-We begin today’s rattle with an interesting story about an Indian-or Muslim, depending upon PR needs of the open borders squad-athlete who was ushered into this country by our very own Senator Chuck Schumer. Unfortunately, this gifted sportsman is also a sex offender. Perhaps this isn’t quite as bad as having an alien interning for your office who is also a registered sex offender, but it does make you question the collective wisdom of our Democratic friends in Congress. Maybe we shouldn’t be taking their advice, vis-a-vis, controversial immigration decisions made by the Executive branch.

-In a reminder that there are actually rational people living in The People’s Republic of Vermont, the voters of Rutland have just turned out their incumbent mayor, Chris Louras, after he attempted to deluge their town with Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq. While ignoring the public’s deep discontent with our government’s refugee resettlement programs-when not imputing racism and bigotry to Americans who express reservations about these schemes-is the norm, even the alternative weekly was forced to concede the enormous political consequences of this decision.

-For those of you who were wondering whatever happened to the thousands of unaccompanied minors who were allowed to enter into this country, wonder no more. According to an in-depth backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, our government has absolutely no clue what it’s doing. While over 80 percent of their sponsors are illegal aliens, 44 percent of the UACs in question were ordered deported. Have the vast majority of these children been deported? Of course not, silly!

-You may ask yourself, “Why is this important?” It’s a good question. After all, it’s not as if these individuals will bring brutal Central American inter-gang warfare to the placidity of our nation’s suburbs, right? Well, I have some bad news for you on that score. It turns out that Latin American gangs, including MS-13, one of the most prolific and ruthless criminal networks in the Western Hemisphere, has actually established a pretty firm beachhead in our own backyard. Naturally, almost all of these gangbangers are criminal aliens. In an ironic twist, the moniker of the man who made an abortive attempt to unify the Mara Salvatrucha within the United States is, you guessed it, Dreamer.

-For those of you who think Europe’s approach to immigration is any less self-defeating and preposterous than the United States, I give you France. A nation where municipal authorities in Calais are attempting to prevent thousands of migrants from recreating the notorious refugee camp known as The Jungle. The biggest proponents of turning The Camp of the Saints into reality are, of course, other Europeans who believe Western civilization is uniquely evil. The ostensible plight of migrants from the third world is simply a cudgel with which the Gramscian left-with the help of corporate bean counters-can beat native Europeans into submission.

-After all, what are a few dozen, or a few hundred, honor killings in the grand scheme of things? Is the systemic dehumanization and murder of girls in nations which were responsible for the idea of religious toleration and freedom of conscience too high a price to pay for erecting the beautiful mosaic? When bad whites are saying intemperate, obnoxious things about people who are off-white, doesn’t that negate their entire philosophical worldview?  Even if that perspective is confirmed multiple times every single day?

-Everyone knows that the real reason millions of Muslims across the world support ISIS, Al Qaeda, and similar jihadist networks is because there isn’t enough inclusion in Hollywood casting decisions. See, the real villain isn’t Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It’s those bastards who refused to green light an all-Muslim reboot of Star Trek!

-The cognitive dissonance at work in the mind of an an open borders leftist must be overpowering. They want to live in a high-trust, quasi-collectivist techno-utopia-along the lines of something created by Gene Roddenberry-yet simultaneously support policies which make this already far-fetched goal virtually impossible. The mentality of a social justice warrior in high dudgeon can be found in this VICE piece, which laments the role homeless shelters have been playing in the deportation of migrants. The traditional liberal concern for the working class and the poor is discarded when it conflicts with the categorical imperative, i.e. preserving diversity. The spiritual hollowness and intellectual vapidity of this type of leftist ‘thinking’ was brilliantly and caustically skewered by George Orwell nearly a century ago. It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed all that much.

-I’d like to leave you on a good note, so here’s some refreshing news to come out of Austria. 8 Iraqi men have been convicted of the gang rape of a tourist. Unlike the Middle Eastern cab driver in Halifax who was, to all intents and purposes, high-fived by a Nova Scotia judge for raping an unconscious passenger, these rapists were actually given (relatively) stiff prison sentences. What’s more, we’ve discovered that these horrific incidents actually constitute an anomaly within the Islamic immigrant community.

Migrants and refugees from other countries expressed concern that the crime will make Austrians hostile toward all newcomers.

