All too little attention has been paid to President Barack Obama’s shocking plan to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries.

 

For most of the media—and, consequently, the public—the plan briefly flashed like heat lightning in the summer sky and soundlessly disappeared. But the very existence of the plan, and the story of how it bit the dust, raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s political wisdom, its ability to govern and whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is running things.

 

The astonishing proposal raised an uproar among veterans’ groups who feared that Purple Heart veterans could end up holding the bag after taking a bullet for their country. Also astonishing was the way Pelosi squashed the plan, literally overruling the president only hours after Obama affirmed his commitment to it.

 

Further, the plan’s sudden appearance and its even quicker demise casts doubts on major media competence or fairness. As news stories go, its importance at least equals, if not exceeds, last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning revelations about deplorable conditions for wounded veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Certainly, if former President George W. Bush had hatched the idea, it would have been splashed all over the front page of the Washington Post and NBC news anchor Brian Williams would have declared it “alarming.”

 

The plan had been quietly simmering within the Obama administration without much, if any, media notice. Consequently, little is known about the plan’s details, other than responsibility for paying for combat or service-related disabilities and injuries would be shifted away from the Veterans Administration, where it has forever resided, to private insurers.

 

When veterans groups got wind of it, they—not the media—brought it to the public’s attention. In testimony the week of March 8, House and Senate veterans affairs committee and the House Budget Committee, the groups denounced it. Among their objections: The government, not private insurance companies, sends members of the armed forces into harm’s way; maximum insurance coverage limits could be reached through treatment of just service-related problems, leaving the rest of the family without coverage, and businesses might become reluctant to hire veterans. Still, the story did not raise much media interest.

 

On Monday, March 16, leaders of 11 prominent veterans organizations met personally with Obama in the White House to try to dissuade him from proceeding. He was unmoved. Said a statement from the group issued on PRNewswire immediately after the meeting: “It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan. He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

 

Frustrated, the leaders marched to the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. to meet with Speaker Pelosi. Mere hours later, Pelosi—not the White House—announced that the Obama administration was killing the plan. Said she, quite disingenuously, “President Obama listened to the genuine concerns expressed by the veteran service organizations regarding the option of billing service-connected injuries to veterans’ insurance companies. Based on the respect President Obama has for veterans and the principle concerns of our veteran leaders, the president made the decision that combat wounds should not be billed through their insurance policies.” Requiscat in Pace

 

I would have loved to have heard the heated phone exchanges between Pelosi’s office and the president or his staff. Undoubtedly, she told them that any such plan would be dead upon arrival in the House, and that they were boneheads for even raising it.

 

Clearly, Obama stumbled politically by taking on one of the country’s most powerful lobbies. He also should have been shamed by Pelosi’s veto of an executive branch study before it even gets off the ground. A bigger issue now is: Has this episode set the stage for the Obama administration ceding executive powers to the legislative branch, or more precisely, Pelosi and Reid, and what are the traditional balance-of-powers consequences? Has the election of the inexperienced Obama signaled to congressional leaders that now is the time to reclaim the powers they believe President George W. Bush had usurped?

 

More important are the substantive implications: Who knows, maybe Obama’s idea has significant merit. Aside from the fact that it sounds like something that Bush might have proposed (quasi privatization of veterans benefits), it is worth a debate over whether the private sector can provide better service than the often-criticized VA. A $540-million savings should not be sniffed at, and that, in itself, is reason enough for a public debate. Is there another way to save that much money, without degrading veterans’ rights and benefits?

 

The way the issue was handled, however, has closed the debate, certainly for now and possibly years to come. Blame Pelosi for that; she gave cover to a powerful special interest (of which, as a veteran, I am a part) to control public policy-making. Not many politicians have the courage to remind organized veterans that they are receiving public monies; it is not theirs alone. Citizens and taxpayers have a right to participate in those decisions.

 

For Obama’s part, this fiasco is symptomatic of an administration hell-bent to change the world in a flash, with a blizzard of unfocused, unsharpened plans. Obama has been rushing impetuously, if not rashly, into major policy decisions that impact every phase of American life. For Obama, this speed is a virtue, allowing him to ignore the more lasting consequences, such as increasing the public debt to $11 trillion (excluding social security and Medicare) in record time. If Obama had not been so headstrong, perhaps the veterans’ issue could have been properly and publicly debated, on its merits. Thanks to Obama’s recklessness, it won’t.

 

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2009/03/26/obama-prepares/

Obama Veterans Health Care Plan » Blue Star Chronicles – 4 Responses to “Obama Veterans Health Care Plan”. 1. George Says: March 18th, 2009 at 1:45 pm. Great. So now Barry in Charge is going to screw up the military and the VA. What a joke this guy is. He and his followers have no idea how to …

One Big Awful Mistake America (OBAMA): Veterans Will Now Lead The … – The Obama administration dropped a proposal to require some disabled veterans to pay for medical treatments through their private insurance companies, heeding a chorus of outrage from veterans groups and Capitol Hill lawmakers who said …

Obama Taps Mabus for Navy Secretary : Veterans Today – News for … – US Military Veterans News – Benefits – Jobs – VA Home Loans – Forums – GI Bill Education and more.

Mersman Political Blog: Obama Veterans Health Plan Proposal: Jon … – President Obama is right of course to try and save the government money where he can however it should not come at the expense of those that serve our country. Veterans relying on their private insurance may not always be an adequate …

Wise as an Owl… and Bush: My MWP Report Card for Obama … – The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases. “It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to …

Obama: Veterans To Pay For Service Related Injuries? | The Blogshevik – According to news reports, Obama and his administration have proposed legislation that would force veterans to pay for service related medical treatment.

