Al Qaeda operatives entered U.S. via refugee program

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But relax: Obama says the refugees are no more threatening than tourists.

“Report: al Qaeda Terrorists Entered United States Through Refugee Program,” by Ali Meyer, Washington Free Beacon, November 18, 2015:

Two al Qaeda terrorists who had killed American soldiers were able to enter the country as refugees, according to a report released Wednesday from the House Homeland Security committee.

Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, two Iraqi refugees settled in Bowling Green, Kentucky, after killing American soldiers, whom they bragged about having “for lunch and dinner.” In 2010, they were caught handling weapons, including included a machine gun and a missile launcher, that they planned to smuggle to insurgents in Iraq.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many more than that,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. “And these are trained terrorists in the art of bombmaking that are inside the United States; and quite frankly, from a homeland security perspective, that really concerns me.”

The committee’s report found that the administration’s refugee resettlement program proposal will have “a limited impact on alleviating the overall crisis but could have serious ramifications for U.S. homeland security.”

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, admitted in October at a hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee that organizations such as the Islamic State might attempt to exploit the Syrian refugee resettlement program.

“It is true that we are not going to know a whole lot about the Syrians that come forth in this process,” he said.

President Obama’s refugee resettlement program is now under scrutiny after deadly terrorist attacks in Paris killed more than 120 people and left more than 300 injured on Friday. It is suspected that one of the terrorists entered the country as a refugee.

In addition to these attacks, men in Minnesota were apprehended by the feds for trying to join the Islamic State. There is growing concern that the state would be a recruiting ground for the Islamic State because of its large community of Somali refugees.

The report was released after a nearly year-long investigation evaluating challenges with allowing Syrian refugee flows into the United States.

Governors from many states are now refusing to allow Syrian refugees to resettle in their states.

“Given the tragic attacks in Paris and the threats we have already seen, Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees—any one of whom could be connected to terrorism—being resettled in Texas,” said Gov. Greg Abbott.

“There is an undeniable connection between our refugee resettlement program and the increased risk of a terror attack within the United States,” said Jessica Vaughan, an immigration expert at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“There have been roughly 70 terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 and scores of young people who are first or second generation refugees and immigrants who have become involved in some way with Islamist jihadists, either by undertaking attacks here or traveling overseas to join a terrorist group, or both,” she said….

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Vetting Needed to Separate Friend from Foe Among Refugees

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The Obama Administration is adamant the 10,000 Syrian refugees it plans to resettle in the U.S. are subject to a tough vetting process. The process is tough and long, but a poll in 2014 found that 13 percent have positive feelings towards ISIS. An ideological vetting process that can separate Islamist from non-Islamist is needed to separate valuable friends from deadly foes.

The vetting process should not just rely on criminal records and databases used to detect terrorists and their associates. Because the threat is ideological in nature, it is very possible we could allow in someone with a radical outlook but has yet to establish the kind of operational connections that would show up in a database.

A new bipartisan congressional terrorism report found there isn’t a global comprehensive database of foreign jihadists who have gone to Syria to fight. It says the U.S. doesn’t even have a national strategy against terrorist travel and “information about foreign fighters is crossing borders less quickly than the extremists themselves.” There’s also the serious problem that there is a more general lack of intelligence about Syria.

Watch Clarion Project National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro and retired INS agent Michael Cutler, who gave testimony to the 9/11 Commission, discuss the vetting process for Syrian refugees:

The U.S. has a vetting process of 18 to 24 months. About 1,800 have come to the U.S. in the past two years and a little bit more than half passed the vetting. Names are checked against databases and there’s an interviewing process to make sure there isn’t information linking them to terrorist or criminal activity and that the biography they provided is truthful.

No news reports or explanations by the administration indicate the process includes evaluating the outlook of the applicant to find signs of Islamist sympathies, anti-American views or other forms of extremism like anti-Semitism.

An ideology-based screening process separating Islamists from non-Islamists (as opposed to simply terrorist from non-terrorist) minimizes the chances of a radical getting through and maximizes the chances of identifying an ally to work with. It is not in our interest or in the Syrians’ interest for an Islamist to take a moderate’s place in line.

By failing to identify anti-Islamist friends among the Syrian refugees, we are hurting our cause and losing a chance to undermine the Islamist extremist cause. For example, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy, is a powerful voice against Islamism. He is in the U.S. doing his work because his parents sought refuge in America from the Assad regime.

