While I’ve had to delay this post for obvious reasons, here are some of my thoughts on Donald Trump’s national security speech delivered in New Hampshire this past week. Although I’ve criticized Donald Trump’s deficiencies, re: prepared speeches, in the past, even while acknowledging the rhetorical brilliance of his extemporaneous remarks and verbal ripostes, I don’t think you can describe Monday’s speech as anything other than superb. He not only articulated the defining issues in this election brilliantly, he also boldly clarified the differences between himself and Hillary Clinton going forward.

The fact that the intellectually and financially bankrupt media spent most of the following day mendaciously parsing a single sentence merely illustrates how solipsistic they are and how little they have learned over the course of this campaign. They will continue to dissimulate because Trump, unlike past Republican nominees, is someone whom they truly fear. That said, there are a few liberal journalists who were able to briefly step out of their bubble to concede the effectiveness of this speech.

The foreign policy portion is praiseworthy, particularly the candidate’s refusal to make any concessions, rhetorical or otherwise, to the broadly unpopular interventionist wing of the Republican Party. The hysteria and moral preening from those responsible for the global catastrophes which have engulfed the Middle East-and which threaten to efface Europe as we know it-is a function of their loss of power within the GOP. It’s hard to underestimate the potential harm these individuals would have posed, had they determined the eventual Republican nominee.

Donald Trump summed up why the Libya intervention was a complete and utter disaster-which continues to inflict untold misery upon millions-and rightfully laid the blame at the feet of Hillary Clinton. His denunciation of nation-building was worthy of applause from patriotic conservatives. It’s a principle that George W. Bush strongly embraced in a pre-9/11 context and one which the Republican Party needs to make a mainstay of its foreign policy in the future. The fact that former Bush administration officials and gurus from one of the most disastrous epochs in American history continue to enthusiastically endorse Trump’s opponent illustrates the stark differences between these two candidates.

Perhaps most importantly, his speech exposed the emptiness of the Democratic Party’s commitments to the welfare of American minorities, particularly those targeted in Orlando by a determined jihadist. In the hierarchy of grievances, the right of women and homosexuals to not be assaulted, raped, or even murdered in their own countries is superseded by the feelings of Muslims. Judging by the reactions of some in the LGBT community, this ineluctable truth is lost on many of those whose lives are most imperiled by the Democratic Party’s embrace of open borders Islamophilia. The fact that a purported gay rights leader-whose family was interned in a concentration camp by a Democratic President-believes that the solution to this problem is disarming gays and lesbians illustrates the cognitive dissonance at work. A popular front does not work when one part of the coalition is trying to exterminate another, something supporters of the Second Spanish Republic learned during the 1930s.

For an insightful analysis of Donald Trump’s Manchester speech, I would recommend reading Ann Coulter’s latest column, which cuts through the veil of media hatred to accurately sum up what this November’s election is truly about.

There’s no other word to describe what’s happening in Oregon right now. The Blaze has more information about this as an absolutely terrifying story continues. At least 10 people have been killed, and many more injured, according to sources. According to preliminary reports from CNN, the shooter has been taken into custody, although other sources claim that he has been incapacitated.

Kudos to Judge Andrew Hanen, bête noire of the treason lobby, for being the first person to put a halt-albeit, temporarily-to Barack Obama’s most recent lawless executive action. We recommend reading Legal Insurrection’s analysis of Judge Hanen’s Temporary Injunctive Order, which includes generous excerpts, as well as a pdf file of the judge’s complete decision. Our friend Hans Von Spakovsky has an in-depth analysis of Hanen’s injunction over at The Daily Signal which deserves your perusal as well. Whether this ruling strengthens the spine of the heretofore invertebrate class within Congress remains to be seen. However, what can’t be disputed is that this ruling is a victory-however delayed-for the American people.

