Current Events - September 6, 2013

 Is a Convention of States Politically Possible?

Mark Levin's book, The Liberty Amendments, has sparked the hope that American citizens can save the Republic by calling a Convention of States under Article V. Two classes of naysayers have arisen. First, there are those, like my dear friend Phyllis Schlafly, who argue that using the power of the states under Article V is dangerous and could result in a runaway convention. Professor Rob Natelson has decisively answered this contention here. James W. Lucas represents the second class of critic -- those who contend that it is politically impossible to call a convention, draft amendments, and send them out for ratification.

Lucas has another plan. He wants Congress to enact a constitutional amendment that gives the states the ability to propose amendments to the Constitution without calling a convention. If two-thirds of the states pass identical legislation proposing an amendment, it would be sent back to the states for ratification.

This idea did not originate with Lucas. It has been around for some time and is generally called the "Madison Amendment."

Whatever the merits of the Madison Amendment may be, Lucas has argued that his plan is better than Levin's on the grounds of political realism. Fair enough. Let's look at this realistically.

In 1999, Senator John Ashcroft introduced an amendment to the same effect as the Madison Amendment. He never got a co-sponsor. In the same year in the House, the companion bill got a total of eight co-sponsors. In 2010, another variant of this bill got a grand total of four co-sponsors in the House.

None of these proposals ever got a hearing. There was never a vote. All of these proposals were dead on arrival. Why? They were introduced in Congress.

Congress will never -- ever -- ever -- pass an amendment making it easier for the states to amend the Constitution. Why? Congress ain't that stupid. They know that such an amendment would allow the states to do an end run around Congress. No branch of the government in Washington, D.C., will voluntarily relinquish even one iota of power.

I hate to get personal here, but we are just being realistic. One way to measure political reality is by gauging public support for an idea. James W. Lucas has published a book outlining his plan. His book is currently ranked 3,905,513 on Amazon.com. Levin's book, after a healthy stint at number one, is now ranked number three among all books sold on Amazon. It seems public support resides solidly in Levin's camp.

Lucas also fails to deal fairly with the scope and impact of the scholarship of Dr. Robert Natelson. Natelson is the premier scholar on Article V issues. Natelson's work not only appears repeatedly in scholarly journals but also in Supreme Court decisions--he was cited twice in this last term. Originalism in actual practice is not as irrelevant as Lucas seems to believe. Moreover, Natelson's work is thoroughly practical -- taking into account current precedent, political reality, and the original meaning of the Constitution.

Nothing is stopping Lucas from pushing his idea in Congress. Good luck to him. If he gets anywhere close to a vote in either the House or the Senate, I hereby promise him that I will use my grassroots networks of several hundred thousand voters to urge passage in Congress.  But since I have worked in Washington, D.C., for over 30 years and have been the chief lobbyist for a constitutional amendment that has gained over 150 co-sponsors, I believe his prospects are dubious.

A realistic plan looks like this. There are 4000 state legislative house districts in the 40 states most likely to support a convention. If we build a grassroots organization in 75% of those districts, we can put significant pressure on the members of the state legislatures to pass a resolution calling for a Convention of States. That grassroots organization needs just one captain in each of these 3000 districts and a minimum of 100 voters who will contact their state legislators to support a convention for the purpose of limiting the power of Washington, D.C. We know we can reach these numbers. We know we can build this network of citizens.

Citizens for Self-Governance has launched a project that will make this plan a reality. We were working on this even before Levin released his book, and now we are ready to start building support. Levin has catapulted this idea into the national spotlight -- we have the plan to implement it.

Since launching the Convention of States Project website (www.conventionofstates.com), we have already gained tens of thousands of grassroots supporters. We have created a network of dozens of state legislators who are interested in sponsoring resolutions to call for the convention.

Lucas contends that procedural uncertainties make a Convention of States impossible. It is true that the organizational details of the convention will have to be settled by the convention itself. But they will be settled quickly because every state gets one vote. This rule cannot be contested and will greatly expedite the process.

Lucas's assertion that the convention will be mired in years of litigation is not based on relevant fact. I have litigated dozens and dozens of constitutional cases over the last 35 years. In fact, I litigated the last major case concerning the Article V amending process (when Congress tried to change the rules for ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in the middle of the stream).

Again, I hate to be personal, but I did a Westlaw search to evaluate James W. Lucas's experience in constitutional litigation, just to see if he knew something I was missing. I cannot find a single reported case of any kind for this attorney. It seems he is not an actual litigator.

The only reason for any serious litigation during the Article V process would be if the states fail to employ sufficiently similar language in their resolutions. The Convention of States Project is proceeding on the basis that each state will use an identical resolution. If litigation arises, it will be quickly resolved in favor of a Convention of States.

The truly realistic bottom line is this: if we don't use the power of the states found in Article V, we may lose liberty forever.

If you don't want to help, fine. Sit on the sidelines and watch.  But I would respectfully suggest that we have both a short window and a great deal of momentum for one idea. Call a Convention of States. Stop the abuse of power by Washington, D.C. Save liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/is_a_convention_of_states_politically_possible.html#ixzz2e7od3uDH

Ignore the headlines. This was a very bad jobs report.

If you only looked at the headlines on Friday’s August jobs numbers, you’d think “Not bad!”
You would also be completely wrong.

Yes, the unemployment rate fell a notch to 7.3 percent, from 7.4 percent in July. Yes, the nation added 169,000 jobs, broadly consistent with the pattern of recent months.

But in almost all the particulars, you can find signs that this job market is weaker than it appeared just a few months ago, and maybe getting worse. The drop in the unemployment rate was caused by 312,000 people dropping out of the labor force. The number of people actually reporting having a job actually fell by 115,000 in the survey on which the unemployment rate is based.

And while the overall August jobs number was okay, the Labor Department revised down its estimates of June and July job creation by a combined 74,000 positions. In other words, through the summer, hiring has been quite a bit shakier than it had appeared.

Jobs numbers ebb and jobs numbers flow, and as always, it would be unwise to make too much of one report. But this one has enough signs of weakness embedded in enough places that it has to make economy-watchers — including those at the Federal Reserve who meet in less than two weeks — reassess their confidence that a solid, steady jobs recovery is underway.

Consider this: The nation has averaged 148,000 new jobs a month for the last three months. The number was 160,000 for the last six months, and 184,000 a month over the last year. That looks to me like a downward trend, no two ways about it. It’s certainly not the gradual acceleration that most mainstream economists have forecast as 2013 advances and the impact of tighter fiscal policy fades.