The Pool Bar: Obama’s veterans’ health care plan: Retaliation? – Obama’s veterans’ health care plan: Retaliation? Just spitballing here…is it possible that Barack Obama’s immoral scheme to make service members carry medical insurance to pay for injuries suffered in combat is retribution for the …

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive … – Leaders of the country’s most prominent veterans groups met Monday at the White House with Obama, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Steven Kosiak, the director in charge of defense …

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The NIF supported nearly a dozen Eritrean Islamist and other opposition forces beginning in the 1990’s including the Eitrean Islamist Jihad Movement , Eitrean Liberation Front.  Eitrea Kunma Movement and the Red Sea Democratic Movement.  In retaliation ,  Asmara severed  diplomatic relations with Khartoum permitted the Sudanese opposition, the National Democratic Alliance to open an office in the former Sudanese embassy in Asmara.  Al Qaeda also sought to establish links with other African Islamist parties and armed groups especially in 1992- 96.  The plight of the Moslems of the Ogaden, an area situates South East of Ethiopia , with Kenya to the South,  Somalia to the East, and Djibouti to the North , came to the direct attention of Osama , shortly after he established himself in Khartoum in December 1991.  It is an exclusively Moslem area with a long established history of both hostility and conflicts with "outsiders".  It is an area where both Arabic and Somali languages are spoken.  Because and as a result that is a "lawless" region beyond the reach of government and governmental agencies Osama  was more than quick to establish a vital presence there.

 

 

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Totalitarianism”  the intellectuals claim that it is all in the name of  “democracy”  and “democratization”.  The truth is somewhere in the range that the Soviet Communists have taken significant steps toward “liberalizing”  party and Soviet practices .  This evolution towards democracy continues to march onwards and upwards.  It has profoundly altered interests and practices , none withstanding.

Russia forces BP top executive to flee | Samizdata.net – Democratic (as in lawfull)? No. The government might have been secular in some sense but an Ayatollah was house speaker. The coup took place after the fall of the Iron Curtain on Eastern Europe, after the Berlin airlift, in the midst of the Cold ….. whatever the state of the Iranian government, British Intelligence fermented the coup for purely commercial reasons. Posted by Trooper Thompson at July 27, 2008 05:51 PM. dan,. If I am a useful idiot, you are a lazy pedant. …

RGE – The Worst Financial Crisis Since the Great Depression – The 10T took decades to ferment, the new loans have managed to do 10- 30% in mere months. We no longer have a Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security and pension debacle for politicians to fret over. Now we have a bona fide interloper and true showstopper. …… While people behind the Iron Curtain suffered permanent impoverishment, free markets and a free society went hand-in-hand in the West and material gains were available to anyone prepared to work hard. …

Hillary Is 44 » Blog Archive » The Rise Of The Obama Crimelords … – we need to pay less attention to the act on the stage and more attention to what goes on behind the curtain. djia Says: April 9th, 2009 at 9:52 am. Have a good day everyone….. gotta go to work now! will check in tonight …… conflicts because I remember working with this male RN 20 some years ago and he would work 6 months out of the year and travel to third world countries, including Afghanistan, share caves with the Mullahs, go behind the iron curtain the other 6… …

ACTION UKRAINE REPORT (Archive): AUR#900 Aug 25 Georgia and the … – Ever since the Russian invasion of democratic Georgia, pundits and politicians have been writing extensively about the “new Cold War” that is emerging between Russia and the West. … Sadly, there was no Churchillian figure who grand eloquently warned the West of an iron curtain descending on Europe, or perhaps, more aptly, an oil-fused one. While NATO was clearly formed to counter the Soviet military threat, at the most recent conference in Bucharest, NATO members bent …

ACTION UKRAINE REPORT (Archive): AUR#931 Mar 2 Ukraine: Coca-Cola … – The plant’s main activity is the production of the fermented drink ‘Kvas’, which is produced under the “Yarylo” brand. As stated by Mr. Hill, the CEO of Coca-Cola Beverage Ukraine, the company is going to develop the “Yarylo” brand further, …… Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who proposed a bailout package of up to euro190 billion ($240.84 billion), warned that without aid a “new Iron Curtain” would descend on Europe and again separate East from West. …

Collective leadership , first under Malenkov, then under Khrushchev repudiated greatly Stalin;s techniques of government by extreme terror.  Denouncing Stalin’s  “cult of personality” – meaning his refusal to to recognize any law higher than his own bloody caprice -  Khrushchev  in his now famous “Secret Speech” ushered in a new era.   Terror largely gave way to persuasion, arbitrary violence to government by law and rules.  With the extensive de-Stalinization proceedings at the Twenty-second Congress five years afterwards the Party surpassed all previous attempts to sponge away the taints of Stalin’s autocracy.

 

 

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Western governments had stressed a new military capacity , the need increased for an expansion of military expenditures and the legitimacy of the use of military force in international conflicts and international geopolitical relations. Kimmy Carter pledged himself in 1978 to a 3 .3 % in military spending , the Republican Party manifesto committed itself to restoring military superiority. Speaking to cadres at its miltary academy at West Point in 1981 on the dangers of "Treaty Trap" President Ronald Reagan promised to expand America’s military strength. "No nation that placed its faith in parchment or paper while at the same time it gave up its protective hardware (military) ever lasted long enough to write many pages in history" he said. Reagan’s first Secretary of State Alexander Haig stated on many occasions during the first months after coming into office that the Administration’s priority was , in his phase , " the restoration of U.S. military and economic strength" He told an audience that "some things were more valuable than peace" Tratfor www.fortunawebs.com www.fortunacooks.com www.fishlakemanitobanarrows.com

 

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Islamic and their backers have a shallow and uncivilized “ideology” which cannot stand up to any rational thinking. It does not offer any alternative to any social, political, or economic order which mankind has thus far has known. It exclusively incites to hatred, violence, and discrimination against women and followers of other faiths. It is even an over statement to say it is bankrupt. Bankruptcy usually applies to someone who has possessed something and then lost it. Islamic, including numerous passages in Shari’a and the Koran, is a destructive mindset. It is a sociology-political virus.

However, without oil and suicide bombing Islamic would be roaming the Arabian Peninsula, the birth place of Islamic, and perish from hunger. Petrodollars and Wahabism, a wild irrational version of Islam, are nurturing Islamism and Muslim terror. Koran schools across the globe stuff young brains with hatred against the rest of the world. Students at these schools are taught that they are the “real Muslims”. Ridding the world of the “infidels” is their primary religious obligation. In return for blowing up themselves in crowded places they are promised paradise and an eternal prosperous life among 72 young virgin pretty women of their choice.