The U.S. needs Muslim activists like Jasser. We need fluent Arabic speakers and those who understand that part of the world. We need voices who can speak first-hand about the horrors of ISIS, other Syrian Islamists and the Iran-backed Assad dictatorship. We need Muslims who are on the lookout for extremism and will not hesitate to report it and even keep tabs on it. These are roles that Syrian refugees who oppose Islamism can help fill.

The debate over the administration’s desire to bring 10,000 refugees into America is fierce and contentious, but a middle ground exists between an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees and trusting the current plan.

ABOUT RYAN MAURO

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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Obama Supports (And Suppresses) Free Speech on Campus by David Bernstein

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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports: “For the second time this year, President Barack Obama publicly defended the importance of free speech on campus.”

The president’s defense is pretty good, though I’d prefer if he had pointed out more directly that left-wing campus activists should embrace free speech not just because it will make them more effective, but also because they should be open to the possibility that they are wrong on issues.

But that’s not why I’m giving the president only two cheers. Rather, it’s because the Obama administration was responsible for undermining freedom of speech on campus, and the president allowed that to happen. Here is the relevant excerpt from my new book Lawless:

In May 2013, OCR [the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights] and the Justice Department jointly sent a letter to the University of Montana memorializing a settlement to a sexual harassment case brought against the university. The letter stated that it was intended to “serve as a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country.”

Ignoring Supreme Court precedent, the First Amendment, and OCR’s own previous guidance, the letter declares that “sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as ‘any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct,” regardless of whether it is objectively offensive or sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile environment.

As FIRE pointed out in a blistering critique, this meant that the federal government was trying to impose a breathtakingly broad nationwide university speech code “that makes virtually every student in the United States a harasser.” OCR was trying to force universities to ban “any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person.”

So, for example, universities would be required to punish a student for telling a “sexually themed joke overheard by any person who finds that joke offensive for any reason,” or for “any request for dates or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient of such a request or flirtation.”

Fortunately, a few months later, OCR got a new leader, Catherine Lhamon. Lhamon wrote in a letter to FIRE that “the agreement in the Montana case represents the resolution of that particular case and not OCR or DOJ policy.” She also reiterated that OCR’s understanding of hostile environment harassment in educational settings is “consistent” with the Supreme Court’s [much narrower] definition. OCR even allowed the University of Montana to disregard some of the requirements of the agreement.

But despite FIRE’s urging, OCR failed to issue any clarification of the Dear Colleague letter it had sent to the thousands of colleges and universities.

It would be tempting to attribute the original OCR letter to rogue bureaucrats at OCR, but we can’t since the Justice Department signed on as well. So while I appreciate the president’s stated commitment to freedom of speech on campus and am relieved that OCR isn’t trying to enforce the Montana guidance, one is left to wonder how that guidance got through two separate Obama administration bureaucracies to begin with.

This post first appeared at the Volokh Conspiracy ©.

David E. Bernstein

David E. Bernstein

David E. Bernstein is the George Mason University Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law.

Governments Are the Worst Polluters by Walter Olson

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It’s a familiar libertarian insight that regulation often holds government itself to lower standards than it does private actors.

Pension funds for public employees are mostly immune from the federal solvency and funding requirements that apply to their private counterparts; Federal Trade Commission rules against false advertising by profit-seeking companies do not restrain false advertising by government actors on the same topics; the FTC can fine companies massively for data breaches even as the federal government itself suffers gigantic losses of sensitive data to foreign actors with few career consequences for many of those who had dozed; anticompetitive practices that are per se illegal under antitrust law become legal when states do them, and so forth and so on.

Now David Konisky of Indiana University and Manuel Teodoro of Texas A&M, in a study published by the American Journal of Political Science entitled “When Governments Regulate Governments,” have pulled together some data:

Our empirical subjects are public and private entities’ compliance with the U.S. Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.

We find that, compared with private firms, governments violate these laws significantly more frequently and are less likely to be penalized for violations.

More from an Indiana press release, via Tyler Cowen:

For the study, Konisky and Teodoro examined records from 2000 to 2011 for power plants and hospitals regulated under the Clean Air Act and from 2010 to 2013 for water utilities regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The study included over 3,000 power plants, over 1,000 hospitals and over 4,200 water utilities — some privately owned and others owned by public agencies.

* For power plants and hospitals, public facilities were on average 9 percent more likely to be out of compliance with Clean Air Act regulations and 20 percent more likely to have committed high-priority violations.

