U.S. Capitol Tour with David Barton:

Ed Lasky at American Thinker:

The tangled web woven by George Soros served as a safety net for Barack Obama when he needed rescue from the exposure of Jeremiah Wright as an America-hating radical. Pastor Jim Wallis lied about receiving money from George Soros’s Open Society Institute. His organization, Sojourners, is a leftist “social justice” type of ministry. He, and Sojourners, have a history with Barack Obama that I have been tracking for a few years. When the Jeremiah Wright scandal erupted, candidate Barack Obama had to find religion — fast. Fortunately, for him, he had a backup Pastor in place and ready to go: Jim Wallis. Apparently, Obama felt right at home with Wallis.

Full story….

Hard on the heels of the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, significant numbers of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. The uncomfortable fact for the White House is the more the American people get to know Mr. Obama, the more they think he is a follower of Islam.

Rumors of Mr. Obama’s purported Muslim identity spread in January of 2007 and were tied to Hillary Rodham Clinton operatives, who denied responsibility. The Obama camp responded that “Barack Obama is not and has never been a Muslim. Obama never prayed in a mosque. He has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim and is a committed Christian who attends [The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's] United Church of Christ.” That seemed definitive.

But in a February 2008 interview with the New York Times, Mr. Obama said the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” He then recited it, “with a first-class [Arabic] accent.” The opening of the Adhan contains the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith, proclaiming, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God.” Stating this before two Muslims is the traditional requirement for joining the Islamic faith.

Read the whole thing….

Gee, I wonder where they get such ideas?

But convoluted logic still rules America’s courts.

In 1934, to honor Americans that served in WWI, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) erected a 5 feet high cross on government owned Sunrise Rock in the Mojave desert. It soon became known colloquially as the Mojave Cross.

In 1994 the area of the cross was incorporated into the Mojave National Preserve.

In 2001 Frank Buono, an assistant superintendent in the park living in Oregon, sued to have the cross removed. He claimed the memorial was unconstitutional because it was on public land and gave the impression that the government was advancing a particular religion. He said he didn’t object to a memorial….He was just offended by the shape of this particular memorial.

Later, Congress approved a land swap of 1 acre under and around the cross to the VFW in exchange for 5 acres of private land adjacent to the park. However the courts simply ignored Congress and allowed the suit to proceed to the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, the court ruled 5-4 that the cross can stay. However, the justices could not get a majority to reach the same conclusion. The nine justices came up with six different written opinions.

Here’s part of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens’ thinking:

In my view, the transfer ordered by §8121 would not end government endorsement of the cross for two independently sufficient reasons. First, after the transfer it would continue to appear to any reasonable observer that the Government has endorsed the cross, notwithstanding that the name has changed on the title to a small patch of underlying land. This is particularly true because the Government has designated the cross as a national memorial, and that endorsement continues regardless of whether the cross sits on public or private land. Second, the transfer continues the existing government endorsement of the cross because the purpose of the transfer is to preserve its display. Congress’ intent to preserve the display of the cross maintains the Government’s endorsement of the cross…

Congressional action, taken after due deliberation, that honors our fallen soldiers merits our highest respect. As far as I can tell, however, it is unprecedented in the Nation’s history to designate a bare, unadorned cross as the national war memorial for a particular group of veterans. Neither the Korean War Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, nor the World War II Memorial commemorates our veterans’ sacrifice in sectarian or predominantly religious ways. Each of these impressive structures pays equal respect to all members of the Armed Forces who perished in the service of our Country in those conflicts. In this case, by contrast, a sectarian symbol is the memorial. And because Congress has established no other national monument to the veterans of the Great War, this solitary cross in the middle of the desert is the national World War I memorial. The sequence of legislative decisions made to designate and preserve a solitary Latin cross at an isolated location in the desert as a memorial for those who fought and died in World War I not only failed to cure the Establishment Clause violation but also, in my view, resulted in a dramatically inadequate and inappropriate tribute.

What’s wrong with this bonehead?

How’s about you ruling to undesignate the memorial, asswipe, or is your whole head just one big bone?

Is there any wonder how we managed to get federal laws so screwed up that nobody can understand them?

The AP says:

Lower federal courts previously ruled that the cross’ location on public land violated the Constitution and that the land transfer was, in effect, an end run around the constitutional problem.

