Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud CIA Director John Brennan for telling the truth about the magnitude of the ISIS threat. They also shudder as more red flags are discovered that should have led authorities to the Orlando terrorist. And we react to a Vox writer urging Pres. Obama to ban all Americans from buying guns unilaterally.
News & Politics
‘This Bill is A Solution in Search of A Problem’
California state lawmakers are poised to advance legislation they say will promote greater equity at the state’s colleges and universities but religious freedom advocates say it’s just another attempt to advance the LGBT agenda by removing the ability of schools to determine their own criteria for selecting students and personnel and establishing codes of conduct.
The legislation is known as SB 1146, which amends the California Equity in Higher Education Act, or EHEA. As it currently stands, the statute forbids discrimination based on religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. But it also contains a significant exemption for religious colleges and universities. SB 1146 would change that.
“That state of affairs is unsatisfactory to the LGBT lobby in California. They want to dramatically restrict the scope of that exemption so that a liberal arts religious institution can no longer maintain, enforce and apply faith-based conduct standards for their students and employees,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Gregory Baylor, who also directs the group’s Religious Schools Team.
He says the problems with this are obvious.
“In essence, it restricts freedom of Christ-centered institutions of higher education in California that participate in the state tuition assistance program known as Cal Grants,” he said.
Given that countless other schools in California do not use religious criteria to evaluate applicants, staff and conduct, Baylor says there is no good reason to pursue this legislation.
“The reality of the matter is that these schools that have more traditional stances on religious issues, on moral issues, on sexual issues, are in a very tiny minority,” said Baylor.
“This bill is a solution in search of a problem. There is no problem, except in the eyes of these legislators that these schools hold ‘the wrong views’ on these controversial issues. So it doesn’t really accomplish anything but it does punish these schools for having these religious views,” said Baylor.
In addition, Baylor says removing the exemption could open Christian and other religious schools to a blizzard of lawsuits.
“You can imagine what sort of things could be called ‘religious discrimination’ by opponents of these sorts of institutions: required prayer, required attendance at weekly chapel exercises, required taking of classes that address theological issues from the perspective of the school’s faith,” said Baylor.
“That is a very serious problem for these religious institutions that want to maintain their religious character by what they do and who comprises their communities,” said Baylor.
Baylor says the Christian schools are fiercely opposed to such controls.
“This is about student choice. Many of them would like to choose a faith-based environment. They shouldn’t be disqualified from doing that simply because their school actually is religious and lives out its religious beliefs,” said Baylor.
SB 1146 has already passed in the California State Senate. Baylor says a series of committee meetings are scheduled in the State Assembly. Passage could come late this summer or early fall and head to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, who is very likely to sign it.
Baylor says the fight goes on to change the minds of lawmakers but he knows the math is working against him as the Democrats dominate the legislature.
“We think that if legislators in the assembly understand that this is really an assault on students, on low income and often minority populations of students, that that might motivate them to protect those students and protect those students that they have,” said Baylor.
“At the same time, there is a political reality, that’s there’s a two-thirds majority of Democrats and they tend to be more sympathetic to the gay rights agenda,” said Baylor, noting the bill passed the senate largely along party lines.
If SB 1146 does become law, Baylor expects legal challenges to follow soon after.
“I do think the bill violates constitutional protections of religious freedom, of freedom of association, equal protection of the laws. It would be very unsurprising to me if some of these schools and the students who would be harmed would commence litigation if this bill becomes law,” said Baylor.
Three Martini Lunch 6/16/16
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review groan as a new Wisconsin poll shows Trump dragging down Sen. Ron Johnson’s re-election hopes. They also slam Sen. Joe Manchin for suggesting that due process is the problem in stopping mass shootings. And they get whiplash as Hugh Hewitt insists Republicans stick with Donald Trump, just one week after declaring him a Stage IV cancer that must be removed.
Why Terrorism May Soon Get Much Worse Than Orlando
A former FBI agent who created the bureau’s first counter-terrorism training program says the FBI and many others in the federal government have lost their way and have no idea how to stop terrorism, a problem that he expects to get much worse in the coming months.