* For water utilities, public facilities had on average 14 percent more Safe Drinking Water Act health violations and were 29 percent more likely to commit monitoring violations.

* Public power plants and hospitals that violated the Clean Air Act were 1 percent less likely than private-sector violators to receive a punitive sanction and 20 percent less likely to be fined.

*Public water utilities that violated Safe Drinking Water Act standards were 3 percent less likely than investor-owned utilities to receive formal enforcement actions.

[After speculating that public operators may find it harder to raise funds promptly for needed facilities improvements:] Public entities also face lower costs for violating the regulations, the authors argue. There is evidence from other studies that they are able to delay or avoid paying fines when penalties are assessed. And officials with regulatory agencies may be sympathetic to violations by public entities, because they understand the difficulty of securing resources in the public sector.

Application of the principle to state-owned industry outside the United States can be left as an exercise for the reader.

This post first appeared at Overlawyered.

Walter Olson

Walter Olson

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

“Affordable Care”: Higher Premiums, Higher Deductibles, Worse Healthcare by Michael F. Cannon

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Aside from one necessary clarification (see far below), it would be difficult to improve on what the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the enrollees they interview have to say about ObamaCare.

First, from yesterday’s New York Times article, “Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless”:

For many consumers, the sticker shock is coming not on the front end, when they purchase the plans, but on the back end when they get sick: sky-high deductibles that are leaving some newly insured feeling nearly as vulnerable as they were before they had coverage.

“The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor,” said David R. Reines, 60, of Jefferson Township, N.J., a former hardware salesman with chronic knee pain. “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.” …

“We could not afford the deductible,” said Kevin Fanning, 59, who lives in North Texas, near Wichita Falls. “Basically I was paying for insurance I could not afford to use.”

He dropped his policy. …

“Our deductible is so high, we practically pay for all of our medical expenses out of pocket,” said Wendy Kaplan, 50, of Evanston, Ill. “So our policy is really there for emergencies only, and basic wellness appointments.”

Her family of four pays premiums of $1,200 a month for coverage with an annual deductible of $12,700. …

Alexis C. Phillips, 29, of Houston, is the kind of consumer federal officials would like to enroll this fall. But after reviewing the available plans, she said, she concluded: “The deductibles are ridiculously high. I will never be able to go over the deductible unless something catastrophic happened to me. I’m better off not purchasing that insurance and saving the money in case something bad happens.”

“While my premiums are affordable, the out-of-pocket expenses required to meet the deductible are not,” said [Karin] Rosner, who makes about $30,000 a year. …

“When they said affordable, I thought they really meant affordable,” [Anne Cornwell of Chattanooga, Tenn.,] said.

And from today’s Boston Globe article, “High-Deductible Health Plans Make Affordable Care Act ‘Unaffordable,’ Critics Say”:

“We can’t afford the Affordable Care Act, quite honestly,” said Cassaundra Anderson, whose family canvassed for Obama in their neighborhood, a Republican stronghold outside Cincinnati. “The intention is great, but there is so much wrong. . . . I’m mad.” …

The Andersons’ experience echoes that of hundreds of thousands of newly insured Americans facing sticker shock over out-of-pocket costs. …

“This will be an issue at least one more time in the 2016 election. It could absolutely still hurt Democrats,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Polls about the Affordable Care Act have a considerable amount of middle-income people who say either the program has done nothing for them or actually hurt them.” …

“Unfortunately, what we are headed toward now is universal crappy health insurance,” said Dr. Budd Shenkin, a California pediatrician. … “It’s just not a good deal for people,” he said.

“We’re in the process of looking at going without insurance,” [Cassaundra Anderson] said, calculating that the family will be better off financially just paying the $2,000 tax penalty for not abiding by the law’s mandate. “What am I even paying these insurance people for? Why should we reenroll?” …

“I cannot get anything with this insurance. Nothing,” said [Laura] Torres, who avoids seeking treatment for her thyroid condition and high blood pressure because of cost. “I just pay my monthly payments, try to take care of myself, go to work, and hope something serious doesn’t happen to me.” …

Amete Kahsay, 53, works as a temporary warehouse packer in Columbus. The Affordable Care marketplace is her only option for health insurance. She and her husband, an airport shuttle driver, pay $275 a month for a “bronze” plan with a $13,200 deductible.

