Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Pics and toons 9/7/10 (2)







 


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Pics and toons 9/7/10 (1)

 





 


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50 worst U.S. lawmakers named by public-interest group









 

 

 

Jim Kouri

50 worst U.S. lawmakers named by public-interest group

·         September 7th, 2010 6:36 am ET

During the last two years of a virtual jobs depression, these 50 lawmakers led Congress in allowing the addition of another 75,000 permanent working-age immigrants every month and in allowing about 7 million illegal foreign workers to keep their jobs in construction, service, manufacturing and transportation, according to NumbersUSA, a national public-interest group. 

Recent government data show that 22 million U.S. workers who want a job can't find one. But these 50 members of Congress deserted those Americans in favor of increasing the number of foreign workers competing with them in the hiring line.

"NumbersUSA is performing a true service for the American people. The group provides a list to help voters decide which politicians are honest and which ones are duplicitous power-grabbers who are betraying their own constituents," said political strategist Mike Baker. 

The non-partisan NumbersUSA rates every member on every committee and floor vote and every bill co-sponsorship that would either increase or reduce the foreign workers (legal and illegal) in the country. Those in Congress who do the most to protect American workers in terms of immigration policies receive an A+, while those doing the least receive an F-minus.
 

  All 50 "Deserters" on this list:
  --  received grades of F-minus and 0%, failing to take a single action to
      reduce competition for jobless Americans.
  --  are asking voters to re-elect them to Congress this November
  --  are in the Senate or in the House where they are leaders with special
      opportunity to influence policy toward jobless Americans because they
      either are congressional chairmen, leaders of their Party or on the
      Judiciary Committee with direct jurisdiction over immigration.
 
 
  
  WORST DESERTERS IN THE SENATE
  -----------------------------
  Bennet, Michael (CO)
  Feingold, Russell (WI)
  Gillibrand, Kirsten (NY)
  Inouye, Daniel (HI)
  Leahy, Patrick (VT)
  Mikulski, Barbara (MD)
  Reid, Harry (NV)
 
   WORST DESERTERS IN THE HOUSE
  ----------------------------
   Ackerman, Gary (NY 05th)
  Baldwin, Tammy (WI - 02nd)
   Becerra, Xavier (CA - 31st)
  Berman, Howard (CA - 28th)
   Chu, Judy (CA - 32nd)
  Clarke, Yvette (NY - 11th)
   Clyburn, James (SC - 06th)
  Conyers, John (MI - 14th)
   Cummings, Elijah (MD - 07th)
  Engel, Eliot (NY - 17th)
   Grijalva, Raul (AZ - 07th)
  Gutierrez, Luis (IL - 04th)
   Hastings, Alcee (FL - 23rd)
  Hoyer, Steny (MD - 05th)
   Jackson-Lee, Sheila (TX - 18th)
  Johnson, Hank (GA - 04th)
   Kucinich, Dennis (OH - 10th)
  Lewis, John (GA - 05th)
   Lofgren, Zoe (CA - 16th)
  Markey, Edward (MA - 07th)
   McDermott, Jim (WA 07th)
  Nadler, Jerrold (NY - 08th)
   Napolitano, Grace (CA - 38th)
  Olver, John (MA - 01st)
   Quigley, Mike (IL - 05th)
  Pelosi, Nancy (CA - 8th)
   Rahall, Nick (WV - 03rd)
  Rangel, Charles (NY - 15th)
   Rush, Bobby (IL - 01st)
  Sanchez, Linda (CA - 39th)
   Schakowsky, Janice (IL - 09th)
  Scott, Robert (VA - 03rd)
   Serrano, Jose (NY - 16th)
  Slaughter, Louise (NY - 28th)
   Stark, Pete (CA - 13th)
  Thompson, Bennie (MS - 02nd)
   Towns, Edolphus (NY - 10th)
  Velazquez, Nidia (NY - 12th)
   Tsongas, Niki (MA - 05th)
  Wasserman-Schultz, Debbie (FL - 20th)
   Watt, Melvin (NC - 12th)
  Waxman, Henry (CA - 30th)
   Woolsey, Lynn (CA - 06th)

Source: NumbersUSA

 


 


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Washington Times Calls for Obama Impeachment

[[ Should be the very first act the new republican controlled house does in jan. ]]







 



http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/major-newspaper-calls-for-impeachment-of-barack-obama?sms_ss=facebook

Major newspaper calls for impeachment of Barack Obama (revised)

  • September 1st, 2010 10:24 am ET

Considered by some to be one of the top 10 most influential newspapers in the country due to its considerable standing with conservatives, The Washington Times has called for the impeachment of Barack Obama.

