welcome to Occupy America. It’s a protest movement for all ages against business-as-usual Washington. Thanks to social media, citizens outside the Beltway are now able to voice their disgust in an unprecedented way. Through Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, they are directly disrupting the well-worn politics of government parks-and-wreck extortion.

From closing down parts of the ocean around Florida to booting elderly citizens from their private homes on Lake Mead to shutting down private restaurants and farms that just happen to sit on federal land, the Democrats’ overreach has finally backfired.

The explanation for this ridiculous Obama obstructionism can be summed up in one word: Control. Control of the people. Control of the partisan narrative. Monument Syndrome, perfected under the Clinton administration, is about inflicting the most visible pain on citizens to demonize political opponents. Big-government advocates in the media enabled the manipulators.

For decades, taxpayers were passive pawns in this gamesmanship. No more. Monument Syndrome, R.I.P.

— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. © 2013 Creators.com

9/11: America’s unfinished business

By Michelle Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/

September 11, 2013

The second tower bursts into flames (Sara K. Schwittek/Reuters)

we head to Syria to avenge the mass murder of their kids, how about we finish avenging ours?

When I say “finish,” of course I really mean “start.” A dozen years after the 9/11 attacks, the trials against the jihadist plotters who incinerated pregnant women, firefighters, grandparents, newlyweds, toddlers and schoolkids on their first-ever plane rides have yet to begin.

Justice not only has been delayed and denied. Justice has been demoted, disowned and deserted. Justice for the 9/11 victims and families isn’t blindfolded. She’s gagged and hogtied.

The terror-coddling Obama White House squandered precious years trying to shut down Gitmo to appease the peaceniks, transnationalists and Muslim grievance-mongers. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder arrogantly attempted to shove civilian trials of terrorists — which would have been held a stone’s throw from Ground Zero — down New Yorkers’ throats. Ever since, Team Obama has dragged its feet on military tribunals for the al-Qaida crew.

If we’re lucky — that’s a big if — the death penalty war crimes trials for KSM and his co-conspirators may begin in the fall of 2014. Maybe. Thanks to cunning delays, made-for-media theatrics and stomach-turning whining by the Gitmo detainees, the journey to hold the 9/11 plotters accountable has become a vulgar joke.

The last time pretrial hearings were held, defendants used their international platform to complain about bathroom breaks and Navy food, which one accused terrorist equated to “torture.” Despite being supplied with fresh halal meals that comport with their Muslim dietary requirements, one member of KSM’s posse complained that his lunches did not include extra condiments such as olives and honey.

Back at Club Gitmo, other jihadi suspects continue to enjoy taxpayer-subsidized movie nights, art and English classes, and Nintendos and PlayStations. And if the clogged wheels of justice for 9/11 victims weren’t bad enough, don’t forget: In 2009, the Obama administration dropped the charges against 2000 U.S.S. Cole bombing suspect, Gitmo detainee and former Persian Gulf Operations Chief for al-Qaida Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — and has made no progress on bringing him to justice since reinstating the charges (only under public pressure) in 2011.

How is it that America is poised to use our military — the American people’s, not Obama’s — for a humanitarian intervention that may very well aid and abet the same barbaric forces that brought unprecedented death and destruction to New York City, Shanksville, Pa., and Washington, D.C., just 12 short unavenged years ago?

How is it that we prosecuted 2009 Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan quicker than his bloodthirsty Islamist brethren who orchestrated the 2001 terror plot that killed more than 2,700 innocent men, women and children?

Remember: The Bush administration first brought military charges of conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, hijacking aircraft and terrorism against KSM and his Koran-inspired killing crew in 2008. Obama recklessly aborted those military tribunals in his bleeding-heart social justice bid to provide full U.S. constitutional protections for the foreign soldiers of Allah.

It took the united stand of 9/11 families, veterans, anti-jihad watchdogs and first responders in Manhattan in late 2009 to force Obama and Holder to retreat. They raised their voices to keep 9/11 war crimes trials out of civilian courts, foreign terrorists off of U.S. soil and America from returning to pre-9/11 days when the feds responded to deadly terrorist attacks with arrest warrants. The 9/11 Never Forget Coalition refused to stand on the sidelines while Obama’s soft-on-jihad lawyers moved to grant war criminals the same rights as American citizens while endangering the safety of New Yorkers.