Now, when you scrutinize Islamic on the ground, you find out that its backers, in particular in the Arab world, focus on the following:

For Islamic, women are the source of all evil. They (men) primarily associate women with sex and only sex. Therefore, women must cover every part of their body when they are outside their homes. Women are seductive, Islamists allege. If they expose any part of their body, men would be distracted and their lust is stirred, which is eventually “sinful”. An Islamist told me that when he is in Europe he sees so much flesh and hence his lust dwindles. At home in Saudi Arabia, he has much more sexual lust. He figures out all kinds of beauty under women’s clothes in the street. He rushes home to pour his lust in his wife. And that is more exciting.

- According to Islamists, women must be ready for intercourse at any time the husband wishes so.

“Your wives are a filth for you, so go into your filth when you like, and do good beforehand for yourselves, and be careful (of your duty) to Allah, and know that you will meet Him, and give good news to the believers.” (Sura 2, verse 223).

During menstruation, however, men should keep away from women; they are filthy. The Koran says:

“It (menstruation) is a discomfort; therefore keep aloof from the women during the menstrual discharge and do not go near them until they have become clean; then when they have cleansed themselves, go in to them as Allah has commanded you; surely Allah loves those who turn much (to Him), and He loves those who purify themselves.” (Sura 2, verse 222).

Women, according to Islamists and the Koran, are, in general, unclean creature. After a Muslim has washed and prepared himself for prayer, he should not touch a woman. She tarnishes his cleanliness. Therefore, “pious” Muslims never shake hands with women.

“O you who believe! do not go near prayer until you have washed yourselves; and if you have touched women, and you cannot find water, betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning, Forgiving.” (Sura 4, verse 43).

For Islamists, even the woman’s voice is “’aura” (a sexual organ). A woman on Saudi radio and TV, for instance, is not allowed to be interviewed by a man. Also a woman should never tell her name in public. Therefore, she is, for example, “um Muhammad”, (the mother of Muhammad), or “um Ali”.

In a public place an Islamist walks a couple of feet ahead of his wife or close female relatives, covered from head to toe. He wants to signal to passers-by, these are my women, do not look at them. They are mine. Thus women are not only sex objects, they are also a piece of property.

Islamists demand that a woman’s face should never be photographed. Women of Islamists in Kuwait are allowed to have their photos on the driver’s license with a dark black face cover. The majority of them are usually reckless drivers and no police dare stop them to take them to task.

Islamists in several Arab and Muslim countries have succeeded in forcing sex-segregation at schools and universities. That is the case in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Malaysia, Iran, and Pakistan. Bosnia and Kosovo are also introducing this system.

Women as witnesses, according to Islamists, are unreliable. Therefore, the testimony of two female witnesses are required to equal that of one male witness in Shari’a courts (Sura 2, verse 282). Further, Women are entitled to inherit only half a portion of that of a man (Sura 4, verse 176). For many men at the Arab Gulf, the brain of a woman is “too small”; it is half the size of that of a man.

Also, Islamists encourage forcing minor girls to marry. The youngest was 8 years old whose father forced her to marry a 57-year-man in Sana’a, the Yemen Times reports (October 10, 2008). As some human rights organizations protested, a local judge defended the case by analogy; the Prophet Muhammad married Aisha, one of his wives, as she was 9 years old.

Men and women, in most Arab oil rich countries, are not allowed to hug or kiss each other in public, at the airport, for instance, when they welcome relatives and friends back from a journey or say farewell to them. For weeks now, Islamists in Kuwait have been condemning a 14-year-old girl who kissed a singer in a family wedding party in a hotel in Kuwait city. Some of them called the girl a “whore” and demanded punishing her and her parents.

Another triviality of Islamists is the ad nausea repetition of “peace and prayers be upon him” every time the name of the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned. It is a must. Otherwise, you are not “pious” enough”.

A real Muslim, for Islamic, is the one who practices Islam to the letter. Muslims are not allowed to use their left hand when they eat or drink. It is the one which one uses to wash their ass.

According to Islamists, a Muslim should never donate an organ, heart or kidneys for example, to a non-Muslim. Ali Gumaa, the grand mufti of Egypt and the Islamist fanatic, Yousef Al Qaradhawi, approved of that on Al Jazeera TV (February 16, 2008).

Freedom of speech is also forbidden, according to Islamists. You are not allowed to question anything in the Koran, Hadeeth, or Shari’a. These scripts are sacred.

Books that criticize certain Islamic practices are also forbidden. The “evolution theory” is also banned from all schools in the earlier mentioned countries. Even the “One Thousand and one Nights” is forbidden in many Arab countries. Some Islamists preach, the Koran is the only book that is worth of reading. It has got everything you need to know. This is reminiscent of what the second Caliph, Omar Ibn Al Khattab did with the Library of Alexandria in the 7th century, the greatest and most precious at the time. Before burning the Library down, he said, “If it contains books which preach what Islam advocates, then it is superfluous. If it doesn’t, then it should be destroyed.” And it was.

Music, for Islamists, is also haram (forbidden). It is a Western fad. It is noise. A good Muslim listens only to recorded recitations of the Koran.

Political “parties” is “hizb” (fragmentation) and as such are forbidden in the Arab Gulf countries. In Kuwait there is a parliament, but parties are forbidden. Saudi Arabia rejects democracy all together. It is un-Islamic. Shura (consultation) is the Islamic alternative. This is one of the reasons why the Al Saud are vehemently sticking to Shari’a. It justifies their absolute despotic rule.

Besides, Islamists reject all secular constitutions and secular laws. They advocate that the Shari’a is the best constitution on earth. It is the law of Allah.

Islamists also reject religious pluralism. Any other faith than Islam is fake. The Saudis and the Turks, both led by Islamists, enjoy religious pluralism in the West. But in their own countries, no churches, synagogues, or temples are allowed to be built.

In addition, until now, no-Muslims are not allowed to enter Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. They are “holy places” and only Muslims are allowed to visit them.

Islam is the only religion in the world that declares Muslims who convert to other faiths apostates and sentences them to death. Islamists enforce this with death fatwas. This is a gross violation of a basic human right which the UN Charter prescribes and all Arab and Muslim countries ratified.