The Washington Times, which has become known through the years as D.C.'s major alternative newspaper, called for the ouster of Obama in an op-ed column yesterday.  The Times is delivered into the mailboxes of every Senator and Congressman in Washington.

While one major site ranks the Washington Times in the top 100 daily newspapers in the country (No. 92), for a publication to rank even in the top 100 out of over 1400 daily papers in America qualifies the Times as a 'major daily.'

Although the column does not officially represent the editorial board of the newspaper, the fact that WT chose to publish it may indicate the official stance of its publisher and ownership, given that the columnist is one of a select few staff editorialists for the paper, and each column written by staff must have prior approval of the WT brass.

In the stunning opinion-piece, columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner stated the following:

"President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors. The Democratic majority in Congress is in peril as Americans reject his agenda. Yet more must be done: Mr. Obama should be impeached."

Kuhner goes further to delineate the specific high crimes and misdemeanors to which he refers.

It turns out that this is not the first time that the Washington Times has hinted that it may now support Obama's impeachment.  In July, former GOP Presidential candidate and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo wrote an opinion piece for the paper which also called for Obama's impeachment.

Tancredo maintains that Obama violated his oath of office by his actions and inaction regarding federal enforcement of immigration law and his intention to punish the state of Arizona for passing a law that would enforce federal mandates.

The problem, of course, is that as long as the Democrats control Congress, such a move will never be made.  In order for an ouster of a sitting President to occur, a clear supermajority must approve the measure.  And, in this current highly partisan political climate, the only way that can occur is a massive Republican (conservatives, not RINOS) takeover of both the House and the Senate in November.

Problems regarding Presidential high crimes and misdemeanors go far beyond the White House, however.  Congress walks in tandem with this President's penchant for disregarding our nation's laws and its Constitution.

A clear example of Congress as an accessory to the crimes is a little-reported covert act which made the ominous 'cap and trade' energy tax on Americans a reality without a vote. 

Many conservative political observers have long warned about actions such as these by Obama and Congress, but mainly with regard to the upcoming 'lame duck session' between November and January before the new Congress can be seated.

Cap and trade was one of the bills the Left promised to pass before they left office.

Now, however, it appears they have already done so, and that without debate or vote.  Although it appears that 65 BILLION dollars have already been transfered to an entity that profits from 'capping' greenhouse gases in the Northeast, citizens still have a window of opportunity to stop it from being implemented across the country--IF they bombard Congress with protests over cap and trade.

Such legislation would add an extra $2400 to $5000 dollars in energy costs PER YEAR PER HOUSEHOLD in America, placing yet another unconscionable financial burden on families who are still suffering from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression.

The fact that these oppressive measures are being forced on the American public by elected co-conspirators in the economic collapse, such as Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, and many others who gave their nod to the dubious government policy dating all the way back to the mid-1990s to essentially turn Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into welfare agencies, only underscores the corruption that is entrenched in Washington in Congress AND the White House.

Thus, not only is it clear that Obama should be impeached and removed from office, but his enablers in Congress, who have controlled the legislative branch since 2006, must be ousted in November.

 

 



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**JP** Ijaz butt hides from crisis!!!

What is the role of Ijaz Butt in cricket today? He is following his boss exactly, shying away and disappearing when leadership is required and never appearing and have a hand in every scandal, and well, his tennure has a record number of scandals....is he planted in cricket just the way zardari is planted on Pakistan to create destruction??
 

