Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Donald Trump's Plan Would Survive Constitutional Challenge

Drop the U.S. citizen Muslims from the plan and it would pass constitutional muster.

See Peter Spiro, at the New York Times, "Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Is Awful. And Constitutional":
In the ordinary, non-immigration world of constitutional law, the Trump scheme would be blatantly unconstitutional, a clear violation of both equal protection and religious freedom (he had originally called for barring American Muslims living abroad from re-entering the country as well; he has since dropped that clearly unconstitutional notion). But under a line of rulings from the Supreme Court dating back more than a century, that’s irrelevant. As the court observed in its 1977 decision in Fiallo v. Bell, “In the exercise of its broad power over immigration and naturalization, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.”

The court has given the political branches the judicial equivalent of a blank check to regulate immigration as they see fit. This posture of extreme deference is known as the “plenary power” doctrine. It dates back to the 1889 decision in the Chinese Exclusion case, in which the court upheld the exclusion of Chinese laborers based on their nationality.

Unlike other bygone constitutional curiosities that offend our contemporary sensibilities, the Chinese Exclusion case has never been overturned. More recent decisions have upheld discrimination against immigrants based on gender and illegitimacy that would never have survived equal protection scrutiny in the domestic context. Likewise, courts have rejected the assertion of First Amendment free speech protections by noncitizens.

Nor has the Supreme Court ever struck down an immigration classification, even ones based on race. As late as 1965, a federal appeals court upheld a measure that counted a Brazilian citizen of Japanese descent as Asian for the purposes of immigration quotas.

In the context of noncitizens seeking initial entry into the United States, due process protections don’t apply, either. This past June, the court upheld the denial of a visa for the spouse of an American citizen based on the government’s say-so, with no supporting evidence.

The courts have justified this constitutional exceptionalism on the grounds that immigration law implicates foreign relations and national security — even in the absence of a specific, plausible foreign policy rationale. The 1977 Fiallo case, for instance, involved a father seeking the admission of his out-of-wedlock son from the French West Indies — hardly the stuff of national interest.

Indeed, contrary to the conventional understanding, President Trump could implement the scheme on his own, without Congress’s approval. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president the authority to suspend the entry of “any class of aliens” on his finding that their entry would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” President Obama has used this to the better end of excluding serious human rights violators...
Spiro hates that Trump's plan is fully legal under current U.S. constitutional interpretation, so he blathers on with a bunch of namby-pampy objections about changing "popular consensus" and "constitutional norms," blah blah.

Let the voters figure out. The Constitution's not a suicide pact. A few more attacks like this and Hillary Clinton will be embracing a bar on Muslim migrants.

More, "Plan to Bar Foreign Muslims by Donald Trump Might Survive a Lawsuit."

The Truth About the War We're In

From Robert Spencer, at Amazon, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In.

And, The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS.

Plus, 12 Days of Deals - TV, Video, Audio.

Also, Custom Gifts for the Holidays.

More blogging tonight.

Syed Farook Practiced Firing AR-15 at Riverside County Gun Range

And he was just a "normal guy" out for a day at the firing range.

At the Los Angeles Times, "San Bernardino attacker practiced firing military-style weapon at gun range":
One of the San Bernardino attackers practiced firing a military-style weapon at a Riverside County gun range, according to an employee who described him as a "normal guy."

John Galletta, a firearms instructor at Riverside Magnum Range, said shooter Syed Rizwan Farook had practiced there before, but couldn't comment on when or how frequently.

Galletta said Farook's wife, Tashfeen Malik, had never been there.

As for Farook, a co-worker at the range described him as "a normal guy," Galletta said.

The company has turned over surveillance footage and sign-in logs to the FBI, he said.

Galletta said Farook practiced with an AR-15 and that he brought his own weapon. It wasn't clear if that is the only type of weapon he practiced with, Galletta said.

The FBI said Monday that the San Bernardino shooters had been radicalized "for quite some time," but investigators were still trying to determine whether they had links to foreign terror organizations.

Officials also said Farook and Malik, had gone to gun ranges in the Los Angeles area in the days before Wednesday's massacre, in which 14 people were killed and 21 were injured.

Federal investigators did not know how the couple had become radicalized, said David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office.

"Remember, oftentimes it's on the Internet," he said.

John D'Angelo of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives added that three of the guns recovered from the couple's shootout with police after their attack and from the couple's home were purchased by Farook between 2007 and 2012. The other two weapons were purchased by Farook's friend, Enrique Marquez of Riverside.

Marquez entered a mental hospital after the attacks, according to two law enforcement sources...
Still more.

TONIGHT: Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2015 (VIDEO)

Hey, it's the annual extravaganza!

Here's the homepage.

And the lovely Lily Aldridge:



Pearl Harbor Survivors Honored on USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum (VIDEO)

There's not too many of the old guys left.

Watch, at ABC 10 News San Diego:



Donald Trump Supporters Applaud Plan to Ban Muslim Entry to the U.S. (VIDEO)

At USA Today, "Trump supporters say Muslim plan won't affect their view of him."



Monday, December 7, 2015

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Calls Obama a 'Total Pussy' on Live TV (VIDEO)

Heh.

Good times. Good times.



Also, at USA Today, "Fox suspends Ralph Peters, Stacey Dash for profanity on air." (Stacy Dash said Obama didn't 'give a s___' about terrorism.")

Donald Trump Calls for Total Ban on Muslim Entry to U.S. (VIDEO)

This is great!

At Politico, "Donald Trump calls for ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims’ coming to U.S." (Via Memeorandum.)



Also, via Memeorandum, "DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON PREVENTING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION."

12 Days of Deals

At Amazon, Holiday Deals in Office Supplies & Electronics.

And here's Michael Weiss's book, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.

Also, from Walter Lord, Day of Infamy, 60th Anniversary: The Classic Account of the Bombing of Pearl Harbor.

BONUS: From Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.

Michael Weiss Eviscerates Obama's Oval Office Speech on Defeating Islamic State (VIDEO)

Weiss is the author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.

And boy, does he unload:



Friends and Family Worried About Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, but Kept Quiet

At Instapundit, "IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING: Friends, family worried about San Bernardino terrorists, but said nothing."

New Photo Shows #SanBernardino Terrorists Entering the U.S.

At ABC News.

Ready to assimilate:



New Poll Shows Donald Trump with 20-Point Lead for GOP Nomination (VIDEO)

At CNN, "CNN/ORC Poll: Trump alone at the top again":

Donald Trump is once again alone at the top of the Republican field, according to the latest CNN/ORC Poll, with 36% of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents behind him, while his nearest competitor trails by 20 points.

Three candidates cluster behind Trump in the mid-teens, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 16%, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 14% and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 12%. All other candidates have the support of less than 5% of GOP voters in the race for the Republican Party's nomination for president.

Carson (down 8 points since October), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (down 5 points to 3%) and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (down 4 points to 1%) have lost the most ground since the last CNN/ORC poll, conducted in mid-October.

Cruz (up 12 points) and Trump (up 9 points) are the greatest beneficiaries of those declines. Rubio is also up slightly, gaining 4 points -- an increase within the poll's margin of sampling error -- since the last CNN/ORC poll.

Republican voters are most sharply divided by education. Among those GOP voters who hold college degrees, the race is a close contest between the top four contenders, with Cruz slightly in front at 22%, Carson and Rubio tied at 19% and Trump at 18%. Among those without college degrees, Trump holds a runaway lead: 46% support the businessman, compared with 12% for Cruz, 11% for Carson and just 8% for Rubio.

Several other recent polls have shown Trump reclaiming a solid lead atop the GOP field after several weeks of near parity with Carson. But the new poll finds the businessman with both his broadest support and his widest lead in any national live-interviewer telephone poll since he announced his candidacy in June.

The poll reflects Trump's dominance over the rest of the field on the issues voters deem most important to them. He holds massive margins over other Republicans as the candidate most trusted to handle the economy (at 55%, Trump stands 46 percentage points over his nearest competitor), the federal budget (51%, up 41 points), illegal immigration (48%, up 34 points), ISIS (46%, up 31 points) and foreign policy (30%, up 13 points).

