Progressive Illiberalism

NRO

 

"Consider, for a moment, how we arrived at the current state of the Hobby Lobby controversy: Ages ago, members of Congress, including a large majority of Democrats, came to believe that the justices of the Supreme Court, notably Justice Antonin Scalia, were taking too narrow a view of the religious liberties secured by the First Amendment. So Congress passed, with overwhelming bipartisan support and the signature of President Bill Clinton, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which requires that when the federal government significantly burdens the exercise of religious liberties, it must do so in the least intrusive fashion.

 

"Along comes the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a massive transfer of power to the unelected bureaucracies, which empowered the Obama administration to issue regulations that burdened a religious liberty..."

 

... There is an ongoing debate on the right about what to call our antagonists on the left. “Liberal” is the traditional word, and one that we still employ out of habit, but the Left is anything but liberal — in the matter of contraception as in the matter of free speech, it is fundamentally and incorrigibly illiberal.

While we're on the subject....
Pew Poll: 77% of Conservatives Back Israel, Support Falls To Just 39% For Liberals…

She Was Tired of Being Photoshopped, So Here’s What She Did About It.

{LIFE}BUZZ   "Grammy Award-winning, singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat released her new EP, Gypsy Heart Side A. Her album’s lead single “Try” makes a powerful statement about beauty ideals."

 

Obama says he'd be seen as moderate Republican in 1980s

 

The Hill    ... "Conservatives frequently raise concern that Obama has turned the U.S. toward socialism, pointing to Obama's healthcare law and the stimulus bill the president championed shortly after taking office. 

"After Obama won reelection, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Fox News said his win would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy because "Obama's socialist policies" will "destroy America's working class as he outsources opportunities."

"Obama made the latest comments in response to a question about why he did well in the election with Cuban-American voters in Florida who could be concerned about the U.S. moving toward socialism because of their experiences with Fidel Castro.

" 'I don't know that there are a lot of Cubans or Venezuelans, Americans who believe that," Obama said."...  Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/272957-obama-says-his-economic-policies-so-mainstream-hed-be-seen-as-moderate-republican-in-1980s#ixzz37Y52OGvM

Swarm! Swarm! Swarm!

Israel PM Netanyahu accepts Egyptian ceasefire proposal

Many Arab-wise analysts look on this as  nothing more that a Hudna, a muslim trick to stop the fighting when they're getting their tails handed to them. This allows them to regroup and make better preparations for the next round of fighting.

... "As for Hamas, they have proven time and again their commitment to a tactical hudna — replenishing their strength during the quiet periods, then returning with increased deadliness. As recently documented by The Washington Institute, Hamas agreed to no less than ten ceasefires in the past ten years, and after every single one returned freshly armed for terror. Hundreds of Israeli citizens have paid for these hudnas with their lives." ...

Legal Insurrection   "Egypt has offered a cease fire proposal, as reported by Haaretz at its live blog (times are Israel time):" ...

10:29 P.M. Sources in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry say Egypt has proposed a cease-fire outline to Israel and Gaza: The cease-fire will start at 9 A.M., meaning Israel will stop aerial, naval and ground operations against the Gaza Strip and promise not to engage in a ground offensive or harm civilians. At the same time, all the Palestinian factions will hold their fire...
...

"This presents an obvious problem for Hamas.

"There are differing assessments of how much pressure its leadership is under, hidden beneath apartment buildings and hospitals it knows Israel will not bomb. Regardless, Hamas will have failed to score any damaging blows to Israel, but will have caused the deaths of almost 200 Palestinians dead and a thousand terrorist locations destroyed.

"Also, Hamas made demands for a ceasefire, including the release of terrorists released in the Shalit deal but subsequently rearrested. If those demands are not met, Hamas’ inevitable claims of victory will be hard to play."  
...
"For the ceasefire to take effect, all the Palestinian terrorist groups would have to hold their fire. Who even knows if that could happen.

"What’s in it for Israel?

"For one, it avoids a ground invasion which almost certainly would have brought international condemnation upon it. For the first time the international community mostly sat this one out for the past week — remarkable actually. It reflects the understanding that Hamas and other terrorist factions started the conflict, and the isolation of Hamas from Egypt and other Arab countries.

"Israel didn’t achieve it’s goal of crushing Hamas, but it inflicted serious damage. Invading and holding Gaza again really is not an option.

"But no one should think this is the last of it."