Spot-fixing controversy

Ijaz Butt hides from crisis - Geoff Lawson

Cricinfo staff

September 7, 2010

Geoff Lawson, the former Australian fast bowler and Pakistan coach, has criticised the PCB and its chairman, Ijaz Butt, for failing to provide the strong leadership that the country's cricket needs during "one of its biggest challenges."

"Even through this crisis we have heard virtually nothing from their chairman," Lawson said on ESPNcricinfo's audio show Time Out. "He hides from a crisis, he is not a leader and when Pakistan need a strong leader and people to show them the way forward, they are not getting it from their board."

Lawson said before the appointment of Butt, Pakistan cricket had in place detailed long-term plans to develop the game from the grassroots up. "There were 10 and 15 year plans, plans to build regional cricket academies, fitness, fitness trainers, physios and stocking gyms with better equipment and better pay for the first-class players."

Things in Pakistan changed after Butt took charge, Lawson said. "After the elections in 2008, it took some months with their hung parliament to appoint a new chairman and Ijaz Butt was appointed and really, I just see from that instant, there has been a decline in Pakistan cricket."

Before the spot fixing controversy, Butt's tenure coincided with the Lahore attack on the Sri Lankan team, the refusal by other countries to tour Pakistan, several captaincy changes, the fallout of the Australia tour with match-fixing and disciplinary charges being levelled on players and deteriorating relations with the ICC.

Last week, Test captain Salman Butt and fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were charged under the ICC's anti-corruption code and provisionally suspended from the game while their case is being heard. However, Lawson said Salman Butt had done a great job with a young side since being appointed captain of Pakistan and that he would be shocked if Salman Butt turned out to be at the center of the spot-fixing scandal.

"If it is the case that these young players are being affected, then there is something very bad with the environment in which Pakistan cricket is being played in."

Given the stakes, Lawson said the current crisis is the greatest Pakistan cricket has faced, and unlike previous crises, the team will not have the opportunity to mend fences by playing matches at home once things calm down.

"The hearings on Asif, Amir and Salman will be extremely important," he said. "I hope against hope that things will turn out alright but this is very much a watershed for Pakistan cricket right now."


Re: [LPRadicals-Discuss] Gen Petraeus says burning Korans will endanger his troops!

Maybe they should use them as bullet proof vests?

On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Harland Harrison <harlandh5@yahoo.fr> wrote:
 



Gen Petraeus says a church should not burn a pile of Qurans. He is concerned
about his kill ratio, which must be around 150 to 1. He thinks people could
get be even more angry at the US government:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100907/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

How can America be so evil? People burning books? Churches destroying
religious objects? Generals telling churches what to do?

Harland Harrison
LP of San Mateo County CA

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Re: **JP** Eid Mubarak To Alll Friends...Hahahah:d

 



 


Eid Mubarak

to all members



 
Muhammad Ali Raza
maraza1984@gmail.com
maraza_1984@yahoo.com

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Spaniards BRILLIANT




 


This a complimentary program to my suggestion to prevent Islamic airplane hijackers.   Have the Flight Attendants stand at the door when boarding and require each entering passenger to eat one Pork Rind, the crunchy chip made from pigskin.  Hot sauce available but optional.   Upon touching or eating pork, it takes 24 hours for the defiled Muslim to cleanse himself.

Simple and cheap.   I cannot imagine a good Muslim willling to suicide before able to return to a holy condition.   No virgins, no Paradise.

Sort of takes the fun out of being a martyr.

 


 

 


 


 

 


---

 

 



WHAT A GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!!!

     

 

Spaniards BRILLIANT..someone get this to NY ASAP.!!!!

 

 

 

PEOPLE IN MICHIGAN and NYC NEED TO LEARN HOW TO DO THIS!! SPECIALLY DRIBBLING THE BLOOD AROUND! SO DO NEWYORKERS!!!

 

 



In Spain ..at Sevilla
 
Some local people found a way to stop the construction of another mosque in their town ..
 
They buried a Pig on the site, making sure this would be known by the local press..
 
The Islamic rules forbid building a Mosque on "Pig soiled ground".
 
The Muslims had to cancel the project ..this land was sold to them by government officials..
 
