The New Inquisition

Victor Davis Hanson

 

... "The president bragged of using "a pen and phone" to circumvent the legislative branch, and urged his supporters to "punish our enemies." The attorney general calls Americans who have different views from his own on matters of affirmative action "cowards."  "All of that them/us rhetoric has given a top-down green light to radical thought police to harass anyone who is open-minded about man-caused global warming, or believes that gay marriage needs more debate, or that supporting Israel is a legitimate cause, or that breaking federal immigration law is still a crime and therefore "illegal."
"Our civil liberties will not be lost to crude fascists in jackboots. More likely, the death of free speech will be the work of the new medieval Torquemadas who claim they destroyed freedom of expression for the sake of "equality" and "fairness" and "saving the planet.' " 

 The New Torquemadas; Brendan Eich would not recant, so he had to be punished.
 

OUR POLITICIZED, WEAPONIZED BUREAUCRACY: Key Lawyer in DOJ Office Charging Dinesh D’Souza is Obama Campaign Donor.

Instapundit  “David Kennedy is the designated District Election Officer in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. According to Federal Election Commission records, Kennedy is also a campaign contributor to Barack Obama as well as to John Kerry. Kennedy has also contributed to state campaigns, including New York Democrat Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz. . . . Not only is DEO Kennedy a Obama campaign contributor, he also has a reputation as a proud and vocal liberal, not afraid to boast about his ideological worldview.”
Full article here.

“While there is no doubt that federal employees are entitled to make political donations, DEOs – who make decisions on the investigation and prosecution of election crimes – should not make such donations,”  Von Spakovsky said.  “Doing so inevitably compromises their credibility and will raise the appearance of bias and a conflict of interest in the eyes of the public.”

The Democrats’ Fake Problems; Democrats, flopping on the economy and health care, try to create new issues.

NRO  

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"The Democrats have made their midterm agenda clear: passing a minimum-wage hike, fighting the menace of the Koch brothers, and expressing loud concern about climate change without actually bringing a cap-and-trade bill to the Senate floor."...
...
"In his first term, President Obama was fond of claiming that Republicans had driven the economy into the ditch. This year, GOP candidates will have an easy argument that the economy is still in the ditch, and our health-care system is now stuck in the mud down there, too."  Full article

The Meltdown of the Obama Genderhawks

They protest male/female imbalances everywhere except in their own workplace.  

 

Michelle Malkin   "Meet genderhawk Jennifer Palmieri. The Clinton-administration veteran faithfully defended a lecherous philanderer-in-chief against what his sexist operatives called “bimbo eruptions.” Then she served as spokeswoman for adulterous crapweasel John Edwards. Now, she is Obama’s communications flack and chief social-media gender warrior. On Tuesday, which Team Obama and its feminist pals dubbed “Equal Pay Day,” Palmieri took to Twitter to call out the sexist White House press corps:" ...

On the road

Tunnel Dweller is away from the computer and will be posting in the evenings instead of the mornings for a number of days. Please be patient.  TD

24-Injured In Stabbing At Franklin Regional High School

Via Drudge  ..."Witnesses said the boy with the knives at first tackled a freshman and stabbed him in the belly, then got up and ran wildly down the hall, slashing other students.

"Nate Moore, 15, said he saw the first attack and was going to try to break it up when the boy got up and slashed his face, requiring 11 stitches.
“It was really fast. It felt like he hit me with a wet rag because I felt the blood splash on my face. It spurted up on my forehead,” he said.

"The attacker “had the same expression on his face that he has every day, which was the freakiest part,” Moore said. “He wasn’t saying anything. He didn’t have any anger on his face. It was just a blank expression.”

"KDKA has confirmed that 16-year-old Alex Hribal is the suspect arrested for the stabbings. He is a sophomore at the high school.

 16-Year-Old Suspect In Custody After Franklin Regional H.S. Stabbing

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the Shame of Brandeis University

The story: Brandeis U. decides against honor for Islam critic   "After taking heat from some of its own over a decision to grant an honorary degree to an advocate for Muslim women who has made comments critical of Islam, Brandeis University withdrew the planned honor Tuesday night.

"The university said in a statement that Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali would no longer receive the honor at the May 18 commencement." ...

The fallout:
WILLIAM KRISTOL:  Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks   ... “ 'Yesterday Brandeis University decided to withdraw an honorary degree they were to confer upon me next month during their Commencement exercises. I wish to dissociate myself from the university’s statement, which implies that I was in any way consulted about this decision. On the contrary, I was completely shocked when President Frederick Lawrence called me—just a few hours before issuing a public statement—to say that such a decision had been made." ...

Again from William Kristol: A Note to Supporters of Brandeis  ... "Brandeis University has in recent years bestowed an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, who called the creation of Israel as a Jewish state “a mistake” and who attacked Israel for ethnic cleansing and for causing “terrible peril in the world.” Brandeis has also honored Desmond Tutu, who compared Israel to Hitler, attacked the “Jewish lobby” as too “powerful” and “scary,” and complained of the “Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.' ”

Brandeis University Rescinds Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Honorary Degree Because She Criticized Islam   ... "She and Theo Van Gogh produced a short film critical of Islam’s treatment of women, called Submission. A Muslim murdered Van Gogh on an Amsterdam street in 2004. His killer used a knife to pin a note to Van Gogh’s body, and in that note he threatened Ali."