For Islamists, people who satirize Islamic symbols are declared satanic/heretic and deserve the death penalty. The Muhammad-Cartoons are a case in point.

Every time a hurricane hits the USA, the Islamic rejoice. They propagate, that is the curse of Allah on the “infidels”. As the tsunami hit South East Asia, Nabeel Al Awadhi claimed in an article for the Kuwaiti Al Watan daily (April 2006), “The tsunami hit more infidels than Muslims.” In’ the same paper, Waleed Al Tabtaba’i concluded (October 5, 2008) that the recent international financial crisis is Allah’ chastisement for the people who deal with riba (usury).” Rajab Al Banna, a columnist with the Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, alleges (May 26, 2007), “Western charity organizations are not interested in humanitarian aid. Their ultimate aim is proselytizing Muslims and help them convert to Christianity.”

As you can see, the Islamists find always a “rational” explanation to events in the world.

The Islamist dogma is void and anti-human. But thanks to petrodollars, lack of genuine democracy and freedom of speech in the Arab and Muslim world – which for decades has been ignored by the West for geopolitical and economic interests – and thanks to relativists in their cozy offices, Islamism is thriving and Islamists are emboldened.

School textbooks in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Indonesia, for example, are still teaching hatred and violence against people of other faiths. According to the latest UN Education Report (2007), these books are funded by Saudi Arabia. And no body dare touch on that. Governments and individuals are intimidated. It is allegedly an internal matter, and justified as freedom of belief. This is perverse. Violating basic human rights has nothing to do with freedom of belief.

The USA and the European Union know all that, yet they have not undertaken concrete measure to ban these toxic textbooks. There must the war on terror begin. Islamists are illiterate in terms of common sense and human civilized coexistence. They are outlaws who need to be re-educated and integrated in our civilized world.

It is very important to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and Islamists. The majority of Muslims around the globe are peaceful people, more or less religious like all followers of other faiths whether they are Christians, Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists. Every human being must have the right to believe in whatever they deem appropriate, including Islamists. But nobody has the right to IMPOSE his beliefs on other, oppress them, discriminate against them, and terrorize them, as Islamists are doing every day.

The so-called Mutawa’s, religious police in Saudi Arabia, are empowered to force all women to cover their bodies from head to toe, even 5-year-old girls. Pedestrians during prayer times are forced to go the mosque and pray, sometimes even non-Muslims are forced to do so. Women who travel by taxi alone are accused of adultery. Both the woman and the taxi driver are imprisoned and tortured. In Gaza, Basra/Iraq, south Lebanon, and Iran no woman is allowed to walk in a public place without a hijab (headscarf). In most Egyptian towns, women without a headscarf are denigrated and treated as prostitutes.

More and more governments in the Middle East, for example, in Egypt, Syria, Kuwait, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, and Iraq are allying themselves with Islamists in a bid to appease the latter. Demonizing the West would partially appease the Islamists and essentially debilitate the demand for democracy in these countries.

The problem is not Islam; it has existed for 1400 years and will still, realistically speaking, exist. The problem in the 21st century is the Islamists. They have hijacked both Islam and moderate Muslims. The resources of these thugs must be dried out and this is the responsibility of all of us. We must not be intimidated by them under any circumstances. They are a socio-cultural virus that must be eradicated by all means.

Finally, a colleague told me, Islam is sick. And its disease is called Islamism. The world community must fight this devastating disease, this Black Death. It is disrupting peace and stability in the whole world. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, an Italian Islam expert said several times, “The Americans should have invaded Saudi Arabia, instead of Iraq. It IS the source of all evil.” I would add Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE. The Islamist establishments in these countries and their media are fostering Islamism. All these regimes proclaim that they are friends of the West, but at the same time they fund and support Islamism. It is, however, clear that America and the West at large would not want to antagonize these regimes for well-known geopolitical and economic considerations.

 

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Mark Levin’s "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" couldn’t be more relevant or important. It is a masterful restatement of conservative principles that is succinct (205 pages) and yet comprehensive. It is thoughtful and deep but highly readable. It is timely yet timeless.


Conservatism is under attack from puffed-up liberals, feeling their oats with the ascendancy of President Barack Obama and the huge Democratic congressional majorities, and from a disgruntled group of conservatives who believe that conservatism, to remain politically effective, needs a face-lift.


Liberal columnists are writing with unrestrained glee about conservatism’s internecine wars, and conservatives are engaged in intramural debates about which principles and policies conservatives should be promoting. Levin’s book will go a long way toward muting the liberals’ premature gloating and refuting the arguments of those who, perhaps with good intentions, would hijack conservatism from within and transform it into liberalism lite, all in the name of political pragmatism. "An ‘effective’ government that operates outside its constitutional limitations is a dangerous government," Levin writes. "By abandoning principle for efficiency, the neo-Statist, it seems, is no more bound to the Constitution than the Statist. He marches more slowly ? but he marches with him nonetheless."

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There has not been a widely read conservative manifesto as such since Barry Goldwater’s "The Conscience of a Conservative" in 1960. Given the unbridled assault on conservatism today, not to mention the personal attacks on its leading proponents, we must celebrate the release of "Liberty and Tyranny" as the modern road map back to our conservative roots.


Having eaten, breathed, slept and studied conservatism, politics, law and history his entire life, Levin, who is my friend and client, is uniquely qualified and situated to have written this book. In undertaking this formidable task, he stands on the shoulders of the giants who have preceded him but has made those giants very proud with this work.


Don’t make the mistake — no matter how learned you are in politics or related disciplines — of assuming you have nothing to gain from reading a primer on conservative thought. This is much more than a primer. It delves into the historical and philosophical roots of conservative thought and ties them to America’s founding. It explains the enduring principles that undergird our unique constitutional system and exposes the dangers in continuing to violate those principles.


Levin identifies conservatism’s relentless nemesis, the statist, who seeks to grow the state at the expense of the individual and his liberty. The statist’s goals are clear, but his methods are deceitful: promising equality, security and Utopia but delivering tyranny. In the current administration, we are witnessing the rise of the statist to new heights. And he must be stopped if we are to preserve our freedom, prosperity and moral order.