Debra Burlingame, founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America and sister of American Airlines Flight 77 pilot Charles Frank “Chic” Burlingame III (the flight the jihadists crashed into the Pentagon) sounded the alarm and warned the Obama/Holder brigade: “We will fight you all the way.”

That’s the unapologetic vigilance America was supposed to have adopted after the towers fell, the planes crashed and the ashes choked the air. Instead, America’s leaders have allowed jihadists to make a mockery of justice. Muslim Brotherhood radicals waltz freely in and out of the nation’s capital. Border security remains a joke. A functioning entry-exit program for foreign visa-holders is still nonexistent. There still is no systemic, coherent and unapologetic plan to keep Islamic radicals from spreading their hate and endangering Americans in our military, prisons and schools.

I’m sick of 9/11 anniversary ceremonies by politicians who pay lip service to peace and justice for our country, but refuse to secure them all the way, every day. Remembrance is worthless without resolve. Resolve is useless without action.

Want to honor the 9/11 dead? Take care of unfinished business here at home. Put America first.

One year later: Camp Bastion families still fighting for truth

By Michelle Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/

September 6, 2013

Marines kneel beside a battlefield cross to pay final respects to Sgt. Bradley Atwell on Sept. 20. He died in the Sept. 14 attack on Camp Bastion, Afghanistan. (Cpl. Mark Garcia / Marine Corps)

Next week, “never forget” will resound across America as citizens mark a dozen years since the 9/11 terrorist attack and one year since the bloody disaster in Benghazi. But who will remember the American heroes who came under siege at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on 9/14/12?

Two heroic U.S. Marines — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — perished in the monstrous battle last year, and nearly a dozen others were injured. What happened at Camp Bastion and whether the Obama administration has learned from the deadly incident are timely questions as Washington prepares for war again in a jihadi-infested region.

And as military families know, there is no such thing as “no boots on the ground.”

The families of the fallen at Camp Bastion are still waiting for the results of an official CENTCOM probe into last year’s attack. They hear that members of Congress will get briefed on the investigation before the families themselves get the details about what happened to their loved ones — and who bears responsibility for the security lapses that enabled the attack.

Atwell’s aunt, Deborah Hatheway, told me: “We are hoping for the best, and that _the attack will always be remembered as one of the most horrific attacks by the Taliban, and that they will never be able to do this again.” A Capitol Hill source tells me the report could be ready by the end of the month.

Refresher: Three days after the bloody siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion. The base is a British-run NATO compound that adjoins our Marines’ Camp Leatherneck. The meticulously coordinated siege by 15 Taliban infiltrators — dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons — resulted in two deaths and the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam.

Six Harrier jets were destroyed; three refueling stations were wiped out; six hangars were damaged. The Taliban animals released video showing their jihadi training prep. The attack came exactly six months after a failed suicide attack targeting then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

As I first reported in June, relatives of the Marines killed in the raid learned on their own that their loved ones were left vulnerable to attack by military leaders who outsourced watchtower security on the base to soldiers from Tonga. The families zeroed in on Maj. Gen. Charles “Mark” Gurganus, who recently returned to the U.S. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, as the man responsible for shortchanging security at Bastion.

Gurganus is the same one who ordered Marines to disarm — immediately after the failed attack on Panetta — because he wanted them “to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners.” Neglect of security at Bastion was widely known.

This past weekend, during the Labor Day holiday, military leaders quietly announced that at least four Marines who served with the Harrier squadron that came under fire at Camp Bastion have been awarded the Purple Heart. They are: Maj. Greer Chambless, Lance Cpl. Cole Collums, Sgt. Jonathan Cudo and former Cpl. Matthew Eason. According to the official news release, reported by the Military Times, the Marines were part of the unit that Raible led in a counterattack on the insurgents. Sixteen of the 50 Marines on hand at the time pushed out of the hangar, said Staff Sgt. Jesse Colburn, an ejection seat mechanic who was on the ground during the raid.