In addition to his time at the bureau, John Guandolo is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who served as a Marine Corps officer in the Gulf War. In contrast to President Obama’s recent comments, Guandolo says the government’s biggest mistake is failing to identify our enemy in any official capacity. He now works to train others in counter-terrorism through his website, “Understanding the Threat.”
“Since 9/11, we have actually failed to identify the threat in any professional manner at the national security level. We have yet to identify the threat, either in our strategic planning documents or our national security documents,” said Guandolo.
He says the consequences of failing to identify the threat have been ghastly.
“What that leads to is what we’ve seen in the last 15 years. We lost Iraq and Afghanistan. We have an incoherent domestic counter-terrorism strategy and our foreign policy is upside-down to where we’re literally, to the tune of more than $100 billion, the largest state sponsor of terrorism – Iran – on the planet,” said Guandolo.
And Guandolo says the problem is about to get a whole lot worse as the priorities of our enemies start shifting.
“The global Islamic movement says that it’s going to begin its turn from its total focus on the Islamic world, where it is seeking to impose Sharia law on the Muslim world first and then the non-Muslim world. That turn is going to begin this year,” said Guandolo.
What will that mean in the West?
“That means instead of a couple of people in San Bernardino, several people in Brussels and lone shooter in Orlando, you’re going to have dozens of jihadis doing multiple operations in conjunction with the Marxists and the socialists of groups like Black Lives Matter, which will be burning and looting cities like they did in Ferguson and Baltimore,” said Guandolo.
It’s in this context that he fears jihadists will attempt to trigger a major chaotic event.
“If those events are precipitated, which they likely will be, from a cyber attack, a power grid attack where power is lost in several states or something similar to that, then it’s truly going to be much more horrific,” said Guandolo.
He says stopping something like that will require massive improvement from the FBI and other relevant agencies. Guandolo says reports that the FBI had multiple chances to screen Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen and then ignored a concern from Disney that Mateen and his wife were casing the theme park, are signs the feds are not ready for prime time.
“There are a couple of problems here. The first is the total ignorance of the FBI leadership as to this problem. [FBI Director James Comey] said in his comments that they were still trying to confirm a motive. That should be a huge red flag for anybody listening to him or reading a transcript of the comments that he is clueless,” said Guandolo.
But Guandolo says the FBI wasn’t always clueless, namely when he created the bureau’s counter-terrorism training program in 2006. But it wasn’t long until politics undermined his work.
“Since then, programs like it that are run by people I trained have all been shut down because it’s not politically correct,” said Guandolo.
“The Muslim community said this offended them. Of course it offends them, because it identifies the leadership of the Muslim community as being members of the Muslim Brotherhood network here whose stated goal is civilization jihad. Americans have got to wake up to this immediately, because this is going to go downhill rapidly in the next 12-16 months,” said Guandolo.
He says the Orlando case is a perfect example of how the government allows a terrorist to slip through its fingers. He says the FBI’s interrogation policy is very weak.
“If you had him sitting there and said, ‘Are you a terrorist and do you know of any acts of terrorism that are being planned?’ and he were on a polygraph and he said, ‘No, I don’t,’ he would register as not being deceptive. That’s because in Islam a terrorist is somebody who kills a Muslim without right,” said Guandolo.
He says a subtle change would make a huge difference.
“If you asked the question, ‘Are you a jihadi? Are you aware of any jihadi plots or actions to support the jihad in the immediate future?’ and then he said no, he would register as deceptive. Something as simple as that 99.9 percent of law enforcement don’t understand,” said Guandolo.
Another simple but significant improvement in training, says Guandolo, is to make law enforcement personnel understand what motivates terrorists.
“One hundred percent (of captured terrorists) say they are jihadis waging jihad in the cause of Allah in order to impose Sharia and establish the Islamic State. Not only do they say the doctrine they are fighting for is Sharia, but their blueprint for everything they do is Sharia,” said Guandolo.