When you read this book, you will learn or be reminded not only that private property and liberty are inseparable but also why. You will learn that a conservative is not only a free market libertarian but also one who believes in a civil society with an underlying moral order in which "the individual is recognized and accepted as more than an abstract statistic or faceless member of some group; rather he is a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience." You will be disabused of the myth that conservatives are fixed in some time warp that requires them to oppose all change. Rather, they believe in change as reform, undertaken with prudence — "informed by the experience, knowledge, and traditions of society, tailored for a specific purpose, and accomplished through a constitutional construct that ensures thoughtful deliberation by the community. Change unconstrained by prudence produces unpredictable consequences, threatening ordered liberty with chaos and ultimately despotism, and placing at risk the very principles the Conservative holds dear."


You will learn the meaning and significance of our Founders’ belief in unalienable rights and that they are unalienable precisely because they come from G-d. Conservatism is otherwise unintelligible. "An individual may benefit from the moral order and unalienable rights around which society functions while rejecting their Divine Origin. But the civil society cannot organize itself that way."


You will learn why interpreting the Constitution in light of its original understanding is essential to preserving our ordered liberty and how we’ve departed from those principles, as with the erosion of the doctrines of federalism and states’ rights and the destructive consequences that have followed.


Levin also unpacks for us the complex issue of immigration, the ravages of the welfare state, the liberty-threatening practices of the radical environmentalists, and the indispensability of safeguarding America’s sovereignty and national security.


As the Obama administration has unleashed its extremist statist agenda, it seems providential that this book is just now being released. If this nation is to beat back the current administration’s rush toward enslaving-and-impoverishing socialism, it must reclaim its founding principles, as brilliantly expounded in this book.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/david/limbaugh032009.php3?printer_friendly

 

 

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When Hitler set out to conquer the world, it was American blood, treasure and determination that stopped him. When the Soviet Union set out to subject the world to communism, it was American blood, treasure and determination that stopped it. If the Muslim extremists’ quest to subject the world to radical Islam is to be stopped, it will, once again, take American blood, treasure and determination. It may be true that the Islamic extremists who call for world domination represent only a minority of the world’s Muslims. Minority or not, it is they who drive the Muslim agenda and unashamedly slaughter untold thousands of people in the name of their Allah. They claim their authority comes from the Qumran – the same Qumran, and the same Allah, the rest of the Muslim world worships. Consequently, all Muslims must bear the responsibility for the inhumane actions of the extremist minority. If the extremists are such a minority of the Muslim population, why does the majority not put a stop to the extremists? There can be only two possible answers: either the majority is in agreement with the goals, if not the tactics, of the extremists, or the majority is incapable of controlling the minority. Both answers are probably correct. When a cartoonist published a caricature of Allah, Muslims around the world filled the streets in protest. Were they all extremists, or just in agreement with the goals of the extremists? By contrast, the image of Christ is desecrated regularly, and the public response is "ho-hum."

 

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In previous years – specifically in the year of 1994,  the Ethiopian government specifically  requested other "Christian"  communities to "interfere"  militarily in the Ogaden  , and attempt to completely wipe out the mujaheddin.  So America and Eritrea became more than directly involved in the battle and conflict.   This stage saw American jets take off from the Indian Ocean  bombing the Mujaheddin positions for hours and hours at a time while Eritrean soldiers were firing their fixed cannons and tanks at the domicile and strategic targets and various locations of the Mujaheddin.    It was quoted in the field " that we planned to use the militia and militia war strategies and to avoid large scale confrontations and battles with the enemy particularly  as the Ethiopian forces along with their American and Israeli allies had stages a broad attack on the mujaheddin both through land and sea in 1994."    There appeared to be large scales and amounts of American experts who were training the Ethiopian army in all aspects.

 

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President Obama on Friday reiterated for the umpteenth time his determination to develop a "new relationship" with the Muslim world. On this occasion, the audience were the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines.


Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that, in so doing, he will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization dedicated to promoting the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah and that has the self-described mission of "destroying Western civilization from within."


As part of Mr. Obama’s "Respect Islam" campaign, he will travel to Turkey in early April. While there, he will not only pay tribute to an Islamist government that has systematically wrested every institution from the secular tradition of Kemal Ataturk and put the country squarely on the path to Islamification. He will also participate in something called the "Alliance of Civilizations."


The Alliance is a United Nations-sponsored affair that reflects – as, increasingly do most things the United Nations is involved in – the views of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC is made up of 57 Muslim-majority nations. Thanks to support from Saudi Arabia and its proxies, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a driving force within the Conference and their agendas largely coincide.


For example, in 2005 a communique issued after a summit in Mecca declared: "The Conference underlined the need to collectively endeavor to reflect the noble Islamic values, counter Islamophobia, defamation of Islam and its values and desecration of Islamic holy sites, and to effectively coordinate with states as well as regional and international institutions and organizations to urge them to criminalize this phenomenon as a form of racism."


Ominously, as part of its bid to "criminalize" Islamophobia, the OIC is seeking "deterrent punishments." It insists that not only freedom of expression but all human rights be circumscribed by the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which concludes with the caveat that, "All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shariah." Translation: Liberties enshrined in the United Nations’ foundational Universal Declaration of Human Rights are largely rendered null and void.


The demand that no criticism of Islam be permitted is the pre-eminent feature of the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in the West. In fact, it is but the leading edge of the Brothers’ bid to suppress public awareness of the threat posed by their program in societies that pride themselves on religious tolerance, thereby facilitating seditious penetration and influence operations by the Shariah-adherent.


A playbook for the latter can be found in a publication issued last fall by the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project being aggressively promoted to the Obama administration and Congress by a number of its non-Muslim participants. Notably, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently effusively presented to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Project’s book titled "Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World." Former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber did the same at Grover Norquist’s weekly meeting of conservative activists last week.


