“This legislation is not going to work,” Sessions told Breitbart News. He described the measure sponsored by the bipartisan so-called Gang of Eight in the Senate as a “surrender to illegality that will guarantee we’ll be back in this position again.”

“We have no indication whatsoever that this administration will have renewed [its] commitment to follow whatever law is passed,” Sessions said. “This Senate bill is very, very dangerous. It won’t work, and I hope the American people will dig into it and follow the details of it.”

In a time of high unemployment, record food-stamp dependency, and economic stagnation, a minimum of 11 million immigrants will immediately be given Social Security cards that will allow them to compete for government and blue collar jobs. The legislation puts “tremendous pressure” on the job market and makes it harder for workers to find jobs and leave welfare programs.

Although amnesty remains deeply unpopular among the American public at large, the activist Left wants the estimated 11 million illegal aliens present in the U.S. to be processed because they see them as future Democratic voters. In addition, many labor unions, such as SEIU (which has executives focused solely on immigration issues) see today’s illegals as future union members. Business lobbies favor amnesty because they crave the cheap, largely unskilled labor.

The Left’s goal with the current immigration bill, which a Heritage Foundation study found would add $6.3 trillion to the nation’s budget deficits over the coming 50 years, is the same as with most of its major policy initiatives over the past half century: To destroy the American system.

The radicals’ goal is to use immigration to subvert the American system, just as it has been since the 1960s when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) shepherded reform of that era’s immigration laws through Congress. The concept is simple: Flood America with people who don’t share Americans’ traditional philosophical commitment to the rule of law, limited government, and markets, in order to force changes in society.

An added benefit, from the Left’s perspective, is the proposed mass amnesty would destroy once and for all the Republican Party.

Starry-eyed Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) think that backing the measure will somehow win their party Latino votes. They must hope that if it becomes law the new voters it brings to their party’s fold will more than offset the all-but-certain exodus of fed-up conservatives the legislation will prompt. Among those disgruntled Republican-leaning voters are the same people whose failure to vote in November helped to deprive GOP candidate Mitt Romney of the presidency.

Democrats, on the other hand, know with much greater certainty that the legislation will secure their party more votes. “This legislation is all about the Democrats bringing in new voters who will assure them of a permanent leftist majority,” writes Paul Mirengoff.

Well-heeled radicals like George Soros are eager to push the national GOP over the cliff. One of the more active progressive groups pushing amnesty, National Immigration Forum, has taken a lot of money from Soros. According to tax records, the group has taken $3,807,152 from Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society since 2009 and $1,650,000 from Soros’s Open Society Institute since 1999.

On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Graham made the nonsensical argument that if the GOP doesn’t pander to Latinos it will die.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table and in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run [for president] in 2016,” he said. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party. And the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run in my view.”

Of course, the kind of outreach proposed by Graham is pointless.

Immigration is not an important issue for most Latino voters and Latinos are traditionally staunch, pro-big government Democrats.

“Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” said Representative Lou Barletta (R-Penn.). “The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”

According to Sessions, the legislation provides that an additional 4.5 million illegals will be legalized over the following decade. At that point the nation’s intake of immigrants will grow by at least 50 percent per year over 10 years for a total of 1.5 million immigrants a year being placed on a path to citizenship, or 15 million more for 10 years.

In addition to these 30 million immigrants placed on a path to citizenship, the measure would also double the quantity of temporary workers who could come and stay in the U.S. for three years, Sessions said. The workers would have the option to “re-up” for another three years with their families.

The bill is currently close to 1,100 pages long, reportedly weighing in at 24 pounds. It deals not only with immigration itself, but also with border security, welfare programs, free trade, and a multitude of other issues. Democrats are hoping to force the legislative monstrosity through the Senate before Independence Day.

The foremost champion of the bill, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), has made the laughable claim that the measure contains “the toughest enforcement measures in the history of the United States, potentially in the world.”

Last week the Senate rejected a “border security first” amendment to the Gang of Eight legislation. The amendment, offered by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), would have required the Department of Homeland Security to show that the southern border was secure for six months before illegals would be granted legal status.

One of the recently discovered gems buried deep within the legislation is a provision that would create a small business advocates’ office within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The office would have the power to block enforcement actions and revoke penalties slapped on an employer.

Another provision would give the attorney general the ability to provide a taxpayer-funded defense lawyer to illegal aliens facing deportation. Even U.S. citizens are not entitled to free government attorneys in administrative proceedings. (A deportation hearing is an administrative — not a criminal — proceeding.)

“Illegal aliens fighting deportation would be entitled to see all of the documents in their file, including those obtained by ICE from other law-enforcement agencies, which may be sensitive or even classified,” writes Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The likely result is that other agencies would decline to provide ICE with these documents if they were worried about their release. And, if ICE refused to release any documents, then the alien could not be removed.”

Incidentally, embattled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director John Morton said he’s quitting at the end of next month.

Morton became infamous in 2010 when he directed law enforcement to stop enforcing immigration laws. ICE’s union, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, approved a non-confidence motion against him on a vote of 259 to zero. Morton also released thousands of illegal immigrants from custody, hundreds of whom had violent criminal records.

But amnesty opponents should not lose heart. All is not lost even if the Senate approves the bill.

The measure faces an uncertain future in the House.

“This is President Obama’s number one political agenda item because he knows we will never again have a Republican president, ever, if amnesty goes into effect. We will perpetually have a progressive, liberal president, probably a Democrat, and we will probably see the House of Representatives go into Democrat hands and the Senate will stay in Democrat hands,” Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said.

An analysis by Amy Walter of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report puts the odds of passage in the House somewhere between slim and none.

For House Republicans, “[T]here is little short-term gain to supporting immigration legislation,” Walter says. “It won’t make them any safer in a general election and instead may make them more vulnerable in a primary.”

GOP operatives’ entreaties to House lawmakers to support the bill out of loyalty to the party are likely to fall on deaf ears. “Today, with over 40 percent of the GOP conference elected since 2010, the idea of ‘taking one for the team’ is likely to fall flat,” Walter says. “Most of these members ran to shake up Washington and have pledged to refuse to bow to party bosses.”

“[I]t’s going to take more than just talk of being a ‘good soldier’ to get House GOPers to go along with comprehensive immigration reform,” she says.

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Kerry’s cynical turn was emblematic of a whole gang of Democrats who had been for the war when it was popular and rushed to come out against it when it wasn’t. Kerry joined the likes of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in initially backing the Bush Administration’s policy because it was their policy to begin with.

Invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein had been a policy explored by the same Democrats who went on to become the loudest voices against it; sometimes after voting for it. And that hypocrisy made them unelectable.

Everyone remembers the loathsome spectacle of mainstream Democrats suddenly embracing creatures like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan for no other reason than that they made useful weapons against George W. Bush. That alone should keep us from embracing the equally repulsive Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald.

At least the Democrats went deeper to their side of the spectrum, further to the left, once they realized that they could score political points over Iraq, but some Republicans are going not deeper into their own side of the spectrum, but also to the left.

