A Picture worth at Least $1.7 Million and Counting

Constitution in decline

By Joseph Postell, Special to The Washington Times

It’s time to reform our administrative state. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she said Congress would have to “pass the health care bill so you can find out what’s in it.” That’s because the health care bill, like most major laws passed by Congress over the past hundred years, isn’t really a law. Rather, Obamacare is a series of assignments to bureaucrats in the Department of Health and Human Services. It is emblematic of what scholars call the administrative state, where legislative, executive and judicial powers are delegated to unaccountable experts sequestered in a fourth branch of government.

If we are seeking the most effective means of defending – and restoring – the Constitution, we must pay attention to the rise of the administrative state and the decline of constitutional government in the United States.

The Founders confronted a basic problem: How to vest government with sufficient power to get things done without giving it the instruments to exercise tyrannical control? To protect individual liberty and rights, they established (among others) two basic principles at the center of our constitutional order: representation and the separation of powers. To assure that government operated by consent, they provided that those responsible for making laws would be held accountable through elections. Moreover, legislative, executive and judicial power would be separated so those who made the laws were not in charge of executing and applying them.

Arizona to California

Government Makes Payments to Mosque It Considers Radical

Family Security Matters

Federal law enforcement officials call it a front for Hamas terrorists which “has been under numerous investigations for financing and [providing] aid and comfort to bad orgs and members.”

The U.S. Census Bureau calls it landlord.

In gearing up for the 2010 Census, the General Services Administration (GSA) leased office space throughout the country. One location is a 6,654 square foot section of a two-story building on Edsall Road in Alexandria, Va. owned by the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque. The United States government is spending $582,000, or about $23,000 per month, to lease the space from November 2008 through the end of this year.

The GSA helped the Commerce Department find office space for the Census. A GSA spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment or for clarification of the lease’s true cost. Fairfax County property records indicate that Dar Al-Hijrah bought the 40,000-square-foot building in May 2008 for $5.8 million.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism obtained the reports referencing Dar al-Hijrah through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records related to a brief detention of Awlaki. Those records were copies of TECS reports – a computer database operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Some of the reports released to the IPT are redacted.

TECS data generally provides a summary narrative and referral to more detailed case references and case agent contacts.

The TECS reports dated in 2002 obtained under this FOIA stated that Dar Al-Hijrah was “associated with Islamic extremists” and was “operating as a front for Hamas operatives in U.S.” A report dated in December, 2007, said the mosque “has been linked to numerous individuals linked to terrorism financing” and “has also been associated with encouraging fraudulent marriages.” Another December 2007 report advised Dar Al-Hijrah, “has been under numerous investigations for financing and proving (sic) aid and comfort to bad orgs and members.”

The TECS reports indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) generated the information.

Federal law enforcement officials have become well acquainted with Dar al-Hijrah over the years.

It was home to radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, today considered the inspiration to Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hassan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who tried to detonate an explosive in his underpants on a flight to Detroit Christmas Day. Reports also indicate that Times Square attempted bomber Faisal Shahzad was inspired in part by Awlawki.

In February, Dar Al-Hijrah hosted a fundraiser for Sabri Benkahla, who is serving a 10-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in 2007 for obstruction of justice, perjury before a grand jury, and making false official statements to the FBI in the course of an investigation into the Virginia Jihad terror cell.

Other mosque founders and officials have been implicated in Hamas-support efforts.

One founder, Ismail Elbarasse, was an assistant to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. It was in Elbarasse’s former home in Northern Virginia that FBI agents found a trove of internal documents from the Palestine Committee, a Hamas-support network in America created by the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to an FBI memorandum, Mohammad al-Hanooti was known publicly as “an active HAMAS supporter, purportedly holding fund-raising activities, as well as supporting visitors to the United States from Israel and Jordan, to speak on behalf of HAMAS.” Al-Hanooti was Dar Al-Hijrah’s imam from 1995-1999.

A former mosque trustee, Abdulhaleem Al-Ashqar, was convicted of contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to testify about Hamas fundraising in the U.S. He helped organize a 1993 meeting of Hamas members and sympathizers in Philadelphia.