Underwritten largely by George Soros’ and other left-wing foundations, "Changing Course" seems to reflect predominantly the recommendations of groups the government has established are Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Both are represented in the Engagement Project’s "Leadership Group." Accordingly, its book calls for:


      • "Engagement with groups that have clearly demonstrated a commitment to nonviolent participation in politics" (read, the Brotherhood).
      • "Not equat[ing] reform with secularism, nor … assum[ing] that reformers who advocate some form of Shariah as the basis for the rule of law will inevitably abuse human rights or adopt anti-American policies."
      • "Not supply[ing] additional ammunition to extremists by linking the term ‘Islam’ or key tenets of the religion of Islam with the actions of extremist or terrorist groups."
      • Launching "an education program comparable in scale" to "the more than $7 billion" invested in the "post-Sputnik U.S. commitment to math and science education" to "education on Islam and Muslims, sustained over a decade or more, focused on teacher training and curriculum in middle and high schools, and colleges."


Emboldened by the promise of this influence operation and the apparent willingness of the Obama administration to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda – in part, if not in its entirety – the organization’s assorted fronts in America are becoming ever more audacious.


In response to a long-overdue decision taken by the FBI last year to terminate "sensitivity training" of its agents by one of the most prominent of these fronts, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), assorted Brotherhood groups and operatives reportedly intend to announce that Muslims will henceforth cease any and all cooperation with U.S. law enforcement until CAIR is rehabilitated.


Such a step would call into question the patriotism of the many Muslims in America who do not embrace the Brotherhood’s Shariah agenda – something that would, presumably, be as offensive to them as it would be troubling to the rest of us. It could also expose those engaged in it to criminal charges of "misprision of felony," conspiring to withhold information from the authorities concerning terrorist operations and activities in the Muslim community.


The message should go forth: Friends of the Muslim Brotherhood are no friends of America. We follow their guidance at our peril.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney031709.php3

 

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A Defender of Classroom Indoctrination

By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/16/2009

One-Party Classroom, our critical survey of 150 courses in 12 universities that violate academic standards, has just been released, but already the supporters of indoctrination in our universities are up-in-arms.

Leading the charge is John K. Wilson, the editor of Illinois Academe, a journal published by the American Association of University Professors and a long-time detractor of the academic freedom campaign. In a review of One-Party Classroom, Wilson takes on the evidence presented in the book, but not before unburdening himself of a barrage of ad hominem invective against David Horowitz (so much for the notion that higher education encourages elevated discourse). Regrettably, the substance of Wilson’s complaints indicates that he has either misunderstood the book entirely or else deliberately misrepresented its arguments.

Most fundamentally, Wilson misrepresents the book’s intent. He claims, for instance, that the book is the tool of our sinister agenda to “banish left-wing speech” with which we disagree, to “ban academic speech itself and entire courses,” and even to impose a “vast repressive apparatus” on American universities (whatever this may be). With all credit to Wilson’s fertile imagination, this claim makes no concession to the facts. We have never called for the banning of left-wing speech; we do not call for the imposition of any apparatus, let alone a repressive one; and far from attacking academic speech, we seek to restore it. Our aim in One-Party Classroom is to hold schools accountable to the very standards by which they professedly abide.

Consider the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of the schools we examine. Academic courses offered through the school, as well as other University of California campuses, are governed by the “Standing Orders” of the university regents. These state that each school must “remain aloof from politics and never function as an instrument for the advance of partisan interests,” and that professors must never allow the classroom “to be used for political indoctrination.” Such indoctrination, according to the Regents’ orders, “constitutes misuse of the University as an institution.”

Browse through the University of Santa Cruz course catalog, however, and you will find courses such as the following, offered through the “Community Studies Department,” which informs students: “The goal of this seminar is to learn how to organize a revolution. We will learn what communities past and present have done and are doing to resist, challenge, and overcome systems of power including (but not limited to) global capitalism, state oppression, and racism.” As we note in the book, this is the outline of a political agenda, not the description of a scholarly inquiry, and a clear instance of the kind of political indoctrination that the school’s own regulations prohibit – in theory, if not in practice.

Having missed (or misrepresented) the point of One-Party Classroom, Wilson fails to comprehend the specific complaints we make about the 150 courses analyzed in the book. He claims that we object “to geography classes dealing with social issues, apparently unaware that geography professors have gone beyond merely studying maps for many decades.” But it is Wilson who is apparently unaware that this corruption of the profession of academic geography is precisely our point. Like too many of their academic peers, geography professors have diverged from the foundations of their specific discipline and expertise to branch out into subjects for which they lack the requisite academic background. The reason they have done this, in too many cases, is to impose their political agendas on their students.

Take Professor Melissa Gilbert, an Associate Professor of Geography at Temple University, whose course “Urban Society: ‘Race,’ Class, and Gender in the City” teaches students that gender and race are “social constructions” designed to oppress nonwhites and women; that American society is structurally “racist;” and that all whites are racist, sometimes unconsciously so (which is itself a racist claim). How this can be justified as an academic course, and how it relates to the professor’s professional credential, which is “geography,” remains shrouded in mystery – unless of course one accepts the perversion of academic studies as ideological propaganda.

Professor Gilbert is not an isolated example, as the case of Melissa Wright demonstrates. An Associate Professor of Geography and Women’s Studies at Penn State University, Professor Wright teaches a course on “Global Feminisms.” If this seems like an unusual title for a properly academic course, it is. Wright’s course is a radical attack on capitalism and free-market globalization, informed by required texts that condemn capitalist societies as “both oppressive and hierarchical.”

Throughout his derisive review, Wilson is either dishonest or just plain careless. He chastises us for allegedly condemning “a professor for assigning a textbook that argues whites are ‘dominant’ in America,” a claim that, according to Wilson, we dispute. He is wrong on all counts. As any fair-minded reader will see, the point we raise about the book in question, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change by Joseph F. Healey, is not that it refers to whites as a majority in the numerical sense, but rather its tendentious charge that the white majority’s relationship with minority groups is characterized by domination and subjugation and is properly seen only in the context of “prejudice, discrimination, ideological racism, and institutional discrimination.”