It’s an ugly spectacle in which a man who escapes to a territory held by an enemy nation and reveals information about intelligence gathering that goes far beyond any domestic surveillance and that alerts enemy states to our capabilities becomes a patriot because his revelations are temporarily damaging to Barack Obama.

Americans should be watchful of what their government does. But that watchfulness should be based on actual actions, not on potential actions.

The IRS scandal is so compelling because there is clear evidence that political targeting had occurred. The NSA scandal is apolitical. It’s about how extensive the information gathering capabilities of the government have become. It’s a valid topic, but it’s also an apolitical topic.

The IRS was used to suppress dissent. The NSA was not. Turning the IRS into a weapon of political destruction is all on Obama, but the NSA has been making people apolitically uncomfortable for a while now.

It’s sensible to distrust what Obama is capable of doing with the NSA, but preemptively shutting down defense and intelligence capabilities out of fear of what Obama might decide to do with them would cripple our national defense.

Kerry and his fellow Democrats did not stop and think before turning the War in Iraq into collateral damage in their war on George W. Bush. We might want to pause before turning the War on Terror into collateral damage in a war on Obama.

Recent attempts to depict drone strikes or extensive information gathering as some gimmick that Obama cooked up on the golf course are as dishonest as the revisionist history that was peddled by Gore and Kerry. If those things are to be opposed, then they should be opposed honestly.

Obama did not invent the War on Terror. He inherited it and mismanaged it. It’s one thing to take issue with that mismanagement and another to take issue with the war. And that is what we’re really talking about.

The War on Terror has mostly been pared down to clumsy intelligence gathering and drone strikes. Take those two off the table and the war is over. It’s not over in the sense that a victory has been achieved or peace has been obtained. It’s over in the sense that we revert back to a pre-9/11 reality in which Islamic terrorism is treated like organized crime.

That outcome is not one that Obama opposes. Instead it’s one that he has fervently worked toward over the years.

We can attack Obama from the right for bungling the War on Terror or we can attack him from the left for continuing the War on Terror and that will just push him in the direction that he already wants to go.

Obama left the remnants of the War on Terror in place because it was the politically safe thing to do. Federal law enforcement has been blinded and neutered when it comes to dealing with Islamic groups, but “smart” intelligence gathering programs and drone strikes have been used to fill the gap to avoid domestic terrorist attacks and accomplish foreign policy objectives.

Both of those tactics have failed. The Boston Marathon bombings and the defeat in Afghanistan are proof of that. The only way to hold Obama accountable for the loss of all those lives is to explain how he tied the hands of the FBI and American soldiers in fighting the real enemy, instead of hooking up with enemy propagandists like Glenn Greenwald who claim that we are the real enemy.

It’s only sensible to have a national conversation about the tactics that we are using to fight terrorism, but giving the anti-war movement the microphone turns the conversation into a choice between doing something and doing nothing. And not even Obama is self-destructive enough to choose doing nothing because once a bomb goes off in a crowded place, there are political consequences to having done absolutely nothing.

Kerry became a walking cartoon because of his dishonesty. Like so many Democrats, he wanted to change his views without admitting that they had changed. If we are going to have a conversation, then it should be an honest one.

We face an extensive conspiracy of Muslim terrorists operating in global organizations on a large scale, and as individuals and cells locally. These groups and individuals communicate through everything from burner phones to coded posts on abandoned forums to Xbox Live game console chats making tracking them a challenge.

Yes, a lot of this would be less of an issue under President Allen West, but under Barack Obama the options are limited. We can’t have the War on Terror that should exist. We can advocate for it, but for now we are stuck with the shambling skeleton of the War on Terror that is. That War on Terror is a mixed bag, but we should be wary of tossing it completely overboard for a temporary political advantage.

The mismanaged War on Terror in its current state may not stop the next bomber. But then again it might.

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The Obama administration is using the election of Iran’s new president-elect, Hassan Rouhani, as an excuse to consider resuming negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Iran is cleverly running the clock, using the election of the moderate-appearing Rouhani as bait to lure the Obama administration and its European allies into another round of useless talks while Iran forges ahead to develop a nuclear arms arsenal.

Rouhani, a cleric, had served as the Supreme National Security Council chairman under Presidents Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005.  He is perceived as a “moderate” compared with the other candidates who ran for president against him. However, everything is relative. Hundreds of reformist and pragmatic candidates, and all women, were barred from running. Rouhani was the last so-called “reform” candidate standing.

Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” this past Sunday that he sees Rouhani’s election “as a potentially hopeful sign.”

For his part, Rouhani is doing all he can to stoke the Obama administration’s interest in resuming talks. “The idea is to engage in more active negotiations with the 5+1, as the nuclear issue cannot be resolved without negotiations,” president-elect Rouhani said during his press conference on June 17th, referring to the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany.

There are “many ways to build trust” with the West, Rouhani added. “Our nuclear programmes are completely transparent. But we are ready to show greater transparency and make clear for the whole world that the steps of the Islamic Republic of Iran are completely within international frameworks.” Rouhani pledged to follow a “path of moderation and justice, not extremism.”

At the same time, Rouhani complained that the U.S. and European Union sanctions against his country were unfair and unjustified, and he vowed that the “period is over” for Iran to consider ending its uranium enrichment program.

“The Iranian nation has done nothing to deserve sanctions. The works it has done has been within international frameworks. If sanctions have any benefits, it will only benefit Israel. It has no benefits for others,” he said.

Using Rouhani’s election as Iran’s next president as an excuse for the Obama administration to chase the rabbit of further fruitless negotiations is a fool’s errand.  Whatever negotiating position Rouhani would like to pursue, his hands are tied by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who calls all of the shots.

As explained by an Iranian Christian leader quoted by Joel Rosenberg, author of The 12th Imam series and expert on the Middle East:

We must remember that Khamenei is the supreme power and will make all the important decisions. This includes relationship with the west and nuclear program… Khamenei and the clergy have set up a power structure so that there are layers of protection for them. They use the government as their puppet (a front) to implement their national and international wishes. But if something goes wrong, they have the government to blame for it.

In any case, Rouhani is an insider. He is reported to be very close to Khamenei and has been serving as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, an advisory body to Khamenei. He is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, a body vested with authority to elect and remove the Supreme Leader.

“Dr. Rouhani is absolutely in the pro-regime camp. He is loyal to the Ayatollah Khamenei and is committed to obeying his wishes and orders,” the Iranian Christian leader,  Dr. Hormoz Shariat (known as the ‘ the Billy Graham of Iran’), is quoted as telling Joel Rosenberg.

Rouhani is no fan of political dissent. In July 2010, for example, he strongly denounced the Green Movement protesters who were demonstrating in support of the Arab Spring. In any event, as president, Rouhani will have little to say about how Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Ministry of Intelligence or Basij militia handle dissenters.

In terms of demeanor and rhetoric, Rouhani is expected to project a far more reasonable image than the outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, Rouhani was highly critical of Ahmadinejad and refused to serve in his administration. However, a shift in style does not mean a shift in substance.

Rouhani sees negotiations as merely a tactic to buy time in advancing Iran’s nuclear program. It is worth noting that Ayatollah Khamenei had specifically requested his appointment as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, a post he retained until Ahmadinejad came to power.