The Conservatives Who Deserve Blame for the Border Breakdown

I believe the motives of those who passed this law in 2008 were un-sordid and more honorable that I feel today's Democrat objectives are. Nevertheless:

John T. Bennett   "The conservative commentators who advocated a “path to citizenship” after the 2012 election bear partial blame for the current wave of illegal immigrants from Central America. Many of those who advocated for amnesty following the 2012 election are now complaining that people indeed came expecting that amnesty. But there is also an unbelievably bad policy at the root of the problem.

"The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 is the awful piece of legislation that is allowing tens of thousands of illegal aliens to be released and remain in America while awaiting “deportation hearings” that we all know are a sham.

"It is not ironic at all that that a law intended “to combat human trafficking” has facilitated human smuggling. It is
not ironic because this is precisely the outcome we should expect from immigration policy designed by multicultural elites. Our inept and corrupt political class, with their utter disregard for our sovereignty, simply does not seem to care about the consequences of the laws they pass.

John Bennett is a writer whose work has appeared in The Daily Caller, Townhall.com, World Net Daily, Human Events, Liberty Unyielding, Accuracy in Media, and FrontPage Magazine, among others.  He has appeared as a featured guest on the Laura Ingraham, Jerry Doyle, and Lars Larson programs

Having said all that, Michael Barone's point is "that was then, this is now":

Obama pays price for inaction on immigration law   ... "The second thing that led to the flood of underage illegals was Obama’s declaration in June 2012, five months before the election, that he would not enforce immigration laws against so-called “dreamers,” young adults brought over the border illegally as children who also met certain conditions." ...

Gaza Situation Report

STRATFOR  ... "From a purely military standpoint, the issue has been Hamas's search for a deterrent to Israeli operations against Gaza. Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009 disrupted Gaza deeply, and Hamas found itself without any options beyond attempts to impose high casualties on Israeli forces. But the size of the casualties in Cast Lead did not prove a deterrent. 

"Hamas augmented its short-range rocket arsenal with much longer-range rockets. The latest generation of rockets it has acquired can reach the population center of Israel: the triangle of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. However, these are rockets, not missiles. That means they have no guidance system, and their point of impact once launched is a matter of chance. Given these limits, Hamas hoped having a large number of rockets of different ranges would create the risk of substantial Israeli civilian casualties, and that that risk would deter Israel from action against Gaza.

"The threat posed by the rockets was in fact substantial. According to senior Israeli Air Force officers quoted on the subject, Israel lacked intelligence on precisely where the rockets were stored and all the sites from which they might be launched. Gaza is honeycombed with a complex of tunnels, many quite deep. This limits intelligence. It also limits the ability of Israeli airborne munitions from penetrating to their storage area and destroying them. " ...Read more: Gaza Situation Report | Stratfor
 

"Gaza Situation Report is republished with permission of Stratfor."

Yes, I know the fear and the panic, but I also know that while I was scared for a while in Israel, I am frightened in Sweden, all the time.

Fear not, Israel; take comfort in knowing that millions of Muslims and peace groups around the world are demonstrating against the murderous attacks on Israeli families being done in the name of Islam.

Jerusalem Post

Bomb shelter in Beersheba

 

... " '15 seconds," I said. "15 seconds to make sure that you and the people you love are safe. Imagine the terror, imagine the fear, and imagine not knowing the outcome.' "...

 

... "We run into the street and I see hordes of people running in the same direction. A group of men from the shul down the street, an old woman carrying a pink bag, heavy with vegetables, a small family just coming back from a day at the beach. They disappear into the building across the street, so I grab the kids by the hand and I follow them. The room is cool, or maybe it’s just me, shaking with chills. Children are sitting on the floor, a young man is on the phone with his mother, my own children are quiet, and the oldest is fighting back tears- watching my face as to see how scared he is supposed to be. I am just about to try and tell them something when I hear the boom. It’s so much louder than I had expected. I feel it in the floor, the impact traveling through my entire body." ...

 

Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a political adviser, writer and activist. An alumni of the Young Jewish diplomatic seminar (organized by the Mizrad Hahutz) and Tikvah seminars in NYC. She lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with her two children.

Parade Float Insults Obama, Department of Justice Initiates Investigation

American Thinker  

"The DoJ has determined that the greatest potential threat to the Constitution, our national security and personal freedoms is... a parade float that pokes fun at President Obama.  The threatening float consisted of an outhouse labeled “Obama Presidential Library”.  Omaha.com reports:

The U.S. Department of Justice has joined the discussions over a controversial float in the Norfolk Independence Day parade.