“Eight people raping a woman — that’s honor-less! Such a thing doesn’t exist in our religion,” Burhan Akbas, a migrant from Turkey, said.

“When such people come here and screw up like that, then everybody will think that Chechens, Afghans, all refugees from war areas are all the same,” Mansur Salamou, an asylum-seeker from Chechnya, said. “But it’s not like that. For example, the majority of us — we also cause problems, commit crimes. But no rape! Only criminal assaults and robberies.”

See, Europeans?! You only have to worry about being assaulted and robbed by the millions of North African and Middle Eastern refugees and migrants making their way towards Europe. What a relief.

The full text of President Trump’s new executive order, courtesy of CNN. As Mark Krikorian observes, whether or not this stands up to judicial scrutiny will probably depend upon the politics of the jurists scrutinizing it. One of the praiseworthy aspects of this new executive order is the demand for an accounting of honor killings carried out by foreign nationals in the United States. Naturally, this has enraged the usual suspects. To which all right-thinking Americans should have a one-word response.

Update: CIS has published a backgrounder on this agreement. 

Whatever adjectives can be used to describe our new President, ‘diplomatic’ is not one which springs readily to mind. His phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull merely serves to reinforce a reputation for bluntness that was already solidified within the public imagination. In this case, however, I think his impolitic speech is actually beneficial for American citizens. For the refugee resettlement swap cooked up by his predecessor, which involves the exchange of non-Muslim Central American refugees for Muslim boat people currently being detained at the behest of the Australian government, is another disastrous scheme to further erase our borders.

The ordinary refugee resettlement process is almost completely insulated from the democratic process. Seemingly benefiting everyone from United Nations functionaries, to bureaucrats in the federal government, but especially VOLAGs whose survival depends upon a constant stream of clients, refugee resettlement takes no account of the feelings of ordinary American citizens. The people whose lives could be ruined by the decisions made hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away by unelected officials.

The last-minute decision of President Obama to craft a backroom deal with his Australian counterpart, in large part as a means of papering over his own catastrophic failure to enforce this nation’s immigration laws, merely highlights the lack of accountability and fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this entire process. Naturally, open borders fanatics are using this incident to parade their virtue before the benighted American public, condemning the philistinism of the Australian and American governments, as well as the people who insist that their representatives protect the internal security of their nations.

Nevertheless, this is a reminder that who lives in our country is not a matter for international plebiscites or social justice campaigns. Thousands of Muslim foreigners being transferred to the heart of this country as part of a sleazy quid pro quo is not what what Americans voted for in November, and simply because it has the stamp of approval from our outgoing President and Australia’s current Prime Minister-the sixth in less than a decade-doesn’t mean the American public should sit back and accept it. It is the current year, and the powers that be should get used to it.

As most of you probably know, a federal judge has blocked portions of President Trump’s executive order pertaining to refugees from 7 Muslim majority nations. Josh Blackman has published a good summary of what this injunction accomplishes, as well as a copy of the temporary restraining order itself. According to reports, it applies to a few hundred foreigners who were either on American soil or on their way to the United States before the EO was issued. Although these individuals have temporary avoided the fate of the character portrayed by Tom Hanks in The Terminal, it’s worth noting that there are much bigger issues at stake in this debate.

The open borders know nothings have deftly exploited the ignorance of large swathes of the American public to score a public relations victory against a man whom they’ve impotently warred against for over a year. Ironically, one of the refugees Democratic partisans claimed to be rescuing was able to succinctly explain why our new President’s immigration policies were in fact pretty reasonable. Beyond the simple observation that this executive order is not a ban on Muslim refugees, we have to confront the truly bizarre notion that our current refugee resettlement policy is somehow beneficial to American citizens. While some armchair analysts on social media have made the assertion that this is not the point of refugee resettlement-a point on which we agree-others have claimed that not importing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from abroad poses a risk of future terrorism. By this token, Japan-which has a de facto ban on Muslim immigration-should be as unlivable as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Or, at the very least, have as many terrorist attacks as Turkey.