In an in-depth interview given to the Mehrnameh periodical in May 2012 to mark the publication of his book, National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy, Rouhani said that during Iran’s voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, which Rouhani negotiated with the European Union in 2003, Iran’s nuclear program made major advances. He declared in the interview that no matter who is elected president of Iran, “Iran’s position on nuclear technology will not change.”

Even if Iran’s new president-elect Hassan Rouhani wanted to steer Iran’s nuclear policies in a fundamentally different direction, which is hardly likely, he will have no power to do so. Hardliner Ayatollah Khamenei will continue to be in charge, which means no real change. Thus, the Obama administration will be wasting more precious time if it is lured by Rouhani’s siren song, as Iran progresses towards achieving its ambition of a nuclear arms capability.

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Even if we ignore the fact that the US cannot absorb and assimilate all the people who want to come to America, we cannot ignore the question of whether we are doing Mexico a favor with our open borders. No doubt, life as an illegal alien in the US is much better than being unemployed and poor in Mexico or any other third world country.

At face value illegal immigration seems to be good for Mexico, which benefits tremendously from the pouring of US dollars into its economy, supporting families and relatives of immigrants in America. That is why the Mexican government is not complaining and is happy to maintain the status quo on its borders. The government of Mexico acts like it is a right for its citizens to cross the borders into the US to find work. Not a bad deal for any government that does not want to be accountable to its own citizens to improve their lives, the economy and human rights conditions. The message of the Mexican government to its citizens is: You want a job, human rights and medical care, then go to the US if you can’t afford it here.

The natural urge for any country to improve comes from pressure from the lower classes that demand employment and pressure governments to work hard to educate citizens to meet the demands of job competition. By absorbing Mexico’s unskilled workers, the US government has become an enabler in this equation.

That is why the US government cannot claim to be an innocent victim here since it has politicized, used and abused the illegal immigration issue and narrowed it down to getting the Hispanic vote, name-calling Americans who want to respect the law and maintain border control, while neglecting the bigger picture: open border policies’ impact on the rights of American citizens and the healthy functioning of both Mexican and American sovereignty and economies.

If the huge number of illegal immigrants from Mexico was good for Mexico as a nation, then how come its economic, political and security conditions have not improved over the years, but instead have steadily deteriorated? The steady absorption of the bottom of Mexican society by the US has deprived Mexico of its motivation to improve its economy and to become a government that serves the welfare and living conditions of its poor and unemployed. Why should Mexico work hard on improving conditions for the poor and unemployed if America is doing the job for them?

It is not easy for any nation to be located on the border with a giant economic super power like the United States. This situation tempts smaller nations to exist like small fish living off the crumbs and leftovers of a giant whale.

The situation in both Mexico and the US is unnatural and self-defeating, leaving Mexico stagnant and unmotivated to improve and meet the needs of its citizens. Groups in America who claim moral superiority for being on the side of open borders and absorbing all illegal aliens because they have big hearts are in fact absolving the Mexican government of its duty toward its citizens and economy and are contributing to the internal problems of Mexico and the United States. In the long run, we are not doing Mexico a favor with our open borders, but we are crippling them and robbing them of the healthy functioning of their nation.

The US should immediately end the politicization of the immigration issue not only for the sake of America, but also for the sake of Mexico. We need a sane immigration policy that respects US sovereignty and that helps Mexico become more responsible as an independent nation to end its sluggish economy and political corruption.

The sovereignty of both the US and Mexico has been compromised under the status quo, which is unsustainable. Either we control the US border or say goodbye to both US and Mexican sovereignty as two separate nations.

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The Gang gathered to discuss The Totalitarianism at the Heart of the Obama Scandals. The discussion occurred in Part II and focused on how the Left’s lust for power and tyrannical control now lies exposed in front of all. The segment also dealt with Obama’s Catastrophes in the Middle East, shedding light on the White House recently giving $1.3 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — while Syrian jihadists await U.S. arms.

In Part I, the Gang’s discussion centered on Edward Snowden: Traitor. The dialogue focused on the importance of punishing a snitch for violating the Espionage Act. At the same time, the Gang analyzed the destructiveness of the Obama administration’s Jihad Denial, which has led to mass numbers of Americans being put under surveillance, rather than the actual jihadists who wish us harm.

To watch both parts of this two-part series, see below:

Part I:

Part II:

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Intellectuals argue that diversity is necessary for academic excellence, but what’s the evidence? For example, Japan is a nation bereft of diversity in any activity. Close to 99 percent of its population is of one race. Whose students do you think have higher academic achievement — theirs or ours? According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, the academic performance of U.S. high-school students in reading, math and science pales in comparison with their diversity-starved counterparts in Japan.

Should companies be treated equally? According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (9/7/2009) by Manhattan Institute’s energy expert Robert Bryce, Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with its pollutants. The company paid $600,000 in fines and fees. A recent Associated Press story (5/14/2013) reported that “more than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.” The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted windmill farms, sometimes called bird Cuisinarts, for killing eagles and other protected bird species. In fact, AP reports that the Obama administration has shielded the industry from liability and has helped keep the scope of the deaths secret. It’s interesting that The Associated Press chose to report the story only after the news about its reporters being secretly investigated. That caused the Obama administration to fall a bit out of favor with them.

But what the heck, the 14th Amendment’s requirement of “equal protection” before the law for everybody can be cast aside in the name of diversity, so why can’t it be cast aside in the name of saving the planet? There are politically favored industries just as there are politically favored groups.

What’s the difference between a progressive, a liberal and a racist? In some cases, not much. President Woodrow Wilson was a leading progressive who believed in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” movie, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: “It’s like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested. Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.

Dr. Thomas Sowell, in “Intellectuals and Race,” documents other progressives who were advocates of theories of racial inferiority. They included former presidents of Stanford University and MIT, among others. Eventually, the views of progressives fell out of favor. They changed their name to liberals, but in the latter part of the 20th century, the name liberals fell into disrepute. Now they are back to calling themselves progressives.

I’m not arguing that today’s progressives are racists like their predecessors, but they share a contempt for liberty, just as President Wilson did. According to Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe — author of “Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift” — in his National Review Online (4/11/13) article “Progressive Racism,” Wilson wanted to persuade his compatriots to get “beyond the Declaration of Independence.” President Wilson said the document “did not mention the questions” of his day, adding, “It is of no consequence to us.” My question is: Why haven’t today’s progressives disavowed their racist predecessors?

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After America said no to a pork-filled security-undermining amnesty bill in 2007, the No Illegal Alien Left Behind lobbyists changed their overtly thuggish tactics. They put down their upside-down American flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts and cloaked their radical “Aztlan” aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of “reform” and “opportunity.”

It was all just an act, of course. Inevitably, the mask has slipped. Over the weekend, illegal alien protesters descended on the private residence of Kansas Secretary of State and immigration enforcement lawyer Kris Kobach. As Twitchy.com reported on Saturday, 300 amnesty activists marched into Kobach’s neighborhood and barged up his driveway and right onto his doorstep. It’s how the Alinskyite “community organizers” roll.