Kudos to our good friends at Urban Infidel and The Silent Majority No More for doing the job our nation’s gatekeepers have so conspicuously forsaken, as well as Glenn Beck for highlighting a story that’s been kept hidden from the American public. Even as a  white English convert to Islam wreaks havoc across international borders, the moral degeneracy of an elite class which has planted a culture completely alien, and resolutely hostile, to the fundamental precepts of western civilization firmly in our soil. It’s time we started to listen to the Cassandras of our culture, instead of allowing politically correct, morally and intellectually bankrupt solons in the media, academe and popular culture to dictate how we discuss matters of life and death.

We need to wake up

In between its Fourth of July break and its month-long recess in August, the unyielding worker bees in Congress will try to shepherd one of the most ill-conceived, potentially disastrous pieces of legislation into law. I’m speaking, of course, about the Gang of Eight travesty. During the Senate’s abbreviated debate on the bill there was almost no discussion of the victims of our government’s open borders policies, despite the fact that a dozen Americans die every single day at the hands of illegal aliens.

That’s why Jamiel Shaw’s interview with The Blaze is essential viewing. Americans need to see for the themselves the horrific consequences of our government’s decision to give aid and succor to criminal aliens. As difficult as it is to listen to these stories, they must be told. We need to make our purported representatives realize that they serve at our behest, not the special interests representing criminals and scofflaws. I urge you to watch Jamiel Shaw Sr. explain in his own words how his government has failed his family, and the families of thousands of others who have been victimized by illegal aliens who’ve been given sanctuary.

There is no sanctuary for the families of those Americans whose lives have ended prematurely because of our government’s criminal irresponsibility.

One of the few bright spots in the recent immigration debate-such as it is- has been Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas. Unlike the spineless Republican leadership-which has been shepherding the Gang of Eight scheme through the Senate-he has resolutely stood against any attempt at legalizing the 10-20 million illegal aliens granted amnesty under the terms of this bill.

Tomorrow afternoon he’ll be traveling to New York City and will most likely be greeted by an antagonistic open borders mob. NY ICE, on the other hand, is planning to stage a show of support for one of the few members of the U.S. Senate worth more than a bucket of warm spit. You can find details explaining how to join them below.

Hi NY ICers,

The report-backs from today’s counter protest are trickling in, and I will post them on NY ICE’s website here when I get them all, but,  from the initial report-backs, it sounds like a handful of NY ICers made a very successful counter protest of the D.R.E.A.M. amnesty that shook things up!

NY ICE will be having another counter protest tommorow, which is Wednesday, May 29th.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has been on our side, will be in NYC tomorrow, and the other side is planning on protesting his appearance.

Here are the details:

WHAT:  NY ICE Counter Protest of amnesty-Seekers who are protesting Senator Ted Cruz’s appearance in NYC

When: Tomorrow (Wednesday) May 29, 2013, at 5:30 PM

Where: Grand Hyatt Hotel, 109 East 42 St., between Lexington and Vanderbilt

As always, bring cameras and signs, which should be simple and bold-faced. Signs specific to supporting Senator Ted Cruz are encourage. For example, “Thank you, Ted Cruz, for defending U.S. Sovereignty. 

Contact: Joanna Marzullo at progressrose@yahoo to let her know you are coming. 

P.S. Those of you living or working in the D.C./Metro Area might be interested in listening to a genuinely bipartisan discussion of immigration reform, which is slated to take place tomorrow morning at the Bipartisan Policy Center. You can find details about how to attend on their website. 

Update: You can also read coverage of the event by the Staten Island Advance.

The events of the past week have prevented us from discussing an issue dear to the hearts of many of our followers. Namely, the continuing, deliberate assault by public officials upon the intrinsic liberties of Americans. Specifically, the right to defend our lives and property from unprovoked aggression. We know what happens when citizens surrender their individual rights to the state; the burning fields in Mexico and the  inferno in Sweden illustrate why entrusting your security to the guardianship of the state-which in many cases is responsible for placing you in peril in the first place-is such a monumentally foolish idea.  