It’s a patently absurd suggestion, yet one which is repeated without shame by open borders apologists who have no rational justification for our country’s bizarre refugee resettlement program. Just as the beliefs of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande-two European leaders who have presided over an unprecedented spree of Muslim terror within their countries-is a laughable excuse to invite in potential security risks, so to is the misguided notion that we’re creating terrorists by not letting potential terrorists onto American soil. Nearly half of the refugees admitted to the United States, and over 30% of those admitted since the 9/11 attacks, are Muslim. To comprehend why this is such a problem you need only scroll through a week’s worth of posts on Refugee Resettlement Watch.

Leaving aside the potential for terrorism-both domestically and abroad-exploitation of the welfare system, and crime, there’s the fundamental incompatibility of cultures. As the economist Nassim Taleb has pointed out, Americans expect foreigners who come here to accept American values and customs-and at a bare minimum, not to impose their values upon us. Whether or not this is a realistic expectation is another matter, but the idea that every person coming here does so because they want to become part of American society-a notion regurgitated endlessly by open borders advocates-is simply preposterous.

Even those who don’t pose a direct threat to the health and safety of American citizens-who don’t engage in honor killings, as dozens of Muslims families in the United States do each year-hold beliefs that are fundamentally at odds with those which shaped this nation. While those views are normal in Iraq, Somalia, or Syria, they are not in the United States, and we should not attempt to normalize them-to borrow a phrase from the unhinged left. President Trump’s order, however crudely executed, was the right thing to do. Hopefully, it’s just the beginning of a completely new approach to this vital issue.

Although overshadowed by your regularly scheduled terror attacks, as well as pre-debate effluvia, the media’s attempt to turn Donald Trump Jr.’s recent tweet into a cause célèbre for smug leftists is worth examining in detail.  While some right wing pundits pointed out the similarity between his Skittles metaphor and a feminist-inspired meme involving a different chewy candy, the actual root of this analogy is the precautionary principle, a deeply flawed approach to risk management. The idea being that the introduction of a new  product or process whose impact is unknown or disputed should be resisted.

The problem is that the United States-and the West in general-has  served as a treatment group for the effects of Islam for well over half a century. We already have an extensive body of data points which demonstrate that randomly dispersing skittles across the non-candy fruited plain is a terrible idea in practice. And even if you subscribe to the bizarre notion that experiencing a major terrorist attack every 4-6 months is an acceptable risk to ensure vibrant diversity, somehow forgetting that this is a deliberate, unnecessary risk introduced by our government, you’re making the assumption that this potential danger will remain static in perpetuity.

The people who want to flood our communities with Skittles fail to appreciate the fact that these risks will only increase the more this country is filled with Skittles-and there is never the hint of a suggestion that we decrease either the quantity or the percentage of increase in the future. I’m sure the French once believed that welcoming emigres from their former colonies in Africa was a swell idea. Several decades later, more than half the prison population of that country is comprised of Muslims and their jails have become small scale replicas of ISIS training camps. The same holds true for the UK, as well as every other Western European nation with a significant Muslim population.

If you want to get a picture of how this translates to the United States, take a look at Oregon, where there are now over 70 active terrorism investigations according to the FBI. There are over a thousand probes into individuals with possible links to the Islamic State, a single global terror network. Is it any wonder that jihadists are winning the intelligence war when we’ve armed them with the most precious weapon of all, i.e. access to our shores and our people?

Yet we have to endure the censorious lectures of bloated UN leeches who believe that the problem isn’t the gross ingratitude of the West’s guests, but the handful of public figures willing to point out this unpleasant reality. The problem we’re facing is not a handful of cyanide-laced skittles. It’s a civilization having skittles, which they were never allowed to refuse, forced down its throat year after year. Forget about theoretical poisons. What if we simply don’t like skittles? What if we find skittles sickening, and get nauseous when we eat them? What if eating an endless supply of skittles ruins your dental health?

Shouldn’t we be allowed to decline junk food?

Most of you familiar with the work of Michael Mukasey probably remember him as the federal judge who granted Jose Padilla, an Al Qaeda agent designated an enemy combatant by the Bush administration, access to counsel during his detention in a U.S. military brig. Others might recall his refusal to declare waterboarding synonymous with torture during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings prior to his confirmation as Attorney General. However, the defining moment of his legal career was his oversight of the trial of the 1st World Trade Center bombing conspirators, led by The Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman.