Want another sign? The proportion of the U.S. population that had a job in August was 58.6 percent. Six months earlier, the number was a whopping — wait for it — 58.6 percent. The year is nearly three-quarters over, and the economy isn’t growing fast enough to put a higher proportion of its citizens back to work.

You don’t have to squint hard to see evidence that the “nice, steady improvement” theme that has been the conventional wisdom is missing part of the story.

That is particularly relevant for Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Fed. The central bank has been expected to start pulling back on the pace of its $85 billion-a-month in bond purchases at its meeting Sept. 17-18. The Fed’s entire plan for winding down its “QE” policies, which it planned to conclude in the middle of next year, has been dependent on steady improvement in the jobs market.

That such a jobs recovery may not materialize has to make them at least think twice, maybe three times, about pulling the trigger on the so-called taper at this policy committee meeting. Adding to the case for waiting is a looming fiscal standoff and rising oil prices set off by the conflict in Syria, which is heightening geopolitical worries.

This report may not be definitive, but it’s enough to spur a reassessment of how robust this recovery is, and how much confidence any of us have in that view.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/06/ignore-the-headline-this-was-a-very-bad-jobs-report/

CNBC Analyst Goes Off on Unemployment and Stocks: ‘What Are We? A Banana Republic?’

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that U.S. employers added only 169,000 jobs in August and that the labor force participation rate edged down to 63.2 percent, its lowest point since August 1978.

But here’s the thing: despite the weak economic data, markets started the day on a relatively positive note.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli, the man commonly credited with starting the Tea Party movement, was not impressed.

“I just think it’s absolutely horrible that we — that we’re in a marketplace where we get a lousy report, 35 years since we’ve seen these participation rates,” Santelli said.

“And listen,” he continued, “you know, you can’t hide the spread of four to four-and-a-half percent between the advertised unemployment rate and what it would be should you go back a few years on that participation rate.”

It’s worth noting that the unemployment rate today would be approximately 10.8 percent if labor force participation were at January 2009 levels.

“See,” Santelli continued, “those people aren’t working. They’re not buying houses. They’re not buying cars. They’re using services. They may be using entitlements or welfare. You can’t hide those millions of peoples forever.”

“So we wonder why we see our cost to take care of people that are in-between jobs rising faster than other areas, less improvement in the economy, not good GDP [gross domestic product]. That’s why. And you can’t play this three-card monte game for long.

“And to see the stock market rally,” he added, “on crappy data, to me, is just a horrible dynamic. What are we? A banana republic?”

His CNBC colleges, per the norm, were amused with Santelli’s passionate tirade.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/06/cnbc-analyst-goes-off-on-unemployment-and-stocks-what-are-we-a-banana-republic/

PK'S NOTE: My opinion: no. Stay out of Syria. The side we'd be helping is Al Qaeda so hell no. We don't have the money for another war interaction. Of course using chemical weapons is bad; in this situation the US condemns it verbally but let the UN finally do something worthwhile. That's what they're there for.

Why America Is Saying 'No'

Syria and Obama: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.

By Peggy Noonan
It is hard, if you've got a head and a heart, to come down against a strong U.S. response to Syria's use of chemical weapons against its civilian population. This is especially so if you believe that humanity stands at a door that leads only to darkness. Those who say, "But Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons—the taboo was broken long ago," are missing the point. When Saddam used gas against the Kurds it was not immediately known to all the world. It was not common knowledge. The world rued it in retrospect. Syria is different: It is the first obvious, undeniable, real-time, YouTubed use of chemical weapons. The whole world knew of it the morning after it happened, through horrified, first-person accounts, from videos of hospital workers and victims' families.

The world this time cannot "not know," or claim not to know. And though Bashar Assad has made his pro forma denials, it does not seem believable that this was not a government operation. Assad's foes may or may not be wicked enough to use such weapons, but it is hard to believe they are capable.

When something like this happens and the world knows and does not respond, you won't get less of it in the future, you'll get more. And the weapons will not only be chemical.

So the question: What to do?

After 10 days of debate in Europe and America, the wisest words on a path forward have come from the Pope. Francis wrote this week to Vladimir Putin, as the host of the G-20. He damned "the senseless massacre" unfolding in Syria and pleaded with the leaders gathered in St. Petersburg not to "remain indifferent"—remain—to the "dramatic situation." He asked the governments of the world "to do everything possible to assure humanitarian assistance" within and without Syria's borders.

But, he said, a "military solution" is a "futile pursuit."

And he is right. The only strong response is not a military response.

The world must think—and speak—with stature and seriousness, of the moment we're in and the darkness on the other side of the door. It must rebuke those who used the weapons, condemn their use, and shun the users. It must do more, in concert—surely we can agree on this—to help Syria's refugees. It must stand up for civilization.

But a military strike is not the way, and not the way for America.

Francis was speaking, as popes do, on the moral aspects of the situation. In America, practical and political aspects have emerged, and they are pretty clear.

The American people do not support military action. A Reuters-Ipsos poll had support for military action at 20%, Pew at 29%. Members of Congress have been struck, in some cases shocked, by the depth of opposition from their constituents. A great nation cannot go to war—and that's what a strike on Syria, a sovereign nation, is, an act of war—without some rough unity as to the rightness of the decision. Widespread public opposition is in itself reason not to go forward.

Can the president change minds? Yes, and he'll try. But it hasn't worked so far. This thing has jelled earlier than anyone thought. More on that further down.

What are the American people thinking? Probably some variation of: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.

Twelve years of war. A sense that we're snakebit in the Mideast. Iraq and Afghanistan didn't go well, Libya is lawless. In Egypt we threw over a friend of 30 years to embrace the future. The future held the Muslim Brotherhood, unrest and a military coup. Americans have grown more hard-eyed—more bottom-line and realistic, less romantic about foreign endeavors, and more concerned about an America whose culture and infrastructure seem to be crumbling around them.

The administration has no discernible strategy. A small, limited strike will look merely symbolic, a face-saving measure. A strong, broad strike opens the possibility of civil war, and a victory for those as bad as or worse than Assad. And time has already passed. Assad has had a chance to plan his response, and do us the kind of damage to which we would have to respond.

There is the issue of U.S. credibility. We speak of this constantly and in public, which has the effect of reducing its power. If we bomb Syria, will the world say, "Oh, how credible America is!" or will they say, "They just bombed people because they think they have to prove they're credible"?

We are, and everyone knows we are, the most militarily powerful and technologically able nation on earth. And at the end of the day America is America. We don't have to bow to the claim that if we don't attack Syria we are over as a great power.