Shouting into a bullhorn and waving their fists from his front porch, the property rights-invaders dubbed Kobach “King of Hate” for his work representing border security activists and federal customs enforcement agents who are fighting the systemic sabotage of immigration law. Thankfully, Kobach, his wife and their four young daughters were not home at the time.

But the aggrieved amnesty demanders are not done yet. And Kobach is not the only one in their crosshairs.

After tea party activist turned Kansas state representative Amanda Grosserode condemned the mob action publicly on Facebook, racist insults and threats littered her page. Roberto Medina Ramirez wrote: “I’ll give her something to be disgusted about!” Doris Lynn Crouse Gent chimed in: “OMG! Maybe her drive should be next.” Matt S. Bashaw echoed the call: “Maybe her house should be next.” Facebook user Jude Robinson also ranted on Grosserode’s page: “Since Kobach steals taxpayer money spreading hate around the country, he deserves what he gets.”

Dennis Paul Romero left this message for Grosserode: “(N)azi kkk and she is proud of it.” A user writing as “Paul-says Fckmarkzuck” left death threats under Romero’s comment: “Gotta start killing all the Nazis. Politicans (sic), bankers, and priests. Cops, lawyers, and Judges. ASAP.” The same user added: “Just another b*tch that needs to die off already.”

The radicals of Occupy Kansas posted an inflammatory photo of Grosserode with the race-baiting caption: “Kansas State legislator Amanda Grosserode says she is ‘disgusted’ by Hispanic protesters.” Grosserode wasn’t disgusted by their ethnicity.

She was disgusted by their actions. No matter. Race/ethnic card: activated.

Gina Long pounced: “(S)he is stupid and doesn’t like brown people.” So did Diana Bauer: “Ah, poor Ms Grosserode; sorry that you find our Constitution so difficult to stomach. Or is it only whites that have the right to freedom of speech.” One Lupe Ramirez left his own message for Grosserode: “We are starting our fundraising and campaign to unseat you. Do you not realize how many Hispanics are in Kansas. You no longer live in Dorothy’s Kansas. You cannot represent your state, you don’t even know who they are.”

Grosserode isn’t backing down. She told me Tuesday that she will remain “vigilant” and has given local law enforcement a heads-up. The conservative mom and lawmaker notes sadly that “there are some who would say that when you are in elected office that you should expect this kind of thing. I would disagree. No one deserves threats nor threats to their home and family.”

But the amnesty vigilantes have no respect for borders, let alone private front porches, in their quest for another massive federal illegal alien bailout. They have no respect for law-abiding U.S. workers. They have no respect for law-abiding foreigners applying to get into our country the right and proper way.

As they besiege Capitol Hill this month demanding more rights and payoffs, take note: These groups do not stand for the American dream. They are a nightmare conglomeration of George Soros-funded social justice operatives, transnationalists and La Raza militants who detest U.S. sovereignty. National People’s Action, which spearheads progressive “direct actions” at the private homes of their political foes and led the march on Kobach’s home, is a “community organizing” nonprofit based in — you guessed it — Chicago.

NPA’s past shakedowns have involved busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families. They relish their brass knuckles with this anthem:

Who’s on your hit list NPA?

Who’s on your hit list for today?

Take no prisoner, take no names.

Kick ‘em in the (a—) when they play their games.

As I first reported in 2004, NPA is funded by the Tides Foundation, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and the MacArthur, Ford and Rockefeller foundations. It’s also funded by your tax dollars. My research found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Education had all given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to NPA members for left-wing activism, identity politics and illegal alien benefits.

Rubio, Ryan and other Republicans who’ve made common cause with these welfare-state goons have betrayed fundamental principles of limited government and the rule of law. They’ve allied themselves with the mob. There’s nothing, not one thing, “conservative” about mass illegal alien amnesty. It’s the complete Chicago-ization of America.

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The numbers have actually gone up as Americans have learned more about the Sunni side of the Muslim religious war taking place in Syria.

Broad majorities continue to oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria. Last Thursday’s announcement that the U.S. would aid the rebels has not increased public support for action, and majorities of all partisan groups are opposed.

Overall, 70% oppose the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria; just 20% favor this. Opinion is little changed from December of last year (24% favor) and support is down slightly from March, 2012 (29% favor).

Despite fawning media coverage of the Free Syrian Army, most Americans don’t seem to be convinced.

60 percent say Syrian opposition groups may be no better than the government.

Among Dems opposition falls to 52 percent. But still a majority. Among Republicans, it hits 64 percent. Independents broadly oppose by 74 percent.

Even supporters are fairly weak.

More than half (56%) of those who favor arming rebels agree with the statement that U.S. military forces are too overcommitted to get involved in another conflict, and 55% agree that the opposition groups in Syria may be no better than the current government. However, far larger majorities agree that it is important for the U.S. to support people who oppose authoritarian regimes (76%) and that the U.S. has a moral obligation to do what it can to stop the violence in Syria (75%).

Except the violence won’t stop.

As a prelude to negotiations with Obama, under the auspices of the terror state of Qatar, the Taliban (or some of them anyway) issued a statement. Here’s the official misleading coverage from the New York Times…

The Taliban signaled a breakthrough in efforts to open Afghan peace negotiations on Tuesday, announcing the opening of a political office in Qatar and new readiness to talk with American and Afghan officials, who said in turn that they would travel to meet insurgent negotiators there within days.

Obama called the Taliban’s announcement “an important first step toward reconciliation,” but cautioned that it was only “a very early step.”

“We anticipate there will be a lot of bumps in the road,” Mr. Obama said.

The Taliban “would not allow anyone to threaten the security of other countries from the soil of Afghanistan,” Mr. Naim added, and seeks “a political and peaceful solution” to the conflict.

The wording adhered to previous requirements by American officials in informal talks leading up the announcement, officials said. The first element, in particular, is vital — it represents the beginning of what is hoped will become a public break with Al Qaeda, which the Taliban sheltered before the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

While the Taliban statement does indeed contain the statement about not allowing anyone to threaten other countries from Afghanistan, the Taliban make it clear that they endorse international terrorism and are out to create an Islamist state, disavowing the Obama Inc expectations that they would “break their ties with al Qaeda, end the violence and accept the Afghan constitution, especially the protections for women and minorities.”

It is well known to all that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has been waging jihad to put an end to the occupation and form an independent Islamic system. To reach this goal it has utilised every lawful means.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan simultaneously follows military and political actions and aims which are limited to Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate never wants to pose harms to other countries from its soil, nor will it allow anyone to cause a threat to the security of countries from the soil of Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban operates in Pakistan as well, this is a bit of a fib already. But let’s read on for the Taliban Tall Tales

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants good relations with all the countries of the world including the neighbouring countries, on the basis of mutual respect and while desiring security at the country level, the Islamic Emirate wants security and justice at the world level.

So, no. The Taliban isn’t really limited to Afghanistan. Not if it seeks “security and justice at the world level”. Justice is slang for imposing the Islamic system on others.

Of course the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considerers it its religious and national duty to gain independence from the occupation and for that purpose has utilised every legitimate way and will utilise it in future too.

Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.

