Are Special Rights for Homosexuals Really Worth Criminalizing Most Religions?

Liberal Logic 101

"Do special rights for some get in the way of civil liberties for others?

"A prominent voice for the historic view of marriage, Ryan T. Anderson, agreed to disagree while speaking at a summit Thursday in Washington, D.C., addressing issues of importance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual activists.

“ 'What we want here is equality under the law, not creating a special category for a protected class,” Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said at The Atlantic LGBT Summit. “Part of freedom is going to have to be the right to disagree about the truth.”

"Mary Louise Kelly, a contributing editor for The Atlantic magazine, said many of about 20 featured speakers at the summit “accept marriage equality as the new normal” and favor of federal anti-discrimination laws like the Equality Act." . . .

"Islamic State Tweets New Map of 5 Year Plan for World Conquest"? Not so, say many

Pamela Geller

"If Hillary takes the White House, the odds are in their favor.

‘ISIS’ Tweets New Map of 5-Year Plan for World Conquest,” By Sam Prince, Heavy, December 10, 2015 (thanks to Christian):

A new map purportedly released by the Islamic State shows Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East drawn-up to show the lands it plans dominate within five years. The map spans countries from Spain in the west to China in the east and includes the new names of the familiar lands if the terrorist state’s “caliphate” prevails.

. . .
Whoa, not so fast; That Map Of The ISIS 5-Year Conquest Plan? Flawed, Experts Say  "ABC News' headline read: “See the Terrifying ISIS Map Showing its 5-Year Expansion Plan.” It traced the map back not to the Sunni militant group, but to A3P, an American political party that promotes white supremacy. Other media organizations that published the map include The Daily Mail, The Blaze, a conservative news site founded by Glenn Beck, and iO9, a blog launched by Gawker Media in 2008.
. . . 
"Although ISIS has garnered new weaponry from its conquests in Iraq, analysts have said it is not likely to take over land outside of the region. Austin Long, a professor at Columbia University, said the group is not even sure if it can take on Baghdad, let alone invade another country."

                                                                                                                                  Steve Proulx

Reagan and Cruz: Unelectable

Fritz Pettyjohn  "For political veterans, much of what we're starting to hear about Ted Cruz has an eerily familiar ring. Too extreme. Unelectable. Scares people. A radical, not a conservative.

"The American people will hear a lot about Cruz's extremism in the year ahead, just as they were told about Reagan’s. It may cause them to hesitate before supporting him. But over the course of the campaign they'll be able to make that determination for themselves. In fact, Ted Cruz represents the mainstream of conservative thought in this country, just as Reagan did two score years ago. Reagan's victory vindicated everything we'd been saying for twenty years. A Cruz win next year would do so again." . . .
. . . 
"There are a lot of parallels between 1980 and today. Economic malaise, war weariness, and a general sense that things are spinning out of control. Carter and Obama have both been weak commanders in chief. Back then we were worried about the Soviet Union. Today it's radical Islam. Then we had Reagan.

"Now we have Cruz."
Fritz Pettyjohn is a former Alaska State Legislator, Alaska Chairman of Reagan for President, 1979-1980, and a Co-founder of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force. He blogs daily at ReaganProject.com

Our Superstitious President

Victor Davis Hanson

. . . "In short, Obama is the most anti-science, anti-factual president in modern memory.

The president has warned the nation, usually on the most inappropriate and untimely occasions, of the American tendency to give into Islamophobia. But to support such an assumed pathology, the president adduced no evidence that Americans are more likely to target Muslims than other groups.

"If we were to rely on “scientific” research, there is statistical evidence that in general hate crimes in the U.S. are rare, and that in particular they tend to focus on Jews. The most recent survey (2014) of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program shows 58% of hate crimes were directed at Jews, just 16% toward Muslims. Thus, if the president felt that there was a real danger of American citizens or residents harming others due to their religions, then obviously he would warn us not to attack Jews, who suffer more hate crimes than all other religious groups combined.

"As a student of science, Obama might incorporate such findings in his pop editorializing, for example, not sloppily characterizing the deliberate sorting and murdering of four Jews in a Paris delicatessen as if it were random attack on “a bunch of folks” (e.g., “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”)." . . .

