_ America's Principles In Public Policy -> The Peace through Strength Institute

RightSideNews.com

Roger Cohen’s January 16th column in The New York Times, “Don’t Do It, Bibi” is only the latest in the Obama election campaign’s efforts to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to take a serious risk at Israel’s being nuked by a nuclear Iran rather than cause any ripples in [Alleged] President Obama campaign for re-election to a second term.
Mr. Cohen begins his rant by quoting the purported advice of an unnamed American ambassador in Europe declaring Mr. Netanyahu to be an ingrate for all that the Obama administration has done for Israel, and strongly suggests the Israeli Prime Minister should “above all stay out of our election-year politics.”

According to Mr. Cohen, President Obama’s is justifiably furious with the Mr. Netanyahu because he had the audacity to “go over his head” by speaking “to a Republican-dominated Congress” even though it was Congress that invited him; again “ingratitude for solid U.S. support”, including in the UN; and the Netanyahu government’s refusal to declare a second freeze on building houses for Jews over the 1949 armistice lines “for the sake of peace negotiations” even though the first unprecedented freeze failed to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiations table. But for Mr. Cohen, Obama can do no wrong, and Netanyahu can do no right.

Should anyone think the existential threat to Israel is more serious than Mr. Obama’s re-election next November, Roger Cohen disabuses of this notion. “I would add a further piece of advice to Netanyahu if he cares about his dysfunctional relationship with Obama — and he should because Israelis know the United States matters…,” opines Mr. Cohen. “That advice is: Do not attack Iran this spring or summer.”

Read this story at rightsidenews.com ...

_America's Principles In Public Policy -> The Peace through Strength Institute

AzureOnline

Summer 2011

By Adi Schwartz

A vast diaspora was utterly annihilated, but Israelis rarely talk about it.

The pages are yellowing, nearly disintegrated. For decades they have lain forgotten, stuffed into crates piled high in the archives of Israel’s Ministry of Justice. No one reads them; no one even shows interest. Even now, nearly sixty years after the painful experiences of loss and flight they recount, they still wait for their stories to be told.

In one, a Jewish woman from Alexandria describes her youth in Egypt:

    "After the [1948] war broke out, my mother was arrested in her ninth month of pregnancy, and they wanted to slaughter her; they threatened her with bayonets and abused her…. One evening a mob came to kill our family with sticks and anything they could lay their hands on, because they heard we were Jews. The gatekeeper swore to them that we were Italian, and so they only cursed us, surrounding my parents, my brothers, and myself, only a small baby. The next day my parents ran away, leaving everything—pension, work, and home—behind."1

On another page, Mordechai Karo, also Egyptian-born, testifies about an explosive device planted in a Jewish neighborhood in Cairo in the summer of 1948:

“The tremendous explosion killed and injured scores of Jews in the neighborhood. One of these casualties was my young daughter Aliza.”2

Thousands of pages of similar testimony have been collecting dust in various government offices since the 1950s. Under the bureaucratic heading “Registry of the Claims of Jews from Arab Lands,” they tell of lives cut short, of individuals and entire families who found themselves suddenly homeless, persecuted, humiliated. Together they relate a tragic chapter in the history of modern Jewry, a chain of traumatic events that signaled the end of a once-glorious diaspora.

Yet for all its historical import, this chapter has been largely repressed, scarcely leaving a mark on Israel’s collective memory. The media seldom mentioned it then, and rarely do so today.3 Schools do not devote comprehensive curricula to it, and academia pays it little attention. Indeed, in the past decade only one doctoral dissertation was written on the devastation of Jewish communities in Arab countries.4 Furthermore, of all the parties represented in Israel’s Knesset, not one has included in its platform an explicit demand for the restitution of these Jews’ property, or the recognition of their violated rights.5

This dismissive attitude toward one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the Jewish people should be cause for astonishment. After all, the heritage of Jews from Muslim lands is enjoying something of a renaissance today, both in academic circles and within the general public. Yet not even the outspoken proponents of this heritage are particularly eager to discuss the historical circumstances under which their deep roots in the Arab world were severed.6

This prolonged silence becomes even more incomprehensible when we take into account the centrality of the refugee problem to the Arab-Israeli conflict. While Palestinians and their advocates repeatedly emphasize the need to correct the historic injustice done to the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who left or were expelled from their lands and dispossessed of their properties in the 1948 Nakba (“catastrophe”), Israel’s international representatives and spokespeople have refrained from highlighting the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who fell victim to systematic persecution and attacks throughout the Middle East and Maghreb at the same time.

How to explain this omission? The answer, as we will see, is neither simple nor easy to digest. It involves a number of motives, some of them pragmatic and some ideological, all of which deserve close scrutiny. Our investigation will raise difficult questions, concerning not only various Israeli governments’ policies in both the past and the present, but also the conceptual foundations of the Jewish state itself. And yet, before we can address these sensitive topics, we must recall certain facts that have been buried for too long in dusty ministerial archives.

Read this story at azure.org ...