“The fact that we’re not teaching our federal agents and our combat warriors about Sharia is one of the reasons that we’re so catastrophically failing in identifying the threat. The threat doctrine is Sharia and anybody who subscribes to Sharia and seeks to impose it on others is the threat,” said Guandolo.
According to Guandolo, the bright spot in this frustration is the growing number of local law enforcement officials welcoming the basics of how to investigate possible threats. He says it’s making a big difference in many communities.
“Once you understand that, it changes how you do interviews, interrogations, basic investigations, when you do search warrants, when you stop somebody in a vehicle for a traffic violation. What you see and how they talk to you, you know how to interpret with the lens of somebody who actually understands the threat,” said Guandolo.
Three Martini Lunch 6/15/16
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review celebrate the dismissal of one charge against the man who exposed Planned Parenthood for its sales of baby body parts. We rip the FBI for not doing more after Disney warned them Omar Fateen was casing the park in April and we suggest setting up Mickey Mouse Clubhouse CTU in the spirit of “24.” And we rip Donald Trump for trying to convince the NRA to support banning gun sales to anyone on the No Fly List.
Obama ‘Radical Islam’ Rant ‘Counterproductive’
President Obama unloaded on Donald Trump and other Republicans for criticizing his refusal to label our enemy as “radical Islam,” saying that changing the term wouldn’t change anything other than giving more fuel to the propaganda from ISIS and other terrorist groups that the West really is at war with Islam.
But a top Trump foreign policy adviser says Obama has it exactly backwards, insisting that identifying the enemy creates clarity to the public and our allies and not creating distinctions actually risks the alienation of all Muslims.
On Tuesday, Obama made comments following his latest briefing in the wake of the horrific Orlando terrorist attack that left 49 dead and another 53 wounded. At the end of his comments, Obama unloaded on Trump and others who demand that Obama admit who we’re fighting.
“What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Would it bring in a military strategy that is served by this? The answer is none of the above,” said Obama.
Dr. Walid Phares is a top foreign policy adviser to Trump. He’s also a longtime terrorism and Middle East scholar and author most recently of “The Lost Spring.” He says Obama got it entirely wrong.
“The president’s statement is counter-productive to our counter-intelligence activity,” said Phares.
“Our analysts, at least since 2009, have been denied the perception that there is an ideology. They can use information about a specific jihadist ideology precisely because of what the president has said today. Therefore, we are missing an opportunity to detect a manifestation of that ideology which would allow us to stop the terrorists before they act,” said Phares.
He says accurately describing the enemy is imperative. He used World War II as an example.
“What would be the profit of calling Nazis Nazis or during the Cold War calling the Bolsheviks or Communists Communists? This is the number one goal when you are in a confrontation, is to identify for your allies and for your people who you are fighting against,” said Phares.
He’s says the importance begins in our own counter-terrorism efforts.
“We need our experts within out own agencies to be able to make a distinction between those who are jihadists and those who are not. If we don’t have this capacity, we’re going to end up having a Major Hasan killing people in Fort Hood without us being able to detect him,” said Phares.
He also says the government can’t expect the public to be an asset in the war against radical Islam if the government can’t define our enemy.
“You need to educate your public. If the public doesn’t know who the enemy is, what the ideologies, narratives and words are, how will the citizens help you? How will they detect? How can they report if they see something, say something? What is that something they’re going to see or hear about?” said Phares.
He says clarity is also vital in building alliances to eradicate radical Islam.
“President Obama is talking about the world looking at us if we use these words. Precisely. The French use Islamist. The British do the same. The Russians have the same terminology,” said Phares, who reports even the Arab and Muslim world uses specific words to describe radicals.
Even the grand imam of Egypt, whom Phares says is the equivalent of the Sunni pope, has no problem using clear terminology.
“He calls them Islamists, takfiri, jihadists. So if the highest figure in the Arab and Muslim world and so many other figures do designate them with these words, what is the president talking about?” said Phares, who met with the grand imam and the Egyptian president.