Obama Is Not Who We Are

Clarice Feldman  "The Washington Free Beacon has put together a video montage of Obama using his catchphrase, “it’s not who we are” 46 times.

"The video editor, David Rutz, observes:

Not unlike his warning to political opponents that they may be on the “wrong side of history,” the expression is useful in its ability to shut down conversation and seize a moral high ground, however imaginary.
Obama has deployed the term to convince the country of his rightness on immigration, Obamacare, education, national security and not voting for Mitt Romney, among other important issues to his presidency.

. . .  
"Since there is little flexibility in his thinking, “not who we are” is likely to be used even more to delegitimize his opponents as his term in office runs down, his popularity sinks, and he becomes ever more desperate to stifle mounting criticism.

"No matter how many times it’s used, it is a weak debate trick to muzzle his opponents by suggesting that no true American could possibly disagree with his point of view.

"Allow me to turn the tables and point out some of the multiple instances when Obama’s actions are not what we are. I know there are many others, but these stand out in my mind right now."  Read the full article here.
. . . 
"Undoubtedly, Obama’s claim that this or that is not who “we are”, depends on the meaning of “we.” Maybe some smart journalist can ask him."

Does this mean we never have to hear about ‘solving’ global warming again!?

Two from Drudge:
Climate Depot   . . . t: "We had one UK scientist, Philip Stott, who has said there are quite literally hundreds of factors governing global climate. For the UN to pick  one politically-selected factor -- CO2 -- and then try to tweak it at the margins and then come up with some temperature goal 50 -100 years in the future, is akin to scientific nonsense. You could call it modern day witchcraft."

James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks 'a fraud'

. . . "Brickbats are thrown in a bipartisan way. Hansen feels Obama, who has made climate change a legacy issue in his final year in office, has botched the opportunity to tackle the issue." . .

Obama: 'Our Most Important Mission' Realized in Climate Agreement  "But the GOP leader of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee called agreement of the Conference of Parties (COP21) pursuant to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change "no more significant to the United States than the Kyoto Protocol announcement 18 years ago.' "

Weasel of the Week Chosen

Nice Deb  "Yes, once again, It’s time to present this week’s statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

"Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner…the envelope please…

"Prog-Faschist New York Daily News Columnist Linda Stasi !!

"The aptly named columnist “blamed of the victim” and engaged in gross moral relativism in her horrific Dec. 6 article asserting “that the interaction between ‘two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees’ led to the deaths of ’13 innocent people’ who were killed in an act of “unspeakable carnage.. ”

"The post’s title read: “San Bernardino Killers Were ISIS-Loving Monsters — But One of Their Victims Was Just as Bigoted.”

. . . "But in terms of the weaselness which we commemorate here, Ms. Stasi is perfect. She has her morality disengaged and will twist, warp and/or excuse anything as long as it helps the Cause, even if it means dragging a murder victim’s name through the mud before his corpse is even cold and while his family is still in mourning."

 . . . 

Terrific Ad Hitting Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama: Leading From Behind

Weasel Zippers

Another Casualty Of Obamacare, Nashville Deli Open For 20 Years, Now Closing…

Weasel Zippers

"After being released from job lock, the employees can become artists and street performers.

"Via Daily Signal:

"If you ask Tom Loventhal, a deli is no more than a place to provide customers with comfort food.

"Whether it’s breakfast—served all day—soup or a sandwich, Loventhal’s motto has always been that at his Nashville, Tenn.,-based deli, “anyone is welcome here from ages 0 to 99, because you’ll find something on the menu.”

"And for nearly two decades, Loventhal has stayed true to his motto at his restaurant, Noshville Authentic New York Delicatessen (“nosh” meaning to eat), where he’s kept more than half of the same employees on the payroll for at least 10 years and one-quarter of his workers for nearly 15 years.

"Loventhal of course has his regulars, who he says come into the deli at least four times a week and take their usual seats at the counter, and he’s seen three generations of customers—the parents had kids, and now those same kids are having kids.