No protests were needed by the local people ... and It worked !!!
 



En Espagne, ils ne sont pas bêtes, ils ont trouvé une solution !!! 
[]

 

 

 

PUTTING THE HEART IN RELIGION BACK TO WORK FOR THE POEPLE


 

 




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No...'burn-a-Quran' protest on 9/11....says Petraeus

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/09/florida-pastor-still-plans-a-burn-a-quran-protest-on-911-despite-warnings-by-petraeus/1

The pastor of a Florida church says he takes very seriously Gen. David
Petraeus' warning that his church's burn-a-Quran day on 9/11 could
endanger U.S. troops and that his congregation is praying about it,
but he still plans to go through with the protest.


Afghans wave banners saying
CAPTIONBy Musadeq Sadeq, AP"We are definitely weighing the situation,"
Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville,
Fla., tells CNN today. "We are weighing the thing we are about to do,
what it possibily could cause, what is our actual message, what we are
trying to get across. How important is that now."


Petraeus, top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said in a
statement Monday that the actions by the 50-member church "could
endanger troops, and it could endanger the overall effort."

But Jones says the protest aimed at radical Islam is still on. "Once
in awhile, you see that in the Bible, there are instances where enough
is enough and you stand up," Jones tells CNN.


Our colleagues at Faith & Reason have details on an interfaith summit
of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders that plans to issue a joint
declaration later today.


Gainesville police plan to set up a checkpoint at streets around the
church on Saturday to check driver's licenses and maintain a
heightened police presence, The Gainesville Sun reports. The three-
hour protest is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET.


This comes a day after someone in Gainesville scrawled the word
"Nazis" on a sign erected near an Islamic center announcing
"International Burn A Koran Day," The Sun reports.

The newspaper says a man has turned himself in for the act, but police
are trying to contact the owner of the property before pressing
charges.


At a protest Monday in Kabul, several hundred Afghans rallied outside
a Kabul mosque, burning American flags and an effigy of Dove World's
pastor and chanting "death to America."

**************
Personally, on Fee Speech grounds I can see it.
It is one segment of the U.S. Christian population's right.....just
like it is one segment of the Muslim Afghans (or others) population's
right to counter-protest.
Then you get to the political question.... support or endanger U.S.
troops... well, says who? and will that really happen? Always the
individual person's choice, I would say...... I'm not doing this....
nominal9

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Think maybe people are starting to see the truth here - Zero has really messed up the economy as has the Congress

   

The Obama Economy

How trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus produced a 1.6% recovery.

So two months before an election, and 19 months after the mother of all spending programs, President Obama said yesterday he's rolling out one more plan to stimulate the economy. We'll discuss the details when they're released, but the effort itself is a tacit admission that his earlier proposals have flopped. As the autumn economic debate gets underway, it's important to understand how and why we got here.

***

The recession preceded Mr. Obama's Inaugural by 13 months, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and so did the President's fiscal policy ideas. George W. Bush got there first. In February 2008, he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed on a $168 billion combination of federal spending and temporary tax rebates that were supposed to maintain growth through the housing market decline that election year.

Larry Summers, who would later become Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser, made the case for such a stimulus to boost domestic "demand" in late 2007. Any stimulus, he told the Brookings Institution, should be "timely, targeted and temporary." Peter Orszag, then at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before joining the Obama White House, made the same case.

The official GDP statistics did show a growth blip in the second quarter of 2008 to 0.6%, but third quarter GDP fell by 4%, and we all know what happened after the financial meltdown. Stimulus I failed.

Associated Press

Larry Summers

Enter Stimulus II, the $814 billion plan that was also supposed to make up for lost private demand. It too was a combination of one-time tax rebates and spending, mostly on social programs like Medicaid rather than on "shovel-read projects." Mr. Summers promised this would have a 1.5 "multiplier" effect on GDP growth, and White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein famously predicted the spending would keep the jobless rate below 8%.

All during this time, the Federal Reserve was also feeding the economy with unprecedented monetary stimulus, cutting its benchmark interest rate to near zero and expanding its balance sheet by more than $2 trillion by purchasing mortgage-backed securities and other assets.