Cpl. William Waterstreet reported on the Purple Heart ceremony at the Yuma, Ariz., Marine Corps Air Station: “When the attack began, there were no friendly forces between the Marines of VMA-211 and the insurgents, so it fell to these Marines to act as the first line of defense for Camp Bastion. … Raible called on his Marines to take up arms and fight with limited ammunition, without body armor, automatic weapons, grenades or support against an enemy force of unknown size, strength or location in the dead of night; his Marines volunteered immediately.”

A new article in GQ magazine this month detailed how the courageous “mechanics and pilots turned defenders and riflemen … undoubtedly prevented a greater catastrophe.” Their actions deserve public attention far and wide. And the families deserve accountability. Yet, the Battle Rattle blog of the Military Times website noted something curious: The Marine Corps “did not disclose details about the Aug. 1 Purple Heart ceremony until nearly a month later.” The news was buried on a holiday weekend. President Obama has breathed not a word. Why?

September 11 was supposed to have taught us to collect the dots and connect the dots, to never underestimate Koran-inspired jihadi warriors, and to never subvert our security to indulge deadly political correctness. From 9/11 to Fort Hood to Benghazi to Bastion, it’s not whether we’ve forgotten that matters most. It’s whether we have learned.

***

Statement from Donnella Raible, widow of Lt. Col. Christopher Raible:

It’s been nearly one year since my husband was killed during an attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. I join an unfortunate cohort of families who have lost loved ones since the War on Terror began. And today, our service members are still fighting and deploying and perishing as they have been for the past 12 years. Simply put – our all-volunteer force has and always will answer the call of duty. Unfortunately many military members and their families have lost faith that our nation’s leaders will perform the duties we elected them to carry out. While Congress bickers about even more military action in Syria, sequestration has left far too many military families, the same ones whose Marines and soldiers fight today, untethered and exposed. This is unacceptable and Congress should be held accountable. I believe our leaders should spend more time crafting policy that works on behalf of our citizens rather than playing politics.

***
Previous:

June 21, 2013 Uncovering the Camp Bastion cover-up

May 1, 2013 The Camp Bastion Cover-Up

November 14, 2012 Camp Bastion Families Want Answers About Afghanistan

October 26, 2012 What about the Camp Bastion attack?

September 28, 2012 Deafening silence about the Camp Bastion attack

September 14, 2012 Jihad Friday gets bloodier: Attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, 2 Marines reportedly killed

How Oberlin Manufactured the Hate-Crime Hoax of the Year

By Michelle Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/

August 23, 2013

Tom Weston, lay leader at the First United Methodist Church, talks about the recent racial incidents that occurred at Oberlin College. The incidents turned out to be a hoax. (AP)

Busted. Stone-cold busted. Just as I suspected, “progressive” pranksters at Oberlin College have been definitively unmasked as the perpetrators of phony campus “hate crimes” that scored international headlines in March. The blabbermouth academic administrators who helped fuel the hysteria are now running for cover.

The Associated Press, USA Today, The New York Times, MSNBC,Yahoo News and the Huffington Post were among the media outlets that trumpeted the story of supposed racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism run amok at my alma mater. Throughout the winter, anti-black and anti-gay graffiti, swastikas, and a shadowy figure in a “KKK hood” surfaced on the tiny campus outside Cleveland, Ohio. Black Entertainment Television Newsdecried the hate outbreaks and “KKK sighting.”

Because of my firsthand knowledge of Oberlin’s long history of self-manufactured hate-crime incidents, the fake-hate-crime alarm bells went off immediately for me when I read the reports. Back in the 1990s, race-obsessed nutballs at Oberlin College cooked up a horrid hate-crime hoax. Asian-American students claimed that a phantom racist had spray-painted anti-Asian racial epithets on a campus landmark rock. It turned out that it was a warped Asian-American student who perpetrated the dirty deed.

Student newspapers were filled with complaints about imaginary racism. One Asian-American student accused a library worker of racism after the poor staffer asked the grievance-mongering student to lower the blinds where she was studying. A black student accused an ice-cream shop owner of racism after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table because she hadn’t purchased any items from his store.