Are North Korea and Iran watching? Sure. They'll always be watching. And no, they won't say, "Huh, that settles it, if America didn't move against Syria they'll never move against us. All our worries are over." In fact their worries, and ours, will continue.

Sometimes it shows strength to hold your fire. All my life people have been saying we've got to demonstrate our credibility—that if we, and the world, don't know we are powerful by now we, and they, will never know.

Finally, this president showed determination and guts in getting Osama bin Laden. But a Syria strike may become full-scale war. Is Barack Obama a war president? On Syria he has done nothing to inspire confidence. Up to the moment of decision, and even past it, he has seemed ambivalent, confused, unaware of the implications of his words and stands. From the "red line" comment to the "shot across the bow," from the White House leaks about the nature and limits of a planned strike to the president's recent, desperate inclusion of Congress, he has seemed consistently over his head. I have been thinking of the iconic image of American military leadership, Emanuel Leutze's painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware." There Washington stands, sturdy and resolute, looking toward the enemy on the opposite shore. If you imagine Mr. Obama in that moment he is turned, gesturing toward those in the back. "It's not my fault we're in this boat!" That's what "I didn't set a red line" and "My credibility is not at stake" sounded like.

And looked like.

***

A point on how quickly public opinion has jelled. There is something going on here, a new distance between Washington and America that the Syria debate has forced into focus. The Syria debate isn't, really, a struggle between libertarians and neoconservatives, or left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. That's not its shape. It looks more like a fight between the country and Washington, between the broad American public and Washington's central governing assumptions.

I've been thinking of the "wise men," the foreign policy mandarins of the 1950s and '60s, who so often and frustratingly counseled moderation, while a more passionate public, on right and left, was looking for action. "Ban the Bomb!" "Get Castro Out of Cuba."

In the Syria argument, the moderating influence is the public, which doesn't seem to have even basic confidence in Washington's higher wisdom.

That would be a comment on more than Iraq. That would be a comment on the past five years, too.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579057420154706690.html

Why GOP Leadership Is Going Along With the Syrian Misadventure

 During the glory days of the Contract with America, Newt Gingrich used to preach that we needed issues with 60% support from the American people. Regardless of your feelings on Obama’s harebrained planned for military intervention in Syria, you have to look askance at why John Boehner and Eric Cantor decided to support the authorization to use military force in Syria when 80% (+/-) of Americans oppose the deal.

The answer is in the tweets screen captured on this page.

Apparently the GOP leadership is tired of being called obstructionist. They seem to have come to the conclusion that if the oppose Obama on this that they lose bargaining power in the upcoming votes on spending and the debt ceiling. This has led them to use Martian Logic to determine that if they do not oppose Obama on Syria somehow Obama will owe them something on spending.

It doesn’t take a political genius to see the fallacy here.

First, opposition to Syria is not only good policy it is backed by 80% of the American people.

Second, if you vote for a military strike you lose the ability to complain about whatever stupid thing Obama, Kerry, and Hagel come up with.

Third, you piss away an 80% issue.

Fourth, Obama isn’t going to give you squat on spending because you just proved to him you aren’t deserving of respect.

What they have done is essentially admit that they believe in leprechauns.

It is a shame that our House leadership and some otherwise conservative members of Congress are going along with this nonsense. They have the opportunity to make an easy and popular vote while doing the right thing for the right reason. Instead, they have betrayed the trust of the American people for nothing.

http://www.redstate.com/2013/09/04/why-gop-leadership-is-going-along-with-the-syrian-misadventure/

PK'SNOTE: O'Reilly is wrong in this and I was glad to see Ingraham make such good rebuttals.

Ingraham Battles O’Reilly Over Syria Intervention: ‘We Lose Moral Authority by Acting’

Bill O’Reilly’s frequent guest host Laura Ingraham dropped by The Factor Thursday night to share her polar opposite views on the Syria intervention with the host. Contrary to O’Reilly’s assertions, Ingraham argued that the U.S. will “lose moral authority by acting.”

Ingraham headed off O’Reilly’s hints at hypocrisy over her support of the Iraq War up top, saying that while she did argue in favor of invading that country, “over the last several years, I have warned Republicans about continuing to go down this path where, when it comes to military engagements, the American public is not seeing how the military engagement improves their lives.”

She said that most of what she had hoped would happen in Iraq turned out to be “wishful thinking” and “instead today Iraq is in total chaos. We had great men and women over there, but we lost blood and treasure and lives have been destroyed and families have been absolutely turned upside down.”

O’Reilly pushed her on the question of whether America’s power will “decline” if we do not strike Syria, but Ingraham maintained her position saying that “the opposite is true,” arguing that it’s America’s “weakness” in the first place that is causing so much chaos in the world. Ingraham also said that the only way the U.S. could lose “moral authority” in this situation is by acting militarily in Syria.

“America has grown weaker in the last eleven years, after a lot of warfare” Ingraham told O’Reilly. “The elites need to prove to America that they have earned their trust back after a lot of mismanagement of our economy, borders and wars. People don’t trust for good reason.”

Watch video below, via Fox News:



http://www.mediaite.com/tv/laura-ingraham-battles-oreilly-over-syria-intervention-we-lose-moral-authority-by-acting/ 

White House Launches Syria PR Campaign

Earlier this week, President Obama called in his former campaign communications team to craft a message selling Syrian military intervention to the American people. Now, the White House has officially launched a propaganda page dedicated to intervention on WhiteHouse.gov.


The page has a video of President Obama meeting with Congressional leaders about intervention and a transcript of Obama's speech in the Rose Garden last weekend has been posted.
What the page doesn't have:
-Cost of intervention
-Number of troops needed for intervention
-Who will take over when Assad falls
-How long intervention will be
-Details about U.S. interests in Syria


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/09/06/white-house-launches-syria-pr-campaign-n169305

Obama Works for Whom?

Testifying about the proposed attack on Syria before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 4, Secretary of State John Kerry said, "With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes. They have. That offer is on the table. ... In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we've done it previously in other places, they'll carry that cost.  That's how dedicated they are at this.  That's not in the cards, and nobody's talking about it, but they're talking in serious ways about getting this done."

Arabs will "carry that cost."  Let's see -- that means Arabs with money.  Which is to say, oil.  Which means the Arabian peninsula: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait.  Almost completely Sunni lands.