During this time, too, Congress passed other industry-specific stimulus bills—cash-for-clunkers, the $8,000 home-buyer's tax credit, mortgage payment relief, and jobless pay up to 99 weeks. Yet all of this has merely stolen auto and home purchases from the future, with sales falling once the tax benefits expired. The housing market in particular may be softening again, despite historically low interest rates.

The recovery seems to have begun in summer 2009, with GDP growth hitting 5% in the fourth quarter on the backs of an inventory rebound and expansion overseas. But U.S. growth has since decelerated, to a mere 1.6% in the second quarter, and the jobless rate is 9.6% after three consecutive months of job losses. The economy is growing, but far too slowly to restore broad-based prosperity.

In sum, never before has government spent so much and intervened so directly in credit allocation to spur growth, yet the results have been mediocre at best. In return for adding nearly $3 trillion in federal debt in two years, we still have 14.9 million unemployed. What happened?

***

The explanations from the White House and liberal economists boil down to three: The stimulus was too small, Republicans blocked better policies, and this recession is different because it began in a financial meltdown. Only the third point has some merit, and for a different reason than the White House claims.

On a too-small stimulus, this isn't what Democrats or most Keynesian economists told us at the time. Even Paul Krugman, who now denies intellectual paternity for this economy, wrote on November 14, 2008 that "My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion." The White House raised him by 33% two months later, but now we're told that wasn't enough.

Given that the stimulus program was so poorly structured and so overtly politicized, how do we know that, say, $500 billion more would have made a difference even on Keynesian terms? The money for government spending has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy. Our guess is that by ensuring even higher debt and implying higher taxes, a bigger spending stimulus would have done even more harm.

Stimulus godfather Mark Zandi and CBO have produced studies claiming that the stimulus saved millions of jobs and thus prevented an even deeper recession. But these are essentially plug-and-play economic models that multiply the amount of dollars spent by the assumed impact on jobs based on previous studies, and, voila, the jobless rate would have been higher without such spending. In the real world, the economy lost 2.51 million jobs.

The claim that recessions rooted in financial panic pose special problems has more truth to it. Credit excesses built up over many years have to be wound down, and that takes time, while banks have to work down their bad assets. However, one good aspect of this recovery is that business balance sheets have shaped up nicely, thanks to productivity gains, and banks have been making healthy profits. The problem is that banks still aren't lending and businesses aren't hiring or investing enough.

***

Which brings us to another major cause of the Obama malaise. When it took office in 2009, many of us advised the Administration to focus on nurturing the recovery first and postponing social-policy priorities that would only add more economic uncertainty. All the more so given this recession's unusual financial roots.

Instead, Democrats embarked on the most sweeping expansion of government since the 1960s, imposing national health care, rewriting financial laws from top to bottom, attempting to re-regulate the telecom industry, and imposing vast new costs on energy, among many other proposals. Not to stop there, in January it plans to impose a huge new tax increase on "the wealthy," which in practice means on the most profitable small businesses.

Central to Mr. Obama's political strategy for passing these priorities has been trashing business and bankers as greedy profiteers. His Administration has denounced or held up as political or legal targets the Chrysler bond holders, Wall Street bonuses, Goldman Sachs, health-insurer profits, carbon energy investors, and anyone else who has dared to oppose any of its plans to "transform" U.S. society.

Only yesterday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama was at it again, declaring that "anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it'll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up—they just haven't studied our history. We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness."

Whatever else one can say about such rhetoric, it is not the way to restore business confidence or turn a fragile recovery into a durable expansion. It has only spread fear and even greater uncertainty.

As for blaming the Republicans, with only 40 and then 41 Senators they couldn't stop so much as a swinging door. The GOP couldn't even block the recent $10 billion teachers union bailout. The only major Obama priorities that haven't passed—cap and tax and union card check—were blocked by a handful of Democrats who finally said "no mas." No Administration since LBJ's in 1965 has passed so much of its agenda in one Congress—which is precisely the problem.