My suspicions about the latest “hate” crime were bolstered by police statements that the “KKK hood”-wearing menace was actually a female student wrapped in a blanket. Hollywood darling and Oberlin alumnus Lena Dunham was undaunted, however, in ginning up emotional calls for Obie solidarity on Twitter, which the AP dutifully reported as “news.”My warnings and reports on previous Obie hoaxes, alas, were not deemed AP-newsworthy.

The orgy of self-flagellation swelled. Liberal grievance-mongers applauded the administration’s decision to shut down classes. Faculty, students and opportunists took to the airwaves and the Internet to bemoan “white privilege,” institutional bigotry, lack of diversity, yada, yada, yada.

And now, the rest of the story. According to police reports published byChuck Ross of The Daily Caller News Foundation this week, two students had ‘fessed up to most of the incidents (and fellow students suspect they are responsible for all of them). The Oberlin Police Department identified the hoaxers as Dylan Bleier (a student worker bee for President Obama’s Organizing for Action and a member of the Oberlin College Democrats) and Matthew Alden. Bleier told police the pair posted inflammatory signs and a Nazi flag around campus to “joke” and “troll” their peers.

Investigators “caught them red-handed” trying to circulate anti-Muslim fliers, and a search of Bleier’s email confirmed he had used a fake account to harass a female student. Cops told Oberlin President Marvin Krislov, but he failed to pursue any criminal action. The two students were removed from campus before the bogus “KKK” brouhaha and news-making shutdown.

Krislov not only remained silent about the two pranksters, but he also stoked the fires of political correctness and helped fuel the false notion that real bigotry had pervaded the campus. The spring edition of the Oberlin College alumni magazine opened with a self-congratulatory essay from Krislov titled “A Fitting Response.”

After perversely bragging about the “national and international news” headlines on the “bias incidents (that) disrupted our campus community,” Krislov clucked that “similar things have occurred at other colleges.” Which, of course, is inadvertently true. As I’ve reported for 20 years, American college campuses are the most fertile grounds for fake hate.

Krislov then praised “students, faculty, staff, alumni and fellow Oberlin residents” who “turned hate into an opportunity to educate.” Of course, “hate” had nothing to do with it. And the police reports suggest that Krislov knew it. The rash of “intolerance” that littered the Oberlin campus was a symptom of juvenile delinquency and perverse self-delusion. Instead of examining their guilt in coddling hate-crime hoaxers, Krislov giddily promoted new efforts “strengthening the emphasis on diversity.”

There are other adults who deserve to be called out. As Cornell law professor and blogger William Jacobson, who has pressed the administration for months about the cover-up, notes: “Oberlin continues the wall of silence which delayed for months disclosure of the hoax. It’s time for Oberlin to reveal who knew what, and when, particularly as to the oversight exercised by the Board of Trustees.”

Sad to say, this is the sorry state of liberal arts colleges in America today: Extreme identity politics, multiculturalism and pedagogical self-indulgence are creating a generation of race trolls enabled by tenured cultural Marxist punks raking in beaucoup bucks. The bursting of the higher-ed bubblecan’t come fast enough.

Uncovering the Camp Bastion cover-up

by Michelle Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

Sgt. Bradley Atwell, left, and Lt. Col. Christopher Raible were killed when insurgents attacked Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on Sept. 14.

All it takes is one crack for a stone wall to start crumbling. Nine months after the deadly 9/14 raid on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, the families of two fallen Marines may finally get some answers. Real accountability, of course, is another story.

A formal internal investigation into lax security at the base — a British-run NATO compound that adjoins our Marines’ Camp Leatherneck — is now under way. A few members of Congress are putting pressure on the administration for the truth. And a couple of mainstream reporters are digging deeper.

More, please. And faster. Camp Bastion belongs in the bloody scandal lexicon with Benghazi and Fast and Furious. This trio of national security disasters under the Obama administration didn’t just involve run-of-the-mill corruption and cover-ups. It cost American lives.

As I’ve been reporting in a series of columns and blog posts over the past year, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan last fall — three days after the deadly siege on our consulate in Libya and after months of prior security incidents and warnings. Fifteen jihadists disguised in stolen American combat fatigues penetrated the complex. They used rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and other weapons to wipe out nearly an entire squadron of Marine Harrier jets worth an estimated $200 million.