Legal Insurrection: The silence of Western feminists is still deafening  
"I’ve been thinking about what to say regarding the decision of Brandeis University to withdraw an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali for an Honorary Degree.
It comes on the heels of attempts to keep The Honor Diaries off campus, The silence of Western feminists is deafening."

John Podhoretz: The Shame of Brandeis 
... "What Lawrence has done here is the nothing less than the act of a gutless, spineless, simpering coward.

"My late uncle, Marver Bernstein, served as the university’s president from 1972 to 1983. I know Marver would have been appalled beyond belief at his shameful successor’s monstrous capitulation to the screaming voices of unreason. As should we all be."



 

Do you know what Dhimmitude is? Everyone should know.

The Washington Times  We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude. I’ve written about dhimmitude periodically, lo, these many years since September 11, but it takes time to sink in. Dhimmitude is the coinage of a brilliant historian, Bat Ye’or, whose pioneering studies of the dhimmi, populations of Jews and Christians vanquished by Islamic jihad, have led her to conclude that a common culture has existed through the centuries among the varied dhimmi populations. From Egypt and Palestine to Iraq and Syria, from Morocco and Algeria to Spain, Sicily and Greece, from Armenia and the Balkans to the Caucasus: Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as “people of the book [the Bible],” were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost." ...  Full Article

BREAKING: House Votes Down Obama’s Budget 2-413…

 

Weasel Zippers   "So all but two House Democrats hate poor people and are heartless racists, right?
"Via The Hill:

The House on Wednesday handily rejected a GOP budget alternative based on President Obama’s 2015 spending blueprint.
It was defeated 2-413, following a pattern seen in recent years in House votes to overwhelmingly reject Obama’s budget proposals. Today’s vote is just slightly better than the unanimous vote against Obama’s budget in 2012.
The two “yes” votes came from Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Jim Moran (D-Va.), who is retiring.

 Full article

What happens when you give radicals an inch

openchangecartoons.

WND  "Every day, Americans receive object lessons in the mind-blowing audacity of the criminals who make up the Obama administration. Indeed, radicals and progressives of prominence simply exude audacity and impudence overall, advancing their immoral and illegal agenda as though the rule of law and the Constitution simply did not exist.

"Occasionally, we’re treated to “one for the books,” as it were.

"During a House Judiciary Committee Hearing this week, Attorney General Eric Holder became irate when Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, suggested that being in contempt of Congress was “not a big deal” to the attorney general. Gohmert was reacting to a perceived lack of forthrightness in Holder’s testimony, referring, or course, to Holder being held in contempt of Congress in June 2012 over the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal.

"“You don’t want to go there, buddy,” Holder responded. “You don’t want to go there, OK?”
....
"Unfortunately, We the People bear some of the blame for the elitist evolution of those in our government. Having reached this point, and with the evidence of our government’s institutional corruption so apparent, we still have millions of Americans who believe President Obama to be a garden variety liberal Democrat, and that Jeb Bush or Chris Christie might be viable GOP offerings for the presidential ticket in 2016."

Rep. Gowdy Questions AG Holder About Duty to Faithfully Execute the Law

Every day, Americans receive object lessons in the mind-blowing audacity of the criminals who make up the Obama administration. Indeed, radicals and progressives of prominence simply exude audacity and impudence overall, advancing their immoral and illegal agenda as though the rule of law and the Constitution simply did not exist.
Occasionally, we’re treated to “one for the books,” as it were.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/what-happens-when-you-give-radicals-an-inch/#40p47uuOP7HcPIu3.99

What happens when you give radicals an inch
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/what-happens-when-you-give-radicals-an-inch/#40p47uuOP7HcPIu3.99

What happens when you give radicals an inch
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/what-happens-when-you-give-radicals-an-inch/#40p47uuOP7HcPIu3.99

What’s To Be Done About Lois Lerner?

Jonathan S. Tobin "There is good reason to believe Lerner violated the law by directing a discriminatory campaign by the tax agency against conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. But neither committee chairman Dave Camp nor any other member of the Republican majority in the House is under any illusions about whether Attorney General Eric Holder and his staff will act on their recommendation. Though the Justice Department has been investigating this scandal since it came to light, there is little reason to believe they will act against Lerner or anyone else involved in the mess at the IRS. "

America’s New Anti-Strategy; Our allies and our enemies have seriously recalculated where the U.S. stands.

Victor Davis Hanson  

"It was not difficult to define American geopolitical strategy over the seven decades following World War II — at least until 2009. It was largely bipartisan advocacy, most ambitiously, for nations to have the freedom of adopting constitutional governments that respected human rights, favored free markets, and abided by the rule of law. And at the least, we sought a world in which states could have any odious ideology they wished as long as they kept it within their own borders. There were several general strategic goals as we calculated our specific aims, both utopian and realistic."
....
"Who knows? But most people abroad fear that we have entered a very dangerous period. It is becoming clear that the United States cannot continue on its present course and still be the United States, and without the United States in the lead, the world cannot remain the world as we have known it since 1945. But, unless a return to sanity arrives before then, the next two and a half years are a window of opportunity for lots of bad people to cash in their chips and take their winnings to the bank."