Archive for the ‘Guest Opinion’ Category

Obama’s ‘Red’ Spiritual Advisor

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Barack Obama’s ‘Red’ Spiritual Advisor
by David Noebel
Summit.org

This piece originally appeared on worldnetdaily.com on March 26, 2009.

El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that’s because North America is moving in the same direction. The President of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red.

According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of the nation of El Salvador. Behind Funes “is a party of former Marxist guerrillas that fought to overthrow U.S.-backed governments in the 1980s and whose rise to power has raised fears of a communist regime in the war-scarred Central American country.”

The AP admits “ex-guerrillas will almost certainly form part of the Funes government, including Vice President-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a rebel commander-turned-congressman.”

And then there’s the “drug” connection! Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) reports that “last May, the FMLN confessed to ‘a relationship’ with Colombia’s drug-trafficking FARC Marxist terrorists after documents found on the computer of dead FARC chieftain Raul Reyes, killed in a 2008 raid, proved it” (March 16, 2009).

Funes, of course, says he’ll “govern moderately, more like Brazil ‘socialist’ President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva than Venezuela’s radical [communist] Hugo Chavez.” Of course, this is what the Nicaraguan communist Daniel Ortega said, too, before he displayed his Communist “proletariat morality” by hugging the Communist dictators Castro and Chavez. Ortega and all his South American pals are hardcore Marxist-Leninists.

While all of this, of course, is relevant to an ardent free-market capitalist, what really frightens me is that Obama’s latest announced “spiritual advisor” has had connections with all these Marxist regimes. And who is the President’s latest advisor? The Rev. Jim Wallis!

FrontPageMagazine (March 17, 2009) reports, “The most notable of [Obama's] spiritual advisors today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis.” Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have “been talking faith and politics for a long time.” He was picked by Obama to draft the faith-based policies of his campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado in 2008. Why should this alarm us?

First, Jim Wallis has had relationships with the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

Second, his “Witness for Peace” was an attempt to defend the Nicaraguan Sandinistas! Wallis, together with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama’s former pastor of 20 years) “rallied support for the communist Nicaraguan regime and protested actions by the United States which supported the anti-communist Contra rebels” (Family World News, February 2009, p. 7).

Third, Wallis and his Sojourners community of fellow-travelers believe Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, and the other revolutionary forces “restructuring socialist societies” are the Communist paradises the United States needs to emulate in order to establish “social justice.” Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, Jacob Laksin notes, “Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of Communist revolutions in Central America” (Laksin, “Sojourners: History, Activities and Agendas” in Discoverthenetworks.org., 2005).

The ugly truth is Wallis wishes to see the destruction of the United States as a nation and in its place “a radical nonconformist community” patterned after the progressive, socialist commune he established in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Laksin, Ibid.). (more…)

George Soros

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Observer-Examiner Editors’ Note:  Mr. George Soros, of Open Society Institute, Media Matters, Move On.Org, and NARAL Now, and a strong Obama campaign supporter, invested $811 Million into Brazil’s state owned oil company, Petrobras, recently(WSJ/FoxNews).  It is further reported that the investment represents an estimated 22% of Mr. Soros’ total financial holdings.

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Too bad it’s not in U.S. waters.

The Wall Street Journal-Opinion Page
Aug. 18, 2009

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. (more…)

U S Tax Dollars Hard at Work in Brazil

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Wednesday, August 19,2009, 12:10am

by Sarah Palin

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan. (more…)

Hate Crime Bill against Constitution

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

By Nat Hentoff

Nat Hentoff, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

Added to cato.org on July 31, 2009

This article appeared in the Pasadena Star News on July 30, 2009.

THROUGHOUT the Bush-Cheney creation of a society under surveillance and unprecedented government secrecy, I have often praised Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for resisting that administration’s penchant for degrading the Constitution. But on July 16, he proudly watched as the Senate passed his “hate crimes” bill (the Matthew Shepard Act) that is the biggest expansion of federal hate-crimes laws since 1968 – providing extra prison time to committers of violent acts perceived to be based on sexual orientation, gender identity or disability (adding to the previous classifications of race, color, religion or national origin).

On the Senate floor, John McCain, R-Ariz., cut to the unconstitutional core of this bill and all such “hate crime” legislation. Leahy’s bill, as of this writing, the president is eager to sign.

Said [John] McCain: “Our legal system is based on identifying, capturing and punishing criminals, and not on using the power of government to try to divine biases.” In opposing what James Madison condemned as “thought crimes,” McCain added: “Crimes motivated by hate deserve vigorous prosecution, but so do crimes motivated by absolute wanton disregard for life of any kind.” No matter against whom. (more…)

Expanding Double Jeopardy

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

By David Rittgers

David Rittgers, an attorney and decorated former Army Special Forces officer who served three tours in Afghanistan, is now a legal-policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Added to cato.org on August 7, 2009

This article appeared in National Review (Online) August 7, 2009.

Welcome to a new age of double jeopardy. The hate-crime statute just passed by Congress expands the potential for federal prosecutions to chilling new levels, and even creates the possibility of retrials for crimes that have already been ruled on by state courts. In one fell swoop, lawmakers have virtually ensured legal proceedings that obviously violate the Bill of Rights and this, for some reason, is being widely hailed as a triumph of justice.

The lack of rigorous debate over this policy is ominous. In the Senate, the hate-crime legislation was not even adopted as a stand-alone measure, but as an add-on to another bill. This relative stealth aside, the flourish of the president’s signature pen will radically redraw the boundaries between state and federal jurisprudence. (more…)