Along with the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam, two heroic U.S. Marines — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — were killed in the battle, and nearly a dozen others were injured. Military officials refused to release details of the fateful budget and strategy decisions that led to the attack. But Deborah Hatheway, aunt of Sgt. Atwell and the family’s spokesperson, and other Camp Bastion families learned on their own that their loved ones were left vulnerable to attack by military leaders who outsourced watchtower security on the base to soldiers from Tonga.

The neglect of security at Bastion was widely known. Nick Francona, a former Marine Corps Ground Intelligence Officer with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, who served as a Scout Sniper Platoon Commander in Helmand Province in 2011, recounted on Foreign Policy magazine’s The Best Defense blog in April: “It was obvious to even a casual observer that many of the posts were unmanned and were comically left with a ‘green Ivan’ silhouette target as a halfhearted attempt at deterrence.”

Francona added: “The attack only occurred because of an egregious failure in basic infantry practices. … It is painfully obvious that this attack would not have been successful, or likely even attempted, if not for multiple security failures at Leatherneck/Bastion.”

The families zeroed in on Maj. Gen. Charles “Mark” Gurganus, who recently returned to the U.S. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, as the man responsible for shortchanging security at Bastion. Gurganus was the same one who ordered Marines to disarm — immediately after a failed jihadi attack on then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last year — because he wanted them “to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners.”

The Camp Bastion families are not the only ones scrutinizing Gurganus’ decisions. A few weeks ago, Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran reported that the U.S. military has finally launched a formal probe into whether Gurganus and his subordinates bear responsibility for lax security at Bastion. A planned promotion for Gurganus has been put on hold.

Chandrasekaran confirmed that watchtowers were indeed left to Tongans (notorious at the base for sleeping on the job). In addition, reports Chandrasekaran, “Security patrols of the perimeter, which were conducted by the Marines … had been scaled back substantially in the months leading up to the attack.” Simply blaming the Tongans, however, is not accountability. U.S. staff decisions “made it easier for the Taliban to reconnoiter the compound and then enter without resistance,” according to Chadrasekaran’s sources with direct knowledge of the incident.

While U.S. Central Command investigates, there is now movement on Capitol Hill to help Camp Bastion families whose information requests have been stymied. Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., has written Marine/CENTCOM leadership on behalf of the victims’ families. (Sgt. Atwell and his family are from Indiana.) Rokita told me in a statement this week: “This is about transparency and accountability. I want to make sure that Sgt. Atwell’s family, Lt. Col. Raible’s family and the American people get the full truth about the Camp Bastion attack.”

It’s a start. But as with Benghazi and Fast and Furious, getting the truth about Camp Bastion is only half the battle. Truth without consequences is a recipe for more dead Americans.

***
Previous:

The Camp Bastion Cover-Up – May 1, 2013

Camp Bastion Families Want Answers About Afghanistan – November 14, 2012

What about the Camp Bastion attack? – October 16, 2012

Deafening silence about the Camp Bastion attack – September 28, 2012

Jihad Friday gets bloodier: Attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, 2 Marines reportedly killed – September 14, 2012

The Camp Bastion Cover-Up

by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate

http://michellemalkin.com/
May 1, 2013

Sgt. Bradley Atwell, left, and Lt. Col. Christopher Raible were killed when insurgents attacked Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on Sept. 14.

Do you remember what happened last year on 9/14? Where are the White House phone calls for the families who continue to grieve? What is being done to prevent another fatal attack like the one on 9/14? And why is the full truth being withheld from the American public?

Benghazi isn’t the only bloody disaster being covered up by the Obama administration. As I reported in a series of columns and blog posts last fall, three days after the deadly siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Two heroic U.S. Marines — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — were killed in the battle. Many fallen and surviving Marines have been honored for their brave, quick-thinking actions to save their comrades and civilians caught in the crossfire.

Family members are angry that military brass are still trying to suppress details of the fateful budget and strategic decisions that led to the attack. But they won’t stay silent. “This is political,” one Camp Bastion relative told me this week. “Just like Benghazi, they don’t want people to know.”