So where does Obama get the idea that using terms like “radical Islam” would turn all Muslims against us?
“That’s exactly the platform of the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s exactly what Muslim Brotherhood analysts and advisers are telling our government,” said Phares.
Both Obama and Hillary Clinton are skewering Trump for insisting that the terrorists be labeled as radical Islam. As a result, Phares says voters have a clear choice in November “between one camp that is in denial” and Trump who is trying to specify who our enemy is.
Three Martini Lunch 6/14/16
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are not impressed as FBI Director James Comey says the bureau cleared Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen because he insisted all his radical rants were just out of anger and not because he was lined with terrorist groups. They also hammer Hillary Clinton for only now being worried about Middle East countries allowing their people to fund terrorism. And they react to the revelation that Mateen was gay.
Orlando Terrorism Linked to San Bernardino
A former Department of Homeland Security official says it took him only a few hours to connect Sunday’s Islamic terrorist attack in Orlando to December’s carnage in San Bernardino, and he says the federal government’s active refusal to acknowledge reality is “handcuffing” efforts to keep the American people safe.
Philip Haney served nearly a decade at the Department of Homeland Security after it’s inception in 2003. His responsibilities there included investigations for Customs and Border Patrol through its National Targeting Center. While there he played a key role in vetting people connected to Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic group with some 70 million members.
He is the author of the new book “See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Excposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad.”
In less than two days since the massacre at the Pulse club in Orlando, reports have surfaced that terrorist Omar Saddiqui Mateen was investigated multiple times by the FBI but was ultimately deemed not to be a threat, despite professing a link to the Boston Marathon bombers and the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Haney says that should have raised innumerable red flags but he says the FBI’s own training procedures, updates in 2012, stopped common sense from taking the probe any further.
“Just because an individual is affiliated with a known terrorist organization, we can’t automatically assume that individual is a terrorist,” said Haney.
“That’s handcuffing. That is making it virtually impossible for basic law enforcement actions to be taken. How can you develop a case if you’re trying to go to probable cause when you’re prohibited from making an association between an individual and the organization that he may be affiliated with,” said Haney.
In addition to the stifling rules, Haney says one hand of government doesn’t know what the other is doing. He says all relevant government entities are supposed to be coordinated by a joint terrorism task force, but the idea works better in concept than in reality.
“The same thing happened with the Boston bombing. There was a disconnect in the transfer of information regarding the Tsarnaev brothers prior to that event. Apparently, there was a disconnect here as well,” said Haney.
Reports that former co-workers were alarmed at Mateen’s angry rants are also chilling to Haney, especially the indications that the employer never followed up on the complaints with authorities out of fear of being politically incorrect. Haney says it’s the same story we saw in San Bernardino, when a neighbor was suspicious of what was happening at the terrorists’ home but did not report anything out of fear of being labeled Islamophobic.
Haney says the ignored warnings from co-workers also reminds him of another horrific case.
“The first thing that comes to mind when I hear about co-workers being concerned is exactly what happened with Nidal Hasan before the Ft. Hood shootings. It’s like a tape recorder. We’re listening to exactly the same comments from people who raised concerns,” said Haney.
So while FBI Director James Comey says there was no basis to continue the investigation after Mateen insisted his pro-terrorist statements were just angry falsehoods expressed in anger to his co-workers, Haney says a few hours of work on Sunday not only proved Mateen was not a lone wolf but his network of influence can be tied to the San Bernardino terrorists.
After learning that Mateen was affiliated with the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce (Florida), Haney quickly discovered a statement from the center’s imam confirming that Mateen worshiped at the mosque. He says that connection is important to establish before unraveling the rest of the thread.
“I always follow the same process. There are individuals and there are organizations. They are inseparable and one always leads to the other,” said Haney.
Haney then discovered the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce is affiliated with the Sharia Board of America.
“Then I find out that the Sharia Board of America is directly linked to an association called the Rahmat-e-Alam Foundation,” said Haney, who then found the foundation was linked to a very familiar group.