_America's Party of Georgia

American Thinker

By Cindy Simpson and Alan P. Halbert

Two AT writers attended yesterday's hearing in Georgia over [Alleged] President Obama's eligibility for the presidential ballot. Cindy Simpson writes:

[Alleged] President Obama has a habit of turning his back and walking away from those with whom he disagrees, as recently discovered by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.  Professor John Lott, in an interview with Teri O'Brien, recalled similar experiences with Obama while at the University of Chicago.

Ms. O'Brien commented to Professor Lott:  "Gods don't debate.  They just issue decrees."

And apparently they also tend to place themselves above the law.

On January 26, I was in Atlanta to observe the hearings on the challenges to Obama's eligibility to appear on Georgia's 2012 ballot.  In two previous American Thinker blog posts, "The Birthers Went Down to Georgia" and "Georgia on Obama's Mind," I described the content and history of the cases.

The courtroom was crowded to maximum capacity; however, the table for the defense was notably vacant.  The defendant, Obama himself, was also not in attendance, even though the judge last week refused to quash the subpoena requesting his presence. Judge Michael Malihi, in his denial, stated:

...Defendant fails to provide any legal authority to support his motion to quash the subpoena to attend.  Defendant's motion suggests that no President should be compelled to attend a Court hearing.  This may be correct.  But Defendant has failed to enlighten the Court with any legal authority...evidencing why his attendance is "unreasonable or oppressive, or that the testimony... [is] irrelevant, immaterial, or cumulative and unnecessary..."

Obama's attorney, Michael Jablonski, had warned of his absence in a defiant and last-minute move on the afternoon of January 25, via a letter he sent to Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp.  He requested that Kemp "bring an end to this baseless, costly and unproductive hearing by withdrawing the original hearing request as improvidently issued."  Jablonski's letter concluded: "We await your taking the requested action, and as we do so, we will, of course, suspend further participation in these proceedings, including the hearing scheduled for January 26."

A few hours later, the blogosphere lit up with the news that Secretary Kemp had responded with a letter stating that the hearings would continue on the 26th as scheduled, and concluded with the warning:  "...if you and your client choose to suspend your participation in the OSAH proceedings, please understand that you do so at your own peril."

And the hearings did proceed, although approximately 20 minutes late, after Judge Malihi requested a pre-hearing conference with all of the attorneys in his chambers...

Read this story at americanthinker.com ...

America's Principles in Public Policy

"History will also give occasion to expatiate on the advantage of civil orders and constitutions, how men and their properties are protected by joining in societies and establishing government; their industry encouraged and rewarded, arts invented, and life made more comfortable: The advantages of liberty, mischiefs of licentiousness, benefits arising from good laws and a due execution of justice. Thus may the first principles of sound politics be fixed in the minds of youth."

-- Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, 1749

_"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researches, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors...
The general Principles, on which the Fathers Atchieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite, and these Principles only could be intended by them in their Address, or by me in my Answer. And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were united: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young Men United, and which had United all Parties in America, in Majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System. I could therefore safely say, consistently with all my then and present Information, that I believed they would never make Discoveries in contradiction to these general Principles."


-- John Adams, letter to the young men of the Philadelphia, 1798

_America's Party Principles In Public Policy -> Free the First Amendment Committee

What a Democrat President did 71 years ago...

American Minute

Bill Federer

On JANUARY 25, 1941, Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote the foreword to a Special Military Edition of the New Testament & Book of Psalms, distributed to millions of soldiers and sailors by The Gideon's International:

JANUARY 25, 1941
The White House, Washington
To the Armed Forces,
As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul.
Very sincerely yours,
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Also on JANUARY 25, in the year 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was quoted in The Religious Herald, Virginia, in the article "Presidential Candidates Stress Role of Religion":

"What is our battle against Communism if it is not a fight between anti-God and a belief in the Almighty?...Communists...have to eliminate God from their system. When God comes, Communism has to go."

On JANUARY 25, 1984, in his State of the Union Address, President Ronald Reagan stated

"Each day your members observe a 200-year-old tradition meant to signify America is one nation under God.
     I must ask: If you can begin your day with a member of the clergy standing right here leading you in prayer, then why can't freedom to acknowledge God be enjoyed again by children in every school room across this land?'...

America was founded by people who believed that God was their rock of safety. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it's all right to keep asking if we're on His side."

Reagan concluded:

"Carl Sandburg said, 'I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair....I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.'"

A month later in a radio address, February 25, 1984, President Reagan stated:

"The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny...
      But now we're told our children have no right to pray in school. Nonsense. The pendulum has swung too far toward intolerance against genuine religious freedom. It is time to redress the balance."

Reagan concluded:

"Former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart noted if religious exercises are held to be impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed at an artificial and state-created disadvantage...
      Refusal to permit religious exercises is seen not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism."

_America's Party Principles In Public Policy -> Equal Protection for Posterity

American Life League

Judie Brown

I have read with interest the thunderous proclamations of sanctimonious outrage from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in response to Obama’s order that conscience protection does not apply to his mandatory birth control coverage in health insurance plans. I find the USCCB’s hand-wringing rather disturbing. After all, history teaches that Obamacare and its progeny might never have become law if the bishops, united in their resolve, had opposed it from the start and pointed out the specific flaws in what is now the law of the land.