 

The department sent a member of its Community Relations Service team, which gets involved in discrimination disputes, to a Thursday meeting about the issue.

"There are only a finite number of resources at Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, so there's no time or manpower available to look into trivial matters such as NSA spying on Americans, IRS targeting political enemies, or the Veterans Administration allegedly killing thousands of vets and covering it up.

"What kind of paranoid, insecure presidential administration reacts to an insult to their honor with a federal investigation, particularly when there are so many urgent critical threats to Americans that they have refused to investigate?  Even Nixon wasn't this Nixonian.  This is Kim Jong-un territory.

"Thomas Lifson adds: The DoJ Community Relations Service played a shameful role in ginning up racial animus surrounding the trial of George Zimmerman, as documented by Jack Cashill in his book, If I Had a Son. It is best thought of as an agitprop organization with prosecutorial powers.  Andrew Thomas

Think that's bad? See what the Germans did:

 

Investigate THIS:

 

Obama: Dancing Barefoot on the Embers

American Thinker  "I can remember several times when Obama just started to laugh in public at various disasters triggered by his policies.

"Happy laughter now seems to be the official White House reaction to domestic and international chaos and human suffering. You could call it leading with Obama’s big strength --  a great smile on TV -- while avoiding the worst of his weaknesses -- his inability to actually solve anything."  Read more...
...
"Abe Lincoln’s last, best hope of mankind is failing, and the ancient tyrannies of the world are smelling blood. Two and a half more years of Obama, in a world where terrorists now have nuclear materials, and Washington tells us to put on a happy face. Richard Cheney was right, and our political leadership is sailing the ship of state straight onto the rocks."   James Lewis.

Jewellery Blog

‘I,’ ‘Me,’ ‘My’—Obama Uses First Person Singular 199 Times in Speech Vowing Unilateral Action    "By contrast, President Abraham Lincoln’s [Gettysburg] Address was only 272 words--and did not include any form of the first person singular.

"In President Obama’s speech, he used a first person singular, on average, every 12 seconds. At that rate, had Obama spoken for just 15 more minutes, he would have used the first person singular more than 272 times in one speech—exceeding all the words in the Gettysburg Address." ...

UPDATE:

Hamas Military Song Calls on ‘Palestinian” Muslims to “Exterminate” the Jews

Supporters and enablers of these savages will be found among the ranks of Obama supporters and in the Democrat Party as a whole.
You know; the "War is not the answer" crowd.   TD

Pamela Geller    "Songs of extermination — only jihad could produce such anti-human abominations.

"Obama is strong-arming Israel to stop defending herself while Hamas sings military songs of extermination. That’s what America represents under this jihadaphile.

"Had Obama not sanctioned Hamas and said he would work with the Hamas government, this would not be happening.

Hamas ‘Scare Song’ Vows Genocide on Israel

‘Traditional’ song by Hamas ‘military wing’ against Israel calls on Palestinian Arabs to ‘exterminate’ Israeli ‘cockroaches.’

By AFP and Tova Dvorin, July 11, 2014

Hamas terrorists have released a Hebrew version of yet another propaganda ‘scare video,’ AFP reports Friday, translating the lyrics to a popular Hamas battle song calling to ‘exterminate’ Jews and Israel.

The original Arabic version of “Shake Israel’s Security” has long been a popular anthem of Hamas’s “military wing,” the Ezzedine
al-Qassam Brigades. 

 

"Now the Hebrew translation is on the brigades’ YouTube site, proclaiming to a dramatic orchestral accompaniment: “Wipe out all the Zionists…burn soldiers and their bases.”
 
“ 'Exterminate the cockroach nest, expel all the Zionists,” it exhorts.
 
“ 'They are startled by death and hide behind walls and protection,” the brigades’ song jibes. “Rain upon them many rockets. Make their world into a horror.”
 
"Earlier this week, Hamas released two additional “scare videos” targeting Be’er Sheva and Judea-Samaria residents.
 
"The clips feature footage of rockets being launched from a multiple rocket launcher, and bodies being placed in an Israeli ambulance."

 

Oh, The Bear is Loose in America Alright…

American Glob    "Have you heard about this stupid, completely manufactured attempt by the White House to nickname Obama the bear?

"Valerie Jarrett tweeted this today…

 

Valerie Jarrett        ✔ @vj44 Follow

I guess bears drink coffee too. Pres Obama at Magnolia Cafe in Austin #TheBearIsLoose