“I’m now realizing I’m about to touch a case that was related to the San Bernardino shootings, the case that the records were deleted from by my own government and a case that was related to the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative that I worked on at the National Targeting Center . Ultimately, the Tablighi Jamaat case was shut down by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security out of concerns that the civil liberties of Muslims would be infringed.
But Haney says the trail keeps going, as Rahmat-e-Alam is affiliated with the Darul Uloom Chicago.
“Now we’re overlapping with the San Bernardino case because the mosque in San Bernardino was called Darul Uloom Islammiya,” said Haney.
But there’s more.
“It turns out that the Darul Uloom Chicago organization, which is a madrassa, is directly related to the Islamic Institute of Education case that I worked on as active duty officer,” said Haney.
“All of it goes back to the Tablighi Jamaat case that I worked on at the National Targeting Center. There was only one degree of separation from the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce and that entire network that I worked on back in 2011,” said Haney.
If Haney could connect that many dots in an afternoon, why couldn’t the federal government do the same?
“Did the FBI have access to any of that information? I don’t know. Did the [Customs and Border Patrol organization affiliates have access to this information? Yes, they did. Did anyone put the picture together? It doesn’t look like it,” said Haney.
Haney stresses that these links are critical and meaningful because affiliation for Muslims is hugely important.
“In Islam, there is really no such thing as a lone wolf individual. In Islam, the sense of community and family is an overriding awareness of everyone,” said Haney.
He says fidelity to the Quran and the Hadith are other pillars of Islamic life, but he says the Islamic approach to homosexuality also cannot be ignored here.
“There is a fourth component and that the cultural, traditional world view, that is violently opposed to homosexuality throughout the Islamic world,” said Haney.
But none of that is enough for the government to remove its blinders with respect to radical Islam, according to Haney.
He was investigated nine times while working at Homeland Security, eight times during the Obama administration. Three of those probes ran simultaneously. The government also refused to allow him to see the files relevant to his case and the shuttering of the Tablighi Jamaat investigation. He was forced to obtain them through Freedom of Information laws. He says emails among the State Department, Homeland Security and other agencies told the the real story.
“They had concerns about civil rights and civil liberties of these individuals, by the way, who are foreign nationals,” said Haney.
How did the priorities get so mixed up? Haney says it all goes back to one moment.
“Things really started going sideways after the Holy Land Foundation trial in November 2008, when it was irrefutably proven in federal court that groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America (and)the North American Islamic Trust were to support for Hamas. That point is the turning point in the history of counter-terrorism,” said Haney.
“At that point, the administration had to make a conscious decision, whether to act on that law enforcement-based evidence and go forward and shut those groups down or ignore it and create a new policy, And that’s exactly what they did,” said Haney. “So people like me, who focused on those groups, ran headlong into the administration’s policy. Many of us suffered because of it.”
Three Martini Lunch 6/13/16
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review slam President Obama for refusing to identity the Orlando terrorist’s motivation which was already clear and for suggesting Americans currently identify with the terrorist more than the victims. They also shake their heads as the federal government had another terrorist under investigation only to let them go and eventually attack. And they rip both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for their pathetic responses to the terrorist attack.
‘We Were Glad to See Her Defeated on Tuesday’
One of the nation’s leading pro-life groups is celebrating its work towards toppling Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers this week and now the Susan B. Anthony List is preparing to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming the next president.
On Tuesday, Ellmers became the first incumbent member of congress to lose in a 2016 primary. Ellmers was soundly defeated by fellow GOP Rep. George Holding as a redrawn district pitted two sitting members of the House. Holding scored 16,999 votes, while Ellmers received 7,527.
Conservative and Republican opposition to Ellmers had been intensifying for years, as she routinely sided with Republican leaders and failed to fight President Obama’s unilateral immigration action. But it was her actions in January 2015 that put her in the cross hairs of the Susan B. Anthony List and other pro-life activists.