Unfortunately, that is precisely what public servants-who almost never serve the interests of the public-across the nation have embraced as a response to the most recent, horrific mass shootings. The most widely publicized attempt to circumscribe our right to self defense has been New York’s SAFE Act, a hastily-written, arbitrary, and capricious bill that was stampeded into law under the most questionable of circumstances and with virtually no debate.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that resistance to implementation around this state is widespread and growing. In addition to district attorneys who refuse to prosecute individuals who have run afoul of this unconstitutional, ex post facto law, there are numerous counties which have called for its repeal. In addition to these tangible demonstrations of opposition to Governor Cuomo and the legislature, there have been mass rallies, demonstrations and marches staged across the state rejecting the notion that New Yorkers who choose to exercise their constitutional rights are no better than common criminals.

One such protest was held in Eltingville, Staten Island this past weekend by Gun Rights Across America and the Richmond County Tea Party Patriots, a local counterweight to the drearily statist political forces that dominate both the borough and city.

As you can see, the rally took place in the midst of a monsoon. Nevertheless, the inclement weather was not an impediment for the several dozen Second Amendment supporters in attendance, nor the Tea Party leaders who took the platform in order to describe why the SAFE Act must be repealed.

Bobby Zahn, president of the Tea Party Patriots, was the first to address the crowd. He began his speech by describing the application process his organization went through in order to obtain a permit to gather that day. Unsurprisingly, they were initially denied by city bureaucrats, whose superiors have repeatedly attempted to thwart New Yorkers from exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Notwithstanding the fact that we live in a city that was once the nation’s capital, there is probably no city or town in this nation whose elected officials and bureaucrats are more implacably hostile to expressive speech.

A perfect illustration of this antipathy to one of the most indelible aspects of our constitutional republic can be seen in Governor Cuomo’s reaction to law enforcement officers and county sheriffs who pointed out the impracticality and unenforceable nature of the SAFE Act. Instead of meeting with them and asking for suggestions on how to modify this law, he told them to shut up. This is why resistance to Cuomo and the legislature’s actions is so vital; once we’ve yielded to assaults upon one of our inalienable rights the entire covenant of liberties is imperiled. The reason the Bill of Rights exists in its current form, a charter of enumerated rights, is to prevent our freedom from being litigated in the court of public opinion, or subjected to curtailment and/or revocation by a democratic majority.

While Mr. Zahn rightly condemned the pusillanimity of our representatives-who, with one exception, voted to send this bill to Andrew Cuomo’s desk-his speech left me questioning the viability of his strategy in seeking redress for this gross violation of our rights. Yes, we are law-abiding citizens, but that doesn’t mean that we are compelled to submit to laws that are clearly violative of the Constitution. After all, what is a law? If it’s simply a decree that we must submit to-regardless of whether or not it’s consonant with basic Constitutional principles-then what’s the point of political participation of any kind?

As Edmund Burke declared, All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

As part of its mission statement, the Tea Party Patriots pointedly reject the notion of majoritarian rule; which is good, because as Mr. Zahn declared throughout his speech, people who share our beliefs are in the distinct minority in this state. As welcome as Andrew Cuomo leaving office might be-and as necessary as building opposition to his policies is-that doesn’t mean we should abdicate responsibility for defending our innate rights. Launching legal challenges to blatant encroachments upon our Constitutional rights is an important safeguard of our rights, as civil rights attorney Alan Gura has demonstrated  repeatedly, and needs to be part of any movement intent on thwarting statutes like the Safe Act.

However, nullification-whether on a statewide or city and county level-can’t be taken off the table. To the contrary, moves to nullify these laws-like the anti-SAFE Act resolutions passed by many counties in upstate New York-should occupy a prominent place in any political strategy designed to thwart their implementation. Fundamentally, this is a debate over whether the state is able to deprive you of your natural rights; whether these inerrant rights are subject to rescission by a majority of legislators.