Looking at those Republicans who consider each issue to be "extremely important" to their vote, Trump's standing on each issue is even stronger. Among those Republican voters who call the economy extremely important, for example, 60% say they trust Trump to handle that issue. Among immigration voters, 55% trust Trump on the issue. On foreign policy, Trump inches up to 32%, and among those who call terrorism an extremely important issue, 49% say they trust Trump most on ISIS.

The poll was conducted before the shootings in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday, carried out by a man reported to have been radicalized and his wife.

More generally, about 4 in 10 Republicans say Trump is the candidate who would be most effective at solving the country's problems (42% name Trump, 14% Carson, 12% Cruz, 10% Rubio) and could best handle the responsibilities of being commander-in-chief (37% Trump, 16% Cruz, 11% Carson and 10% Rubio).

And a majority of Republican voters say they see Trump as the candidate with the best chances to win the general election next November (52% say Trump has the best chances there, compared with 15% for Rubio, 11% for Cruz and 10% for Carson).

On immigration, an issue that has been a focal point of Trump's campaign, most Americans say the government should not attempt to deport all people living in the country illegally (63%), and even more say such a mass deportation wouldn't be possible (81%). About half say such an effort would be harmful to the economy (47%), while about 3 in 10 say it would help (29%).

Among Republicans, a narrow majority (53%) think the government should try to deport all of the estimated 11 million immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally, but most think it wouldn't ultimately be possible to achieve (73%). Republicans are more likely than others to see a deportation effort as helpful to the economy (44% think it would help, 30% that it would hurt).

There's a sharp divide among Republican voters on these questions about deportation between those who back Trump and those who do not. Among Trump supporters, 67% say the government should attempt to deport all people living in the country illegally, while just 39% of Republican voters backing other candidates agree. Still, even among Trump's supporters, most say it wouldn't be possible to deport all those living in the U.S. illegally (55%).

Republican voters remain more enthusiastic about voting than their Democratic counterparts, but the gains in enthusiasm that had emerged through October appear to have stalled...
No wonder the Republican establishment is totally panicked at this point. See the New York Times, "Wary of Donald Trump, G.O.P. Leaders Are Caught in a Standoff."

The don't want him but they fear him. That's the standoff. Trump's powerful and they're scared of him retaliating.

If the primaries were held today, especially Super Tuesday, Trump would be the GOP nominee. It's won't be too long now though. And events aren't helping the establishment much. Not much at all. Trump's surging.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Obama White House Issues Retraction on Tashfeen Malik Entering U.S. on 'Visa Waiver Program'

Ahem, that's kind of a big retraction, at Twitchy, "WHOOPS! White House issues embarrassing correction to Obama’s speech."


Obama Seeks to Ban People on No-Fly Lists from Buying Firearms (VIDEO)

Amazingly, the president actually acknowledged the terrorist threat. He didn't utter the phrase "radical Islam," but there was a noticeable difference in his speech. A low bar, I know. But still.

No matter though. Our strategy against Islamic State will remain unchanged, while stateside the administration is ramping up its efforts to strip law-abiding citizens of their constitutional rights.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Terrorist Threat Has ‘Evolved’ Into a New Phase, Obama Says":

President Barack Obama, in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday, outlined his administration’s intensified efforts to combat “a new phase” of terrorist threats in the U.S., aiming to boost confidence in his national-security strategy after last week’s deadly attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Mr. Obama said the attack underscores that the threat of terrorism in the U.S. “has evolved into a new phase.”

President Barack Obama, in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday, outlined his administration’s intensified efforts to combat “a new phase” of terrorist threats in the U.S., aiming to boost confidence in his national-security strategy after last week’s deadly attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Mr. Obama said the attack underscores that the threat of terrorism in the U.S. “has evolved into a new phase.”

“This was an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people,” he said, standing behind a podium inside the Oval Office.

The prime-time address marked a turning point in his administration’s fight against Islamic State and other terrorist groups that previously had largely played out on foreign soil. The San Bernardino massacre—the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001—shattered any sense among Americans that the battle was one waged overseas. The challenge now for Mr. Obama lies in assuring the country that the government is doing everything it can to prevent similar attacks.

Mr. Obama didn't announce an overhaul of his counterterrorism strategy or any sweeping changes in the U.S.-led military campaign in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State. Instead, he sought to reassure a jittery nation by emphasizing a boost in national-security measures designed to blunt terrorists’ ability to strike in the U.S., and in elements of his Islamic State strategy.

“We will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless,” he said.

Mr. Obama forcefully called for Muslim leaders to do more to stop radicalization.

“Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote, to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity,” he said.

The president also called on Congress to pass provisions he believes would further reduce terrorist threats in the U.S., including legislation that would ban assault weapons and gun sales to people who are on the terrorist no-fly list. Such an approach has some bipartisan support, but Republican leaders have opposed it, saying it would violate the Second Amendment rights of Americans who are on the list erroneously.

The president urged lawmakers to pass a new resolution authorizing the military campaign against Islamic State. That measure has stalled in Congress.

Mr. Obama called for a review of the program that waives visa requirements for foreigners from certain countries mainly in Europe and Asia. Last week, the Obama administration laid out changes to the program, which allows people from 38 countries, largely in Europe and Asia, to enter the U.S. without visas. The program will now include a check for any visits to countries that are considered havens for terrorists.

In the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people, Mr. Obama spoke out sharply against legislation in Congress to halt the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the U.S. But the visa-waiver program has emerged as a potential point of agreement between the two major political parties.

While Mr. Obama called for streamlining technology that allows law enforcement to better track potential threats, he didn’t seek to renew the debate on surveillance. The administration is also looking into tackling the use of encrypted messages to plan attacks.

While declaring the San Bernardino attack, which killed 14 people and injured 21, an “act of terror,” Mr. Obama on Sunday appealed to Americans to resist reacting in ways he believes would alienate Muslims in the U.S. and fuel the extremist ideology perpetuated by groups like Islamic State...
The terrorists at CAIR are rolling over in laughter. All of this plays right into their hands. Meanwhile, law-abiding Americans are going to be increasingly targeted, on gun rights, and with a crackdown on so-called "hate speech," of which there's no First Amendment exception. Leftists don't care about the legality of their agenda, of course. It's ideology all the way down.

More.

REPORT: Syed Farook's Mother Active in 'Pro-Caliphate' Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)

Following-up from previously, "Tashfeen Malik Was Driving Force in Terror Couple's Embrace of Jihad — #SanBernardino."

The Daily Caller has the report, via Memeorandum, "Shooter’s Mother Active In U.S. Branch of Pro-Caliphate Islamic Group."

And see Pamela Geller, "SB Jihadi’s Mother Active In U.S. Branch of Pro-Caliphate Islamic Group":
The family knows. They know everything.  As I explain here, it was obvious  when Chris Cuomo interviewed the Bernardino shooters’ family attorneys. Cuomo gave them a free pass and the family was  hostile, unrepentant. The family blamed the victims. They were a very tight family and they didn’t see a bomb making factory in the house? The neighbors were suspicious but the family wasn’t?

They go on to say the wife had no role in the murder or in the planning. This is morbidly comical, because according to numerous news reports, she is alleged to have “radicalized” her husband.

Attorney Muhammad said Tashfeen took care of the mother in the house. Are we expected to believe that the mother never saw anything?
“Shooter’s Mother Active In U.S. Branch of Pro-Caliphate Islamic Group,” Daily Caller, December 6, 2015

Rafia Farook, the mother of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, is an active member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Muslim organization that promotes the establishment of a caliphate and has ties to a radical Pakistani political group called Jamaat-e-Islami.

Farook’s affiliation with ICNA was revealed on Friday when MSNBC and other new outlets scoured the Farooks’ apartment in Redlands, Cal. An MSNBC reporter found a certificate of appreciation presented to Safia Farook last summer by ICNA’s sisters’ wing.