OK. Fine. So what? A federal court found that the government was too close to endorsing — or leaving the impression of endorsing — a religion and the government listened. It stepped back across the line. That should’ve ended this case.

Instead, we expose the reality that Stevens’ thinking has filtered down to lower courts. Stevens and the dunderhead that wrote the order reported by the AP didn’t look at the Constitution before rendering their decisions. They just looked for ways to justify their real desire to order the destruction of the cross.

If the government is caught stepping over the line, the court should say “stop” and that should end the case.

What happens if some HS valedictorian slips in a prayer at graduation? Are we supposed to burn the schoolhouse down?

If a citizen can show damages for the government’s over-stepping, let them sue. We don’t need no stinking social construction from the bench.

Remember this clause from the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;….

That’s it; It’s whole thing on religion. There’s not one word or hint there that if the government finds itself unconstitutionally intertwined with religion it must destroy the religion, the object, the artifact, or what the hell ever it’s intertwined with. The constitution says “shall make no law.” That means both ways: for or against. It does not say that gummit has to act like a bunch of frigging morons in dealing with religion.

NYT story here.

Ms. Paulin-Ramirez’s interest in Islam “came out of left field,” said her mother, Christine Holcomb-Mott, in an interview at her home Friday, wearing a blue sweatsuit with a silver cross around her neck.

How out of left field?

Mr. Mott, a convert to Islam himself, says he went to Denver to find his stepdaughter but couldn’t track her down.

This woman is married to a Muslim, but neither she nor her husband can grok where in the world their murder-plotting daughter/ step-daughter ever got exposed to this worrisome religion that subducts so many of its followers into terrorism.

Their disgust at daughter Jamie sounds sincere, but their blatant dishonesty about how she could have gotten interested in Islam suggests otherwise. It is possible, however, that The Wall Street Journal‘s paraphrase is not precise. If put on the spot, Holcomb-Mott would likely clarify that she has no idea how her daughter ever got interested in murder-cult Islam.

There is a way that this could actually happen: if Mr. Mott is some kind of multiculturalist do-gooder who converted to Islam in sympathy with the idea that “Islam was hijacked too” on 9/11. Such a person could have converted without comprehending the well established Islamic pedigree of violent aggressive jihad.

Don’t scoff. This same “Islam is a victim too” sentiment is right now allowing a giant Mecca oriented crescent to be built on the Flight 93 crash site. After all, it would just be too horrible to reject the Crescent of Embrace memorial simply because it is in the shape of a giant Islamic crescent, not when Islam itself was amongst the victims on that terrible day. No, we must do the opposite and embrace Islam.

If Mott is thinking the same way, he has hardly gone any further than the Memorial Project. But then it seems that his step daughter took one step further still and actually read the Koran, with its endless commands to slaughter the unbelievers. Thus did an unhappy misfit finally find a home for the vicious vindictiveness that the religion of her birth had kept in check.

. . . . .Alec Rawls
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First, Obama bows to the King of Saudi Arabia and the Emperor of Japan. Now comes Best Buy…

From Debbie Schlussel:

Yup, Best Buy wants non-Muslims to spend their Thanksgiving time–and, more important, dollars–at the store. But it only extends holiday greetings to Muslims. Normally, this whoring to Muslims is for dollars or votes. But in this case, Best Buy is whoring to Muslims, yet expecting the Infidel dopes to pay the bills. …Read all about it….

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Roy Beck @ NumbersUSA has posted a long list of groups advocating “immigration reform.” Of course we know that “immigration reform” (from the Left) is an euphemism for open borders and more cheap H1b visa workers to take American jobs.

Here’s an excerpt from Roy’s post:

With 10.2% Unemployment, These Groups Are Lobbying For More Foreign Workers (give them a call)

[...]

LOBBYING FOR MORE FOREIGN WORKERS

Every one of these large organization is pushing Congress to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” that would increase the number of foreign workers to take jobs from Americans:

Examples from the list (the usual suspects):
- American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
- AFL-CIO
- Anti-Defamation League
- Chamber of Commerce (U.S.)
- Change To Win (union)
- Democratic National Committee (DNC)

But the most infuriating names on the list are the hypocritical bastards that head up American religious groups, such as: American Jewish Committee, Catholics, evangelicals, Protestants, et al. All entries at NumbersUSA have contact info: phone numbers, email addresses.

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