It comes down to the question of whether we should yield to laws that are unjust and unconstitutional by their very nature.

That’s why the speech by Louis Adimando-who is arguably more knowledgeable of the law than those responsible for drafting the SAFE Act-was so refreshing. He contextualized Governor Cuomo’s attack upon the Second Amendment into the broader assault upon civil liberties and rights we’re currently enduring. The attempts by the Obama administration to undermine the 1st Amendment, including  freedom of the press, as well as its sustained assault on the 4th Amendment, pose no less of a threat than efforts by Cuomo and his fellow governors to deny individuals the ability to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

That is what the debate, such as it is, over the SAFE Act boils down to. There are rights enjoyed by mankind which predate the creation of governments, and which were incorporated into the text of this nation’s founding documents because they are inalienable, i.e. incapable of being surrendered. Regardless of  how politicians interpret the Constitution, the words of that document represent real rights, not artificial constructs that are only intended to diminish the scope of our freedoms. These are rights that are universal, not delimited to uniformed officers, be they active duty or retired.

I have to commend Dino Longueira for not only urging people to join the National Rifle Association-which has a well-deserved reputation as a lobbying powerhouse on Capitol Hill-but smaller, grassroots gun rights organizations like Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Gun Owners of America. These organizations, although underfunded, are the first line of defense in the war to preserve our civil liberties and civil rights. These groups constitute the hemoglobin of a thriving republic’s bloodstream, and to the extent that the NRA resists temporizing its principles, they are responsible.

The right to defend your life, property, and liberty is a fundamental right, and it’s not simply a matter of keeping your guns. As long as tyrannical governments have existed, there have been attempts to disarm the population. The same arbitrary distinctions between ordinary citizens and those deputized by the state were invoked in past weapons bans having nothing to do with firearms. Even today, restrictions imposed upon the possession of defensive weapons can be found in nations across the globe, including the United Kingdom, which has some of the most draconian penalties for violating these restrictions on the planet, although I doubt the Lee Rigby’s family finds much solace in that.

The man who drafted the Declaration of Independence was correct when he wrote, 

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.

However, that does not mean we can not and should not resist the impulse by the Cuomos and the Malloys to arrogate more power to the state even as they attempt to strip us of our liberties. The widespread and spontaneous resistance to the SAFE Act, as well as other attempts to erode the protections of the Second Amendment, is a sign that Americans are not as pliant as our authoritarian leaders and their political apparatchiks believe us to be.

For a transcript of the remarks at this rally by the Tea Party Patriots, Molon Labe by Legal, Political Processes, and to see a few of the (much better) photos taken by my friend Virginia Ross, check out this thread on Free Republic.

In summary, DUMP CUOMO and stick to your guns!

He didn’t find himself in America, because it’s not easy!

O Rly? 

It seems like the theories espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood-in Arabic, of course-are shared by its Sunni brethren from the Caucasus, perhaps unsurprisingly. Here’s a very abbreviated list of popular conspiracy theories believed by millions of Muslims throughout the world. Something tells me this will not end well.

h/t: Urban Infidel

Update: The brothers’ legal status has been corrected from an earlier post.  Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev is in police custody! More details, courtesy of the Boston Globe. 

Video footage from the initial shootout between the two terrorists and police officers. Live Wire from WCVB. Atlantic Wire coverage, including a link to what’s been verified as his Twitter account. 

Metro Boston SOPS scanner. Police have withdrawn from the part of Watertown where they suspected the bomber might have fled to. Military helicopters are circling the town. 

More details from Mother Jones and Deadspin. The Lid also has some updated news about what we know about this Chechen terrorist. According to Buzzfeed Politics, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an American citizen, while his older brother was a legally permanent resident. Despite being arrested for domestic assault, he was not deported. The father of the deceased terrorist describes him as a true angel. 