***

To put it another way, the real roots of Mr. Obama's economic problems are intellectual and political. The Administration rejected marginal-rate tax cuts that worked in the 1960s and 1980s because they would have helped the rich, in favor of a Keynesian spending binge that has stimulated little except government. More broadly, Democrats purposely used the recession as a political opening to redistribute income, reverse the free-market reforms of the Reagan era, and put government at the commanding heights of economic decision-making.

Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have succeeded in doing all of this despite the growing opposition of the American people, who are now enduring the results. The only path back to robust growth and prosperity is to stop this agenda dead in its tracks, and then by stages to reverse it. These are the economic stakes in November.

The halal racket is not a real racket unless its totally controlled by the soldiers of Allah









Halal

by SHEIKYERMAMI on SEPTEMBER 4, 2010

The halal racket is not a real racket unless its totally controlled by the soldiers of Allah

…a sinister midget, with a bucket and a mop, where the blood goes down the drain:

What exactly is 'halal'?

According to al-islam.org, one condition is (all emphasis mine):

i) A person, a man or a woman, who slaughters an animal must be a Muslim. An animal can also be slaughtered by a Muslim child who is mature enough to distinguish between good and bad, but not by non-Muslims other than Ahle Kitab, or a person belonging to those sects who are classified as Kafir, like, Nawasib – the enemies of Ahlul Bait (A.S.). In fact, even if Ahle Kitab non-Muslim slaughters an animal, as per precaution, it will not be halal, even if he utters 'Bismillah'.

So, whenever you see public school system, prisons or other government operated facilities that have changed to a halal menu only to accommodate muslims, keep in mind the government is contracting with slaughterhouses that discriminate against non-muslims.

 





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New Seal of the Democratic Party




 

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Can We Ban Islam? - Legal Guidelines for the Criminalization of Islam in the United States









There must be a way to ban Islam and protect the country from this plague.

 

 

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/05/can-we-ban-islam-legal-guidelines-for.html







Sunday, May 03, 2009

 

Can We Ban Islam? - Legal Guidelines for the Criminalization of Islam in the United States

Geert Wilders' recent call at a Palm Beach synagogue to ban Islam has stirred up all sorts of controversy, with more "moderate" blogs speaking out in opposition to it. So let's take a closer look at the issue of banning Islam.

Banning Islam is more difficult in the United States than in Europe, because of the First Amendment.


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


On the surface of it this is a fairly straightforward formulation barring the legislative branch from taking any action to create a state religion or barring the practice of any religion.

The founders were English citizens and well aware of the way in which religion could stoke political violence. In the late 18th century, Cromwell was not ancient history, neither were the Covenanters or the Gunpowder Plot. While they did not anticipate like the rise of an Islamic insurgency in America, they understood quite well that religion and violence could and would intersect.

That of course was one of the reasons for barring a State Church, to avoid giving the government control over religion, a situation that had resulted in much of the religious violence in England. By giving religion independence, but not political power, the First Amendment sought to avoid a repeat of the same ugliness that had marked centuries of wars in Europe.

That of course is a key point. The separation of church and state was meant to protect the integrity of both, and avoid power struggles between religious groups. There was to be no state religion, the government could not leverage religious authority and religious factions could not begin civil wars in a struggle to gain power or autonomy. For the most part it worked.

Until now the only real acid test for this approach involved the Mormon Church, an ugly history on both sides that has mostly been buried under the weight of time. More recently Scientology flared up as a cult turned church that demanded its own autonomy and did its best to make war on the government and its critics.

And then there is Islam. The first problem with using the First Amendment in defense of Islam-- is that its goal is to violate the First Amendment. Islam's widely stated goal is to become a State Religion, around the world and in America as well.

Sharia has been making steady advances in Africa and parts of Asia. Majorities of Muslims in the UK have said that they want Sharia law, and leading British figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury have supported the introduction of Islamic law into the British legal system. Domestic advocates for Sharia, such as Noah Feldman, are pushing for the normalization of Sharia law in the United States as well.

This would in effect turn Islam into an Established Religion in the United States, itself a violation of the First Amendment.