On Wednesday, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeed Malik, killed 14 people during a holiday party being held for San Bernardino County workers in what the FBI considers a terrorist attack...
More.

Also at Red State, "Was Syed Farook’s Mother the Linchpin in the #SanBernardinoShooting."

Tashfeen Malik Was Driving Force in Terror Couple's Embrace of Jihad — #SanBernardino

At the Wall Street Journal, "San Bernardino Wife Believed to Be Driving Force to Radicalism":
Investigators probing the couple suspected of the shooting attack in San Bernardino, Calif., last week increasingly believe the wife was the driving force behind the assault—a working theory that highlights the difficulty of trying to spot such plots and prevent them, law-enforcement officials said.

Initial evidence suggests Tashfeen Malik may have had a stronger bond than her husband to jihadist ideology, the officials said. The husband, Syed Farook, appears to have been someone who was curious but not particularly driven on his own to support terror groups, these officials said.

Agents are pursuing “the very real possibility’’ that Ms. Malik was the catalyst for the violence that killed 14 and injured 21 at a holiday office party for San Bernardino County health workers on Dec. 2, said one official. So far her husband “seems like someone who was searching for answers,’’ the official said.

Mr. Farook’s family members have told investigators they are stunned by what the couple allegedly did and that they did not see signs of radicalization in the pair or evidence that they were planning violence. So far investigators have no reason to doubt those accounts, officials said...
Well, additional information's coming out, for example, that Farook's mom was active in "pro-caliphate" Islamic groups, but keep reading, in any case. I'll have more.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Branco Cartoon photo Blame-Wheel-600-LI1_zpsrwow6f23.jpg

And at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES," and Theo Spark's, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Wheel of Misfortune."

Leftists Go After the First and Second Amendment — #SanBernardino

Crush speech that "edges toward violence" and seize semi-automatic "military-style assault rifles."

That's been the left's agenda since last Wednesday and the jihad terror massacre in San Bernardino.

Here's Cristina Laila, on Twitter:



Preview of Obama's Oval Office Speech Tonight: Expect New Gun Control Measures (VIDEO)

From Fuzzy Slippers, at Legal Insurrection, "Preview of Obama’s Oval Office Speech About That Problem We’re Not Allowed to Mention."

And watch, at NBC News, "Attorney General Loretta Lynch: President Will Call on Congress to Take Action on Guns."

Marine Le Pen's National Front Leads in First Round of French Regional Elections

No surprise there.

At the Wall Street Journal, "National Front Leads in First Round of French Regional Elections":

PARIS—France’s far-right National Front was ahead in the first round of regional elections, early exit polls showed Sunday, positioning the anti-immigration party to win control of several French regions in a second vote a week from now.

Three weeks after the terror attacks that left 130 dead in Paris, Marine Le Pen’s National Front took 30.6% of the mainland France vote, according to an IFOP-Fiducial exit poll. That marked a surge from the last comparable elections in 2010, when the party won only 11.4% of the first-round vote.

President François Hollande’s Socialist party and allies came in third place with 22.7% behind Les Républicains—the center-right party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy—and its allies who garnered 27%.

The first-round results highlight the emergence of Ms. Le Pen’s National Front as a third force in French politics, capable of luring mainstream voters. With 18 months to go to presidential and legislative elections, the results also underline the fading momentum of Mr. Hollande’s Socialists and other leftist groups, who currently preside over all but one of France’s mainland regions.

The strong first-round score doesn't guarantee the National Front will take control of one of France’s regions. But their chances are better than in other local votes because the regional elections don’t necessarily end in runoffs. That means several parties can get through to the second round of voting, making it difficult for mainstream parties to unite behind one anti-National Front candidate in a runoff, as they have in the past.

The party that takes the largest share of the vote in the second round next Sunday will get a bonus of 25% of the seats at the regional assembly, which almost guarantees majority control of the region.

The strength of the National Front in the first-round vote will force the mainstream parties to scramble in the coming days to find ways to block the National Front in regions where it is ahead. Prime Minister Manuel Valls has already said that his Socialist party and Mr. Sarkozy’s Les Républicains should prepare to bury decades of rivalry and merge their lists of candidates for the second-round vote for the regional assemblies. Alternatively, one party could withdraw from the race.

The National Front had already chalked up successes in local elections in recent years after Ms. Le Pen cracked down on the anti-Semitic rhetoric that kept the National Front on the margins of French politics under the stewardship of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Mr. Le Pen’s expulsion from the party in August crowned that makeover.

But the National Front has continued to endorse anti-immigration and anti European policies, combined with calls for hard-line security measures. That enabled Ms. Le Pen to bolster support after the Paris attacks by castigating Mr. Hollande for not implementing soon enough the policies she has long espoused...
Marine LePen's niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, is expected to take 43 percent of the vote in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.

More at the Telegraph UK, "Marion Maréchal-Le Pen: The New Wonder-Girl Of France's Far-Right."

Jihadist Tashfeen Malik Attended Radical Islamic Seminary in Pakistan — #SanBernardino

Here's the breaking story at the Los Angeles Times, via Memeorandum, "San Bernardino shooting updates: Tashfeen Malik attended seminary in Pakistan; President Obama to address the nation."

And click though, at LAT, "San Bernardino assailant attended Islamic institute in Pakistan":
Two students who attended college with San Bernardino assailant Tashfeen Malik confirmed that during her time at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, Pakistan, she began attending Al Huda, a chain of modern institutes of Islamic education which mainly focuses on women with the stated objective of “bringing them back to their religious roots.”

“She used to go to attend sessions in Al Huda almost every day,” said a fellow student, who asked not to be identified. “She was not too close to any class fellow."

The fellow student said that Malik did not share her thoughts on religious issues with fellow classmates in the department of pharmacology, where she studied.

"We all are in state of shock," the fellow student said.

Experts said that the majority of women who attend Al Huda institutes, located in large cities, wear the hijab. They are usually well-heeled. These institutes use the group-isolating Islamic preaching session (called ‘dars’) activity to reinvent personal identity through ‘discovery’ of Islam.

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani security analyst, said Al Huda institutes teach women "fundamentalist" ideas, though they do not necessarily promote a jihadist agenda. “I call Al-Huda the fourth generation of religious seminaries. It does not promote use of violence but takes you closer to the red line. Now, it is a personal decision to cross the red line and take or give one's life.”

She said that the impact of such institutes is widespread, because a child going to a seminary has an impact on the thinking of other members of her family. “People would be familiar with, for instance, a daughter going to an Al Huda changing the mother and eventually the entire household. This dynamic is mirrored in more traditional seminaries as well.”

Sadaf Ahmad, an assistant professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, has written in a book about Al Huda institutes that Farhat Hashmi’s (founder of Al Huda) denunciation of various cultural practices and disapproval of Westerners and Indians helps women redefine their own identity as Muslims.  The author found Al Huda graduates to be “very intolerant and judgmental toward people who were different from them.”

Tomi Lahren: 'God Bless America. God Bless San Bernardino' (VIDEO)

God bless this woman!



San Bernardino Jihad Causes Surge in Number of People Seeking Concealed Carry Permits (VIDEO)

Well, there's been a surge in gun purchases all around, but up in Fresno folks are also requesting permits for concealed carry.

Watch, at KFSN Channel 30 News Fresno, "SURGE IN CONCEALED WEAPON PERMIT REQUESTS."

Frances Townsend on Face the Nation: How do we defeat #ISIS at home? (VIDEO)

She used to be on CNN, but now she's all over the place, including Fox News.

Here's Fran Townsend on Face the Nation:



Dana Loesch Interview with Carly Fiorina: 'Let's Call This What It Is, Terrorism' (VIDEO)

Shame on me for not posting Dana Loesch more often.

A great interview:


Suspect Syed Farook's Childhood Neighbor-Friend's House Raided by Police (VIDEO) — #SanBernardino

At London's Daily Mail, "FBI raid home of 'ISIS terrorist's' childhood friend - as it's revealed 'HE bought Syed Farook assault rifles, then fell out with him as he became more devout' and checked into mental unit after the attack."

And watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



Rule 5 Sunday

I haven't been doing the huge Rule 5 roundups because they take a long time to write, and the payoff in terms of reciprocal full-metal jacket reach-around is often negligible. That said, hats off to those stalwart Rule 5 bloggers who religiously post the tasty totties each and every weekend.

See Pirate's Cove, for example, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is heat created snow, you might just be a Warmist."

Also from Dana Pico, "Rule 5 Blogging: Sailors!"

BONUS: From Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY," and "LADY GAGA NOT LOOKING LIKE LADY GAGA FOR BILLBOARD OF THE DAY."

Tactical Peaks photo CL7S58zW8AQgm43_zpsovg41tdd.jpg

Photo Hat Tip: Tactical Peaks.

The Sad Reasons for the Delay in Publishing Photos of Tashfeen Malik — #SanBernardino

At Pamela's, from Nonie Darwish:
AFDI Geller Fellow Nonie Darwish explains why several days passed after the San Bernardino jihad murders before any photo of jihad killer Tashfeen Malik was published:
 photo a20ee7ac-abb3-44ab-98b1-a92db2bcf7cc_zpstepsga5f.jpg
Most Americans are wondering why the photo of the female Muslim terrorist of the recent San Bernardino attack, Tashfeen Malik, was for several days after the attack withheld without explanation by the authorities. Some guessed that it is for the sake of preserving the integrity of the investigation. That is the only logical explanation to most Americans. But I am afraid there are other reasons that only people with deep knowledge of the Islamic culture understand why Malik’s photo was not immediately published.

After the San Bernardino massacre by a Muslim married couple who left their new born baby orphaned for the sake of killing Americans, President Obama still refused to call the well-planned slaughter of Americans “terrorism,” let alone “Islamic” terrorism.

Obama does not even care about appearances when it comes to Islam and protecting Muslim sensitivities. It is not just Americans who are left wondering why Obama appears more concerned about the reputation of Islam than the reputation of America. But many around the world, including Muslims in the Middle East, are wondering about Obama’s loyalties and priorities.

Like her boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, instead of meeting families of the San Bernardino terror victims, met with a group of Muslims in Washington DC. She told them that her “greatest fear” was retaliatory violence against members of the Muslim community. That meant that her priority was to prevent a backlash against Muslims before protecting the American people.

Having been born and raised in a Muslim culture, I have little doubt that the Muslim leaders Lynch met with asked her not to show the photo of the Muslim female terrorist. Their explanation for keeping the photo away from the public eye was probably because they claimed that showing a photo of a veiled Muslim terrorist who was also a new immigrant would inflame Americans against veiled Muslim women.

Another reason the Obama administration found good reason to keep the public from seeing her photo initially is because the veiled Muslim female terrorist who killed 14 Americans and injured 21 would have a negative impact on Obama’s plan to bring in hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees to America.

There is also another reason probably not spoken, and that is that observant Muslims do not like their women’s photos exhibited in public, even if the woman in question is a mass murdering terrorist. The Muslims who met with Lynch still expected Americans to respect their traditions of not showing Muslim women’s photos publicly.

The Islamic culture is a “pride and shame”-based culture, and Obama fully understands how important it is for Muslims to not be embarrassed. Obama and Lynch’s desire to please their Muslim friends and to prevent a backlash is more important to them than telling Americans the full story of jihad activity. In Obama’s world, Islam must be protected at any cost, even at the cost of keeping the American people uninformed.

Thousands and even millions of Muslims are not ashamed to openly sympathize with ISIS, but at the same time, they are too proud to accept the consequences of the shame associated with Islamic terrorism. The so-called moderate Muslim leaders who met Lynch were helping, aiding and abetting the Islamic game of eating their cake and having it too. It is a well-known convoluted feature of Islamic cultural logic, to preserve their pride and hide their shame, and Obama is helping them do just that.

Even though Muslims claim that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, they still identify with and want to protect the image of a Muslim veiled woman who committed terrorism in the name of the Islamic State. And that is why the photo of the Muslim terrorist, Tashfeen Malik, were too precious to Muslim leaders to be posted on newspapers and TV screens for several days, until the public made it impossible for them to continue to withhold them. It was all about protecting the image of Islam and Muslims: we are told that the female terrorist does not represent Islam and has nothing to do with it.

The American people need to wake up and smell the jihad, even though their leader is keeping them away from knowing the sad truth.

Leftist Hatred Unleashed by San Bernardino Jihad

From John Hayward, at Big Government, "The Left has gone stark raving mad since the San Bernardino shootings":
If you were online, you could watch it happening in real-time, as the early confident predictions of white redneck Christian-fascist shooters – complete with wishcasting about the distance to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic – gave way to the realization it was another jihad attack.

At that moment, political necessity, opportunism, and deep-rooted prejudice combined to send raging lightning storms of defective neurons hissing and crackling through every liberal’s mind. The actual killers blurred out of existence in the mind’s eye of the Left, until they saw only guns floating in midair, firing themselves at people who… well, let’s be blunt: liberals are working hard on some narratives about how the victims had it coming, and the jihadi couple were the real victims....

Mrs. Jihad waltzed right through Obama’s vaunted “screening” process, the one he says American voters are bigots and fools to express reservations about, when it comes to flooding the United States with Syrian refugees. Mr. Jihad somehow eluded the all-seeing eye of our trillion-dollar Surveillance State, even though he was chatting with terrorists online and checking out ISIS propaganda. The killers swore fealty to the Islamic State at literally the same moment Obama was offering confident assurances ISIS could never pull off a Paris-style terror attack in the United States. Confronted with these failures, the Democrat Party – to a man and woman – has absolutely no idea what to do, other than smear law-abiding Americans who had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime.

And that’s where the raw, slavering hatred comes in. It’s palpable right now. The Left hates decent Americans so very, very much. They hate your religion, your independence, your stubborn refusal to submit. They hate your prosperity, your resourcefulness, and your refusal to believe their fairy tales about an Almighty State that can take care of everyone’s needs in a fair and just manner. They hate that you keep noticing their failures. They hate that you won’t let them import a more pliable electorate from other countries without putting up a fight. They’re furious that you won’t accept their sacred religious belief that everything is your fault, and you deserve generations of punishment for the sins of your fathers...
Keep reading.

Sharp Partisan Polarization on Gun Control (VIDEO)

Here's the Washington Post, "Mass shootings reveal sharp partisan divisions ahead of 2016 elections."

And at ABC News, the video discusses polling data from the ABC News/Washington Post poll from late October, where Americans identified mental health issues as the problem, not access to guns. I think that's gotten lost in the debate since Wednesday's jihad massacre in San Bernardino. But be sure to push the mental health and jihad angles when debating leftists.

Here, at Town Hall, "Poll: Mental Health Problems, Not Lax Gun Laws, Are Responsible for Mass Shootings."

And at Big Government, "Poll: 2 Out of 3 Americans Say Focus on Mental Health, Not Gun Control."

In any case, from ABC News:



Saturday, December 5, 2015

Liquor Store Owner Pulls Out Gun and Robber Flees Like a Punk (VIDEO)

And leftists want to take away your guns.

At CBS News New York, "Connecticut Liquor Store Owner Pulls Gun On Would-Be Armed Robber."



America Confronts New Menace After #SanBernardino Jihad Massacre

At WSJ, "Nation Confronts a New Menace After San Bernardino Shooting":
Chilling terror danger seen from extremist sympathizers who, unnoticed by authorities, amass deadly arsenals to attack anywhere in U.S.

Even with many details about the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre still unknown, law-enforcement officials see a chilling terror danger from extremist sympathizers who, unnoticed by authorities, are able to amass deadly arsenals to attack vulnerable gatherings anywhere in the U.S.

Much about the case has crystallized trends that officials have feared for years: The attackers, a young married couple with a baby, had never surfaced as subjects of any terror investigation and lived apparently ordinary suburban lives while secretly stockpiling guns, ammunition and homemade bombs.