So the Obama administration wants to risk starting World War III with a "shot across the bow" to Syria's al-Assad, dictator of an Alawite (Shia-sect) government in a mostly Sunni country, paid for by Sunni protagonists.  We're supposed to risk American lives and do the dirty work to pave the way for a Syrian Sunni sharia-based government, the "Arabs" will pay the bill (if we let them -- why would our government refuse free money?), and the American people will reimburse the Arabs a little bit every time we fill our gas tanks.

For whom is Obama working -- the American people, or the Sunnis?

Where is that file photo from 2009?  Oh yes, here it is:

Now I know.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/obama_works_for_whom.html#ixzz2e7iZ9GSH

U.S. Hypocrisy for Syrian 'Human Rights'

Did the Syrian government, or did it not, use chemical weapons - that is the question that will apparently decide whether the U.S. will enter another messy war, one that may have many long-term consequences.
That is the question the media and its talking heads are abuzz with.
And yet, that is also the question that -- to any objective, independent thinker -- is wholly irrelevant.
Why? Because the fact is, from one end of the world to the other, outrageous human rights abuses -- many much worse than the use of chemical weapons -- are going on.
As Bruce Thornton recently put it in a FrontPage Magazine article:

[A]ll this rhetoric about "crimes against humanity" and the "responsibility to protect" reeks of hypocrisy and moral preening. The President said, "We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale." Who's he kidding? We already have, in Hussein's Iraq. Change "gassed" to "bombed," "fire-bombed," "hacked to death," "machine-gunned," and "starved" and you can cover the globe with the victims whose deaths on a "terrible scale" we have "accepted." We have stood by and watched millions of women, children, and innocent civilians murdered in all sorts of ways equally as, or more gruesome and painful than, dying by poison gas.
In Rwanda anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in 1994, many by being hacked to death with machetes, not to mention the women raped, purposely infected with HIV, and sexually mutilated. We did nothing to stop the killing not because we militarily couldn't, but because it was not in our national interests and security to do so. Hence we sent in a toothless U.N. to salve our consciences and deflect the charge of callous inactivity.
So all those calling for intervention in Syria or anywhere else to prevent "crimes against humanity" should be required to explain just how this unfortunately common slaughter is different from all those others we did not intervene to stop.

Indeed, the real question is not whether Assad used chemical weapons or not, but rather why his doing so would warrant U.S. military intervention -- when so many worse human rights abuses are happening all around the world, each one of which is as well documented as the notion that Assad used chemical weapons is still open to debate.
In short, if there is a legitimate case for invading Syria, U.S. leaders, beginning with Obama, need to start making it, and drop the hypocritical rhetoric about "human rights" concerns -- which has become nothing short of insulting to the intelligence.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/us_hypocrisy_for_syrian_human_rights.html#ixzz2e7j2bKjO

Why We Still Must Not Support Obama’s Strike on Syria: Responding to Ron Radosh

Indeed, this is how a serious debate should be conducted. Invective-free.

I’ll take Ron’s latest arguments in order.

1. John Kerry has not changed. He remains the leftist “international test” advocate that he has always been. He publicly identified with Code Pink’s ideals when they disrupted his unconvincing, self-contradictory testimony in the Senate this week. His advocacy for striking Syria may be based on Islamist disinformation, about which I’ll have more to say shortly. Suffice it to say that he is carrying out the policy of his boss, whatever that policy is, in the job he has openly and lustfully sought for years and would never resign on any principle, and knows which buttons to push (“indispensable nation”) to make hawks pay attention to him. Lingo does not hide the fact that he is still the same man who smeared American troops then fighting in Vietnam and then built his career on that, and the same man who opposed the 1991 intervention in Iraq. The case for action then was much stronger than the case for action now. Should he not take a few minutes to explain his evolution in thought before asking us to just trust him? Is he wiser now, or merely older?

2. Failure to act decisively may be worse than not acting at all. The Iranians are watching, as are the North Koreans, etc. There’s a popular saying these days — “go big or go home.” That saying would get realized, in my judgement, if we strike Assad but do not kill him or remove him. After the symbolic, mostly meaningless strikes that Obama promises, Assad will emerge from the smoke as if he has been hardened in combat, stand on some rubble in a MacArthur pose, and announce that he “defeated” us. It will be absurd, but that’s how Middle East despots react when they’re bombed but not killed or face invasion. Obama’s “just muscular enough not to be mocked” strike invites mockery. Obama has already told Assad that he is not a target and that the strikes will be so limited as to be militarily meaningless. Iran will be watching that, too. Assad is probably already having soot smeared on his face and rehearsing his post-bombing lines. We know that Obama won’t go big. So in my view he should stay home — not strike.

3. The nature of the rebellion is not what John Kerry says it is. The pro-moderate source Ron cites, Elizabeth O’Bagy, is dubious and may be involved in a disinformation campaign to sell the “moderate” face of an Islamist insurgency. She appeared on Fox again today and played word games about her role with the Syrian Emergency Task Force — she is their political director, and they have Islamist ties. In my mind, this discredits everything she says about the “moderate” forces in Syria. The New York Times reported on the rebels’ brutality today. It also should matter that even when America does put hundreds of thousands of pairs of boots on the ground to kick out evil dictators like Assad (Saddam was pretty much his clone), the people don’t automatically love us and they don’t choose freedom. They tend to choose Islamism. They write sharia into their constitutions. They enforce anti-blasphemy laws. They elect the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Obama administration plays along. It may be that a strong dose of radicalism convinces people in the Middle East to swing back toward civilization, as has apparently happened in Egypt. Should the U.S. military be used in Syria to drive Assad out and start that Islamism-t0-civilization cycle? It’s risky, and Obama isn’t selling that. He’s playing Hamlet and promising to prick Assad so shallowly that he won’t even bleed.
In addition to all that, what is a “moderate” in the context of the Middle East? It’s not the kind of sit-on-the fence Maine Republican we tend to think of in our context. We desperately need to understand Middle East politics on its own terms.

4. Point three also argues with Abe Greenwald, whom Ron cites saying that people in the Middle East will read our inaction in Syria to mean that the U.S. should not be counted on when they look for help fighting off tyrants. We’ve been there, done that, and most of them hate us more for it. We tried living that freedom-fighter role across more than a decade following 9-11. We believed that millions across the Middle East were just yearning to be free. We waged wars to free them at great human and financial cost to ourselves. Unfortunately, it turns out that they’re not who we hoped they were. Afghanistan rumbles on. Libya is a hot mess that already incubates terrorism. For every Jeffersonian there appear to be 1,000 who would rather be right with the Koran than free to do what they like. I saw that firsthand when I went to Baghdad in 2007. Many thanked America for freeing them, then turned right around and wrote Islam and sharia into their laws. Turkey, once a great secular ally of the West, continues its slide toward Islamism. When they move to the West as individuals and families, many of them — enough to matter — try their hand at imposing sharia rather than enjoy their newfound freedoms. The religious revival I mentioned in my first post on this subject is just going to have to run its course.