Shortly after they signed up for insurance last year, her husband rushed her to the emergency room when she experienced dizziness. The visit, which included a CT scan of her brain, cost $1,700. She paid the charge from her savings, then returned to her native Ethiopia, where care is cheaper, to consult a neurologist and seek follow-up care.

“I support Obamacare. Without it, I wouldn’t have any type of insurance. But I’m not sure it’s worth the money,” said Kahsay, a US citizen who is registered as an independent voter. “Now, unless I get very, very sick, like only if it’s life-threatening, I won’t go to the doctor. I just lay down and take a rest.”

The necessary clarification is that these people are not complaining about high-deductibles in a market system. In a market system, consumers who choose high deductibles save money on their premiums and therefore have more resources to help them pay their out-of-pocket expenses.

ObamaCare, on the other hand, manages to pair high deductibles with higher premiums, stripping many people of this benefit of high-deductible plans and leaving them unable to pay their medical bills.

Cross-posted from Cato.org.

Michael F. Cannon
Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies.

Your Tax Dollars Are Blowing In The Wind

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Have you ever wondered just how much of your tax money is wasted on subsidies to industrial wind producers?

Well earlier this month, our partner organization, the Institute for Energy Research, released the most comprehensive study to date of the impacts of federal wind subsidies across all U.S. States.

As you would expect, the findings don’t paint a pretty picture.

IER analysts found that from 2005 to 2014, the cumulative subsidy allocations from the PTC, ITC, and Section 1603 to the wind industry are at least $18.58 billion!

The study also found that over the last decade, taxpayers in 30 states and the District of Columbia paid more in taxes to the federal government to support wind subsidies than wind producers who own wind facilities in those states received in subsidy allocations.

Although the report discusses states and regions in terms of net losses and net subsidies to show the geographical distribution of federal wind subsidies, subsidies to wind producers come at the expense of all U.S. taxpayers.

This really is a shame considering how inefficient and unreliable wind is as a source of energy.

The environmental left often claims that wind is the “energy of the future” and “cost competitive” with all sources of energy. But if that really is the case why do they insist on billions of dollars in taxpayer money just to survive?

Instead, we should remove these federal subsidies and let the market decide what energy sources really are the most affordable, abundant, and reliable.

Exposing the impact of subsidies to industrial wind producers is a good step in that direction.

To learn more, please check out our full wind subsidy study from our partner organization, the Institute for Energy Research.

1,070 Iraqis admitted to U.S. since October 1st — 85% are Muslim

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Since my two previous posts are so popular—the first is on Syrians admitted to the U.S. in FY 2016 (which began on Oct. 1) and the second on Somalis admitted in those same 6 weeks, I thought you might like to know about the Iraqis who have been coming into the US (over 100,000 since Obama took office. Here is one summary through 2013 and a large portion of 2014. I’ll get more complete numbers later).

My Somali post made it to Drudge!  What an honor!

This is where the 1,070 have gone in the last six weeks.  Top five Iraqi resettlement states so far this year are: Texas, California, Michigan, Washington and Colorado.

map Iraqis first six weeks

And here is how their religions break down (directly from the Refugee Processing Center data base, these are their categories and spelling):

Atheist:  3

Catholic: 69

Christian: 24

Moslem:  44

Moslem Shiite: 427

Moslem Suni: 435

Orthodox: 20

Yazidi: 40

Interesting isn’t it!  When you see almost equal numbers of Shiites and Sunis don’t you wonder why we are bringing in both sides of the warring factions?

Supposedly the bill being supported by Speaker Paul Ryan that seeks to get administration assurance that no terrorists are getting in through the refugee stream to America only involves Syrians and Iraqis.  What about Somalis?  And, isn’t it a bit late considering we have admitted over 100,000 Somalis and over 100,000 Iraqis to live in your towns and cities?

Anyone want to write a book on the Iraqi resettlement, we have 673 previous posts going back 8 years on that resettlement.

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Victory for Common Core Opponents in Missouri Appellate Court

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In a big victory for opponents of Common Core, the Missouri court of appeals dismissed the State’s appeal, leaving in place a lower court decision that blocked Missouri’s membership in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (“SBAC”).  The ruling, issued on November 17th, dismissed as moot an appeal by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, and thereby upheld the lower court’s decision that Missouri’s participation in SBAC was a violation of the Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution and numerous federal and state statutes.

Victory for Common Core Opponents in Missouri Appellate Court

The Compact Clause challenge to SBAC was first conceived and implemented by Missouri attorney, D. John Sauer, of the James Otis Law Group, based in St. Louis, who brought the action on behalf of state taxpayers.   The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, MI, filed a friend of the court brief supporting the lower court decision in that case.