In case you were sleeping or had forgotten: The meticulously coordinated siege at Camp Bastion by 15 Taliban infiltrators — dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons — resulted not only in two deaths and nearly a dozen injuries, but also in the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam. Camp Bastion is Britain’s main military base in Afghanistan; it’s adjacent to our Marines’ Camp Leatherneck.

Eight irreplaceable U.S. aircraft were destroyed or put out of action during the raid. A trio of refueling stations was decimated; a half-dozen hangars were damaged. The attack came exactly six months after a failed jihadi suicide attack targeting former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Camp Bastion family members are hearing that U.S. and British military leaders left their loved ones vulnerable to attack by outsourcing watchtower security on the base to soldiers from Tonga, who were known to fall asleep on the job. Deborah Hatheway, aunt of Sgt. Atwell and the family’s spokesperson, is naming names and mincing no words. She says Major General Charles “Mark” Gurganus, who recently returned to the U.S. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, was ultimately responsible for skimping on security patrols. “He might as well have made it easier for the Taliban by cutting the perimeter fence himself and putting out the welcome mat,” Hatheway told me.

This is the same Gurganus who ordered Marines to disarm — immediately after the failed jihadi attack on Panetta last year — because he wanted them “to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners.”

Hatheway says her family has learned that “it took over an hour before any of the other coalition forces arrived to help the Marines, who were already engaged with the terrorists and had it under control.” In addition, she says, they’ve learned that those on the ground did not have “proper protective gear available … or properly functioning weapons.”

Bastion families have raised questions with politicians and Pentagon officials in Washington, but are being forced to jump through Freedom of Information Act hoops to get to the bottom of the story. If ever.

In the meantime, a few officers in the know have begun leaking to the press. A little-noticed article by Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran two weeks ago reported that “several officials with direct knowledge of the assault said in recent interviews that staffing decisions by U.S. and British commanders weakened the base’s defenses, making it easier for the insurgents to reconnoiter the compound and enter without resistance.”

Cue the stonewalling. According to the Post, “When the House Armed Services Committee asked to see the initial Marine security review earlier this year, senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff deemed it insufficient for release and ordered the Marines to conduct a fuller review, military officials said. But that examination still fell short of an official investigation.” Neither the Marine Corps nor NATO plans to release the results of their separate investigations — in part, the Post reports, “to avoid embarrassing the British for leaving towers unmanned.”

There’s a whole lotta CYA going on. Sgt. Atwell’s family wants America to know: “This must end.”

***

Related: Former Marine officer Nick Francona blasts Maj. Gen. Gurganus’s glib assessment that the Taliban just got “lucky:”

The attack only occurred because of an egregious failure in basic infantry practices. The enemy may have been lucky to exploit these failures, but neglect was the precondition that set the stages for this attack. Intelligence analysts should not have to issue a warning of an impending frontal assault on a major military base for the base to be prepared.

There is an appalling lack of accountability and introspection that is evident in Maj. Gen. Gurganus’ comments about this incident. It is painfully obvious that this attack would not have been successful, or likely even attempted, if not for multiple security failures at Leatherneck/Bastion. This single episode highlights a much larger problem of accountability in the Marine Corps. It is nearly impossible to get fired for incompetence.

We need to stop treating the Marine Corps like a teachers union and demand excellence and accountability from our officer corps.

Open-borders reporters ban 'illegal immigrant'

By Michelle Malkin

http://www.nationalreview.com

April 3, 2013 12:00 A.M.

File this in the overflowing cabinet labeled, “No Wonder the Mainstream Media Is Dying.” On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced that it is banishing the phrase “illegal immigrant” from its famous stylebook. The world’s largest newsgathering outlet now advises reporters that “illegal” will “only refer to an action, not a person.”