5. Presidential authority. Ron says that a failure to strike will undermine presidential authority. Given how Barack Obama has repeatedly abused presidential authority, I don’t view restraining him as a bad thing. More restraints, please!

Finally, this administration is fundamentally dishonest about the jihad. I won’t get into Nidal Hasan and “workplace violence” again. The same administration that still cannot (will not) tell us what happened to the Americans in Benghazi asks us to trust what it is saying now about Syria. Obama himself denies ever drawing a “red line,” when he did, and then his lieutenants rolled out a concerted “red line” message. The administration is ignoring evidence that the rebels may also have used chemical weapons, months ago. This fundamental dishonesty must be challenged, not followed into war.

If we’re going to do anything in Syria, and I don’t believe military action is wise, then we should act in a way that takes down both Assad and his Islamist enemies in a stroke. Then perhaps Elizabeth O’Bagy’s moderates can come forward and usher in an era of peace.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/09/05/why-we-still-must-not-support-obamas-strike-on-syria-responding-to-ron-radosh/?singlepage=true

Navigating ObamaCare Outrage

How dare anyone ask anything about the law's implementation.

With ObamaCare scheduled to launch on October 1, Democrats seem more than a little anxious about their ability to execute. That's the only fathomable explanation for their nervous breakdown over a routine House inquiry.

The Affordable Care Act is paying for "navigators," or non-government groups that received federal dollars in August to help people figure out and enroll for subsidies. That such a program even exists explains a lot about the complexity of the new entitlement.

The navigators were supposed to cost $54 million, but the Health and Human Services Department dipped into a "wellness" slush fund to bump that up by 24% to $67 million. The money will flow to groups like Planned Parenthood, the National Urban League and other community organizers.

HHS regulations don't require background checks for the navigators but do say they must obey security and privacy requirements, without defining what the requirements will be. Since the navigators will tap into sensitive medical and financial information about individuals, more than a dozen state attorneys general are alarmed about the potential for fraud and identity theft.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent oversight letters to about half of 105 navigator organizations with six general questions. They include asking about "the work that will be performed with the funds obtained via your navigator grant" and "the training or education employees, volunteers or representatives must complete." 

Presumably these professional activists needed to submit this sort of material to HHS to obtain taxpayer plums in the first place. HHS could disclose the applications but is treating them like state secrets.

Prepare the fainting couches. HHS has responded by calling the GOP requests "a blatant and shameful attempt to intimidate groups who will be working to inform Americans about" the glories of national health care. Norm Ornstein, the American Enterprise Institute's house liberal, claims this is "another effort at sabotage" because the navigators won't be in the field while they're responding to the letters. Best of all, Henry Waxman claims to be shocked. The Democratic investigations specialist says the letters are "an abuse of your oversight authority," and he would know.

All of this outrage is part of the liberal alibi that Republicans are responsible if ObamaCare stumbles. But if the handsomely financed navigators can't spare an hour or two to comply with a congressional investigation, then the law must be in bigger trouble than Democrats care to admit.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579057160271107276.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

One Year Later: Camp Bastion Families Still Fighting for Truth

By Michelle Malkin
Next week, "never forget" will resound across America as citizens mark a dozen years since the 9/11 terrorist attack and one year since the bloody disaster in Benghazi. But who will remember the American heroes who came under siege at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on 9/14/12?


Two heroic U.S. Marines -- Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell -- perished in the monstrous battle last year, and nearly a dozen others were injured. What happened at Camp Bastion and whether the Obama administration has learned from the deadly incident are timely questions as Washington prepares for war again in a jihadi-infested region.

And as military families know, there is no such thing as "no boots on the ground."

The families of the fallen at Camp Bastion are still waiting for the results of an official CENTCOM probe into last year's attack. They hear that members of Congress will get briefed on the investigation before the families themselves get the details about what happened to their loved ones -- and who bears responsibility for the security lapses that enabled the attack. 

Atwell's aunt, Deborah Hatheway, told me: "We are hoping for the best, and that _the attack will always be remembered as one of the most horrific attacks by the Taliban, and that they will never be able to do this again." A Capitol Hill source tells me the report could be ready by the end of the month.

Refresher: Three days after the bloody siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion. The base is a British-run NATO compound that adjoins our Marines' Camp Leatherneck. The meticulously coordinated siege by 15 Taliban infiltrators -- dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons -- resulted in two deaths and the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam.

Six Harrier jets were destroyed; three refueling stations were wiped out; six hangars were damaged. The Taliban animals released video showing their jihadi training prep. The attack came exactly six months after a failed suicide attack targeting then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

As I first reported in June, relatives of the Marines killed in the raid learned on their own that their loved ones were left vulnerable to attack by military leaders who outsourced watchtower security on the base to soldiers from Tonga. The families zeroed in on Maj. Gen. Charles "Mark" Gurganus, who recently returned to the U.S. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, as the man responsible for shortchanging security at Bastion.

Gurganus is the same one who ordered Marines to disarm -- immediately after the failed attack on Panetta -- because he wanted them "to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners." Neglect of security at Bastion was widely known. 

This past weekend, during the Labor Day holiday, military leaders quietly announced that at least four Marines who served with the Harrier squadron that came under fire at Camp Bastion have been awarded the Purple Heart. They are: Maj. Greer Chambless, Lance Cpl. Cole Collums, Sgt. Jonathan Cudo and former Cpl. Matthew Eason. According to the official news release, reported by the Military Times, the Marines were part of the unit that Raible led in a counterattack on the insurgents. Sixteen of the 50 Marines on hand at the time pushed out of the hangar, said Staff Sgt. Jesse Colburn, an ejection seat mechanic who was on the ground during the raid.

Cpl. William Waterstreet reported on the Purple Heart ceremony at the Yuma, Ariz., Marine Corps Air Station: "When the attack began, there were no friendly forces between the Marines of VMA-211 and the insurgents, so it fell to these Marines to act as the first line of defense for Camp Bastion. ... Raible called on his Marines to take up arms and fight with limited ammunition, without body armor, automatic weapons, grenades or support against an enemy force of unknown size, strength or location in the dead of night; his Marines volunteered immediately."