The attacks Wednesday believed carried out by Syed Rizwan Farook, a religious Muslim and U.S. citizen, and his wife,  Tashfeen Malik, a native of Pakistan, targeted a gathering of county workers far from any high-profile metropolis. The couple entered the room armed to kill a lot of people, quickly.

“Terrorists have adapted and evolved in order to carry out heinous plots since 9/11, and this tragedy reinforces the need for law enforcement to evolve its intelligence-gathering and investigative techniques,’’ said U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

As the shooting rampage was about to begin, authorities said, Ms. Malik posted a message on Facebook pledging her allegiance to the leader of Islamic State. Pipe bombs later found at the couple’s Redlands, Calif., home echoed designs posted online by the al Qaeda publication, Inspire. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said they had evidence the couple showed signs of radicalization.

An Islamic State-linked news agency said the California shootings were carried out by their supporters, part of string of attacks that included those in Paris last month, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks online postings by extremists. The claim couldn’t be verified.

U.S. counterterrorism has long focused on people traveling to and from Syria and Iraq. Now, another threat looms from local terrorism sympathizers inspired to violence by Islamic State, but who act without any direct orders, said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber & Homeland Security at George Washington University.

People with sympathies but no formal communication or ties with extremist groups can operate under the radar, he said, until they act. “That’s the big threat,” he said.

Unlike the Paris attacks, which were carried out by people whose friendships and family connections appear to have formed the backbone of one or more terrorist cells, the husband and wife in Wednesday’s attack hadn’t trained in Syria and, so far, don’t appear associated with a terrorist cell.

The San Bernardino attack “shows that a small number of people determined to plan but not boast can get away with it,” said Patrick Skinner, a former case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. “In this way, terrorism is exactly like any other crime.”

The couple, who were killed Wednesday in a gunbattle with police, apparently sought to hide evidence that might connect them to others, law-enforcement officials said. Two relatively new cellular phones were found smashed in a garbage can and a computer in their townhouse was missing a hard drive. Investigators have subpoenaed email service providers to retrieve any communications.

Some questioned whether U.S. and local law-enforcement officials may have missed signs that the couple had become radicalized. Mr. Farook had communicated with at least one FBI terrorism suspect, for instance. But U.S. law enforcement agencies had no case files on either Mr. Farook, an environmental-health specialist who worked for San Bernardino County, or his wife, whom Mr. Farook married during a trip to Saudi Arabia, where she had lived most of her life.

The U.S. has seen similarly motivated attacks. In May, two Phoenix men were killed in a Dallas suburb after they opened fire outside an event that featured cartoon drawings of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad...
Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were the primary targets at the attempted jihad attack in Garland, Texas.

The terror is picking up speed. It's the deadly signature of the Obama interregnum.

Still more at the link.

Cocaine Found on Scott Weiland's Bus

Well, he was only 48, with a history of substance abuse, so it's no surprise the police found drugs on the scene.

But see the Los Angeles Times, "Cocaine found on Scott Weiland's bus; former Stone Temple Pilots bandmates issue a statement."

More, on Weiland's death, "Appreciation: RIP Scott Weiland: Rocker, lyricist and self-described 'tenacious drug addict' dies."

Plus, flashback from March, "Guitarist for Scott Weiland's new band dies a day before album debut."

Drugs and rock and roll. A fatal combination.

The Logic of Islamic Intolerance

From Raymond Ibrahim, at Jihad Watch:
A sermon delivered by popular Saudi Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid clearly demonstrates why Western secular relativists and multiculturalists — who currently dominate media, academia, and politics — are incapable of understanding, much less responding to, the logic of Islamic intolerance.

During his sermon, al-Munajjid said that “some [Muslim] hypocrites” wonder why it is that “we [Muslims] don’t permit them [Western people] to build churches, even though they allow mosques to be built.” The Saudi sheikh responded by saying that any Muslim who thinks this way is “ignorant” and...
Keep reading.

The CAIR Effect: See Something, Do Nothing

From Michelle Malkin:
“If you SEE something, SAY something.”

The warning should be followed with a big “LOL” and a winky-blinky, just-kidding emoji. It’s one of the emptiest slogans in modern American life.

While the White House pays lip service to homeland security vigilance, it consorts with Islamic terror sympathizers who attack vigilant citizens and law enforcement officers at every turn.

Yes, I’m looking at you, Council on American-Islamic Relations.

After seeing CAIR’s bizarre press conference with the San Bernardino jihadists’ family members, here’s what I’d like to say to them:

You are not to be trusted. You put damage control above border control and jihad control. You are enemies of our national security and sovereignty.

Reminder: The feds designated CAIR an unindicted terror co-conspirator in 2007 in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and others for providing support to Hamas jihadists. Over the alleged objections of Dallas-area federal prosecutors, the Obama Justice Department’s senior political appointees declined to press terror-financing charges against CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad.

Instead, the administration has rolled out the red carpet for CAIR officials “hundreds” of times since 2009 on a “range of issues.”

This is the same group of “Islamophobia!”-shrieking grievance grifters that cooked up the Ahmed “Clock Boy” Mohamed brouhaha in Texas, where the city of Irving and Irving Independent School District are now being sued for $15 million after raising alarms over the teen’s low-tech media stunt. Obama hailed Mohamed before the boy jetted off to Qatar to cash in on a Muslim Brotherhood-linked educational scholarship.

This is the same group of litigious radicals who unsuccessfully sued a Florida gun shop owner this summer for declaring that he would refuse to sell weapons to “[a]nyone who is either directly or indirectly associated with terrorism in any way.” A judge ruled this week that “[t]here are simply no facts grounding the assertion that Plaintiff (CAIR) and/or one of its constituents will be harmed.” CAIR is appealing, of course.

This is the same group of treacherous thugs that squelched critics of Somalia-based jihad group al-Shabab in Minnesota. CAIR smeared whistleblowing Muslims who participated in an educational Minneapolis forum on al-Shabab terrorism and youth gangs as “anti-Muslim.” In 2013, the uncle of a missing young Muslim radical testified before Congress about CAIR’s efforts to pressure families to impede FBI investigations.

“CAIR held meetings for some members of the community and told them not to talk to the FBI,” Abdirizak Bihi told lawmakers, “which was a slap in the face for the Somali American Muslim mothers who were knocking on doors day and night with pictures of their missing children and asking for the community to talk to law enforcement about what they know of the missing kids.”

This is the same group of free speech-trampling zealots that bombarded private citizen, Zaba Davis, with harassing subpoenas over her opposition to a planned construction project by the Muslim Community Association and Michigan Islamic Academy. A federal judge called CAIR’s anti-free speech witch hunt “chilling” and ordered the outfit to pay $9,000 in legal fees.

This is the same manipulative group of controversy-manufacturing instigators who tried to sue “John Does” — innocent American citizens who alerted the authorities about their security concerns — in 2007 after a group of imams falsely claimed they were discriminated against on a Minneapolis flight...
Keep reading.

U.S. Officials Say Homegrown Terror Plots Are Bubbling-Up Like They've Never Seen Before (VIDEO)

At ABC News 10 San Diego:



After San Bernardino and Paris Attacks, Security Experts Foresee Major Changes at 'Soft Target' Venues (VIDEO)

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



Muslims in America Allegedly 'Fear for Their Lives'

Amazing how the left has ginned up the specter of "Islamophobia," of which there's minimal evidence.

But see the New York Times, among many other outlets barking the same false memes, "Muslims in America Condemn Extremists and Fear Anew for Their Lives."

Friday, December 4, 2015

Suspect Tashfeen Malik Obtained 'Fiancé' Visa Using Falsified Address — #SanBernardino

She committed fraud to obtain a visa, and we're told not to worry about Sryian "widows and orphans."

At AoSHQ, "So They Finally Did the Vetting of Tashfeen Malik, and It Turns Out the Address She Gave Is Fake, and She's Connected to Pakistan' Most Notorious Radical Mosque."