Here the Taliban state it in black and white (behind some borrowed leftist dogma) that they intend to continue aiding international campaigns of terror.

Western negotiators might try to fancifully imagine that the Taliban only mean Israel as their example of liberating countries from colonialism, but under Islamic doctrine every country not ruled by Islamic law is colonized by Western powers.

Swedish jail cell

The six teenage boys put on trial for the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl represent a rainbow of Muslim diversity. There are Turks, Arabs and Africans.

So naturally after the trial, the judge threw the book at them the way only a Swedish judge can throw the book at Muslim immigrants who are contributing to the country’s rich diversity.

Five of the teens were found guilty of aggravated rape by the Solna District Court on Friday, with the sixth guilty of attempted aggravated rape.

The attack took place in early March at an apartment in Tensta, where one of the teens dealt out condoms while the other five took turns raping the 15-year-old girl.

The court took into account that the girl’s information included “a cohesive, long, and relatively detailed account” of the incident that did not contain “any contradictions or elements to the story that could be considered inexplicable”.

Despite denying the incident occurred when the trial opened, four of the boys have since confessed to having had intercourse with the girl at the time, but have denied committing any crime. The boy who allegedly provided the condoms has denied everything.

“According to the court, their explanations as to why they’ve changed their story are not sustainable, but suggest that they’re trying to hide something,” the court wrote, according to the TT news agency.

Five of the boys have been sentenced to over 100 hours of community service each, and have been ordered to pay 55,000 kronor ($8,500) each in damages to the victim.

The punishment was less severe than it could have been as the boys are minors, and the court also concluded that they had already been punished to some extent by having their pictures and their personal details exposed on the internet.

Less severe? You don’t say. But don’t worry. The UN ranks Sweden highly when it comes to women’s rights. Unfortunately the right not to be raped by a Muslim immigrant isn’t one of those rights.

The U.S. is to give more than $300 million in additional “life-saving humanitarian assistance” to Syrians caught up in the country’s civil war, Barack Obama has announced, taking the total amount given since the conflict began to nearly $815 million.

What does that 815 million dollars add up to?

Obama fired 20,000 Marines to save 10 billion dollars. He’s spent around 1.5 billion now on aid to the Palestinian Authority and Sunni refugees in Syria alone. Another half a billion for Egypt and its Muslim Brotherhood government brings us up to 2 billion.

Then there’s 3.6 billion for the United Nations. That gets us to 5.6 billion dollars. And there’s another 6 billion for Muslim green energy in Asia.

That brings us to 11.6 billion dollars. Or more than enough to pay for those 20,000 Marines that Obama decided to purge. Certainly more than enough to pay for the shameful backlog in veterans’ benefits.

But the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood are a bigger priority for Obama than American soldiers.

Someone has to blow up the buildings that Americans won’t blow up.

The Department of Homeland Security on Monday issued new regulations that will allow more Syrian refugees to temporarily settle in the United States.

The department estimates that about 9,000 people will be eligible to come to America under the 18-month extension to March 2015 of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrians. Another 2,600 or so Syrians already here will be able to apply to renew their status. The Obama administration first gave TPS designation to Syrian citizens and residents last year, and the status was set to expire on Sept. 30.

“The extension of the current Syria TPS designation and re-designation is due to the continued disruption of living conditions in the country that are a result of the extraordinary and temporary conditions that led to the initial TPS designation of Syria in 2012,” the Homeland Security Department said. “The extension is based on ongoing armed conflict in that region and the continued deterioration of country conditions.”

Why extend TPS to a date two years from now when we have no idea whether the Syrian Civil War will last that long? Because TPS is effectively infinite.

Last week, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that TPS had been extended for at least 70,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans “for an additional 18 months, beginning July 6, 2013, and ending Jan. 5, 2015.” Thanks to American generosity, these TPS winners have been here since 1998 — when Hurricane Mitch hit their homeland.

That was 15 years ago.

Another 250,000 illegal aliens from El Salvador first won TPS golden tickets after an earthquake struck the country … in January 2001. In addition, 60,000 Haitians received TPS after the earthquakes in 2010. Last fall, Napolitano extended their stay until at least 2014. Several hundred Somalis remain in the country with TPS first granted in 1991, along with some 700 Sudanese who first secured TPS benefits in 1997. Last March, the Obama administration extended TPS to an estimated 3,000 Syrian illegal aliens. Guatemala and Pakistan are lobbying for their own TPS designations.

If those 9,000 come. They’re never leaving.

The news is full of cheerful reports that Iran new clerical president Hassan Rouhani is a “moderate”. Since Hassan Rouhani was really chosen by the clerical regime, rather than the voters, as the last election should have made clear, Hassan Rouhani’s supposed moderation doesn’t matter.

Iran’s government has not changed. Only the guy out front has. Iran is still run by an alliance between Islamist clerics and the Islamist militias of the Revolutionary Guard.

And Hassan Rouhani is about as moderate as Ahmadinejad. He just wears a better public face.

The leading London-based pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reports today that Iranian President-Elect Hassan Rouhani’s eldest son took his own life in 1992, in protest at his father’s involvement with Iran’s murderous Islamic regime and his father’s close ties to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“I hate your government, your lies, your corruption, your religion, your double acts and your hypocrisy,” wrote the future president’s son in his suicide note, according to the Saudi-owned paper. “I am ashamed to live in such an environment where I’m forced to lie to my friends each day, telling them that my father isn’t part of all of this. Telling them my father loves this nation, whereas I believe this to be not true. It makes me sick seeing you, my father, kiss the hand of Khamenei.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be the guy who actually runs the country and chose Rouhani. The Revolutionary Guard has endorsed him.

Rouhani has been involved in the Islamic revolution since its murderous beginning. In 1978 he moved to France to join Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution, who was living in exile in Paris.

He then helped found the Islamic regime in Tehran and for the last three decades has been intimately involved in its security apparatus (which has killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of people).

Among the security positions Rouhani has held:

* He was chairman of the Majles Defense Committee from 1985-1989

* He was deputy commander-in-chief during the Iran-Iraq War from 1988-1989

* He was supreme commander of civil defense from 1985-1990, and commander of the Khatam-ol-Anbiya Headquarters

* His most notable position was Chairman of the Supreme National Security Council (1989-2005), the period in which the Supreme National Security Council helped mastermind the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people (including many elderly Holocaust survivors), and of the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19 U.S. airmen

He is still Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s personal representative on the council, and informed sources say that Khamenei engineered his victory in last weekend’s election as a ruse to fool the West, to help western powers lower their guard – as some western diplomats already appear to be doing.

All they needed was an excuse.

President Obama said Monday that the Iranian people have “rebuffed the hardliners and the clerics” in the country by electing a moderate president over the weekend.

It’s not exactly a great surprise, considering that Indonesia’s recent history includes genocide against Christians in East Timor and the mass rapes of Chinese women.

Still Indonesia is one of those Muslim countries that politicians like to pretend is moderate and a good example. By comparison to Saudi Arabia, it might be. By comparison to even the most elementary standards of human rights and religious tolerance… not so much.

