Daily Email from 912 Patriots of Lower Bucks

Earlier this year Robert Redford - former Hollywood heartthrob, founder of the Sundance Institute, and a progressive activist with connections to the leftist puppetmaster George Soros - released his first film as a director since 2007. The Conspirator was his thinly-veiled attack on Bush's war on terror posing as a docudrama about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Now Redford seems poised to turn the lens of his historical revisionism on a whitewashing of the '60s and '70s domestic terrorists of the Weather Underground.

When Leadership Has an Expiration Date

Posted by Alan W. Dowd Bio ↓ on Aug 4th, 2011

With an election year fast approaching, the president delivered a speech that's been overlooked by too many Americans and overshadowed by too many events. At a time when the burdens on America seem to be growing heavier by the day, it's a speech all Americans should read and a message, one would think, all Americans could rally around.

"This is a very dangerous and uncertain world," the president began. "We should realize what a burden and responsibility the people of the United States have borne for so many years...We put ourselves, by our own will and by necessity, into defensive alliances with countries all around the globe"-alliances that "would collapse overnight" were it not for American leadership. "Without the United States, there would be no NATO. And gradually Europe would drift into neutralism and indifference," he added, almost as if to warn the isolationists on his right and utopians on his left of what their policies could spawn.

Conceding that Americans "would like to live as we once lived...uninterested in the struggles of the world," he concluded that "history will not permit it." Whether or not we seek a special role in the world, "We are still the keystone in the arch of freedom."

It's worth noting that the president who delivered this powerful message was not Barack Obama, but rather John F. Kennedy. At once inspiring and yet deflating, the words come from his last speech on foreign policy.

A Caged Mubarak in the Dock

Posted by Rick Moran Bio ↓ on Aug 4th, 2011

In a scene most Egyptians believed would never happen, former President Hosni Mubarak, confined to a stretcher, was wheeled into a cage in a makeshift courtroom at the national police academy, located in a suburb east of Cairo. He is to stand trial for corruption and for the murders of nearly 850 protesters slain during the uprising last winter. As many Egyptians revel in the dramatic event, other spectators cannot overlook troubling changes in their country's political landscape. For even if justice is served in the trial, the fear remains that the fall of Mubarak heralds the rise of something much worse.

The trial begins just days after hundreds of thousands of Salafists poured into Tahrir Square calling for Egypt to become an Islamist state and adopt Sharia as the law of the land. The demonstration, which shocked many analysts with its organization and discipline, raised the specter of a union between the Salafists, represented by their political party Al Nour or "The Light," and the Muslim Brotherhood. The alliance threatens to sweep Islamic extremists into power when the elections are held in November or December.

"Christian Terrorism"?

Posted by Raymond Ibrahim Bio ↓ on Aug 5th, 2011

In light of the Norway terrorist attack, and as expected, the hail of religious relativism has begun-the idea that, if a "Christian," such as Breivik, commits terrorism, then it is folly to assert that certain Muslim doctrines inspire violence and terror: all becomes relative. A recent AP report titled "'Christian terrorist'? Norway case strikes debate," makes this clear:

As westerners wrestle with such characterizations of the Oslo mass murder suspect, the question arises: Nearly a decade after 9/11 created a widespread suspicion of Muslims based on the actions of a fanatical few, is this what it's like to walk a mile in the shoes of stereotype? "Absolutely," said Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. "It clearly puts us in a position where we can't simply say that extreme and violent behavior associated with a religious belief is somehow restricted to Muslim extremists." "It speaks to cultural assumptions, how we are able to understand something when it (comes from) us," Tyler said. "When one of us does something terrible, we know that's not how we all think, yet we can't see that with other people." Psychologists say stereotypes come from a deeply human impulse to categorize other people, usually into groups of "us" and "them."

The report goes on to give the opinions of an array of sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, who regurgitate the same aforementioned themes on "a fanatical few," "extreme and violent behavior," "cultural assumptions," and "stereotypes."

Yet not once do any of these soft-scientists bother investigating, let alone pointing out, what Christianity and Islam actually teach regarding violence.

Nor do they seem cognizant that there is a major difference between what people do in the name of religion and what the religion itself commands-just as there is a major difference between historical descriptions of war in the Bible and timeless prescriptions to wage war in the Koran (see "Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?" for a full treatment of these issues).