The Terror This Time — #SanBernardino

At WSJ, "The FBI confirms what President Obama refuses to admit":
President Obama entered the White House believing that the “war on terror” was a misguided overreaction driven by political fear, and his government even stopped using the term. Seven years later Mr. Obama is presiding over a global jihadist revival that now threatens the American homeland more than at any time since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

That’s the distressing lesson of the recent spate of terror bombings that this week arrived at a center for the disabled in San Bernardino, California. FBI Director James Comey said Friday that his agency is now investigating Wednesday’s massacre of 14 people as an act of terrorism and that the two Muslim killers showed “indications of radicalization.”

Mr. Comey added that while there is no evidence so far that the killers were part of a larger terror cell or plot, there are some indications of potential foreign terror “inspiration.” The latter would have to mean Islamic State or al Qaeda, perhaps through the Internet.

The FBI director said more than once that the investigation is in the early stages, but he deserves support for speaking frankly about the evidence and dangers. Every instinct of this Administration, starting with the President, has been to minimize the terror risk on U.S. soil—perhaps because it contradicts Mr. Obama’s political belief that all we have to fear is fear of terrorism itself.

The President made this explicit in his May 23, 2013 speech at National Defense University in which he said Americans should move past the country’s post-9/11 war footing and compared the Islamist terror threat to “many forms of violent extremism in our history.” Few speeches in presidential history have been repudiated so quickly by events.

San Bernardino is an example of the domestic terror nightmare that Mr. Comey has been warning against as he’s told Congress about the thousands of Americans who are now Islamic State sympathizers. That neither Pakistani-American Syed Farook, born in Illinois, nor Tashfeen Malik, his wife by way of Saudi Arabia, was on the FBI’s watch list is all the more worrisome. Their quiet stockpiling of guns, ammo and bomb-making material even as they led seemingly average lives shows that the U.S. may have a larger problem of homegrown terrorism than the government has wanted to admit.

Americans have tended to think they are safer than Europeans and their Muslim immigrant enclaves of Saint-Denis, Molenbeek and Birmingham. But by the account of his friends and even his family, Farook gave no hint of radical conversion until he mowed down the same colleagues who had thrown his wife a baby shower. He shows that jihad is possible even among native-born Americans who give every sign of abiding by U.S. norms.

San Bernardino also shows that the consequences can be as murderous from a jihadist who is “inspired” by Islamic State as one directed by it. U.S. officials said Tashfeen Malik had pledged her allegiance to Islamic State in a Facebook post the day of the attack. If ISIS was her inspiration, this demonstrates that the caliphate doesn’t need a network of agents to spread terror. Its perverse Internet-age genius is to claim to speak for all Sunni Muslims anywhere who can inflict pain on infidels and apostates.

President Obama’s failure to respond forcefully enough, or even seemingly to understand the threat, has allowed this evil inspiration to spread as Islamic State claims to be the vanguard of Islamist history...
More.

On Saturday, New York Times to Publish Editorial on Newspaper's Front Page — For the First Time Since 1920

Yes, an editorial on gun control.

How pathetic.

See, "End the Gun Epidemic in America."



The Closing of Barack Obama's Mind

Pretty good, although not a new revelation, or anything.

From Peter Wehner, at Commentary:

If you want to witness an adamantine mind at work, you could do a whole lot worse tha[n] observe the 44th president of the United States. Barack Obama is the most rigidly ideological president of my lifetime, a man who has a nearly blind adherent to a particular ideology (progressivism). It’s a disturbing, if at times a psychologically fascinating, thing to witness.

We're seeing it play out in multiple ways, but let me offer just one illustration — his approach to jihadism. It has been clear from the start of his presidency that Mr. Obama has decided that Islam is wholly separate from Islamic terrorism, which explains his refusal to use the words (or variations of the words) radical or militant Islam. It also explains why his administration has used absurd euphemisms like “man-caused disaster” and “workplace violence” to describe Islam-inspired attacks. Why the 2009 Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was an “isolated extremist.” Why the shooting at a Kosher supermarket in Paris earlier this year was “random.” (The gunman had declared his allegiance to ISIS.) And why the president, in an effort to protect Islam, invokes the Crusades at a National Prayer Breakfast, despite the fact that the Crusades happened roughly a thousand years ago. On and on it goes.

We have a president who is eager to put a racial frame around incidents in which white cops kills blacks, even if, as in the case of Officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, the shooting was justified and there was no evidence that it was racially motivated. No matter; the incidents fit into Mr. Obama’s worldview, and off to the races he went.

But in the case of jihadism, when the killers themselves are invoking the Koran and the Islamic faith to justify their malevolence — when the caliphate established in the heart of the Middle East is called the Islamic State — the president refuses to confront it. He goes into contortions to downplay or ignore the connection to Islam. He has a narrative to advance, and he will do it even if he has to run roughshod over reality to do it.

No one is asking Mr. Obama to indict all of Islam or have America or the West declare a war on it. He should do neither. But what we should expect is the president to understand the nature of the enemy we’re facing. It would also be refreshing if the president did not live in a world hermetically sealed off from facts that are inconvenient to his worldview. But that is precisely what Mr. Obama is doing...
Still more.

The Consequences of Jihad Denial

Here's Pamela, at Breitbart, "'Motive Unknown' — The Consequences of Jihad Denial":
Obama shrugged. Hillary shrugged. The media shrugged.

“We do not yet know why this terrible event occurred,” said Barack Obama.

“No matter what motivation these shooters had, we can say one thing for certain—they shouldn’t have been able to do this,” said Hillary Clinton.

“Motive unknown.” That’s the mantra from the Obama administration and his running dogs in the media. Obama rushed to say that the motive was undetermined, but when a leftist follower of the Southern Poverty Law Center murdered three Muslims in North Carolina, Obama immediately ascribed the killings to “Islamophobia,” when in fact they were the act of a deranged man who was enraged over a parking dispute, and who had repeatedly said that he preferred Muslims to Christians.

Here’s the motive: it has now been revealed that as the San Bernardino jihad attack was taking place, Syed Farook’s wife and accomplice, Tashfeen Malik, put up a post on Facebook in which she pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

This was jihad terror. This was premeditated, methodical, and well planned. The bombs left behind at the site were for first responders. They deleted their email accounts and smashed their cellphones, no doubt to cover up their contacts with other jihadis.

Some have downplayed this connection to other jihadis, saying that the attack was inspired, not directed, by ISIS. That is a distinction without a difference. ISIS has directed devout Muslims to “think globally, act locally.” They have directed Muslims who accept their authority as the caliphate to kill American civilians on U.S. soil. That is their explicit directive, and that is exactly what this cell did. Yet Josh Earnest in Friday’s press conference still refuses to acknowledge the terror connection.

Meanwhile, there are still more unanswered questions than ones on which we have clarity. The Feds have not even been able to tell us exactly who Tashfeen Malik (if that is her real name) is, or provide a picture of her, or records of where she came from, when she married Syed Farook, when their child was born, or proof that Syed is indeed the father and that she had a legitimate claim to be in this country.

Tashfeen Malik was subjected to background checks by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security before she was allowed to enter the country. She passed both. That is a stunning indictment of Obama’s vaunted “vetting process” for the Syrian refugees he is intent upon inflicting upon this country.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Muslim immigration, the rise of Islamic jihad armies in the Middle East and Africa, and the sanction (even exaltation) of jihad front groups in the U.S. such as the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) (how did they get to the family so fast?) have provided the enemy with ample opportunity to grow exponentially. And they have taken full advantage of that opportunity.

In the wake of this jihad attack, Obama wishes to disarm the victims — as if that would stop the jihadists. Machete-wielding Muslims slaughtered a dozen Chinese commuters and wounded over a hundred at a major commuter train station in China. The commuters had no weapons – no way to fight back.

And it has happened here. How would gun control have stopped the Muslim college student in California who recently stabbed four innocent people while carrying an ISIS flag, with the attendant references to Allah and beheadings?

San Bernardino is in one of the most stringent gun control states in the country. The fact is that these mass shootings usually take place in gun-free zones — except for the attempted jihad massacre at our free speech event in Garland, Texas last May. That jihad attempt had the best of all possible outcomes, because the jihadis were greeted by armed freedom fighters.