The last vestige of one Indonesia’s oldest and largest Jewish communities is now just a pile of rubble. Beth Shalom in Surabaya — Java’s one and only synagogue — was demolished in May after being sealed off by Islamic hard-liners in 2009.

A small, Dutch-style building located on a 2,000 square meter plot of land in the middle of Surabaya’s business district, Beth Shalom looked like an ordinary house in the neighborhood. The only features that distinguished it as a synagogue were its mezuzah (Torah scrolls fastened to an entrance way) and the two Star of David carvings on its door.

“There were many artifacts inside the building which can’t be found in other heritage sites,” Freddy said.

In January 2009, Muslim demonstrators sealed off Beth Shalom and burned an Israeli flag to protest the country’s attacks on the Gaza Strip at the time.

Soemarsono, the head of the National Unity and Society Protection Agency of Surabaya, claimed that the synagogue was an illegal structure because it did not possess proper building permits.

Soemarsono, the head of the National Unity and Society Protection Agency of Surabaya, claimed that the synagogue was an illegal structure because it did not possess proper building permits.

Sachiroel noted, though, that most of Indonesia’s oldest buildings don’t have building permits since such a requirement was only introduced during the Suharto era.

“The synagogue was built before Indonesia declared its independence,” he said. “How could it have a building permit?”

Rivka Sayers, a Jewish woman of Iraqi descent, reportedly lived in the synagogue’s compound since 1970. She said that only three families regularly visited the synagogue to celebrate the Sabbath and holidays such as Passover and Rosh Hashanah.

Indonesia’s last surviving synagogue is located in Manado, Sulawesi.

From the Islamic point of view, that’s one down and one to go.

Marco Rubio is likable. That likability is his chief asset. Even as he champions a wildly unpopular bill among his own base, his numbers remain high. It’s not just magic.

Rubio is everywhere. If you tune in to Univision, you can hear him promising legalization. If you watch FOX News, you’ll hear him express disappointment in his own bill, almost sounding as he might not vote for the very thing that he has staked his entire career on.

There are many Rubios. At times it seems as if there are as many Rubios as there are Obama. A flock of smiling men with neat black hair who can talk Tupac, the American dream and anything in between for as long as you want them too.

Anyone can have a Rubio and if you don’t like your Rubio, just send him back and in two to four weeks a new Rubio will arrive hoping to meet your expectations.

Who is the real Rubio? Is he the passionate conservative or a sharp Florida politician? Is he the man saying that border security comes before legalization to a conservative audience or the man saying that legalization comes before border security to an Hispanic audience?

The real Rubio isn’t likable. The real Rubio wants to be liked. The real Rubio is desperately insecure and desperate to please everyone at the same time. The real Rubio is in over his head.

A Rubio aide was quoted as saying that there are American workers who can’t cut it. That is no doubt true and Rubio is one of them. Marco Rubio moved up the ladder too fast. Too much was put on him too fast and he’s trying to juggle everything in the air without dropping his likability.

What does Marco Rubio stand for? Anything you want him to.

Sign This Letter and Send the UC Regents a Message:

June 17, 2013

The Regents of the University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12^th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607

Dear Regent:

We are concerned by your nomination of Sadia Saifuddin, a leading figure in two organizations that conduct an annual hate campaign against the state of Israel and Jewish students on UC campuses to be a University of California student regent for 2014-15.  Appointing Sadia Saifuddin to the Board of Regents would be an offense to the “Principles of Community” for UC Berkeley which are supposed to be core values in the UC system, and which calls on UC students to “ respect the differences as well as the commonalities that bring us together and call for civility and respect in our personal interactions.” How is it respectful for the organizations that Sadia Saifuddin represents to sponsor “Israeli Apartheid Weeks” which support terrorist organizations like Hamas and call for the destruction of the Jewish state?

Sadia Saifuddin has been an active participant in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement which eminent academics like Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard have described as “anti-Semitic” and which call for the destruction of the Jewish state. Two student senators at UC Berkeley who voted against the divestment resolution that Sadia Saifuddin and her organizations support reported that they had received death threats.

Sadia Saifuddin is a leader of the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine who have featured speakers that promote hate against Jews at multiple campuses in the UC system. Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, a leading figure in these organizations who has spoken at UCLA, UC Irvine and other UC campuses under the auspices of the MSA and SJP openly supports the terrorist organization Hamas, calls for a war against America and describes Jews “the new Nazis.”  And Malik-Ali is not alone.

Recently, Saifuddin has been behind the vicious attacks on Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz who is also a co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a grass-roots advocacy coalition dedicated to protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism on UC campuses.

The anti-Jewish activities of Sadia Saifuddin’s organizations are well documented. Here are links to two current lawsuits about them:

• http://www.investigativeproject.org/3100/lawsuit-details-depth-of-berkeley-jewish-student
• http://zoa.org/2004/10/101869-jewish-students-at-uc-irvine-harassed-intimidated-zoa-reports-in-complaint-to-u-s-civil-rights-office/

The nomination of Sadia Saifuddin as the student regent is inappropriate, and if she were confirmed, it would set a dangerous precedent to encourage escalated anti-Semitism on campus, which is already a big problem in the UC system.  I urge you to reconsider Saifuddin’s nomination and not to confirm her as a Regent next month.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz
Founder and CEO
The David Horowitz Freedom Center

Jeffrey Wienir
Campus Director
David Horowitz Freedom Center

To sign this letter to the UC Regents, fill out the form below: 

“Let us not delude ourselves. The international community must not become caught up in wishful thinking and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in response to Hassan Rouhani’s clear-cut victory in Iran’s presidential elections.

Netanyahu’s fears are, unfortunately, well founded. There is nothing the West loves more than another round of appeasement and deluding itself that the wolf has magically turned into a sheep.

Rouhani, on Monday, already spoke what appeared to be conciliatory words. He promised “greater transparency” in Iran’s nuclear program that would “make clear for the whole world that the steps of the Islamic Republic of Iran are completely within international frameworks.” He said Iran would engage in “constructive interaction with the world through moderation.”

The Wall Street Journal had already reported that “the Obama administration and its European allies” were “surprised and encouraged” by Rouhani’s win and “intend to aggressively push to resume negotiations with Tehran on its nuclear program by August to test his new government’s positions….”

These eager plans come just as Israeli intelligence minister Yuval Steinitz has been warning that Iran is now “very close” to the nuclear finish line and that its nuclear industry is already “many times larger than that of either North Korea or Pakistan.”

But should Rouhani be given a chance? Is it just possible that, as the Wall Street Journal report describes Washington and Brussels as hoping, his “unexpected victory could pressure [Iranian Supreme Leader] Khamenei into softening his position on the nuclear issue or scaling back Tehran’s broader rift with the West”?

Not according to more sober, knowledgeable voices.

On Monday the Wall Street Journal’s Sohrab Ahmari gave some important background on Rouhani that has been missing from Western media’s laudatory accounts of his “moderation.”

Ahmari notes that Rouhani “spent Iran’s revolutionary days as a close companion of the Ayatollah Khomeini.” Later, as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Council, Rouhani led an effort to—as he himself put it—“crush mercilessly and monumentally” the 1999 student uprising.