Defund the Department of Education

Posted by Tait Trussell Bio ↓ on Aug 5th, 2011

The U.S. Department of Education has swung so far off course every citizen should question why we are spending $70 billion to keep it running.

The Constitution provides no authority for the federal government to be involved in education. Most educational problems arise at the local level and can't be solved by bureaucrats who now are running more than 200 programs in Washington. Questions about the need for a federal Department of Education have been raised for years.

China: Pakistan's True Ally

Posted by Stephen Brown Bio ↓ on Aug 5th, 2011

Uighurs terrorists

While it blatantly betrayed America for almost a decade regarding Osama bin Laden, recent terrorist attacks by Islamists in western China reveal who Pakistan views as its true ally.

In the middle of July, "an organised terrorist attack" on a police station in western China's restive, Muslim-majority Xinjiang region left 14 people dead. About 18 Uighurs, carrying a flag with the Arab words for "Holy War" written on it, were blamed for the deadly assault.

The Uighurs are a Muslim Turkic people, native to the region and numbering about ten million out of a population of about 22 million. Some want independence from China and have angrily opposed the influx of Han Chinese immigrants. Simmering tensions between the two ethnics groups exploded in violence in 2009 that saw about 200 people killed.

Last weekend, China experienced two more terrorist attacks in Xinjiang that left 19 dead, including five terrorists. On Saturday, an hour after two bombs exploded, a truck hijacked by two Islamic terrorists slammed into a group of people, after which they got out and stabbed innocent bystanders, causing eight deaths. The following day, after burning down a restaurant, a larger group of Uighur terrorists began to randomly stab passers-by, killing several.

Unlike with other terrorist attacks worldwide with connections to Pakistan, the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), reacted immediately to last weekend's Chinese incidents. That's because a captured Uighur terrorist confessed the leaders of Sunday's Islamist attackers had received training in Pakistan in camps of the banned extremist East Turkistan Islamic Movement. So in contrast to its stonewalling behaviour regarding bin Laden, the ISI sent straightway Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the agency's director general, to Beijing. The Pakistani government also stated it was extending its "full support" to China on this matter.

"We cannot allow Pakistani territory to be used for any activities against any neighbour, especially a close ally like China," said the chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute. "There are strong ties between China and Pakistan, and we are cooperating closely on this issue."

It's unfortunate, however, that America does not get the same consideration and "full support," especially when it comes to jihadists using Pakistani soil to launch attacks against NATO and Afghan troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Market Madness

Posted by Arnold Ahlert Bio ↓ on Aug 5th, 2011

Like a bursting dam, the nation's debt gushed soon after a deal on the debt ceiling was reached. On Tuesday, America endured a largest-in-history one day bump of $239 billion, increasing the national debt from $14.294 trillion to hit $14.532 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. As a result, two daunting realities were revealed. First, that the bump represents 60 percent of the initial $400 billion in borrowing authorized by the debt ceiling deal. Second, America's borrowing now exceeds 100 percent of GDP for the first time since 1947. Meanwhile, key economic indicators are sagging. The obvious question: is America headed for a double-dip recession?

An idea considered remote as recently as two months ago is now gaining steam. The economy is at a virtual standstill with a 1.3 percent gain in GDP for the second quarter, well below previous estimates of 2 percent. Furthermore, first quarter estimates, initially registered at 1.9 percent, were revealed to be an abysmal 0.4 percent - meaning they were overstated by a factor of almost five.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, growth below 2 percent has signaled a recession six-out-of-seven times since 1970. Justin Wolfers, associate professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who thinks the economy is on "the knife's edge," contends that another recession may already be occurring, noting that we're only "one data revision away" from such a reality.

Perhaps the hallmark of historic liberalism, at least the 19^th century variety of Thomas Jefferson or John Stuart Mill as well as mid-20^th century liberals, was toleration and free expression. But does anyone doubt for a nanosecond that if those who today call themselves "liberals" had the power to do so, they'd censor or shut down Fox News and Rush Limbaugh immediately? That's what the attempted revival of the "Fairness Doctrine" is all about, since for liberals "fairness" means stopping any fight where they're losing.

So check out good ol' John Kerry (who fought in Vietnam, I have heard) on Friday lecturing the media on its "responsibility" not to give equal time to the Tea Party, because, obviously, the Tea Party is wrong, and as such liberals shouldn't have to defend themselves or even argue to matter to a public too stupid to be convinced of who their betters really are.