The AP directs writers not to use the terms “illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented” anymore, except “in direct quotations.” It won’t be long before illegal border crossers, illegal visa overstayers, illegal deportation evaders, document fraudsters, and illegal-alien traffickers are all referred to as “our fellow Americans.” Without the quotations. Mark my words.
The AP explains that it wants to stop labeling people. Ha. This is the same organization that employs journalists who have repeatedly shown naked bias against tea-party members, gun owners, and pro-life activists. AP’s most famous White House correspondent, Jennifer Loven, was such a shameless water-carrier for the Democratic party that she earned the permanent nickname “Democratic operative Jennifer Loven” on the Internet. In 2010, she left AP to join an official Democratic-run lobbying and communications firm in D.C. Same difference.
I propose that we banish the term “journalist” when referring to members of mainstream news organizations who pose as neutral news-gathers while carrying out a blatantly ideological agenda. From now on, the AP’s staffers shall be described in my columns as “alleged practitioners of journalism,” and as “journalists” only when using direct quotations.
But I digress.
Just a few years ago, the AP resisted open-borders demands and the pressure of political correctness in favor of pithiness and precision. In 2010, a member of the “Diversity Committee” of the Society of Professional Journalists launched a campaign against “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien.” The crusading “journalist” argued that foreign law-breakers should instead be labeled “undocumented workers” or “undocumented immigrants.”
As I told Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle at the time, the idea that “undocumented workers” and “undocumented immigrants” are more objective labels than “illegal immigrants” is complete and utter nonsense. The euphemisms that mainstream “journalists” favor are far more politically loaded than the ones they’re trying to replace.
It’s a farce to call someone an “undocumented immigrant” whose pockets are overflowing with fake, fraudulent documents — and that is usually the case with many of the suspected illegal immigrants featured in AP stories. (Moreover, it is inaccurate to call someone whose employment history, criminal record, and welfare status are unknown an undocumented “worker.”)
At the time, the AP agreed. Their deputy standards editor David Minthorn told Boyle three short years ago: “The AP Stylebook created its entry on ‘illegal immigrant’ in 2004, in response to renewed debate over border security and the enforcement of immigration laws after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Together, the terms describe a person who resides in a country unlawfully by residency or citizenship requirements. Illegal immigrant . . . is accurate and neutral for news stories.”
So what changed? “Journalist” Kathleen Carroll, the AP’s executive editor, attributes the move to the “evolving” English language. I attribute it to the “evolving” transformation of once-neutral news organizations into brazenly transparent satellite lobbying outfits for the Left. It’s not media bias that’s the problem, of course. It’s the sanctimonious pretense of objectivity to which these alleged practitioners of journalism cling.
Just look at the ABC News coverage of the AP’s decision. “Journalist” Cristina Costantini praised the move and patted her own colleagues on the back for their progressivism. “Fusion, the ABC-Univision joint venture, does not use ‘illegal immigrant’ because we believe it dehumanizes those it describes and we find it to be linguistically inaccurate.” On her Twitter account, “journalist” Costantini gushed that the AP’s capitulation came “thanks to the hard work of great people like @joseiswriting.”
“@joseiswriting” is Jose Antonio Vargas, the former Washington Post reporter who spearheaded the whitewashing of our language and our laws on behalf of illegal aliens. In 2011, with great fanfare and elite media sympathy, Vargas publicly declared himself an “undocumented immigrant.” Except, as he himself confessed, Vargas had documents coming out of his ears — including a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card, and a Social Security card his grandfather doctored for him at a Kinko’s.
As I previously noted when Vargas shed his “journalist” costume in favor of full-fledged activist, he had committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. An immigration lawyer advised him to take responsibility for breaking the law and return to his native Philippines. Following the rules would have meant a ten-year bar to reentry into America. Making false claims of citizenship is a felony offense. Document fraud is a felony offense. Instead of accepting responsibility, Vargas used a friend’s address to obtain an Oregon driver’s license under false pretenses and duped his employers until the golden moment to confess — without any fear of punishment under the illegal alien-friendly Obama administration — arrived.
The persistent use of open-borders euphemisms championed by Vargas and Co. once again serves as the perfect illumination of the agenda-driven, dominant progressive media. They’re as activist inside their newsrooms as Vargas is out in the open. Vargas won’t rest until the legal definition of American citizenship is obliterated. And neither will his “journalist” colleagues cheering him on, whitewash brushes in hand.
— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. © 2013 Creators.com

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