Since then, the Thomas More Law Center and the James Otis Law Group have joined forces to bring similar challenges to the constitutionality of the Common Core testing consortia in several other states, including North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia. Erin Mersino, TMLC senior trial counsel, has worked alongside Sauer in developing the three additional lawsuits.

Richard Thompson, President of the Thomas More Law Center, commenting on the collaboration between the two firms.  “John Sauer is an extraordinary attorney.  We are privileged to work alongside John.  In this truly cooperative effort, several other attorneys have donated their time as local co-counsel: Arnold Fleck, of Bismarck, ND, Jeffrey Kimble and Ryan Kennedy of Robinson & McElwee, PLLC, in Charleston, WV, and Robert J. Rohl of Johnson Eiesland Law Offices, PC, in Rapid City, SD.”

John Sauer obtained his law degree from Harvard Law School where he graduated magna cum laude. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney. He eventually entered into private practice and recently founded the James Otis Law Group. Prior to his law degree, Sauer attended Duke University before attending Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He subsequently received his Masters from the University of Notre Dame.

Thompson, commenting on the appeals court ruling, said “The effect of the court of appeals ruling is to leave in place the first and only state court ruling that tears down the Common Core edifice constructed by the federal government.”

Shortly after the lower court decision holding SBAC unconstitutional, the Missouri General Assembly passed House Bill 2, later signed by Governor Nixon, which expressly prohibits the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) from using funds to pay SBAC license fees or membership dues. An opinion from DESE General Counsel stated that the language contained in H.B. 2 specifically prohibited the state from participating as a member or as a licensee of SBAC and recommended that Missouri’s membership in SBAC be terminated immediately.

As a part of its continuing efforts to help parents combat Common Core, the Thomas More Law Center developed a Test Refusal and Student Privacy Protection Form and a Common Core Resource Page as a general reference and guide.

Why Muslim Migrants Always = Terrorism

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What’s the point in the West sending troops to the Middle East if we bring the Middle East to the West? The preceding is a money line, one that should be used by Islam realists from Germany to Georgia.

The Paris terror attack has inspired much debate, from conservatives saying we need to confront ISIS aggressively overseas to liberals wringing their hands over rising anti-Islam sentiment that they claim will exacerbate the jihadist problem. And while I’m more sympathetic to the former sentiment than the latter, nothing should distract us from what must be our number-one priority: stopping the Muslim influx into the West cold.

Many say this is a cold position. And, unfortunately, their prescription for (misguided) compassion is seldom sufficiently refuted.

In an attempt to salvage a failing multicultural model and strategy for importing left-leaning voters, we hear that the Muslim migrants must be “vetted” better. A practical problem with this notion is that Syria’s and other Middle Eastern countries’ databases are woefully inadequate, making accurate information on many migrants impossible to obtain. This confronts us with a simple matter of probability: if 1 million migrants enter a nation over time and just 1/10th of 1 percent are terrorists, that’s 1000 dangerous jihadists. Is this acceptable? Note that my estimate may be conservative.

Yet there’s also a fundamental problem with vetting that goes unmentioned: even with complete information, it only tells you about the past.

It cannot tell you about the future.

In other words, even if those one million migrants have “clean records,” how many will become terrorists in the future? Again, 1/10th of 1 percent is 1000.

And what of their children? How many of them will become terrorists? No point repeating best-case-scenario percentages.

One response here is that the children will be more integrated and thus the problem should diminish over time. This is logical, but, unfortunately, also apparently untrue.

Studies have shown that young Muslims in Europe are actually more radical than their elders. This certainly is counterintuitive, but only because the average Westerner’s cranial database also doesn’t contain accurate information. For example and related to this, moderns take as a given that religion is declining in our “enlightened times.” Yet religious belief is actually increasing worldwide, a phenomenon poised to continue. Islam’s adherents are growing in number, and Catholicism’s are, too, slightly in excess of the increase in world population. Religious belief is only declining in the West — and, most significantly, among Westerners in the West.

Another common argument was expressed by Charles Grant, director of pro-E.U. think-tank Centre for European Reform. He said that ratcheting up the anti-Islamic rhetoric would serve ISIS’ ends and that “Europe’s game must be to resist that and not repeat the mistakes we made after September 11 which played right into al-Qaeda’s hands. We must hold our nerve and embrace our values of tolerance of faith and religions which we share in common and against the Islamic State,” reported the Telegraph. Many leftists echo this, the idea being that we must not further “alienate” Muslim communities. This overlooks that you can only alienate those who aren’t already alien.