Furthermore Islam abridges the remaining portions of the First Amendment, which protect Freedom of Speech and the Press. Islam rejects both of these. To protect Islamic rights therefore means depriving non-Muslims of freedom of religion--- and both Muslims and non-Muslims of freedom of speech and the press.

These are not hypothetical scenarios, the Mohammed cartoon controversy has demonstrated exactly how this will work. So did the persecution of Salman Rushdie. To accept Islam is to reject freedom of speech and religion... in the same way that accepting Communism meant rejecting freedom of speech and religion. Islam and the Constitution of the United States are incompatible in the same way that Communism and the Constitution are incompatible.

The Founders sought to protect religious freedoms, at no point in time did they seek to protect religious terrorism. And Supreme Courts throughout American history have found that the First Amendment does not provide license for significant lawbreaking. That is why polygamy is not legal in the United States.

Having to choose between religious freedom and the rights and dignity of women and children-- America correctly chose the latter.

In 1785, James Madison, Father of the Constitution, wrote, "We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth that religion or the duty which we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." 

Yet Islamic history and recent events in Eurabia demonstrate that Islam does indeed spread by force and violence. Upholding the right of Islam to force its statues and views on Americans, violates Madison's fundamental and undeniable truth.

In 1802, Jefferson wrote his explanation for the First Amendment to the Danbury Baptist Association;


"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, and that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that the legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."


There is a key phrase in this statement, which is that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions. This statement was used as a legal principle by the Supreme Court in 1878 in the case of Reynolds vs the United States. Reynolds had been charged with bigamy and claimed that his faith required him to engage in polygamy.

The Court found that while Reynolds had the right to believe that polygamy was his duty, he did not have the right to practice it-- thus upholding Jefferson's distinction between action and belief.

As the court put it;


In our opinion, the statute immediately under consideration is within the legislative power of Congress. It is constitutional and valid as prescribing a rule of action for all those residing in the Territories, and in places over which the United States have exclusive control. This being so, the only question which remains is, whether those who make polygamy a part of their religion are excepted from the operation of the statute. If they are, then those who do not make polygamy a part of their religious belief may be found guilty and punished, while those who do, must be acquitted and go free. This would be introducing a new element into criminal law

Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?

So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? [98 U.S. 145, 167] To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.



The outcome then was that we could not have a situation in which crimes could be committed in the name of religion and protected by the First Amendment. Belief could not be criminalized, but practice could be.

But what does that actually mean and how exactly do we distinguish between action and practice? Does it merely mean that it is legal to believe in seizing America in the name of Islam, but not to practice it.

We can begin by pointing out that any number of Islamic practices which violate American law or promote an unhealthy social consequence can be banned, for much the same reason that polygamy was. In Reynolds vs the United States, the Court upheld the right of the Utah legislature to brand the spread of polygamy as a threat to innocent women and children, that had to be arrested through strong measures. The spread of Islam's practices can be seen in the same way.

France has treated the Hijab in a similar way. The United States can too, if it finds any abuse or violence associated with its enforcement or use. Honor killings over the Hijab demonstrate that this is the case. State Legislatures can then move to ban the Hijab.

Thus while we cannot charge someone with believing in Islam, we can stamp out many Islamic practices that are dangerous or abusive. The First Amendment does not protect religious practices that are illegal or made illegal, it protects only the beliefs themselves.

And we can go much further at an organizational level, based on the Sedition Act of 1918 and the 1954 Communist Control Act , which give us some guidelines for cracking down on Islam.


Sec. 2. The Congress hereby finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. Unlike political parties, which evolve their policies and programs through public means, by the reconciliation of a wide variety of individual views, and submit those policies and programs to the electorate at large for approval or disapproval, the policies and programs of the Communist Party are secretly prescribed for it by the foreign leaders of the world Communist movement. Its members have no part in determining its goals, and are not permitted to voice dissent to party objectives


This applies to Islam just as much as it applies to Communism. And this preamble was part of a passage demonstrating the fundamental distinction between Communism and legitimate political parties.