In any case, we do not “condemn” the professor for using Healey’s text, however polarizing or ideological it may be. Our point, rather, is that Healey’s text is one of only two used in a Penn State course called “Inequality in America.” The other text is Joe Feagin’s White Racism, which claims that “few whites are aware of how important racism is to their own feelings, beliefs, thinking and actions,” and alleges that all whites harbor unconscious feelings of racism against blacks. (Lest one suggest that whites may not be the only ones capable of racist sentiments, Feagin instructs that “From the perspective of this book, black racism does not exist.”) Penn State students wishing to understand the complex subject of racial dynamics in America are thus forced to rely on two ideological texts on the political margins, both of which explain inequality as a function of white racism. This one-sided presentation of controversial issues is sadly typical in the contemporary university, and exemplifies the political indoctrination that One-Party Classroom exposes.

In one of the odder lines of attack on One-Party Classroom, Wilson, not content to distort and misrepresent our actual arguments, condemns us for not making others. He protests that “There are no stories [in the book] of students punished for disagreeing with their professors, no stories of censorship at all,” and concludes, conveniently for his purposes, that this is proof that “actual violations of student rights in the classroom are rare and grievance mechanisms are typically effective.” But of course the fact incidents of abuse against specific students are not the subject of our book in no way refutes their existence, which has been documented many times on Front Page Magazine. As for the claim that current oversight is sufficient and effective, it is refuted by the 150 courses analyzed in our book and the many more like them that exist at schools across the country. As David Horowitz observed in the introduction to One-Party Classroom:

To create an academic course requires the approval of the tenured leaders of an academic department who have been hired and then promoted by other senior faculty. For a department to survive and flourish, its curriculum must be recognized and approved by professional associations that are national in scope. Consequently, the fact that a course in how to organize a revolution is offered at one of the nation’s distinguished academic institutions speaks volumes about the contemporary university and what it has come to regard as an appropriate academic course of study.

Although Wilson does not question the existence of these courses, he attempts to make light of the fact, dismissively asserting that these are 150 courses “out of more than one million faculty teaching millions of college courses every year.” Yet again, Wilson fails to grasp the book’s argument. Extrapolating the evidence from the 12 schools we consider in One-Party Classroom, we conclude that there may be as many as 10,000 courses offered at institutions nationwide whose primary purpose is not to educate students but to train them in left-wing ideologies and political agendas. The students who pass through these courses annually may number in the millions. In short, the 150 courses considered in One-Party Classroom are a small sampling of a more systemic problem plaguing our country’s universities.

In a surely unintended irony, Wilson himself lends force to One-Party Classroom’s argument about the widespread deterioration of professional standards. Having considered the book’s findings – including the subversion of academic goals by political agendas, the abandonment of scientific methods of inquiry, the devaluing of academic expertise, and the replacement of intellectual discourse with programs designed to instill sectarian and ideological doctrines – Wilson concludes that this is, in the end, no big deal. “Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Horowitz’s book is how little in the book is appalling,” he writes. The fact that a spokesman for the American Association of University Professors is untroubled by the abuse of academic standards documented in our book reveals all one needs to know about the state of American universities in our time.

To purchase One-Party Classroom, please click here

 

 

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Defined in this matter of Detente if becomes much easier to identify the peculiarities of those periods of the Cold Wars. It can be said to be a period of the Cold Wars of Oscillatory Antagonism and that of Political and Bi-National "Detente". If the latter marks the clearest contrast , the former is an ambiguous period containing elements and phases of Detente followed by reversion to the characteristics of the Cold War. The six features of Detente contrast with those already sen as characteristics "Cold War’ and " Cold Warriors". Detente was marked by a retreat from the allout arms race, by a rhetoric of peace and pursuit of armament. Ehole Detente was not accompanied on either side, by substantial disarmament – i.e by net reduction of weapon levels , some limitation of the arms race i.e. arms control , was a prominent aim and acheivment of the Detente Period. During Detente , there was a greater tolerance of the other social order , more interest in and more accurate information about its character . Indeed there was sometimes a tendency for analysts on one or the other side to minimize failings on the other side even when one or the other was well known to the two camps.

 

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Canada’s cable and satellite television companies are currently running a campaign against what they call signal theft. It includes a number of television commercials, including one in which a small boy in a store puts a chocolate bar in his pocket without paying only to be confronted by the store owner after he leaves.

The boy was obviously shoplifting. Later he is confronted by a parent figure, who asks where he learnt to steal, saying that it could not of been at home.

The boy replies that he learnt to steal from his father who in the boy’s words, steals satellite signals. Theft we are told is theft.

Perhaps. Canada is the only democracy which, like the dictatorships of North Korea and China makes watching unauthorized television a crime.

The dictatorships do so to suppress revolutionary ideas that may infiltrate their oppressed populations. We do so ostensibly to protect ourselves from undue American influence on our culture and to protect our fragile broadcasting industry and our endangered artists.

This despite the fact that the real mark of artistic success in Canada is to be recognized south of the border and to be paid accordingly.

The standard of broadcasting success here is to clone of popular U.S. television channel or program and to persuade the government regulator to ban the original from Canadian airwaves.

We license Canadian broadcaster to obtain approved U.S. programs and to air them not only on their own channels, but to have their signals (and their advertisements) simultaneously substituted on U.S. stations. We have a rather silly situation where a Winnipeg television viewer can dial up ABC, NBC, or CBS for an entire evening and find himself watching CTV, Global and A channel without touching his own TV dial.

Back to the shoplifting kid. Why with all these controls, are cable companies worried about what they call satellite theft? Because, to their concern, three quarters of a million Canadians are fed up with their government dictating what television they are allowed to watch and are fighting back by accessing U.S. satellites. They would rather

Watch the originals rather than the clones. Some even want the other half of the Super Bowl games- the commercials that pull in as many viewers as the game itself, but which are deleted from the Canadian broadcasts.

Our cable companies, operating under an organization called the Coalition against Satellite Theft, or something similar want us to feel like criminals for watching television.

The comparison to shoplifting is inaccurate. The thieving boy is in a store when the lifts the chocolate bar. The TV viewer is in his home where the signals, not to put too fine a point on it, are trespassing on his property. He simply has equipment that enables him to watch the signals that are already there.

It would be fairer to depict the boy in his home, with the chocolate bar on the kitchen table in some sort of container which he can obtain a key. The fact that the government says it is illegal for him to have that key doesn’t take the chocolate bar out of his home where he thinks, quite rightly, that he should have it.