Note again that the pattern evident is for younger Muslim generations to become more alienated from the West, not less. Some would blame this on the West itself, saying that — despite indulging multiculturalism, outlawing anti-Muslim rhetoric and offering generous government benefits — we still aren’t opening our arms and hearts to these newcomers. Kill ‘em with kindness, the thinking (feeling?) goes.

Of such people ask a simple question: can you cite one time in history in which large numbers of Muslims have willingly assimilated into a non-Muslim culture?

Just one?

While there may be some exception, I can’t think of any. Note here a recent poll showing that a slim majority of U.S. Muslims prefer living under Sharia law to American civil law (and how many wouldn’t admit such a thing to pollsters?). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the historical record informs that “Muslim assimilation” is a contradiction in terms.

In fact, I don’t know of even one instance in which large numbers of Muslims were ever shaken from Islam other than by the sword, and that wasn’t done very much, if at all. There was an attempt by a group of medieval Christian missionaries to peacefully convert Middle Eastern Muslims, but the effort was found futile and abandoned after a short time.

Then there’s the myth of “assimilation.” The term is thrown around thoughtlessly much as is “diversity,” and seldom mentioned is that assimilation is often never complete. For while large groups who immigrate to a nation often do change, they also are agents of change. Did the large waves of Irish, Italian and German immigrants not alter America somewhat? This might have been a good, bad or neutral thing, but it’s assuredly a real thing.

There are also those who don’t assimilate markedly, if at all. Have the Amish or Hasidic Jews assimilated noticeably into the wider culture? Again, I’m not here making a value judgment on their particular different-drummer walk. The point is merely that assimilation is, foolishly and dangerously, taken as a given when there’s great precedent proving it’s not.

And this also is a numbers game. The rare Muslim who contemplated going to the West many years ago had to be a different kind of Muslim, one who understood he was entering a Christian culture that wouldn’t cater to his desires. He and his co-religionists would be so few and far between there’d be no prospect for “Halal” groceries, Islamic interest-free financing or Muslim schools for his children. So he’d be forced to assimilate by having to work within the established institutions of the host nation. But great numbers of Muslims form their own enclaves and their own institutions; this reality not only makes the journey west more inviting to pious Muslims, but also enables them to reinforce each other’s beliefs.

There’s another problem with assimilation: a prerequisite for it is providing something attractive to assimilate into. The communist political activist Willi Munzenberg once reportedly said, “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.” This has been accomplished. Decadence is everywhere, and we no longer even know what marriage is or what boys and girls are. French president Francois Hollande recently canceled a dinner meeting with the Iranian president because he refused to bow to a demand to serve Halal meat and no wine. It’s good he took at least that stand, but one could just imagine his hurling accusations of “intolerance” at Christians who refused to refrain from saying the Lord’s Prayer before a meal with Muslims. It’s an example of how Western Europe has been hollowed out, how it has the superficialities of its culture but not the substance. What are foreigners today supposed to assimilate into in today’s France, Italy, Germany and U.S.? Bread and wine; pasta fagioli; Wiener schnitzel; and baseball, hot dogs and reality TV, all lathered in moral relativism? Are they really going to follow the lead of a dying anomaly in a world of growing religiosity? Heck, I’m a Westerner, and as a believing Christian I refuse to assimilate into my country’s wider culture (although I save my cutting off of heads for broccoli). Thus, with assimilation, even if Muslim migrants were buyin’, they wouldn’t be buyin’ what we’re sellin’.

Of course, none of this means we should toss the post-Christian West from the frying pan into the fire. If you want to destroy liberalism, though — both the suicidal modern ideology and the extant remnants of the classical variety — Islamization is a sure way to do it.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

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Governors’ Revolt Continues: No Syrian Refugees

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Over at PJ Media I discuss the growing defiance of Obama’s suicidal refugee policy:

As of Monday evening, the governors of twenty-four states have declared that they are not going to allow any Syrian refugees to be settled in their states. Barack Obama, predictably enough, is livid.

The governors have all cited, quite reasonably, the security risks involved in taking the refugees. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, noted that “a Syrian ‘refugee’ appears to have been part of the Paris terror attack. American humanitarian compassion could be exploited to expose Americans to similar deadly danger.” Robert Bentley, the governor of Alabama, agreed, explaining that he did not want any of the refugees in Alabama because “I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way.”

The governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, was similarly security-minded: “No, I’m not interested in accepting refugees from Syria,” he said. “My view on this is the safety and security of the people of the Commonwealth of Mass. is my highest priority. So I would set the bar very high on this.” Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson stated simply that taking Syrian refugees at this time “is not the right strategy.”

Barack Obama remains convinced that it is exactly the right strategy.

He said that the Paris jihad massacre, which were perpetrated by, among others, at least two “refugees” who had just recently arrived in Europe, was just a “setback” that wouldn’t deter him in the slightest from pursuing his scheme to flood the U.S. with at least 10,000 refugees from Syria. He termed opposition to his plan “shameful,” casting American acceptance of the refugees as a moral imperative and saying: “We have to, each of us, do our part, and the United States has to step up and do its part.”

The United States has to do its part, in Obama’s view, but he didn’t explain, and of course was not challenged by his lapdog media, why Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar don’t have to do their part. Those countries, even though they have a linguistic, cultural and religious bond with the refugees, have accepted none of them at all all, citing the risk of terrorism. Why can’t Americans cite the same risk, and likewise refuse to take in these refugees?

Obama didn’t answer that question, but he did imply that objection to the refugees was really all about religious bigotry:

When I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims. When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted. When some of those folks themselves come from families who benefitted from protection when they were fleeing political persecution — That’s shameful. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.

Fair enough. But do we have common sense limits to our compassion? If the “right-wing extremists” of the administration’s imagining were really as lethal as Islamic jihadis, Obama might have a point about not applying religious tests to our compassion. But unfortunately for Obama’s presentation of the issues involved in the refugee crisis, Christians are not waging jihad around the world. Christian terrorists did not boast last February that they would soon inundate Europe with 500,000 refugees – Muslim terrorists did. The Lebanese education minister did not recently warn that there were 20,000 Christian terrorists among the Syrian refugees in camps in his country – he said there were 20,000 active jihadis. It was not a Christian terrorist, but an Islamic State operative who boasted in September, shortly after the migrant influx into Europe began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 terrorists had already entered Europe.

Obama didn’t address those facts. Instead, he portrayed the refugees — all of them — as victims:

The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism … It is very important … that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.

Meanwhile, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes tried to address some of the real concerns, asserting that American officials had “very extensive screening procedures” that they would employ among the refugees. Former NATO supreme commander James Stavridis added his own claim that U.S. officials would be able to vet the refugees “safely and appropriately,” and declared:

We should continue to take a substantial number of Syrian refugees because it is the right thing to do for the international community and because over time they will prove to be citizens of real capability and true grit, like many who immigrated before them in troubled times. The key is serious vetting using all the tools at our disposal.

How he knew that the refugees would “prove to be citizens of real capability and true grit,” he didn’t say.

At the same time, there were discordant voices. FBI Director James Comey doubted that the refugees could be easily vetted: “If we have no information on someone, they’ve never crossed our radar screen … it will be challenging,” he said — and most jihadis from Syria have not crossed the U.S. radar screen, as the U.S. fought for ten years in Iraq, not Syria….

Read the rest here.

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Eight Syrian Muslims caught illegally crossing Texas border

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Why would Syrians be trying to enter illegally when Obama is breaking down every restraint in order to get them in legally? Only if they’re up to some nefarious purpose.

“EXCLUSIVE — REPORT: 8 Syrians Caught at Texas Border in Laredo,” by Brandon Darby and Ildefonso Ortiz, Breitbart, November 18, 2015:

Two federal agents operating under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are claiming that eight Syrian illegal aliens attempted to enter Texas from Mexico in the Laredo Sector. The federal agents spoke with Breitbart Texas on the condition of anonymity, however, a local president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) confirmed that Laredo Border Patrol agents have been officially contacting the organization with concerns over reports from other federal agents about Syrians illegally entering the country in the Laredo Sector. The reports have caused a stir among the sector’s Border Patrol agents.

The sources claimed that eight Syrians were apprehended on Monday, November 16, 2015. According to the sources, the Syrians were in two separate “family units” and were apprehended at the Juarez Lincoln Bridge in Laredo, Texas, also known officially as Port of Entry 1.