The assumption of the Communist Control Act was that the First Amendment did not apply to the Communist party or to Communist controlled parties... because they did not fit the democratic template of the First Amendment. As such the Communist party was not a legitimate party, but an overseas directed conspiracy to overthrow the United States and replace it with a Communist system.

Not only can this same argument also apply to Islamic organizations such as CAIR, but Islam can be distinguished from other religions on similar grounds. The following phrase from the original document represents the key point here;


It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.


And that is the core of the problem. While we cannot criminalize individual beliefs alone, we can criminalize organizations dedicated to overthrowing the United States and replacing it with a totalitarian system. An organization is not merely "belief", it also represents an attempt to put those beliefs into practice.

The Internal Security Act of 1950, along with the 1954 Communist Control Act provides extensive legal grounds for criminalizing organizations dedicated to the overthrow of the United States, as well as membership in such organizations-- and even provides for the removal of citizenship from members of such organizations.

While succeeding courts have thrown out many portions of these laws, had the United States truly gotten serious about the War on Terror, it could have passed a real Patriot Act that would have clamped down on Islamist organizations in a similar way.

The bill could have easily retrofitted some of the language of the Communist Control Act as follows;


Sec. 3. Islamic organizations, regardless of their assumed name, whose object or purpose is to overthrow the Government of the United States, or the government of any State, Territory, District, or possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein by force and violence, are not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof; and whatever rights, privileges, and immunities which have heretofore been granted to said party or any subsidiary organization by reason of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof, are hereby terminated:

Sec. 4. Whoever knowingly and willfully becomes or remains a member of such organizations, or (2) any other organization having for one of its purposes or objectives the establishment, control conduct, seizure, or overthrow of the Government of the United States, or the government of any State or political subdivision thereof, by the use of force or violence, with knowledge of the purpose or objective of such organization shall be subject to all the provisions and penalties of the Internal Security Act of 1950



The question then becomes one of defining what exactly an Islamist organization is. If we define Islamist under the same guidelines as Communist, but specifically modified as representing a belief in the overthrow or takeover of the United States or any part of it, thereby placing the United States under Islamic law... we already have a very broad net to work with.

Or to simply quote the Internal Security Act again


Sec. 4. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to combine, conspire, or agree, with any other person to perform any act which would substantially contribute to the establishment within the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship



Since Islam represents a totalitarian dictatorship, any organization or individual seeking to establish Islamic Law or Sharia within the United States, can be held liable and charged over its violation. This would apply to both Muslims and non-Muslims. 

And the Koran or Quran itself represents a volume whose contents implicitly call for the violent overthrow of the United States.

Consider Chapter 9 of the Koran, which governs the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims. Particularly Sura 9:29


[9.29] Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.



There are numerous other verses in the Koran which similarly call for Muslims to subjugate non-Muslims and take power. This parallels the charge against the Communist party and places Muslims who believe in the Koran on the same level as Communists who believed in the overthrow of the United States.

Participation in any Muslim organization therefore becomes the equivalent of participating in a Communist organization-- and can be banned. 

So back to the original question, can we ban Islam? While we cannot ban an individual from personally believing in Islam, we can ban Islamic practices and organizations-- which would effectively ban any practice of Islam in an organized way. 

While the First Amendment does not permit a ban on any specific religion, this is limited to religious belief, not religious practice. And the laws enacted against Communism in the 1950's demonstrate that organizations aimed at the overthrow of the United States can be banned and membership in them can even be criminalized. 

Thus we can be Islam from the public sphere, ban Muslim organizations as criminal organizations, criminalize Muslim practices and even denaturalize and deport Muslims who are United States citizens. The legal infrastructure is there. Despite the fact that the United States is far more protective of political and religious rights, within a decade every single Muslim organization, from the national to the mosque level, can be shut down... and the majority of professing Muslims can be deported from the United States regardless of whether they are citizens or not.

We can do it. Whether we could or will do it is another matter. It would require rolling back a number of Supreme Court decisions that are a legacy of the corrupted Warren Court. But it was possible post 9/11. It may yet become possible again.

 


 


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