It was this historic trial, as well as its implications for American society, which was the primary focus of Judge Mukasey’s speech to the Gertrude and Morrison Parker West Side Republican Club this past Tuesday. As he explained to a standing room only audience, this criminal conspiracy case was a milestone in our nation’s history, because it marked the first time that we learned of a jihadist cell bent on sowing terror, fear and destruction on American soil. Unfortunately, the lessons gleaned from that trial were largely lost on the immense federal bureaucracy ostensibly charged with protecting the lives and security of American citizens.

While the FBI ignored the ties Egyptian-born El Sayyid Nosair, the assassin of Rabbi Meir Kahane, had to jihadists both domestically and internationally-2 of the conspirators in the 1st World Trade Center bombing were present at Kahane’s murder-it likewise disregarded the links between the ’93 conspirators and Islamic terrorist networks abroad. Just as the failure of imagination and lack of moral clarity in Nosair’s prosecution set the stage for the 1993 WTC bombing, so too did the trial of these jihadists allow the 9/11 plotters, specifically the mastermind of the 9/11 massacre and cousin of Ramzi Yousef, breathing room to plot future acts of spectacular terror.

The question is why this was allowed to happen, and Judge Mukasey’s unequivocal answer is that it occurred because the institutional powers tasked with confronting this threat decided to ignore the connection between the tactic of international terrorism and the religious ideology which it serves. There was, as the former prosecutor of Sheik Rahman puts it, a willful blindness to the practical consequences of Islamic dogma, which is drawn from Islam’s sanctified texts. Texts with which our government is not only ignorant-and thus, unprepared to combat-but which are antithetical to our public officials’ increasingly absurdist pronouncements about Islam, which they view as a religion of peace and love.

The logical conclusion to this bizarre inversion of reality can be found in an article published by The Atlantic, which posits that even without Islam the Islamic State would still exist! An article shaped, it should be noted, by a former consultant to the Obama administration who publicly justifies the oppression of women that have had the misfortune of being born into Islam. Is it any wonder that when this same organization calls for the destruction of our nation’s crops and eradication of its food supply the media make no connection between that fatwa and the words ostensibly uttered by Mohammed, the ideal man according to  Muslims, which justified the same type of war crime in 7th century Arabia?

The disconnect between the apprehension felt by ordinary citizens, and the increasing body count of infidels, and the rose-colored view of Islam painted by our government and its media courtiers has never been broader. Although this gap can be seen throughout the federal government, from the FBI and the Department of Justice to the White House itself, it is most acute within the State Department. A government agency charged with expediting the resettlement of 10,000 unverifiable Muslims from Syria, but which refuses to countenance the idea that the precepts of Islam might have anything to do with the thousands of terror attacks which occur every single year around the globe. An agency which used the aftermath of the Brussels attack to remind Americans that Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with the massacres committed explicitly and repeatedly in its name.

Even as the tangible  connection between Islam and global terrorism becomes inescapable for most observant human beings-even those, like Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who lead Islamic nations-the powers that be refuse to acknowledge the synergy between these two forces. All of the inexplicable actions taken by the Obama administration, from its brief flirtation with the idea of releasing The Blind Sheikh from incarceration, to its embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood as a negotiating partner-going so far as to host a Brotherhood leader at the White House-to Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s vow to punish anti-Islamic speech make sense when viewed within this context.

As Judge Mukasey pointed out throughout the course of his speech, the paradox of people who are considered to be dirty kuffar shaping our approach to Muslims, particularly those whose violent actions they are seeking to curb, is completely lost on our policy-makers. Hence, the proper Islamic burial of Osama Bin Laden. The folly of entrusting our national security to those who hold purportedly enlightened views of Islam can be seen most starkly in Europe, which is currently being devoured by Islamic refugees, many of whom were created by the presumptive Democratic nominee and Koranic expert, Hillary Clinton. Europeans are supposed to have faith in their leaders’ judgement, the same leaders who decided it would be a good idea to place Iranian refugees in charge of Arab-Muslim refugees, with predictable results.