Ahmari quotes a victim of that crackdown who recalls how, after Rouhani’s statement, security forces “poured into the dorm rooms and murdered students right in front of our eyes.”

During this year’s election campaign Rouhani also boasted of how, as Iran’s nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, his wily approach achieved great gains for Iran’s nuclear program (for details see this account by an Israeli expert). And Rouhani gave his view of the Syrian crisis just last January, saying: “Syria has constantly been on the front line of fighting Zionism and this resistance must not be weakened.”

Indeed, Dr. Soli Shahvar, head of the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf Studies at Haifa University, told The Tower that in his view Khamenei’s regime actually wanted Rouhani to win. Shahvar’s analysis is worth quoting at length:

If [the regime] had wanted one of the conservatives to win, they would have gotten four of the five conservatives to drop out of the race, paving the way for [eventual runner-up, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Bagher] Ghalibaf to win. But they didn’t do that. Moreover, it was the regime that approved the candidacy of Rouhani alongside only seven others. This is striking evidence that Khamenei wanted Rouhani to win, both internally and externally.

…Victory for a candidate who is perceived as more moderate yet still has the confidence of Khamenei, serves the regime in the best way. Externally, Iran today is in a very difficult situation with regard to sanctions and its international standing. A conservative president would only have increased Tehran’s isolation in the world. A victory for someone from the “moderate stream,” however, will immediately bring certain countries in the international community to call for “giving a chance to dialogue with the Iranian moderates.” They will ask for more time in order to encourage this stream, and it will take pressure off the regime. And so we see that in the non-disqualification of Rouhani and especially in the non-dropping-out of four of the five conservative candidates there is more than just an indication that this is the result the regime desired.

Or as a former head of the Mossad station in Tehran and prime ministerial adviser put it more pithily: “We will miss the Ahmadinejad era. He spoke like Hitler and the world knew him.”

Israel’s leaders will, of course, try very hard to clarify Tehran’s game of deception to top Western officials. Their work will be cut out for them.

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Following the president’s announcement that we will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Senator John McCain has intensified his drumbeat for war and demanded even more extensive U.S. involvement, particularly a no-fly zone. But McCain has not indicated any awareness of the risks and complications of such an escalation.

McCain’s argument is the typical one made by “responsibility to protect” internationalists like Samantha Power, Obama’s new U.N. ambassador, whom McCain supported despite her record of anti-Israel animus and doubts about America’s worthiness. But we can’t stand by and watch Assad slaughter his people, the interventionists claim. Except we have stood by on numerous occasions, in Congo, Sudan, and Rwanda, to name just a few venues of slaughter. We are standing by right now as Christians in the Middle East are being murdered, assaulted, harassed, and cleansed from lands that have been Christian for two millennia. We are standing by as al-Qaeda in Iraq slaughters its political and sectarian rivals, and we will for sure be standing by in Afghanistan when the Taliban slaughter even more enemies after we depart in 2014.

The lofty notion of “responsibility to protect” is a fraud, for the fact is we can’t protect every victim of global violence and oppression. This means that our national interests and security can be the only reasons for an armed intervention.

Of course, McCain et al. argue that our interests are at risk, and that providing weapons or even a no-fly zone offers little danger to our soldiers. An Assad victory, so the argument goes, will also be a victory for Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah. But Iran’s real achievement will be the possession of nuclear weapons, which will change the geostrategic calculus in the Middle East much more than Assad’s holding on to power. If we’re concerned about Iran, then, we should be focusing on the regime’s nuclear weapons program, which day by day relentlessly progresses to fulfillment. It’s not Iran’s proxies we should worry about, but Iran.

Nor should the apparent ease with which the U.S.––excuse me, NATO––toppled the Gaddafi regime fool us into thinking we can do the same in Syria. The odds of civilian casualties, for example, will be much greater in Syria if we attack Assad’s air defense system. Once the videos of dead children amidst the rubble hit the international media, how long will all those “allies” still be in our corner? And what about Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons? What if he responds by unleashing them against his enemies? And will Russia simply stand by while we bomb its ally’s assets that it provided to them? Perhaps Putin will decide to send the promised S-300 missiles after all. There are all sorts of risks and contingencies, and unless we have a plan to deal with them that puts all our assets on the table, including ground troops, we could make the situation even worse.

Equally bad, McCain doesn’t really know to whom he is eager to give sophisticated weapons. Clearly the most effective and dedicated fighters are to some degree Islamist in ideology, ranging from Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to al-Qaeda franchises like the al Nusra front, which has already pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda headman Ayman al-Zawahri. Jihadists from Europe and across the Middle East are streaming to Syria, where they are getting valuable battlefield experience. The so-called “moderate” Syrian Free Army, the force comprising mostly army defectors, has made it clear they will cooperate with the al-Nusra fighters and anybody else committed to destroying Assad’s regime. Do we really think that if they win, they will then turn their guns on their allies?

And what makes McCain think that weapons delivered to “vetted” groups––assuming that there is any way to definitively establish that they are “moderate”–– will be kept out of the hands of jihadist gangs that are sworn enemies of the U.S. and Israel? We’ve already suffered blowback in Benghazi from Gaddafi’s looted arsenals in the four coffins of dead Americans. The Syrian rebels have asked for anti-aircraft weapons, as these are necessary for countering Assad’s air superiority. So we’re going to provide weapons that can bring down commercial airliners to committed jihadists? In 1979 we hadn’t yet been sufficiently awakened to the terrorist threat from jihadists, so providing the mujahidin with the means to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan made sense. But we know now the nature of the enemy, and so should be a little more prudent.

No one pressing for intervention in Syria has confronted the fact that even if defeating Iran and its proxies is critical to our national interests, arming a congeries of different jihadist groups and imposing no-fly zones are not going to accomplish that aim. It will take a much larger, more intrusive force, including troops on the ground, to defeat Assad, secure his chemical weapons arsenals, and marginalize the jihadists. After our experience in Iraq and the failure of political nerve that has kept us from achieving similar aims, good luck reprising that experiment in Syria.

But even if Assad is driven out just by airpower and arming rebels, what sort of government does McCain think will arise out of these various Islamist factions? As Barry Rubin points out, our choice in Syria “will be one of Sunni anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites rather than Shia anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites.” Whatever it is, it’s not going to be a liberal democracy friendly to us and our interests, if what’s going on in Egypt is any indication. The most likely outcome will be Libya on steroids, with large swaths of the country available for sheltering jihadist camps right next door to Israel and Jordan.

And so live on the delusions of Middle East “democracy” promotion, a consequence of wishful thinking rather than analysis of reality. And so continues the baleful influence of John McCain on our foreign policy. His demonizing of waterboarding helped to eliminate one of the most effective tools for extracting intelligence, with the result that now we have no effective means for gleaning intelligence from captured terrorists. And his naïve faith in the magic powers of “democracy” to change a culture steeped in 14 centuries of religious intolerance, supremacism, and violence promises to repeat in Syria the empowerment of jihadist regimes we’re witnessing in Egypt. We’ll be living with the consequences of those delusions for a long time.