 Here’s a photo of deceased MIT officer Sean Collier. Suspect’s father calls on him to surrender to police.

Video of Frank Gaffney’s speech can be found on Urban Infidel.

One of the unofficial mottos of the United States, this phrase-which is minted on this country’s coins and emblazoned upon our paper bills-embodies the common heritage of the American nation, which was created from the union of thirteen distinct, unique former British colonies. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it came to symbolize the melting pot forged from a collection of people who came to the United States from various European nations in order to reconstitute their lives.

It is a concept that, like many of its inhabitants, has become alien to contemporary America. We now live in a country comprised from a polyglot agglomeration of foreign tribes, individuals and extended families, many of whom would be unable to assimilate to American culture even if a coherent one still existed and they were encouraged to do so, both dubious propositions.

One of the most persistent questions raised by the September 11th attacks, and recurring periodically since, e.g. during the debate over the construction of Park 51, the debacle that the trial of Ft. Hood jihadist Nidal Malik Hasan has occasioned, and other terrorist attacks conceived by native or naturalized American citizens, has  revolved around whether Islam as it’s practiced today can be reconciled with traditional American values embodied in documents like the United States Constitution.

This question is what brought Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, to the Women’s National Republican Club last week, where he addressed the “civilizational jihad” he asserts Islamists are waging against the United States, as well as the West more broadly conceived. While the sight of Mr. Gaffney delivering a policy address is far from unusual, the fact that the event was hosted by Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies reflects a growing recognition among some conservatives-albeit, not all-that our nation’s immigration policy has a deep and profound influence upon national security and foreign policy concerns.

While some believe that the growing diminution of the traditional demographic profile of America will lead to a more pacific, non-interventionist foreign policy-analogizing it to the anti-war sentiment which prevailed in this country before its entry into World War I-it can be argued that the government’s embrace of heretofore foreign ethnic and religious groups will foster an even more aggressive, and in many ways detrimental, foreign policy, which might well endanger American diplomats, servicemen and civilians in the future-as it has in the recent past. What’s more, the union of multinational jihadist platforms with digital technology has given an entire generation of Arab, Asian and African Muslim young men who are essentially unmoored-having been transplanted to a foreign land at a young age-a distinct cultural and political identity; one which involves the replacement of Western norms and mores with a muscular, revanchist interpretation of Islam. The fact that the dominant legal, cultural, and political class have spent the past five decades attempting to minimize or nullify these very same values speeds their mission.

A perfect illustration of this dilemma was discussed by Frank Gaffney in relation to the Somali community within Minnesota, which now numbers in the tens of thousands. Resettled in previously homogeneous, tranquil parts of the United States at the urging of a United Nations bureaucracy and with the assistance of the U.S. State Department, these refugees have children who are now returning to the homeland of their parents and enlisting in battle against the Transitional Federal Government which our government helped to establish and killing African Union peacekeepers whose mission it ostensibly supports. Beyond the validity of their refugee claims-many of which are wholly fraudulent-there is the inescapable conclusion one must draw that the wealth confiscated from American citizens in the form of taxes-and lavished upon social welfare programs necessitated by the Somalis inability to support themselves or their families legally-is being used in some small measure to defray the cost of living of those who intend on blowing other people up.

In addition to the expense-born in our pocketbooks and  in the gradual erosion of American community-of this experiment, there is the the genuine threat posed by a large segment of migrants who dislike this country both because of specific foreign policy decisions and concrete Koranic injunctions. It beggars belief that the federal government would seek to import scores of foreigners from third world nations whose populations harbor significant hostility towards America while at the same time another branch of the state engages in nation-building experiments and military operations in those very same lands. The fact that this process is facilitated by the United Nations, a world body whose values are diametrically opposed to those cherished by most Americans, strains credulity.