As dispiriting as the current state of affairs is, Mr. Mukasey has a number of recommendations which might point us in the right direction, vis-a-vis defeating Islamic terrorism. For one, honestly and openly name the problem. Challenge elected officials, and to the extent possible, bureaucrats, who continue to deceive us about the connection between terrorist attacks by jihadists and the Islamic doctrine which inspired them, even if only indirectly. Obfuscation and denial will not get us any closer to resolving one of the most dire problems facing Western civilization. He also suggests building bridges to genuinely secular, liberal Muslims domestically, while encouraging diplomatic cooperation with anti-jihadist leaders abroad, such as President Sisi in Egypt.

Whether these steps will ultimately succeed is dependent upon our ability to influence those who wield power. Unfortunately, it looks bleak on that front, as our benevolent rulers continue to portray Islam as force for good in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, hope springs eternal. As long as there are ordinary American citizens, as well as distinguished officials such as Judge Mukasey, willing to speak the truth, I’m confident that the values inculcated by Western civilization will not pass from this earth.

Happy Easter for those of you who observe Pasch in this country and throughout the world. Unfortunately, many Christians aren’t able to celebrate this holy day because of a certain pacific religion which originated in the Arabian Peninsula. Their persecution throughout the Middle East and Africa-as well as any other region where the companions of Mohammed find themselves in numbers great enough to  exert their will-is a fact which can’t be denied or explained away. Alas, that zone of imperilment now includes the continent of Europe, which has seen plenty of carnage because of its leaders decision to welcome millions of Muslim settlers.

As Mark Steyn points out, this violence has been meted out even to people who are ostensibly devout Muslims, but whose actions or principles run afoul of  current Islamic dogma. The sheer brutality and gruesomeness of this murderous assault calls to mind the near decapitation of 2nd Battalion Drummer Lee Rigby, who was dispatched by 2 Muslim converts in an equally cowardly manner. That Belgian police are attempting to dissuade people from holding a tribute to the victims of the Brussels massacre because it has become an Islamic cantonment-eagerly trying to acquire fissile material-tells you all you need to know about who really controls Europe.

How many more times people in Belgium or Scotland will able to celebrate Resurrection Sunday remains to be seen, but current trends do not look promising.

Even as Germany’s Dr. Kevorkian  refuses to do anything in her power to stem the tide of invasion that has enveloped her country, the fallout from European leaders’ indulgent attitudes continues. A case in point being the recent revelations by a woman who spared France from suffering more carnage in the wake of the Paris and Saint-Denis massacres. Instead of protecting her life-and figuring out ways to identify and detain the Islamists seeking her death-French leaders are exploiting the atrocities of November in order to deprive citizens of their civil liberties and devise new ways of thwarting the dreaded Marine Le Pen. 

You must read the entire article to grasp how perverse the priorities of EU are, but this excerpt should give you an inkling of how imperiled individual Europeans are due to the skewed political priorities of their statesmen:

She said the Islamic State group commander told her he had entered France without documents, among a group of 90 people that had scattered around the Paris region…She asked him whether he had come in with Syrian refugees and he told her he came in a group without any documents. “There are Syrians, Iraqis, French, Germans, British. We came in a group of 90 and we’re a little bit everywhere around Paris.”

Whether there are 90 or 19 more jihadists wandering the French countryside is irrelevant to a certain degree. We’ve already witnessed-on repeated occasions-what havoc a few dedicated Islamic terrorists can wreak once they’ve set their minds to it. However, the fact that none of them have been apprehended, while this courageous woman lives in fear, is indicative of Europe’s present-and perhaps a portent of our future-in a very chilling way.

Although the upcoming presidential race occupies national media attention-to the exclusion of virtually every other political contest-one of the most exciting elections will be taking place in the state of Arizona later this year. Senator John McCain, who is singularly awful, is facing a remarkably strong challenge from Arizona state legislator Kelli Ward, a candidate who’s already garnered the endorsements of her fellow lawmakers. Whether or not she succeeds remains to be seen, however the fact that she’s challenging one of the worst members of the United States Senate-mull over that statement for a second-should earn the praise of any patriotic citizen.

To find out more about Kelli and her campaign, check out her official website! Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a lot more from her in the years to come.

A veto-proof majority in the House has just told Barack Obama that, empty assurances notwithstanding, it doesn’t trust this administration to “vet” the 10,000+ Syrian refugees who it intends to resettle within the United States.  The Sith Lord himself, Harry Reid, intends to crush this before it makes its way to the President’s desk.

Contact Your Senators Now!