“ 'The loyalty, people just come back,” he told The Daily Signal. “We have good service and consistent good food. It’s just a fun place to come in and eat.”

"But come Dec. 27, the midtown Nashville location of the restaurant, one of two Loventhal owns, will be closing its doors in part because of Obamacare, he said." . . .

 “ 'It’s an onerous bill, and for a small business, it’s a lot of time [to comply],” he said. “I’ve been studying this for three years, and I really couldn’t come up with a good answer, and I feel sorry for closing this business.' ”

Final draft of climate deal readied in Paris

Rick Moran  "After weeks of wrangling, the thousands of officials attending the Paris Climate Conference look to approve a final draft of an agreement that would phase out the use of fossil fuels over the next few decades and transfer trillions of dollars from rich to poor nations to help the latter pay for the effects of global warming.
Or enrich the personal bank accounts of third world kleptocrats - take your pick.
This is not a treaty. It is a statement of intent from every country on the planet to meet ambitious goals to reduce carbon emissions. 
Reuters:

. . . Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal agreed in 1997, the Paris pact will also not be a legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly fail to pass the U.S. Congress. Instead, it will be largely up to each nation to pursue greener growth in its own way, making good on detailed pledges submitted ahead of the two-week summit.
And in the United States, many Republicans will see the pact as a dangerous endeavor that threatens to trade economic prosperity for an uncertain if greener future.

. . . "So in essence, we are expected to rip trillions of dollars out of the US economy over the next few decades and ask the American taxpayer to give billions a year to a climate change fund, based on nothing more than predictive models that so far, have failed miserably to accurately predict anything."

Alan Caruba, your voice of wisdom and reason are sorely missed.  R.I.P.

False: Valerie Jarrett wants America to be more Islamic

Snopes

"Quoted from Valerie Jarrett:

" 'I am an Iranian by birth and of my Islamic faith. I am also an American Citizen and I seek to help change America to be a more Islamic country. My faith guides me and I feel like it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself." 

"Valerie Jarrett, Stanford University 1977 

"Contrary to common rumor, however, neither Jarrett nor her parents are Iranian, nor (as far as we can tell) are any of them Muslim. Jarrett's parents, James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman, were both American-born U.S. citizens from Washington, D.C. and Chicago, respectively; the couple merely lived in Iran for about six years in the late 1950s and early 1960s while James served as chair of pathology at Nemazee Hospital in Shiraz as part of a program that sent American physicians to work in developing countries. 

"Valerie was born in Shiraz during the Bowmans' sojourn in Iran; she returned to the U.S. with her parents in 1962 (when she was five years old), whereupon she attended prep school in Massachusetts, graduated with a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and earned a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981 before returning to Chicago to begin her working career. We've found no evidence Valerie Jarrett is (or ever was) Muslim, her only apparent connection to that religion being the incidental one that she temporarily lived in a predominantly Muslim country with her American parents for the first few years of her life. " . . .

While many who do not like this president would like to believe he is creating the Islamization of America, we do need to make sure our claims are based in truth and can be taken seriously. There are too many real reasons to oppose this administration without our inventing any. TD

Kudlow: I’ve Changed. This Is War. Seal the Borders. Stop the Visas.

A hardline shift from an immigration reformer.

Larry Kudlow  "I know this is not my usual position. But this is a war. Therefore I have come to believe there should be no immigration or visa waivers until the U.S. adopts a completely new system to stop radical Islamic terrorists from entering the country. A wartime lockdown. And a big change in my thinking. ISIS and related Islamic terrorists are already here. More are coming. We must stop them. Until FBI director James Comey gives us the green light, I say seal the borders.

"Here’s what we must do: Completely reform the vetting process for immigrants and foreign visitors. Change the screening process. Come up with a new visa-application review process. Stop this nonsense of marriage-visa fraud. And in the meantime, seal the borders. I agree with Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, who argued many of these points in excellent detail on the National Review website on Friday. 

"Again, why am I taking this hardline position? In the past I have been an immigration reformer, not a restrictionist. But we are at war. That changes everything." . . .

"And let me add, as I have in the past, if the U.S. has the will, the urgency, and the energy to destroy ISIS, then we will destroy ISIS."