Canadians who watch TV they want to watch are not shoplifters, or thieves. They are victims of an attempt at control that is unworthy of a democratic government.

We see this control in many places. Our own Royal bank of Canada has recently begun using the name RBC Financial Group. Is it doing so because it is in the process of expanding its U.S. operations and doesn’t think that the combination of Royal and Canada in its name will do it any good there?

Strange, isn’t it, that we applaud the efforts of Canadian organization, such as the Royal Bank and Rogers to expand their U.S. operations but close the door firmly to any U.S. competition here, be it Direct TV which might better suit some of our viewing habits, or a major U.S. bank that might provide some real competition to the benefit of consumers in Canada.

The cable companies, who are stuck with expensive digital programming that no one is watching, want to boost their viewership. How do they propose to do so? By adding U.S. programming, everything from HBO to sports networks.

They should be allowed to do so. Canadian satellite companies should do the same. We however, should be allowed to choose between the clones and the original without being called thieves.

Canada’s cable and satellite television companies are currently running a campaign against what they call signal theft. It includes a number of television commercials, including one in which a small boy in a store puts a chocolate bar in his pocket without paying only to be confronted by the store owner after he leaves.

The boy was obviously shoplifting. Later he is confronted by a parent figure, who asks where he learnt to steal, saying that it could not of been at home.

The boy replies that he learnt to steal from his father who in the boy’s words, steals satellite signals. Theft we are told is theft.

Perhaps. Canada is the only democracy which, like the dictatorships of North Korea and China makes watching unauthorized television a crime.

The dictatorships do so to suppress revolutionary ideas that may infiltrate their oppressed populations. We do so ostensibly to protect ourselves from undue American influence on our culture and to protect our fragile broadcasting industry and our endangered artists.

This despite the fact that the real mark of artistic success in Canada is to be recognized south of the border and to be paid accordingly.

The standard of broadcasting success here is to clone of popular U.S. television channel or program and to persuade the government regulator to ban the original from Canadian airwaves.

We license Canadian broadcaster to obtain approved U.S. programs and to air them not only on their own channels, but to have their signals (and their advertisements) simultaneously substituted on U.S. stations. We have a rather silly situation where a Winnipeg television viewer can dial up ABC, NBC, or CBS for an entire evening and find himself watching CTV, Global and A channel without touching his own TV dial.

Back to the shoplifting kid. Why with all these controls, are cable companies worried about what they call satellite theft? Because, to their concern, three quarters of a million Canadians are fed up with their government dictating what television they are allowed to watch and are fighting back by accessing U.S. satellites. They would rather

Watch the originals rather than the clones. Some even want the other half of the Super Bowl games- the commercials that pull in as many viewers as the game itself, but which are deleted from the Canadian broadcasts.

Our cable companies, operating under an organization called the Coalition against Satellite Theft, or something similar want us to feel like criminals for watching television.

The comparison to shoplifting is inaccurate. The thieving boy is in a store when the lifts the chocolate bar. The TV viewer is in his home where the signals, not to put too fine a point on it, are trespassing on his property. He simply has equipment that enables him to watch the signals that are already there.

It would be more fair to depict the boy in his home, with the chocolate bar on the kitchen table in some sort of container which he can obtain a key. The fact that the government says it is illegal for him to have that key doesn’t take the chocolate bar out of his home where he thinks, quite rightly, that he should have it.

Canadians who watch TV they want to watch are not shoplifters, or thieves. They are victims of an attempt at control that is unworthy of a democratic government.

We see this control in many places. Our own Royal bank of Canada has recently begun using the name RBC Financial Group. Is it doing so because it is in the process of expanding its U.S. operations and doesn’t think that the combination of Royal and Canada in its name will do it any good there?

Strange, isn’t it, that we applaud the efforts of Canadian organization, such as the Royal Bank and Rogers to expand their U.S. operations but close the door firmly to any U.S. competition here, be it Direct TV which might better suit some of our viewing habits, or a major U.S. bank that might provide some real competition to the benefit of consumers in Canada.

The cable companies, who are stuck with expensive digital programming that no one is watching, want to boost their viewership. How do they propose to do so? By adding U.S. programming, everything from HBO to sports networks.

They should be allowed to do so. Canadian satellite companies should do the same. We however, should be allowed to choose between the clones and the original without being called thieves.

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Cold War I had brought neither neither peace nor honor for those that waged it. Neither East nor West was able to prevail over the other , and the very partitions that accompanied its end – in Germany , Korea and Vietnam – symbolized the inconclusive character of its termination. Yet of there were no clear winners, both sides can be side to have gained in some measure from this level and situation of this segment and period of the Cold. On the Soviet side , the leadership could see that that their alliance system was now established from Berlin , Peking and Hanoi , an extraordinary contrast with the situation prevailing before 1945 , let alone that in existence before World War II. The terrible devastation of the "Great Patriotric" or Second World War had given way to an outburst of reconstruction and development in Eastern Europe and the USSR as behind almost sealed frontiers , the construction of socialism went ahead apace. The dynamism of the USSR was later in the decade to find expression in the scientific acheivments of Sputnik and the first manned space flights.

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In what some are calling a breakthrough in the hunt for the world’s most wanted man, the Central Intelligence Agency revealed today that it is following Osama bin Laden on Twitter.


The decision to track Mr. bin Laden’s movements, moods, and musical tastes came late last week after the agency discovered he was using the popular social networking utility.


"We thought we were detecting an increase in chatter from Osama bin Laden," CIA chief Leon Panetta told reporters today. "What it turned out to be was an increase in tweets."


Mr. Panetta said the agency’s success in tracking Mr. bin Laden via Twitter would depend on its ability to decode a series of seemingly indecipherable messages.


"So far he is tweeting in code, using such terms as LOL and OMFG," Mr. Panetta said. "At this point we have no idea what he is trying to say."


The spy chief said that Mr. bin Laden’s Twitter usage seems to peak between the hours of 8 and 9 PM on Mondays: "This may simply be a coincidence, but that’s when ‘Gossip Girl’ is on."

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0309/borowitz031009.php3

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