A new article in GQ magazine this month detailed how the courageous "mechanics and pilots turned defenders and riflemen ... undoubtedly prevented a greater catastrophe." Their actions deserve public attention far and wide. And the families deserve accountability. Yet, the Battle Rattle blog of the Military Times website noted something curious: The Marine Corps "did not disclose details about the Aug. 1 Purple Heart ceremony until nearly a month later." The news was buried on a holiday weekend. President Obama has breathed not a word. Why?

September 11 was supposed to have taught us to collect the dots and connect the dots, to never underestimate Koran-inspired jihadi warriors, and to never subvert our security to indulge deadly political correctness. From 9/11 to Fort Hood to Benghazi to Bastion, it's not whether we've forgotten that matters most. It's whether we have learned.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/09/06/one-year-later-camp-bastion-families-still-fighting-for-truth-n1692697/page/full

The Ruling Elite Settles In

It has been said a number of times in recent years that the U.S.  is undergoing a period of flux, a state of rapid churning on the political-social level with any number contradictory trends appearing and vanishing while few permanent changes are evident.  After 2013, this may no longer be the case.  Events of this past summer indicate that a new political paradigm is settling in -- one in no way friendly toward American life as we now understand it. 
This new system was outlined by Dr.  Angelo Codevilla in his 2010 book, The Ruling Class. Codevilla saw clear signs of the formation of a ruling elite in the U.S., a convergence of interests among both "liberal" and "conservative" politicians, along with industrialists, academics, and members of the entertainment and media worlds.  It has become expedient for these blocs to combine their efforts in order to protect and extend their own interests, even in defiance of the American political system and secular creed as it has always existed.  Opposing this effort is the "country class," the vast mass of Americans, essentially the middle class (to be American is, in a real sense, to be middle class), who have invested their lives in the traditional state of the country and expect to see it remain as it is.   These past months present us with clear evidence that the Codevillian ruling class is beginning to take shape. 

(A major influence of Codevilla's thinking is James Burnham, particularly his The Managerial Revolution, which discovered basic similarities in the attitudes and procedures of communism, fascism, and New Deal liberalism.  Burnham, a onetime Trotskyite who played a large role in the founding and development of the National Review, predicted a grim postwar world in which these ideologies converged and melded to rule what was left of the Western world.  His thinking guided George Orwell in the writing of 1984.)

There is in the natural world a class of phenomenon called the "phase change," in which a substance will change from one state to another without much in the way of notice, as water turns to ice at 32'F and many liquids will sublimate into gas.  The political world often acts the same way -- consider how the tumult of Weimar Germany suddenly became melded into the mass reflection of a single lunatic's will after 1933, or the way that Central Europe simultaneously dismissed Marxism in favor of Western democratic capitalism in 1989.  Is the U.S. going through such a phase change as we watch? Many of the most controversial episodes of the past few months -amnesty, gay marriage, the various NSA scandals -- strongly suggest such a transition in political structure.

The American people -- the country class -- have made it clear that they don't want amnesty, that it is completely unacceptable and uncalled for.  There is no "emergency" involved in illegal immigration at this point in time, nothing that can be termed a "crisis" -- no rational reason why any such bill should have been passed.  And yet it was rammed through the Senate in pure defiance of public opinion. 

The prime mover behind this year's attempt at amnesty is not a northeastern liberal or GOP RINO with farming interests demanding stoop labor, but a self-styled "Tea Party" Republican, Marco Rubio.  The motivation in this case is obvious, though I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere: Rubio wants to be president.  He thinks he can buy off the Hispanic vote with his amnesty bill, then swing right and rope in the Tea Party vote -- halfwits as he takes them to be -- with a few bloodcurdling speeches about ObamaCare.  This will enable him to slip into the White House in 2016 or 2020 without popping a sweat.  Simply put, Rubio is trying to transform himself into a Republican Obama. 

There are a few problems with this scenario.  Perhaps the major one is the fact that the Hispanic vote is not a bloc, like the black vote.  It's a variegated population of different nationalities that have two things in common: the Spanish language and their annoyance with Cubans.  As Rubio ought to know, Cubans feature as something like the WASPs of the Hispanic Americans, elitist, stiff-necked, and disdainful.  Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other Latinos are as likely to vote for Hindu maharajah as they are for a Cuban-American politician. 

Another turncoat in the immigration case is Kelly Ayotte.  We have no clear idea why Ayotte flipped; all we have heard is the standard Hallmark Card "immigrants are people too" gibberish before she fled to hide out in a cabin the White Mountains.  I have a sneaking suspicion that she was bullied into it -- her announcement had all the signs of someone making a statement under duress.  Bullying of high-level females is a topic that never comes up in regard to Congress, though we hear about it endlessly in the military and the corporate world. 

Both these politicians were sent to Washington as reform candidates, both sold out at Warp Factor Six, in a period measured not in years but in months.  This suggests either that it was planned that way -- that Rubio andAyotte intended it all along -- or that the ruling class has highly persuasive methods.  Or perhaps, as is usually the case in the quotidian world, both. It suggests that, as Christ might have put it had he been preaching in the brutal and unforgiving third millennium, that we put no faith in senators.  (Or governors, either.  Jan Brewer's recent behavior regarding ObamaCare has been just as egregious as that of the pair above, though it took her longer to get there.)

Gay marriage is another case where the wishes of the majority have been tossed aside.  Despite heavily manipulated opinion polls, gay marriage remains the obsession of a minority.   Two-thirds of the states are still holding out against it despite heavy pressures from all sides.  The push for gay marriage is purely elitist; it began by being rammed through the Massachusetts State Supreme Court by Chief Justice Margaret H.  Marshall, the wife of Anthony Lewis, the late ultraliberal New York Times columnist. That has remained the method throughout.  Gay marriage is yet another ruling-class project, and was carried out as such in the Supreme Court's DOMA ruling.

We know what the gays get out of this -the appearance of popular acceptance while retaining the ability to spit in the face of the straight majority, as made utterly clear by their nuptial rituals of drag queens marrying leather boys or the vision of females in XXX-large tuxedos.  But what exactly does the elite get out of it?

One thing above all: the destruction of the family.  The family is the chief and strongest element of Edmund Burke's "little platoons," the local congregations -- churches, guilds, clubs-- that protect and aid the individual against the monster state.  Everybody but the most unfortunate of us has a family that can be turned to in the most desperate of hours.  But as we all know, this is doubleplusungood  -- all of us little Janes are supposed to turn to the State, and none other. 

So to exercise total control over a society, the little platoons -- family above all -- have to go.  That is what we're seeing here.   If this is allowed to continue, the future for families in general will resemble the present of the black family -- effective destruction, an existence as wards of the state alongside crime, drugs, and promiscuity wrecking entire communities. 