Border Patrol agent and NBPC Local 2455 President Hector Garza told Breitbart Texas, “Border Patrol agents who we represent have been contacting our organization to voice concerns about reports from other agents that Syrians crossed the U.S. border from Mexico in the Laredo Sector. Our agents have heard about Syrians being apprehended in the area from other federal agents.” Agent Garza added, “At this time, I cannot confirm or deny that Syrians have crossed, for security reasons.”

Agent Garza further stated that in matters as sensitive as Syrians crossing the border from Mexico, it would be highly unlikely that federal agencies would publicize it or inform a broad group of law enforcement. He did say that Local 2455 is taking the reports seriously and that they “will be issuing an officer safety bulletin advising Border Patrol agents to exercise extra precautions as they patrol the border.”

Breitbart Texas can confirm that a Syrian did attempt to enter the U.S. illegally through Texas in late September. The Syrian was caught using a passport that belonged to someone else and U.S. authorities decided against prosecuting anyone involved due to “circumstances.”

What circumstances?

RELATED ARTICLE: Toronto Muslim charged with carrying concealed meat cleaver into Parliament

VIDEO: The ‘Country Un-Safe Refugee Theory’

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yoella wellsYoella Wells, who studied at the University of Oxford, is a war trauma specialist, clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist working for many years with refugees from all over the world. The United West‘s Damon Rosen in this exclusive interview with Yoella Wells explains the theory of the “Country Un-safe” in creating refugees worldwide.

Governments or a governmental lack of the ability to protect its citizens creates refugees.

What we experiencing today is a clear example of that.

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French President Hollande: Saint-Denis Raid Proves We Are at War With ISIS

VIDEO: The French-Gaza Connection

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Day of the Dead GAZACaptain Dan Gordon, a reserve Officer with the Israel Defensive Force explains how the Paris jihadis are using the HAMAS operational battle tactics to launch terror attacks in France and other countries soon to come. Dan has served in Israel for over 40 years and in combat in many wars against Islamic jihad.

Don’t miss this fascinating interview with Dan Gordon, a veritable Renaissance Man, who holds duel citizenship in America and Israel and is a highly acclaimed Hollywood Producer, Screenwriter and Author.

His latest thriller, Day of the Dead: GAZA, predicted these exact type attacks on Western cities, with the United States clearly on the imminent targeting list of ISIS.

hamas strategy

Shut-down the Mosques to shut-down Islamocrimes

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The mosque is the heart of Islam, shut down the mosque to shut down Islamocrimes.

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Poll: Trump Lapping the Field in Florida — Clinton Trails GOP Frontrunners

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fau polling initiative logoBOCA RATON, Florida /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Donald Trump has doubled the votes of his nearest challenger in Florida, where Hillary Clinton trails in matchups with several GOP frontrunners, according to a new poll by the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative (FAU BEPI).

The survey was conducted in Florida from Nov. 15-16, immediately following the latest Democratic debate.

Trump leads the GOP field with 36 percent, followed by Marco Rubio at 18 percent, Ben Carson at 15 percent and Ted Cruz at 10 percent. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush placed fifth with just 8.9 percent, down more than two points from BEPI’s poll in September when he took 11.3 percent of the vote in Florida.

“Despite conjecture that Donald Trump has plateaued, his support in Florida remains very strong and could be growing,” said Kevin Wagner, Ph.D., associate professor of political science at FAU and a research fellow of the Initiative.

While Clinton holds a 43-point lead (65.5 percent to 22.4 percent) over Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, she continues to trail in head-to-head matchups with the GOP frontrunners, with Carson holding the biggest margin at 9.7 points (50.2 percent to 40.5 percent). Trump leads Clinton by 8.7 points (49.2 percent to 40.5 percent).

“While Clinton is losing in all the trial heats, she is winning among females,” said Monica Escaleras, Ph.D., director of the BEPI. “Thus it appears that her strategy of targeting women is working.”

Regardless of their poll numbers, the favorability ratings for many of the candidates are low. Trump has a favorable rating of just 41 percent among all voters, while 51 percent have an unfavorable impression of him. Clinton also suffers from negative name recognition, with 41 percent of all voters giving her a favorable rating, compared with 54 percent saying they have an unfavorable impression of her.

The polling sample for the Democratic and the Republican primary consisted of 297 and 355 likely Floridavoters, respectively, with a margin of error of +/-5.6 percent and +/-5.2 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. The General Election Sample consisted of 829 registered voters with a margin of error of +/-3.3 percent and a 95 percent confidence level.