Besides gun control, the media and Obama’s administration are obsessed with the prospect of an “anti-Muslim backlash.” Obama, Hillary, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the media — they are all groveling before Islam, scrubbing and mopping up after this latest jihad attack, and still it’s not enough. Devout Muslims slaughtered innocent Americans at a Christmas party, and now comes the second wave of the attack — charges of racism (Islam is not a race) and “Islamophobia.”

American Muslims for the umpteenth time are wailing about a fear of reprisals – reprisals that never actually come in reality, but are always the focus of media obsession after every jihad attack. The blood of American Christians and Jews is still on the floor and the walls of a Christmas party, and they are playing the victim. How savage.

Why aren’t American Muslims mourning our dead? Why aren’t American Muslims using their money and influence to call for an “enlightenment” in Islam, a purge of the Quran and the Islamic texts and teachings that call for jihad and genocide?

Law enforcement has been just as compromised as the government and the media: I have been watching CNN — yes, unbelievable (a first), but the failings of FOX are too big to stomach. So imagine my horror when I switched it on and saw swarms of reporters inside the home of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik. Qurans everywhere, passports, drivers licenses of family members are strewn about.

They released the crime scene? There were no fingerprint forensics anywhere. How do they know who came and went into that apartment?

The FBI did this? Even CNN’s law enforcement analysts appeared shocked by what CNN’s reporters (and other reporters) were doing. They had never seen a crime scene of this magnitude opened to the public so early.

This was an Islamic cell with many people involved. Who gave the order to release the scene? Obama? And how much evidence was destroyed by these reporters tramping through the house? How much of the jihad killers’ activities and contacts were obscured and lost forever?

What’s the result of the universal government, law enforcement and media denial and obfuscation of the reality of the Islamic jihad against the United States? San Bernardino
— and there will be many more San Bernardinos.

Obama’s jihad-free counter terror policies and jihad denial is the cause of this catastrophic intelligence and law enforcement failure...
Still more.

Global Jihad Has Landed in San Bernardino

It's not like homegrown terrorism is unheard of in the U.S. --- not by a long shot.

But the recent increase of mass-scale death by Islamic jihad --- which has more often been a foreign problem --- has left people feeling as if something fundamentally has changed, something indeed existential, right here at home.

An interesting commentary from Steve Lopez, at the Los Angeles Times, "A worldwide war has landed in San Bernardino -- now what?":
“It’s war in the 21st century, and it’s an ugly reality that unfortunately we are going to be plagued with for some time.”

Those are the words of Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

I spoke to Schiff by phone on Friday morning, just after federal officials announced that one of the San Bernardino shooters had declared allegiance to Islamic State before the slaughter of innocent civilians.

That news was the most disturbing reminder since 9/11 that the threat of terrorism is not limited to distant lands, and it raised a litany of scary and complicated questions.

How many radicalized sympathizers of terrorist groups like Islamic State or Al Qaeda are living among us, people who may or may not be taking orders from anyone, but are plotting their own acts of barbarism?

Can we prevent the next one?

And how much of our privacy and civil liberty are we willing to sacrifice in the interest of safety, a question France is wrestling with after terrorists killed 130 people there last month?

“It could happen anywhere,” said a longtime friend who lives in the San Fernando Valley and is worried, as are all parents, about her children’s safety in public places. “It could happen just walking down the street.”

So, too, could any crime. But we’re reasonably safe, so we try to keep some perspective about odds and statistics and all that. We don’t want to overreact, stop going places, stop living.

But San Bernardino may represent a tipping point.

Because it’s part of our community.

Because it’s not a high-profile political or ideological target, like the Twin Towers or the Pentagon.

Because it leaves you with the uneasy feeling that no place is safe from those who identify with the twisted idea that beheadings and the slaughter of innocents are tributes to God’s greatness.

How do you begin to defeat that?

“I think the combination of Paris and San Bernardino, if in fact San Bernardino turns out to have an ISIS connection, may be a turning point in the resolve of the world to try to defeat ISIS, to take the fight to ISIS,” said Schiff, using an acronym for Islamic State.

He thinks it’s key to militarily drive ISIS off the land they control in Iraq and Syria, disrupting the terrorists’ money-making operations and complicating access to Europe and the planning of more attacks in the West.

He may be right, but already there are reports of Islamic State establishing a new stronghold in Libya, terrifyingly close to much of Southern Europe...
Well, Schiff offers a pretty good plan, and as for Libya, we'll take out ISIS there as well. Or, well, we would take them out there as well, if Obama wasn't president. But we've still got 14 months with this cowardly administration of appeasement.

Still more.

FBI Now Investigating San Bernardino Massacre as Jihad Terrorism

At Fox News, "Stating the obvious? FBI awkwardly acknowledges San Bernardino massacre likely terrorism."

Also, at LAT, "San Bernardino massacre probed as terrorism, FBI says."

And watch, at CNN:



Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik Built Bombs Using Instructions from al-Qaeda Magazine (VIDEO)

At the Palm Springs Desert Sun, "FBI checking Al Qaeda link to San Bernardino shooting":

The FBI is investigating whether there's a connection between the San Bernardino shooters and Al Qaeda.

The shooters, Syed Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, had a dozen pipe bombs in their Redlands home and carried three other bombs that were combined into a single device, authorities said Thursday morning.

David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, said officials are checking whether the bombs were built using directions from an Al Qaeda online magazine, "Inspire."

The magazine is written in English and targets American and European readers.

Wednesday's attack would be reminiscent of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev built a pressure cooker bomb using instructions found in "Inspire."
More.

Tashfeen Malik Linked to 'Red Mosque' in Pakistan, Center for Jihadists — #SanBernardino

At Truth Revolt, "Terror Wife Linked to Radical Mosque in Pakistan":

 photo a20ee7ac-abb3-44ab-98b1-a92db2bcf7cc_zpstepsga5f.jpg
Terror wife Tashfeen Malik is being linked to an infamous mosque in Pakistan connected to terrorism and whose imam has pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to reports from Britain's Daily Mail.

Malik and her husband Syed Farook killed 14 and wounded more than 20 people in a terrorist attack on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California.

While Farook was born and raised in the United States, and has a brother who is a decorated U.S. Navy vet, Malik is originally from Pakistan...
Here's the piece at Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE: ISIS loyalist woman in San Bernardino massacre is linked to Pakistan's most notorious radical cleric and mosque known as center for fundamentalists."

MSNBC Apologizes for Live News Coverage Inside Home of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik (VIDEO)

Here's the video, "MSNBC takes viewers on tour of California terrorists' apartment."

And at MSNBC on Twitter, "WATCH LIVE: NBC News entering attackers' apartment," and "TUNE IN: Kerry Sanders is live inside #SanBernardino attackers' apartment."

More at TPM, via Memeorandum, "MSNBC: 'We Regret' Live Shots Of Kid Photos, ID Cards From Attackers' Home."



Plus, from Ashe Schow, at the Washington Examiner, "MSNBC embarrasses itself inside San Bernardino attackers' apartment."

America’s Pathological Denial of Reality

From Caroline Glick, at FrontPage Magazine, "In America of 2015, natural conclusions about the San Bernardino jihadists are considered irresponsible, at best":
How much lower will America sink before it regains its senses? Wednesday, two Muslims walked into a Christmas party at a community service center in San Bernardino, California, where one worked. They were wearing [tactical gear] and carrying automatic rifles, pipe bombs and pistols. They opened fire, killed 14, and wounded 17.

The murderers, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik were killed by police.

Speaking to the Daily News, Farook’s father said his son, “was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.”

Farook’s neighbor told the paper that over the past two years, Farook exchanged his Western dress for Islamic gowns and grew a beard.

These data points lead naturally to the conclusion that Farook and his wife were jihadists who killed in order to kill in the name of Islam.

But in America of December 2015, natural conclusions are considered irresponsible, at best.