The next step will be to go after the children.  Within a short time we will see a campaign to lower the age of consent to 12 or 13, with strictures for lower ages effectively nullified.  This has been a primary goal of the homosexual rights movement for decades.  We saw it begin with the Kaitlyn Hunt case in Florida -- though that has collapsed thanks to little Kait's personality disorders.  It will be forced through using the same methods as gay marriage:  bogus court cases filed to protect minor's "rights" and expand their "freedoms." (The latest in this effort was seen last weekend in the now-infamous Betsy Karasikop-ed.  As we all know, any minor boho artist whose entire body of written work consists of a handful of pieces about cute animals can get her submissions placed in the Washington Post anytime she likes.)

We come to the NSA scandal, which put the headstone over movement conservatism.  With few exceptions, national security conservatives -- Andrew McCarthy, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney -- came to the defense of Obama on the grounds of "national security." What this argument overlooks is the fact that Obama, throughout his career and without serious exception, has corrupted and exploited every system he came into contact with.  Academic, judicial, political -- he has squeezed 'em all dry.  The evidence suggests he has done the same with this nation's security systems.  (It also overlooked the fact that the scandal, like most scandals, got worse as it rolled along.  It's easily possible that some of the names mentioned above are feeling twinges of regret at speaking too soon.)

Establishment conservatives -- and I'm talking about the blue blazers here, what I've in the past called Northeast Corridor conservatives -- have long posed as noble Romans tsk-tsking over the fall of the Republic while not getting involved themselves.  They don't get their hands dirty with actual politics or confrontations with the left, they simply sit back and discuss what Madison or Locke would have thought about it all. 

This in and of itself makes them an elite, and opens them up to the temptations of an elite.  Over the past few years, rather than confront the left, they have in large part stooped to doing the left's dirty work.  They -- and I'm speaking here directly of Brooks, Frum, Lowry, Parker, and Noonan, and indirectly of many others -- worked hand in hand with the left to destroy Sarah Palin, the most impressive natural politician in this country since Reagan.  They undercut and ridiculed the Tea Parties, thus joining hands with the IRS and the major media.  Many are even now attacking Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. 

Consider the fact that establishment conservatives have put more effort into attacking their own over the past five years than they have the left over the past fifty.   Consider that both ObamaCare and Rubian amnesty originated from within "conservatism."

We have reached a fork in the road, and the establishment conservatives have chosen for the elite.  They are in the process of becoming the right wing of the ruling party.

For decades, the conservative formula has been for East Coast conservatives to make the case and suggest policy, while elected conservative Republicans carry out what they could of this program, supported and guided by staffers recruited from conservative think tanks.  With many leading conservatives both in the journals and the think tanks having chosen for the ruling class, this formula is no longer operative. 

We could go on -- McCain turning into Obama's personal attack dog (accompanied, as always, by the attack poodle Lindsey Graham), the decision by Justice Ruth Ginsburg to "officiate" at a gay wedding, the quiet acceptance by both Congressional Democrats and Republicans of illegal personal health-care payoffs in contravention of ObamaCare strictures. 

So what is the ruling elite we are facing? With far leftists and blacks at one end, remnants of the old WASP ascendancy mingling with Hispanics and Asians in the center, and urban conservatives on the right, this is not your typical 20th-century statist conglomeration.  This is something new; the old appellations just won't work.  It's probably best to simply identify its chief characteristics for the time being: a worship of the state as a source of power, a veneer of "progressivism," in the sense that society consists of "problems" that can be solved only by state-wide efforts, green technology,  and of course, a hefty dose of classism. 

This goes a step beyond Dr.  Codevilla. What we are seeing is the foundation of a new form of technofeudalism.  Conservatives often waste their time fighting enemies that no longer exist -- consider how often we see people ranting about invisible "hippies" or "communists." In fact, the major impetus to the current progressive program isn't political at all -- it's a combination of economics and pseudoscience.  The ruling class believes that we are on the verge of an environmental collapse, triggered by "climate change." They intend to keep their toys and privileges no matter what.  The rest of us will have to do without -- no heat, bad food, no transport, all of life's luxuries (and freedoms)-- vanished with the snows.  They will retain all this and more in well-protected enclaves, keeping a careful eye on the proles with their drones and PRISM-derived surveillance systems.  The American ruling class will by this means join the transnational elites living the same way -- as in many areas, among them Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America, they do already.

Anyone who doubts this can take a look at the works of John Holdren, Obama's science czar, or the actions of former EPA chief Lisa Jackson, or the HUD programs going under the name "Regionalism," which intends to turn Americans out of their wasteful private homes and automobiles into vertical slums patterned after 1960s high-rises, where they will be allowed to work only at jobs within walking distance. 

We are to become crowded, hungry, cold, stupid, and poor, our transportation limited to bicycles (registered with the block authorities, needless to say, on the North Korean model), our access to information controlled by the same filtering systems that Google developed for the Chinese.  Education will be limited to such an extent as to make the goofball stoonts of today seem like the protégés of Socrates. 

If you want to see the American future from the point of view of the ruling class, look at Detroit -- a once mighty city that now features packs of wild dogs roaming through overgrown lots in abandoned neighborhoods.  There are photos of Detroit that hauntingly resemble third-world slum metropolises -- vast stretches of neglected, collapsing housing with the skyscrapers of the rulers looming in the misty distance.  This is what the Obama future looks like.  This is what the elite is willing to accept on our behalf. 

So what is the answer? Above all, we need to cease pretending that we are outside the problem.  This standard conservative response is no longer tenable.  To limit ourselves to sending our best to Congress only to discover that our "best" are hustlers no better than the sleaziest Dem apparatchik,  to retreat to the think tanks to construct alternate universes to live in, at worst to do pioneering research for the left, as the Heritage Foundation did with ObamaCare. 

Too many conservatives are retreating into the welcoming and comfortable past -- a largely imaginary era of certainty and sanity.  They are unwilling to face modern challenges that seem strange and unfamiliar, instead falling into nostalgia and wish-fulfillment. 

Tech is our friend.  For too long, conservatives have turned their back on technology as a progressive phenomenon.  (Also as something involving vulgar fellows who lack neckties and show no interest in modern dance.) Already we see that fracking has wrecked the plans of the green elites.  The closure of the coal industry was supposed to be followed by a slow national decline to pre-20th century levels on a schedule known only to Holdren and Jackson.  When the inevitable brownouts came, our rulers would simply shrug and state that we were "limited" by the capabilities of renewables, that we'd just have to get used to six hours of power a day.  Instead, within ten years we'll have a natural gas economy -- the largest and most profitable in the world -- with oil and nuclear as ancillary sources. 