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The same U.S. policies that helped created al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s are today creating many al-Qaedas in many Muslim countries, promising to deliver future terror strikes that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.

To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history  of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.

In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Afghani rebels—among them the jihadis—to repel the Soviets.  Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and countless foreign jihadis journeyed to Afghanistan to form a base of training and planning—the first prerequisite of the jihad, as delineated in Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.

Al-Qaeda—which tellingly means “the base”—was born.

The U.S. supported al-Qaeda, they defeated the Soviets, shook hands with Reagan, Afghanistan became ruled by the Taliban, and for many years all seemed well.

But it wasn’t.  For over a decade al-Qaeda, unfettered in Afghanistan, trained and plotted.  Then came the strikes of 9/11, which were portrayed by the talking heads as a great and unexpected surprise: “What happened? Who knew?  Why do they hate us?”

Had al-Qaeda not secured a base of operations, 9/11 would not have occurred.

But if Reagan unwittingly helped create the first al-Qaeda cell in relatively unimportant Afghanistan, Obama is helping to create al-Qaeda cells in some of the most important Islamic nations.

He is doing this by helping get rid of those Arab autocrats effective at suppressing jihadis (even if for selfish reasons), while empowering some of the most radical jihadis who were formerly imprisoned or in hiding.

And all in the name of the “Arab Spring” and “democracy.”

In Egypt, Obama threw Mubarak, America’s chief Mideast ally for three decades, under the bus, and cozied up to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Egypt’s government is today overrun with Islamists, many who share al-Qaeda’s radical worldview.  Several of these new policymakers—including President Morsi himself—were imprisoned under Mubarak, not, as the Western media portray, because they were freedom-loving rebels, but because they were, and are, Sharia-loving radicals trying to transform Egypt into an Islamist state.

The Sinai alone is now infested with jihadis, including possibly al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri.

In Libya, Obama supported the opposition against Gaddafi—knowing full well that al-Qaeda was among them—enabling the Benghazi attack and murder of Americans on the anniversary of 9/11. The unprecedented persecution of Christians in Libya—from attacks on churches to attacks on nuns—is further indicative of the direction “liberated” Libya is taking.

And now in Syria, Obama has decided to arm foreign jihadis.  One report indicates that foreigners make up 95% of Syria’s so-called “opposition.”  As in Libya—and as in Afghanistan in the ’80s—foreign jihadis are flooding Syria, terrorizing non-Muslims and cleansing the nation of Christians in their bid to create another base, another qaeda.

One of them recently declared, “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!”—precisely al-Qaeda’s thinking in the ’80s-’90s when it was supported by the U.S. against the U.S.S.R.

Thus all the forces and circumstances that led up to the strikes of 9/11—foreign jihadis infiltrating and consolidating power in Muslim countries formerly run by secular dictators—are once again in full play, but in a much more profound way.  Today it’s not just one unimportant country, Afghanistan, that is being subverted by jihadis but several strategically important nations.

If 9/11 was the price the U.S later paid for helping turn Afghanistan into a jihadi base of operations in the 80s-90s, what price will America later pay now that it’s betraying several major nations to the jihadis, who are turning them into bases, into qaedas?

So why are American politicians not blowing the whistle on Obama’s suicidal policies?

Because their myopia and inability to see beyond today—beyond their tenure—has not changed since September 11, 2001.  Just as it took over a decade after al-Qaeda’s creation to launch the 9/11 attacks—a time of ostensible peace and calm for the U.S., a time of planning and training for the jihadis—it will take time for the jihadi storm to pour on America.

And that’s the era we’re currently in: the calm before the storm. Just as before 9/11, today’s American leaders focus only on the moment—a moment when the U.S appears relatively safe—never considering the future or the inevitable consequences of a woefully counterproductive U.S. foreign policy.

Speaking of foreign policy, if Reagan supported the jihadis to combat the U.S.S.R—a hostile super-power—why is Obama supporting the jihadis?  What exactly does America have to gain by propping up jihadis in some of the most strategic Arab nations?

In short, just as it was before 9/11, when the jihadi storm eventually does break out—and it will, it’s a matter of time—those American politicians who helped empower it, chief among them Obama, will be long gone, and the talking heads will again be stupidly asking “What happened?” “Who knew?” Why do they hate us?”

Except then it will be too late.

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First of all, Iran’s political structure is strictly run by institutions which were established by the founding father of the Islamist state, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. These institutions include the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the Basij (with more than 7 million members, the Basij is the largest volunteer paramilitary militia in Iran), and Ettela’at, Iran’s notorious intelligence agency. All of these institutions are directly monitored and guided by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to whom the high officials and commanders directly report. Moreover, these institutions receive a high number of benefits from the Supreme Leader and are extremely loyal to him. This kind of shrewd political apparatus can be compared to that of North Korea under Kim Jong-un.

Iran’s foreign and domestic policies are also controlled by the Supreme Leader, under the guidance of the aforementioned powerful institutions. As a result, Iran’s presidency can be regarded as a peripheral, shallow, depthless, and perfunctory position – a superficial political figure that is only granted the authority to set the tone in national and international platforms for the Supreme Leader. When it comes to making policies, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran – although also from the gilded circle of the ruling clerics – is a powerless figure.

Secondly, climbing the political ladder in the Islamic Republic of Iran requires specific personal characteristics and qualifications. If a political figure’s ideologies, policies and tendencies do not comply with those of the ruling cleric and the Supreme Leader, he/she will be thwarted from succeeding in their political career. Tactics that have been utilized to accomplish this include imprisonment, torture, blackmailing, and assassination. As a result, the political figures that have been capable of running for presidency are those who have significantly proven their loyalty and compliance with the Islamist revolutionary ideals. The most significant ideals include antagonism towards the United States and Israel, imposing Shari law throughout the country and across Iran’s borders, arming terrorist militia groups, supporting Assad’s sect-based and police regime, and seeking to become a regional and international hegemon.

Thirdly, and more fundamentally, even if those political figures who challenge the Supreme Leader are able to register for presidential candidacy, they will inevitably become immediately disqualified by the Guardian Council – an authoritarian body that consists of 12 non-elected members who are directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader. As Kambiz, a 24-year-old computer engineering student at Tehran University, told me: “I am not going to vote. Many of my friends will not vote too. All these candidates are the same. We trusted Khatami (the reformist), but he was one of them and did not stand for us. Rafsanjani, Mashaei and the rest [of the conservatives] are all supporters and beneficiaries of the current corrupt and theocratic regime.”

Fourthly, major issues that the Islamic Republic of Iran faces – such as enriching uranium and confronting Israel and the United States – have been matters of consensus across all of Iran’s political spectrum, among hardliners, principlists, centrist, moderates, and reformists alike.

When considering the major political and ideological spectrums, all the members of the reformist, hardliner, principlist, centrist, and moderate political camps share identical policies and strategies. The only difference lies in the shrewd political language that each camp uses. While the hardliners – such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and current presidential candidate Jalili – publicly attack the West and use inflammatory and provocative language to express their intentions, the reformists are much more sophisticated political statesmen, employing softer tones in order to manipulate the international community and achieve the objectives of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Supreme Leader.

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