In an interview with CNN following the shooting, US President Barack Obama said the massacre demonstrates that the US needs stricter gun laws. As for the motives of the shooters, Obama shrugged. “We don’t yet know the motives of the shooters,” he insisted.

In other words, while ignoring what in all likelihood drove Farooq and his wife to murder innocent people, Obama laid responsibility for the carnage at the feet of his political opponents who reject his demands for stricter limitations on gun ownership.

Here is the place to note that California has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the US.

According to the victims, Farook and his partners were able to reload their weapons and shoot without interruption for several minutes until the police arrived because there was no one to stop them.

Obama wasn’t alone in deflecting attention away from the likely motivations of the murderers.

Wednesday evening, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), held a press conference at the Islamic Center of Orange County. Farook’s brother in law, Farhan Khan was carted out before the cameras to tell the world that he for one had no idea why his brother in law opened fire.

Two other speakers at the event were Hussam Auyloush, CAIR’s regional executive director and Muzammil Siddiqi, the director of the Islamic Society of Orange County.

Auyloush insisted that he had no idea would could have possibly prompted Farook and his wife to murder those gathered at the center. Auyloush raised the prospect that they could have been mentally ill, or perhaps they just didn’t like the victims, or maybe they were garden-variety extremists.

For his part, Siddiqi insisted that Islam had nothing to do with the shooters’ decision to murder innocent people, (how he could be so certain, is unknown).

Siddiqi added that he hopes law enforcement bodies will conduct a full investigation into the “people and motives,” behind the attack.

To a degree, the very fact that Siddiqi had no compunction about stepping in front of the cameras just hours after the attack is proof that the US has lost its way.

If American elites were even semi-competent, Siddiqi would have faded into the shadows, never to emerge again 15 years ago.

Siddiqi is a known jihadist sympathizer. His close ties to jihadists have been a matter of public record since 2000.

In October 2000, Siddiqi spoke at an anti-Israel rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. There he warned the American people that they must abandon their support for Israel lest “the wrath of God” be unleashed against them.

According to a profile of Siddiqi compiled by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, (IPT) in the late 1990s Siddiqi gave a speech extolling jihad and foreseeing Israel’s replacement with an Islamic state.

Among other things, Siddiqi said, “In order to gain the honor, jihad is the path, jihad is the way to receive the honor.”

Siddiqi converted Osama bin Laden’s senior aide, American jihadist Adam Gadahn. Gadahn converted to Islam at the Islamic Center of Orange County in 1995. According to a 2007 New Yorker profile, Siddiqi employed Gadahn at the Center in the years following his conversion. It was during this period that Gadahn was radicalized. He then went to Pakistan and joined al Qaida.

In 1992 Siddiqi hosted a blind sheikh named Omar Abdel Rahman at the Islamic Center. He stood beside Rahman and simultaneously translated his lecture about jihad to the audience of worshipers.

The next year, Rahman masterminded the first jihadist attack on the World Trade Center...
 Still more.

PREVIOUSLY: "EXCLUSIVE: First Photo of San Bernardino Terror Suspect Tashfeen Malik Released," and "#SanBernardino: FBI Seized .22 Caliber Rifle, Dozens of Boxes of Ammo, Weapons Accessories, Invoices from Gun Sellers, Laptop, and Several Data Storage Devices."

#SanBernardino: FBI Seized .22 Caliber Rifle, Dozens of Boxes of Ammo, Weapons Accessories, Invoices from Gun Sellers, Laptop, and Several Data Storage Devices

At the Los Angeles Times, "FBI seized guns, ammo, computer and notebook from home of San Bernardino shooters."

PREVIOUSLY: "EXCLUSIVE: First Photo of San Bernardino Terror Suspect Tashfeen Malik Released."

EXCLUSIVE: First Photo of San Bernardino Terror Suspect Tashfeen Malik Released

At ABC News, "First Photo of Female San Bernardino Shooter Tashfeen Malik."

And at ABC 7 News San Francisco:



PREVIOUSLY: "Tashfeen Malik Pledged Allegiance to Islamic State During #SanBernardino Jihad Massacre (VIDEO)."

All Muslims Are Potential Terrorists and Suspects

Well, obviously.

This is the Islamic State attack on the homeland that Americans feared in the yesterday Washington Post poll conducted in the wake of the Paris attacks.

We're not safe. The Obama administration simply does not take the threat seriously, so we're going to be in greater danger until a Republican is elected.

At Astute Bloggers, "THE SAN BERNARDINO ATTACK PROVES ALL MUSLIMS ARE JUSTIFIABLY POTENTIAL TERRORISTS AND SUSPECTS."

Tashfeen Malik Pledged Allegiance to Islamic State During #SanBernardino Jihad Massacre (VIDEO)

At Free Beacon, "Report: San Bernardino Attacker Pledged Allegiance to Islamic State." (Via Memeorandum.)

And at CNN, via Memeorandum, "San Bernardino shooting: Attacker pledged allegiance to ISIS, officials say."



Thursday, December 3, 2015

Save $30.00 on Amazon Fire HD 6 Kids Edition Tablet

Shop for the holiday, Fire HD 6 Kids Edition, 6" HD Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB, Blue Kid-Proof Case.

More, Sales & Deals on Luggage and Travel Gear.

Once again, for under the tree, from Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945, and Alistair Horne, Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century.

Plus, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.

Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer Has Run Out of Time for a Turnaround

That's the first thing I thought when I heard the company might be up for sale.

At the New York Times:
Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer has run out of time for a turnaround.

After three years, it’s clear that neither the chief executive, nor maybe any potential replacement, can save the flailing Internet company. The board’s job should be to determine the best way for tidying up the company’s affairs. Ms. Mayer’s best legacy could turn out to be that she got a good price for Yahoo’s core business.

Ms. Mayer has tried to drum up excitement by investing and buying smaller firms in mobile, video and social technologies. That hasn’t worked. Yahoo is expected to earn less than half as much as it did in 2012. The future doesn’t look any brighter, as companies cut into its advertising revenue with software that blocks online ads.

It’s doubtful that any other executive could do better. After all, Yahoo has had six bosses over the last decade, and none were able to figure out how to turn things around. History shows that struggling tech companies rarely regain momentum. Top engineers flee, new technologies and rivals are ignored and sclerosis sets in.

Given that reality, it might be futile for the board to try to replace Ms. Mayer. Instructing her to dismember the company might be the best approach and a way for her to salvage her reputation...
Ouch. That's harsh.

Still more at that top link.

VIDEO: FBI Uses Robot to Search Suspect's Home in #SanBernardinoShooting

From Sean Hannity, last night:



Climate Fanaticism is Sponsored by the Students' Unions

This is from Toronto's Financial Post (via Blazing Cat Fur):
Engage in a discussion with university students or peruse the social media pages they stare at on their devices, and it quickly becomes evident that climate change is the political issue youth are most passionate about. University campuses are home to a sizable contingent of climate justice activists, who proclaim loudly that climate catastrophe is imminent unless we cripple the fossil fuel industry and end capitalism.

Much of the climate fanaticism is sponsored by the students’ unions. There are campaigns to ban the sale and distribution of plastic water bottles on at least two dozen campuses in Canada. The plastic bottle ban is supported by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), which claims that “communities, not corporations, must control water resources and services.” Evidently, the exchange of money for water is so offensive to their socialist sensitivities that it must be purged from campuses. Surely it won’t be long before students’ unions are setting up “safe spaces” students can retreat to when they feel “triggered” by the sight of plastic bottles.

In addition to the bottle ban, there is a strong and growing movement on campuses – also organized in part by the CFS – lobbying for universities to divest from fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry “is a rogue industry and it’s immoral for our colleges to continue investing in it,” claims the CFS. According to them, fossil fuel companies are “spending millions of dollars to corrupt our political process,” they are “profiting while our children and communities pay the price” and “their greed for profit threatens the entire planet.” All that’s left is for the CFS to launch a campaign to have the scientist-muzzling, climate-denying oil puppet Stephen Harper deported for setting Canada on the path to Armageddon...
Keep reading.