One of the points emphasized throughout Gaffney’s lecture was the global, multidimensional nature of the jihadist threat. He focused extensively on the case of a particular individual who was detained while he and his hijab-clad wife filmed the support structure of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, an incident which would ultimately lead to one of the most critical pieces of evidence introduced during the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, at the time the largest Islamic charity in the United States. The HLF was eventually revealed to be not only a financial conduit for Hamas but also part of a network of institutions within the United States which were created under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to achieve their ideological goals on American soil.

Although it might seem absurd to believe that bedrock American institutions can be undermined by a small coterie of Islamic ideologues, you have to consider the havoc the institutional left has already inflicted upon our society. An Iraqi refugee-with prior criminal offenses-has been charged with maliciously damaging federal property for attempting to destroy a Social Security Administration office with an improvised explosive device! The systematic execution of over a dozen soldiers by Nidal Malik Hasan is deemed a case of  ’workplace violence’ by our federal government. A premeditated jihadist assault on LAX’s El Al terminal is not even considered a hate crime, and the head of the Justice Department cannot even utter the name of the religion whose doctrines inspired the man who attempted to obliterate Times Square with an explosive device which dwarfed that used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

In this context, it’s not difficult to see how a machiavellian political apparatchik with an outsized influence over the conservative movement, or an influential Democratic congressmen popular among both leftists and militant Muslims, or a presidential advisor with dubious ties to apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood can do permanent harm, especially when constitutional rights like freedom of speech are being used as bargaining chips in relations with the Muslim world.

The fact that a would-be facilitator of regicide and terrorist financier was able to enter the good graces of a sitting president and establish a program for Muslim chaplains, which still exists, because of the oleaginous influence of someone who purports to represent American Muslims illustrates the toxic combination of  identity politics and K street lobbying. And while some maintain that establishing a pro-Arab/Muslim political infrastructure in this country is necessary to balance the existing pro-Israel bias among American lawmakers, it’s hard to imagine Israelis-regardless of the wisdom of their specific policy views-enacting violent revenge upon Americans for their government’s policy regarding the West Bank or votes on the UN Security Council.

Glenn Greenwald raises the question of whether Nidal Malik was engaged in an act of terrorism, since-from his perspective, at least-he was fighting those who had enlisted in an army which had attacked his coreligionists in the nation of Yemen. But a more pertinent question is why someone who places allegiance to a foreign religion or a terrorist group in the Persian Gulf above his oath to the U.S. Army, or even his  obligation not to slaughter unarmed Americans, is in the United States to begin with. Why must the cult of diversity take precedence over the lives of ordinary American citizens?

And the answer is not comforting. It’s because our immigration policy is not designed with the interests of Americans in mind. Our laws are built to satisfy the demand of  colleges and universities that need the tuition paid by tens of thousands of Saudi students. Of private and public institutions that demand the addition of Muslim chaplains, regardless of ideology. Of parasitical federal contractors which make a killing by resettling scores of refugees who are a drain on state coffers in towns and cities throughout the country.

The customary response from advocates of changing the cultural landscape of America is that we need to do these things in order to change the hearts and minds of those living in the Islamic world. We need to project an image of openness in order to change the negative image of the United States overseas. The problem is that it has not worked, and in all likelihood, will never work. Globalization, insofar as it facilitates the exchange of goods and services according to the law of supply and demand, is a good thing. However, importing the maladies, cultural neuroses and obscurantist religious dogmas of foreign cultures for the sake of appeasing the gods of diversity and multiculturalism, even as we engage in questionable foreign interventions urged on by figures whose interests are inimical to those of the United States, is madness.

The rotten fruit of the Arab Spring, like that from the most recent war in Iraq, is being brought to our shores, so this is as good a time as any to begin having a conversation about what we want our country’s future to look like. Like Frank Gaffney, I believe it’s time to discontinue the diversity lottery, stop issuing visas to imams for whom there is no demand, and begin to look out for the interests of Americans, first and foremost.