Attempts to obtain a copy of the lease from the GSA have been unsuccessful. A written request for a copy was submitted April 13, and its receipt was confirmed by a spokeswoman. The IPT sent a list of questions about the lease arrangement and the contents of the TECS reports to the GSA last Wednesday. A spokeswoman said the agency was “working on it,” but could not say if it would ever issue a response.

In addition to the Census office, the Edsall Road building is home to a school run by the mosque and the Muslim American Society (MAS). A 2004 Chicago Tribune investigation found that MAS was the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Some of this information is publicly available. And the GSA could have learned about the DHS TECS reports by requesting a Federal Protective Service background check on its vendor.

The contract expires at the end of the year.

Source:

Embracing dhimmitude

America Thinker

America is tip-toeing across an important line: we are becoming dhimmis, infidels cowed into observing sharia law against our wills. We are engaged in submission. Mohammed may not be represented in our media. Ask Parker and Stone of South Park. Or, better yet, ask CNN, which covers up a cartoon of Mohammed, while reporting on threats against Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks:

Vilks is being harrassed and threatened, as dhimmitude’s enforcers operate in Europe. AFP reports:

[Vilks], who sparked controversy in 2007 by drawing Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog, was attacked Tuesday while giving a lecture at a university, police said.

“The man was sat in the first row and suddenly he rushed at me. He punched me in the head and I lost my glasses,” said Vilks, adding that at the very most he was “a little bruised.”

Police said around 250 people were present at the time of the attack at Uppsala University, north of Stockholm.

“When Lars Vilks arrived, five persons started to protest against him with screaming. They calmed down and the lecture continued,” police said.

When Lars Vilks talked about religion and showed a film, 20 persons tried to attack him, probably offended by the film.”

What is at stake is nothing less than our liberty. Americans are giving up free speech when the subject is Islam. Jihad is gaining ground.

Source:

Oops! Obamacare Will Cost $115 Billion More and Counting

Human Events

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a new estimate yesterday of the cost of Democrats’ government takeover of health care.  The new estimate shows Obamacare will cost at least $115 billion more than first claimed.

The CBO continues to sort through the consequences of the Democrats’ smoke and mirror accounting just as the White House launches its campaign to try to convince the public that Obamacare is not as bad as it really is.

“Before trying to ‘sell’ the new health care law, the Obama administration may want to be honest about how much it’s going to cost American taxpayers,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio).  “This new CBO analysis showing that the new health care law will cost at least $115 billion more than advertised provides ample cause for alarm.  This comes just weeks after the Obama administration itself released an analysis confirming that the new law actually increases Americans’ health care costs.”

Investigators: Obama uses Connecticut Soc. Sec. #

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

NEW YORK – Two private investigators working independently are asking why President Obama is using a Social Security number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.

In addition, the records indicate the number was issued between 1977 and 1979, yet Obama’s earliest employment reportedly was in 1975 at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream shop in Oahu, Hawaii.

WND has copies of affidavits filed separately in a presidential eligibility lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia by Ohio licensed private investigator Susan Daniels and Colorado private investigator John N. Sampson.

Hold fire, earn a medal

U.S. Navy Times

U.S. troops in Afghanistan could soon be awarded a medal for not doing something, a precedent-setting award that would be given for “courageous restraint” for holding fire to save civilian lives.

The proposal is now circulating in the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, a command spokesman confirmed Tuesday.

“The idea is consistent with our approach,” explained Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis. “Our young men and women display remarkable courage every day, including situations where they refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians. In some situations our forces face in Afghanistan, that restraint is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those seen in combat actions.”

Soldiers are often recognized for non-combat achievement with decorations such as their service’s commendation medal. But most of the highest U.S. military decorations are for valor in combat. A medal to recognize a conscious effort to avoid a combat action would be unique.

Consideration of such an award, first reported by an Associated Press reporter in Afghanistan, doesn’t mean that, if approved, troops would be pressured to prevent such casualties at risk to themselves, Sholtis said.