The backstory on this most recent government requirement goes like this: Obamacare first came to the public’s attention in 2009 as a proposal introduced in both houses of Congress. At the time, American Life League sent out a warning aimed at Catholic charitable organizations including Catholic Charities, the Society of St. Vincent DePaul, and the Catholic Health Association—three major Catholic groups that were not only supporting the newly introduced Obamacare but that were rallying their troops to contact Congress and get involved in helping pass the proposal.

Try as we might to convince those organizations—including the USCCB—that Obamacare was fraught with problems, their support continued with the single caveat that the healthcare proposal must be “abortion neutral.” The USCCB has argued for years that every American has a right to healthcare and that the government should be providing it, though the current law is flawed. 

In August of 2009, “The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) . . . ruled that a small Catholic college must include coverage for artificial contraceptives in its employee health insurance plan, raising new concerns about the need for conscience protections and religious exemptions in America’s health care policies.” The college, Belmont Abbey, stood up to the federal agency, arguing that its religious liberty must be protected and that if it were not, the president of the college would prefer to shut it down. 

Still, few Catholic leaders seemed to see the problematic nature of supporting Obamacare!

Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, took a very public position in favor of Obamacare early on and, for a time, stood at odds with the Catholic bishops on some aspects of the proposal. Our documentation aside, Sister Keehan would not publicly address fundamental Catholic healthcare principles as evidenced in her 2010 debate with me. In fact, the bishops themselves avoided these principles, never pointing out that the only way the USCCB could support Obamacare would be if the proposed law eliminated all funding for abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, human embryonic stem cell research, sex education, and euthanasia. In other words, any attack on human dignity would have to be specifically eliminated from healthcare reform proposals if Obama wanted USCCB support. 

The USCCB never made that case. 

Fast forward to today and the unadulterated gall of [Alleged] President Barack Obama, who personally called Cardinal-designate Dolan, Archdiocese of New York, “to inform the archbishop he had decided to move ahead with the federal sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate despite pleas from Dolan, the Catholic bishops, and prominent Catholic lay people that the mandate was an unambiguous and unprecedented attack on the free exercise of religion that is expressly guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.”

In a USCCB media release following the Obama administration announcement, we find Sister Carol Keehan voicing “disappointment” at the administration’s strong-arm tactics.

Cardinal-designate Dolan is also quoted as saying, “The Obama administration has now drawn an unprecedented line in the sand. . . . The Catholic bishops are committed to working with our fellow Americans to reform the law and change this unjust regulation. We will continue to study all the implications of this troubling decision.” In fact, the USCCB is even considering a lawsuit. 

But wait a minute. Where have these people been for the past four years? Why didn’t they work with other Americans four years ago to stop this draconian law from ever being passed in the first place?

Now that the horse is out of the barn, they are screaming? Give me a break! What else can you expect when you sit down with the devil?  

__America's Party Principles In Public Policy -> Equal Protection for Posterity

BioEdge.org

Michael Cook

Remember the Avis Rent-a-Car commercials from the 1960s? Maybe not. Anyhow, they tripled the company’s market share with the slogan, “Avis Is Only No. 2, We Try Harder.” The Belgian right-to-die lobby seems to have the same can-do attitude. In the journal Health Policy, researchers associated with the End-of-Life Care Research Group at Ghent University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels have lamented the low take-up of the services of doctors specialising in facilitating euthanasia.

Read this story at bioedge.org ...

__America's Party of Indiana

LifeSiteNews.com

By John Jalsevac

City utility workers who were cleaning a screen at a pump house in Fort Wayne, Indiana made a gruesome discovery Monday: the body of an unborn child, estimated to be about 10-25 weeks gestation.

According to local media, the body of the unborn child was collected by police to be examined by forensics.

“We’re not treating it as a homicide,” said Raquel Foster, police spokeswoman. “It’s the coroner’s investigation. They’ll determine the age, and they’ll share their findings with us, and then we’ll go from there.”

“We don’t know whether this baby was aborted and then flushed into the sewer system by Fort Wayne’s local abortion clinic, or aborted at home using the RU-486 chemical abortion method, but both are strong possibilities,” said Indiana Right to Life President and CEO Mike Fichter.

The Indiana State Department of Health told the pro-life organization in response to inquiries that fetal remains prior to 20-weeks are classified as medical waste to be handled according to federal guidelines. Those guidelines list various methods for disposing of medical waste including, “Discharge in a sanitary sewer or septic system that is properly installed and operating in accordance with state and local laws.”

“The horrifying fact is that abortion clinics in Indiana can use garbage disposals and toilets to discard body parts into local sewer systems,” stated Fichter. “The degradation of the disposal process is second only to the degradation of destroying these lives in the first place.”

Fichter notes that the Fort Wayne baby may also have been aborted at home by a woman using the RU-486 chemical abortion method and subsequently flushed down a toilet.  ”A woman who has an RU-486 abortion is given a drug that kills her unborn child, followed by another powerful drug that causes cramping, bleeding, and the expulsion of the child,” said Fichter. 

Read this story at LifeSiteNews.com ...