“Congresswoman Ellmers led the charge to derail the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. This was common sense legislation to stop abortion after five months. It has majority support among Americans. Women support this bill in higher numbers than men. It was scheduled for a vote on the day of the March for Life 2015,” said Susan B. Anthony List Communications Director Mallory Quigley.
Quigley says Ellmers began undermining the bill weeks earlier.
“Congresswoman Ellmers started to make a fuss in the media, saying that millennials don’t support this issue. They don’t support this legislation, and this shouldn’t be among Republicans’ top few legislative priorities,” said Quigley.
As the vote got closer, Ellmers then amended the basis of her opposition. She spoke out against an abortion exception beyond 20 weeks for rape victims because she did not want those patients to be required to show a police report alleging the rape prior to proceeding with the abortion. Backers of the provision pointed out that no such paperwork was required prior to 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Quigley says Ellmers not only succeeded in scuttling the vote but triggered fierce media criticism of the bill.
“She contributed to this media firestorm, taking attention away from the horrific reality we were trying to draw America’s eyes to: the fact the U.S. is one of only seven nations to allow abortion on demand after five months,” said Quigley.
As a result, the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect pro-life women to public office, took an unprecedented step.
“Because that betrayal was so profound, we had to take action and endorse against her. It was the first time in our history that we’ve endorsed a pro-life man over a pro-life woman in a Republican primary,” said Quigley.
It wasn’t just an endorsement. The group also blitzed North Carolina’s second congressional district, going door to door to tell thousands of GOP voters why Ellmers was unacceptable to them. Quigley says their work made a big difference.
“Almost 40 percent of the people that originally said to the activists that they were supporting Renee Ellmers changed their minds and said they were less likely to vote for her after learning about her role in derailing the pain capable bill,” said Quigley.
She says taking the time to speak with voters is quickly becoming the most effective campaign tool.
“You can’t really measure what the impact of a TV ad is, especially in the age of NetFlix and DVR. For us to know that we actually reached 12,571 people by election day was a powerful statement for the pro-life movement. This is where we thrive, in person to person interaction,” said Quigley.
When Holding’s overwhelming victory was secured, Quigley and her colleagues rejoiced.
“We could not stand for what she did back in January (2015) and the damage she caused to the pro-life movement, so we were glad to see her defeated on Tuesday,” said Quigley.
Now the Susan B. Anthony List turns its attention to the general election, in races all over the nation and in the race for the White House.
On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton secured the delegates needed to make her the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. In her speech, she claimed the legacy of the women who fought for women’s suffrage, which, of course, includes Susan B. Anthony.
“Susan B. Anthony, if she were alive today, would not recognize the position that Hillary Clinton has taken as being the pro-woman feminist,” said Quigley, who says Clinton is not the pro-woman candidate because she couldn’t care less about women who disagree with her on abortion.
“Hillary is all about being her kind of woman. She does not leave open the possibility that there is a majority of women in America who think that it’s not okay to build up their rights on the broken rights of their unborn children,” said Quigley,
During the Republican primaries, Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser joined several other pro-life leaders in denouncing Donald Trump as not a reliable pro-life candidate. But with Hillary Clinton and pro-choice Libertarian Gary Johnson as the only other options drawing any support, Quigley says the group’s tune on Trump has changed.
“Donald Trump has made very firm commitments to the pro-life movement that he has reiterated several times,” said Quigley. “He said that will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who will be pro-life. He actually used the term pro-life, which is to go a step further than others who would just say a ‘strong constitutionalist,” said Quigley.
She says he has also made commitments to support defunding Planned Parenthood and passage of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
While Trump was not the group’s preference earlier this year, Quigley says the match-up with Clinton is a no-brainer.
“Hes certainly said some things that were indefensible but I think ultimately what matters is policy and the court,” said Quigley.
“[Clinton] wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which would be the most pro-abortion position that any politician has ever taken, even to the left of Barack Obama, to force taxpayers to fund abortion on demand. There may be some questions about Donald Trump, but Hillary Clinton is a sure thing,” said Quigley.