As for surveillance tech, keep in mind that the mightiest information-gathering system ever devised was exploited for years by a woman trapped in a man's body and the spiritual offspring of Maynard G.  Krebs.  As we've learned from the Infowave, this kind of thing gets easier as time goes by.   And keep your eye open for the first $5,000 killer drone kits appearing on Ebay. 

Resistance on every level is the key.  ObamaCare was so badly designed that it actually rewards defiance.  The elite's total surveillance system can be overcome by the simple means of encryption on one hand and basic hackery on the other. 

We need to learn as much as we can and inform ourselves as deeply as possible.   When the cracks appear, we have to be ready to jam a crowbar into them, but we can't do that if we don't recognize the cracks or know what end of the crowbar to use. 

In the end, none of the elite's plans will work --ObamaCare , the gay apotheosis, green industry -- all these pipe dreams have been attempted elsewhere and have never worked.  ObamaCare is collapsing this minute with the terrible majesty of the Hindenberg at Lakehurst.  Green power has been revealed as a sure method of plunging headfirst into bankruptcy.   Justice Ginsburg's attempt to elevate gay marriages will simply make the Supreme Court look even more foolish than it already does. 

Nothing has gone right for the ruling classes since the 18th century.  The British wanted to transform America into another Ireland - a plantation and tax farm.  They saw their empire ripped in twain by the first extant army of free men in 1900 years.  The Bourbons wanted to intensify feudalism; they reaped the Terror and Napoleon.  The Nazis wanted technofeudalism on racist terms, the Japanese imperialists according to Shinto.  Both pulled the entire world down on top of themselves.  LBJ wanted the U.S.  run the same as his Texas ranch, with everything done his way.  He ended up drinking himself to death as one of the most casually despised men in American history. 

Now we have Obama and his cute little nomenklatura, his tag team of politicians, CEOs, justices, czars, and  professordoktors.  Abiding behind the walls of their gated communities, desperately pawing through every last email sent by a citizen, threatening the lower classes with robot drones.Do they truly come across as a generation of Caesars?

A long time ago, a man said, "there's a lot of ruin in nation." That's the school I belong to.  There's more ruin in the United States than in any other nation in history.  They could gouge at it for next millennium and it would remain standing while their bones crumbled into dust.   Somebody will always be coming up with fracking or founding Tea Parties.  We have no right to despair. 

There was a period in the late 70s when it appeared that the Soviets held all the cards - they were on the march worldwide, in Africa, Asia, and Central America, aided by the same American class that now wants to borrow the country for awhile.  Then Reagan came along and cleaned their clocks, because the Soviet system had no future.  It was based on nothing -- a series of gestures covering up sheer emptiness.  The same is true here.  So fear God and dread naught.  We will once again take our rest unafraid beneath our vines and fig trees.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/the_ruling_elite_settles_in.html#ixzz2e7nAl0ga

'Dreamer' Website Teaches Illegal Immigrants 'How To Lie Successfully'

If you're an illegal immigrant worried about being caught, help is only a mouse click away. An article from the radical website DreamActivist.org will give you a quick lesson on how to lie about your status. It's all part of the aggressive pro-illegal immigration 'Dreamer movement' that is leading the fight for "comprehensive" immigration reform, with a boost from President Barack Obama and many in Congress.

The "Dreamers" are illegal immigrants who were brought into the country by their parents. They've become the darlings of the media, garnering both positive press and an executive order by President Obama in 2012, offering them legal status if they met certain requirements and paid a $465 fee. Even that controversial end-run around Congress, however, wasn't enough for the Dream activists as they pursued an agenda that rejects the idea of borders and deportation entirely.

The theatrical direct-actions of the Dreamers have intensified in recent months, including the 'Dream 9' activists who went to Mexico and then came back into the United States using an asylum claim. The avowed and proud illegal immigrants have used in-your-face social justice tactics for years, however, showing a dedication and a long-term view that opponents of amnesty would do well to note.

The Dreamer movement has been pushing the edge of the envelope in both their goals and tactics. They are gaining ground. The ACLU recently called Dreamers 'the face of immigration reform movement' and wrote:

But as important as their stories have been to the immigration reform movement, we can't lose sight of the critical organizing DREAMers have been engaged in for years, pushing not only for the DREAM Act, but also for creating an environment where voices as disparate as Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) can vote "Yes" to move sweeping immigration reform legislation out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

So, what sort of enviroment have they created? An example of the Dreamers long-term animosity towards any enforcement of immigration laws is a 2009 article on the DreamActivist.org site entitled Particulars and Universals #3: Tips on How to Lie Successfully.
 
The anonymous author of the article doesn't see a problem with the fact that illegal immigrants are violating the law. The problem is they aren't good at lying.

…many undocumented youths conceal their immigration status when faced with potentially awkward questions, but the problem is that they absolutely suck at it. When faced with an instance in which they have to lie, they come up with a myriad of half-hearted excuses that they think up on the spot.

In order to help solve the "problem" of bad lying, the Dream Activist site gives a few tips on lying more effectively. Tip #1 is 'Think up a lie beforehand', while Tip #3 is 'Be consistent.'

Create lies that are close to the truth and easy to keep track of. Think up lies that you know you can be absolutely consistent about. Write them down in a notepad if you must.

The article also suggests that illegal immigrants can 'pretend that you’re an international student who has been taking public education in the U.S. since elementary school.' 

The article stresses 'this post is for tips on how to lie only to your friends and acquaintances' and suggests never lying to officials 'in writing' but also says:

I’d like to take a moment here and stress that not lying does not mean having to reveal the truth. You have the right to remain silent. In fact, do not confess that you’re undocumented if you’re approached by immigration officials; know your rights.

The author also says "I know that it’s a bit corruptive to give young people tips on how to lie well" but they justify it immediately by saying that illegal immigrants understandably want to lie so they don't 'feel very dispirited.' 

The Dream Activist site was co-founded by Peruvian Maria Marroquin, self-indentifed Fijian law school graduate Prerna Lal, and Iranian gay activist Mohammad Abdollahi. The site says it 'would not be possible' without the help of people like Lizbeth Mateo, one of the 'Dream 9' Activists previously profiled by Breitbart News  for her claim to have been employed by a Washignton D.C. based community organizing group.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/05/Dreamer-Website-Teaches-Illegal-Immigrants-How-To-Lie-Successfully